Free City of Dragons: Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb

well, but Thymara had felt differently about that. If she wanted sunlight, she could climb for it. She could not recall that she had ever wished to feel the full onslaught of a rainstorm.
    Here, she had no choice. The meadow that edged the river was not like the shadowy undergrowth of the Rain Wilds. Thick grasses grew hip- to shoulder-deep. Rather than being swampy, the earth was firm under her feet and salted with rocks, a bewildering array of hard chunks of different textures and colors. She often wondered where they all came from and how they had come to be here. Today the wind swept across the naked lands and slapped the unimpeded rain into her face and down her collar. Her worn clothes, weakened by too-frequent contact with the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River, were no protection. Limp and soaked, they clung to her skin. And she could look forward to being cold and wet all day. She rubbed her red, chilled hands together. It was hard enough to hunt well with the battered assortment of gear she had left. Numbed hands only made it harder.
    She heard Tats coming before he caught up to her: the wet grass slapping against his legs and his hard breathing as he ran up behind her. She did not turn to him until he breathlessly called to her, “Going hunting? Want some help?”
    “Why not? I could use someone to carry my kill back to the dragons.” She didn’t mention what they both knew: that Carson didn’t like any of them hunting alone. He claimed to have seen signs of big predators, ones that might be large enough to attack a human. “Large game usually attracts large predators,” he had said. “When you hunt, take a partner.” It was not so much that Carson had authority over them as that he had experience.
    Tats grinned at her, his teeth white in his finely scaled face. “Oh. So you don’t think I’m capable of bringing down meat that you’d have to help me drag back?”
    She grinned back. “You’re a good enough hunter, Tats. But we both know I’m better.”
    “You were born to it. Your father taught you from the time you could teeter along a tree branch. I think I’m pretty good, for someone who came to it later.” He fell into step beside her. It was a bit awkward on the narrow trail. He bumped elbows with her as they walked, but he neither moved ahead of her nor fell back. As they entered the eaves of the forest, the meadow grasses grew shallower and then gave way to a layer of leaf mold and low-growing bushes. The trees cut the wind, for which Thymara was grateful. She bobbed her head in acceptance of Tats’s compliment.
    “You’re a lot better than when we left Trehaug. And I think you may adapt to this ground hunting faster than I will. This place is so different from home.”
    “Home,” he said, and she could not tell if the word was bitter or sweet to him. “I think this is home now,” he added, startling her.
    She gave him a sideways glance as they continued to push forward through the brush. “Home? Forever?”
    He thrust out his arm toward her and pushed up his sleeve, baring his scaled flesh. “I can’t imagine going back to Trehaug. Not like this. You?”
    She didn’t need to flex her wings nor look at the thick black claws she’d had since birth. “If acceptance means home, then Trehaug was never home for me.”
    She pushed regrets and thoughts of Trehaug aside. It was time to hunt. Sintara was hungry. Today Thymara wanted to find a game trail, a fresh one they hadn’t hunted before. Until they struck one, it would be hard going. They were both breathing hard, but Tats was less winded than he would have been when they first left Trehaug. Life on the Tarman expedition had muscled and hardened all of them, she thought approvingly. And all of the keepers had grown, the boys achieving growth spurts that were almost alarming. Tats was taller now and his shoulders broader. His dragon was changing him, too. He alone of the keepers had been fully human in appearance when they had