LITMIR.BIZ

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fire. She smiled, and made small talk during the meal, as if all were well and she were merely a subservient wife conceding to her husband’s demands. Thymara asked about it twice more, unable to resist the bait she had dangled, and each time her mother told her that surely Thymara would not want to leave home and family and she would say no more on such a silly topic.

      All Thymara could do was simmer in her seething curiosity.

      As soon as the meal was ended, Jerup announced he had errands and left the house. Thymara tidied away the remains of the meal, trying not to meet her mother’s resentful stare. As soon as she could, she left the house and the little walkways that connected it to its neighbours. She clambered higher in the canopy. She needed to think, and she’d do that best if she were alone. Dragons. What could the dragons possibly have to do with an offer for her?

      Thymara had seen the dragons twice in her life. The first time had been five years ago, when Thymara had been almost eleven. Her father had taken her down the trunk and across the Necklace Bridges and then down, down, all the way to the earth. The trail that led to the hatchery by the riverbank had been trodden into muck by the passage of so many feet. That had been Thymara’s first visit to Cassarick.

      The memory of watching them emerge haunted her still. Their wings had been weak and their flesh was thin on their bones. Tintaglia had come and gone, bringing fresh meat to feed them. Her father had felt sympathy for the poor misshapen creatures. A rueful smile twisted her mouth as she recalled his scrambling flight from one newly hatched dragon.

      In the early days following the hatch, everyone had hoped that the dragons who survived would grow and prosper. Her father had been employed for a time as a hunter to help feed the dragons. But the densely forested Rain Wilds could not long support such large and ravenous carnivores. The best efforts of the hunters could not create more game than there was. The Council had become more and more penurious about paying for the hunters’ work. Her father soon quit that occupation and returned to their home in Trehaug. He told a sad tale of the sickly dragons quickly dying off. Those who remained grew larger, but not heartier nor more self-sufficient. ‘Sometimes Tintaglia comes, bringing meat, but one dragon cannot feed so many. And her shame for those poor creatures radiates from her. It will come to a bad end for all of us, I fear.’

      For the earth-bound dragons, it had grown worse. For against all odds, Tintaglia had found a mate. All had believed that Tintaglia was the last true dragon in the world. To discover it was not so was shocking, and the tale of the black dragon that had risen from the ice was almost too far-fetched to believe.

      Some prince of the far Six Duchies had unearthed the dragon, digging him out of an icy grave for reasons of his own, ones that did not matter to her. The black drake had not been dead after all; he had risen from his long and icy sleep and taken Tintaglia as his mate. They had flown off together to hunt and feed and mate. Wild as the tale was, one thing was unmistakably true: since that time, the queen dragon had returned to the Rain Wilds only sporadically. There were reports from some Rain Wilders that they had seen the two great dragons flying in the distance. Some said bitterly that now that she had no need of humans for companionship or aid, she had parted from them, not only abandoning to their care the ravenous young dragons but ceasing to cast her protective shadow over the waters of the Rain Wild River.

      Even though Tintaglia had ceased to observe her end of their bargain, the Rain Wilders had little choice but to continue to care for the young dragons. As many had pointed out, the only thing worse than a herd of dragons living at the foot of your city was a herd of hungry, angry dragons living at the foot of your city. Although the cocooning grounds were substantially upriver of Trehaug, they were almost on top of the buried city of Cassarick. The most accessible parts of the ancient Elderling city beneath Trehaug had been mined of Elderling treasure long ago. Cassarick now seemed to offer the same potential, but only if the young dragons were kept in a frame of mind to allow the humans access to it.

      Thymara wondered how many of the young dragons now remained alive. Not all of the serpents who entered their cocoons had emerged as dragons. The last time her father had journeyed to Cassarick, Thymara had gone with them. That had been a little more than two years ago. If she recalled correctly, there had been eighteen surviving creatures then. Disease, lack of fresh food and battles among themselves had taken a heavy toll on them. She had watched from the trees, not venturing near. The dirty hulking creatures seemed tragic, almost obscene when she recalled the glittering newness of the freshly emerged dragons. They were large, ill-formed hulks, smeared with mud, living in a trampled mucky area by the river. They stank. They stalked about listlessly, wading through their own droppings and nosing through the offal of old meals. None of the dragons had ever achieved the ability to fly. Some of them could hunt for their own food, in a very limited way. Their efforts consisted of wading out into the river and snatching at the migratory fish runs. A sensation of suppressed strife rose to her, thicker than their reptilian stench. She had turned away from them, unable to bear looking at the bony, ill-tempered creatures.

      Thymara shook her head to clear it of memories and focus on her climb. She dug in her claws and moved up, into the branches that arched over the roof of her home. It was among the highest in Trehaug. From here, she looked down over most of the tree top city.

      She drew her knees up under her chin and pondered as she sat watching nightfall devour the city and forest. She liked this particular perch. If she leaned out and angled herself just right, she had a tiny window up through all the intersecting branches, through which she could glimpse the night sky and the myriad stars that filled it. No one else, she thought to herself, knew that such a view existed. It belonged to her alone.

      For a short time, she had peace. Then she felt the small vibrations of the branch that told her that someone was coming to join her in her precarious perch. Not her father. No. This person moved more swiftly than her father did. She did not turn to look at him, but spoke as if she had seen him. ‘Hello, Tats. What brings you up to the canopy tonight?’

      She felt him shrug. He’d been standing up on the branch. Now he dropped to all fours to creep along the narrow limb to join her. When he reached her, he sat up but locked his wiry legs around the branch beneath him. ‘Just felt like visiting,’ the Tattooed boy said quietly. She finally turned her head to look at him.

      Tats met her gaze without comment. She knew that recently her eyes had taken on the pale blue glow that some Rain Wilders had. He’d never commented on it, nor on her black claws. But then, she’d never asked any questions about the tattoos that sprawled across his face beside his nose. The one closest to his nose was a little horse symbol. The one that spread across most of his left cheek was a spider’s web. They marked that he had been born into slavery. She knew the bones of his tale. Six years ago, with the return of the serpents, the Rain Wilds had invited the Tattooed of Bingtown to emigrate there. Many of the recently freed slaves had few other prospects. Some had been criminals, others had been debtors, but the tattoos of slavery had reduced them all to a near equal footing. The Rain Wild Council had invited them to journey up the Rain Wild River, to settle and intermarry, to begin new lives. In exchange, the Tattooed had offered their labour in dredging out the river shoals and building the water ladders that had allowed the serpents to complete their migration. Many of the Tattooed had gone on to become valued citizens of the Rain Wilds. Those who had been debtors were often skilled artisans or craftsmen, and they brought their talents to the Rain Wilds.

      Unfortunately, some of them had been thieves, murderers and pickpockets. And some of them brought those skills to the Rain Wilds as well. Despite the chance to make a new life, they had fallen back on what they knew. Tats’ mother had been one of them. Thymara had heard that she was a thief, and no more than that, until a burglary had gone wrong and turned into a murder. Tats’ mother had fled; no one knew where, least of all Tats, a boy of about ten at the time. Abandoned to his own devices, he had been fostered among the other Tattooed. Thymara had the impression that he had lived everywhere, and nowhere, picking up what food he could as it was offered to him, wearing cast-offs and doing whatever menial tasks he could to earn a coin or two for himself. She and her father had met him at one of the trunk markets, the large market days held closest to the huge trunks of the five main trees of central Trehaug. They had birds to sell that day, and he’d offered to do anything they needed, if only they’d give him

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