The Dragon Round (12 page)

When he can't hear their clicking anymore, Jeryon says, “I'm sick of crab too.”

4

Jeryon tries to line up the rips in his sleeve. “I don't think I can mend this.”

“Good. Tear it off. I need it for a bandage.”

“It's just a flesh wound.”

“You can live without a sleeve, not without an arm.”

“I've known plenty of one-armed sailors,” he says. Nonetheless, he tears off the sleeve while she hacks off a long piece of the vine with
her sword. Then he cuts off the other sleeve with his blade. “Balance,” he says.

Everlyn upends the vine over his arm and hand. Water trickles out to clean his wounds and wash away the seeping blood.

“A water vine?” he says.

“Exactly.”
Lubber
. She takes a swallow and hands him the vine. “You can eat the fruit too.”

He twists one off, bites it, and makes a face.

“Too bitter?” she says.

“Looks like a plum. Thought it would taste like one.”

She takes a big bite of one herself. “I like bitter.”

“I like tart.”

“Then we'll get along just dandy,” she says.

“What choice do we have?” he says.

Everlyn takes a roll of thick aloe leaves from her smock. With his blade she scores them to release their medicinal juices, then uses the sleeves to bind the leaves to the wounds. “I'll disinfect them with seawater after they've clotted,” she says.

He wipes his blade on his pants and pockets it. “Where are your hair pins?”

“Lost at sea. But this island more than makes up for it.” She produces a sprig of leaves with a blue flower. “Boneset. It's a pain reliever. Chew it.”

After a moment he says, “I feel pretty good. Kind of invincible.”

“That's just what it's like not to hurt after so long.” She chews a wad herself.

He looks at the bandages. “These, and back there: How can I repay you?”

“Make me lunch. Then get me off this island.”

At the beach, Jeryon kills two
crabs. While he piles their meat on one of their carapaces, Everlyn pulls up her smock and sits with her bare legs
stretched out on the sand. A misshapen target, dark purple ringing yellow, covers her ankle. She scratches it with the ornate brass cap on her sword sheath. He asks, “Where did you get the sword?”

“Not, ‘Where did you get the bruise?' ”

“Where did you get the bruise?”

“I twisted my ankle badly when I washed up. If I hadn't found the boneset by the pond where I made camp, you might have found me by my screaming. I couldn't walk until this morning.”

“That's when you found the sword?” He feeds the fire, crushes olives into his cooking shell, and sets it to warm.

“Yes.” There's more to her story, but why should she bother? “On the south side of the island beneath a large patch of yellow asphodel.”

He looks at her blankly.

“King's spear. Cousin of aloe.”

“Ah.” Jeryon lays crab meat in the oil to sizzle. “What's that got to do with the sword?”

“It only grows in patches when it's planted on an Ynessi grave or where one of them died.”

“Right. Yes,” Jeryon says. “That's piss blossom. They use it like dogs to mark their territory. The streets of Yness are covered with it. So you dug?”

Everlyn waggles her filthy, ragged fingernails. “You said Ynessi pirates might work these waters. Perhaps one had been buried there with something useful.”

“The Ynessi are sentimental that way,” Jeryon says. “Probably shrouded him in sailcloth too.”

“It would've been sad if they hadn't,” she says. “I'm hardly sentimental, but I want my shroud.”

“Waste of cloth. And the time spent digging. If it comes to that, give my body back to the waves.” He flips the meat. “Make the crabs work for their vengeance.”

Everlyn rolls the sheathed sword over her lap. She doesn't want to think about that. Or what a Hanoshi might do with her body.

“Of course, their waste is our reward,” Jeryon says.

She draws the blade. “It would've been a waste had they buried it without its scabbard. The leather rotted away, but the metal sheath has an oiled fur lining that kept the blade sharp.” She holds it so the sun glares on the spider rust. “I think it's from the far north. It's bigger than a spatha.”

“I didn't think pothing required a knowledge of swords.”

“A tool's a tool. I would've preferred a kopis. Or an axe. Beggars and choosers, though.”

Jeryon snorts in agreement and adds just a touch more olive.

“After I found it, I was feeling pretty good—I've practically been living on boneset—so I decided to explore the peak. And you know the rest.” She resheaths the sword and rubs her ankle. It's swelling again. Too much running and walking today. Thinking about trudging to her pond makes it ache more. “I think I should stay here,” she says.

“Your pond would make for a better camp,” Jeryon says, flipping the crab. “Water, probably shade, certainly no crabs. And the ground has to be softer.”

“I meant for tonight,” she says. “So I don't have to walk back.”

“Yes, of course,” he says. “We should stay close, though. And pool our resources.”

“A Hanoshi sharing? We are in desperate straits.”

“Given the circumstances, it's rational. Provided we each do our part.”

“I'm sure you'll keep track.” She looks out to sea. “Someone should be here when a boat comes by.”

Jeryon pours some crab onto a clean shell for her and gives her two freshly cut bamboo shards to eat with. “A smart captain would give this island a wide berth. Too many rocks and sandbars. He'd never get close enough to see us.”

“Then let's make a sign that could be seen. After all, ships came here once. They could come again.” She eats some crab. It's tastier
than she gave him credit for. She could probably find some herbs and spices to complement it. “This is good,” she says.

“You make do,” he says. He serves himself the rest and sits across the fire from her.

She points at the cross-staff propped against the lean-to. “What's that?”

“A failed experiment.”

“It's perfect, though, for a signal,” she says. Her shoulders straighten. She likes a project. “It's unnatural. The eye would pick it up. Someone would want to investigate. If we put some on the peak, larger ones, they could be seen far out to sea. We could build a fire, too, as a beacon.”

“A beacon could cause a ship to wreck,” he says. “And something like that would be unstable in the wind.”

“Then we can prop up big X-frames.” She puts down her bamboo shards. “Start saying ‘yes.' ‘No' just gets you nowhere.”

He stares at her plate. She won't eat.

“Let's see what's up there first,” Jeryon says, “then maybe. If your ankle's better, we can go tomorrow. In the meantime, we'll build you a lean-to and dig another fire pit to keep the crabs away.”

That night, after Jeryon falls asleep,
Everlyn remembers when she was fourteen and her father sent her around the League with one of his caravans. He described it as a chance to see not just the cities, but also the world in between: the plants and the landscape, the husbandry and agriculture. This was a compelling argument, and she loved him for it even though the real reason for the trip was obvious: She was the caravan's chief trade good.

For every useless son she met, for every dreary nephew and lonely old man, there was a bloom beside the road she had to investigate. She hated to sit in her red-wheeled box and would have demanded to walk the entire route had her father not predicted this attitude and filled her
wagon with books on plants from around the League, boxes and bottles for samples, and blank journals for her notes. Thus she was kept busy, the caravan was kept on schedule, and she understood why her father was respected as a trader.

She filled every journal and bought more on the way. She had to find room in another wagon for her samples. And she wrote her father scores of letters describing what she'd found, seeing as none of her suitors cared half a whit.

But one night on this island had been worth the hundred on the trip. The fragrance of so many strange flowers was intoxicating. For every plant she knew, there were ten she didn't. She could spend endless days learning about the flora, just as she had with her herb master in the forests around Ayden, not to mention naming the birds and bugs she'd never seen. Everlyn should have been indescribably happy, but lying there in her lean-to she couldn't help thinking,
What's the point of learning something if you can't teach it to someone else?
Knowledge must propagate, her herb master would say. It dies in isolation. And so might she. Everlyn knew she could survive on the island. She didn't think she could survive being alone.

She'd bet the captain could. On the
Comber
he'd rarely spoken except to give commands. He'd kept to his cabin when he had no duty, even in Chorem with all its wonders, and when he ate he ate alone. His only pleasure seemed to be in routine. That afternoon, after they'd attended to all their tasks, he'd retreated to his lean-to without a word to her. He'd barely spoken during dinner. Everlyn can't imagine what that must be like. Dreary. Lonely.

How her father would laugh. At the end of her tour, he lauded her research and bound three copies of her notes and letters: one for her, one for her herb master, and one for his library. He was less congratulatory about her suitoring. He said if she didn't find a partner soon, she'd likely be left with the last man in the League.

And there he is
, Everlyn thinks. “At least he's not useless,” she whispers.

That night, after the poth falls
asleep, Jeryon wonders if he should have told her that his calculations had been wrong. There was no hope of rescue. What purpose would that have served, though? He might as well humor her. A hopeful crew's a happy crew, even when trapped in a maelstrom.

He hears the poth whisper something in her sleep, and Jeryon realizes he can't have his scream, not with her five feet away. He also realizes he doesn't need it. Getting comfortable with her around:
that's not a productive attitude
, he tells himself.

5

Everlyn is woken up by Jeryon scraping the cliff face with a sharp stone.

“What are you doing?” she says.

“Day seven,” he says. He touches up the first two of the slashes he's made.

“I've been keeping track too,” she says. She picks up a spear and digs a long furrow in the sand. “One,” she says, then rubs it out with her foot. “Now what's for breakfast?”

Her ankle feels stronger, so Jeryon shows her how to clean a crab with her sword instead of hacking it to pieces: flip it over, cleave it halfway through, lop off its limbs, and pry free its carapace. His father gave him the same lecture. Jeryon points out one for her to practice on while he gathers firewood and fills cups at the stream. When he returns the job is done “mostly competently,” and she says she'll do the cooking today. She crushes some of his store of wild olives into a paste, but before she adds the crab to the cooking shell she puts in some herbs she gathered before he returned. A wonderful smell rises over the beach. The olives' bitterness lingers, though.

After he tidies his camp and she changes his dressings, they set out
for the island's peak. He has a spear in each hand and his knife in his pocket, and she has her sword, but they take a long detour south around the blue crabs. They can clear them out later.

The slope surrounding the column of gray rock is gentler to the south, which makes hiking easier, but they aren't making good time. The fifth time the poth stops to examine some plant, Jeryon snaps, “Can we eat that? Can it cure us? Will it kill a blue crab?”

“Not that I know of,” she says.

“Then let's go.”

“Maybe it could.”

“Look,” he says, “when you see something interesting, I'll add a mark to the next blaze so you can find it later.”

“Are we late?” she says. “Is there something up there waiting for us?”

He looks toward the dragon hollow. “I hope not.”

“No reason to hurry then. Besides,” she says, “my ankle is acting up again.”

“I'm sure it is,” he says. He slows to her excruciating pace, though, and gives her a spear to use as a walking stick.

At the tree line around the column, they spot no trails or ledges they can use to climb it. They circle to the east and observe that half of the island. Disappointingly, it is much the same as the rest. There don't appear to be any other beaches. They see more streams, several ponds, and meadows. Nothing breaks the horizon.

“No dragons, at least,” she says.

When they find a water vine, they take a break to drink and eat. The poth sits on a slab of fallen rock. There isn't a place for Jeryon to sit except the ground, and he's wearied of that. Another slab has fallen behind and above her seat. There's a third higher up the column. Jeryon slides into the tree line, looking up.

“What is it?” the poth asks.

He says, “You're sitting on a step.”

She looks up too and sees the shelves of rock climbing around the
peak. The stairway is cleverly made, blending into the stone and sturdy despite ages of weathering.

“Who do you think built it?” she says. “I've seen stairs like this in the mountains. My herb master said they were made by giants or maybe dwarves, and once there were great castles at the top to defend against hobgoblins.”

Jeryon says, “Given the rise between steps, I'd say everyday men, albeit taller.” He points at her ankle. “Are you up for this?”

“Says the sailor, king of flat water. I'm mostly mountain goat.” She springs up the first few steps, trying not to wince, and is amused that he can't keep up. The stairs are wider than they look from below and slightly canted toward the column, so she feels comfortable setting a brutal pace.