“I have told you. There are no others!” Leftrin tried to put thunder in his voice and failed. Kalo’s head was hovering over the ship, considering the bunched keepers as if he were selecting a ewe from a flock of terrified sheep. How clearly that ancient memory came to Sintara. Those had been good times, of easy feeding on the pasturelands outside Kelsingra. The sheep and cattle had been fattened for them, grained on oats that grew in abundance in the cultivated fields there. And higher up the slopes, in the surrounding hills and mountains, there had been goats, gamy and delicious. For a moment, her thoughts and life were abducted to that other time, to being a dragon who was tended and fed, not by one small human but by a city of Elderlings and the humans who served them.

In the context of those memories, she saw Kalo lower his head. She saw the keepers cringe, just as sheep had once cowered before a dragon. But Kalo swept past them, to Leftrin’s crew and the hunters who stood on the roof of the deckhouse. With his muzzle, he nudged a boy, nearly sending him flying. “This one I will have.”

“No,” shouted Carson, but before the hunter could speak another word, the youngster shouted, “Yes!” Davvie turned to Carson and spoke quickly and clearly. “I want to do this, Uncle.” He glanced down at the gathered keepers, caught the eye of one of them, and grinned. He turned back to Carson. “I’ll be Kalo’s keeper.”

“Why is he choosing you, Davvie?” Carson demanded.

The dragon responded before the boy could. “I’ve seen him walking among us. He hunts well. He doesn’t show fear. I’m taking him.”

“It will be all right,” Davvie responded. “You’ll see, Uncle. I think it’s the place in the world that I’ve been looking for. I’ll be with friends.”

“You had rather stay with the dragons and your friends than go where I go?”

Davvie looked at him. “I know you, Uncle. You will stay with them, also.”

“Then he can be my keeper!” This announcement came from Spit. “If Kalo can claim a hunter as his own, then I can take one for myself as well. I take Carson the hunter as my keeper, to tend me and to be changed by me as I require. There, that’s done.”

“Nothing is done!” Leftrin roared again, and this time he did manage the thunder. “We are not your cattle!”

“Leftrin. It will be all right.”