herself to think of him in such a way, she realized.
Hest was handsome and educated, charming and well-mannered. To others. She was allowed to spend his wealth as she pleased, as long as she did not bother him. Her parents thought she had married well and most of the women of her acquaintance envied her.
And she hated him. That was that. She had walked some way in silence at Leftrin’s side before he cleared his throat, breaking in on her thoughts. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologized reflexively. ‘I was preoccupied.’
‘I don’t think there’s much we can do to change things,’ he said sadly, and she nodded, attaching his words to her inner turmoil before he changed their significance by adding, ‘I don’t think anyone can help the brown dragon. She will live or she’ll die. And we’ll be stuck here until she decides she’s doing one or the other.’
‘It’s so hard to think of her as female. It makes me doubly sad that she is so ill. There are so few female dragons left. So I don’t mind. I don’t mind being stuck here, I mean.’ She wished he would offer her his arm. She’d decided she’d take it.
There was no clear dividing line between the shore and the river’s flow. The mud got sloppier and wetter and then it was the river. They both stopped well short of the moving water. She could feel her boots sinking. ‘Nowhere for us to go, is there?’ Leftrin offered.
She glanced behind them. There was the low riverbank of trampled grasses and beyond that a snaggled forest edge of old driftwood and brush before the real forest began. From where she stood, it looked impenetrable and forbidding. ‘We could try the forest,’ she began.
Leftrin gave a low laugh. There was no humour in it. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about you and me.’
Her eyes locked with his. She was startled that he had spoken so bluntly, and then decided that honesty might be the only good thing that could come from Sedric’s meddling. There was no reason now for either of them to deny the attraction they felt. She wished she had the courage to take his hand. Instead, she just looked up at him and hoped he could read her eyes. He could. He sighed heavily.
‘Alise. What are we going to do?’ The question was rhetorical, but she decided she would answer it anyway.
They walked a score of paces before she found the words she truly wanted to say. He was watching the ground as he walked; she spoke to his profile, surrendering all control of her world as she did so. ‘I want to do whatever you want to do.’
She saw those words settle on him. She had thought they would be like a blessing, but he received them as a burden. His face grew very still. He lifted his eyes. His barge rested on the bank before them and he seemed to meet its sympathetic stare. When he spoke, perhaps he spoke to his ship as much as to her. ‘I have to do what is right,’ he said regretfully. ‘For both of us,’ he added, and there was finality in his words.
‘I won’t be packed off back to Bingtown!’
A smile twisted half his mouth. ‘Oh, I’m well aware of that, my dear. No one will be packing you off to anywhere. Where you go, you’ll go of your free will or not at all.’
‘Just so you understand that,’ she said, and tried to sound strong and free. She reached out and took his calloused hand in hers, gripping it tight, feeling the roughness and the strength of it. He squeezed her hand carefully in response. Then he released it.
The day seemed dim. Sedric closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again. It didn’t help. Vertigo spun him and he found himself groping for the wall of his compartment. The barge seemed to rock under his feet, but he knew it to be drawn up on the riverbank. Where was the handle to the damn door? He couldn’t see. He leaned against the wall, breathing shallowly and fighting not to vomit.
‘Are you all right?’ A deep voice at his elbow, one that was not unfamiliar. He fought to put his thoughts in order. Carson, the hunter. The one with the full ginger beard. That was who was talking to him.
Sedric took a careful breath. ‘I’m not sure. Is the light odd? It seems so dim to me.’
‘It’s bright today, man. The kind of light where I can’t look at the water for too long.’ Concern in the man’s voice. Why? He scarcely knew the hunter.
‘It seems dim to me.’ Sedric tried to speak normally, but his own voice seemed far away and faint.
‘Your pupils are like pinheads. Here. Take my arm. Let’s ease you down on the deck.’
‘I don’t want to sit on the deck,’ he said faintly, but if Carson heard him, he didn’t pay any attention. The big man took him by the shoulders and gently but firmly sat him down on the dirty deck. He hated to think what the rough boards would do to his trousers. Yet the world did seem to rock a little less. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
‘You look like you’ve been poisoned. Or drugged. You’re pale as white river water. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get you a drink.’
‘Very well,’ Sedric said faintly. The man was just a darker shadow in a dim world. He felt the man’s footsteps on the deck and even those faint vibrations seemed sickening. Then he was gone and Sedric felt other vibrations. Fainter and not rhythmic as the footsteps had been. They weren’t even really vibrations, he thought sickly. But they were something, something bad and they were directed towards him. Something knew what he had done to the brown dragon and hated him for it. Something old and powerful and dark was judging him. He closed his eyes tighter but that only made the malevolence seem closer.
The footsteps returned and then grew louder. He sensed the hunter crouch down by him. ‘Here. Drink this. It’ll buck you up.’
He took the warm mug in his hands, smelling the dreadful coffee. He raised it to his lips and took a sip, and found the bite of harsh rum hidden in the coffee. He tried to keep from spitting it on himself, choked, swallowed it, and then coughed. He wheezed in a breath and then opened his watering eyes.
‘Is that better?’ the sadistic bastard asked him.
‘Better?’ Sedric demanded furiously, and heard his voice more strongly. He blinked away tears and could see Carson crouched on the deck in front of him. His ginger beard was lighter than his unruly mop of hair. His eyes were not brown, but that much rarer black. He was smiling at Sedric, his head cocked a little to one side. Like a cocker spaniel, Sedric thought viciously. He moved his boots against the deck, trying to get his feet under him.
‘Let’s walk you into the galley, shall we?’ He took the mug from Sedric’s hands, then with apparent ease, seized him by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet.
Sedric’s head felt wobbly on his neck. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘How should I know?’ the man asked him affably. ‘You drink too much last night? You might have bought bad liquor in Trehaug. And if you bought any liquor in Cassarick, then it’s almost definitely rotgut. They’ll ferment anything there, roots, peelings from fruit. Lean on me, don’t fight me now. I knew one fellow tried to ferment fish skins. Not even the whole fish, just the skins. He was convinced it would work. Here. Mind your head. Sit down at the galley table. Could be if you eat something, it’ll absorb whatever you drank and you’ll be able to pass it.’
Carson, he realized, stood a head taller than he did. And was a lot stronger. The hunter moved him along the deck and into the deckhouse and sat him down at the galley table as if he were a mother harrying a recalcitrant child to his place. The man’s voice was deep and rumbling, almost soothing if one overlooked his uncouth way of putting things. Sedric braced his elbows on the sticky galley table and lowered his face into his hands. The smells of grease, smoke and old food were making him feel worse.
Carson busied himself in the galley, putting something in a bowl and then pouring hot water from the kettle over it. He stood for a time, jabbing at it with a spoon before he brought it to the table. Sedric lifted his head, looked at the mess in the bowl and belched suddenly. The dark red taste of dragon blood rose up in his