Could we find some means of killing the dragon or driving it away? Will this woman of Dev's find some lore to help us? Will there be any sign presaging such good fortune when there's a wizard involved? Will there be any sign showing me which is the better choice for Chazen?

First things first: we have to keep this dragon from laying waste to the domain while we wait for some salvation from these northern wizards or for inspiration as to how we might save ourselves.

Let's take a leaf out of that bold savage's book. It wants meat first and foremost. Very well. We send every trireme and warrior Chazen has to call on to round up every last one of these savages. We hold them captive on the islands closest to the beast. If the dragon comes, it can feast on them.

The rocky end of the island sank beneath the turquoise waters, reaching out long fingers of many-coloured coral. In the open waters beyond, an undulating russet reef guided them into a calmer channel between two barren islets rising barely a handspan above the rippling waters.

Though there's no telling where the dragon might go. Best make ready for its arrival anywhere in the domain. Tell the islanders to surrender their ducks and hens. Hunters will have to snare as many deer and forest hogs as they can. Will that sate its appetites? Or has it only got a taste for human flesh? Crude as they were, their palm-frond hats helped to baffle the punishing sun and the calm waters in the sheltered channel made for easier paddling. Kheda slowed and scooped up water to rinse his sticky hands and face and to wash some of the dust from his chest. 'Dev, take a turn steering.'

What of its other appetites? Risala must be right. It must be gems that savage gave it. Why does it want gems? Does that matter? Stick to the question at hand. How do we stop it devastating the domain? The gift seemed to placate it. Is that what we must do? Pour out what little wealth Chazen has just to keep the beast from causing mayhem?

He paddled on, curbing his longer stroke to match Risala's determined efforts.

It has to be worth a try. Isn't one life worth more than even the finest talisman gem? Then that's another reason to take the battle to the remaining savages, to take back the jewels they have stolen. But can we do it without being eaten by the dragon ourselves?

Dev used the stern sweep to help drive the raft on and Kheda recalled the barbarian's expertise inmanaging the ill-fated Amigal single-handed.

A scatter of irregular reefs demanded all their attention. Wider isles further off baffled the prevailing wind and the sun struck up a dazzling sheen from the water. They left the treacherous uncertainty of the corals and found themselves crossing a shallow stretch of sea rippling crystal clear over white sands. Invisible currents sent the carpets of sea grasses below swaying around the grazing turtles. The raft's shadow crossed the path of a smaller turtle. It shied away, rolling over to show the pale under- side of its mottled grey and brown shell as it flailed its scaly flippers.

The invaders scorned turtleshell and pearls when they looted. I suppose that means the dragon has no interest in such things. Is that ill fortune for Chazen or good luck? Do we lament that our own resources cannot save us or rejoice that we don't have to squander the pearl harvest to buy off this monster?

'There's good eating on one of those,' Dev remarked.

'Got anything to catch it with besides magic?' Risala looked at Kheda. 'You've been rowing longer than anyone. You should take a turn at steering.'

'How long have we been at this? How far have we come?' Kheda tried to stand and discovered how cramped and stiff his legs were. His stumble almost overset the raft before he caught the stern oar and managed to recover his balance.

Dev muttered something derogatory under his breath as he settled himself to another stint of paddling.

Risala shot the wizard a filthy look.

Kheda scanned the seas and islands ahead and a flash of white caught his eye. 'What's that?'

Dev and Risala both looked up.

'Where?' she queried.

'What?' he demanded.

'Over there, past that easterly island.' Kheda watched the wing of pale canvas disappear behind a clump of nut palms.

'I see it.' Dev let his paddle trail in the water. The boat reappeared on the other side of the islet. 'Do you think it's one of ours?' Risala looked back at Kheda for reassurance. 'We've never seen the invaders using sails.'

'If it isn't one of ours, it soon will be.' Dev made sure his swords were secure in his belt before setting to with his paddle once again.

'I don't want any bloodshed,' Kheda warned sharply. 'Not unless there's nothing else for it.'

With a dragon in the islands, we don't need the ill omen of Chazen blood spilled in Chazen waters by Chazen steel.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Kheda woke from a dream of sweating bodies entwined in velvet darkness to hear sunbirds singing cheerily outside his shuttered windows. Strong sun striped the wide bed. He threw off the embrace of the light quilt that had rebuffed the night's breezes and pushed himself upright, stifling a rueful groan.

It was barely sunrise when I first woke. I never meant to go back to sleep. Where's Devi A soft footfall sounded in the bathing room beyond the door in the opposite wall.

'Dev? Is that you?' Kheda swung his feet to the floor.

'It's me.' Risala appeared in the archway with an armful of towels. She was dressed in a modest cotton dress neither crisply new nor overly worn.

Unobtrusive, all the better for finding out just what the people here are making of the web of lies the three of us have spun for them, her own mouth shut, eyes and ears open.

His blood pulsed at an unbidden memory of her soft skin beneath his hand.

Was it you I was dreaming of? That dress is almost the same colour as your eyes.

'Good morning.' He managed a casual greeting as he eased past her to the bathing room.

'You look rested.' She surveyed his nakedness with the faintest of teasing smiles.

'Why didn't Dev wake me?' Kheda took a moment for the urgency in his loins to fade before he relieved himself, returning, rather more composed, to the bedchamber.

'I don't know.' Risala opened the shutters and Kheda crossed to the window.He turned the ivory column on the sill so that the vane faced the sun and read the shadow's mark across the swooping lines carved into the cylinder. 'The morning's half gone.' He turned to shout peremptorily at the heavy outer door. 'Dev! Breakfast and plenty of it!'

Risala perched on the edge of the bed as Kheda threw open a clothes chest and looked for trousers.

'Your lady wife is wearing green this morning.'

'We need to show a united front, do we?' Kheda glanced at her before pulling out an emerald pair of trews.

Risala nodded. 'The Yellow Serpent's rowers have been talking.'

'We can hardly blame them for that. Anyway, a creature that size was hardly going to stay a secret for long.' Kheda stepped into the trousers and pulled the drawstring tight. 'They must have left a groove in the sea, they got us back here so fast. That deserves some praise.' He leaned against the wall, arms folded across his bare chest. 'At least we got back here quickly enough to prove that the hasty rumours of my death were exaggerated. What are people making of Itrac's reactions to the Mist Dove's first report?'

'Hardly anyone knew what was going on.' Risala wasn't unsympathetic. 'Just that she'd shut herself in her pavilion, barring her doors against all-comers. Thanks to Beyau and Jevin, her hysterics stayed safely behind those locked doors, and all her servants are loyal, they won't betray her with gossip. As for the rumours . ..' Risala shrugged. 'There's some speculation that she might have lost an early pregnancy.'

Let's hope those loyal servants keep that from her ears.

'There was no word of a dragon around the anchorage?' Kheda persisted.

Risala took a moment to consider her reply. 'There was rumour but it just wrong-footed everyone, especially when there was no word from Itrac. It's incredible, after all. Who'd imagine we'd see a dragon in these reaches? Who's heard of one outside a poet's verses?'

She smiled faintly before continuing, wholly serious. 'You've reappeared, which is good news even if the Yellow Serpent's men have confirmed that the beast is real. That's hardly good news, but at least your presence gives the people some reassurance and for the moment the dragon is still well over the horizon.

Everyone's waiting to see what you do, what orders you give. They're all telling each other long and loud that there's no point making any decisions until they know what's afoot. Better to know where the dragon is, rather than head off blindly and run straight into its jaws. I don't think they're too keen to throw themselves on Daish mercy again.'

Kheda rubbed at the back of his neck. 'So it's not as bad as it could be. The domain's not in an uproar.'

'It would have been a cursed sight worse if we hadn't got back when we did,' Risala countered. 'And the people need your leadership. Otherwise dread will spread like mildew.'

'Slow but insidious.' Kheda looked at her, his voice low. 'Do they believe what we said happened to us and the Amigair 'I think so.' Risala wrinkled her nose with a suggestion of doubt. 'They want to believe that it's possible to escape a dragon, especially those who have friends or family on the triremes you've left out there to continue the hunt for the savages. And they've no reason to think their warlord wouldn't tell them the truth,' she concluded wryly.

'I'd better get to the courier-dove lofts.' Kheda pushed himself away from the wall. 'And see what news there is from the Mist Dove and the others. Do you know if there have been any whispers on the wind from any other domains? Is Janne Daish inviting people to wonder why a magic so evil touches this domain, even if it chooses not to touch me?' A knock sounded on the brass-bound door giving on to the hallway. 'Dev? Have you been grinding the sailer to make that bread?'

The door opened to reveal Itrac. 'Good morning, Kheda.' Waving Jevin back, she pushed the door closed on his anxious face. She turned to face Kheda, her expression unreadable behind a mask of cosmetics. Risala slid off the bed to vanish swiftly away through the bathing room.

'Itrac, good morning.' Kheda brushed a chaste kiss on her cheek and then waited, uncertain what to do or say for the best.

How can I tell you I don't blame you for panicking at the news that you might have been widowed asecond time in strange and ominous circumstances? How can I do that without shaming you by letting you know I heard about your hysterics'!

'Jevin is bringing your breakfast.' The first wife of Chazen was wearing a long, wide-sleeved tunic over close-fitted trousers all in leaf-green silk shot with silver lights. Ropes of pearls bound the shimmering cloth at ankle, wrist, waist and neck and a crescent of silver-mounted nacre held back her long black hair, which was plaited into a torrent of narrow braids. 'Dev was as weary as you. I told Beyau to leave him in his cubby hole.' Itrac shrugged her disdain for a body slave who insisted on a permanent sleeping place of his own, rather than at the foot of his master's bed. 'He'll hardly be fit to serve you if he doesn't sleep himself out.'

'We had a tiring voyage back here,' Kheda said carefully.

'And suffered in the sun when you had to make your own way back to the Yellow Serpent.' Avoiding Kheda's eyes, Itrac went to a tall coffer and took out a stubby jar with a rag-swathed stopper. 'Let me oil your back before you finish dressing.'

'Thank you.' Kheda took the jar from her and poured a little of the emollient into his own palm before returning it. He rubbed the lotion into his hands.

Back to navigating the intricate complexities of the married life. You're offering an intimacy but one that means you don't have to face me. What does that tell me?

'Now we have a dragon to plague us.' Behind him, Itrac's voice was as firm as her fingers rubbing balm into his muscles. 'After all the trials of invasion last year.'

'There is indeed a dragon.' Kheda concentrated on relaxing his shoulders. 'Though I'm not sure it's here to plague us. For the moment, it seems most interested in devouring those remaining invaders. It's entirely possible that their wickedness has brought this evil down upon them.'

'Truly?' Itrac's hands stopped circling. 'That's how you read this?'

'It's certainly more than possible,' Kheda said steadily. 'I shall need to read the omens with considerable care, to see if things become any clearer.'

In the meantime, that's the word we'll start spreading as far and as fast as courier doves and dispatch galleys can carry it. And I'm sure the portents can be suitably ambiguous, in case the beast makes a liar out of me.

'Hesi, on the Yellow Serpent, he said the dragon overflew them.' Itrac resumed her rubbing and Kheda could feel a faint scoring from her silver-varnished nails. 'It drove that boat your slave insists is his on to a reef?'

'Some whirlwind was following in its wake.' Kheda tried to strike an appropriate balance between awe and ease of mind. 'It seems the poets were right: such creatures stir up chaos wherever they go.'

Thank you, Risala, for recalling that nugget from some endless epic or other. I imagine poets on every island will be unrolling those song cycles now. What will that do for morale]

'So we will see the whole domain riven by this chaos?' Itrac's hands and voice both trembled.

'Not if I have any say in it.' Kheda turned to take her hands in his, looking deep into her brown eyes. 'As I said, for now the beast seems content to eat those foul savages and I'm content to let it. I've ordered our triremes and warriors to drive the wild men into its very jaws, if they can do so without risking themselves.'

'But you said we needed all our boats guarding the main sea lanes . ..' Itrac faltered.

'Which is why I decided to clear the western isles of the last invaders,' Kheda reminded her. 'That's what our warriors need to be doing, isn't it, dragon or no dragon? Besides, I'll wager word of this beast clears Chazen waters of every parasite and pirate. They'll be splashing their way north as fast as they can row.

There can be a pearl in the least promising oyster, can't there?'

He gripped her fingers tighter to stifle the next question on Itrac's lips. 'And we saw something very strange when we washed up close by the beast, something so strange no poet would dare imagine it. The creature covets gems, Itrac. Don't ask me why, but it does. Dev and I saw a wild man buy his life with a handful of them. That's how we managed to escape its notice, while it was besotted with its prize. We must send jewels to the triremes, so that they can buy their lives by distracting the beast with them, ifneed be.'

'Jewels?' Itrac's eyes widened with pure astonishment.

Kheda nodded. 'We keep this to ourselves, naturally, but don't you see, this knowledge can buy us more time as and when the beast has eaten its fill of those invaders. I'll stuff its mouth with every jewel Chazen can lay hands on before I let it devour a single one of our people.'

'And when it's eaten every gem we can lay our hands on?' There was desperation in Itrac's eyes.

'All the while we're keeping it sated, with carrion or whatever else it wants, we'll be looking for the means to kill it,' Kheda told her purposefully. 'I will not give over this domain to that creature, Itrac. I refuse to believe we cannot kill this dragon. Those invaders came backed by magic and terror and we killed their wizards. I found the means to defeat their sorcerors in Shek Kul's archive. I've already sent dispatch galleys to every warlord we're allied with who has a library worth having between here and the northernmost reaches. There must be lore about such beasts somewhere.'

'You've seen some portent telling you this is the best thing to do?' Itrac's face shone with frantic hope.

'I have,' Kheda lied doggedly. 'And I shall go on using every divination known to me to see us through this peril.'

That much is no He. I'll use every means I have of battling such evil. Every means, even if that requires consorting with wizards again.

Tears filled Itrac's eyes. 'Chazen Saril never showed such courage. He wouldn't have gone looking for answers, for ways to fight back, not like you did. He'd have run from a dragon, just like before when the invaders came. He wouldn't have come back for me.'

'Let's look to the future, not to the past.' Kheda led Itrac towards the bathing room. 'And let's not mark that tunic, or your head maid will scold me till the rains have come and gone again.' Taking up a cotton cloth, he dipped one end in a ewer of fresh water and gently scrubbed her hands clean of the oily lotion.

He refused to catch his own eye in the mirror above the washstand. 'Now, which tunic do you think I should wear?'

Itrac dabbed the cloth at the corners of her eyes before following him back into the bedroom, her face a mask of hard-won calm once more. 'The emerald with the golden embroidery.' She opened Kheda's jewel coffer. 'That will go well enough with turtleshell.'

'We can take it as an omen in our favour that this dragon doesn't seek to plunder this domain's riches.'

Kheda donned the tunic and accepted the bracelets she offered him.

'We could.' Itrac sounded doubtful. 'Though I doubt that's what Rekha Daish will be saying.'

Kheda settled a chain of carved turtleshell links on his hips. 'When did she sail north?'

'Four days since. I got word of the dragon, that you were lost. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let her know but I was so shocked by the news.' Hurt and chagrin coloured Itrac's words equally. 'She left straight away and took all her triremes with her.'

'Rushing off like a startled fowl? And four days ago?' Kheda shrugged. 'When I was already safely aboard the Yellow Serpent and on my way back here. That galley will take eight days to make the voyage back to the Daish residence. So let's make sure Rekha arrives home to find a courier dove waiting for her, assuring her that I am alive and well and inviting thoughts on what this new puzzle might mean for Chazen and Daish alike. Do you suppose she'll have made herself very foolish telling everyone I'm already dead?'

Do you understand my meaning? That as far as I am concerned, you stayed here level-headed and prudently waiting to learn the truth of the matter? That it was Rekha who took fright and fled?

Do we have Rekha to thank for the rumour that you were secluded because you'd lost a child? Doubtless she'd argue that was all she could think of to plausibly hide the truth. 'I hope not, for her sake.' Despite her words, the prospect evidently amused Itrac as she handed Kheda a collar of turtleshell plaques. 'Perhaps she won't be so hasty. You've been thought dead and confounded everyone before.'

'She should know that, better than most,' agreed Kheda lightly.

'I don't see why we want to invite Daish opinions on this matter.' Itrac frowned as she studied Kheda'sappearance.

'It's only courteous; Daish will need to prepare if there's any chance of Chazen boats fetching up on their shores again.' Kheda grinned maliciously. 'Besides, don't forget how desperate Rekha is for pearls. I said I'd spread every jewel in Chazen in front of this dragon to keep it quiet. And I will, but only after I've drained Daish dry of all the stones it can spare and more besides. If Rekha Daish wants Chazen pearls to hide the disaster of their reefs' harvest, she can trade weight for weight in gems.'

If that doesn't convince everyone that my allegiance is now truly to Chazen, nothing will. What choice do I have? If this dragon isn't dealt with, it'll ravage Chazen and then move north. I have to do all I can to prevent that for Sirket's sake, even if I have to plunder his domain to do it.