The Dragon Round (9 page)

She's tough. If someone has to put fingers in his mouth, it might as well be her.

4

The world is cellar black when the poth awakes. Thick clouds obliterate the sky. For a moment she thinks she's dead. She can't see him. She can't see the boat. She can't feel anything. She's beyond pain. She's not sweating. She would be sweating if she were alive. She's happy the darkness is a floating, not a falling. The soft breeze, though, wafting
across her face, suggests there's little difference between the two when there is no ground, no up or down.

Did she work herself to death? Did he coax her into it, playing on her willfulness? He wanted to keep paddling, even though they didn't have to anymore. Or did he slit her throat after she collapsed? Has he already started to devour her?

One winter a pair of trappers was lost for months above Ayden. They weren't found until spring, holed up in a cave, one woman fat and happy, the other gnawed and cracked to release her marrow. Her rescuers, appalled, bludgeoned the survivor with her own walking stick. Everlyn still wonders if the devoured woman knew what was in store for her. Did she fight her partner? Or did she surrender herself with pleasure?

Everlyn sees him crawling up her legs, gnashing with his scaly teeth. She kicks. She'll fight. She slams her boot heel into his belly. He wheezes. How did he get over there? She kicks him again. She hears him roll onto his side. Her heart rate slows. She rubs her neck. No slits, no blood. She's alive. She must be.

She could kill him first. He wants her to testify. She could steer down the river like he said and race from Yness to Hanosh. It would be her tribute to him. She would carry him inside her belly. They would testify together with one voice and one mind.

She's skinned game. She's a fair butcher. She doesn't want to slaughter him, though. She wants him to keep. She has to savor him. She needs the knife. She'll make a little prick in his wrist and suck his blood slowly. She doesn't even need to kill him. She smiles. He doesn't have to die. She'll drink a little whenever he's not looking. A sip here, a sip there. He'll never know. He's so exhausted. His hands are cut up like hers. What's another cut?

Her eyes adjust to the darkness. Everything glows green. She's like a cat. She waves her paws around him. He's slumped over the pocket with the knife. She can't get to it. Wait. She should wash her hands. Always wash your hands before working with food, Everlyn.

She pads on her knees to her side of the boat. The sea is licking it. It's like a cat too. A thousand black cats in little white caps make little tiny laps. She pets the cats. So warm. So soft. Their fur is so deep. She smells them on her fingers. More like kitties than cats. She takes a little taste. Delicious! Why would she eat bony old him when she could eat these kitties? Don't eat kitties, Everlyn. There's so many, though. No one would miss a couple or six. She lifts one yowling to her lips.

He yanks her backward with his claw. It slides beneath her smock. It burns her bare shoulder. She screams a trickle of bile. He falls on top of her. Her smock slides up. Where's his other hand? Where's the knife? She lets the kitty go, it flees to the bow, and she grabs at him.

He locks her wrists in his fists and crushes them between their chests. His head falls on her shoulder. He sniffs at her ear. She tucks her chin against her chest and folds her head over so he can't bite her neck.

He whispers, “No. No water.”

She says, “It's kitties!”

He doesn't respond. He may have fainted. He doesn't let go. His hands are tight as a painter knot. She can't get him off her. Dawn comes as a surprise to her. She must have fainted too. He lifts his head. He says, “I want you—” and coughs. He lifts himself. He helps her sit up. He releases her hands, kicks her paddle at her, and says, “I want you alive. One more day.” His voice sounds like wind in a tunnel.

She puts her paddle in the water. It bobs. It bobs. The strand has rubbed her wrist raw. “Which way?” she says.

He looks at the sky. The cloud cover is so thick, he can't tell where the sun rose. The uniform gray makes him strain his eyes. “Pin,” he says.

She takes a pin from her bun, where he graciously lets her store them. His hands are shaking terribly. He stabs himself in the crotch twice before the stick finds its real target: a tiny catch on the back of his top pants button, a tacky golden globe. He holds the button and works the stick around until the front of the button opens like a locket. A yellow-green gem is set inside. He holds it against the sky.

The gem gathers light from somewhere, and a line appears inside it. He turns the boat at a right angle to it.

“Magic?” she says.

“Yolite.”

They paddle. The air leans on their shoulders until a following wind erupts from the night's breeze. It's cool and encouraging. They paddle faster, although each stroke is like pushing through an angry mob.

At some point, the water changes color. “River,” Jeryon says.

The sky darkens behind them. Night is still a long way ahead. “Storm,” she says. “Water.”

“Too much.” He motions for her wrist. He cuts the cord with a jittery slash. He cuts his own strand in a way that nearly costs him his thumb. Then he tries to pull the crosspieces off her paddle. He can't get the blade under them. His fingers refuse to obey. He hacks the wood uselessly. She reaches for the paddle. He pushes her away and tears at the crosspieces with his fingers. She reaches for the paddle again. He jabs at her with the knife. She returns his glare. His features slacken, and he pushes the paddle and knife at her. He hangs his head.

It takes her awhile, but the poth finds the same rhythm she did with the painter and the paddle comes undone. His spirit returns. He nails two pieces of her paddle along either side of the top of his, his sandal hammer broad enough to accommodate his fluctuating aim. He wedges another piece between them to lengthen the extension, nails it in place securely, and ties it to his wrist.

“Rudder,” he says.

He puts the paddle portion behind the transom and slots the tiller in the sculling notch. It doesn't fit.

He shakes his head, unties the rudder, and drags the serrated edge of the knife across the transom's gunwale to enlarge the notch. He barely scratches the wood at first. The sky grows darker. The sea grumbles. The blade catches. In a few minutes or hours he's cut halfway through. He falls aside and the poth takes a turn.

She squeezes the jury-rigged knife handle so hard her hands regain enough feeling to ache. The metal chips away the wood. She counts the flakes to keep her focused. The horizon collapses toward them. She cuts horizontally from the bottom of the notch, yanking the blade. The gunwale grips, the handle gives, and the blade flips free across the boat.

Jeryon crawls on top of it then roots for it beneath his chest. He looks at her as if he really might eat her if he had the strength. She looks sadly at the well-worn handle. It wasn't her fault. He puts the knife together again, considers the notch, and hands it to her. This cheers her.

In a moment she pries free the bit of gunwale. Now the tiller fits and turns. He nails a former paddle crosspiece over it loosely as a guide.

He sits against the transom and pulls the tiller across his chest. He puts his arms over it, spreads his knees, and points between them. Reluctantly, she sits. He spins his finger. She pivots until he can pull her back against his chest, anchoring the rudder in place. He flops his arms over her. She can remember the last time she let a man lie on top of her, but not the last time one put his arms around her. So be it. She pulls her smock down then holds his wrists with the opposite hands. They knot together and let the river take them.

Jeryon whispers, “Swallowed my button” and passes out.

Everlyn realizes she has the knife now. She strokes the veins in his wrists with her thumbnails.

5

The Hanoshi harbor has two notable features. The most useful is its long, broad piers. At Yness, Jolef, and Meres, galleys beach themselves, making these cities no more than up-jumped versions of coastal
towns. At Hanosh, the galleys tie up, shipowners come aboard on Tower-blue gangplanks, and cranes handle cargo day and night.

Its more arresting feature is the line of gibbets, also painted blue, a hundred yards beyond the docks. Four consist of tall posts with single beams pointing at inbound ships as a warning. The Great Gibbet in the center, reserved for the most celebrated or vicious criminals, looks like a cross-staff. From its two transoms four prisoners can either swing in iron cages or, if banded, hang by chains directly.

Jeryon stands at the end of Hanosh's main pier with the leaders of the Trust arrayed behind him. They are silent. The wind picks up. Tuse sways in his cage, pleading for Jeryon to understand. He sticks one bare foot through the bars. It dangles well above the tide. In time flesh will drip beneath it to be eaten by crabs. Livion and Solet snap and sway in their bands like broken pendulums. They can't speak with the bits in their mouths, but they can moan. Their spit has dried up. Thirst scrapes in their throats like mice in a wall.

The wind gusts harder. A gale is moving in, strange for this season. The Great Gibbet twists, while the tide bursts over the pier. Its spray wails with the prisoners' despair. Jeryon bathes in it, and he feels beautiful.

He turns to ask the Trust where the poth is, and he finds himself staring at the gibbet again with the Trust behind him. He turns the other way. The world turns with him. He can't face the Trust. He can't see their faces. He can hear them laughing.

Then he's in the dinghy, filthy and contorted, clutching the tiller against a heaving sea. He closes his eyes again.

Something smacks his face. His eyes grind open. The poth holds a heavy bulb of smock above his lips. A wave makes her fall, and the bulb dives into his mouth. He sucks. Rainwater flows into the cracks in his tongue. It's warm and sweet, and he's drowning in it. He spits out the cloth and water. She sops more water from the bottom of the boat with her hem, braces herself, and wrings the water into his mouth. His head droops over the transom so the rain can fall down his throat while she sops up a third drink.

This time he grabs the bulb and takes it into his mouth himself. She tugs the bulb free, touches it to his lips, and squeezes. “Slowly,” she says.

As she resops, so slowly, a frenzy takes him. Shaking, he works free the crosspiece guide and hauls in the rudder. It splashes in nearly an inch of water. It can't all be fresh, but enough is, and the rain is picking up. He wrenches his shirt off, mops it across the bottom, and squeezes the water over his face. Still too slow. He flings himself down and drinks directly from the dinghy. He slurps and waits for her to pull him away, except she's beside him on all fours now, lapping and gagging, the frenzy in her too. Once the boat is empty, he will suck her long hair dry.

The rain falls in great fans faster than they can drink it, and the sea rises high enough to stuff it back into the clouds. Only the drops lancing their skin let them know which way is up.

A wave nearly jounces them from the boat. Jeryon yells in the poth's ear, “Blade!” She stares at him. He yells again. She searches through her pockets for it. Did she lose it? Jeryon feels around in the boat. She finds it in the pocket behind her smock's brocade and gives it to him. He saws through the strand attaching his wrist to the rudder, pockets the blade, and ties the strand to her left wrist with a child's knot. “Float,” he says.

He notices something odd on his left wrist. A tiny cut seeps blood. A bruise blooms around it. He wonders how it got there.

A wave rolls the dinghy mere seconds from the righting moment, pushing her on top of him, before it settles back. She grabs his wrists. A wave flips them the other way. Another gushes over the gunwale, half filling the dinghy. Jeryon slips under the poth so she can keep her head above the water. The rudder floats beside them, clacking against the remaining pieces of her paddle.

Something scrapes the hull, the dinghy shudders, and a strake cracks. Water spits through the hull then disappears as more waves fill the boat, and the poth lets go of his wrists. Splashing for purchase, she
floats away from him. The rudder is tossed overboard, dragging her half over the gunwale. He grabs her collar and hauls her back in. She hooks her free arm around his neck. He folds her smock's brocade into his fist and tucks her against his body. They're more afloat than the dinghy. He wraps a leg around her thigh to weigh her down. A huge wave rises astern, dawning black above the transom.

His eyes tell her what's coming. Hers plead,
Don't die
. His say,
You can't
.

A mat of fresh palm leaves sloshes by and vanishes. In disbelief they look around for it, and obligingly it returns to moor in the lagoon between their chests. A tiny white horned crab shakes its claws at them and scuttles off its raft into the dinghy. The wave crest bubbles white and reaches for them.

The dinghy rises slowly, stern first. Jeryon throws out his feet to catch his sandals on the boat's ribs. Water pours over the bow, pulling them forward toward the sea. The remains of the poth's paddle slide past them and disappear into the sea. The toes of Jeryon's sandals slip to the next rib, then the next.

The crest curls over them like his father's hand. It rises, strikes, holds them inside its fist, squeezes, and shoots the dinghy through its foamy fingers across the sea.

Everlyn screams because she knows they're going to live until the bow is stoved in. Water blasts through it like a gout of dragon flame. It slices her from Jeryon's grasp, and the boat pitches over their heads. The last thing Everlyn sees is him reaching for her as they soar into a sky of water.