The footsteps returned and then grew louder. He sensed the hunter crouch down by him. ‘Here. Drink this. It’ll buck you up.’

He took the warm mug in his hands, smelling the dreadful coffee. He raised it to his lips and took a sip, and found the bite of harsh rum hidden in the coffee. He tried to keep from spitting it on himself, choked, swallowed it, and then coughed. He wheezed in a breath and then opened his watering eyes.

‘Is that better?’ the sadistic bastard asked him.

‘Better?’ Sedric demanded furiously, and heard his voice more strongly. He blinked away tears and could see Carson crouched on the deck in front of him. His ginger beard was lighter than his unruly mop of hair. His eyes were not brown, but that much rarer black. He was smiling at Sedric, his head cocked a little to one side. Like a cocker spaniel, Sedric thought viciously. He moved his boots against the deck, trying to get his feet under him.

‘Let’s walk you into the galley, shall we?’ He took the mug from Sedric’s hands, then with apparent ease, seized him by the upper arm and hauled him to his feet.

Sedric’s head felt wobbly on his neck. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

‘How should I know?’ the man asked him affably. ‘You drink too much last night? You might have bought bad liquor in Trehaug. And if you bought any liquor in Cassarick, then it’s almost definitely rotgut. They’ll ferment anything there, roots, peelings from fruit. Lean on me, don’t fight me now. I knew one fellow tried to ferment fish skins. Not even the whole fish, just the skins. He was convinced it would work. Here. Mind your head. Sit down at the galley table. Could be if you eat something, it’ll absorb whatever you drank and you’ll be able to pass it.’

Carson, he realized, stood a head taller than he did. And was a lot stronger. The hunter moved him along the deck and into the deckhouse and sat him down at the galley table as if he were a mother harrying a recalcitrant child to his place. The man’s voice was deep and rumbling, almost soothing if one overlooked his uncouth way of putting things. Sedric braced his elbows on the sticky galley table and lowered his face into his hands. The smells of grease, smoke and old food were making him feel worse.

Carson busied himself in the galley, putting something in a bowl and then pouring hot water from the kettle over it. He stood for a time, jabbing at it with a spoon before he brought it to the table. Sedric lifted his head, looked at the mess in the bowl and belched suddenly. The dark red taste of dragon blood rose up in his mouth and flooded his nose again. He thought again that he might faint.

‘You got to feel better after that,’ Carson observed approvingly. ‘Here. Eat some of this. It will settle your gut.’

‘What is it?’

‘Hardtack softened with hot water. Works like a sponge in the gut, if you got a man with a sour belly or one you got to sober up fast for a day’s work.’

‘It looks disgusting.’

‘Yes, it does. Eat it.’

He hadn’t had any food, and the aftertaste of the dragon blood still lingered in his mouth and nose. Anything, he reasoned, had to be better than that. He took up the wide spoon and stirred the muck.

The hunter’s boy Davvie entered the deckhouse. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded. There was a note of urgency in his voice that puzzled Sedric. He put a spoonful of soggy hardtack in his mouth. It was all texture and no taste.

‘Nothing you need to worry about, Davvie.’ Carson was firm with the boy. ‘And you have work to do. Get after mending those nets. I’m betting we won’t be moving from here for most of the day. We set a net out in the current, we may get a haul of fish, maybe two. But only if the net is mended. So get to it.’

‘What about him, what’s the matter with him?’ The boy’s voice sounded almost accusing.

‘He’s sick, not that it’s any of your business. You get about your work and leave your elders and your betters to their own. Out.’

Davvie didn’t quite slam the door but shut it more firmly than he needed to. ‘Boys!’ Carson exclaimed in disgust. ‘They think they know what they want, but if I gave it to him—well, he’d find out that he just wasn’t ready for it. But I’m sure you know what I mean.’

Sedric swallowed the sticky mass in his mouth. It had absorbed the dragon blood taste. He ate another spoonful, and then realized that Carson was looking at him, waiting for a response. ‘I don’t have any children. I’m not married,’ he said, and took another spoonful. Carson had been right. His stomach was settling and his head was clearing.

‘I didn’t think you did.’ Carson smiled as if at a shared joke. ‘I don’t either. But you looked to me like someone who would have had some experience of boys like Davvie.’

‘No. I haven’t.’ He was grateful for the man’s rustic remedy, but he wished he’d stop talking to him and go away. His own whirling thoughts filled his head and he felt he needed time to sort them rather than filling his brain with polite conversation. Carson’s words about poison had unsettled him. Whatever had he been thinking, to put dragon’s blood in his mouth? He couldn’t remember the impulse to do so, only that he’d done it. His only intention had been to take blood and scales from the beast. Dragon parts were worth a fortune, and a fortune was what he was after. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done, but he’d had to do it. He had no choice. The only way that he and Hest would ever leave Bingtown together would be if Sedric could amass the wealth to finance it. Dragon blood and dragon scales would buy him the life he’d always dreamed of.

It had seemed so simple, when he’d crept away from the boat to harvest what he needed from the sickly dragon. The creature was obviously dying. What would it matter to anyone if Sedric took a few scales? The glass vials had weighed heavy in his hands as he filled them with blood. He’d meant to sell it to the Duke of Chalced as a remedy for his aches and pains and advancing age. He’d never even considered drinking it himself. He could not even remember wanting to drink it, let alone deciding that he would.

Dragon blood was reputed to have extraordinary healing powers, but perhaps like other medicines, it could be toxic too. Had he truly poisoned himself? Was he going to be all right? He wished he could ask someone; it came to him abruptly that Alise might know. She’d done so much research on dragons, surely she must know something about the effects their blood could have on a man. But how could he ask such a question? Was there any way to frame it that didn’t incriminate him?

‘That pudding helping your stomach at all?’

Sedric looked up suddenly, and regretted it. Vertigo rocked him briefly and then cleared. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ The hunter sat down across from him and kept looking at him. Those black eyes locked with his own, as if they wished to see inside Sedric’s head. He looked down at his bowl and forced himself to take another mouthful of the stuff. It was helping his stomach, but he didn’t enjoy the experience of eating it. He glanced up again at the watchful hunter. ‘Thank you for your help. I don’t mean to keep you from your duties. I’m sure I’ll be fine now. As you say, it was probably something I drank or ate. So you needn’t bother about me.’

‘It’s no bother.’

Again the man waited, as if there was something he expected Sedric to say. He was at a loss. He looked down at his ‘food’ again. ‘I’m fine, then. Thank you.’

And still the man lingered, but now Sedric refused to look up from his bowl. He ate steadily in small bites, trying to seem as if it demanded all his attention. The hunter’s attention flustered him. When he rose from his seat across the table, Sedric repressed a sigh of relief. As Carson passed behind Sedric, he put a heavy hand on his shoulder and leaned down to speak right next to his ear. ‘We should talk some time,’ he said quietly. ‘I suspect we have far more in common than you know. Perhaps we should trust one another.’