Blood of Dragons

Day the 27th of the Fish Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Keffria Vestrit, of the Bingtown Traders

To Jani Khuprus of the Rain Wild Traders, Trehaug

Jani, as we both well know, there is no privacy to bird-sent messages any more. If you have anything of great confidentiality, please send it in a packet by any of the liveships that ply the Rain Wild River. I have far more confidence in them than I do in the so-called Bird Keepers’ Guild. I will do the same, save for tidings that must reach you immediately and thus must, unfortunately, be subject to spying and gossip.

Herewith, the bones of what you must know. My messages to Malta are going unanswered. I am gravely concerned, especially since she was so close to giving birth. If you can send me any tidings to put my mind at ease, I would greatly appreciate it.

Other information also too grave to delay sharing: I have finally heard from Wintrow in the Pirate Isles. You may recall I wrote to him months ago to ask if he knew anything of Selden. As is often the case with letters sent through that region, both my message and his response were greatly delayed. He had no tidings of Elderlings but was alarmed at gossip of a ‘Dragon-Boy’ exhibited in a travelling display of freaks and oddities that had been journeying through his territory. Efforts on his part to learn more were fruitless. He fears that those he has queried have been less than frank for fear of incurring the wrath of the Pirate Queen’s consort. I beg you to use your contacts to ask if anyone has heard of such a travelling exhibition, and where they were last seen.

With great anxiety,

Keffria

CHAPTER SEVEN City Dwellers

Moving to the city had proved more challenging for the keepers than the dragons, Thymara thought. Kelsingra was a city built for dragons. The broad streets, the immense fountains, the scale of the public buildings all proclaimed that dragons had resided there. Entries were tall and wide, steps were set for a dragon’s tread, and every dimension of every chamber dwarfed humans to insignificance. For keepers who had grown up in the tiny tree-houses of Trehaug and Cassarick, the differences were stunning. ‘It doesn’t feel like I’m inside,’ Harrikin had observed the first time he entered the dragon baths. All the keepers had clustered together, looking up in wonder at the immense frescoes on the ceiling far overhead. Sylve, Thymara, Alum and Boxter had held hands and tried to measure the diameter of one of the supporting pillars. The first night that all the keepers had spent in the city together, they had slept in a cluster in the corner of an immense room, as if the building were a new kind of wilderness in which they had to huddle together against unknown dangers.

For the dragons, it was different. They had prospered since they had gained access to as much warmth as they wanted. After soaking in the baths they had gone on to recall and visit other sites in the city that had been created for the enjoyment of their kind. At the crest of one of the hills, there was a structure where sections of stone wall alternated with glass beneath a domed roof. The ceiling was a strange patchwork of glass and stone as well, while the heat-radiating floor contained shallow pits of sand in varying degrees of coarseness.