The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(20)

She’ll be happy not to row. Her hands are blistered on both sides, the palms from the paddle, the backs from the sun. Blood is smeared across the rough-edged ends of the wood. Her hands are so numb she can barely hold her paddle, and her arms are so numb she can barely hold them out.

She digs for the phial of lotion. “No sense in letting it go to waste,” she says. She puts a few dabs on her hands, then, after some initial reluctance, on his. Rubbing it into her fingers is like donning mittens in winter.

He sniffs his hands. They smell like some flower. He flexes them and reaches for his paddle. “We still need to row now, though,” he says.

“Let’s keep going then,” Everlyn says and puts the phial away.

She’s tough. If someone has to put fingers in his mouth, it might as well be her.

4



* * *



The world is cellar black when the poth awakes. Thick clouds obliterate the sky. For a moment she thinks she’s dead. She can’t see him. She can’t see the boat. She can’t feel anything. She’s beyond pain. She’s not sweating. She would be sweating if she were alive. She’s happy the darkness is a floating, not a falling. The soft breeze, though, wafting across her face, suggests there’s little difference between the two when there is no ground, no up or down.

Did she work herself to death? Did he coax her into it, playing on her willfulness? He wanted to keep paddling, even though they didn’t have to anymore. Or did he slit her throat after she collapsed? Has he already started to devour her?

One winter a pair of trappers was lost for months above Ayden. They weren’t found until spring, holed up in a cave, one woman fat and happy, the other gnawed and cracked to release her marrow. Her rescuers, appalled, bludgeoned the survivor with her own walking stick. Everlyn still wonders if the devoured woman knew what was in store for her. Did she fight her partner? Or did she surrender herself with pleasure?

Everlyn sees him crawling up her legs, gnashing with his scaly teeth. She kicks. She’ll fight. She slams her boot heel into his belly. He wheezes. How did he get over there? She kicks him again. She hears him roll onto his side. Her heart rate slows. She rubs her neck. No slits, no blood. She’s alive. She must be.

She could kill him first. He wants her to testify. She could steer down the river like he said and race from Yness to Hanosh. It would be her tribute to him. She would carry him inside her belly. They would testify together with one voice and one mind.

She’s skinned game. She’s a fair butcher. She doesn’t want to slaughter him, though. She wants him to keep. She has to savor him. She needs the knife. She’ll make a little prick in his wrist and suck his blood slowly. She doesn’t even need to kill him. She smiles. He doesn’t have to die. She’ll drink a little whenever he’s not looking. A sip here, a sip there. He’ll never know. He’s so exhausted. His hands are cut up like hers. What’s another cut?

Her eyes adjust to the darkness. Everything glows green. She’s like a cat. She waves her paws around him. He’s slumped over the pocket with the knife. She can’t get to it. Wait. She should wash her hands. Always wash your hands before working with food, Everlyn.

She pads on her knees to her side of the boat. The sea is licking it. It’s like a cat too. A thousand black cats in little white caps make little tiny laps. She pets the cats. So warm. So soft. Their fur is so deep. She smells them on her fingers. More like kitties than cats. She takes a little taste. Delicious! Why would she eat bony old him when she could eat these kitties? Don’t eat kitties, Everlyn. There’s so many, though. No one would miss a couple or six. She lifts one yowling to her lips.

He yanks her backward with his claw. It slides beneath her smock. It burns her bare shoulder. She screams a trickle of bile. He falls on top of her. Her smock slides up. Where’s his other hand? Where’s the knife? She lets the kitty go, it flees to the bow, and she grabs at him.

He locks her wrists in his fists and crushes them between their chests. His head falls on her shoulder. He sniffs at her ear. She tucks her chin against her chest and folds her head over so he can’t bite her neck.

He whispers, “No. No water.”

She says, “It’s kitties!”

He doesn’t respond. He may have fainted. He doesn’t let go. His hands are tight as a painter knot. She can’t get him off her. Dawn comes as a surprise to her. She must have fainted too. He lifts his head. He says, “I want you—” and coughs. He lifts himself. He helps her sit up. He releases her hands, kicks her paddle at her, and says, “I want you alive. One more day.” His voice sounds like wind in a tunnel.

She puts her paddle in the water. It bobs. It bobs. The strand has rubbed her wrist raw. “Which way?” she says.

He looks at the sky. The cloud cover is so thick, he can’t tell where the sun rose. The uniform gray makes him strain his eyes. “Pin,” he says.

She takes a pin from her bun, where he graciously lets her store them. His hands are shaking terribly. He stabs himself in the crotch twice before the stick finds its real target: a tiny catch on the back of his top pants button, a tacky golden globe. He holds the button and works the stick around until the front of the button opens like a locket. A yellow-green gem is set inside. He holds it against the sky.

The gem gathers light from somewhere, and a line appears inside it. He turns the boat at a right angle to it.