craving? Do you desire a platter of steamed hummingbird tongues?”
“Ew!” Malta turned, laughing, to put an arm around her husband’s narrow hips and drew him close to her. Reyn bent to kiss lightly her scarlet crown. She shivered at the touch and tilted her head to look up at him. “Can’t I simply say something nice to you without you reminding me of what a spoiled child I was when we first met?”
“Of course not. I’ll never miss a chance to remind you of what a brat you were. A gloriously beautiful and very spoiled brat. I was utterly charmed by your complete self-absorption. It was rather like courting a cat.”
“You!” she rebuked him fondly and turned back to her mirror. She set a hand on the marked swell of her belly. “And now that you’ve made me fat as a pig with your baby, I suppose I’m not as ‘gloriously beautiful’ to you.”
“And now she fishes for compliments! And comes up with a net full. My darling, it only makes you the more lovely to me. You glow, you gleam, you scintillate with your pregnancy.”
She could not control the smile that wreathed her face. “Oh, and
“I am not the only one who says so. My mother, my sisters, even my cousins stare at you!”
“That’s the envy that every Rain Wild woman has for a pregnant woman. It doesn’t mean they think I’m beautiful.” She put her hands on the vanity table and pushed herself to her feet. As always, the sight of her belly in a mirror startled her. She set her narrow, long-fingered hands on the bulge and stared. Becoming an Elderling had elongated so many of her body parts; her hands, her fingers, the long bones of her arms and legs-now this round bump in the middle of her frame seemed startling. “I look as if I swallowed a melon,” she said to herself.
Reyn looked over her shoulder into the mirror. “No. You look as if you carry our child within you.” He slid his hands down to just beneath the curve of their child and cradled it. The nails of his hands were a midnight blue, contrasting sharply with the soft white tunic she wore. He kissed the side of her face. “There are times when I still cannot believe in my good fortune. All we went through, all the times we nearly lost each other, and now, soon, we will have-”
“Hush!” she cautioned him. “Don’t speak it aloud. Not yet. We have been disappointed too many times.”
“But this time, I’m sure, all will be well. Never before have you managed to carry a child this long. You’ve felt him move, I’ve seen him move! He’s alive. And soon he will be where we can see him.”
“And if ‘he’ is a girl?”
“I promise you, I will be just as content.”
They felt the branch that supported the small house give to someone’s tread. There came a tap at the door. They moved apart reluctantly, Malta resuming her seat before her mirror and Reyn moving swiftly to the door. “Yes?”
“Please, sir, I’ve news!” a breathless and boyish voice responded.
“News of what?” Reyn opened the door wider. The lad on the doorstep was no runner. His clothes were ragged and he was thin. He looked up at Reyn hopefully. Tattoos marred both his cheeks.
“Please, sir, I heard at the trunk market that someone named Malta Elderling would want to know about the ship what’s come in. That she might pay a penny for such news.”
“What news? What ship?”
The boy hesitated until Reyn groped in his belt purse and held up a coin.
“
Malta lurched to her feet as Reyn slid the flimsy door open. Rain from high above pattered down in stray droplets, but the runner who still stood outside was soaked with it. “Come in,” Reyn invited him, and he stepped gratefully into the chamber and over to the firepot on its baked-clay hearth. He warmed his hands, his clothes dripping water onto the rough plank floor.
“What of the dragons?” Malta demanded.
The lad lifted gleaming blue eyes to meet her gaze. “I saw no dragons when I went down to look. I didn’t wait to ask, lady, but only came to tell you the barge has docked. I was not the first to know, but I wished to be the first to give my news. To earn a penny, as I understood it.” The lad looked worried.
But Reyn was now offering him a handful of coins, and Malta nodded. “You’ve done well. Only tell me what you saw. There were no dragons with the vessel? Did you see any of the young keepers? Did the barge look battered or in good condition?”
The runner wiped a hand over his wet face. “There weren’t any dragons. I saw only the barge and the crew working it. It didn’t look battered, but the crew looked tired. Tired and skinny and more on the ragged side than you’d expect.”
“You did well. Thank you. Reyn, where is my cloak?”
Her husband saw the boy to the door before turning to look at her. “Your cloak is on the back of your chair, where you last left it. But you cannot be thinking of going out in this downpour?”
“I must. You know I must, and you must come with me.” She glanced around the room but saw nothing more she needed. “Fortune has favored us to be here in Cassarick! I will not lose this chance. I need to be there when Captain Leftrin reports to the Council. All
“Malta? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. He just kicked me, hard, right in my lungs. Took my breath away for a moment.” She grinned. “You win, Reyn. He must be a boy. It seems that whenever I get excited about something, he must dance a jig inside me. No well-mannered little girl would do that to her mother.”
Reyn snorted. “As if I would expect any daughter of yours to be a ‘well-mannered little girl.’ Darling. Why don’t you stay here and let me go in your place? I promise I will come back immediately and give you word of all I heard and saw.”
“No. No, dear.” Malta was putting her cloak on. “I have to be there. If you went for me, I’d only ask you a hundred questions you hadn’t thought to ask and then be frustrated when you did not know the answers. We’ll leave a note for Tillamon so that she doesn’t worry about me if she comes by this evening.”
“Very well,” Reyn agreed reluctantly. He found his own cloak, still wet from an earlier outing, shook it out, and slung it around his shoulders. “I wish Selden were here. He is the one who should be handling this.”
“I just wish I knew where he was. It has been months now since we’ve heard from him. That last letter he sent didn’t sound like him, and it didn’t look like his hand to me. I fear something has befallen him. Yet even if my brother were here, I’d still have to go, Reyn.”
“I know that, my dear. We were raised in the old ways of the Traders, you and I. But even I wonder if we keep faith with a dead dragon. No one has seen her or heard rumor of her for years, now. Is she is dead and our agreements dead with her?”
Malta shook her head stubbornly as she lifted the large hood of her cloak and set it carefully on her pinned hair. “Contracts are written on paper, not air, and signed with ink, not breath. It does not matter to me if she is dead. Regardless of what others may do, we remain bound by our signed words.”
Reyn sighed. “Actually, we said only that we would help the serpents and protect the serpents’ cases until the dragons hatched from them. In which case, our part of the bargain is done.” He grimaced as he pulled up the wet hood of his cloak.
“I was raised to keep the spirit of an agreement, not just the letter of it,” Malta responded tartly. Then, as she realized it was her aching back that was driving her to quarrel with him over their old disagreement, she changed the subject slightly. “I wonder if that woman has returned safely, that Alise Finbok. She gave me such comfort and heart on the day she said she would go with them. She spoke so confidently and learnedly about Kelsingra.”
Malta turned to look at her husband. His eyes were a lambent blue within his hood’s shadows. He spoke reluctantly. “I’ve heard rumors that she was actually fleeing her husband and running off with his servant. There was some talk that her husband had disowned her, but that her father and the servant’s family were seeking news of them, even offering a reward for any word.”
Malta felt a pang of deep dismay. She pushed it aside. “I don’t care about any of that. She spoke like someone well versed in ancient things. The way she described the city, it was as if she had already walked there. She might have been fleeing her husband; she would not be the first wife to do so. But I think she was also bound toward something. So. Let’s go out into the rain and down to the Council Hall. We’ll learn no more about the
