He shook his head at her fondly. “Well, when we get back to Trehaug, I shall have to buy you a crate of paper and a hogs-head of ink.” He reached over and playfully twitched the abused handkerchief from her fingertips. “And perhaps a few of these, too.”
“What?” she asked him. All life, all merriment faded suddenly from her face. “Trehaug? Go back to Trehaug?”
He cocked his head at her. “Well, I think we’ll have to before winter, or we’re going to have keepers running around here in the cold in next to nothing. And while meat and fish and wild greens are fine things, I for one am starting to miss even such bread as ship’s biscuit. And a dozen other things we’ve been doing without.” He grinned at the prospect.
She just stared at him. “Go back to Trehaug?”
“Well, of course. You must have known that we’d have to go back eventually.”
“I, well, no. I hadn’t thought about it. I never want to go back, not to Trehaug, not to Bingtown.”
He looked at the distress in her face and then carefully folded her into his arms. “Alise, Alise. You don’t think I’d let you get away from me? Yes, we’ll go back to Trehaug. We’ll go back together, just as we came here. Tarman will show you what he can do, downriver in the current, when we know where we’re going, without a herd of slogging dragons setting the pace for us. We’ll go down to Cassarick and put in our order for provisions. You’ll report to the Council there, and I’ll collect my money. Yes, and you’ll report to Malta the Elderling, too.”
She was looking up at him, and the life had come back to her face. Her eyes had begun to shine. He had to continue the tale for her.
“And then we’ll go down to Trehaug, pick up our cargo, and be back here before the worst of winter, with blankets and knives and tea and coffee and bread and whatnot. Now I’ve never so much as seen a herd of sheep or an apple tree, but from what I’ve heard tell, I think they’d go here. So we’ll make that an order, too, and next spring, we’ll make another run, and we’ll pick up whatever it was we sent for. Seeds and animals and such things from Bingtown and beyond. Look around us, Alise. You see that old city over there, and it’s a very fine thing, I’m sure. But I see the one thing that the Rain Wilds has never had, and that’s arable land. What if, after all these generations, the Rain Wilders could feed themselves without having to dig for Elderling artifacts to do it?
“We’re going to change everything, Alise. Everything.”
COPPER AND SILVER they gleamed, side by side on the sandy riverbank. They were both stretched out in utter repose. Sedric’s back ached and his hands felt raw from the scrubbing, but Relpda shimmered as if she were a newly minted coin. She was growing again, he was sure of it. Both her neck and tail seemed longer and more graceful, and her wings were getting stronger all the time. Beside her, Spit’s ribs rose and fell in the slow cadence of deep sleep. Sedric glanced up at Heeby’s distant circling silhouette just in time to see the red dragon clap her wings tight to her body and dive on something; he knew a moment of purest jealousy. Then he looked at Relpda, and it all ebbed away. In time. Soon enough, the sun would catch on her copper wings in flight. For now, the deep sleep of her repose was satisfaction enough for him.
“I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as she is when she’s clean. Nothing gleams like she does.”
Sedric was perched on the riverbank. A short distance away from him at the water’s edge, Carson straightened slowly, shaking water from his hands and arms. Both men had spent most of the afternoon grooming their dragons. Carson had gone hunting in the dawn and brought back a deer. The dragons had not been happy about having to share a kill, but he’d insisted. In the process of eating it, they’d managed to get blood all over themselves, and Sedric had insisted it was time they both had a good grooming. That task finished, Carson had discarded his shirt while he’d sluiced his hands and arms in the river.
He toweled himself with the discarded garment as he walked back to Sedric. There was silvery scaling on his arms now, and sparkling drops of water clung to the black hairs on his forearms and chest. The hunter was grinning. “Oh, I think I’ve seen a thing or two as pretty as she is, copper man.” He tossed his shirt to the ground and then sat down on the sand beside Sedric. He ran a finger up the line of scaling on Sedric’s bare back. Sedric gave a delighted shiver and in response, Carson put his arm around him and pulled him over to lean against him. The hunter rested his chin on Sedric’s head and said quietly, “Let’s nap while they do. And when we wake up, I’ll take you hunting.”