Then the mast went up in a blaze of lightning. Even with her back turned, Toinette saw the strike: it filled the world. A shriek followed, human but inhuman, as men sounded in the final extremes of agony. She couldn’t turn to see who it was, nor shut her eyes in sympathy, for the ship, unbalanced, rolled in that moment and only the full extent of her strength kept it from overturning completely.
A hand grasped her shoulder. She snarled.
“Change.” Erik stood behind her. Of course it was Erik. Anyone else would have known not to approach her. She was doing the only thing she could do, for whatever difference that made. “We need to change.”
Words flooded back, borne on anger like a tide. “I’m not a rat, damn you, whatever else I am. I’ll not leave my crew!”
“No!” he shouted back, straining to be heard over the storm. “One on each side—keep the ship upright!”
Toinette’s first instinct was to say that he knew nothing of ships or the sea—but she did. And his notion might work.
Moreover, nothing else likely would.
“Get Marcus,” she said.
In an eyeblink, her second-in-command was there, blood sheeting down his head but upright and otherwise unharmed. “Take the wheel. Try to keep the men calm. We won’t hurt you. I’m sorry.”
“What?”
There was no time for explanation, but old habits were strong in Marcus. He grabbed the wheel as Toinette left it, and didn’t let go of it to catch her as she ran to the rail. He shouted as she leapt.
She didn’t hear the sound he made when she transformed.
Seven
Pounding waves grasped Erik and pulled him down. The water was dark, cold, briny where it seeped into his closed mouth, and heavy. He’d never thought of water as heavy before. It weighed on him like lead.
Water slowed the shift too. His muscles twisted, expanding around bones that grew and changed. Claws slid from his hands and feet. His neck rippled outward, vertebrae multiplying; spines sprouted from the back of it. Erik felt it all, as he hadn’t done since years before he’d come to manhood. His lungs burned through it, lack of air blurring his vision, until his wings sprouted and let him thrash his way back to the surface.
There he gasped the storm-ravaged air. Above him, on the tilting deck of the Hawk, the sailors were crying out in panic. Erik hoped that Marcus could calm them. For a mercy, none of them had tried to attack him yet.
He swam awkwardly sideways toward the ship, learning to move with the waves as best he could. Filling his lungs in case he sank further than he intended, he let his body fall downward, then rise, taking the weight of the Hawk along his right side.
In dragon form, Erik was far stronger than he was as a man. He’d lifted cows into the air with no more effort than a man might use to heft a brace of rabbits after a day’s hunt. The Hawk was still a vast weight. He made no attempt to lift it out of the water, only to keep it upright in the waves, yet for a few moments the mass of it was almost overpowering, certainly more than he could hold for any time.
Then the weight balanced onto the other side. The ship righted itself. At the edge of his vision, just ahead of the prow, Erik saw the great dark shape of Toinette’s head, long horns curving back like stylized lightning bolts themselves. Her eyes met his, fully golden in the darkness. They couldn’t speak in this form, but Toinette gave a faint nod, Erik nodded back, and both knew the words that would go with the gesture: I can do this for a while.
With Toinette to aid him, he could. His muscles had carried his whole weight up into the air more times than he could count. Now the water would support him, turbulent as it was, and the Hawk through him. They had only to balance themselves, balance the ship, and wait.
The storm kept up its assault for a long time. Waves slapped Erik in the face, even though he held his head up high. Lightning pierced the water around them and sent sharp tingling sensations crawling across his skin. The itching was the worst of that, making it devilishly hard to keep still.
Occasionally he turned his head toward the Hawk and saw the sailors at the rails. Most were still running back and forth with bailing buckets. Good thing: the less water the ship took on board, the less difficulty he and Toinette would have carrying it.
Most of them stopped a moment when they poured the buckets overboard, staring down at Erik with eyes so wide that he could practically see the whites at his distance. In a brief break in the storm’s noises, he heard Marcus call one of the men to stop gawping and be about his duties, or by God he would get a reason to move faster.
All around them, the green fire lit the ship’s deck. The air smelled of salt, lightning, and a trace of blood.
Erik began to think that the storm would never end. Common sense said that it had to, that all storms did. Anywhere else, that would have been more of a comfort. As best Erik knew, the only men to sail to that part of the world had been the Templars, years ago, and no man knew what had become of them. Such an alien sea could very well host an eternal tempest.
With his quest, he might well have doomed them all.
* * *
Dragon shape was lonely.
Toinette hadn’t mentioned that to Erik when she’d spoken of her preference for a ship, but that was another truth: she could speak to nobody in that form, not even other dragons. The oldest had been able to talk mind-to-mind, or so Artair’s stories had said, but she was descended too far for that. All the words that tied her to others were gone while she was in dragon form.
In the sky, after a long time in much company, that was sometimes restful for a little while, but too much time with her own thoughts and Toinette grew ill-humored under even the most cheerful circumstances. In the storm-tossed ocean, with her crew staring at her in horror, an hour might have driven her to screaming if not for Erik’s presence on the other side of the Hawk.
He couldn’t speak either. Still, he met her eyes from time to time, his shining almost the same blue-green as the lightning-struck water. More than that, he was present and there, another member of her bloodline. It helped more than she’d ever thought such a thing would, and certainly more than she’d ever admit to him.
They went onward, floating and paddling to stay in place, as the storm shrieked itself out around them. It drowned the voices of the crew, but Toinette didn’t mind that. She very much doubted that she wanted to hear anything they were saying just then. She could imagine quite enough.
No matter: if they and she both lived, then they could sort out the rest one way or another. Toinette only prayed that the storm would end soon, that lightning wouldn’t hit her or Erik directly—that might kill even one of them—and most of all, that the clouds wouldn’t spawn a waterspout. She’d seen one of those once, from a blessedly great distance. For a crippled ship, it would probably be doom.
When the thunder began to grow softer and the lightning less frequent, Toinette feared it was an illusion. Wishful thinking was a flaw she knew well. She watched, not daring to hope too highly, as the waves gradually settled. Lightning became flickers in the clouds once again, fading, then gone. The clouds themselves broke up slowly.
Toinette craned her head back to look at the Hawk. The shattered remnants of the mast stabbed into the clearing sky. The rail was broken in several places. God knew what damage the waves and wind had done to the wood. The storm was ending, but it had left them in a bad state indeed.
* * *
In time Toinette and Erik both shifted to the side, letting the water take the Hawk’s weight once more. Neither moved to change back. Toinette could guess at Erik’s reasons. Most resembled her own: it was best to be on hand in case damage became worse with time and the ship started taking on water; transformation took strength that neither of them had; and the crew, who would have to get them back aboard, were all occupied. She couldn’t have said whether he had her reluctance to face the men, nor whether it would be easier or
harder for him, not having known them as well beforehand.
For a while they floated. The men pulled up the anchor, slow and clanking. The ship drifted forward, but without wind, the tide moved it very slowly. It took only the occasional flex of muscle for Toinette to keep up. The water was cool around her, supporting and sustaining as it had been treacherous not an hour before. She ducked her head as a school of swordfish swam near, bit the pointed bill off one, and swallowed the rest of it whole. Blood and flesh began to take the edge off her weariness almost at once.
She knew that she should go back aboard. The men would want an explanation. They’d need a captain. Erik couldn’t supply the second, nor was the first his duty. She, Toinette, had taken these men into her employ, and she would meet their accusations with as much courage as she could manage. She had to.
Sighing, she turned her head upward to look at the deck again. Marcus had just come to the rail. That was well: of all the men, he was probably the most likely to bother pulling her up when she turned back to a woman.
“Captain!” he called, cupping his hands to make his voice louder. Just before changing, Toinette halted in place. “Captain, we think there’s land ahead!”
In her exhaustion, she hadn’t even thought to look.
Toinette whipped her head around—the motion of her neck sent water splashing upward in a small fountain—and peered out past the horizon. Her third eyelid slid down, focusing her vision and screening out the worst of the sun’s glare.
Yes, there was a dark smudge on the horizon, too low and stable to be a cloud bank. Even she could make out nothing more definite at their distance, but she nodded her head rapidly—enough of a sign for Marcus, judging from the short cheer above her.
Erik seemed to have understood as well, for he caught her eye from across the ship’s prow and nodded, jerking his head toward the shape. Toinette waved a wing slowly across the water, eliciting another nod: they’d float for a while, regaining their strength and letting the current move them.
When the tide did shift, she and Erik came closer to the ship. They didn’t take the full weight of it again, but they pushed it toward the land, making up as much as they could for the lack of sail. Such interludes were thankfully short. The sea itself seemed to be with them, for which Toinette sent up a prayer or seven of thanksgiving.
The dark shape in the distance became an island perhaps ten miles long. Cliffs took shape, and the twisted forms of wind-stunted evergreen trees atop them. As the Hawk drew closer yet, Toinette could see the long, tan line of the beach.
Plenty of rocks studded the sand. They were large enough for her to spot even at a distance, which meant there were likely to be more in the water as they approached. At the speed the Hawk was going, even running aground was likely to leave all the men standing; still, Toinette wanted to keep the ship as whole as she could. Hope spawned hope, and she had begun to think of repairs.
Such thoughts kept her going. All else was beginning to fail. Even a dragon’s strength ended, and food could only do so much. Her outstretched wings ached. The side where she pushed the Hawk was alternately numb and burning. Her vision blurred every few minutes, and she had to blink it back to clarity again.
Just a little longer.
Toinette lost herself in purpose and sense. The smell of blood still mingled with salt, but she didn’t wonder whose, or how badly injured they might be. The water was cold. The wind was colder, and the glare of the setting sun brought no warmth with its red light. Birds, returned after the departing storm, called far overhead.
She spotted the first of the rocks and leaned her weight into the ship, pushing it sideways. Erik caught on quickly and helped her. They seemed to move like people in a dream, slow and drifting, with no feeling that they’d actually get anywhere.
Truly, it was a surprise when the Hawk came to rest on sand. Toinette couldn’t stretch her mind around it for a little while.
The ship had stopped moving.
She let go of its weight, sighing in relief, and swam forward. A few strokes brought her far enough toward land that her claws touched the ocean’s bottom. A few more steps and she was on the beach itself, the sand moist beneath her feet.
They’d done it. They were out of danger. Toinette pushed herself a few more steps, until she was far enough up the beach to escape the incoming tide. Then she collapsed, stretched full-length on the sand.
Later, she would explain things to her crew. If they wanted to slit her throat in the meantime, that would be too bad, but right then she couldn’t make herself care enough to stay awake.
Eight
When Erik woke, the sky was dark again. This time the stars shone through it and a crescent moon hovered overhead. He followed familiar constellations with relief: rationality said they weren’t likely to have traveled beyond the skies he knew, but after the day he’d had, he still welcomed the reassurance of the Pleiades and Cassiopeia.
Following Toinette’s lead, as she knew her crew better than he did, Erik had lain down beside her and slept without changing form. After he came to full wakefulness, he stretched and allowed himself to slip back into a man’s shape. This time it went as quickly and painlessly as the change normally did.
A month on ship had ensured that magic recognized all his clothing as a part of him, and thus he was still dressed as a human. He was glad of it. Modesty aside, the night air was cool and damp, and the sand rockier than he’d have wanted to walk without boots.
He smelled smoke and turned to follow the odor. Several yards off, the sailors had built a fire between two of the largest rocks. They sat huddled around it, small fragile shapes against the empty night.
“Only six,” said Toinette’s voice from behind him.
Erik turned back toward her. She was human again as well, bright hair loosed from its moorings and straggling over her shoulders, rumpled red wool clinging to her figure. The gold sparks in her eyes might have been reflections of the firelight, and her face was expressionless.
“Yes,” said Erik after a quick count.
“You saw more than I did in the storm. Do you know who didn’t make it?”
“Gervase.” That image stood out in Erik’s mind. From experience, he knew it would stay there a while yet. “The mast.”
“He didn’t drown,” she said with a bitter and exhausted mirth. “You could argue that the earring was worth its price, couldn’t you? Who else?”
“Yakob fell badly when the ship tilted. Broke his neck. Emrich went overboard. I only heard that after, when it was too late.” Erik spoke bluntly, as he’d learned to do in war. He didn’t think Toinette would welcome either gentleness or hesitation.
She nodded, lips pressed together, and crossed herself. “It was a good thought,” she said eventually, “transforming. Might have saved the rest of us.”
“I’d no way of knowing it would work.”
“Comes a point when you’ve no way of knowing that about anything.” She made an attempt at gathering up the untidy mass of her hair, realized it was futile, and let it spill down her back again. “I should go speak to them. You can come too, or not, as you wish.”
“I’ll join you,” Erik said. “If you think it’ll help rather than hinder.”
“That point I mentioned?” She quirked her mouth up on one side in a half smile. “We’re still at it. Come on, then.”
* * *
Wet sand made for unsteady footing. Toinette grumbled, but only half-heartedly. Keeping her balance was a distraction. Looking down at her feet meant less time watching the faces that had turned toward her as she approached, looking from her to Erik.
She wasn’t sure whether or not she was glad to have him there. Allies were good. Witnesses, if the conversation went badly, were not, most particularly witnesses who’d seen her when she’d been fifteen, filthy, and desperate. If this ended with Erik feeling sorry for her, she thou
ght she might fly off then and there, no matter that she had no notion of where she was going.
The waves washed steadily against the sand. The fire crackled, burning shades of blue and lavender: driftwood. Pretty as the flames were, they cast all the crew in an eerie, ghostly light. Perhaps that was good. Perhaps it would make them feel on more equal footing.
Toinette cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, hands clasped behind her back as if she were a girl again and facing her tutor. Reciting Latin would have been easier. “You saw.”
“That we did,” Marcus answered, his voice and eyes both expressionless. “You’re dragons.”
“We’re people,” said Toinette, “who turn into dragons. Sometimes.”
“How?” asked Sence.
In every pair of narrowed eyes lurked the shadow of a horned figure. “Blood.”
“Inheritance,” Erik said at her shoulder. “It goes back generations.” Toinette thought of the other meanings blood could have, and gave him a grateful look.
“We made no pacts,” she said, holding her open hands in front of her. “As best I know, my soul’s intact. I go to mass as often as any of you”—at that she heard a couple of the men, including Marcus, chuckle, and a few, including Raoul, look down at the ground—“and if you’d like me to recite Scripture, I could likely manage a few lines at least.”
“Here,” said Samuel, getting to his feet and holding out one closed hand. It took a moment for Toinette to make out the rosary dangling from it, jet beads glimmering in the witch light of the fire. “Hold this and say the Ave Maria. A creature of the devil couldn’t do that.”
Asking how many of Satan’s creatures he’d tried it on probably would not help at that juncture. Toinette closed her fist tightly around the silver cross. “Ave Maria, gratia plena…” she began.
It had been a long time since her last mass. The words came clumsily to her, but the prayer helped in more ways than one. By the end, Toinette felt the tight knot of her sorrow ease, and though their predicament weighed on her, the guilt no longer felt like a barbed hook in her insides. The lessened suspicion on the men’s faces was probably a good part of that relief too.
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