While the captains were seeing our Dornel guests off the ship, Laurel and I went to the hold to check on the death staff and now dragon skin. I stared at them, once again feeling the hairs rise on my body at our private chamber of horrors.
“When you started your journey, honored Laurel, did you foresee this?”
Laurel shook his head. “Not this, Lord Rabbit. Never this.” He raised his paws to renew the wards.
I waited until he was done. “What did you foresee, then?”
Laurel’s eyes slid sidelong to me and if I had hackles, they would have risen. The thought suddenly came to me of how the Border took Iversterre by the throat and savaged it hard the last time it had transgressed. Now they couldn’t find a ragtag bunch of runners who were murdering its People? I took a step away from the mountain cat.
Laurel rumbled, his ears lying against his skull as his eyes slit. Then he stopped. “The dragon’s curse,” he said, looking at the skin again. “Dissension, division, distrust.” He sighed. “Even through the wards.” He picked up his staff and began tracing once more. I watched for a moment, then reached out and stopped him.
“Also ward between the staff and the skin,” I said. Laurel stared at me and I shrugged. “Can’t you feel how they feed off each other?”
“I see,” Laurel said slowly. He raised the staff again.
“No, not there.” I took his arm and pulled him to a different spot. “Here.” I stood next to him, keeping my hand on his arm. I grunted in satisfaction as the wards blazed. I allowed my shoulders to relax and my hand to fall away from Laurel’s arm. “That’s better.”
“Yes,” said Laurel, staring at me once more.
We also checked on the cask with the holy bells, but its wards didn’t need renewing, so we extinguished the lanterns and left.
“So, honored Laurel,” I said, climbing the hold steps behind him. “You didn’t tell me. What did you foresee?”
Laurel said nothing until we were on the deck. He walked over to the railing and waited for me to join him. It was a beautiful night, the stars brilliant and low, and the waxing moon bathing the water in sharp-edged reflections. I remembered my earlier adventure, though, and didn’t stand too close to the rail.
“I saw the fulfillment of the Council’s charge,” Laurel finally said.
Well, that was nice and vague, just like his dinner toast. “And what was that?”
Laurel’s eyes slid to me again, but this time I grinned. “Yes, I dare. I was brought up in the same damn place you were, honored Laurel.”
Laurel Faena chuffed; quietly at first; then his laughter overtook his whole body. “So you were, Lord Rabbit. So you were.” His laughter dwindled into the occasional snort. “As I said before, I was charged with peace.”
“How do you mean to do that?”
“At this point, I don’t know.”
Faena don’t lie, but I felt like Laurel just did a quick two-step with the truth. I sighed, frustrated, and repeated a question which he could only answer two ways. “And you had nothing to do with us getting lost.”
“I had nothing to do with you getting lost,” Laurel echoed, as he leaned against his staff. “It was a most powerful working, Lord Rabbit. I almost didn’t find you.”
I contemplated us still in the mountains—and once again wondered if it would’ve been a bad thing.
“Tell me, Lord Rabbit,” Laurel said after a moment, “why did you leave the Border?”
“I wanted to see the world.”
“Hmmm. Yes. The truth, if you please.”
I watched the play of moonlight against dark.
“Rabbit.”
Conjecture and knowing. I guessed Laurel hadn’t been quite truthful, but I knew that I hadn’t. “I was apprenticed to a mage. Decided it wasn’t for me.”
“Why?”
“Choice. Mine.” Rebellion against an old man with cold eyes looking me over like a horse he was minded to buy. Or a meal he was about to devour. Looking into the future and seeing it full of shadows. “Besides, I did want to see the world.”
“You didn’t get very far.”
I shrugged. “I’m still young.”
While we were talking, I could hear the crew’s and troopers’ voices as they conversed, joked, and called to each other. Now, out of that noise, I heard my name and I turned around. Lieutenant Groskin was headed our way.
“He even moves like my sire,” Laurel said.
I watched Groskin’s fluid strides and on the deck there was the shadow of a tail.
“What do you see, Lord Rabbit?”
“Nothing,” I lied.
“Come away from the railing, Rabbit,” Groskin said as he arrived. He didn’t wait for me to comply, but grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“Forgive us, honored lieutenant,” Laurel said with a small bow as he also moved further from the rail. “We weren’t thinking.”
“Too right you weren’t thinking.” Groskin glared at both of us and I found myself hanging my head like a schoolboy caught out. “Captain Suiden wants to see you both.” He waited for us to start moving and fell in beside us. I guessed I was going to get my lecture after all. I hunched my shoulders.
Commander Ystan, Governor Somne and Doyen Orso came to see us off the next morning. I had spent the night in Lieutenant Groskin’s cabin, as Captain Suiden decided that he wanted me under his or the lieutenant’s eye at all times. That meant that Slevoic was shifted to Captain Javes’ cabin and Laurel had the choice of either Captain Suiden’s cabin or sleeping on the floor of ours. He chose our floor, muttering about the testiness of dragons in the morning. I slept well, despite the fact that I had to lie on my stomach and that both my bunkmates were prejudiced against fresh air, refusing to open the porthole. Groskin swatted my hand as I reached for it.
“Night air is injurious,” Groskin said. “Besides, the whole idea is to keep you secure, Rabbit.”
This time I muttered about there only being so much air in the cabin and having to share it with two big oafs, but Laurel only laughed and Groskin ignored me.
I now stood on the deck next to Lieutenant Groskin as Captains Javes and Suiden went through the leave-taking ceremony. I ignored the muted whistles and calls of “sweet cheeks” by the sailors as I watched Ystan hand Suiden a sealed pouch.
“For the Lord Commander,” he said, and Captain Suiden saluted and promised to deliver it personally.
“I’ve sent a letter to my good friend Archdoyen Obruesk,” Doyen Orso said to Lieutenant Groskin, “regarding your arrival in Iversly. Hopefully, you’ll be able to spend some time with him.”
“Yes, uncle,” Groskin said.
Finally, with one last bow, a salute, and Groskin surviving a crushing bear hug by Doyen Orso, we were rid of our guests and the ship’s captain gave the signal to set sail.
“Next stop, the Royal City,” Laurel said.
Chapter Twenty
The heat was alive, weighing us down as we lay boneless in any shade we could find, every breath full of water. Hot water. It ran off of us in rivulets and made everything limp and bedraggled. We even found mushrooms growing in dark places and Ryson mildewed once more. He washed his clothes and bedding, but nothing dried and so he had to launder them again and again (which was, overall, a good thing). By our last day on the Banson, we were perilously close to being out of soap.
We were in the city’s outskirts, the last of the farmland and country estates had fallen away some time ago, and the King’s Road, now running parallel to the river, was thick with the sky blue of dock warehouses, the occasional sprinkle of the gold of government and the purple tiles of army posts. Then we rounded the final bend and started the approach to the city proper and I caught a whiff of something that made me sneeze.