The Dragon Round (22 page)

Tuse hopes that's enough food for its breakfast.

Jeryon looks out to sea. “Any sign of your galley? I didn't think so.”

Tuse's hunger turns acid. He's doomed. And he doomed Rowan too. You can't stop a ripple once you've cast your stone. The crew, they knew the risks of the sea. The rowers, they put on their own chains. Rowan did nothing except be his father's son. Tuse ducks his head and clamps his teeth as hard as he can. Something is trying to get out of him, something less physical and more vulgar than vomit, and he can't let it.

Jeryon picks up the waterskin and takes a long pull. He leaves it open and props it on the seagrass again.

Tuse looks at the dragon. When the dragon doesn't move to stop him, he pushes his mouth toward the skin. What does it matter anyway?

“No,” Jeryon says, “you look to me.”

“What?”

“You don't ask the dragon for permission,” Jeryon says and snatches up the waterskin. “You ask me.”

“I'm not your dog.”

Jeryon replaces the skin on the seagrass. Tuse stares at it. He stares at Jeryon's old and oft-repaired sandals. He stares at the dragon's haunches.

The dragon rips off a crab leg and crunches it.

Tuse cranes his neck to glare at Jeryon.

Jeryon whistles once, long and rising, once short and backs away.

Tuse worms forward, unable to feel his arms and legs. He gets his mouth onto the spout of the skin then rolls on his side to drain the water out.

“Good,” Jeryon says. He yanks the skin away. “The poth did survive,” he says. “She'd want you to live. She'd bear you no ill will. She'd want me to bear you no ill will. You led her to the wheel, but she put down her own coin.”

“If I could have rigged—”

Jeryon holds up his hand. He puts down the skin. He waits. Tuse looks at him. Jeryon whistles and Tuse drinks more water. Tuse tells himself he's training Jeryon to talk.

“You were right,” Jeryon says. “I did luck out. She's made me a better man.” He checks the dragon's wounds. They're glazed with new tissue. “We share, for instance. It's an old idea. At first we had to help each other to survive, but now we share because there's a joy in it. I think sharing's been out of the world for too long.” Jeryon puts some salve on the wounds just in case. “All we have now are contracts. Incentives. Targets.”

Tuse sucks out the last of the water. His stomach burns. His heart
is full of smoke. His arms and legs contract, and the cord on his left wrist slips and slackens. Pins rush into his fingers.

“She shares a dream of mine,” Jeryon says, retrieving the empty skin. “We'd go to Hanosh, tell the Trust our story, and see the three of you gibbeted. Two years, and that's all I've wanted. That was our deal.”

“I'll speak for you too,” Tuse says. “I'll say anything you want.” He rolls onto his left side so his hand can worry the cord unseen.

“They wouldn't listen,” Jeryon says. “ ‘No justice at all,' you said.”

“They treated you wrong,” Tuse says. “Maybe—”

“They'd treat me worse if I returned,” Jeryon says. He brushes grit off the dragon and rubs her neck. “The company can't have me walking around, talking about mutiny. I'd be a risk. Worse, a liability. Other owners would use me against them. And they couldn't buy my silence with a ship and fancy shoes. They'd have to kill me. And her.”

When I get free, I'll spare the poth
, Tuse thinks. He twists his hand. It uncovers a stub of wood, a root, or a buried stump. The cord catches.

“You're dead already,” Tuse says, “so you can do anything. You have a dragon. You have the world. Tame the North. Disappear in the Dawn Lands.”

“She wants to go home too.”

Tuse slowly saws the cord against the stub, the rest of his body dead still.

“Then go to Ayden,” Tuse says. “They're nearly at war with Hanosh. They'd open their purses to you.”

“And see them make the dragon a weapon against my own city?” Jeryon says. “The poth would clip the dragon's wings before that happened.”

The dragon looks at Jeryon.

“It's not your city anymore,” Tuse says. “Never was, really, not for people like us. We're just coins passing through the owners' purses. See how they've spent you? Go. Leave me and go. You owe them nothing.”

“No,” Jeryon says, “they owe me.” He grinds his spear into the scrub. “I gave them decades. I gave them trust. And where's my return?”

Jeryon stabs the ground. Tuse saws more vigorously.

“When I washed up here, where were they? When the rainy seasons came, where were they? When the fire—” Jeryon chokes. “Two years here. How could they forsake me?”

The cord frays.

“I deserve more than a monthly. Or a bonus. They owe me your head, and if they won't pay,” he points his spear at Tuse, “I'll collect the debt myself.”

Tuse jerks away from Jeryon. The cord pops. He rolls on his back to hide his free hand. The spear point circles his chest. Tuse says, “She wouldn't want this.”

“No.” Jeryon taps Tuse's chest.

“What would she say if you killed me? If you killed them?”

“Nothing. She'd leave. I'd never see her again.”

“So leave me. Take her and go.” Tuse thinks he couldn't grab the spear before it gored him. Jeryon's leg, though, if he could catch him off balance . . .

“I can't. The dragon's not big enough for two riders yet. You're lucky she made it all the way here with you.”

“Then go alone. She'll never know I was here. Or I can help. To make up for what I did. I owe her.”

Jeryon shakes his head. “I thought of a better course. Last night while watching you from the trees and thinking about all you told me.”

“You didn't spend the night with her?”

“No, I didn't let her know we were here. That's the solution. What she doesn't know can't upset her.” Jeryon whistles twice. The dragon sits up. “Naturally, we can't leave any traces,” he says.

“Mercy,” Tuse says. He wiggles against Jeryon's toes. “Have mercy.”

“Where's the profit?” Jeryon says.

Tuse growls and rolls into Jeryon's skinny ankles. Jeryon yelps, falls forward, and jabs the spear into the ground to catch himself. Tuse hammers the back of Jeryon's calf with his free fist, unlocking his knee, then he grabs the top of the calf and collapses Jeryon's lower leg against his own chest. Tuse rolls back. Jeryon twists, trying to skip away before his leg is folded between Tuse and the ground, but the spear loses its grip in the scrub, Jeryon loses his grip on the spear, and he falls on his face.

Tuse pivots and claws his way up Jeryon's back with his free hand. He clenches Jeryon's neck. He straddles him with his free leg spread to one side and the knee of his bound leg dug into the sand on the other. Tuse makes himself heavy.

“Any sign of your poth?” Tuse whispers. “I didn't think so.”

Jeryon bucks. Tuse barely moves. Jeryon puckers his lips. The dragon cocks its head. Tuse grinds his mouth into the scrub.

“There was a boy on the
Hopper
,” Tuse says, and presses his frying-pan thumb into Jeryon's carotid artery and jugular vein. “He wasn't a part of this. He didn't deserve what he got. He was a good kid. Now you owe me.”

“Gray,” Jeryon says, his voice already woozy.
“Comber.”

“Those days are—oh.” Tuse remembers Jeryon yelling the galley's name while passing over the
Hopper
. He turns and sees the dragon rear its head. Jeryon tucks his head and pulls his left knee up so he's entirely under the larger man. The dragon drops its jaw. Jeryon heaves Tuse toward it. Tuse yells. The dragon spits a gob of fire.

The fire spreads across Tuse's back. He flips over to smother the flames. The dragon spits another gob on his chest. That inspires some flailing. When it stops, Jeryon whistles three times.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Hunter

1

Solet grinds the heel of his dragonskin boot into the deck of his monoreme
Gamo
as two of the Shield's shipowners push themselves away from a portable mahogany dining table. Their valets swoop in to replace the remains of their grilled quail and okra with a bottle of burnt wine, two snifters, and a silver ceramic narghile for each. As the owners take their respective hoses, Solet thinks,
They'll share their interests, but not their smoke
.

He isn't surprised. They wouldn't share their table with him, despite the fact he wore their ridiculous formal uniform. Pants, on an Ynessi! In Yness they'd never be welcome to eat again.

One must smile at an owner, though, even when one, Mulcent, blows a huge cloud of honeyed smoke at you and says, “We can expect a dragon tonight?”

“Trackers found signs on shore today,” Solet says. “They believe it hunts there before returning to the spires, where it lives. When it flies past, we'll engage.”

“You've been saying that for a week,” Sumpt, the other owner, says.

“Dragons aren't as keen about schedules as are the Shield's compters,” Solet says. “We can encourage it, however.”

Solet signals for his lamp to flash the
Pyg
, the penteconter to starboard. A girl on
Gamo
's stern deck wears a candlebox around her neck. She points it at the
Pyg
,
opens it once long, once short, and once long. A moment later the
Pyg
begins the dragon march, a rhythm the beasts like best. Ideally, the dragon will be drawn to the
Pyg
then
Gamo
and the monoreme
Kolos
, positioned on the other side of the
Pyg
, will flank the dragon and pounce.

Solet's wolf pack sits a mile off a broad fan of thick woods and hard leaf shrubs that fills the dusk with the scent of pine and oak. It spills toward the sea through a break in the black cliffs that line much of the ragged coast between Hanosh and Yness. Another mile behind them, glittering in the dusklight slipping over the cliffs, are a line of black basalt stacks, the ruins of an ancient cliff. Solet knows how they must feel. The owners are wearing him down too.

Solet taps his foot to the beat. Sumpt withdraws his bald, bulbous head into his rolling shoulders. “That sound,” he says. “How do you stand it?”

Solet points to a badge sewn onto his blouse beside his Shield badge. “You see this?” It depicts the rearing head of a black dragon, its jaw dropped. “All my men have them.”

“They should be fined for a uniform violation,” Mulcent says.

“They'd happily pay it,” Solet says. “When other crews are in port, they look for whores. When mine are in port, the whores look for them.”

“I'd happily pay a dragon to attack just so I didn't have to listen to that sound again,” Sumpt says.

“We are paying,” Mulcent says. “Dearly. We can't afford another empty hold.” He looks at the
Pyg
, and Solet can tell he's tallying the cost of every man, line, and oar. Despite bagging two dragons already, Solet's had a run of bad luck lately, so Mulcent has come aboard to
protect their investment. Sumpt has also, but he's more interested in the adventure.

“You will not only recoup your investment,” Solet says. “This dragon will be our most profitable yet.” They hold smoke as he steps to the table. “We aren't going to kill this dragon. We're going to capture it.”

Sumpt spits his smoke. “Why would we want to do that when there's a ready market for render?”

Mulcent's pale eyes thin. He says, “This is not our arrangement.”

They sadden Solet. Their families were traders before the League, men who recognized opportunity in the strange and figured out how to cultivate it. Their grandfathers had formed the League. These men, however, these boys, only know counting books. They haven't traveled to every corner of the Tallan Sea to buy and sell while gripping a knife under the table. They're quill dippers, managing stock and schedules. And they only meet people like themselves, soft, wealthy, usually Hanoshi. It had been hard enough getting them to support his wolf pack, convincing them that killing a dragon was possible only by actually killing one. But capturing a dragon? He understands their minds: It had never been done, which meant it couldn't be done, so where was the profit? That's why he hasn't broached the subject until now, when impatience would help him win the day.

Solet's voice drops to a slow, Hanoshi heaviness as he explains: “What is the biggest expense in hunting dragons?”

“The ships,” Sumpt says.

“No,” Mulcent says. His needle-like fingers bob as he thinks. “The crew.”

“The uncertainty,” Solet says, stabbing the tablecloth with his finger blade to emphasize his point. “If we kept a dragon as stock and milked its phlogiston instead of removing it from the dead organ, we could predict supply and costs would be dramatically diminished. Feeding and barning one dragon would be cheaper than maintaining three ships. Perhaps we could catch a second and husband them.”