"Ah. Sometimes friendly is harder than cold."

"Exactly." Grag rubbed his forehead. "The Vestrits are a stiff-necked bunch. The women are too damn independent for their own good. So everyone has always said of Ronica Vestrit. I've discovered the hard way that the same is true of Althea." He gave Reyn a bitter grin. "Let's hope your luck with the younger generation is better."

"She gives little sign of that," Reyn admitted ruefully. "But I think that if I can win her, the battle will have been worth it."

Grag shook his head and looked away from the other man. "I felt the same way about Althea. I still feel that way. Somehow, I doubt that I'll get a chance to find out."

"But you're returning to Bingtown?"

"I won't be stopping there, I'm afraid. Once we get to town, it's belowdecks for me, until we're out at sea."

"And then?" Reyn asked.

Grag gave a friendly smile but shook his head dumbly.

"Quite right. The fewer who know, the better," Reyn agreed. He returned his gaze to the river.

"I wanted to tell you personally how grateful the Teniras are for the support you've shown us. It is one thing to say you will back us. It's another to put your family fortune on the line as well."

Reyn shrugged. "It is a time when the Rain Wilds and Bingtown must stand united, or give up who and what we are."

Grag stared at the ship's white-edged wake. "Do you think enough of us will stand united for us to succeed? For generations, we have functioned as part of Jamaillia. All of our lives are patterned as closely as possible on Jamaillia City. It is not just our language and our ancestry. It is all our customs: our food, our style of dress, even our dreams for our futures. When we stand apart from that and say, We are Bingtown, what will we really be saying? Who will we be?"

Reyn concealed his impatience. What did it matter? He tried to formulate a more political answer. "I think we will simply be recognizing the reality of the last three or four generations. We are the folk of the Cursed Shores. We are the descendants of those brave enough to come here. They made sacrifices and we inherited their burdens. I don't resent that. But I won't share my birthright with those who will not make the same commitment. I won't cede my place to people who don't recognize what it cost us."

He glanced at Grag, expecting him to agree easily. Instead, the man only looked troubled. In a low voice, as if ashamed of the thought, Grag asked him, "Have you never thought of just kicking it all over and running away?"

For a moment, Reyn just stared at him through his veil. Then he observed wryly, "Obviously, you have forgotten whom you are speaking to."

Grag gave a lopsided shrug. "I've heard you could pass. If you wanted to. As for me… sometimes, when I am away from my ship for a while, I find myself wondering. What holds me here? Why do I stay in Bingtown, why must I be all a Trader's son must be? Some folk have kicked over the traces. Brashen Trell for instance."

"I don't believe I know him."

"No. You wouldn't. And you never will. His family disowned him for his wild ways. When I heard about that, I halfway expected him to die from it. But he didn't. He comes and goes as he pleases, lives where he wants, sails where the wind blows him. He's free."

"Is he happy?"

"He's with Althea." Grag shook his head. "Somehow, the family picked him to captain the Paragon for them. And they entrusted him with Althea."

"From what I've heard of Althea, she needs no man's protection."

"She would agree with that." Grag sighed. "I don't. I think Trell has deceived her in the past, and may again… It eats at me. But do I rush off to find her and bring her back? Did I leap in and say, 'I'll go, I'll captain your mad ship for you, so long as I can be with you? No. I didn't and Trell did. And that's another difference between us."

Reyn scratched at the back of his neck. Was something growing there? "I think you make a fault of what is actually a virtue, Grag. You know your duty and you are doing it. It isn't your fault if Althea can't appreciate that."

"That's just the trouble." He tugged the small missive from his sleeve, then pushed it back again. "She does. She praised me for it and wished me well. She said she admires me. That's a poor substitute for love."

Reyn could think of nothing to say to that.

Grag sighed. "Well. No point in dwelling on any of that now. If it comes to war with the Satrap, it will come soon enough. Either Althea will come back to me, or she won't. It seems there is little I can do about my life; I'm like a leaf caught in a current." He shook his head, and grinned in embarrassment at his own melancholy words. "I'm going forward to talk to Kendry for awhile. You coming?"

"No." Reyn realized how abrupt he sounded and sought to soften it. "I've got some thinking of my own to do."

Reyn watched through a gray haze of veil as Grag walked forward to the figurehead. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. Even with gloves on, he would not take a chance on leaning on the railing. The whole ship shouted to him as it was, and it was not «Kendry» that spoke to him.

He had traveled aboard liveships before and never had this problem. The dragon had done something to him. He wasn't sure what, or how, but it frightened him. He had broken his bargain with his mother and elder brother to pay her a final visit. It was wrong, but so was abandoning her without trying to make her see that he had done his best. He had begged her to let him go; she had seen how hard he had tried. Instead, she had vowed that she would devour his soul. "As long as I am a prisoner here, Reyn Khuprus, so shall you be also," she had cursed him. She had twined herself through his mind like a black vein in marble, mingling with him until he was no longer certain where she left off and he began. It frightened him worse than anything else she had ever done. "You are mine!" she had declared.

As if to underscore her words, the entire floor of the chamber had trembled. It was only a tremor, a common occurrence on the Cursed Shores. It was not even a large one as quakes went, but never before had he been in the Crowned Rooster Chamber when one struck. His torch showed him the frescoed walls undulating as if they were draperies. He ran, fleeing for his life, with her laughter echoing inside his mind. He could not escape it. As he fled, he had heard the unmistakable sound of corridors giving way. The deadening rush of damp earth followed the clattering of falling tile. Even when he reached the outside and bent over, hands on his knees, trying to reclaim his breath, he could not stop shaking. There would be work tomorrow, and for days to come. Tunnels and corridors would have to be shored up. If it was bad, sections of the buried city might have to be abandoned. All would have to be inspected laboriously before there could be any new explorations. It was precisely the sort of work that he hated.

"Toil away," the dragon's voice had bubbled merrily in his mind. "You might be able to shore up the walls of this dead city, Reyn Khuprus. But the walls of your mind will stand no more against me or my kind."

It had seemed an idle threat. What worse could she do to him than she had already done? But since then, his dreams had been plagued with dragons. They roared and battled one another, they stretched out on rooftops to sun themselves, they mated atop the lofty towers of an exotic city. He was witness to it all.

It was not a nightmare. No. It was a dream of extraordinary brilliance and complexity. They trafficked with beings that were almost human, yet were subtly different. They were tall, with eyes of lavender or copper, and the shades of their flesh were subtly different from any folk he had ever encountered in his real life.

His real life. That was the problem. The dreams were far more compelling than his waking hours. He saw cities of the Elderkind and came tauntingly close to understanding their history. He suddenly grasped the wideness of their streets and corridors, the broad yet shallow steps, the height of the doors and the generous windows. The vastness of their constructions had been to accommodate the dragons that shared the city. He longed to venture inside the buildings, to linger close to the people as they strolled in the markets or ventured out on the river in their gaily painted boats. He could not.