City of Dragons

to smile at Sedric. “I wish I knew what finally motivated her. I’d try it on Spit.” He turned his grin back on Tats but got no response from him.

Silence again, save for the scatter of rain outside and the soft crackling of the awakened hearth fire. Tats shifted on his bench. “I guess I’m not worried that they’re hurt. I’m worried that they’re together.” He hunched his shoulders more tightly, as if that would ward off his pain.

Sedric watched him in sudden understanding. He knew the pangs of jealousy when he saw them.

The bench creaked as Carson shifted his weight. He was in profile to Sedric, and the light of the fire lit the consternation on his face. “Well. Nothing you can do about it if they are, son. Things like that happen.”

“I know that.” Tats had locked his hands together. He trapped them between his knees, rocked slightly, and then suddenly said, “I made a mess of things with her. I thought everything was going well and then suddenly it wasn’t. She was so angry that I’d slept with Jerd. And I didn’t get it, because when Jerd and I were together, Thymara didn’t even seem interested in me. She was just being my friend, like always. So why was she so angry about it?

“Well. Now I guess I understand it better.”

Carson leaned down and used a piece of kindling to poke the log deeper into the hearth. “It’s a hard way to learn, but I think that’s how most of us learn about jealousy. It seems like a stupid way for anyone to feel, until someone makes you feel it.”

“Yes.” Tats was animated now and perhaps angry. “And I can’t stand thinking about them together, and I can’t stop thinking about it. How can she do that to me? I mean, couldn’t she have told me about it, warned me, or given me a chance to do better before she chose him, or, or something?”

Carson glanced over at Sedric and then back at the boy. “Sometimes things aren’t all that planned. They just happen. And, well, you’re talking as if her being with him, if she is with him, is something that she’s doing to you. Now I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, but chances are that you didn’t figure at all in her decision. When you decided to be with Jerd, did you stop to wonder what Thymara would think of it? Or Rapskal or Warken? Or anyone?”

A bemused smile twisted Tats’s mouth. “When I ‘decided’ to be with Jerd. Hah.” Despite his misery, the memory lit his face with a smile. “I don’t remember deciding anything that night. Or thinking at all.”

“Well, perhaps for Thymara. .”

The smile faded abruptly from his face. “But she’s a girl. Girls do think about those things. Don’t they?”

An incredulous smile spread slowly across Carson’s face. “You came here tonight to ask me for advice about women?” He turned and looked pointedly at Sedric. “Are you sure you knocked on the right door?”

Tats looked uncomfortable. “Well, who else can I talk to? The other keepers would just make fun of me. Unless I talked to Jerd, and that would go places I don’t want to go. Or Sylve, and then I just might as well talk straight to Thymara because anything I said to Sylve would get right back to her. So I came here. You, both of you seem happy. Like you got it right. And I thought, of everyone that’s here now, you seemed the best to talk to. You’re older. And it can’t be that different, can it? People being jealous, people being in love.” The last word came awkwardly to Tats, and he didn’t look at Carson as he said it.

Sedric found himself glancing away from Carson, as if he dared not read what might be on his face. For a time, the hunter didn’t speak. Then he said quietly, “Happy comes and goes, Tats. Loving someone isn’t that crazy infatuation that you feel at first. That passes. Well, not passes, but it calms down, and then sometimes, when you least expect it, you get a glimpse of the person and it all comes back again, in a big rush. But even that’s not what you’re looking for. What you’re looking for is the feeling that no matter what, being with that person is always going to be better than being without that person. Good times or bad. That having that person around makes whatever you’re going through better, or at least more tolerable.”

“Yes. That’s it, exactly. That’s what I feel about her.”

Sedric looked up at Carson. The hunter was slowly shaking his head. “Sorry, Tats, but I don’t believe it.”

The boy shot to his feet. “I’m not lying!”

“I know you aren’t. You believe what you’re saying. Now don’t get angry. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Davvie not long ago. Don’t take offense, but you just aren’t old enough to know what you’re talking about. You want Thymara, and I’m sure you like being around her. And I’m sure it’s making you crazy tonight that she’s with Rapskal instead of you. But what I see is a young man with a very limited selection of partners and a very small experience of. .”

“You don’t understand!” Tats cried and spun toward the door. He snatched it open and then paused to pull his hood up.

Carson didn’t try to stop him. “I do understand, Tats. I’ve been where you stand. Someday, you’ll be where I am right now, saying these same words to a youngster. And he probably won’t-”

“What is that? Look! Is it a fire? Is the city on fire?” Tats had halted in the doorway, staring out and across the hillside and river and into the distance.

In two steps, Carson was at his side, peering over his shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen light like that. It’s coming from windows, but it’s so white!”

A rumbling began, so deep that Sedric more felt than heard it. He rose, clutching the blanket around his nakedness, and joined them at the door. In the distance, in the night, he could see the city as he never had before. It was not a distant huddle of structures but an irregular pattern of rectangular lights scattered over the far shore and into the distance, right up to what he surmised were the foothills. As he watched, more lights kindled, spreading downriver, and his breath caught in his throat as he suddenly realized that he was looking at a city much larger than he had imagined. It easily rivaled Bingtown for size.

“Sweet Sa!” Carson breathed, and at that moment the rumbling Sedric had felt became a full-voiced trumpeting from a dozen dragon throats.

“What is it?” he demanded of everyone and no one, and he felt Relpda echo his query. His dragon had wakened to the lights and trumpeting. For a moment, he sensed only her disorientation, and then he felt her thought, both joyous and anguished. The city awakens and welcomes us. It is time we went home.

But we cannot get there.

Alise awakened to dragons trumpeting in the night. She put her feet over the side of the bed and winced as they hit the cold floor. She slept in the Elderling gown that Leftrin had given her, as much as to feel it as his touch as for the unfailing warmth it gave her. She hurried to the door of the hut that seemed so much larger and emptier without the captain, opening the door to rain and darkness.

No. Not complete darkness. Stars had blossomed across the river. She stared, rubbed her eyes, and then looked again. Not stars. Not fires. Windows lit with the sort of light that could come only from Elderling magic. Something had happened over there, something had been triggered. She stared in awe and frustration. “I should have been there when this happened. Who did this, and how?”

But she knew. Rapskal had been impulsive since she first met him, reminding her of a mischievous boy from the very start of the expedition. She knew that he had continued to visit the city in Leftrin’s absence and strongly suspected that he had ignored the captain’s warnings about immersing himself in the memory stone dreams. Now he had discovered something and had done something to waken that reaction in the city. If it was like other Elderling magic she had witnessed, it would last for a time and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it would fail and be gone, never to be seen again.

And here she was, on the wrong side of the river.

Tears pricked her eyes. She shook her face angrily, denying them. No time to weep. Instead, it was time to stare, to try to mark in her memory which of the distant buildings had lit and which had remained dark. It all had to be recorded. If this was as much as she could witness of this last great display of Elderling magic, then witness it she would and make a record for any who came after her to study the ancient ruins.

“I think the first thing is to rig a better shelter for the Elderling and her child,” Hennesey suggested. He was sitting at the galley table. He glanced at the veiled woman beside him as if awaiting her confirmation. She remained silent and still.

Leftrin nodded numbly. He was exhausted, but there was no time to rest now. His ears buzzed with weariness, and he shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “Is there any coffee left?”

“A little,” Bellin replied. She took the pot from the iron stove and brought it to the galley table. She poured more for him, and when Reyn nudged his mug to the middle of the table, she refilled his as well. Leftrin looked at