The Tarman expedition has reached Kelsingra, the long-sought Elderling city, only to find it on the far side of a vast river the malformed dragons cannot cross. Most of the young dragons still cannot fly: too ashamed of their feeble wings or too proud to risk humiliating failure, they remain stranded while the keepers explore the silent, treasure-filled streets across the water. Alise, the dragon scholar, and a handful of keepers begin to uncover the wonders and secrets of the abandoned city of black stone veined with silver. Meanwhile the wider world closes in. The ailing, heirless Duke of Chalced remains obsessed with acquiring dragon flesh and blood to prolong his life, and will use blackmail, torture, and murder to get it; his agents menace the dragons and those connected to them. In Bingtown, Alise's estranged husband Hest is drawn into the Duke's schemes and finds himself stalked by a remorseless assassin, while Selden Vestrit, taken for a dragon man, falls into the Duke's hands. The Elderlings Malta and Reyn Khuprus await the birth of an imperiled child. The third volume, originally part of one manuscript split into the final two books, deepens the political danger surrounding the dragons even as a few begin, tentatively, to take to the air.