"It's very strange," said Oreg once he'd locked the two of us back in my cell and picked up the chamber pot.
"What is?" I asked.
"The way you've convinced everyone, including yourself, that the two of us can stop Kariarn and his whole army."
"I don't have to stop his army," I explained. "All I have to do is get Duraugh to evacuate Hurog rather than fight for it. All Kariarn wants is the dragon bones. He'll take them and leave Hurog."
"So you're going to let Kariarn take the bones?" Oreg tapped the chamber pot unhappily on his thigh.
"It's the only way I see for Hurog to survive."
Oreg stared at me, but in the poor light of the sputtering torches, I couldn't see the expression on his face. In the quiet, I could hear the murmur of voices as several men came up the stairs.
"The chamber pot—hit me," I said, bending my knees so Oreg could get a good angle. "I can fake unconsciousness, but it's got to be hard enough to raise a bump."
Oreg stared at the chamber pot. "I could still get you out of here. We could get Beckram and bring an army to defeat Kariarn."
I straightened. "Buril is only three or four leagues from the sea. With the wizards for communication, Kariarn'll have a fleet at the nearest port waiting for him. Beckram is at Callis. He'll have to travel overland."
Oreg worked it out for himself. "It'll take him at least a week longer to get to Hurog than it'll take Kariarn."
I nodded. "Hurog isn't ready for a siege. It won't last a week."
The guards had gone to Garranon's cell. I could hear them shouting, and I bent down again. "Do it."
"So the Hurogmeten sacrifices the dragon again," said Oreg.
I caught a better look at his face as he raised the chamber pot over his head. What I saw there told me that Oreg wasn't unhappy about the opportunity to hit me. As it turned out, I didn't have to fake anything at all.
14—WARDWICK
It always takes me a few days of sailing before I quit trying to jettison last week's dinner.
My stomach told me I was aboard a ship before I opened my eyes to see Bastilla sitting cross-legged on the floor beside my bunk, wearing boy's clothes and looking very much like the woman who had traveled halfway across the Five Kingdoms with me.
She smiled. "Good morning, Ward. How's your head?"
I returned her smile before I remembered what she was. I touched my head gingerly but could find no bump.
"I healed you," she said. "I'm sorry Tosten was so angry that you chose to follow my master. He gave you quite a concussion. My master thought you should sleep until we reached the sea, so I let you rest."
"How do you know Tosten was angry?" I'd planned upon that interpretation, but she sounded so certain.
"When I healed you," she said, patting my knee, "I picked up on your emotions. I felt how much he hurt you."
Tosten had said she invaded his mind when she healed him. Just how much did she know?
"He doesn't understand what Hurog means to me," I said tentatively. Her normalcy so contrasted with the picture of her kissing Kariarn's boots, it was hard to believe it was both the same person.
She nodded her head sympathetically. "He'll come around; he idolizes you. After Duraugh is dead, he can put it behind him." So she hadn't read me enough to know that Duraugh's death was one of the things I hoped to stop by traveling with Kariarn.
Everyone seemed to think that I could just throw away my uncle's life in order to satisfy my own ambitions. I don't know why I cared what Bastilla thought; maybe it was just confirmation of Tosten's opinion that hurt.
"Does King Kariarn know you tried to kill me?" I asked.
She dropped her head so I couldn't see her expression. "That was very bad of me," she said. Then she met my gaze and laughed. "Did you think you would get away with flirting with Haverness's cow after refusing me? And you suffered. I saw it on your face when Penrod died." She sounded like my mother talking about her garden. "Poor Penrod. I had thought to use him to kill your wizard, but the opportunity, with us so close to my master, was difficult to resist. He fought me, though. I don't think I could have gotten him to do more than wound you before he broke the hold, but Tosten made that a moot point, don't you think?" She smiled again at the expression on my face and ran her fingertip around the outside of my ear. "I told you that you'd regret how you treated me. But—" There was a repellent eagerness in her eyes. " — if you tell my master, I'm sure he'll punish me. Speaking of whom, I'd better tell him you have awakened."
Wordlessly I nodded.
She shut the door behind her, but I couldn't tell if she locked it or not.
Oreg appeared sitting in the same place she'd just been. "He told her to make you comfortable."
I shivered, and Oreg patted my knee the same way Bastilla had. I jerked away, because I hadn't been able to jerk away from her.
"Did Tosten get away?"
"Yes." He shifted on the bed, not looking at me. "I'm sorry I hit you so hard."
I remembered what our last words had been, and why Oreg had been upset. "Oreg, I wouldn't let him take the bones if I could see a way around it."
He nodded his head, not looking at me. "What are you going to do about Duraugh?"
Tosten, Bastilla, and now Oreg, I thought. It didn't help that the rocking of the boat had begun to make me nauseated. Thoroughly miserable and wanting to hurt him back, I said, "I'll kill him if Kariarn doesn't take care of it for me. He's the last thing standing between me and Hurog. If I have to sacrifice everyone left at Hurog to regain my birthright, well then, I guess that's what I'll do." I thought he'd catch the sarcasm, but he left instead. Even Oreg, I thought, even Oreg believes me capable of killing Duraugh.
The next few weeks were grim.
If I went onto the deck, I had to talk with Kariarn with Bastilla always nearby. I had to be very careful not to do anything that would tell her I was not Kariarn's ardent supporter. Bastilla, herself, behaved as if nothing had changed, forcing me to do the same.
I'd grown used to being less guarded, and the old cautions learned from my father's treatment sat upon me like a hair shirt. I don't think I could have done it if I hadn't wanted what Kariarn offered so much. It gave me a truth to blind him with.
Kariarn proved his reputation for charm. He asked me soft-voiced questions and listened while I ranted and stormed about the idiots around me—the way I'd always wanted to rant about them. I told him of my ambitions and how much Hurog meant to me. I even told him about my father. I talked myself so raw that when I went to my cabin and Oreg's accusing silence, I couldn't bring myself to confront Oreg about his assumptions.
His distrust hurt almost as much as the loss of Hurog. Again. I'd resigned myself to it at Silverfells, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt when Kariarn dangled it in front of me.
I stood near the prow one evening, the setting sun on my left sending red fingers out into the darkening sea. The air was chill on the water and blew my hair away from my face.
"You can't make the ship go faster by willing it," said Kariarn, approaching me from behind.
Nor could I make it any slower. Last night I'd overheard the Seaford-born sail master say we were making good time.
"I'm getting tired of the food," I said truthfully.
Oreg wasn't speaking to me except when I demanded it. I wondered bitterly if Oreg would tell some long-distant Hurogmeten about Wardwick, who betrayed dragonkind one final time. But Oreg wasn't without companionship. He'd made friends of the shy trillies who lived in the darkest bowels of the ship: I'd seen one of the gray green, rat-like creatures scamper off his lap when I came into our cabin one evening.