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In truth, it was the perfect time for Morgan and Auban to be discovered—at least by a friend. The entire village was wrapped up in catching, preserving, and cooking sturgeon, which Morgan had to admit were delicious, from the crisp crunch of their scaly backs to the glistening, dark wonder of their eggs. And everyone who wasn’t working on the sturgeon was working in the fields, including Morgan and Garen, but only in the mornings. In the afternoons, they had plenty of free time, and Morgan decided it would be a good idea to move the boat to the pebble beach.

“I can say I was sick of it being in the way if Brevaer asks,” he said one afternoon a week after Garen’s discovery. His friend was still prickly about the entire thing, but a few more meetings with Auban had convinced him that the human was at least in earnest about wanting to leave as much as Morgan wished he wouldn’t. “And that you and I are finishing it up on our own.”

“You don’t think that will upset him?” Galen asked, wrapping his hands with leaves to help keep the edges of the boat from biting into his skin. “After all the work you two did on it together, to take it over by yourself and cut him out?”

“Brevaer never gets upset about that sort of thing,” Morgan said blithely. “He’s too busy being better than everyone at everything else.”

“I think you don’t see things very clearly where you and your brother are concerned,” Garen replied. “He loves you very much. He’s just not very good at showing it.”

Morgan opened his mouth to argue, then reconsidered. After all, when it came to complicated relationships with people who weren’t very good at showing their affection, Garen was the authority.

When backed into a corner, tease your way out of it. “Are you sure you’re not talking about his relationship with you?” Morgan asked, wrapping his own hands up. One layer ought to be enough … He stared down at the heavy boat and frowned. Hmm, maybe two layers would be better. “Aren’t you the one he’s spending all that extra time training with in the mornings before he goes out to sea?”

“It’s because my mother asked it of him,” Garen said, but there was no mistaking the flush in his cheeks. “It’s just that she’s concerned about my ability to protect myself.”

“She ought to be concerned about idiots like Drenikel, not worried about people like you who actually practice every single day.” Dren and his crew were becoming more insufferable by the day; it was only due to the fact that everybody was needed to help prepare food for winter that they weren’t dogging Morgan’s every step. As it was, they spent most days drowning in fish guts instead, which was quite pleasant. “All right, let’s try to move it.”

“All right.” They reached down, got their grips, and hoisted the boat up.

Morgan almost immediately let go of it, sending Garen crashing down to his knees with a cut-off cry. “Damn, that’s heavy!”

“Ow,” Garen snapped, rubbing his lower back. “Warn me before you drop it, Morgan!”

“I didn’t know I was going to drop it!”

“I still could have used a warning!”

This wasn’t an argument worth having, especially not with the truth staring Morgan so starkly in the face. “We won’t be able to carry it to the beach.”

“No kidding,” Garen muttered as he got back to his feet. “Not if you’re going to drop it every two feet.”

“You wouldn’t have been able to hold it up much longer either! Now shut up and let me think.” Think, think … we’ll have to float it there. It was the only way. But that meant possibly exposing their movement to the sight of the village, which didn’t bode well for keeping things under wraps. But if they waited until evening, when the central beach was empty, Brevaer would be back, and he would undoubtedly have questions that Morgan didn’t want to answer about where the boat was going.

“We’ll have to chance it in the water,” he said at last. “Maybe we could push it from below?”

“Towing it would be better,” Garen said. “I think I can get a rope around the front, actually … but you’ll need to sit inside it and stabilize it with the paddle.” The paddle was still mostly stick shaped.

“Sure,” Morgan said with all the conviction of someone who had no idea what he was doing but didn’t want to let on. “I can do that.” First, though, they had to get the damn thing down to the shore.

In the end, they rolled it. The log was heavy and hardy enough that it bumped over rocks and roots with aplomb, and by the time they got it to the water, Morgan was cautiously optimistic that even the worst storm wouldn’t be able to tear it apart. Getting inside of it and balancing it, however …

Sploosh.

“You’re supposed to stabilize it while I get in!” Morgan said as he lifted his head out of the water after the fifth dunking.

“I’m trying!” Garen replied after shifting back into his human form. “It’s not the easiest thing, you know—this shape seems to want to roll. You’re going to have to take more off the bottom, find some way to make it sleeker and less—”

“Ah, look. Idiots at work.” There was a snicker. “Or is that play?”

Morgan groaned inwardly, then turned to face Drenikel and his pair of remoras—the suck-up snots of the village. “Dren,” he said pleasantly. “I see you’ve escaped the fish frenzy early today. You don’t even smell any worse than usual!” Actually, the scent of guts was very strong on the breeze, and the trio seemed to know it if the dark looks they shared were any indicator.

“At least we’re working for the common good,” he snapped. “Whereas the two of you are … what, trying to get that ridiculous boat of yours to work? Stupid. It’s all wrong. You and your brother were mad to think you’d ever be able to make something like that yourselves.”

“It works just fine,” Morgan snapped despite all evidence to the contrary. “We’re just fine-tuning it now.”

“Fine-tuning it to what, see how quickly you can get it to flip over?” Drenikel laughed. “Too bad it’s not your brother doing the testing—I could stand to see him fall out of a boat a few dozen times.”

“Yeah, too bad he’s off hunting with the rest of the men,” Morgan said.

“At least I’m not farming with the women,” Drenikel shot back.

“I’d rather farm with the women than get stuck on gut duty. Too slow to keep up with the hunters, too stupid to know weed from food in the fields … no wonder they had to set you to eviscerating a bunch of fish. I suppose not even you could screw up that job.” Morgan’s smile turned sharp. “Or … is that a cut I see on your hand? Did you stab yourself while you were trying to take out a sturgeon’s liver?”

“I—you—” Drenikel was speechless with rage, and Morgan was ready to escape. He pulled himself out of the water, plopped down into the boat, and put the end of the paddle with the bit of shaping down to help maintain his balance. Miraculously, it worked this time.

“Lovely,” he said as Garen started to pull him away. “It works! Even better than three fish-fingered sturgeon fuckers, I bet!”

And that was when Drenikel led his crew into the water, changed shape, and began a fight that led to three broken fingers, several slashes, a swollen eye ridge for one of Dren’s lackeys, and a rip in Morgan’s own beautiful tail. Hours later, as he sat enduring a scolding from Brevaer that would put any parent to shame, Morgan reflected that maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t gotten the last word in after all.

“And on top of it all, you lost the boat!”

On the other hand … after the fight was over—and Garen was truly magnificent in the water, sending Dren and his fools packing after hardly a minute—they’d been able to tow the boat to the pebble beach with no one the wiser except Auban, who had done his own scolding but also listened with a smile on his face to Morgan’s tale of adventure.

To Brevaer, the boat was as good as gone. That meant he’d never have reason to look for it.

Now, if they could just get it seaworthy for Auban, this would all be worth it.