“It won’t help,” it mocked him. “Destroy me, and Bolt will know why. But I tell you this. Take this woman against her will, and the whole ship will know why you wanted her. I will see to it. And I will see that Wintrow is the first to know.”

“Why? What do you want of me?” Kennit’s question was an infuriated whisper.

“I want Etta back on this ship. And Wintrow. For my own reasons. I warn you. Both Bolt and I would find rape extremely distasteful. Among dragons, it is not done.”

“A scrap of a charm, no bigger than a walnut, claims to be a dragon!”

“One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon. Take your hands off her.”

Kennit slowly complied. As he stood and took up his crutch, he observed, “I’m not afraid of you. As for Althea, I will have her. Of her own free will. You will see.” He breathed out a long, slow breath. “Ship, woman and boy. All will be mine.”

HOW HAD SHE KNOWN? PARAGON WONDERED MISERABLY. HOW HAD AMBER known just where to put her hands to reach each of them, both of them, all of him at once? Her bare fingers pressed his wood, and she was open to him now. If he had wanted, he could have reached into her and plumbed all of her secrets. But he did not wish to know any more of her than he already did. He only wanted her to give up and die peacefully. Why would not she do that for him? He had always been a friend to her. But she ignored him now, reaching past him to speak to the others that shared his wood. She spoke to him, but they listened, and their listening echoed through him, vibrating his soul.

“I need to live,” she begged. “Only you can help me. There is still so much I must do in my life. Please. If there is any bargain we can strike, tell me. Ask of me anything, and if it is in my power, it is yours. But help us live. Close up your seams, and stop the cold water flowing. Let me live.”

“Amber. Amber.” Against all wisdom, he spoke to her. “Please. Just let go. Be still. Be silent. We will die together.”

“Ship. Paragon. Why? Why do we have to die? What changed, why are you doing this? Why can’t we live?”

She would never understand. He knew it was foolish, but he tried anyway. “The memories have to die. If no one remembers them anymore, then he can live as if they never happened. So Kennit gave the memories to me, and I was to die with them. So that one of us could live free.”

They were listening still, both of them. The Greater spoke suddenly, his thoughts ringing through his half of the hull. “It doesn’t work that way. Silencing memories does not make them stop existing. Events cannot be undone by forgetting them.”

He felt Amber’s shock. Valiantly she tried to overcome it. She spoke to him as if she had not felt the Greater. “Why does Kennit do this to you? How can he? What is Kennit to you?”

“He is my family.” Paragon could not conceal his love for the pirate. “He is a Ludluck, like me. The last of his line, born in the Pirate Isles. A Bingtown Trader’s son took a Pirate Isles bride. Kennit was their child, his son, his prince. And my playmate. The one who finally loved me for myself.”

“You are not a Ludluck,” the Greater interrupted him. “We are dragons.”

“Yes, we are dragons, and we wish to live.” It was the Lesser, managing to insert a thought of his own.

“Silence!” the Greater one quashed him. Paragon’s list became more marked as the Greater asserted his control.

“Who are you?” Amber asked in confusion. “Paragon, why are there dragons in you?”

The Greater laughed. Paragon knew better than to try to reply.

“Please,” Amber begged of them now. “Please, help us live.”

“Do you deserve to live?” the Greater demanded of her. He spoke with Paragon’s mouth in Paragon’s voice, taking control of the figurehead and booming his voice into the wind. It did not matter to him that Amber heard his thought through her hands. He spoke as he did, Paragon knew, to prove to the ship how strong he had grown. “If you did, you would see it is right now within your power to save all of us. But if you are too stupid to see how, I think we should all die here together.”

“Tell her how,” pleaded the Lesser. “It is our time, come again, and you will let us die because a human is stupid? No! Tell her. Let her save us so we can go on and-“

“Silence, weakling! You have kept company with humans too long. The strong survive. Trapped as we are in this body, we are better off dead if the humans aboard us are stupid. So let her show us that she can make our life worth the living. If she can fathom how to live, we will let her give us eyes again. A Paragon we shall be, but not Paragon of the Ludlucks. Paragon of the Dragons. Two made into one.”