“Perhaps you should try having a clean conscience. But perhaps you slept well despite lacking one.”
“I’ve got nothing on my conscience,” Leftrin lied.
Sedric looked like a cat about to spit. He’d huffed up his shoulders. “Then ignoring a woman’s marriage vows doesn’t bother you?”
He couldn’t let those words go unanswered. He turned to face Sedric, feeling his own shoulders and neck begin to swell. Sedric didn’t step back but he saw him shift his weight, to be ready to move quickly. Leftrin forced himself to speak calmly. “You are insulting a lady who doesn’t deserve your contempt. Alise hasn’t done anything to violate her marriage vows. I haven’t tried to persuade her to do anything wrong. So I think you’d best rethink what you just said. Words like that can do big damage.”
Sedric narrowed his eyes but spoke calmly. “My words are based on what I’ve seen. I’ve a deep affection for Alise, based on a lengthy friendship. I don’t say such things lightly. You might both be innocent, but it no longer appears that way. Early-morning meetings and late-night conversations alone — is that how a married woman should comport herself? I’ve been cursed with being a light sleeper with very keen hearing. I know that after Alise and I bid you good night and sought our separate quarters, she went out again and met you. I could hear you talking together.”
“Did she take a vow she wouldn’t talk after midnight?” Leftrin asked sarcastically. “Because if she did, then I admit, she broke it, and I helped her.”
Sedric glared at him. Leftrin drank more coffee, looking at him over the rim of the mug. Sedric looked like a man trying to contain himself. When he finally spoke the eternal courtesy in his voice seemed strained. “For a lady like Alise, married to a prominent and wealthy Bingtown Trader, appearances can be as important as realities. If I know that she arose from her bed to seek out your company late last night, then I’ll wager that others aboard this vessel also know. Even a rumour of that sort of behaviour released into Bingtown could compromise her reputation.”
Sedric finished his speech and turned his gaze out over the riverbank. More of the keepers were waking up. Some were clustered around the fire, warming themselves from the night’s chill and heating food. Others were around the shallow sand-well they’d dug the night before, taking the earth-filtered water for washing and cooking. The dragons, Leftrin noted, weren’t stirring yet. They were creatures that loved the sun and warmth and would sleep as long as their keepers allowed them to, rising at noon if they were left to their own devices. He stared at them and wished his life were as simple as theirs. It wasn’t.
Leftrin forced himself to loosen his hold on the mug’s handle before he broke it. “I’ll speak plain to you, Sedric. Nothing happened. She came up on deck and I was making my night rounds. So we talked a bit. She walked my rounds of the ship with me. We checked the tie-up lines and the anchor. I showed her some constellations and explained how a sailor can use the stars to know where he’s headed. I told her the names of some of the night birds she heard. If any of that offends your morality, it’s your problem. Not mine and not Alise’s. I’ve done nothing I’m ashamed of.”
He spoke righteously but guilt coiled inside him like a snake. He thought of the moments when her hands had been under his as he showed her how to tie the bowline. He’d put his hands on her warm shoulders and turned her to face Sa’s Plough in the southern sky. And very late or rather early, depending on how one reckoned it, when she had bid him good night and sought her compartment, he’d leaned on the railing outside her door and looked out over the river and pondered all the things that might have been. From there, he’d allowed himself to think of things that still could be, if he had the courage to propose them and she felt the passion to accept them. Under his hands, the railing had thrummed with the sweep of the river’s current and the response of his ship to it. It had seemed to him then that he was a sort of river and Alise might be a ship that had ventured into his current. Was he strong enough to carry her off with him?
Sedric spoke and the gentler tone of his voice took Leftrin off guard. “Look, man. I’m not blind. If there’s a man on board this ship that is unaware of your infatuation with her, well, then he’s a man with no senses and no heart. Your crew knows, your hunter friends know. Knowing Alise as well as I do, I can also see that she is venturing onto dangerous ground. You’re a man of the world, out and about, meeting all sorts of women. But perhaps you’ve never met someone as sheltered as Alise has been. She went from her father’s house to her husband’s. He was her first and only beau. In some ways, she and Hest are well matched. He’s wealthy, he provides for all her needs, and that includes giving her the materials and the time for her precious studies. She had never met a man like you. To a Bingtown lady, you probably seem a bit larger than life. If your admiration for her tempts her to step outside the bounds of society, she will be the one to pay the cost, not you. To her, the shame and the shunning. Possibly the divorce that will send her, irrevocably shamed, back to her father’s household. He’s not a wealthy man. If you continue to pursue her, even if she doesn’t fall as your conquest, people will hear of it. You could ruin her life, send her back to live in reduced circumstances without the scholarly pursuits she has come to love. I don’t mean to sound harsh, man, but are you worth it? Will you continue this dalliance, to her ruin? You’ll walk away; forgive me if I say that all know the way of sailors in these matters. But she will be crushed.”
Sedric spoke his piece and turned away from Leftrin, as if giving him a chance to think. Two of the dragons were awake now and lumbering down to the water. Sedric stared at them as if fascinated, as if he’d forgotten the man beside him.
Anger vied with horror inside Leftrin’s chest. His face had first flushed and then drained of blood. He was not a man who was faint of heart or body, but Sedric’s words sickened him. Was he right? Was there any way this would not end in disaster for her? He mastered his emotions and spoke.
“I doubt there’s any man aboard this ship that is bound for Bingtown, let alone prone to gossip about a lady. The only exception is you, and if you’re her friend, as you claim to be, you won’t say ugly, untrue things about her. I have no intention of disgracing the lady. And I think you wrong her when you suspect she would betray her husband.” That last he felt was true, but oh, how he longed that she would at least consider it.
“I am Alise’s friend. If I weren’t, I’d have kept to my words and left her on this ship while I went back to Bingtown. But I knew that if I did, she’d be ruined. The only reason I’m here is to safeguard her reputation. You can’t imagine that I’m enjoying this little misadventure! No. The only reason I’m here is for Alise. I want to protect her. Her husband is a close friend as well as my employer. So you might, for a moment, consider what an untenable position you are forcing me into. Do I respect Alise’s dignity and refrain from reprimanding her? Or do I respect my employer’s dignity and challenge you?”
“Challenge me?” Leftrin was shocked.
Sedric spoke quickly. “That’s not what I’m doing, of course. I don’t think I need to. Now that I’ve come to you and explained the situation in civil terms, I’m sure you’ll see that there is only one solution.”
He paused, as if he expected Leftrin to fill in his silence. He tried. Despite his efforts at control, his voice went deep with fury and despair. “You want me to stop speaking to her, don’t you?”
Sedric tucked his chin and widened his eyes, surprised that Leftrin didn’t see the obvious. “I’m afraid that, at this stage and in these close quarters, that would be inadequate. You need to order one of your hunters to take one of the keepers’ small boats, and transport Alise and me back down the river to Trehaug.”
“We are three days upriver of Cassarick,” Leftrin pointed out. “And one of those small boats wouldn’t hold half your luggage, let alone you and Alise and all your trappings.”
“I’m aware of both those things,” Sedric replied briskly. Leftrin was watching his face. He thought the corner of his mouth almost twitched into a smile. “Travelling downriver, with the current, the little boats go much faster. I heard the hunters talking about it yesterday. I suspect that at most Alise and I would spend one night camping out before we reached Cassarick. From there, we could make proper travel arrangements to reach Trehaug and then home. As for our belongings, well, they’ll have to remain on board for now. We’d travel light, and rely on you to ship our things to us in Bingtown when you finally return to Trehaug. I’m sure we could trust you to do that.”
Leftrin just stared at him.
“You know it’s the right thing to do,” Sedric urged him quietly, and then added, like a twist of the knife, “For Alise’s sake.”
A long wailing cry of anguish from the shore rose to crack the sky.
“He was better last night!” Sylve insisted. Red-tinged tears were streaming down her cheeks. Thymara winced at the sight of them, knowing well how much such tears hurt. Perhaps the fear of that pain was the only thing keeping her own eyes dry. She knelt by the little copper dragon. He had eaten last night, the first really large
