Eleven

Whatever the merits of hard work, there was more than enough to go around.

They dragged the barrels and crates of supplies up the shore and stacked them against the cliffs. The night guards had specific instructions to keep an eye on them against the predations of either animals or gluttons. They’d about a fortnight’s worth left of beef, bread, and turnips. Dried peas and cheese had taken more of a blow. Toinette estimated a few days there, carefully rationed. Yet the men had already caught a fish or two, and John thought he’d seen mussels off the shore. Rations were not their only option.

As usual, water was going to be the problem.

Their supplies, mixed with wine, would last roughly a month—but it would take a month to get back, perhaps longer. To aid in conservation, the ruined sailcloth that hadn’t become shrouds, as well as the fabric of the dead men’s sleeping pallets, became rain collectors: pierced and tied to sticks, they formed small basins around the camp.

After clearing out the Hawk, helping place wood and stones, wrestling with stakes and ropes, and digging out a pit for the fire, all on short rations, Toinette was at least able to push her awareness of Erik to the back of her mind. She slept by the fire at night with the dreamlessness of exhaustion and later a sense of satisfaction with work that progressed well.

Rain would have found them in good shape after the first day. Driftwood and rocks had let them form a cozy sort of artificial cave against the cliffs, with enough space and air in it for a fire pit. Toinette and Erik had gotten the hide sacks off the Hawk, so there was bedding, although the dry sand was pleasant enough for most.

Rain would have been fine—if it happened. Toinette knew from long experience not to expect it; counting on the weather was only slightly more foolish than counting on men.

The trees on the island were tall and thick above the cliffs. She very much doubted that they depended entirely on rain.

“I’ll wager there’s a spring up there,” she said to Marcus on the morning of the third day, “and I say we should go and find it, or at any rate the stream it births. We’ll need to get wood for the repairs, and half a damned tree for a new mast, and I’d not mind fresh meat for dinner. Squirrel or rabbit would do.”

“Well,” said Marcus, “at any rate it’s not likely you’ll be dinner. Take a few of the men. I didn’t see you sprouting extra eyes in your other shape, and you might need hands.”

Since the first few revelations, he seemed to have taken Toinette’s dragon form as he did any other piece of news: factoring it into calculations of risk and reward, mentioning it as he might have done a wounded shoulder or a good following wind. Toinette had no idea what his actual feelings might be. She would have felt like a gawky stripling asking, and so she was simply glad for the practicality.

“Best leave m’lord here with us,” he added. “Should aught go amiss, you’ll want reserves, or we protection.”

It was a wise suggestion. Nothing about Marcus’s expression, nor his tone, suggested any more than that. Still Toinette wondered. The two of them had been friends for many years.

The only real response either way was not to ask, to believe that he’d had nothing behind his words but what lay on the surface. Even with friends, Toinette had learned, it didn’t do to look too deeply.

“Right,” she said. “We’ll sort the men accordingly too.” If she could pretend that Erik was another of them, or just one more asset to be used where he’d do the most good, it would relieve her mind immensely—not to mention taking the strain off other parts.

* * *

Toinette took Raoul, Sence, and John up the cliff with her. Going with the new men was less strained than it might have been. She had far less of their previous behavior to look back on, and so far fewer changes, or possible changes, to raise questions in her mind.

They trooped up the steep path from the beach, walking two by two. None of them spoke. All kept their eyes open and their hands on their swords. Just before the outing, Toinette had taken her belt dagger and slashed the skirt of her blue gown up to her knees. If any of the men took it amiss, they hadn’t let her know by word or act—and most of the old hands had seen women in far less regardless. Her lower legs felt terribly exposed, but she’d be damned if she’d spend the whole journey tripping and getting caught on brambles out of modesty that was frankly laughable on her at any rate.

She’d also taken Gervase’s sword before they’d buried him. Again, it had been only practical—but it felt worse than the short skirt did.

The trail was white and rocky at the start. As they climbed farther up, they began having to push their way past brambles and duck under low-hanging branches. The plants pressed in on either side. They were a darker green than those Toinette had seen in Italy and elsewhere, more like those that had lined the Scottish hillside. She even made out the pale-pink flowers of herb Robert springing from the mass of green, along with darker pink blossoms she’d never seen before.

Shortly after they reached the top of the cliff, Raoul grunted in recognition and held up his hand. The party paused for him to bend and pull up a broad-leafed plant, wincing as he did so, and sniff at it. “Nettles, Captain,” he said. “We can eat them, if we boil them first—or even if we don’t, if we’re desperate enough.”

“I’ll feel a bit like a goat,” said John.

“You should always,” Sence told him, half in jest.

“If it wasn’t for sailing home,” Toinette put in, “I’d trade any of the lot of you for a good nanny in milk right now. But I’m glad to know of the nettles, Raoul. We’ll come back and get more later, when we’ve gloves and bags. Meantime, keep an eye out for anything else we can eat, all of you.”

“How much do you think we’ll need?” John asked. “That is, how long d’ye think we’ll be here?”

“No longer than we can help it, but I’ve no notion how long that’ll be.” She saw their faces as she spoke and half wished she could have brought herself to lie to them. “And we’ll have a journey ahead of us when we do go. Best have the stores as full as we can, no?”

With those more or less encouraging words, the best Toinette could do, they went on. An occasional rustling in the undergrowth suggested small animals or birds, but none broke from cover. Toinette tried not to think of roast partridge.

“We can get the bows from the ship and come back,” Sence said after the second time.

“Or set traps,” said Raoul.

“Both, likely,” said Toinette, “and if there are birds, we can find their nests.”

John chuckled. “I did that plenty as a boy. Was always running off from chores for it too, and getting my hide tanned as often as not. And now look at me.”

“Wouldn’t your tutor be surprised?” Raoul said.

“Old Father Henry? Oh, he always knew I’d come to no good.”

“We haven’t yet,” said Sence.

“Indeed,” said Toinette. “Think of the stories we can tell when we return.” She stopped and looked around, searching for the glint of light on water. Nothing met her eye, but she was hopeful. “The place couldn’t get this green on rain alone,” she said, half to herself. “We can dig a well, if we truly must.”

“Can you dowse?” Sence asked.

Toinette shook her head. If the magic for finding water did exist, it was a peasant’s art, like healing stock or taking off warts. Artair’s instruction to his kin, even his ward, had concerned loftier matters—or martial ones. It seemed rather a pity now.

“We’ll trust to Providence,” she said. “If we must.”

* * *

“If you can fly,” asked Samuel, sharpening a slim driftwood stake, “why did you bother with a ship in the first place?”

“Even birds need to land.” Erik leaned back on his elbows and looked out to sea. The day was cloudless and the horizon a misty band of pale blue above the darker waves. He couldn’t see a trace of land anywhere. “We’re not albatrosses, not even close. It takes strength to get us aloft and keep us there. More than most birds, I’d reckon, though I doubt any man’s made a study of it.”

“Ah.” The other man’s brown eyes lit with curiosity. Here, Erik thought, was one who might have been a scholar had his birth allowed as much. “What’s the furthest you can fly?”

“That’d depend on the winds,” Erik said.

After the first bustle of activity, the remaining camp had settled into near idleness in Toinette’s absence. Marcus and Franz fished, though Erik suspected that they might be drowsing in the process. He and Samuel were keeping watch, whittling spears for fishing and cooking, and talking. The men spoke to him more easily now. For all the revelation of his nature, the wreck had stripped away a few of the boundaries rank and payment implied.

Turning the stake in his own hand and scraping the wood with the knife, he thought it over. “I spent a whole day aloft once. I was young, and one of my cousins had dared me to do it. Could barely move for the next week.” He chuckled with the memory. “My uncle gave me no sympathy at all. The chambermaids, on the other hand…”

He and Samuel laughed together. “I tried to ride my father’s best stallion once,” said the other man, teeth flashing white in his dark face, “by way of impressing the goldsmith’s daughter. I was lucky to get away with only bruises. Dad said, if Leviathan had left me able to sit down that night, he wouldn’t have—which was more than a bit embarrassing at sixteen.”

“Your father owned many horses?”

“Sold them. My older brother does now—or last I was in port long enough to see him. I was trained in that too, but—” He shrugged.

“Never liked the beasts overmuch?” Erik asked.

Samuel nodded. “Too temperamental. Too messy. Fine mounts for noblemen, of course,” he added hastily.

Erik laughed. “You needn’t fear to give offense. We’re not much for riding when we can avoid it. Few horses can abide us calmly.”

“Ah,” Samuel said, and scraped away a bit more at the stake. “Stands to reason, that does. They’re damned panicky beasts at the best of times. Now, going to trade them was likely what gave me the taste for the road—it just took a different form. I remember my first sight of the ocean. Went on forever, it did, and could take me anywhere.”

“Not quite mild-mannered itself,” Erik pointed out, gesturing around them.

“No. But it smells better.”

“Were you always with Toinette?”

“Nay, I ran away—more than fifteen years gone now.” Samuel scratched his head with the slow gesture and the startled look of a man finding that time tallied up faster than he’d expected. It was an expression long familiar to Erik, on mortal and dragon-blooded face alike. None of them could ever keep up. “I’ve been five with the Captain. I’ll say, I knew she was an odd sort of a woman, but I never thought anything like—” He waved his hands, heedless of knife and spear alike, in an inarticulate gesture.

“Hard to think of it,” said Erik, “until you know it’s possible. That’s probably true of a good many things.”

“Mmm. Do you know each other? Even when you don’t know each other, that is?”

“Not mostly, I’d think,” said Erik. “There are signs: often we’ve odd-colored eyes even as men, and fire won’t burn us, and we live a long time. But you’d have to wait around a long while for the last, plenty of mortals have strange eyes, and you can’t go around shoving people’s hands into the hearth on suspicion. And then, we’re not the only uncanny creatures in the world.”

Samuel cast his eyes down to the rosary looped through his belt. “Are there demons?” he asked.

“Oh, aye,” said Erik. “I’ve never seen one, but a few of my cousins have fought them. Nasty things, from the stories they told me. Not so likely to trouble most folk, though, save those that anger a wizard of great power and no morals. Generally they’ve got to be called up.”

That news looked to calm Samuel a trifle. Erik wished he could have been more certain; he’d only a few stories to go on. It was true that most men went their whole lives without seeing more demons than came out of a wineskin, but that was in the known world, with the Church and magic like Artair’s to hold the fabric of it together.

Erik suddenly became aware of how much water surrounded the island, and how few people were alive on it. For Samuel’s sake, he repressed the urge to shudder, or to cross himself.