Thymara blinked her eyes, then squeezed them shut. Vertigo spun her. She had been sitting on Tarman’s bow, dangling her legs over the side and considering how big the world had become. The dense cloud and steady rains of the last few days had finally ceased; overhead was an endless canopy of stars that stretched from horizon to horizon. She’d stared up at them too long and had suddenly felt as if she were falling off the deck of the boat and up into the sky. She opened her eyes again and stared out at the water.

The forest was gone. It had retreated, day by day, until now it was no more than a smudge on the horizon. The ship was lost in a flat slough of reeds and rushes. Short trees and bushes with stilt roots stuck up in isolated groves. They had learned these indicated not only the shallowest water but also areas where gallators enjoyed sunning themselves. The dragons did not fear the gallators; they regarded them as a larger meat source. But the larger gallators felt the same way about the keepers and their small boats. The keepers had learned to hang back and let the dragons feed off the gallators before coming close to the stilt bushes. The dragons liked to overnight near the groves. All of them were tired of standing in water, but at least it was shallower by the groves. Captain Leftrin accommodated them, but she knew that he feared grounding Tarman in water so shallow that not even he could scuttle out of the mud.

The retreating forests had taken all her familiar food sources with them. Now the keepers set nets for fish at night and pulled up reeds and rushes for their thick, starchy roots. A few days ago, they had been lucky when a flock of waterfowl had got entangled in Carson’s fish nets. They’d had fresh meat, but they paid for it in long hours of attempting to mend the tattered nets. She didn’t like the monotony of the food now and disliked even more her feeling of being useless. With her hunting gear lost in the wave, all she could do was gather. And the only things to gather were the starchy roots or the seedheads from the tall grasses.

At least Sintara had become more attentive to her, if not any kinder. The dragon demanded nightly grooming now. The water made it difficult, and she had had to submit to Thymara climbing on her back and neck in order to reach the parts of her that needed cleaning. Bundled handfuls of reeds and grasses made coarse brushes for dislodging insects and polishing the dragon’s scales, but they were harsh to human hands. Thymara felt sorry for those whose hands were less scaly than her own.