The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(17)

“There we go.” A stitch pops and he yanks out the thread with the pin. He opens the seam and removes a steel blade, one edge straight, the other serrated, and a thin envelope the length of her pinky.

“Aren’t you full of surprises,” she says.

Jeryon has such a bland face, like dough too dry and hard to be pounded, that she’s shocked to see a bit of mischief dart through his eyes.

“Trust your sails, but not the wind,” Jeryon says. “And I’ve been thinking the wind was about to turn.”

“Do you have an aphorism for everything?” she says. “Any port in a storm? Nodding the head won’t row the boat?”

“Simple rules prevent complex problems,” he says.

She humphs. “What’s in the envelope?”

He unfolds it carefully. In it sits a bone needle and some red thread.

“What’s that for? Sutures?”

“Do I look like a surgeon?” he says. “It’s for fixing my pants. I can’t run around with my pants falling to pieces, can I?”

Everlyn stifles a laugh at his serious expression.

He threads the needle and goes to work. “While I do this,” he says, “crawl to the bow and untie the painter.” Everlyn looks confused. “The line. The rope.” Landlubber, he thinks.

She nods and slips past him. She doesn’t ask why he needs the rope and lets the mystery of it burnish the next five minutes of life adrift.

The knot is hard as steel, hammered by a thousand waves. She wonders if this is a test of patience. Her fingers are powerful from yanking roots and nimble from untangling vines, but the knot gives only the tiniest bit with each tug. She develops a rhythm after a while, which lets her look into the water.

The sea is lifeless compared to the lake at Ayden, whose shallows are covered in nests. She splashed and shrieked in summer, especially when a mother fish nipped at her for stepping on a nest, and she slid in winter until her friend went through the ice and drowned, then it wasn’t so much fun. The lake was huge to her as a child. It could fit in the dinghy compared to the sea.

Everlyn gets the painter free. Having fixed his pants—all sailors can sew—Jeryon rewraps and pockets the needle, then trades her pins for the painter and cuts off a piece as long as his blade. This he slices longitudinally a third of the way through. He fits the straight edge into the rope and saws experimentally at the starboard gunwale forward of the oarlock. The rope guards his finger satisfactorily. He keeps sawing.

“First, we’re going to remove the gunwales section by section,” Jeryon says.

The poth says, “Won’t that make the boat fall apart?”

“Were this a new dinghy, maybe,” he says. “Nowadays, every bit of wood is minimized to keep costs down. Boats don’t last more than a couple years. Some galleys don’t even carry them anymore. But this dinghy is pre-League and overdesigned. It’ll last.” He taps the gunwale with his blade. “Two boards. We’ll just take the top one.” He shakes his head. “I even got her cheap, for being ancient.”

He cuts through the top board, pushes past the poth, and saws the end by the breasthook.

“If it eases your mind,” he said, “the boat only has to stay afloat for three days. We’ll be dead of thirst after that. Actually we’ll probably be too weak for work after two.”

“Once a child got lost in the woods around Ayden,” she says. “He lasted six days without water before he was found.”

“He wasn’t in this sun. But you could be right. Maybe we could go a week. Let’s plan for three days, though.”

He cuts through the board and wedges it up with the blade. “Take the pin,” he says, “and slide it underneath the gunwale so it doesn’t sit back down.” She does so. “Don’t lever it. You’ll bend the pin. Just slide it aft as I do the levering.”

They work it free slowly and steadily until Jeryon can get his fingers under it and yank it up nails and all. His rope handle has been nearly worn through, so he makes an inch-long slice up one end of the piece of gunwale, cuts off the end to make two opposing pieces, makes a quarter-inch cut in their opposing faces, and clasps the pieces together tight around half the blade to create a handle. He folds the rest of his rope to make a new fingerguard. “Now, let’s take up the rest.”

It doesn’t take her much longer to realize that he doesn’t really need her to help. “You’re just giving me something to do,” she says, “so I don’t panic.”

“Yes,” he says.

“I don’t panic,” she says.

He gives her a long look and says, “Reduce the painter to its strands. I’ll need those soon.”

After a while she says, “We could be found by another galley.”

“We won’t be,” he says. “Galleys don’t often cross Tallan. They row north in the gutter between the coast and the river, where they can trade and stop ashore for water and game.” He yanks the larboard bow gunwale free. “Ships from the Dawn Lands ride the river north to Jolef to trade with us, then work their way home down the coast. There’s no profit in the sea itself. Besides, there were no other ships at Chorem planning to cross.” He gets to work on the starboard quarter gunwale.

“What about whalers?” she says.