He had been staring at the table, at the almost-empty bowl, the cheap earthenware mug, the unused spoon. Now he lifted his eyes to look at her. In the dimness, her face could have been a paper mask with holes cut for the eyes. She was full of stillness, he thought. But no. All the stillness was on the surface. Beneath that quiet, she seethed.

“I’m not going back.”

He stared at her, unable to make the connection between what he had said and what she had replied.

“I’m never going back to Bingtown,” she clarified. “I’m never going back to where anyone knows me, knows how I was deceived, how I was shamed. That was something Hest did to me, using me that way. But I won’t let him make that be who I am. I won’t be cut and sewn into something that suits him.”

“Alise—”

“He broke his vows to me. He voided our contract. I’m no longer bound to him, Sedric, and I’ve no reason to return to him. I’m staying here. On the Tarman with Leftrin. I know he’ll have me. I don’t care if he wants to marry me or not. I’m staying with him.”

“You can’t. You shouldn’t.” Now was not the time to be telling her this. He did not want to mix the two things together in her mind. But he couldn’t let her get up from the table and walk away without knowing. He couldn’t let her do something irrevocable, something that would allow yet another man to deceive her.

“Alise. You shouldn’t trust him.” His words stopped her. Her hand was on the door.

“I know that’s what you think, Sedric.” She didn’t even turn to look back at him. “I know you think he is uneducated and socially beneath me, crude and unmannered. And you know something? He is those things. But he loves me, and I love him, and I’ve discovered that that matters more than all the things you think are important.” She opened the door.

“Alise, he is deceiving you.”

For a moment she stood in the doorway. Then she closed the door again, softly. He could not see her face, but he could imagine how the insecurity would flicker through her eyes. A man had made a fool of her before. A man she had trusted as a friend had deceived her for years. Could she trust her own judgment? Was it happening again?

“I don’t enjoy telling you this.”

“Yes, you do,” she said harshly. “But say it anyway. How could he be deceiving me? How? Does he have a wife I don’t know about? Immense debts somewhere? Is he a murderer, a liar, a thief? What?”

He ground his teeth, wondering how he could tell her without revealing his part in Jess’s death. He wanted to keep that private. It was bad enough that both the dragon and Carson knew. He was surprised to realize that it was his dragon he was shielding as much as himself. He didn’t want the other keepers to know that she had killed and eaten a human. Just tell her about Leftrin. He wouldn’t say how he knew. “You must know that the Duke of Chalced is ill. He has made it plain that there will be rich rewards for anyone who brings him the dragon parts that he thinks will cure him. For that matter, any part of a dragon that ends up in any market will command a high price.”

“Of course I know that. How could I study dragons and be unaware of all the traditions about the medicinal values of dragon scale or blood or liver or tooth? I don’t doubt that some of that tradition is true. So?”

Out with it. “Leftrin is in league with people who intend to make the duke happy. He plans to gather or may already be collecting specimens from the dragons to sell in Chalced.”

“He wouldn’t.” A hitch in her words as she thought. She was asking herself if it was possible. “He has no time, no opportunity!” she objected. “Running the ship takes up every bit of his time.”

“He has been out around the dragons, helping get the rasp snakes off them, helping tar their injuries. He could do it, Alise. A scale or two here, some blood there. Waiting for the chance to plunder more from a dying or dead dragon. That would be the big payoff for this expedition. If a dragon dies or is injured, and he could collect parts from it, he could abandon the keepers and dragons and leave immediately for Chalced and rake in a rich reward.”

“This is insanity! I won’t, I can’t believe it.”

“It’s true.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Oh.” She put a world of disgust into that one word. “Innuendos and rumors. Well, Sedric, I’ll put an end to it. I’ll simply ask him.”

“You shouldn’t do that, Alise. I truly believe you don’t know him, don’t know what he is capable of doing. Jess, Jess the hunter, he told me things. There. Now you know. Jess told me that he was in partnership with Leftrin to get the dragon parts. He told me there was a plan to meet a Chalcedean ship at the mouth of the Rain Wild River as soon as they had what they needed. But they had a falling-out over it, and it came to fists.”