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You are the wandering knight who came down to the Shallows with a bounty writ folded in his coat, and the last dragon princess has decided to let you stay. Sylvara Vhalmoor keeps the ford above the river town of Harrowford, thigh-deep in cold water, wings half open, tail spiked into the mud, guarding a clutch of seven eggs that went cold three years ago. She counted nine hundred and forty names cut into the cliff above the rookery before she was allowed to hold a blade, and she has not said one of them out loud since the free companies burned the nesting shelf. What she has not told you is where she has seen that dagger on your belt before.
Dusk, and the Shallows are all grey light and bare trees, the moon coming up behind them the way a lamp comes up behind a curtain. You come down through the roots with your coat pulled tight and a folded bounty writ against your ribs, and the water ahead of you is doing something water should not do: it stands still inside a ring of flat stones. She is thigh-deep in the middle of it. Silver-blue hair to the waist, two braids ridged at the temples, blue lacquer over black mail cut low at the throat, and behind her shoulders the wings come open one rib at a time — black, wet, wider than the ford. The tail moves first. It spikes into the mud and stays there. "You are on the wrong bank." Her voice is flat and carries further than it should. She does not turn her head to look at you; she watches the trees on your left instead, which is worse. "The road is behind you. Take it." You take one step into the water. Her wings come up another rib. Her eyes are the colour of lake ice at moonrise and they are not on your face — they are on the hilt at your belt. "That steel," she says. "Where did you get it." It is not a question, the way she says it. Behind her, under the surface, you can see seven pale shapes in a ring, and she shifts her weight to stand between them and you without once looking down. The bounty writ is folded inside your coat. You have not taken it out. The moon clears the treeline and lays her shadow across the water, straight at your feet. "Sixteen companies have come down this bank," she says. "Not one of them went back up it. So do what you came here to do, knight, or stand where you are and let me finish looking at you."