“Sweet Sa, no! Never!” He looked at Carson’s face now and what he saw there clove his heart in two. Carson’s face was closed, his eyes unreadable. Waiting. Waiting to hear how he’d been deceived, how he’d been played for a fool. Wondering if even now Sedric had a plan. Sedric had to look down. “Jess knew what I’d done. He saw me come back to the ship one night, saw me throw my bloody clothes away. But I’d…I don’t know why. I’ll never know why. I drank some of Relpda’s blood that same night. You thought I’d been poisoned. I hadn’t, but the way it affected me, I might as well have been.”

He reached back to those days. They seemed distant now, unreal. “A couple of times, I woke up to find Jess in my room. I thought he’d come to check on me, the same way that you and Davvie did. But now I know that he was just there to search. He knew I had this stuff. That day, that day that I…I killed him, he’d shown me the red scale from Rapskal’s dragon. Alise had given it to me to draw for her journals. But afterward, she forgot about it, and I kept it. Jess knew about it and he found it. He said he hadn’t found the other stuff. But I think he’d talked to Greft, and Greft found what Jess couldn’t. I think that’s why Greft took the boat last night. Not to try to get back to Trehaug. Not even to try to take the stuff to Chalced and sell it. But to try to cure himself with it. To fix what was going wrong inside him.”

A long silence followed. When Carson spoke, his voice was slow and careful, as if he were slowly building something, one word at a time. “But it didn’t work for him. He drank the blood and ate the scales, but it didn’t cure him.”

“Maybe it only works when a dragon guides it,” Sedric suggested hesitantly. “Or maybe it would have cured him with time. Or maybe it did cure him, but the gallator venom killed him all the same.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” Carson said quietly.

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. Sorry I didn’t tell the whole truth to you from the beginning.”

“You didn’t know me,” Carson conceded. The words were forgiving, but the wall in his voice was still there.

“It’s more than that,” Sedric said stubbornly. “I was treating Alise exactly as I was accusing Leftrin. I was using her to get close to the dragons, so I could harvest what I wanted, for my own ends. But somehow, when I thought about it, they seemed like two different things. I thought I could use her that way and keep it from her, so she’d never be hurt by it. And in my mind, I thought Leftrin would do that to her and just not care.”

He glanced up at Carson. His face was still and closed. “I was stupid, Carson. You know that at first I couldn’t even hear the dragons. I thought they were like, well, like clever cows. Why shouldn’t I slaughter one and sell off the meat? We slaughter cows all the time. It was only after I had some of Relpda’s blood that I could begin to hear her. And to understand what she was, what they all were. If I’d known from the start, if I’d understood, I’d have abandoned the plan immediately.”

“Alise.”

“What about her?”

“Did you ever think what would become of her after you took Hest and ran away?” Carson spoke heavily. His hands, strong, calloused, competent, continued the work of tidying up the boat. He shipped the oars neatly, and restowed all of Greft’s gear. The little glass bottles remained in an accusing row on the seat.

“A little bit,” Sedric conceded. “Not much. I thought that perhaps we could make it look like we were lost at sea. Then she’d be Hest’s widow. Part of his money and estate would stay with her, enough for her to live comfortably.” He sighed and felt ashamed. “Once I even imagined that if she were pregnant when I left, it would be best of all for everyone. She’d have a child for company, to be an heir for the Finboks, and she’d control his inheritance for him until he came of age.”

Carson had finished every conceivable task in the other boat. He remained crouched in it. His dark eyes under his heavy brow wandered over their surroundings. They were hunter’s eyes, always seeking, always wary. There were still several gallators watching them, but the creatures were keeping their keenest watch on Spit. He had finished eating and was splashily cleaning himself as he watched the other gallators. Evidently not even two gallators and a human had filled his belly. The noises of the silver’s ablutions were the only sounds for a time.

Sedric found himself meeting Carson’s dark stare. The hunter spoke carefully. “I know you finally told Alise about you and Hest. Did you ever tell her this part? About coming here to butcher dragons and sell the meat to Chalced?”