Eight

When Erik woke, the sky was dark again. This time the stars shone through it and a crescent moon hovered overhead. He followed familiar constellations with relief: rationality said they weren’t likely to have traveled beyond the skies he knew, but after the day he’d had, he still welcomed the reassurance of the Pleiades and Cassiopeia.

Following Toinette’s lead, as she knew her crew better than he did, Erik had lain down beside her and slept without changing form. After he came to full wakefulness, he stretched and allowed himself to slip back into a man’s shape. This time it went as quickly and painlessly as the change normally did.

A month on ship had ensured that magic recognized all his clothing as a part of him, and thus he was still dressed as a human. He was glad of it. Modesty aside, the night air was cool and damp, and the sand rockier than he’d have wanted to walk without boots.

He smelled smoke and turned to follow the odor. Several yards off, the sailors had built a fire between two of the largest rocks. They sat huddled around it, small fragile shapes against the empty night.

“Only six,” said Toinette’s voice from behind him.

Erik turned back toward her. She was human again as well, bright hair loosed from its moorings and straggling over her shoulders, rumpled red wool clinging to her figure. The gold sparks in her eyes might have been reflections of the firelight, and her face was expressionless.

“Yes,” said Erik after a quick count.

“You saw more than I did in the storm. Do you know who didn’t make it?”

“Gervase.” That image stood out in Erik’s mind. From experience, he knew it would stay there a while yet. “The mast.”

“He didn’t drown,” she said with a bitter and exhausted mirth. “You could argue that the earring was worth its price, couldn’t you? Who else?”

“Yakob fell badly when the ship tilted. Broke his neck. Emrich went overboard. I only heard that after, when it was too late.” Erik spoke bluntly, as he’d learned to do in war. He didn’t think Toinette would welcome either gentleness or hesitation.

She nodded, lips pressed together, and crossed herself. “It was a good thought,” she said eventually, “transforming. Might have saved the rest of us.”

“I’d no way of knowing it would work.”

“Comes a point when you’ve no way of knowing that about anything.” She made an attempt at gathering up the untidy mass of her hair, realized it was futile, and let it spill down her back again. “I should go speak to them. You can come too, or not, as you wish.”

“I’ll join you,” Erik said. “If you think it’ll help rather than hinder.”

“That point I mentioned?” She quirked her mouth up on one side in a half smile. “We’re still at it. Come on, then.”

* * *

Wet sand made for unsteady footing. Toinette grumbled, but only half-heartedly. Keeping her balance was a distraction. Looking down at her feet meant less time watching the faces that had turned toward her as she approached, looking from her to Erik.

She wasn’t sure whether or not she was glad to have him there. Allies were good. Witnesses, if the conversation went badly, were not, most particularly witnesses who’d seen her when she’d been fifteen, filthy, and desperate. If this ended with Erik feeling sorry for her, she thought she might fly off then and there, no matter that she had no notion of where she was going.

The waves washed steadily against the sand. The fire crackled, burning shades of blue and lavender: driftwood. Pretty as the flames were, they cast all the crew in an eerie, ghostly light. Perhaps that was good. Perhaps it would make them feel on more equal footing.

Toinette cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, hands clasped behind her back as if she were a girl again and facing her tutor. Reciting Latin would have been easier. “You saw.”

“That we did,” Marcus answered, his voice and eyes both expressionless. “You’re dragons.”

“We’re people,” said Toinette, “who turn into dragons. Sometimes.”

“How?” asked Sence.

In every pair of narrowed eyes lurked the shadow of a horned figure. “Blood.”

“Inheritance,” Erik said at her shoulder. “It goes back generations.” Toinette thought of the other meanings blood could have, and gave him a grateful look.

“We made no pacts,” she said, holding her open hands in front of her. “As best I know, my soul’s intact. I go to mass as often as any of you”—at that she heard a couple of the men, including Marcus, chuckle, and a few, including Raoul, look down at the ground—“and if you’d like me to recite Scripture, I could likely manage a few lines at least.”

“Here,” said Samuel, getting to his feet and holding out one closed hand. It took a moment for Toinette to make out the rosary dangling from it, jet beads glimmering in the witch light of the fire. “Hold this and say the Ave Maria. A creature of the devil couldn’t do that.”

Asking how many of Satan’s creatures he’d tried it on probably would not help at that juncture. Toinette closed her fist tightly around the silver cross. “Ave Maria, gratia plena…” she began.

It had been a long time since her last mass. The words came clumsily to her, but the prayer helped in more ways than one. By the end, Toinette felt the tight knot of her sorrow ease, and though their predicament weighed on her, the guilt no longer felt like a barbed hook in her insides. The lessened suspicion on the men’s faces was probably a good part of that relief too.

She opened her hand and turned it over, letting the men all see her palm. Transforming had healed her palm of the scrapes from her final desperate struggle with the wheel, and neither cross nor beads had left any mark.

The crew looked with the gravity of men buying horses or weighing accounts. Sence was the first to nod.

“Are you relations?” asked Franz. “If you’re both…if this is blood.”

“Lord, no!” said Erik, quickly enough that Toinette lifted her eyebrows, wondering if he feared contaminating the MacAlasdair name by association with her. “Or only distant ones if we are. More than third cousins, likely.”

“I don’t know who my father was,” Toinette added briskly. If the truth was to come out, it might as well all come out—or almost all. “What I heard of him doesn’t resemble any of Erik’s kin. So. Now we all know. And we’re all here.”

“That,” said Marcus with a sigh, “we are indeed.”

“Wherever that may be,” said John.

All of them turned to Erik, who hesitated and shrugged. “This might be the island I was seeking.” He looked up at the stars, frowning, then shook his head. “I believe it is the right place, but I can’t read the sky as well as you can. My map…was with the rest of my belongings,” he added, looking back over his shoulder at the bulk of the landed ship.

“We’ll salvage tomorrow. The light’ll be better then. No need to go in with torches and set it all on fire,” Marcus said.

Wordlessly, the men moved to open a place for Toinette and Erik. The gesture went further toward calming Toinette than speech ever would have, and Raoul helped by handing over a small tin box. “We did get out a little of the food.”

It was dried bread and salt beef, with a skin of warm wine going around for drink, but Toinette relished it. So did Erik, by his expression and the way he ate. Usually the size of prey they took in dragon form would have kept them full for a while, but occasionally snatched fish hadn’t been nearly enough fuel for the effort Toinette had put in that day. Her muscles were already making their objections known.

“It’s too dark to build any shelters,” Marcus said. “But we’ve all slept rough before, and it’s not likely to rain again.” Indeed, the sky above them was clear enough to count every star, and the wind blew warmly from the east.

“Any creatures out yonder?” Erik waved a hand to the dark bulk of the forest.

“None that we’ve seen or heard, save birds. It’s likely our fire will scare most beasts away. All the same, we’ll keep watch. There’s enough of us that no man will have to lose more than an hour or two of sleep,” Marcus replied.

“Nor do we have to be up at dawn,” Toinette put in. She stretched her feet out toward the fire, enjoying the heat on her damp boots. When dragon shape recognized her clothing as part of her, the garments stayed in the same condition from one human moment to the next: wonderful for avoiding further damage, but it did very little toward drying out wet clothes. “Well, I don’t mind taking the midnight shift, if it’s not claimed. I’m a few hours ahead of you men as it is.”

“Oh,” said Franz. “John’s taking that. We’ve given them all out.”

“Didn’t know when you’d wake up, did we? And anyhow, the two of you have exerted yourself far more than the rest of us did today. Best that you get a full night of it. We’ll work out more arrangements come the morning.” Marcus gave her a quick smile. He might have intended it to be reassuring, or apologetic, or both.

There were even odds of him being sincere about the reasons. Even if those weren’t all the reasons, the men had planned the watches before Toinette had given her explanation and proved that she wasn’t in league with Satan, at least so far as rosaries could determine. It was important to keep such things in mind, particularly when she was in a melancholy humor to begin with.

She made herself give her normal smile, breezy and matter-of-fact. “I’ll never say no to an extra night of sleep, Marcus. You know that.”

* * *

They let the fire burn. The man keeping watch would guard it too, and they needed a balance to the cold sand beneath them.

After the planning, the conversation turned desultory, with long pauses that grew longer. It was too late and everyone was too tired to talk of the men they’d lost or the uncertainty of their future, but anything else would have been hideously incongruous. A few at a time, the men lay down and sought the release of sleep.

In time, only Sence, Erik, and Toinette were left sitting at the fire, all three of them silent. Unfamiliar night birds called in the forest behind them. The stars were quiet overhead. Taken out of context, the scene might have been a very peaceful one.

“Have you enough wood?” Erik asked.

Sence jerked his chin at a pile off in the shadows. “We gathered it earlier. Should last until morning, or near enough.”

“Good,” Erik said. “Then I’m off as well. Wake me if there’s need.”

He lay down on the sand. Even with the sleep he’d gotten earlier and his less-than-comfortable bedding, fatigue soon stole over his body, weighing down bones and eyelids alike. Sleep itself didn’t come for a while, though: not until he heard Toinette’s voice muttering her own good night, and felt the disruption in the breeze as she stretched herself out on the land. She lay beside him, though several feet away, and he heard her slow, steady breathing.

If she was asleep, she’d been quick about it. If not, she feigned well. Either way, the sound sent Erik off too, pulling him down into slumber as into the sea itself.