Greft straightened slightly and glanced quickly about the surrounding forest. “Tats is hunting with you? Where is he?”
“Tats is probably still back at the river.” She shouldn’t have answered his question, she thought, for it suddenly made her feel more alone. “When I tell him I’ve got meat, he’ll come and help me with it.”
Greft smiled, relaxing, but his expression only made her more tense. “Why bother? I can help you with it now. I don’t mind helping you.”
“I NEED TO talk to Thymara’s dragon.”
Alise snapped her head around, startled and annoyed at the interruption. It was so hard to get Skymaw talking. Things had been going so well, with Skymaw telling a story of someone in Kelsingra creating a fountain around a life-size sculpture of three dragons. To keep her talking, Alise had been standing beside her while the dragon rested her head on her front paws, carefully grooming the scales around her eyes. Fishing in the silty river splashed water into the dragon’s eyes and ears, and when it dried, fine dust remained near her eyes. It was careful, ticklish work to remove it, one better done by human fingers than the dragon’s own claws. “I beg your pardon?”
The dragon keeper stared at her for a moment. Rapskal, she thought. That was his name. She’d spoken to him twice before, and each time found the experience a bit unsettling. His eyes were a very light blue, and sometimes when he blinked, as he did now, the color and the faint light that came from them seemed to be one and the same. He was very handsome, in a Rain Wild way, and would be an extraordinary man. Right now, his face had that unfinished look of a youth venturing toward manhood. The jaw was shaping into firmness. His wild hair, she realized, made him look more boyish than he truly was.
Sedric spoke to the boy’s silence. “Why do you need to speak to Skymaw? She was in the midst of giving Alise some very important details about Kelsingra.”
“Got to find Thymara. She’s going to miss out on the food.”
“She’s not here,” Sedric said, almost patiently. He looked at the pen he was holding. He was sitting on the crate that he’d hauled down from the Tarman with his lap desk on his knees. The sheet of heavy paper in front of him was almost covered in his fine handwriting. Even with her having to stop to translate every word the dragon said, the session had been going well; in fact, it had been the best they had ever had. Sedric dipped his pen again and finished the sentence he’d been on. He looked up at her expectantly.
Impatience scratched at her nerves as she told the young man, “I don’t know where Thymara is. Have you looked all around the encampment?”
He cocked his head at her as if she were a bit stupid. “Did that before I came here. Skymaw, please tell me where Thymara is?”
The dragon replied with a single word. “Hunting. We are busy here.” She canted her head very slightly, to remind Alise that she had been tending her. Alise went back to work on her.
“Hunting where?” Rapskal persisted.
“In the forest. Go away.”
“It’s a big forest.” Rapskal didn’t seem to have the sense not to annoy the blue dragon. Alise felt the dragon flex and knew her claws were digging into the wet mud. She distracted her. “Loose scale right here by the corner of your eye. Don’t blink while I lift it away.” To her surprise, Skymaw obeyed. Alise held it up on the tip of her finger, marveling at it. It was like both a fish scale and a feather. There were lines on in, possibly indicating how it had grown, but at the edge of it, it feathered into fine tendrils. It was a deep, deep blue, deeper than the best sapphire she had ever seen. She leaned forward, looking at the place it had come from, suddenly seeing how the feathered edges interlocked into a smooth surface with the following scales. “This is incredible,” she breathed in awe. “Sedric, can you draw this for me?”
“I’d love to!” he replied with enthusiasm. She was startled to find that he’d set down his desk and come to stand at her shoulder. “But, to do it justice, I’d want a steady surface, a bright lamp, and my colored inks. I have all that back on the Tarman. Let me put it in a safe place.”
He had reached out his hand for it when Skymaw’s head suddenly lifted. Her tongue, long and forked just like a lizard’s, was of a size commensurate with her body, and when it flicked out, it was like having a large, fleshy whip crack in the air right between Alise and Sedric. It happened so swiftly that suddenly the scale was gone, lifted deftly away from Alise’s fingertip with an accuracy that astonished her.
