“It would be better if you could sleep,” he said quietly.
“Yes, well, I can’t. Is that so strange? We’ll be in Dunark tomorrow, or so I’ve heard.”
He nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“The plan? Nico, do you even have one? Except to… to let the nearest Dragon soldier kill you?”
“Dina. I’m not a complete idiot.”
No, he wasn’t. But neither was he quite himself, and I was cold with fear that he might be too desperate for his own good.
“Carmian, I want to talk to you,” he said.
“Talk away.”
He shook his head. “Not here. Come up with me. Dina, you stay here.”
“But I have to—”
“No. Stay here. Promise.”
He held my gaze longer than he usually did. Nico could never forget that I had once had Shamer’s eyes and still felt the gift sometimes at unpredictable moments. It was natural, I supposed. A man who had once in his life been under a Shamer’s long and thorough scrutiny, the way my mother had scrutinized Nico… it was not something anyone would easily forget.
“Promise,” he repeated.
I nodded. “All right. I’ll stay here.”
Arms crossed, Carmian watched us. “Are you sure you don’t want me to tie her up, just to be sure?” she said, and I couldn’t tell whether she meant it for a joke or not. She had not enjoyed being my nursemaid and keeper all day, that much was certain.
“When Dina gives her word, she keeps it. Don’t you?”
“I suppose so.”
And I did. At least for five whole minutes, or as long as it took them to reach the deck and forget about me.
Not that it was easy for me to break a promise. With a mother like mine, I hadn’t exactly been raised to lie and cheat. But I told myself it was for Nico’s own good. My father wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment.
They were standing to the lee of the cabin, perhaps twelve paces from the open hatch. Up here there was still a bit of sunlight left, just a sliver of gold between sea and sky. They were talking, or at least, Nico was. But to hear what he was saying, I had to get closer.
It would have been easier with the flute. But even without it…
Look at the waves, I thought. Look at the seagull diving at the dark water.
If you tell someone “Don’t look at me,” of course they do. My father taught me that that is not how you hide. You can’t forbid them to look at you. But most people can’t look at more than one thing at a time, not really, and so, if Nico and Carmian looked at something else, they wouldn’t be looking at me. Quite simple, really.
The flute worked because it caught people’s attention without them noticing it. It filled eyes and ears with thoughts and dreams, until the eyes no longer saw what the Blackmaster wanted to hide. So like I said, it was easier with the flute. But not impossible without it….
Look at the sunset. Look at the light dancing on the waves. Look at Carmian’s hair dancing in the wind.
And don’t see me.
They didn’t. I kept low, all the same, and crept a little closer on all fours.
“It’s important,” said Nico. “When I leave this ship tomorrow, she stays. And whatever else happens, she is going home to the Highlands.”
“And just how do you imagine that will happen?” she said. “She’s not exactly easy to deal with. She is hell-bent on looking after you, and she is stubborn as they come.”
“You don’t say. But, Carmian, in the old days. Back when you… back when you and Tip-Toe were running that little scam of yours—”
“Nico, you promised you wouldn’t—”
“And I won’t. I don’t tell tales.”
“A bunch of old rich fools who barely knew what to do with their miserly hoard. Did they come to any harm if we unburdened them of a fraction of their wealth? They had their money’s worth in entertainment, I can tell you.”
“Probably. But that isn’t—”
“And they hanged him, Nico. Did you know that? He never hurt a fly. He never mugged people, or threatened anyone. And still they hanged him. Is that justice?”
“No. No, it is not justice.”
“Perhaps you think I should have bedded them instead? Because where I come from, Young Lord, there aren’t many other ways for a girl to make her living.”
“Carmian, I said I wouldn’t tell anyone. But I just thought… how did you make sure that your—what did you call them, your old rich fools?—how did you make sure that they didn’t wake at the wrong moment?”
“Bit of poppy in their wine.”
“And that’s not dangerous, is it?”
“No one ever complained. Not about that, anyhow.”
“Do you still have some? In that box of yours?”
There was a pause.
“I might have,” she finally said.
“So, a little poppy in Dina’s water, perhaps a little wine to disguise the flavor. And when she wakes, it’ll all be over. One way or the other. Isn’t that possible?”
Carmian stood still for a very long time. I couldn’t see her face properly, but her shoulders looked high and tense.
“Why do you care so much about her?” she said. “She shows up out of the blue, sneaks aboard ship uninvited—and how she did that is a bloody mystery. It’s not your fault she got mixed up in this.”
“I just don’t want her getting in the way.”
“Come on, Nico. I know you. It’s more than that. The men don’t like her being here. Enoch swore she had to be some kind of witchling to sneak aboard without him seeing her. But Mats said you practically bit off the Crow’s head when he began to talk about a ransom. What is she, your secret half sister, or something?”
“Of course not. I just owe her family, quite a lot. Life, limb, and whatever shreds of honor I retain, just to mention the first things that come to mind.”
She snorted. “Honor. That is for those who can afford it. And you were never one to go charging off on your high horse, waving the family coat of arms.”
“Honor can be more than that. Self-respect, for instance. And I think even the lowliest beggar in Swill Town possesses his own sense of honor. I know you have yours, or I would never have written you that letter or put my life in your hands.”
Oh no, I moaned to myself. Don’t. Don’t trust her so. Trusting someone like Carmian can kill you.
She straightened and turned away from him abruptly, as if she no longer wanted to look him in the eyes.
“You and your fancy notions,” she said, her voice low and hoarse. “Not all of us can afford them, you know.”
“Carmian—”
“No. Don’t look at me with those eyes. Not when you don’t mean it. That little miss down there, her you would wrap up in cotton wool to keep her away from harm. Not me. With me it doesn’t matter so much, does it?”
“You’re a big girl now. Isn’t that what you usually tell me? You are better at looking after yourself than most people. But I’m not forcing you. If you would rather stay here tomorrow—”
“No. No, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“What are you saying, then?”
“You know very well what I mean. Ever since Farness… you haven’t even touched me once.”
Nico hesitated. Then he put a hand on her shoulder.
She spun and struck it away with a furious movement.
“Not now!” she snapped. “Not like I’m some dog you have to remember to pet!”
“But—”
“If you can’t work it out for yourself, it really doesn’t matter. But once, Nico, once, you knew where my bed was. Am I so ugly now that you won’t even touch me?”
I closed my eyes and felt like closing my ears too. I didn’t want to hear this. It might not be a huge surprise; I knew Nico had had more than one girl back when he still lived in Dunark and was the youngest son of the Castellan and in unrequited love with his brother’s wife. I had seen everything in his eyes that night in the dung
eon when it all started, that night two years ago when I met him for the first time. And Carmian—just the way she laced her shirt, or rather, didn’t lace it—no, it was no surprise.
Why, then, did it hurt? Two years ago it had meant nothing to me, Nico and his girls.
“You’re not ugly,” he said, and something in his voice made me open my eyes. “You are as beautiful as you ever were.” He reached out to touch a lock of her hair, and this time she let him do it. “You are strong,” he went on. “If the world kicks you when you’re down, you get up and kick back. That strength, it’s part of your beauty. And that is why I don’t wrap you in cotton wool. You wouldn’t like it.”
“What do you know about it?” she said, but for the first time since I’d known her, she didn’t sound angry. She even put her hand on top of his and pressed it against her neck.
I had had enough. Maybe I should just drink his damn poppy, I thought, and leave him to Carmian and the Crow and their callous plans. I slipped down the ladder and ducked behind the drape. The lamp was just a guttering spark by now, and in the dimness I knocked into the bucket. It made a fearful racket, but there was no one but me to hear. I rubbed my shinbone and slowly and clearly repeated the ten worst curses I knew. It helped a little, so I did it again.
When Carmian came down, I pretended to be asleep. Whether she believed in the act, I didn’t know. She moved about in the dim light, hanging another hammock. Then she turned the wick of the oil lamp all the way down, and the darkness became total. There was a creaking from the beams and the ropes as she swung into the hammock, then those sounds died down as well. Was she asleep? It wouldn’t surprise me. Nico had called her strong, but I just thought she was cold. Cold, heartless, and false. And she was the one Nico had chosen to trust? Out of all the people in the whole wide world. I have put my life in your hands, he had said.
I stared into the darkness.
If he absolutely had to put his life in someone’s hands, why not mine?
DINA
The Dragon Is Not at Home
One couldn’t sail all the way to Dunark. The closest a ship like the Sea Wolf could get was the small port town of Dunbara, which lay at one end of North Cove, just below the Dun Rock. But Dunbara had grown lately, and Dunark had spilled across its old boundaries too, so that now there were people living at the foot of the castle rock, in what was called Netherton. There was only a narrow stretch of mud flats between Netherton and Dunbara, so it was probably only a matter of time before the two towns merged completely.
The harbor was busy with more ships than I could readily count, and on the pier was a lively traffic of people and goods, barrels and crates being carried one way or the other by sweating sailors or by little donkeys that could climb the narrow planks of the gangways without tripping, even with what looked to my eyes like quite unreasonable burdens on their woolly backs.
“Enough of that, little darling. Get below. Now.”
I turned. A moment ago, Carmian had been sleeping soundly in her hammock, but not anymore, it seemed. For a brief moment I actually considered whether it would be better to jump onto the railing and leap into the sea. But the water was cold, and there was still a fair bit of distance to the pier. Davin might have managed it. Not me.
“I just wanted to see the town.”
“Great. You’ve seen it. But if you can see the town, the town can see you. Get your posh little tail below, and I might think about getting you some breakfast.”
Breakfast. Oh, yes. With wine and poppy.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You think I care?”
Did this mean no poppy after all? No, better not count on it.
Carmian took my arm.
“I can walk,” I said, tearing free of her grasp.
“Then pray do so, Your Ladyship.”
I didn’t want her to touch me. I didn’t want her hands on me. As a matter of fact, I wished violently that she and I were very far apart—like at opposite ends of the world—instead of sharing a space no larger than three paces by four paces, if you didn’t stretch your legs too much when you paced.
“Weren’t you getting breakfast?” I said.
She measured me with her cool gray-green eyes.
“I thought you weren’t hungry?”
We glared at each other. If I had still had my Shamer’s eyes, she wouldn’t be so full of herself, I thought. Or would she?
“I’m not,” I said.
Maybe she was like Drakan, completely unmoved by the Shamer’s gaze because he had no more shame than a beast. Nico had said she had her own sense of honor. But his judgment didn’t count where Carmian was concerned. Once, you knew where my bed was, she had said.
In the end she did get the breakfast, having told Mats to keep an eye on me meanwhile. She obviously didn’t trust me. Mats I might have tricked into not seeing me, but what good would it have done? Even if I did find Nico and manage to talk to him alone, I was by now pretty certain he wouldn’t listen to me. He was set on a plan that included Carmian and the Crow but not me.
Carmian returned with two bowls of porridge and two beakers of toddy. I looked at the beaker with the steaming hot red-gold liquid. There it was, I thought. If she had used the poppy, it would be in there.
“Eat,” she said. “You may or may not be hungry, but you had nothing at all yesterday, and no one here has the time or the leisure to nurse sick kiddies.”
I considered it. I was as good as certain that the porridge was safe. And she was right. If I didn’t eat, I might regret it later. I tried a spoonful. It was too salty for my taste, but other than that there seemed to be nothing wrong with it.
Carmian noticed my caution, and her lips tightened.
“It’s the same porridge everyone else gets,” she said. “But perhaps Her Ladyship is used to finer things?”
“No,” I muttered, taking another spoonful. “Nothing wrong with porridge.”
At first she didn’t mention the toddy. But as it became more and more obvious that I wasn’t touching it, she raised her eyebrows.
“So you don’t like toddy either?”
I shrugged. “I’m not so used to wine.”
“I should have guessed,” she said in a condescending tone.
“Your mama won’t let you, I suppose. She’s right. It’s not a child’s drink.”
“I’m no child.”
“No? You’re sure you wouldn’t like some nice hot milk instead? We could heat a bottle for you.”
Her condescension rankled, but I wasn’t quite stupid enough to drink her poppy juice just to prove what a big girl I was. And so, when the ship finally bumped against the pier at Dunbara and we could hear the shouts and movements of landing, I was still awake. And Nico was furious.
“She wouldn’t drink it,” said Carmian, completely unruffled by his anger. “What did you expect me to do, hold her nose and force it down her throat?”
“You promised—”
“I promised to see what I could do. It’s hardly my fault that Her Ladyship is sly as well as stubborn.”
Nico regarded me with an expression of fury and a strange despair. His dark blue eyes looked nearly black right now.
“I don’t want you here,” he said. “You weren’t supposed… I didn’t want…”
It was so rare for Nico to stumble like that. He was usually so precise. But here he was, searching and struggling just like Davin sometimes did, as if there were no words to fit what he wanted to say.
“The Harbormaster will be here any minute,” said Carmian, watching him coolly. “So unless you want them to take you here and now, uselessly, I suggest you make for the hole. And decide what you want us to do with Her Ladyship meanwhile.”
She didn’t mean it as a compliment, the Ladyship bit, and I wished she would stop it. But it was perhaps a slight improvement on the “little darling” she had used to begin with. And in any case, it seemed to me that the cleverest thing to do right now would be to keep my big mouth shut.
>
Nico kept that nearly-black-looking gaze on my face.
“She’ll have to come with me,” he said. “For now, at least. We can’t let them see her either, they want her almost as badly as they want me. It’ll have to be the hole.”
“If there’s room for both of you.”
“There has to be.”
She shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it. Come along, then. We haven’t got all day.”
The hole in question was a narrow space between the hull and some floor planks in the cargo hold where the ballast—the heavy rocks that kept the Sea Wolf from capsizing when the wind filled her sails—was normally kept. The Crow, however, had moved some of the stones and created a tiny boxlike room. I don’t think he normally smuggled people in it, though there was no doubt that he smuggled something there, but there was just enough room for Nico and me, as long as we didn’t breathe too deeply or try to move.
He was still angry with me, and it was odd to lie so close to someone so furious. I was half on my side, with my face against his shoulder, so that I could feel the edge of his collar against my cheek. He was so angry that he wouldn’t put his arms around me, though that would probably have been more comfortable for both of us. He couldn’t avoid touching me, what with us having to lie practically on top of each other, but he made it clear he only did it because he must.
“Nico, please,” I said. “Please don’t trust the Crow.”
“I don’t trust the Crow in the least.”
“But why, then…”
“I trust his greed and his nose for money. That is all.”
“But Nico, they’ll pay him a hundred gold marks to betray you.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dina. Stay out of it. You will do as I tell you and stay here until someone can take you back to Farness. Do you hear me?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to break any more promises to him.
“Where is the flute?” I asked instead.
“The Crow has it.”
“The Crow?” I was outraged. “You gave my father’s flute to the Crow?”
The Shamer's War Page 9