Sedric and Alise to turn toward her. Skymaw gave her no greeting but simply took three strides and then fell onto the meat and began feeding. Alise’s mouth went into an “O” of surprise and then she laughed merrily, as if watching a favourite child indulge in a sweet. “She’s hungry again!” she called to Thymara, as if expecting the girl to share her pleasure.
“She’s always hungry,” Thymara replied, trying not to sound sour. She felt an echo of assent from the feeding dragon. Sedric, at least, looked happy to see her. His eyes lit and his pursed lips became a welcoming smile.
“I’m so glad you’re finally here. I looked everywhere for you earlier. This process will go a lot faster if you translate.”
She hated to disappoint him. “I can’t. I mean, I only brought part of the meat back with me. I have to find Tats and have him help me with the rest before scavengers take it.” She tried not to imagine that a two-legged scavenger was already hacking off parts of her kill. He wouldn’t dare, she told herself. They were too small a company for anyone to steal openly from another. No one would tolerate it.
Would they?
Sedric had said something else. He was looking at her expectantly, waiting for a reply. The twist of anxiety in her belly made her suddenly dismiss him and his concerns. “I have to find Tats and go back for the rest of the meat,” she said hastily, and refused even to wonder if that answered his question at all. She left them and headed toward the shore and the other dragons.
Behind her, Alise called out to her, “Rapskal is looking for you!”
Thymara nodded, and kept on going.
Tats was not with Fente. The small green dragon was still dozing, and when Thymara tried to rouse her to ask if she knew where Tats was, the creature made a sincere snap in her direction. Thymara jumped back uninjured and left her quickly. She wondered uneasily if the dragon would have eaten her if she’d drawn blood. She knew from Skymaw that the green queen had a reputation for being vicious when provoked. It was something she should talk to Tats about. If she could find him.
She found him and Sylve with the little silver dragon. Guilt tinged with annoyance suffused Thymara. She’d said she would care for the silver and Sylve had said she’d help. She’d only spoken out because Tats and Jerd had said they’d team up on the copper one. But she’d done little more than to check him for parasites around his eyes and nostrils each night. She hadn’t even thought to offer him some of the meat she’d brought back. Sylve was fussing over his tail. Nearby, a little fire smouldered reluctantly on a tussock of grass. A pot of foul-smelling soup had been set on it.
“How is he?” she asked uncomfortably as she approached.
“It’s as we feared,” Sylve said. “It looks like he let his tail dip below the surface of the river water, and more than once by the look of it. The cut is inflamed.” She opened the cloth she’d been trying to wrap around the injury and Thymara winced. She wondered if her earlier ministrations hadn’t done him more harm than good. It must have been painful when the raw flesh met the acid river. She frowned: she couldn’t recall hearing him cry out. On a positive note, the dragon was sleeping heavily; from the scraps of gut under his front claws, he had evidently got at least a share of the fish run.
“I wish there were a way to seal the bandaging around his tail to keep the water out,” she said hopelessly.
Tats grinned at her. “Maybe there is. I asked Captain Leftrin for some tar or pitch, and he gave me a little pot of it. It’s heating now. He gave us canvas, too.” His grin grew wider. “I think Captain Leftrin likes that Bingtown woman. When I was asking for the stuff, I thought he was going to tell me to shove off. But that woman, that Alise, got all fluttery about the ‘poor little dragon’ and the captain came up with a solution pretty fast.”
“Oh,” she said. Sylve was nodding approvingly at what Tats said.
“The captain said we should wrap it well, and then tar over the canvas and over his scales to either side. We’re hoping that it will stick to his scales well enough to make a watertight bond.”
The sheer strangeness of such a patch drove, for a moment, all other concerns out of her head. She stared at Tats. “Do you think it will work?”
He shrugged and grinned. “Nothing to lose by trying. I think the tar is warm enough. I don’t want to burn him. In fact, I hope to do this without waking him up.”
“How did you get involved in this?”
Sylve answered. “I asked him.” Despite the scaling on her face, a blush rosed her cheeks. “I had to,” she added defensively. “I couldn’t find you, and I didn’t know what to do for him.” She looked down at the dragon’s injured tail. “So I went to find Tats.”
As plainly as if she had spoken the words aloud, Thymara saw that the girl was infatuated with the tattooed boy. It almost made her laugh, except that it was so disturbing. Sylve could not have been more than twelve, even if her pink-scaled scalp and copper eyes made her seem older. Didn’t she know how hopeless it was for a girl like her to have a crush on someone like Tats? She could never have him; she could never have anyone, any more than Thymara could. What was she thinking?
But Thymara knew the answer to that, too. She wasn’t thinking at all. Only yearning after a handsome young man who’d shown her kindness and made nothing of her differences. Thymara couldn’t fault her. Hadn’t she felt the same, sometimes?
Didn’t she now?
She must have been looking at him strangely, because Tats suddenly flushed and said, “I wanted to help. There wasn’t much I could do for the little copper one anyway. So I decided to put my time here.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
The grin had faded from Tats’ face. “The same things that have been wrong with him since he hatched. He’s dull-witted. And his body doesn’t work very well. I cleared a load of parasites from around his eyes and nose and uh, other places. He didn’t even stir. I think he’s just exhausted from trying to keep up with the others today. I can’t even find out if he’s hungry. He’s that dead tired.”
The words echoed through her like a prophecy. “I killed an elk,” she blurted out.
In the shocked silence that followed her words, she quickly added, “I need help to bring the meat back. There would be some for each of our dragons, and some for us keepers, too. But we’d have to leave soon if we want to get back to camp before dark. It’s going to take us several trips back and forth to get it here.”
Tats looked at the tar pot and then at Sylve’s face. “We’ve got to finish this first,” he decided. “Then maybe Sylve and some of the others would help us go for the meat. That way we’d only have to make one trip.”
“The more people, the less meat for each dragon,” she pointed out bluntly.
Tats looked surprised that she’d think of it that way. She was surprised that he’d think of it any other way. For a long moment, the silence held. Then Sylve said quietly, “I can do the silver’s tail alone. You can go get your meat.”
Thymara relented. “Let’s just get it done and then we’ll all go.”
Sylve kept her eyes down and her child’s voice thickened as she said, “Thank you. Mercor made a kill today and he didn’t complain of hunger, but I don’t think it really satisfied him. I tried to fish, but the boys had the best places all staked out. When Captain Leftrin said that there would be a serving of meat portioned out to each dragon tomorrow morning, I hoped it would be enough for him.”
“Well, let’s get this dragon patched up and then we’ll go fetch meat for the others,” Thymara surrendered.
The heat had loosened the tar. Sylve and Thymara held the bandage firm around the silver dragon’s tail while Tats daubed the tar on with a stick. He worked carefully and to Thymara it seemed that it took an age before the entire bandage was well covered with tar and sealed to the dragon’s thick tail. The silver, thank Sa, hadn’t even fluttered an eyelid. That thought gave her a moment’s concern. The two least-capable dragons seemed more exhausted every day. How long could they keep up this pace? What would happen to them when they could not? She had no answer to that. She forced her mind back to today’s problem.
Tats could almost keep up with her as she led them through the forest, moving through the trees rather than on the ground. Sylve trailed him, but not by much. It was easy to find the way back; she just watched for the trail she had made dragging the meat back to Skymaw. She judged they were about halfway there when she heard voices below her. She moved down the tree trunk, her heart sinking. Her worst fears were realized. Greft was below her. He was dragging a hindquarter of her elk. Behind him came Boxter and Kase. Boxter had the other
