The Dragon Round (19 page)

To get this big, she ate six times a day, and nothing on the island was large enough to satisfy her. One week, when a pod of dolphins was migrating nearby, she ate ten of them, bringing each to Jeryon for his approval. The stink was horrific, especially when a few didn't agree with her and she vomited them up under the cabin. At least she ate them again. Worse was their whistles and squawks and the way they flopped on the ground before she gobbled them.

Her greatest catch was a whale calf bigger than her. To his horror
she kept dropping it in the sea while flying to the island, then diving down to retrieve it again. He wasn't sure if she couldn't carry it very far or if she was playing with the poor thing. Eventually she dropped it into camp with such force it left a dent in the packed ground before the cabin.

He takes his saddle, bridle, and other tack from a peg on the edge of the porch and puts them on her. To the saddle he affixes a dozen waterskins made of dragon skin, the bag full of shega, another full of olives boiled with herbs, sprinkled with sea salt and pepper and wrapped in palm leaves, and several spears with dragonbone tips. He figures this will last him several days. Of course if he doesn't reach land, none of his supplies will matter. The dragon, which he's flown in circles around the island to test her range and endurance, should be able to reach the land south of Yness in a day, but he's not sure how far east he is and so could miss the continent entirely.

Jeryon goes inside. He wonders what life will be like with keys. And without bamboo. In the common area he checks the barrel of water, as well as crates full of dried fish, fruit, olives, and spices. These should last at least two months. He evens up the bamboo spears standing beside the door. He ducks into his bedroom. There, beside his bed, is his blade. He puts it in the pocket of his dragonskin pants, a good luck charm now that he has a dragonbone knife with a bamboo handle.

He pauses at the door of the other room. The cabin is silent. He steps in.

4

Everlyn lies facedown on a wide bed beneath a dragonskin coverlid. He's cut her hair close to disguise the places where it didn't grow back, but patches of puckered skin betray them.

She rolls on her side to show him the good half of her face. He
kneels beside her. She says, “You're going?” Her voice is raspy from her throat and lungs being burned.

He nods. He glances under the bed. Her sword is there. Somehow it survived the fire. A bamboo spear is easier for her to use, but she won't give in to one. Practicing with the sword, she claims, works her body and eases her mind.

“I'll see you off,” she says and sits up.

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “No.”

She shakes him off. “I can't spend the week in bed.”

“It could be longer. Maybe a month. Or two.”

“Then I'll have to get up,” she says. The blanket slides off her as she swings her legs over the other side of the bed. She wears only his old yellow shirt, which is long enough to reach her knees and worn soft. Her arms are crosshatched with pale white scars from where he pulled her through the hole Gray made, and they accent her wiry muscles.

“Shall I do your back?” he says.

She shakes her head. “I can do that.”

“I want to.”

She unbuttons the shirt and lets it drape over her hips. He uncovers a bamboo cup sitting beside the bed. The smell of honey and pepper fills the room. He spreads lotion on his palms and works it into her scars.

He also works in a year of fury at his mates. He sees their names written in wrinkles and puckers. He sees their faces drawn in desperate flesh.
They did this
, he thinks.
They made her choose
. He would trade every minute of their two years together, he would trade their ever having met, if she could be whole again. Even justice will have to wait. Seeing his mates in gibbets won't heal her. He needs a ship to get her off the island.

The dragon isn't big enough to carry them both on her back. He'd tested that proposition by hanging bags of rocks over his saddle. She found it difficult to take off and couldn't balance in the air. Nor is she strong enough to carry one of them all the way to the League with
her back claws. He'd tested that with a sling full of rocks. She's fine for short distances, but Gray has to let go after a few miles. The poth is in too much pain to fly so he'll go to Hanosh and bring back a ship.

The Trust, he's sure, will be more than accommodating in exchange for his services with Gray.

He would fly to Yness, which is hundreds of miles closer, but no doubt they would kill him on sight and take the dragon.

When the poth can stretch without feeling like her skin will tear, he lifts his shirt back up over her shoulders, and she rebuttons it. He comes around the bed and offers her his arm. Her feet are sore. She doesn't often wear her boots, and her legs stiffen when she doesn't move for a while. They go outside. He climbs off the porch into the saddle and straps himself to it. He and the dragon move together. They didn't always.

His first effort to ride Gray
was comical, the dragon lying down before taxiing him around the pond for the price of a beetle per step. Their first flight was nearly tragic. They were on the beach and she flipped out her wings to toss him off when the wind caught them and threw dragon and rider into the trees. Their first real flight was little more than a hop across the shega meadow, but it was exhilarating for them both. For a moment they were one.

Their next test was a glide from the meadow cliff to the beach. As they yawed and plummeted in the tricky winds, he realized he couldn't steer the dragon the way he would a boat. He had to point out a destination and give Gray her head to figure out the best way to get there. As with a razor, he had to let the dragon do the work.

Everlyn insisted on hearing everything, and he cringed a bit when relating this part. She didn't disguise her glee at being right about this and, by extension, so many other things.

Soon he and Gray were making trips across the island, then circuits around it. They flew out to sea to the point where the island had
nearly vanished and soared high enough for the sea to flatten into a smear of blue and white. Jeryon would have screamed with joy as they plunged had vomit not stoppered his throat. A month ago, he felt confident that Gray could stay aloft long enough to reach the League. He began preparations for leaving the poth. She began arguing to take the dragon up.

He was apprehensive, given her pain and limited mobility, as well as her unfamiliarity with the actual process. She recited from memory every lesson he had learned. She said she wasn't going to watch the first broken dragon in history fly away without having a chance in the saddle. Gray sensed her desire and would lower her neck beside Everlyn to let her sit on her shoulders. Jeryon couldn't refuse in the face of joint opposition. And he had no right to, she reminded him.

He would have called it a mutiny, but that would have spoiled the moment. Instead, he asked that she ride the next day. He wanted to prepare a surprise for her.

The next morning he lotioned her thoroughly, she ate a fair quantity of boneset and golden shield, and he led her out to Gray, already saddled. Her seat was good, and the pain slipped out of her. He told her to end her ride by cruising over the Crown. She asked why. He remained clay-faced.

At first the dragon flew close to the ground and so slowly she thought Gray might land. Everlyn couldn't believe the dragon was babying her too. She yanked the dragon up hard. Jeryon's stomach fell to hear her scream, then rose when he realized what a wonderful scream it was. It was the scream of the whole sky greeting the morning. He watched the dragon turn and glide. She was, he would tell her later, a great rider. As she passed by the third time, he could see she was getting fatigued, and he pointed at the Crown.

She cruised north over the beach to come at the Crown from the seaward side, a long dramatic slope. Later she would recall finding Gray's egg, fighting the crabs, rendering the dragon, and many walks up to the Crown with Jeryon, but in the moment she only recalled
that she should occasionally breathe. As she came over the top, she discovered Jeryon's surprise: a huge pile of wood in a ring of stones. She brought Gray around, aimed the dragon at the pyre, and dove at it. At the last second she gave the command to fire: “Comber!” The dragon's flames exploded off the wood and roared high enough for Jeryon to see it at camp and cheer. She soared off in a great circle around the pyre, laughing. She couldn't feel her body at all.

Two hours later, Jeryon looks past
Gray's slowly waving tail and sees the island sink into the horizon. He rubs his beard. He's let it get long and full. He feels bushier too.

At midday the dragon spots a pod of razorback whales also traveling north by northwest. She bobs toward them. He reins her in. They have no time for hunting. Then he considers: Razorbacks are exceedingly fast for whales, and other galley captains would race them to see if their rowers could keep up. Jeryon never went in for such exercises in ego. The rowers would have to move at double-time, which would exhaust them quickly and cost them more time later. He does wonder, though, just how fast she can go.

Jeryon lets her swoop, which spooks the whales. Gray falls behind, but with a few beats of her wings she catches up. She isn't straining. She's waiting for the order. He gives it, and she fires past the whales like a harpoon from a cannon. As she slows, Jeryon sees another pod ahead and beyond it a galley heading east.

He circles far to larboard. Gray is so close to the water, small and dark, they might not have been seen. Should he just continue past them? He doesn't want to risk getting shot at. He's tempted to show off, confident that when they get to the Dawn Lands no one will believe they saw a man riding a dragon. He decides to fly just close enough to read the galley's flags. Maybe he can persuade the captain to make a detour to the island. He could pay him off with a few dragon bones, more than recompense for the ruin of his schedule.

The galley is Hanoshi. He doesn't recognize the company insignia, a gold circle in a blue field. It must be a new outfit, which is unusual, but not unprecedented. Perhaps a company split or two combined. He does recognize the captain's flag. It bears the insignia of his former third mate, Tuse.

So his mates did fool the Trust. Why isn't this a Trust ship, though? Like all officers, Tuse wouldn't be able to work for another company in the League for five years after leaving the Trust. Who would have made him a captain anyway? No one is that good a mate. Tuse wasn't. Tuse's share might have filled his pockets to bursting, but you can't buy a command, even in Hanosh. So how could he have moved up the ranks so quickly?

A terrible thought strikes him: What if the Trust doesn't exist anymore? Where would that leave him? Who else could he trust? Blue Island, the Trust's main rival? Hanosh Consolidated, the city's most powerful company? The former licks the latter's boots, and the latter would kick him to the curb to confiscate Gray and the island while the other companies fought to wrench them away. Jeryon bends over the saddle. His throat wants to retch, but his stomach feels empty.

Jeryon is directly astern now, and the galley hasn't made any motion that would indicate he's been spotted. They're probably looking at the whales, wondering if they could take a few without falling behind schedule. Jeryon realizes he has to give up his own schedule. He had planned to be over land by star-rise, to hide overnight in the coastal hills north of Yness, and to be in Hanosh a day or two later. He has to be opportunistic, though. What would Solet say? He has to grasp?

How fortunate he is to have found someone he wants to reach out and take hold of. After all, Tuse was the final vote. Tuse put the poth in the boat. She wouldn't care for what he wishes he could do, so he'll just question him. What he'll do with him afterward will depend on his answers.

Jeryon has Gray glide in a slow circle to keep them in place while
he surveys the ship. How can he get the yolk without breaking the egg? The stink of sulfur wafts over him downwind from the ship.
And it's a rotten egg at that
, Jeryon thinks. He laughs. He knows what Tuse would do if a dragon attacked. He doesn't have the imagination to do anything except what he saw Jeryon do. His old oarmaster is in for a few surprises.

PART TWO

The Mates

CHAPTER SIX

The Oarmaster

1

Tuse puts his massive foot on the foredeck of the penteconter
Hopper
and flicks some grime off his dragonskin boots. The stitching's worn, the heel should be replaced, and the piping at the tip is coming loose, but the red-tinged black skin looks as fresh and tough as it did the day it was flensed beside the
Comber.
Officers and sailors of Hanoshi companies must all wear sandals of Hanoshi make, but Tuse received these boots from the Shield and the City Council approved their use, which is tantamount to law. They remind his crew of what he had to do to get this ship, which is one reason he doesn't like to wear them.