“There’s none of Camwyn’s blood to do it but you,” Samdal said. “Dragon’s a sign that someone must come, must renew the bond. You’d have made a better prince than Perdal; everyone saw that, even back then. You’re a man full grown now, experienced in command and in ruling a domain. And descended from Camwyn himself…”

“But I’m oathsworn elsewhere,” Arcolin said again. “I cannot make bond with the dragon and the people if I break my oath somewhere else.” He said it as if explaining it to Samdal and not to convince himself.

Samdal’s expression did not alter. “None there is of the dragon’s house. What does it matter?”

“It matters to me,” Arcolin said. “And to the gods, I’m sure, and to Camwyn Dragonsfriend, who was no oathbreaker. If—” He clamped his teeth on the rest of that. If they had come to him while he was still Kieri’s captain, hands of years ago, if he had asked Kieri’s advice, as he so often did, Kieri would have freed him from that oath. Kieri might have told him to go back to Horngard, and then—he would have gone.

To return in triumph: was that not every exile’s dream? It had been his once. He would show them; he would prove himself; they would be sorry … and now they were, but now he was not a runaway with no name. Now he carried a title, lands of his own. He had his own bond with a dragon—a different dragon, maybe, though who could tell?

He had to tell Samdal, he realized then. Only a dragon’s bond would convince the man. Maybe.

“If,” Samdal said, picking up Arcolin’s last word. “If you were not oathbound to your king?”

“And if I were not already oathbound to a dragon,” Arcolin said. Samdal’s jaw dropped; he shut it with a snap and said nothing. “You were right to say I had the smell of dragon on me,” Arcolin went on. “And yes, I have touched tongue to a dragon’s tongue—not a statue of a dragon, but a dragon himself. I do not know if it is the same dragon, and the dragon said nothing about my past, or about Horngard.”

“But then—but you must be—”

“The dragon came to me in my northern stronghold,” Arcolin said. “It was a matter of—” What could he say, how much could he reveal without risking secrets the dragon did not want known? “A matter of land,” he went on. “It demanded land which I held from the king of Tsaia.”

“Why did it not come to us? We are the dragons’ kin, through Camwyn—”

“I do not know,” Arcolin said. “You know the legends as well as I. We do not question dragons’ reasons, do we?”

“No. No, of course not.”