A guard in a lamplit guard box checks some papers. He shakes his head. The corporal says, “I’ll have to send for confirmation.”
“Has this city gone mad?” Sivarts says.
“Just doing our duty,” the corporal says. A glance sends a private walking toward Chelson’s house.
The crowd stares at the captain. Their faces are flashes of beard and bitter flesh in the lamplight. Their eyes are holes. Tiny shuffles and slow shifts press them closer to the captain, who puts an arm in front of the cabin boy and reaches for his sword.
Rowan says, “Why are you here?”
A woman in a worn tunic carefully repaired and soft leather pants that have been severely brushed says, “I will not pay for their war.” People shake their heads. “None of us will. Whatever Ayden did.”
“If they did anything,” a painter says.
“What did they do?” Rowan says. “Did they attack us?” He asked Sivarts for permission to go home, but the captain refused. Now he really wants to go. His father, as a sergeant in the army, would know what’s happening.
One of Chelson’s footmen approaches. “I’ll take them,” he says to the corporal.
The corporal opens the gate just wide enough to admit Sivarts and Rowan. Still, the woman in the tunic tries to slip in. The corporal gives her the back of his hand and sends her sprawling. Fish that had been hidden under her tunic spill onto the cobbles. The guards laugh, which makes the crowd grumble. This quiets the guards, and the sound of steel sliding from the guard’s scabbards quiets the crowd in turn. The painter helps the woman up.
Sivarts can’t imagine Chelson sleeping. His face is a shell, his eyes glassy and unblinking, black as a doll’s, his body, like his will, unbending. He seems particularly stiff when he meets them in a room off his courtyard. It’s lit by a brazier so tepid it sucks light from the air rather than casts it. The servants look as wan. Only the footman who fetched them has a spring in his step.
“This is Rowan,” Sivarts says, “the Hopper’s boy and its only survivor.”
At the name of the ship Chelson’s eyes clench. Sivarts figures he knows something of the story already. He proceeds as if it’s new, though.
“Three days ago,” he says, “he showed up at our agent’s in Yness with a woman and a remarkable tale.”
“Where is the woman?”
“The Castle,” Sivarts says. “She’s injured and uncooperative.”
“Who have you told this story to, boy?”
Rowan says, “The captain and the agent.”
“And the woman, who has she?”
“No one,” the boy says. “I brought her straight to the agent’s.”
“She’s barely told us anything,” Sivarts says. “She had no contact with anyone except Rowan, and he never left her side.”
“Summarize.”
“Four days before Rowan came to us and not long after the Hopper made the turn east, the galley was attacked and badly damaged by a small dragon—a dragon that was being ridden. It carried off the captain.”
“Where did the woman come from?”
Why would Chelson be more interested in a stranger’s history, Sivarts thinks, than his captain’s fate? “The Hopper followed the dragon and found an island in the ocean. Possibly Gladsend.”
“It doesn’t exist.”
“Or maybe not. The woman, Vel, was living there. She had a sword. She defended her land.”
“Admirable. Why was she there?”
“She wouldn’t say. Right after the galley landed, the rowers, led by one called Bearclaw, attacked the crew.”
“While chained?”
Rowan says, “Before he was taken Tuse made sure they would be freed so they wouldn’t burn alive.”
Chelson scowls. “Go on.”
“The battle took to the woods,” Sivarts says. “The woman took the crew’s side, apparently. She saved Rowan from Bearclaw, their last man standing, after he killed ours, a harpooner named Igen. She was badly injured, so he sailed her to Yness in the galley’s dinghy.”
“What about the dragon and its rider?”
“No sign was found of them. The cabin where the woman lived, though, had a second bed. It could have been his. She said it was a man’s. Said his name was Jon.”
“And Tuse?”
“No sign of him either. The woman said she didn’t know anything about him or a dragon, ridden or not.”
“Is all this true, boy?”
“Yes.”
“A boy sailed to Yness in a dinghy from an island in the ocean, and he kept a woman alive?”
“We had the wind,” Rowan says, “and supplies from the island. The woman kept herself alive. She knows medicine.”
“Probably how she stayed alive on the island,” Sivarts says. “She was horribly burned at some point.”
“Was the rider Aydeni?” Chelson asks.
“I couldn’t tell,” Rowan says. “He was flying very fast. He had a beard. But his skin looked as dark as ours.”
“But could he have been?”
“Possibly.”
Sivarts says, “The woman is Hanoshi. In fact, she’s wearing an old Shield captain’s blouse.”
Chelson has half a thought then pushes it aside. “Probably some ragpicker’s prize,” he says. “What matters is, you must be sure.”