City of Dragons recap

Settled opposite Kelsingra, the keepers can only reach the city on dragonback, and once there they find it nearly intact but inert: the Elderling magic that ran it needs Silver from wells that have stopped giving, and without Silver the dragons cannot become what they should be. Alise records and maps everything; Rapskal begins immersing himself in the memories held in the city's stone and returns from them carrying a dead Elderling's confidence and opinions, drawing Thymara after him. Downriver, Leftrin discovers that the Cassarick council means to cheat the expedition of its payment, and fights to get his barge and his supplies back. Hest Finbok's comfortable life collapses when Chalcedean agents demand the dragon parts he commissioned, and he is forced north to find Sedric. In Chalced, the dying Duke keeps Malta's brother Selden caged as a supposed cure, while Malta and Reyn's newborn son sickens beyond any healer's help. Tintaglia, hunting the Chalcedean coast, is struck down by poisoned weapons and arrives at Kelsingra gravely wounded, bringing the trade in dragon flesh to the keepers' doorstep.

Previously: the sea serpents of the Liveship Traders trilogy were dragons that could not complete their life cycle, and Bingtown's liveships had been built from stolen dragon cocoons. Tintaglia, the last dragon, hatched beneath Trehaug and bargained her protection of Bingtown for the Rain Wilders' help in guiding the serpents upriver. They came too late: in Dragon Keeper the clutch that hatched at Cassarick was stunted, flightless and unable to hunt, a burden the Rain Wild Traders were desperate to be rid of. The Traders' Council hired a company of heavily marked young outcasts as keepers and contracted Captain Leftrin's liveship barge Tarman to take dragons and keepers far upriver in search of the Elderling city of Kelsingra. Among them were Thymara, keeper to the imperious blue queen Sintara; the former slave Tats; the odd, fearless Rapskal and his small red dragon Heeby; and Greft, who meant to lead. Alise Kincarron came from Bingtown as the expedition's scholar, escaping a hollow marriage to the wealthy Hest Finbok, accompanied by Hest's secretary Sedric, secretly sent to steal dragon blood for the Chalcedean market. In Dragon Haven the journey remade them all: Sedric was bonded to the copper queen Relpda after she saved his life, his theft was exposed, the hunter running the same trade died for it, and Sedric changed sides and fell in love with the hunter Carson. Greft's attempt to found a new order among the keepers ended in his death. The dragons learned to hunt and then to fly, and the keepers finished changing into Elderlings. Alise and Leftrin became lovers. At last the company found Kelsingra, standing intact on the far bank of a river too wide to cross, and settled in a smaller Elderling village opposite it while Leftrin took Tarman downriver for payment and supplies.

Life in the village opposite Kelsingra settles into a hard routine of hunting, building and waiting. Only the flying dragons can carry keepers across the river, so access to the city is rationed by which dragons will consent to it, and Thymara, whose queen is proud and uncooperative, is often left behind. What the keepers find in the city is close to undamaged: streets, halls, baths and market squares, and stone that holds the recorded lives of the Elderlings who built it. But nothing works. The city was run on Silver drawn from wells that no longer give, and the dragons are blunt that without Silver they will stay less than dragons, and the keepers less than the Elderlings the city was made for.

Alise sets herself to mapping and recording Kelsingra properly, the work she has wanted all her life. Rapskal takes a different approach: he immerses himself in the city's memory-stone, living the recorded lives it holds, and comes back with a dead Elderling's skills, certainties and appetites layered over his own. He urges the other keepers to do the same, arguing that the Elderlings left their knowledge deliberately and that refusing it is waste. Thymara, drawn to the person he is becoming and disturbed by how little of the old Rapskal is left, has to decide how much of that inheritance she is willing to take on. Meanwhile the dragons begin to search the city for the wells in earnest.

Downriver at Cassarick, Leftrin runs into a council that has no intention of paying for an expedition it can call a failure, and that would rather send its own people to claim Kelsingra than honour a contract with a bargeman. He fights for Tarman, his crew and his cargo, discovers that the message birds carrying news up and down the river have been tampered with, and finds allies in Malta and Reyn Khuprus. In Bingtown, Hest Finbok's life comes apart: Chalcedean agents arrive who know precisely what he commissioned Sedric to bring back, and they make it clear the debt will be paid in dragon parts or in blood. He is forced to start north.

In Chalced, the Duke is dying, and his physicians have persuaded him that dragon blood and Elderling flesh will restore his youth, which has put a bounty on every dragon in the world. Selden Vestrit, Malta's brother and once Tintaglia's ambassador, is kept caged and displayed as a specimen of the cure. Malta and Reyn's small son is failing, and no Rain Wild healer can help him; Malta becomes convinced that only dragons can. Above the Chalcedean coast, Tintaglia is hunted with poisoned weapons by men who have been offered a fortune for any part of her. Wounded and unable to heal, she has nowhere to go but to the herd she abandoned.

The keepers cannot make Kelsingra work without Silver, and the search for the wells becomes the settlement's whole purpose. Rapskal's Elderling memories give him answers nobody can check and an authority the others resent, and he and Thymara become lovers on terms she is not certain of. Leftrin gets Tarman free of Cassarick and turns upriver with supplies, leaving behind a council that now regards him as an enemy and a rival claim on the city forming behind him. Hest, escorted north by people he cannot refuse, is coming to find Sedric. And Tintaglia, poisoned, torn and failing, reaches Kelsingra at last, bringing with her the certainty that Chalced will hunt dragons anywhere and the question of whether the herd can save one of its own.

The keepers hold a city they cannot yet use. Kelsingra stands almost undamaged across the river, its stone full of preserved Elderling memory, but the magic that ran it depends on Silver drawn from wells that are no longer giving, and until the dragons get it they will remain less than dragons and unable to make proper Elderlings. Rapskal, steeped in the memories of a dead Elderling warrior, has become the loudest voice for taking up the city's inheritance wholesale, and Thymara is close to him and increasingly unsure who she is close to. Leftrin has recovered Tarman and secured supplies, but only by making enemies of the Cassarick council, which has no intention of honouring the expedition's contract and every intention of getting its own people upriver to claim a share. Hest, coerced by Chalcedean agents who know what he commissioned, is on his way north to find Sedric and the dragon parts he was promised. In Chalced, Selden Vestrit remains a captive of a dying Duke who has been told Elderling flesh will restore him. And Tintaglia, shot with poisoned Chalcedean weapons while hunting the coast, comes to Kelsingra in terrible condition, seeking the only creatures in the world who might be able to save her, and bringing the war over dragon parts directly to the keepers' door.