them, he would not try to come back this way, but would make for the more stable parts of the city. With every breath I take, I pray that soon someone will come running to give us the tidings that they have emerged on their own.'
They had reached a large chamber that looked like an amphitheater. The work crews had been dumping the tailings of their work here. Jani tipped the barrow and let the load of earth and rocks increase the untidy pile in the middle of the formerly grand room. Their wheelbarrow joined a row of others. Muddy shovels and picks had been tumbled in a heap nearby. Keffria suddenly smelled soup, coffee and hot morning bread. The hunger she had been denying woke with a roar. The sudden clamoring of her body made her recall that she had eaten nothing all night. 'Is it dawn?' she asked Jani suddenly. How much time had passed?
'Well past dawn, I fear,' Jani replied. 'Time always seems fleetest when I most long for it to move slowly.'
At the far end of the hall, trestle tables and benches had been set out. The very old and the very young worked there, ladling soup into dishes, tending small braziers under bubbling pots, setting out and clearing away plates and cups. The immense chamber swallowed the discouraged mutter of talk. A child of about eight hurried up with a basin of steaming water. A towel was slung over her arm. 'Wash?' she offered them.
'Thank you.' Jani indicated the basin to Keffria. She laved her hands and arms and splashed her face. The warmth made her realize how cold she was. The binding on her broken fingers was soaked and gritty. 'That needs to be changed,' Jani observed while Keffria used the towel. Jani washed, and again thanked the child, before guiding Keffria toward several tables where healers were plying their trade. Some were merely salving blistered hands or massaging aching backs, but there was also an area where broken limbs and bleeding injuries were being treated. The business of clearing the collapsed corridor was hazardous work. Jani settled Keffria at a table to await her turn. A healer was already at work rebandaging her hand when Jani returned with morning bread, soup and coffee for both of them. The healer finished swiftly, abruptly told Keffria that she was off the work detail, and moved on to his next patient.
'Eat something,' Jani urged her.
Keffria picked up the mug of coffee. The warmth of it between her palms was oddly comforting. She took a long drink from it. As she set it down, her eyes wandered over the amphitheater. 'It's all so organized,' she observed in confusion. 'As if you expected this to happen, planned for it-'
'We did,' Jani said quietly. 'The only thing that puts this collapse out of the ordinary is the scale of it. A good quake usually brings on some falls.
Sometimes a corridor will collapse for no apparent reason. Both my uncles died in cave-ins. Almost every Rain Wild family who works the city loses a member or two of each generation down here. It is one of the reasons my husband Sterb has been so adamant in urging the Rain Wild Council to aid him in developing other sources of wealth for us. Some say he is only interested in establishing his own fortune. As a younger son of a Rain Wild Trader's grandson, he has little claim to his own family's wealth. But I truly believe it is not self-interest but altruism that makes him work so hard at developing the foragers' and harvesters' outposts. He insists the Rain Wild could supply all our needs if we but opened our eyes to the forest's wealth.' She folded her lips and shook her head. 'Still. It does not make it any easier when he says, 'I warned you all' when something like this happens. Most of us do not want to forsake the buried city for the bounty of the rain forest. The city is all we know, the excavating and exploration. Quakes like this are the danger we face, just as you families who trade upon the sea know that eventually you will lose someone to it.'
'Inevitable,' Keffria conceded. She picked up her spoon and began to eat. A few mouthfuls later, she set it down.
Across from her, Jani set down her coffee mug. 'What is it?' she asked quietly.
Keffria held herself very still. 'If my children are dead, who am I?' she asked. Cold calmness welled up in her as she spoke. 'My husband and eldest son are gone, taken by pirates, perhaps already dead. My only sister has gone after them. My mother remained behind in Bingtown when I fled; I know not what has become of her. I only came here for the sake of my children. Now they are missing, and perhaps already dead. If I alone survive-' She halted, unable to frame a thought to deal with that possibility. The immensity of it overwhelmed her.
Jani gave her a strange smile. 'Keffria Vestrit. But the turning of a day ago, you were volunteering to leave your children in my care, and return to Bingtown, to spy on the New Traders for us. It seems to me that you then had a very good sense of who you were, independent of your role as mother or daughter.'
Keffria propped her elbows on the table and leaned her face into her hands. 'And this now feels like a punishment for that. If Sa thought I undervalued my children, might he not take them from me?'
'Perhaps. If Sa had but a male aspect. But recall the old, true worship of Sa. Male and female, bird, beast and plant, earth, fire, air and water, all are honored in Sa and Sa manifests in all of them. If the divine is also female, and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel.'
The old saying, once so comforting, now rang hollow in her ears. But Keffria's thoughts did not linger on it long. A great commotion at the entrance to the hall turned both their heads. 'Sit still and rest,' Jani advised her. 'I'll see what it's about.'
But Keffria could not obey her. How could she sit still and wonder if the disruption were caused by news of Reyn or Malta or Selden? She pushed back from the table and followed the Rain Wild Trader.
Weary and bedraggled diggers clustered around four youngsters who had just slung their buckets of fresh water to the floor. 'A dragon! A great silver dragon, I tell you! It flew right over us.' The tallest boy spoke the words as if challenging his listeners. Some of the laborers looked bemused, others disgusted by this wild tale.
'He's not lying! It did! It was real, so bright I could hardly look at it! But it was blue, a sparkly blue,' amended a younger boy.
'Silver-blue!' a third boy chimed in. 'And bigger than a ship!' The lone girl in the group was silent, but her eyes shone with excitement.
Keffria glanced at Jani, expecting to meet her annoyed glance. How could these youngsters allow themselves to bring such a frivolous tale at a time when lives weighed in the balance? Instead, the Rain Wild woman's face had gone pale. It made the fine scaling around her eyes and lips stand out against her face. 'A dragon?' she faltered. 'You saw a dragon?'
Sensing a sympathetic ear, the tall boy pushed through the crowd toward Jani. 'It was a dragon, such as some of the frescoes showed. I'm not making it up, Trader Khuprus. Something made me look up, and there it was. I couldn't believe my eyes. It flew like a falcon! No, no, like a shooting star! It was so beautiful!'
'A dragon,' Jani repeated dazedly.
'Mother!' Bendir was so dirty that Keffria scarcely recognized him as he pushed through the crowd. He glanced at the boy standing before Jani, and then to his mother's shocked face. 'So you've heard. A woman who was tending the babies up above sent a boy running to tell us what she had seen. A blue dragon.'
'Could it be?' Jani asked him brokenly. 'Could Reyn have been right all along? What does it mean?'
'Two things,' Bendir replied tersely. 'I've sent searchers overland, to where I think the creature must have broken out of the city. From the description, it is too large to have moved through the tunnels. It must have burst out from the Crowned Rooster chamber. We have an approximate idea of where that was. There may be some sign of Reyn there. At the least, there may be another way we can enter the city and search for survivors.' A mutter of voices rose at his words. Some were expressing disbelief, others wonder. He raised his voice to be heard above them. 'And the other thing is that we must remember that this beast may be our enemy.' As the boy near him began to protest, Bendir cautioned him, 'No matter how beautiful it may seem, it may bear us ill will. We know next to nothing of the true nature of dragons. Do nothing to anger it, but do not assume it is the benign creature we see in the frescoes and mosaics. Do not call its attention to you.'
A roar of conversation rose in the chamber. Keffria caught at Jani's sleeve desperately. She spoke through the noise. 'If you find Reyn there… do you think Malta may be with him?'
Jani met her eyes squarely. 'It is what he feared,' she said. 'That Malta had gone to the Crowned Rooster chamber. And to the dragon that slept there.'
'I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING SO BEAUTIFUL. DO YOU THINK SHE WILL COME back?' Weakness as well as awe made the boy whisper.
Reyn turned to regard him. Selden crouched on an island of rubble atop the mud. He stared up at the light
