Carson gingerly grabbed the thwart and pulled the boat so it righted itself. ‘What a way to die,’ he observed quietly.

As the boat rocked upright, Greft’s eyes slowly opened, seeming to fight an awful lethargy as he slowly turned his gaze on them. His face had puffed around his eyes, and he looked out at them from under a swollen brow.

Sedric stared in horror as Greft’s mouth moved. Words drawled out. ‘Stole em frm er rm.’ The hand at the end of the sausage arm moved in a slight flipping motion, as if it would gesture at something. ‘S’all… gon naw. Din’ mek no-awn rich.’

‘It’s all right, Greft. It’s all right.’ Sedric kept his eyes on Greft’s face.

‘Greft. You want some water?’ Carson had opened his water-skin. Spit had appeared alongside the two boats. Sedric didn’t know if the dragon was keeping watch for gallators or hoping to eat Greft’s body.

Greft seemed to consider Carson’s question for a long time. Then, ‘Yeah,’ he managed. Carson leaned across from one boat to the other, and directed a tiny stream of water towards Greft’s mouth. Greft sucked at the water; then as abruptly as a falling leaf, his head slumped slightly. His eyes didn’t close, but Carson abruptly stopped the flow of water, stoppered the skin and carefully restored it to its place in the boat. ‘He’s dead. The venom causes paralysis. Took a while to stop his whole body, but it did. Horrible way to die.’

‘Horrible,’ Sedric agreed faintly.

‘Well. Time to clean it up,’ Carson said grimly.

He lashed the two small boats together and poured water over the sides of both until he’d washed away as much of the gallator’s venomous slime as he could. Then he clambered over into Greft’s boat and straddling the body, matter-of-factly patted Greft’s pockets. He unbuckled the keeper’s belt and kept it and the sheathed knife on it. He hadn’t carried anything else that Carson considered worth keeping. ‘Help me with the body,’ the hunter said, and Sedric didn’t ask questions. He took the feet and Carson took the shoulders. They lifted Greft up. Sedric gritted his teeth as the small boat rocked beneath them. The gallators had fled Spit, he hoped, but he still didn’t want to fall in.

They didn’t even have to put Greft over the side. Spit reached over and took the body in his mouth, then turned and stalked off with him. For a moment, Sedric watched the dragon wade through the shallow water. Greft’s head and feet stuck out either side of the dragon’s mouth. Greft’s head bobbed with every step that Spit took, almost as if he were nodding farewell to them.

When he looked back, Carson was crouched in the bottom of Greft’s boat. Like their own, it had shipped some water and he was bailing it out. As items scattered in the bottom of the boat emerged, he picked them up and set them on the seat to drain. There was a broken fishing spear. Carson looked at the snapped shaft and shook his head ruefully. ‘The head’s probably in a gallator on the bottom by now’

There wasn’t much to tidy. Greft had been a precise fellow.

The same organization and stowing habits that had saved his gear during the wave had preserved it now. Carson opened his canvas pack, glanced inside and said, ‘The ship’s bread is there, and mostly dry.’

In the bottom of the boat was a sturdy cloth sack, drenched. When Carson picked it up, the chink of glass sounded inside it. ‘What on earth?’ Carson muttered, and untied the drawstring. Sedric’s heart sank. Greft’s last words had been clear to him. I stole it from your room. It’s gone now. Didn’t make anyone rich. He’d known immediately what the keeper was talking about. He hadn’t looked at his dragon parts in days, hadn’t wanted to gaze on the vials of blood or the scales he’d taken. He had hoped that Greft’s last words had meant he’d thrown them over the side or otherwise lost them. But as Carson pulled the glass ink bottles and the specimen pots out of the sack and set them in a row on the seat, Sedric saw what Greft had meant. They were empty. The bottle that had held the blood had a swirl of scarlet left in the bottom. When Carson tipped it, it was still liquid. The colour in it still swirled, scarlet on red. ‘What was this about?’ Carson asked no one.

Sedric sat very still. If Carson was aware of how he crouched like a rabbit hoping a hawk would not see him, he gave no sign of it. Sedric looked at the emptied bottles. He was the last one to know what they meant. If he never spoke, then Carson need never know what kind of man he had been and the sort of deceptions he’d practised. No one need know the full count of how he had deceived those who had trusted him. Deceived those who loved him.

But if he never spoke, then he’d continue being that man. He’d continue deceiving those who trusted and loved him. Including Carson.

His voice sounded rusty when he spoke. ‘Those were mine, Carson. Greft took them from my room.’ He cleared his throat, tried to speak, couldn’t, and croaked the words out anyway. ‘They had dragon parts in them. Bits of flesh cut from a dirty wound that Thymara was bandaging. A few scales. And that one held blood.’ He was choking again, his throat closing with shame. He didn’t look at Carson’s face. ‘That was my plan when I came on this trip with Alise. I was going to stay just long enough to get dragon parts to sell, and then I was going back to Bingtown. I was going to sell it all to the Duke of Chalced. And then I was going to be rich and I was going to run off with Hest, so we could live as we pleased.’

When the words were out, he sat still, staring at the little flasks. He felt as if he had vomited up something foul and it lay, stinking and steaming, between them. He saw Carson’s hand touch one of the glass containers and then draw back from it. His voice was always deep. Sometimes, when he was holding Sedric in his arms and he spoke to him, Sedric felt the words vibrate in him, chest to chest, as much as he heard them. But now his voice was the deepest Sedric had ever heard it, and confusion weighted it.

‘I don’t understand Isn’t that what you accused Leftrin of doing? Of using Alise so he could harvest dragon parts? And Jess oh.’ For two quiet breaths, Carson thought it through. ‘I see, now. That’s why Jess assumed that you’d help him kill Relpda, isn’t it? He knew. He thought that you and he could collect parts from her, and then take the boat and head back to Trehaug. Or Chalced. Had you been working together then?’

‘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 afterwards, 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.’