“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 fo
r 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.”
“We?” Mulcent says and sips some smoke. “Wouldn’t you be putting yourself out of a job?”
“I think a man who can capture a dragon would be in great demand,” Solet says, “if relieved from his position or undercompensated. Markets do thrive when there’s competition.”
Sumpt sorts. Smoke drifts up from his nose.
Solet doesn’t add that his position is already endangered. How many more dragons can there be that his pack could kill easily?
Mulcent is not amused. “How do you plan on accomplishing this?” he says. “Our ships have already incurred significant repair costs from previous excursions, which have diminished expected returns.”
“The ships are outfitted with a number of new devices,” Solet says, “as you’re aware from having paid for them. The Pyg has pots that will blast a cloud of pepper into a dragon’s face to disorient and possibly blind it. Our harpoons have weighted heads for greater penetration—”
“Much like my own,” Sumpt says, waving his snifter to be refilled.
“Plus the harpoons will be attached to chains,” Solet says, “and the chains to winches so we can hold the dragon, keep it from flying, and, once it falls into the water, drag it into a position to subdue it.”
“How will you do that?” Mulcent says.
“We’ll stretch it between the boats, then fire a harpoon through its snout. This iron will have a flange near the end so the dragon can’t work it out. It won’t be able to open its mouth, saving more phlogiston for us.”
“I know some foremen who need that treatment,” Sumpt says, and takes a long draft of the burnt wine.
Mulcent holds his hand to his ear. “Curious,” he says, “I don’t hear the laughter you think you hear.”
Sumpt scowls and blows smoke at Mulcent.
A long sharp whistle comes from the Kolos. The watches on the foredecks of the Pyg and the Gamo blow theirs. Sumpt sits up. He points off the Pyg’s bow, where a green-blue dragon with broad wings has lifted into the dusk above the black backdrop of the cliffs. It has an enormous red stag in its claws.
“It must be as big as our ship,” Sumpt says.
Solet gives a hand signal to the stern deck. A whistle is returned. The Gamo’s drum replies with a soft, slow beat, and the oars gently pivot the galley to face the Pyg. Another whistle stops them.
“It must be as big as our ship,” Sumpt says again.
“Not quite,” Solet says. “The one I took on the Comber was longer. It’ll be no trouble. Now,” he motions to stern, “if you’ll take your places in your cabins.”
“Do they always fly like that?” Mulcent says. The dragon darts and drifts as it flies. It looks agitated, but not in the way a dragon gets when it’s considering an attack. “Is it looking for something?”
“Must be the weight of the stag,” Solet says, “and the wind against it, throwing it off.” He holds out his arm. “Your cabins. We only have a few moments.”
A passing crewman, misunderstanding, hands Solet a pair of leather goggles with glass lenses and a bandana to cover his nose and mouth.
Sumpt jiggles to his feet and polishes off his wine, but Mulcent stays in his seat and says, “I’ve changed my mind. I will remain on deck.” He gestures for the valets to clear the table and take it away.
Sumpt grabs the bottle before his valet can and says, “We must get out of the crew’s way. The portholes will afford us excellent views.” He takes two encouraging steps toward the cabin.
Mulcent sniffs his wine and waves away the valet’s tray. “No,” he says, “I’m here to observe. I wish to see that none of these devices are merely for show. I may be able to suggest some additional efficiencies. For instance, fewer ships.”
Solet half expects Mulcent to demand that he make the decisive blow as well, the way other owners are guided through a wood, handed a loaded crossbow, and told when to fire so they can later call themselves hunters.
The dragon closes. Sumpt drinks straight from the bottle. Mulcent looks at him stonily. Sumpt decides. With his puffy cheeks held as firmly as possible, he follows the valets and their loads of tableware and linen to the cabin that once was Solet’s.
Mulcent takes his glass to the mast and says, “I will stay here.”
Solet says, “As you wish.” He smiles again and gives Mulcent his goggles and bandana. “Because of the pepper,” he says.
A sailor gives Solet a replacement pair of goggles as he mounts the stern deck. He hears Sumpt bar the cabin door, as if a four-inch iron peg will protect him. Solet laughs. Sumpt is too scared to act stupid. Mulcent is too stupid to be scared. And if he and his efficiencies are swept overboard in the confusion, there is a precedent for such a tragedy.
2
* * *
The first mate, Jos, has the oar. An old bone pipe hangs from his bottom lip like the stump of a cigar. Others might be bothered by that, waiting for the pipe to fall, but Solet finds it amusing. He appreciates insolence when carried off well. Jos would make an excellent match for one of his sisters, but he’s from Duva, and they wouldn’t have one not truly of the sea. Pity.
Mylla, Solet’s cousin and former ship’s boy, rests her candlebox on the rail as she reads messages from the other two ships. “The Kolos has concerns about the dragon,” she says. “Barad’s nervous.”
Barad, the Kolos’s lamp, is always nervous around her, Solet thinks, even w
hen he lets them flash chat during their downtime. Poor kid likes her, and he has zero chance. She keeps her black hair tied up and back. If she liked Barad, she’d grow her bangs long to hide behind them.
Mylla is still on the scrawny side, but carries herself as far larger. Although an obscure regulation would let her wear, as a female, a fustanella, which she would prefer, she nonetheless wears plain blue uniform pants with the white one-button shirt befitting her rank. Solet got his uniformed personnel exempted from wearing the uniform hat—by throwing them all away during their first voyage, then claiming they were lost in the fighting—but she doesn’t mind the blue vest, which her own study of the regulations revealed she could cut short and have made of any fabric she wanted. She chose a thick cotton and made a pocket inside for her knife. Trapped in his boots, he envies her sandals, which she despises. They catch on her toe rings.
After her predecessor was devoured, she proved such a quick study with the candlebox that she can identify other lamps by how they flash. He’d be concerned that her expertise would get her transferred to another ship if he didn’t know how much the Shield hated girls being aboard in the first place.
“The Kolos may be right,” Jos says. “That dragon looks rabid.”
“Could be injured,” Mylla says, “or distressed or diseased.”
Solet hates to read, and he hated schooling even more; when did math keep a boy from being incinerated? Fortunately, Mylla loves it, another thing that recommended her to him, and she happily traded her cheap broadsheets full of fanciful tales about dragons for stolid reports about actual ones.
“We might want to give it a wide berth,” Jos says. “Or watch it for a bit.”
“We can’t afford that,” Solet says. The dragon jerks and flies a hundred yards south before jerking east again. “Mylla, see if anyone can spot a second dragon. Maybe it’s caught the scent of one.”
The girl flashes the other two galleys. The Kolos responds, then, a moment later, the Pyg. “No,” Mylla says. “I also told Barad to ask the trackers if they found spoor from more than one dragon, and they said no.”
The Dragon Round Page 17