pointed at Tintaglia. Reyn glimpsed his mother elbowing her way through the crowd. When she reached the front row of awed onlookers, she alone stepped free of the crowd and advanced cautiously toward the dragon. Then she saw him, and lost all interest in the towering beast.
'Reyn?' she asked incredulously. 'Reyn!' Her voice broke on his name. 'And you are alive? Praise Sa!' She ran to him and knelt by him.
He reached up to grip her hand. 'She lives,' he said. 'I was right. The dragon is alive.'
Before she could speak, a long wail interrupted them. Reyn saw Keffria break free of the clustered onlookers and race along the wharf to Selden. She knelt by him, and then gathered her boy up in her arms. 'Oh, thank Sa, he lives. But what of Malta? Where is Malta, where is my daughter?'
Reyn spoke the difficult words. 'I did not find her. I fear she perished in the city.'
Like a rising wind, the cry rose from Keffria's throat until it was a piercing scream of denial. 'No, no, no!' she wailed. Selden paled in her grip. The features of the tough little boy who had been Reyn's companion during their ordeal suddenly quivered into a child's face again. He added his sobs to her wailing.
'Mama, Mama, don't cry, don't cry!' He tugged at her but could not gain her attention.
'The one you call Malta isn't dead,' the dragon interrupted sharply. 'Stop this caterwauling and cease your emotional wallowing.'
'Not dead?' Reyn exclaimed.
His words were echoed by Selden. He seized his wailing mother and shook her. 'Mama, listen, didn't you hear what the dragon said? She said Malta is not dead. Stop crying, Malta isn't dead.' He turned a shining gaze on Tintaglia. 'You can trust the dragon. When she carried me, I could feel her wisdom right through my skin!'
Behind them on the docks, a rising chorus of talk drowned out Selden's words. Some folk were exclaiming in wonder. 'She spoke!'
'The dragon spoke!'
'Did you hear that?' Some nodded in surprised agreement, while others demanded to know what their friends meant. 'I heard nothing.'
'It snorted, that was all.'
Tintaglia's silver eyes grayed with disgust. 'Their minds are too small even to speak to mine. Humans!' She limbered her long neck. 'Stand clear, Reyn Khuprus. I am done with you and your kind now. My bond is fulfilled.'
'No! Wait!' Reyn jerked free of his mother's clutch on his arm. Boldly he gripped the clawed tip of Tintaglia's gleaming wing. 'You cannot go yet. You said Malta still lives. But where is she? How do you know she lives? Is she safe?'
Tintaglia twitched her wing tip effortlessly free of him. 'We were linked for a time, as well you know, Reyn Khuprus. Therefore, I retain some small awareness of her. As to where she is, I know not, save that she floats on water. On the river, I surmise, from the fear she feels. She is hungry and thirsty, but not otherwise injured that I can tell.'
Reyn fell to his knees before the dragon. 'Take me to her. I beg you. I will be forever in your debt if you will but do this one thing for me.'
Amusement flickered over the dragon's face. He knew it in the swift swirling of her eye colors, and the small flaring of her nostrils. 'I have no need of your service, human. And your company bores me. Farewell.' She lifted her wings and began to open them. 'Stand clear of me, if you would not be knocked down.'
Instead, Reyn sprang toward her. Her sleekly scaled body afforded no purchase to his scrabbling hands. He flung himself at her foreleg and wrapped his arms around it as if he were a child clinging to his mother. But his words were full offeree and fury. 'You cannot go, Tintaglia Dragon! Not and leave Malta to die. You know she did as much to free you as I did. She opened herself to the memories of the city. She discovered the secret catches that would open the great wall. But for her seeking you out, I would not have come into the city amidst the quakes. You would be buried even now! You cannot turn your back on such a debt! You cannot.'
Behind him, he was aware of garbled questions and conversation among his mother and Selden and Keffria. He didn't care what they overheard; he didn't care what the boy told them. Right now, all he could think of was Malta. 'The river runs white,' he went on to the dragon. 'White water eats boats. If she is on the river on a log or raft, the water will devour it and then her. She will die, because she ventured into the city to try to save you.'
The dragon's eyes spun silver flecked with scarlet, so great was her anger. She snorted a hot blast of breath that nearly knocked him down. Then with a single forepaw she snatched him up as if he were a doll stuffed with sawdust. Her talons closed painfully around his chest. He could barely take a breath.
'Very well, insect!' she hissed. 'I will help you find her. But after that, I have finished with you and yours. For whatever good you and she may have done me, your kin have committed great wrongs against all my kind.' She lifted him and thrust him toward the liveship. Kendry stared at them, and his face was that of a dying man. 'Do not think I do not know! Pray that I forget! Pray that after this day, you never see me again!'
He could not take a breath to reply, nor did she wait for words from him. With a mighty leap, she sprang upward. The sudden lurch of the dock knocked down those who had ventured onto it. Reyn heard his mother's shriek of horror as the dragon bore him away. Then all sound was driven from his ears by the swift wind of their ascent.
He had not known, before this, what care Tintaglia had taken for him and Selden on that earlier flight. Now she rose so swiftly that the blood pounded in his face and his ears popped. His stomach was surely left far below them. He could sense the fury seething through her. He had shamed her, before humans, using her own name. He had revealed her name to those others, who had no right to it.
He caught a breath but could not decide on words. To apologize might be as great an error as to tell her she owed this to Malta. He stilled his tongue and clutched her talons, trying to ease their grip around his ribs.
'Do you want me to loosen them, Reyn Khuprus?' the dragon mocked him. She opened her claws, but before he could slip through them to his death, she clamped them shut again. Even as he gasped in terror, she arrested their ascent, tipping her body and sending them in a wide spiral above the river. They were too high to see anything. The forested land below them was an undulating carpet of moss, the river no more than a white ribbon. She spoke to his thought.
'The eyes of a dragon are not like the eyes of a prey beast, small meat creature. I see as much as I need to see from here. She is not in sight. She must have been swept down the river.'
Reyn's heart turned over in his chest. 'We'll find her,' the dragon comforted him grudgingly. Her great wings began to sweep steadily, driving them down the course of the river.
'Go lower,' he begged her. 'Let me search for her with my own eyes. If she is in the shallows, she may be hidden by the trees. Please.'
She made no reply, but took him down so swiftly that he saw darkness at the edges of his vision. She flew with him down the river. He clutched at her talons with both his hands and endeavored to watch all of the broad face of the river and both banks. Her flight was too swift. He tried to believe that the dragon's keener senses would find Malta even if he missed her, but after a time, despair took root in him. They had gone too far. If they had not found her yet, it was because she was no more.
'There!' Tintaglia exclaimed suddenly.
He looked, but saw nothing. She banked and turned as adroitly as a swallow, and brought him back over the same stretch of river. 'There. In that little boat, with two others. Close to the center of the river. See her now?'
'I do!' Joy leaped in him, followed as quickly by horror. They had found her, and as Tintaglia bore him ever closer, he saw that the Satrap and his Companion were with her. But seeing her was not the same as rescuing her. 'Can you lift her up from the boat?' he asked the dragon.
'Perhaps. If I drop you and swamp the boat in the process. There is a chance I could snatch her up without doing more than breaking her ribs. Is that what you wish?'
'No!' He thought frantically. 'Can dragons swim? Could you land near her on the river?'
'I am not a duck!' Her disgust was manifest. 'If dragons choose to come down on a body of water, we do not stop on the surface, but plunge down to the bottom, and then walk out from there. I don't think you would enjoy the experience.'
He grasped at straws. 'Can you drop me into the boat?'
