“It’s been solved. Why do we have to know it now?”

“Sing it for me so I’ll know that you know it, girl,” Petiron had said testily. Which was no reason at all.

But Petiron had been very land to her, Menolly knew, and her throat tightened with remembered regret for his passing. (Had he gone between? The way dragons did when they lost their riders or grew too infirm to fly? No, one left nothing behind, going between. Petiron had left his body to be slipped into the deeps.) And Fetiron had left more behind than his body. He’d left her every song he’d ever known, every lay, every ballad, saga, every fingering, chord and strum, every rhythm. There wasn’t any way a stringed instrument could be played that she didn’t know, nor any cadence on the drums at which she wasn’t time-perfect She could whistle double-trills as well as any wherry with her tongue or on the reeds. But there had been some things Petiron wouldn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—tell her about her world. Menolly wondered if this was because she was a girl and there were mysteries that only the male mind could understand.

“Well,” as Mavi had once told Menolly and Sella, “there are feminine puzzles that no mere man could sort, so that score is even.”

“And one more for the feminine side,” said Menolly as she followed the fire lizards. A mere girl had seen what all the boys—and men—of the Sea Hold had only dreamed of seeing, fire lizards at play.

They’d ceased following the queen and her bronzes and now indulged in mock air battles, swooping now and then to the land itself. And seemingly under it Until Menolly realized that they must be over the beaches. The sand was slipping under her feet An unwary step could plunge her into the holes and dips. She could hear the sea. She changed her course, keeping to the thicker patches of coarse marsh grasses. The ground would be firmer there, and she’d be less visible to the fire lizards.

She came to a slight rise, before the bluff broke off into a steep dive onto the beaches. The Dragon Stones were beyond in the sea, slightly hidden by a heat haze. She could hear fire lizards chirping and chattering. She crouched in the grasses and then, dropping to her full length, crept to the bluff edge, hoping for another glimpse of the fire lizards.