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and he deputed Manuel to stand in for him during the evening hour. Bazil would have been invited, too, but the Tower of Guard was not designed to allow ingress by dragons. Their friend Lagdalen of the Tarcho promised to come and visit him very shortly, however.
    Relkin worked swiftly through the morning. He checked all the brass fitments and gave them a last-minute buffing.
    Then the steel, starting with scabbards and going on to blades and morningstars. He forced the dragon to sit still for half an hour while all his talons were filed once more and burnished to a deep glow. All the dragons were being exhorted not to do anything boisterous for the rest of the day. There were to be no scratches, let alone chips or cracks, in those talons today. At length he finished and let the dragon retire to the plunge pool.
    Relkin went out in the forenoon and trod quickly down to the dockside through a chill wind. He noted that the
Barley
had been joined by another white ship, only a little smaller than the
Barley
itself. Scattered flakes of snow were whipping along in the wind. Two white ships could carry a full legion, without horses, and with everyone crammed in tight. Relkin turned over the rumors in his mind. Whatever else was true, there was clearly a voyage of some kind in the offing. They'd have to work hard on the ocean discipline with the wyverns. It would be best if the dragons were kept belowdecks as much as possible on a sea voyage. The smell of the sea brought on ancestral longings, and there was always the danger they would go feral.
    At the dockside he turned right and made his way around to Fish Place, a broad stretch of cobbles along the wharves where the city's fishing fleet docked. Facing the boats stood a row of solid three- and four-story buildings, dominated by an even larger one in their midst that had a large front gate with the doors propped open. He dodged through this gaping entrance and was enveloped in the odors of the fish market.
    Sweating dockworkers were moving huge slabs of ice on which reposed mounds of fish—cod from the Cunfshon banks, tunny and swordfish from the Bright Sea. A halibut large enough to have swallowed a dragonboy was wheeled past on another ice block.
    With a roaring clatter, a train of dollies bearing tubs of salted herring was thrust past by a team of burly lads. Relkin caught sight of their red faces, heard their cheerful banter, including a few insults tossed his way that he ignored completely, and he wondered briefly what it must be like to be one of them. To live here in the city as a civilian, to grow up here with a mother and a father and a firm place in life. It was so unlike his own existence that it actually had a romantic tinge to it.
    He inquired at the stalls along the sides of the market, but sternfish were rare these days in the Long Sound. No one much fished for them anyway, and they were rarely brought in for sale.
    "No demand for that," he was told on more than one occasion.
    "Ol' mansnapper? No, son, we don't carry that. Too strong a flavor. No one likes that."
    After trying with a few fishing skippers and finding no chance of a sternfish, he left and returned up the hill to the Dragon House. The snow was thickening steadily now, and the wind seemed even colder.
    At Kinch he reported his failure to the dragon. There was an ominous lack of response. Relkin realized he had a very sulky dragon on his hands.
    The dragons were to exercise after lunch, and this day they were watched over by anxious dragonboys alert to the slightest chip on a nail as they went through their routines with dragonsword and shield, crushing the big dummy trolls and cutting deep into the softened wood butts.
    When exercise was done and joboquins, swords, and shields had been retrieved from the dragons, and the great beasts had taken themselves back to the plunge pool with much grumbling, the dragonboys dispersed on their own errands.
    Relkin dug into his chest and put on his best blue breeches,