cargo. It s a warning to
It s a senseless yarn is what it is, my lady. Ignorant chatter to make sense of a world that resists any more robust interpretation.
Chatter that you do not lower yourself to, I take it? Something like delight trickled into her voice. Dilettante salon sacrilege, he imagined, must be as popular among the upper echelons in Gris as anywhere else. You reject belief in the Dark Court?
Dakovash stalked at the margins of his memory. He held down a shiver.
I am, let us say, indifferent to the Dark Court, Lady Quilien. I ask nothing of them, and expect the same courtesy in return. In any case, whether they exist or not, I think it unlikely that such beings would concern themselves with one small cargo vessel and its grubby, spell-chanting captain. He gestured at the darkened slop of the dragondrift beyond the rail. And I think that there you are probably looking at the true origin of legends like the Hurrying Dawn.
You ll not feel it necessary, then the delight was still there, rich and thick in her tone to offer prayers of thanks to any of the Court? Given your escape from Hinerion before the quarantine came down, I mean.
I d say that any gratitude I owe belongs to you, my lady. Gruffly. He didn t like being in anyone s debt. You appear to have been my savior in this. Though I m at something of loss to understand the exact
Yes, I know. You must be confused. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a small smile playing about her lips. The last thing you remember, after all, is being aboard a vessel with black sails, crewed by corpses.
It jerked him around to face her. Tiny finger of chill at his nape. She looked back at him blandly.
At least, you did mutter something along those lines while I watched over you at one point. The ship s doctor says it must have been delirium. You were running a very high fever when we found you. Some feared it was plague.
As did I. I am doubly indebted to you, then, for bringing me out of Hinerion.
I could hardly leave you as you were sprawled reeking of cheap alcohol on a pile of trawl nets, alone. You thought perhaps you would drink it away, the plague? Was that the plan?
I thought perhaps I d try to die drunk.
Such ambition. And this from a dragon-slayer. The smile was there for certain now, but secret and somehow turned inward around the eyes. Somewhat misguided as well, since it now seems you did not have the plague after all. Or at least, short of divine intervention, I can see no way for a man to make a full recovery from the disease so rapidly. Can you?
It does seem remarkable, he said tonelessly.
Quilien snorted in a very un-lady-like fashion. No. Remarkable is that when we found you, you d not already been robbed and stripped naked where you lay. Remarkable is that, despite your apparent lack of interest in your own continued welfare, you were still possessed of that magnificent blade you own.
If she was flirting, it was clumsily done, and Ringil could think of no adequate response. Nor did he much like the idea that everything he remembered from the Gray Places had been a fever dream. Recollection would fade anyway, he knew Seethlaw had speculated that it was the only way humans could cope with the unconstrained probabilities in the Aldrain marches and not go insane but Ringil still held to a stubborn differentiation between dream and reality. Hjel as a fond but fading memory was something he could live with; Hjel as a figment of his feverish imagination and longings was a lot less palatable. He pushed the thought away. Concerned himself instead with current events.
Might I inquire, my lady, where we are bound?
Oh, to Yhelteth. She gestured at the horizon, as if the lights of the great city might at any moment appear there, painting the sky with pale yellow glimmer. It suits my eventual purposes well enough to go there, but really, there wasn t a lot of choice. I arrived at the harbor to see the Marsh Queen s Favor standing out to sea without me, and half the other vessels along the wharf preparing to cast off. Plague panic everywhere, and me with a sick man in my retinue. This was the first ship, the only ship, in fact, I could persuade to take us aboard. Its destination really was the least of my concerns.
Ringil nodded at the approaching drift. And you ve time enough for detours.
Quilien lounged languidly on the rail, one hip outthrust. She tilted her head and favored him with a sidelong smile. Well, sir, I confess I am a hopeless addict when it comes to mystery and heroic tales. You and your Black Folk blade, and now, on the same voyage, a floating spice island of the lizard folk? Who could resist seeing something like that?
Someone who s seen it before, he thought about saying. Someone who s been a little closer to the lizard folk than titillating after-dinner tales.
Instead, he left her question hanging there, and they watched in silence as the ship maneuvered closer to the drift. Ringil spotted the ragged gashes and hollows in the texture, filled now with seawater that roiled and poured as the matted surface undulated with the sweep of the waves. It was more or less what he d expected, but he still felt the tension rinse out of him like the last dregs of a hangover.
Perhaps she did, too. So this is harmless?
Yes. He pointed out over the rail, old memories roiling like the water. You can see where the dragon tore its way out that long, ragged hollow near the front, the pieces that flap about when the swell hits. The dragon comes first. It s like a mother bird protecting its brood. Then there ll be a couple of hundred smaller hatching gouges farther back where the reptile peons and the higher-caste Scaled Folk came out afterward. Once that happens, the whole raft starts to rot. It loses a lot of its bulk and in the end the currents carry it back out to sea. This has probably been drifting about out here since the early fifties.
You really killed one of these beasts? She was watching him keenly now, he knew. With that blade you carry? Now, that is remarkable.
I suppose so. As I said, I did have help.
Even so. Are you not proud?
Ringil grimaced. If you d seen some of the other things I ve done with this blade, you d perhaps be less enamored of my feats.
And perhaps not.
Was she rubbing herself against him at the hip? Ringil turned to face her, met her eyes, caught the gleam of saliva on the teeth in her grin.
My lady, I don t quite know how to put this to you gently, so I won t try. You are wasting your time with me.
Am I? The grin was still there. That s a hasty judgment.
Ringil sighed, pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyes. Was he really going to have to fuck this madwoman before they made port?
Please don t consider me ungrateful, my lady. It is simply that I am not made to please your kind.
Perhaps you mistake what my kind is.
There was a bite to the words that drew his gaze back to her. She stood a little farther from him now, sober-faced. Had produced a pair of krinzanz twigs from somewhere in the folds of her gray cloak and held them up like an apprentice carpenter offering nails to his master.
Just what you need, Gil, fresh from your fever.
He took one anyway, noted that it was expertly rolled, waited for courtesy while she put the other to her lips. A hitherto unsuspected manservant, somewhat hunched, scurried forward from somewhere and offered a low-wick lamp to light each twig. Ringil watched the Lady Quilien tilt her head to the flame, draw deep on the twig until it fired up. There was a curious immobility to her features in the flaring light it made, as if, suddenly, her whole face was a hollow, porcelain mask with nothing behind it but darkness. The servant turned, a twisted black shadow on the margins of the light and offered him the flame. He took it and drew deep.
You are Tightly, holding the breath in. Too kind.
She shook her head, wreathed in exhaled smoke. It s your supply. I found it in your things.
She met his gaze in silence for a single beat, widened her eyes around pupils already stretched black and broad. Then she burst out laughing.
The ship butted solidly up against the dragondrift. Ringil heard the eerie scrape of its fronds against the timbers. Crewmen mobbed past, lining the rail again, craning over to look down at what they d found. Someone
