The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(37)

Jeryon and Everlyn cheer.

Gray drags the body to Everlyn, who’s touched.

Before she can pick Gray up to tend her wing, the wyrmling pounces on the broad claw and tries to crack it open with her mouth. Jeryon whistles twice. She doesn’t come, so he yanks the wyrmling away from the claw by her scruff. She hisses at him, flaps her wings, and breaks free. Jeryon grabs the claw, and she dives on his hand, biting him. He flings her off and shakes the blood from his hand.

The poth yells and steps toward the wyrmling. Jeryon says, “No!”

“You’ll hurt her,” the poth says. “She earned that claw. Let her have it.”

He steps between her and Gray. “On my terms,” he says. Then he drops the claw and puts his foot in front of it.

The wyrmling hisses, she squeals, she snaps at his foot, but he won’t let her have it. Finally, she sits and looks at him. He moves his foot. Gray attacks the claw.

“Now you may,” Jeryon says and steps aside so the poth can reach the wyrmling. He kicks the crab’s body out of the arena and stalks off, clutching his hand.

Everlyn finds him on the rock at the washbasin, probably the last place he thought she’d look for him. She has a packet of aloe leaves and one of his sleeves, now clean, to tie them on.

“I put the flower up,” he says.

“You could get a disease,” she says. “Do you want to be the first person to die from dragon spit?” She takes the ointment from the Comber out of her pocket. “Give me your hand.” He grudgingly sticks it out. She dabs some ointment on his wound, two matching semicircles of needle-thin punctures.

“You’re scaring me,” she says. She scores an aloe leaf with a bamboo splinter and wraps the leaf over his wound. “I know angry. I understand angry. That’s why I spend so much time on this rock. Not just to get away from you. I have to get away from me. Hold that there.” He does. “So I can live with angry. What I can’t live with is controlling. And I have to live with you if we’re going to survive.”

“I will not be undermined,” he says. “She’s bad enough.”

The wyrmling has poked out of her pocket. There’s a little bandage on its wing. It ducks into the depths.

“I’ve been around enough shipowners—and their wives—to understand that attitude,” she says. She puts one end of the sleeve on the leaf, he holds it with his finger, and she neatly wraps his hand. “What you misunderstand is, you’re not in charge. Flex your fingers.” He does. She knots the sleeve end to the last round. “And I will not obey. I’m not your mate. Those are my terms.”

He doesn’t know what to say. The captain commands. The rowers row. That’s the Hanoshi way. There is no middle ground. There isn’t even a term for middle ground, except perhaps “at crossed oars.”

She surveys his hand. “I used more bandage than the wound calls for, but I don’t want to cut the sleeve down in case we need a longer bandage at some point—or a tourniquet.” She stows the rest of the leaves and the ointment.

She wouldn’t deny him medical care, Jeryon thinks. She didn’t bring her sword. She can’t leave the island. What does she have to bargain with? “Then who controls the wyrmling?” he says.

“She does,” the poth says. “It’s clear she’ll do what we want, but only if she also wants to do it.”

“What about when we get back?”

“Let’s worry about that when we get back.”

He doesn’t see that he has a choice. He rubs his chin. He should cut off his beard to spite her, but he’s starting to like it.

4



* * *



Another month passes. The wyrmling is nearly two feet long now, and it’s getting perceptibly longer and broader each day. They have to start a new measuring culm to keep track of its growth, and they’re at risk of running out of white crabs to fuel it. Only a handful are left on the beach and flats where the poth washed up, while those at the base of cliffs elsewhere are largely inaccessible. Jeryon’s worried that if they kill any more the population in those areas won’t recover, so he says they need to attack the blue crabs. He and the poth can only kill a few a day, given the effort it takes, and that’d be barely enough to feed them. The wyrmling will have to hold up her end.

Also, it’s getting cooler. Winter, however mild, is coming, and the rainy season after that. They need the dead dragon’s renderings to make it through. The wyrmling’s molt has proven a terrible cloth, even for patches, and Jeryon’s attempts at making a net out of the poth’s thread were failures. The skin will serve for coats and tarps, and Jeryon can make fishhooks out of the bone. He can also make adzes, axes, and knives. The poth’s sword is becoming blunt from its use as a universal blade, and they’re concerned it will break.

More importantly, they need the distraction. They’ve built up their camp as much as they can. The poth has planted herbs and small vegetables. She surrounded it with so many replanted flowers of such variety and color that it looks like an island on the island, a wondrous and magical refuge. Their days have settled into a routine that he finds comfortable; every chore completed another galley brought into port, but which drives her crazy—as does his comfort in routine. Apparently there is a limit to how long she can study plants each day. She’s mapped the island and found no other signs of civilization—man, giant, or dwarf. She’s found many more blue crabs and black frogs. She would have tried to build a sundial if it weren’t for all the hour lines having to be labeled YOU ARE ON AN ISLAND. She’s been spending more time at the basin rock.