a water bucket with her. Every evening she returned laden with the brimming bucket and whatever she had brought from the market for her dinner. Then she would bustle about inside him, singing nonsense songs to herself. If the evening was fine, she kindled a cook-fire and talked to him while she prepared her simple meal. In a way, it was pleasant to have company on a daily basis. In another way, it chafed him. He had grown accustomed to his solitude. Even in the midst of a companionable talk, he would know that their arrangement was temporary. All humans did was temporary. How else could it be, with creatures who died? Even if she stayed with him the rest of her life, she would still eventually be gone. Once he had grasped that thought, he could not be rid of it. To know that his days with Amber must, eventually, come to an end gave him a feeling of waiting. He hated waiting. Better to be done with it, and have her gone than to spend all his time with her waiting for the day she would leave him. Often it made him cross and short-spoken with her.
But not tonight. Tonight they had had a merry evening together. She had insisted on teaching him a silly song, and then they had sung it together, first as a duet for two voices and then as a round. He had discovered he liked singing. She had taught him other things as well. Not weaving a hammock: that he had learned from Brashen. He did not think she knew such sailorly skills. However, she had given him soft wood and an oversize blade that he might try his hand at her trade. Sometimes she played another game with him, one that was somewhat unsettling. With a long light pole, she would reach up to tap him gently. The game was that he must bat the pole aside. She praised him most when he could deflect the tip before it actually touched him. He was getting good at the game. If he concentrated, he could almost feel the pole by the slight movement of air that it caused. Another fiction between them was that this was just a game. He recognized it for what it was: a drill in skills that might help him protect himself, if it came to a direct attack. How long could he protect himself though? He smiled grimly into the darkness. Long enough for Amber to be able to kindle fires inside him.
He wondered if that was what brought her bad dreams. Perhaps she dreamed that she had set fire to him and had not had time to escape. Perhaps she dreamed that she was burning inside his hull, the flesh crisping away from her bones as she screamed. No. This was more of a whimpering and pleading she made in her sleep, not the scream that could wake her. Sometimes, when the nightmares were upon her, it took her a long time to struggle back to wakefulness. Then, smelling of fear sweat, she would come out onto the deck to take in great gasps of cool night air. Sometimes when she sat down on his sloping deck with her back to the cabin, he could feel the trembling of her slender body.
That thought made him lift his voice. ‘Amber? Amber, wake up! It’s only a dream.’
He felt her shift restlessly and heard her incoherent reply. It sounded as if she called to him from a vast distance.
‘Amber!’ he replied.
She thrashed violently, more like a fish caught in a net than a woman sleeping in a hammock, then she was suddenly still. Three breaths later, he felt her bare feet hit the floor. She padded toward the hooks where she kept her garments. A moment later she was moving across his canted deck. Light as a bird, she dropped over his side to land on the sand. A moment later she leaned against his planking. Her voice was hoarse. ‘Thank you for waking me. I think.’
‘You wished to remain in your nightmare?’ He was puzzled. ‘I understood such experiences were unpleasant, almost as unpleasant as living through the reality.’
‘They are. Extremely unpleasant. But sometimes, when such a dream comes repeatedly, it is because I am meant to experience it and heed it. After a time, such dreams can come to make sense. Sometimes.’
‘What did you dream?’ Paragon asked unwillingly.
She laughed unevenly. ‘The same one. Serpents and dragons. The nine-fingered slave boy. Moreover, I hear your voice, calling warnings and threats. But you are not you. You are…someone else. And there is something…I don’t know. It all tatters away like cobwebs in the wind. The more I grasp after it, the worse I rend it.’
‘Serpents and dragons.’ Paragon spoke the dread words unwillingly. He tried to laugh sceptically. ‘I’ve taken the measure of serpents in my day. I do not think much of them. However, there are no such things as dragons. I think your dream is only a nasty dream, Amber. Set it aside and tell me a story to clear our minds.’
‘I think not,’ Amber replied unsteadily. Her dream had shaken her more than Paragon had thought. ‘For if I tried to tell stories tonight, I would tell you of the dragons I have seen, flying overhead against the blue sky. It was not so many years ago, and not so far to the north of here. I will tell you this, Paragon. Were you to tie up in a Six Duchies harbour, and tell the folk there that there were no such things as dragons, they would scoff at you for foolish beliefs.’ She leaned her head back against him and added, ‘First, though, they would have to get used to the idea that there was truly such a thing as a liveship. Until I saw one and heard him speak, I had believed liveships were only a wild tale concocted to enhance the reputation of the Bingtown Traders.’
‘Did you truly find us that strange?’ Paragon demanded.
He felt her turn her head to gaze up at him. ‘One of the strangest things about you, my dear, is that you have no idea how wondrous you are.’
‘Really?’ He fished for another compliment.
‘You are fully as marvellous as the dragons I saw.’
She had expected the comparison to please him. He sensed that, but instead it made him uneasy. Was she fishing for secrets? She’d get none from him.
She seemed unaware of his displeasure as she mused, ‘I think there is in the heart of a man a place made for wonder. It sleeps inside, awaiting fulfilment. All one’s life, one gathers treasures to fill it. Sometimes they are tiny glistening jewels: a flower blooming in the shelter of a fallen tree, the arch of a small child’s brow combined with the curve of her cheek. Sometimes, however, a trove falls into your hands all at once, as if some greedy pirate’s chest spilled before an unsuspecting beholder. Such were the dragons on the wing. They were every gem colour I know, and every possible shape one could imagine. Some were dragons such as I knew from childhood tales, but others had shapes whimsical and still others were terrifying in their strangeness. There were proper dragons, some with long serpentine tails, some four-legged, some two, red and green and gold and sable. Flying amongst them were winged stags, a formidable boar who swept his tusks from side to side as he flew, and one like a great winged serpent and even a great striped cat, with striped wings…’ Her voice died away, subsiding in awe.
‘They weren’t real dragons, then,’ Paragon observed snidely.
‘I tell you, I saw them,’ she insisted.
‘You saw something. Or some things, some of which had stolen the shapes of dragons. Nevertheless, they were not real dragons. As well to say that you saw green, blue, and purple horses, some of which had six legs and some shaped like cats. Such things would not be horses at all. Whatever it was you saw, they were not dragons.’
‘Well…but…’
It pleased him to hear her flounder for words. She who was usually so glib. He didn’t help her.
‘Some were dragons,’ she finally defended herself. ‘Some were shaped and coloured just as the dragons I have seen in ancient scrolls and tapestries.’
‘Some of your flying things were shaped like dragons and some like cats. As well to say that flying cats are real, and sometimes they are shaped like dragons.’
She was silent for a long
