“Is that what you tell all of them?” he demanded. “To go home, to leave you alone? They won’t do it, you know, not until they’ve got what they came for. They’re a trading nation, haven’t got much on their shores; they just get rich from bleeding other lands dry.”
“And they would bleed us,” the scryer said.
The translator shrugged. “Most of them aren’t bad; it’s just their rulers.”
“He saw the dragon,” the scryer mused. “Have you seen a dragon? Of course you haven’t. It’s not right that they should see them when we can’t. I was born here in Anamat, and I’ve still only ever seen Anara at festivals, on crossing days.”
“And you call yourself a scryer,” the young sailor said. He spat on the ground, but he did not claim to have seen Anara himself. He trundled down toward what was left of the
