The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(64)

Mylla can’t imagine a worse death, and she saw Sumpt die. As the rider returns west, Mylla says, “Why are you doing this?”

The rider says something she can’t make out, the wind is so loud.

Nearing the beach where the Pyg has burned nearly to the waterline, she says again, “Why are you doing this?”

He says in her ear, “You remind me of someone I know. Can you swim?”

“Of course. I’m Ynessi. Wait!”

The dragon dives again. They skim the water toward the beach. She tries to take control of the dragon. She clings to the dragon with her legs, leans over, and braves the spikes to hold its neck. The dragon slows. First he grabs her goggles, but they come off in his hand and slide over his wrist. Then he grabs her by the back of her pants and slides her half off.

“Don’t go to Hanosh,” he says.

Turning sharply finishes the job. She skips off the water, flips, half loses her pants, and splashes to a stop.

The officers and archers weren’t expecting the dragon to return and so they had gathered in a tight clump in the light to discuss what to do. The dragon blasts them, and they decide to run around burning and screaming.

I don’t care, Mylla thinks, I’d rather sink than call Barad for help. She doesn’t have to. He sees her, throws off his candlebox, and swims out. He’s huffing so hard by the time he reaches her, though, that she has to save him. They collapse in the shallows to avoid being seen. She pulls up her pants, rakes her soggy hair off her face, then rakes his off his face and says, “We have to find him. The dragon rider. We’ll go to Hanosh. Are you with me?”

He nods. She had him at “we.”

“First, though, we’ll go to Yness,” she says, “to get Solet’s brothers.”

Jos, wreathed in flames, runs by and flings himself into the surf. A cloud of steam stinking of burned hair wafts over them.

“And his sister Thea,” Mylla says.

6



* * *



Midafternoon the next day Jeryon spots the island. The weather’s lousy, dank and misty, the sun a mere suggestion. Jeryon’s new goggles keep fogging.

The previous night, after flying a mile toward Hanosh, Gray tugged for home, and he gave her his head and they flew down the coast. Hanosh could wait a few more days. After spending the night a few hours south of Solet’s beach, Jeryon longs for his lumpy bamboo bed a wall away from the poth.

A week hasn’t passed, but it feels much longer as the magnitude of what he’s done bleeds through his exhaustion. So many dead. That wasn’t the plan. What can he possibly tell her? He doesn’t lie. He could argue they worked for the Shield and his former mates, but they weren’t soldiers, nor is he. He can’t understand how he enjoyed watching Tuse suffer. He can’t fathom how he crushed Solet’s skull. He tries hard not to admit it thrilled him. Instead he feels released.

He doesn’t need Hanosh anymore. Why risk all by going there? What more could he do? He doesn’t have to finish the job. He’s already cost the company four ships. The reasons why will come out, and the other companies will make sure the Shield suffers further. Livion won’t escape. That he can count on.

He only needs a boat. He could buy one outside Yness and tow it to the island. He and the poth could then ride it into the sunrise. He could talk her out of going to Ayden by saying they’d take the dragon. In the Dawn Lands, she’d never find out for sure what’s happened.

Jeryon soars over the island to make a more dramatic descent to the cabin and notices a galley on the flats where the poth washed up. At first he thinks it’s a pirate ship, then he sees the burned mast and the scorched remnants of deck and knows it’s the Hopper. He doesn’t want to be spotted by the men lounging on the galley and the beach, so he pulls the dragon up until the mist obscures the galley and races for the Crown along the treetops.

If they’ve done anything to the poth, he doesn’t want them to know he’s there. His vengeance would be swift. His remorse disintegrates. Having killed before makes it surprisingly easy to consider afterward.

When Gray lands, she becomes very agitated, as if looking for something. He takes two spears and dismounts then stays behind her for cover as she rushes from spire to spire. Men from the Hopper may be waiting. He’d prefer that to another dragon.

At the spire where Jeryon and Everlyn found Gray’s egg, she curls around it, groaning. He wonders if she’s hurt, and she’s come here because instinctually it’s the place she feels most safe. She rolls on her belly then pushes herself up into a crouch, bent nearly double. Her stomach heaves. Having seen what the green dragon did in a similar posture, Jeryon flees around a spire behind her where he couldn’t be drenched with acid. She squeals and her tail whips up. She squeals again as if in pain. Jeryon peeks around the spire and sees the first egg slide onto the bare rock. Another follows and a third, a tiny cairn mortared with strands of gray mucus.

Her head snaps around. She gives him a ferocious look. He ducks behind the spire, presses his back to it, and tucks his spears against his chest. He doesn’t have a command, he realizes, that means Don’t eat me. When he peeks around the other side of the spire, she’s putting the eggs in the hole where hers was. Amazing, he thinks. He’ll keep them apart when they’re hatched. They could create an armada.

Gray curls around the spire again and falls asleep. He takes a step toward her to see if she’s all right. One eye opens, red-rimmed and slitted. She’s all right enough, he decides, and hurries down the steps to find the poth.