“Really. The dragon escaped, flew straight to the tower, and rescued Jenna.”
The healer’s wary interest dissolved into skepticism. “The dragon again. That’s your theory? That after spending weeks confined belowdecks, this Carthian dragon’s first instinct was to fly across town and smash a hole in a castle to rescue a girl he’d never met?” Sul’Han shook his head. “How long did it take you to come up with that?”
“I think Jenna is a shape-shifter, or at least someone with a special affinity for dragons.”
“Convince me,” the healer said, looking obstinate as a rock.
“When Jenna’s in danger, have you noticed that she develops scales?”
The healer, frowning, stared at him, then nodded. “I did see something like that,” he said. “When I was treating Jenna in Ardenscourt, and her wound was healing up, there was, at first, something that looked like scales. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would have survived that fire in the tower. But she did. I think that she is resistant to flame.”
“Something you hadn’t counted on,” the healer said.
“You’re wrong. Nobody is happier than I am that Jenna survived and escaped,” Evan said. Looking into the healer’s face, he thought, Well, maybe somebody is.
He pressed on, building his case. “Did you notice her eyes?”
“What about them?” From the healer’s expression, it seemed he didn’t like Evan noticing anything about Jenna.
“Beautiful, golden, almost reptilian, wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose,” sul’Han said grudgingly. “Though I never really thought of them that way.”
“Something smashes a hole in the tower. Jenna and the sun dragon disappear. The next thing we know, Jenna is in the mountains, ordering an extra-large harness from the upland trader. A harness for a dragon, perhaps?”
The healer grunted, still uncommitted, but wavering, as if weighing the evidence.
“Finally, the dragon was with Jenna when I saw her on the coast. It was wearing a harness. After incinerating my ship, she mounted up, and they flew off together.”
“Jenna. Was riding on the dragon.”
Evan nodded. “Exactly. Legend has it that the ancient Nazari rulers fielded squadrons of dragon fighters. There are images of them in the ancient texts.”
The healer scrubbed his hands through his hair. “All right. Leaving the topic of dragons for the moment—let’s say you’d succeeded, and your deal had gone forward. What did you plan to do with Jenna after the trade was made?”
Evan looked down at his hands and considered what to say. “Being the target of someone like Celestine is a lonely business,” he said finally. “There’s nobody I can really trust, and no source of information that I can access without risking my life. I hoped that Jenna was ahead of me, that she knew more about this magic than I do. I hoped that we could share information and find a way to fight back.”
“Did you tell her that?”
Evan nodded. “Eventually. But not until we met again, on the coast near Chalk Cliffs. I couldn’t risk telling her while we were in Ardenscourt.”
“How did she respond?”
Evan laughed. “Not well. I’m the last person she wants for a partner. The way she sees it, I ruined her life.”
“I don’t think it’s a matter of perspective,” the healer said. “You did ruin her life.”
“Her life would have been ruined with or without my involvement. You may not believe me, but I was trying to help. I told her the truth—about the magemark, all of it. I tried to persuade Jenna that we are natural allies, that we share the same blood.”
“What do you mean, you share the same blood?” sul’Han said, leaping on that like a trout on a fly.
“Celestine claims that the magemarked are related to her, that we have Nazari blood, which is why we belong together. Remember, it was Jenna who drew Celestine to the wetlands.”
“Jenna and the busker,” sul’Han said, half to himself.
Evan’s mind was racing along, and now it skidded to a stop. “Busker? What do you mean?”
The healer sighed. “Back at Solstice, when I was still in Arden, a street performer—a musician—led my sister into an ambush.”
“Oh!” Evan said, unsure where this was going. “Did it—? Was she—?”
“She was unhurt, but one of her personal guards was killed. The Queen’s Guard tracked the busker down in Chalk Cliffs, and he turned out to have a magemark, too.”
Evan was stunned. He’d been living alone with this secret for most of his life, but now the magemarked seemed to be surfacing at every turn, flushed out of hiding by Celestine.
“Did you ask him about the mark?” Evan leaned forward. “What did he tell you?”
The healer shook his head. “He claimed he didn’t know much about it, either. He’d been working with a gang out of Baston Bay when he was recruited to do a street concert, supposedly to try to woo my sister on behalf of a suitor.”
“So . . . this person . . . used his gift to try to murder the heir to the throne?” Evan felt as if he were standing on a sandbar that was being washed out from under him.
Sul’Han nodded. “Now, bear in mind, most of this is secondhand, because I just arrived home after . . . after a long time away.”
“In Ardenscourt.”
“In the south, yes.”
“So . . . the busker . . . What is his name?”
“Breon d’Tarvos, he calls himself.” The healer was watching Evan closely.
Evan made no attempt to hide his surprise. “Tarvos! But that’s where—”
“That’s where your stronghold is,” sul’Han said, nodding.
Evan was beginning to see why the wetlanders might be wary of him. How could he possibly win their trust with that history on the books?
“The busker has the gift of . . . ensnarement? Enticement?”
“Something like that. My sister—she wouldn’t—anyway.” The healer fumbled his way to the end of that sentence as if changing his mind several times on the way. “So you can see why we’re trying to jam all these pieces into the same puzzle. One theory is that Arden’s behind it, because we’ve been enemies for so long. That assumes that Carthis is here as a proxy for the Montaignes, hired as mercenaries to fight their battle for them, since the thanes are in rebellion.”
“Celestine is nobody’s proxy,” Evan said. “If the young king thinks she’s biddable, he will learn to his sorrow that she is not.”
The healer nodded. “I agree. Given what happened in Ardenscourt, and the fact that the busker was in Chalk Cliffs when it came under attack, I’m inclined to think that the empress came north on her own, and she was after the busker.”
Evan didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. “You mentioned that the busker was in Chalk Cliffs. Where is he now?”
“We don’t know,” sul’Han said. “He was in the city when it fell. We believe that he might be among the prisoners the empress took back to her capital.” Again, it seemed like he had more to say, but didn’t.
Evan tried not to surrender to despair. Despite everything he’d done, all the plans he’d laid with Destin, another of the magemarked was in the empress’s hands.
So, now what? Maybe Brody was right. These wetlanders might decide to trade him to the empress in an effort to make her go away. They might believe they had no other skin in the game. Evan had to convince them otherwise.
“Once Celestine realizes that Jenna is still alive, she will conquer the wetlands, realm by realm, until she finds her. If you want to defeat the empress, you are going to have to join together. If you don’t, she will win. Ask the survivors of Chalk Cliffs.” He paused. “Do you think there’s any chance of that—joining together?”
“It won’t be easy,” the healer said. “There’s too much blood on the ground already.”
“And there will be more—you can count on that,” Evan said. “What about you? Why are we having this meeting? What are you hoping for?”
The healer held his gaze for a long moment. And then, somehow, chose to trust him. “You’ve heard people speak of a Captain Gray,” he said.