The man turned toward her with a shuffling step very different from the grace she recalled. He looked irritated to see her, but replied anyway. “Better? No, Thymara, not better. But soon perhaps I shall be.” His voice sounded thick as if his throat were very dry. She wondered if he were slightly drunk, then rebuked herself for thinking such a thing. He had been very ill; that was all.
As he turned away from her without any farewell, she saw that he carried a heavy wooden case. That burden was what had made him awkward on the ladder. He walked leaning to one side as if it were almost too heavy for him. She nearly ran after him to offer to help him with it, but she stopped herself. Surely a man would be humiliated for her to see how weakened he was. Best to leave him alone and let him manage.
She set off to find Sintara among the dragons. Her bedroll bounced on her back as she walked. After three steps, she un-slung it and carried it clutched to her chest. The rasp on her arm was scabbed over and healing fast, but the long scratch down the top half of her spine didn’t seem to be healing at all. Elsewhere, her scales had mostly protected her from Mercor’s teeth, but there they had given way. Sylve had first noticed it when she insisted that Thymara take off her shirt so that she could bandage her arm. “What is this?” the girl had asked her.
“What is what?” Thymara had asked her, shivering still.
“This,” Sylve said and touched a spot between her shoulder blades. The touch hurt, as if she had prodded an abscess. “It’s like you cut it and it closed. When did this happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m going to let it drain,” Sylve said, and before Thymara could forbid it, the girl had flicked away the edge of a scab. She’d felt warm liquid trickle down her back and turned to see Sylve’s expression of distaste as she dabbed at it. But the scaled girl had spoken no word of disgust as she prodded it and then poured clean water over it and bandaged it. It should have begun to heal. But the cut festered and was swollen and sore and sometimes oozing in the morning. She had nothing to treat it with, and no desire to expose her lizard body to anyone’s scrutiny. It would heal, she told herself stubbornly. She always healed. It was just taking longer this time. And hurting more.
The hunters had not fared well today. She smelled no meat, only river fish cooking on the fire. Once, she had enjoyed fish and regarded it as a rare treat. Now, even as hungry as she felt, she decided her dry meat would be enough.
The dragons were disappointed, too. Several of the big males were roaming the mud spit in a disgruntled way. Ranculos waded in the shallows, as if he might be able to discover more food there. On plentiful nights, the dragons often gathered around the fire with their keepers. They all enjoyed the warmth. But tonight the beasts were hungry and more scattered.
It would have been hard to find Sintara in the dark if Thymara had used only her eyes. But all she had to do was grope along the unwelcome connection she felt to the queen dragon. Sintara was at the downriver spike of the sandbar, staring back the way they had come.
And she wasn’t alone. As Thymara approached, she could hear Alise’s voice raised in gentle reproach. “You sent her right into that, deliberately, with no preparation. Of course it was upsetting to her. I wouldn’t want to stumble onto such a scene without warning. She has a sensitive nature, Sintara. I think you should have more care for her feelings.”
“She can ill afford to be ‘sensitive,’” the dragon replied scathingly.
Thymara halted, straining to hear what else they might say about her. She was becoming quite an accomplished eavesdropper, she thought sourly.
“She is already tough and strong.” Alise boldly contradicted the dragon. “Coarsening her spirit will not make her a better person. Only a harsher one. I think it would be a shame for that to happen to her.”
“It would be more of a shame for her to continue as she is—meek, bound by rules that she did not make, always holding in her words. Among dragons and Elderlings, we knew that every female is a queen, free to make her own choices and follow her own wishes. This is something Thymara must learn if she is to go on serving me.”
“Serving you!” Alise spluttered. “Is that how you see it? That she is your servant?”
She had come a long way, Thymara thought, from those days when her every word to Sintara was framed as a flowery compliment. Now it seemed to her that Alise spoke to the dragon almost woman to woman. She wondered if she had changed that much. Or perhaps it was Sintara, confident enough of them to no longer bother exerting her glamour. Thymara grinned to hear Alise defend her, but an instant later, the woman paid the price.