All of them moved with ponderous grace. Kalo and Sestican followed behind Mercor. Their heads wove back and forth as they moved, and as she watched them, Sestican darted his head into the water and brought up a fat, dangling river snake. He gave his head a sharp shake and the writhing creature suddenly hung limp in his jaws. He ate it as he walked, tilting his head back and swallowing it as if he were a bird with a worm.
“I hope my little Heeby finds something to eat on the way. She’s hungry. I can feel it.”
“If she doesn’t, we’ll do our best tonight to come up with something for her.” She spoke the words almost without thinking. She was becoming resigned, she suddenly realized, to sharing whatever she could bring back from her evening hunt. Most often it went to whichever dragon was hungriest. That did not endear her to Sintara, but the blue queen had not been exactly generous with Thymara. Let her find out that loyalty was supposed to run both ways.
The rest of that day, Thymara expected to feel echoing quakes, but if they came, they were so small that she didn’t notice them. When they camped that night on a mud bank, the main topic of discussion had been the quake, and whether a rush of acid water would follow it. After spending the meal hour chewing over the potential threat to all of them, Greft had suddenly stood and dismissed the topic. “Whatever will happen is going to happen,” he said sternly as if expecting them to argue. “It’s useless to worry and impossible to prepare. So just be ready.”
He stalked away from their firelit circle into the darkness. No one spoke for a few minutes after he left. Thymara sensed awkwardness; doubtless Greft was still smarting from his misspoken words about the copper dragon. His pronouncement of the obvious seemed a feeble attempt to assert his leadership over them. Even his closest followers had seemed embarrassed for him. Neither Kase nor Boxter followed him or even looked in the direction he had gone. Thymara had kept her eyes on the flames, but from the corner of her eyes, she marked how shortly after that Jerd stood up, made a show of stretching, and then likewise wandered away from their company. As she passed behind Thymara, she bid her “Good night” in a small catty voice. Thymara gritted her teeth and made no response.
“What’s bothering her lately?” Rapskal, to Thymara’s right, wondered aloud.