He stopped there.

After a moment, she realized he was waiting for her. She took up one of the empty bottles and turned it in her hands. ‘What did you do with them?’

‘Greft stole them from me. When he fled with the boat. They’re gone forever, now.’ He gestured at the glass vials. She suppressed a shudder and set the one in her hand back on the table with a small ‘clink’.

‘Why are you telling me this now?’

He paused, then said unwillingly, ‘Carson. He said I needed to finish old things before I could start something new. This is part of that.’

‘You’re finishing with me.’

‘No. No, that’s not it at all. I don’t want to lose you, Alise. I know that it’s probably not possible, but somehow I’d like to go back to being the sort of friend I once was to you. Being that person from my side, if you see what I mean, even if you can’t feel about me as you once did. Somehow I went from being your friend to someone who could participate in deceiving you, could even exploit you just to get close to the dragons. I don’t want to be that person any more. Telling you is a way of destroying him. Telling you about someone like him is something the old Sedric would have done, back when he was really your friend.’

‘You mean before Hest got to him. Before Hest got to either of us.’ She lifted a hand and rubbed her brow. It gave her a moment to cover her eyes, a brief time of being alone with her own thoughts. It wasn’t really fair to blame it all on Hest. Was it? She and Sedric had gone their own ways before he came along and joined their lives again in such a bizarre fashion. She tried to remember how she had once thought of Sedric. In those years when their lives had taken separate paths, she’d recalled him fondly. Smiled over her girlhood infatuation with him. Whenever she chanced to see him, in the market or visiting mutual friends, she’d always felt a leap of pleasure at the sight of him, and always greeted him warmly.

His presence, she slowly realized, had been the only pleasant part of her marriage to Hest. She tried to imagine the past few years without him. What if she had been marooned in her marriage to Hest without Sedric’s presence in the house, without his thoughtfulness and conversation at meals? He had, she recalled, been Hest’s advisor in the gifts chosen for her, in her access to the scrolls and books that had made her life tolerable. In some ways, they had been two animals in the same trap. If he had some responsibility for her falling into Hest’s power, he at least had done what he could to ameliorate her misery.

And he had helped to win this journey for her. At what must have seemed a terrible price to him.

It had been a chain of events that led to her finding Leftrin. That led to her finding both love and a life.

With a fingertip, she touched the red-stained bottle. Then she frowned, leaned forward, and picked up the one next to it. It was slightly larger than the others. Something winked at her from inside it. She held it up to the light from the galley window and peered at it. She shook it. It didn’t move, but there was no mistaking what it was.

Then, with a strength that surprised him, she smashed it on the edge of the galley table. Shards of glass went flying, and Sedric instinctively put up his hands to shield his face. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, shocked at her own impulsiveness. With cautious fingers, she separated the shattered glass until the bottle bottom was revealed. Carefully she plucked out the single small copper-edged scale that had remained stuck inside the bottle. She held it to the light. It was almost transparent.

‘A scale,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

With a table rag, she wiped the shards of glass off the planks and into the waste bucket that held the guts and feathers of the birds she’d cleaned. Then, from her trouser pocket, she took the locket.

‘You kept it?’ He was stunned.

‘I did. I didn’t know why. Perhaps to remind me of how stupid I had been.’ She glanced at him from under lowered lashes. ‘But perhaps you need the reminder even more than I do.’

She opened the locket, and Hest peered out at both of them, his supercilious smile no longer handsome at all, only mocking. She lifted the tiny bundle of silk-secured black hair and set it aside as she had earlier set aside the guts she’d pulled out of the dead birds. Then she picked up the knife she’d used to disjoint the fowls, slid it under Hest’s portrait and popped the little image free. She carefully placed the copper-edged scale inside the locket case and snapped it shut. ‘Always’ said the small case. She held it up on its chain. ‘Always,’ she said to Sedric, holding it out.

After a moment’s hesitation, he took it from her. For a moment, he held the trinket in his hand. Then he looped the chain over his neck and slid the locket inside his shirt. ‘Always’, he agreed.

She rose so he wouldn’t see her eyes filling up. Could it be that simple to be done with the old and finally begin clean with the new? She lifted the lid off the kettle and gave the soup a stir. It was barely simmering. She’d have to ask the keepers to go out and bring her back anything that might burn if they wanted cooked food tonight. She opened the front of the little stove and scowled at the dying coals. ‘We need fuel,’ she said, to be saying anything.

‘Here’s something we can burn,’ Sedric said, and flipped the tiny portrait into the fire. She hadn’t seen him pick it up and look at it. It landed in the fire, and a single flame flared up briefly before the image curled and blackened. ‘And here’s something else.’ The lock of Hest’s black hair landed on the dying coals and singed. Smoke rose from it and she hastily slammed the door of the stove.

‘Oh, that stinks!’ she exclaimed.

Sedric sniffed. ‘He does, doesn’t he?’

She covered her mouth and nose, and then laughed around her hand. To her surprise, Sedric joined her and suddenly they were both laughing together as they had not in Sa knew how long. Then somehow, he was crying instead, and her arms were around him and she found she was crying, too. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she managed to say to him. ‘It’s going to be all right. I’ve got you, my friend. We’ll be fine.’

After Sylve had left the room, Thymara had spent some time alone in the darkness crying. It was stupid and useless. She’d done it anyway. And when she was sure that all her tears had been used, that all of her sorrow had been converted to anger, she left the little room and went in search of Sintara.

She went to the bow rail and located the dragons. They were not far from the barge. Some of them were lying down next to one another, each one’s chin cradled on the next dragon’s back. It looked sociable and peaceful, but she knew the truth. It was the only way the dragons could rest their legs and sleep without their heads dipping into the water. Sintara was not sleeping. She was moving slowly through a reed bed, peering down into the water. Probably hoping for a frog or a fish. Or anything made of meat. The recent rainfall had washed the dragons clean. The afternoon sun had broken through the overcast and glittered on Sintara. Despite her anger, Thymara could not help but see the beauty of her dragon.

Light ran and shivered along her blue scales. When she moved her head, there was grace and danger in every ripple of muscle. Despite her size, despite the fact that she was not a creature made for the water, she edged through it soundlessly. Beautiful death-dealer, she thought to herself, and the now-familiar sensation of the dragon’s effortless glamour washed through her. She was the loveliest creature Thymara had ever seen.

Thymara groped frantically and then angrily for her sense of self. Yes. Sintara was the most beautiful creature in the world. And the most thoughtless, selfish and cruel! She shook herself free of the dragon’s charm, seized Tarman’s railing and clambered over it.