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Wintrow looked at her closely. Something was awry here. Such solicitude was not her usual manner with him. He would more expect her to tell him that he ought to be toughening himself rather than convalescing. He tried to read her eyes, but she looked past him, not meeting his stare.

The dragon was blunter. ‘She would like to speak to me privately. Leave, Wintrow.’

He ignored the dragon’s command and spoke to Etta. ‘I would not trust much of what she says. We have not yet heard the truth about Vivacia. Legends are rife with the dangers of conversing with dragons. She will tell you what she knows you want to…’

She was suddenly there again, inside him. This time he felt her presence as a physical discomfort. His heart skipped a beat, then surged on unevenly. A sweat broke out on his forehead. He could not draw a full breath.

‘Poor boy,’ the dragon sympathized. ‘See how he sways, Etta. He is not at all himself today. Leave, Wintrow,’ the dragon repeated. ‘Go rest yourself. Do.’

‘Be careful,’ he managed to gasp to Etta.

‘Don’t let her…’ A giddying weakness overtook him.

Nausea rose in him; he dared not speak lest he vomit.

He feared he would faint. The day was suddenly painfully bright.

He flung his arm across his eyes and staggered across the foredeck to the ladder.

Darkness. He needed darkness and quiet and stillness.

The need for those things overwhelmed all else in him.

Only when he was in his own bunk did the symptoms recede.

Fear replaced them. She could do this to him at any time.

She could heal him, or she could kill him.

How could he help Vivacia when the dragon had such power over him?

He tried to seek comfort in prayer, but a terrible weariness overcame him and he sank into a deep sleep.

Etta shook her head after him. ‘Look at him. He can scarce walk straight. I told him he needed to rest. And last night he drank far too much.’ She swung her gaze to meet the figurehead’s eyes.

They swirled like molten gold, beautiful and compelling.

‘Who are you?’ Her words were bolder than she felt.

‘You are not Vivacia. She never had a civil word for me. All she wanted was to drive me away that she might have Kennit for herself.’

A deeper smile curved the ship’s lush red lips.

‘At last. I should have known that the first sensible person I spoke to would be one of my own erstwhile sex. No. I am not Vivacia. Nor do I wish to drive you away, nor take Kennit from you. Think of the man that Kennit is. There need be no rivalry between us. He needs us both. It will take both of us to fulfil his ambitions. You and I, we shall become closer than sisters. Now. Let me think of a name you may call me by.’ The dragon narrowed her golden eyes, thinking.

Then her smile grew wider. ‘Bolt. Bolt will do.’

‘Bolt?’

‘One of my earliest names, in an ancient tongue, might be “Conceived in a Thunderstorm at the Instant of a Lightning Bolt”. But you are a short-lived folk, given to shortening every life experience in the hope of comprehending it. Your tongue would trip over so many words. So you may call me Bolt.’

‘Have you no true name?’ Etta ventured.

Bolt flung back her head and laughed heartily.

‘As if I would tell it. Come, woman, to entrance Kennit, you must have more guile than that. You shall have to do better than to simply ask my secrets with an innocent face.’ A look of bemusement came briefly over her carved features.

Then she called out, ‘Helmsman! Two points to starboard the channel deepens and the current is more favourable. Take us over.’

Jola was on the wheel. Without a word of question, he put the ship over.

Etta frowned briefly to herself. What would Kennit think of that?

Some time back, he had told the men that whoever was on watch should give as much heed to the ship’s commands as to his own.

But that was before she had changed. As the ship took up the change in course, Etta felt her go more swiftly and smoothly.

She lifted her face to the wind against her cheeks and her eyes scanned the horizon.

Kennit said they were bound for Divvytown, but that would not stop him from taking prey along the way.

Wintrow was recovering well; there was no need to hasten to a healer.

Like as not, a healer could do little for him.

He would wear his scars to the end of his days.

‘You’ve the eyes of a hunter,’ Bolt observed approvingly. She turned her great head to scan the horizon from side to side. ‘We could hunt well together, we two.’

An odd thrill ran down Etta’s spine. ‘Should not such words be given to Kennit, rather than me?’

‘To a male?’ Bolt asked, a small stain of disdain on her laugh.

‘We know how males are. A drake hunts to fill his own belly. When a queen takes flight and seeks a kill, it is to preserve the race itself. We are the ones who know, from our entrails out, that that is the purpose of every movement we make. To continue our species.’

Etta’s hand went to her flat belly. Even clothed, she could feel the tiny bump of the skull charm on her navel ring.

It, like the figurehead, was carved of wizardwood.

Its purpose was to keep her from conceiving.

She had worn it for years, ever since she had become a whore when she was little more than a girl.

By now, it should seem a part of her. Yet of late it had begun to chafe and irritate, physically as well as mentally.

Since she had found the small figurine of a babe on the Treasure Beach and inadvertently carried it off with her, she had begun to hear her own body’s questing for a child.

‘Take it off,’ Bolt suggested.

Etta settled into a great stillness. ‘How do you know about it?’ she asked in a deadly quiet voice.

Bolt did not even glance back at her, but continued to peruse the open sea before them. ‘Oh, please! I have a nose. I can smell it on you. Take it off. It does no honour to the one it was once part of, nor you to put him to such a purpose.’

The thought that the charm had once been part of a dragon suddenly made Etta’s flesh crawl. She longed to take it off. However, ‘I must talk to Kennit first. He will tell me when he is ready for us to have a baby.’

‘Never,’ Bolt said flatly.

‘What?’

‘Never wait for a male on any such decision. You are the queen. You decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race. Some things are not for males to decide.’ She lifted her hand and smoothed her hair back.

She flashed Etta a confiding grin that was suddenly very human.

‘I’m still not used to hair. It fascinates me. ’

Etta found herself grinning in spite of herself. She leaned on the railing. It had been a long time since there had been another woman to talk to, let alone one who spoke as forthrightly as a whore herself. ‘Kennit is not like other men,’ she ventured.

‘We both know that. You’ve chosen a good mate.

But what is the good of that if it stops there?

Take it off, Etta. Don’t wait for him to tell you to do it.

Look around you. Does he tell each man when the time is right for his task?

Of course not. If he had to do that, he might as well do every task himself.

He is a man who expects others to think for themselves.

I’ll venture a wager. Has he not already hinted to you that he needs an heir? ’

Etta thought of his words when she had shown him the carved baby. ‘He has,’ she admitted softly.

‘Well, then. Will you wait until he commands you? For shame. No female should wait on a male’s command for what is our business. You are the one who should be telling him such things. Take it off, queen.’

Queen. Etta knew that by the term, the dragon meant no more than female.

Female dragons were queens, like cats. Yet, when Bolt said the word, it teased to mind an idea that Etta scarcely dared consider.

If Kennit were to be King of the Pirate Isles, what would that make her?

Perhaps just his woman. But if she had his child, surely, then…

Even as she rebuked herself for such ambitions, her hand slipped under the silk of her shirt to the warm flesh of her belly.

The little wizardwood charm, shaped like a human skull, was strung on a fine silver wire.

It fastened with a hook and loop. She compressed it with her fingers and it sprang open.

She slipped it out, careful of the hook, and held it in her hand.

The skull grinned up at her. She shivered.

‘Give it to me,’ Bolt said quietly.

Etta refused to think about it. She held it out in her hand, and when Bolt reached back, she dropped it into the ship’s wide palm.

For a moment, it lay there, the silver wire glittering in the sun.

Then, like a child gulping a sweet, Bolt clapped her cupped hand to her mouth.

Laughing, she showed Etta her empty hand.

‘Gone!’ she said, and in that instant, the decision was irrevocable.

‘What am I going to say to Kennit?’ she wondered aloud.

‘Nothing at all,’ the ship told her airily. ‘Nothing at all.’