‘If you do and you get fresh meat. . .’

‘I’ll share what I can,’ Thymara replied instantly. She tried not to regret the promise. Meat for Sintara, and meat for the sickly copper and the dim-witted silver dragon. Why had she ever volunteered to help care for them? She couldn’t even keep Sintara well fed. And now she had just said she’d try to bring meat for Sylve’s golden dragon Mercor. She hoped the hunters were going out as well.

In the days since the dragons had made their first kill, they had learned to do some hunting and fishing for themselves. None of them were exceptional predators. Dragons were meant to hunt on the wing, not lumber after prey on the ground. Nonetheless, all of them had enjoyed some success. The change in diet to freshly-killed meat and fish seemed to have affected almost all of them. They were thinner, but more muscular. As she strode past some of the dragons, she looked at them critically. With surprise, she realized that they now more closely resembled the depictions of dragons she had seen in various Elderling artefacts. She halted where she was to watch them for a moment.

Arbuc, a silver-green male, was splashing along in the shallows. Every now and then he thrust his whole head into the water, much to the amusement of Alum, his keeper. Alum waded alongside, fish spear at the ready, even as his frolicking dragon drove off any possible game. As she watched, Arbuc spread his wings. They were ridiculously long for him, but he beat them anyway, battering water up and showering Alum with it. His keeper yelled his disapproval and the dragon stopped and stood puzzled, his arched wings dripping. She looked at him and wondered.

Abruptly, she turned her steps and went looking for Sintara. Sintara, not Skymaw, she reminded herself moodily. Why had it injured her pride so much to learn that some of the dragons had never concealed their true names from their keepers? Jerd had probably known her dragon’s name since the first day. Sylve had. She clenched her teeth. Sintara was more beautiful than any of them. Why did she have to have such a difficult temperament?