“Gray,” Jeryon says, his voice already woozy. “Comber.”
“Those days are—oh.” Tuse remembers Jeryon yelling the galley’s name while passing over the Hopper. He turns and sees the dragon rear its head. Jeryon tucks his head and pulls his left knee up so he’s entirely under the larger man. The dragon drops its jaw. Jeryon heaves Tuse toward it. Tuse yells. The dragon spits a gob of fire.
The fire spreads across Tuse’s back. He flips over to smother the flames. The dragon spits another gob on his chest. That inspires some flailing. When it stops, Jeryon whistles three times.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Hunter
1
* * *
Solet grinds the heel of his dragonskin boot into the deck of his monoreme Gamo as two of the Shield’s shipowners push themselves away from a portable mahogany dining table. Their valets swoop in to replace the remains of their grilled quail and okra with a bottle of burnt wine, two snifters, and a silver ceramic narghile for each. As the owners take their respective hoses, Solet thinks, They’ll share their interests, but not their smoke.
He isn’t surprised. They wouldn’t share their table with him, despite the fact he wore their ridiculous formal uniform. Pants, on an Ynessi! In Yness they’d never be welcome to eat again.
One must smile at an owner, though, even when one, Mulcent, blows a huge cloud of honeyed smoke at you and says, “We can expect a dragon tonight?”
“Trackers found signs on shore today,” Solet says. “They believe it hunts there before returning to the spires, where it lives. When it flies past, we’ll engage.”
“You’ve been saying that for a week,” Sumpt, the other owner, says.
“Dragons aren’t as keen about schedules as are the Shield’s compters,” Solet says. “We can encourage it, however.”
Solet signals for his lamp to flash the Pyg, the penteconter to starboard. A girl on Gamo’s stern deck wears a candlebox around her neck. She points it at the Pyg, opens it once long, once short, and once long. A moment later the Pyg begins the dragon march, a rhythm the beasts like best. Ideally, the dragon will be drawn to the Pyg then Gamo and the monoreme Kolos, positioned on the other side of the Pyg, will flank the dragon and pounce.
Solet’s wolf pack sits a mile off a broad fan of thick woods and hard leaf shrubs that fills the dusk with the scent of pine and oak. It spills toward the sea through a break in the black cliffs that line much of the ragged coast between Hanosh and Yness. Another mile behind them, glittering in the dusklight slipping over the cliffs, are a line of black basalt stacks, the ruins of an ancient cliff. Solet knows how they must feel. The owners are wearing him down too.
Solet taps his foot to the beat. Sumpt withdraws his bald, bulbous head into his rolling shoulders. “That sound,” he says. “How do you stand it?”
Solet points to a badge sewn onto his blouse beside his Shield badge. “You see this?” It depicts the rearing head of a black dragon, its jaw dropped. “All my men have them.”
“They should be fined for a uniform violation,” Mulcent says.
“They’d happily pay it,” Solet says. “When other crews are in port, they look for whores. When mine are in port, the whores look for them.”
“I’d happily pay a dragon to attack just so I didn’t have to listen to that sound again,” Sumpt says.
“We are paying,” Mulcent says. “Dearly. We can’t afford another empty hold.” He looks at the Pyg, and Solet can tell he’s tallying the cost of every man, line, and oar. Despite bagging two dragons already, Solet’s had a run of bad luck lately, so Mulcent has come aboard to protect their investment. Sumpt has also, but he’s more interested in the adventure.
“You will not only recoup your investment,” Solet says. “This dragon will be our most profitable yet.” They hold smoke as he steps to the table. “We aren’t going to kill this dragon. We’re going to capture it.”
Sumpt spits his smoke. “Why would we want to do that when there’s a ready market for render?”
Mulcent’s pale eyes thin. He says, “This is not our arrangement.”