He stared at her for a moment, and she couldn’t read his expression. At last, he said, “Then I had better not kiss you.”
He turned and walked down the stairs.
And she felt an ache so sharp that for a minute she couldn’t move.
Outside, the sun had set. Within the Silver Dragon Inn’s tavern, all the candles were blazing from sconces on the walls, as well as from the wrought iron chandelier over the wide table in the center of the room. Huge platters of food had been piled up on the table: breads and meats and vegetables. Ree was in the middle of it all, not unlike a centerpiece. His branches looked neater, as if he’d been combed or pruned or whatever, and his roots were deep in a pot that was overflowing with chocolate-dark soil. He was chattering happily with aclump of people seated at the closest bench. Slowing at the bottom of the stairs, Marin listened to him.
“… I’m like an apprentice sailor. Marin—she’s my captain, Captain Mariner—she tells me what to do, and I do it, and then we go-go-go into the bluuuuue! She can read the wind like it’s talking to her. She’s amazing. There was this storm coming—a magic storm! Lightning all around! The seas as high as a house!” He stretched his branches up to demonstrate. “And she wasn’t scared at all. Me, I was so terrified I nearly dropped all my leaves, but she shouts,‘Do your worst, storm! I am Captain Mariner of the Crescent Islands, and you won’t take my crew! Haha! I laugh at danger!’”
She was one hundred percent positive she hadn’t said any of that.
One of the listeners said, “Your loyalty to your captain is admirable, little shrub.”
“I love her and I want to be her when I grow up,” Ree said. “Except I don’t want legs. Legs are weird—you have two trunks that stick out under you. How do you not fall over all the time? You’d be a lot better off with roots and branches.” He added, “No offense meant.”
The man guffawed. “None taken. Would you want more water in your soil?”
“Yes, please.”
He signaled a boy with a pitcher, who came over and poured water into Ree’s pot. Ree sighed in satisfaction.
Surot appeared by Marin’s elbow. “Your crew is eating. Won’t you come eat too?”
“Sure, yes, thank you.” She scanned the tavern and noticed that Dax was by the fireplace, next to a young woman who had just handed him a guitar. She was lovely: bronze skin, magenta hair, curves on display in her formfitting outfit with a dragon pendant perched between her breasts. And Dax was completely ignoring her, his lips pursed in concentration as he studied the frets and the neck of the guitar, completely oblivious to whatever the young womanwas saying to him, which wasn’t like him. He was usually polite and friendly with everyone.
Oh crap, this is my fault.
She should’ve found better words—kinder ones, clearer ones, smarter ones. She hadn’t meant to hurt him while she was protecting herself.
Watching Dax, Marin followed the headwoman to an empty seat at the end of the bench. There was a clean plate and utensils waiting for her, and Surot began to heap slabs of meat and spoonfuls of tubers onto Marin’s plate. “I should make sure he isn’t so distracted by the guitar that he forgets to eat.”
Surot placed a hand on her shoulder. “You have to care for yourself before you can effectively care for others. Eat, rest, and then tend to your crew.”
Mechanically, Marin picked up her fork and began to eat. To her surprise, the meat was sweetened with cranberries and had been cooked so long that it scarcely required any chewing. It was butter soft and even more delicious than it looked. Still, she kept watching Dax as he tuned the guitar. Surot sat beside her and helped herself to dinner as well, filling her plate with a heap of meat and tubers. “I had to learn that lesson when I became headwoman two hundred years ago.”
Tearing her eyes away from Dax and the guitar, Marin looked at her. “Two hundred?” She knew some sorcerers could be long-lived, but she hadn’t thought—
“Twenty-eight years,” Surot amended with a laugh. She had a deep laugh, and the lines on her golden face deepened as she smiled. “But some days it feels like two hundred.”
Well, that made more sense. “The meat is delicious,” Marin offered. She wasn’t certain what kind of meat it was, just that it wasn’t fish.
“We raise sheep for us and for the dragons,” Surot said. “They prefer theirs raw, but we’re pickier. This lot was cooked by my brother’s husband. I’ll let him know you approve.”
That was enough niceties, wasn’t it? Marin launched into the only topic she wanted to talk about. “Do you think there’s a way to save my boat?”
Surot hesitated. “Such a thing hasn’t been attempted before.”
“Probably not many boats get stuck up on the mountain.”
“Not many,” she agreed with another smile.
By the fireplace, Dax began to play the guitar. Beside him, the magenta-haired woman sang loudly, and conversation around the tavern paused for a moment to listen. She had a pleasant, furry kind of voice that filled the room.
Dax was smiling, but it was a plastered-on smile.I hurt him,Marin thought.
It was for the best, a little hurt now to stop a greater hurt later. He had to see that. What kind of a relationship could they build when he was due back at the conservatory in a few short weeks? She was just a supply runner. She wasn’t a permanent fixture in his life.
“It’s one of our island songs,” Surot said softly, “about when the dragons first came to Ilreka and learned to live with humans.” A few more voices joined in the singing. It wasn’t a language that Marin knew, probably the original language of the island. When the empire spread across the sea, it imposed a standard language on all the disparate cultures. It wasn’t always kind about it either. But some languages clung on stubbornly. Surot continued. “The first human to befriend a dragon was my ancestor, or at least that’s what my great-grandmother claimed. It was many generations ago. Supposedly, she walked up to his cave and offered to let him eat her in exchange for the safety of the village. See, the villagers had taken a look at the dragons’ teeth and decided that we must look like lunch to them. My ancestor was wearing a necklace like this one.” She touched the multiple-stranded necklace that spilled across her bodice.
