For most of a moon cycle, the dragons had trudged up the river, staying to the shallows near the densely grown riverbank. The banks of the river were too thickly forested, too twined with vines and creepers, too tangled with reaching roots to provide walking space for the dragons. Their hunters ranged ahead of them, their keepers followed in their small boats, and last of all came the liveship Tarman, a long, low river barge that smelled much of dragon and magic. Mercor was intrigued with the so-called liveship. Most of the dragons, including Sintara, found the ship unsettling and almost offensive. The hull of the ship had been carved from “wizardwood,” which was not wood at all but the remains of a dead sea serpent’s cocoon. The timber that such “wood” yielded was very hard and impervious to rain and weather. The humans valued it highly. But to dragons, it smelled of dragon flesh and memories. When a sea serpent wove its case to protect it while it changed into a dragon, it contributed saliva and memories to the special clay and sand it regurgitated. Such wood was, in its own way, sentient. The painted eyes of the ship were far too knowing for Sintara’s liking, and Tarman moved upriver against the current far more easily than any ordinary ship should. She avoided the barge and spoke little to his captain. The man had never seemed to wish to interact with the dragons much. For a moment, that thought lodged in Sintara’s mind. Was there a reason he avoided them? He did not seem cowed by dragons, as some humans did.

Or repulsed. Sintara thought of Sedric and snorted disdainfully. The fussy Bingtown man trailed after her keeper Alise, carrying her pens and paper, sketching dragons and writing down snippets of information as Alise passed it on to him. He was so dull of brain that he could not even understand the dragons when they spoke to him. He heard her speech as “animal sounds” and had rudely compared it to the mooing of a cow! No. Captain Leftrin was nothing like Sedric. He was not deaf to the dragons, and obviously he did not consider them unworthy of his attention. So why did he avoid them? Was he hiding something?