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He stood a time longer looking down on her.

She was Wintrow, in female form. With his forefinger, he traced the curve of her cheek, the arch of her brow, the flare of her nostrils.

Bingtown Trader stock, well born and raised well.

There was no mistaking one’s own kind. When he bent over and kissed her, her lax lips were warm.

Her unresponsive mouth teased his with the taste of the spices and brandy.

He could take her right now if he wanted to.

No one else would know; she herself might not even realize he had done it.

Such an amusing idea curved his lips in a true smile.

His fingers started on the top button of the nightshirt.

His own nightshirt, he thought, and it was as if he undressed himself. She breathed deeply and steadily.

‘You only want her because she resembles the boy,’ the charm said snidely. The nasty little voice shattered the peace in the room.

Kennit froze. He glared down at the noxious thing. Its small eyes glittered up at him. Were there truly blue sparks in the carved wood, or did he imagine them? The etched mouth turned down in disgust at him.

‘And you only want the boy because he so reminds you of yourself at that age. Only, in reality, you were much younger when Igrot dragged you to his bed.’

‘Shut up!’ Kennit hissed. Those memories were forbidden. They had all gone to the bottom with Paragon. What else had all this been for, if not to destroy those memories? For the charm to speak such words endangered everything. Everything. He knew now he would have to destroy the thing.

‘It won’t help,’ it mocked him. ‘Destroy me, and Bolt will know why. But I tell you this. Take this woman against her will, and the whole ship will know why you wanted her. I will see to it. And I will see that Wintrow is the first to know.’

‘Why? What do you want of me?’ Kennit’s question was an infuriated whisper.

‘I want Etta back on this ship. And Wintrow. For my own reasons. I warn you. Both Bolt and I would find rape extremely distasteful. Among dragons, it is not done.’

‘A scrap of a charm, no bigger than a walnut, claims to be a dragon!’

‘One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon. Take your hands off her.’

Kennit slowly complied. As he stood and took up his crutch, he observed, ‘I’m not afraid of you. As for Althea, I will have her. Of her own free will. You will see.’ He breathed out a long, slow breath. ‘Ship, woman, and boy. All will be mine.’

How had she known, Paragon wondered miserably?

How had Amber known just where to put her hands to reach each of them, both of them, all of him at once?

Her bare fingers pressed his wood, and she was open to him now.

If he had wanted, he could have reached into her and plumbed all of her secrets.

But he did not wish to know any more of her than he already did.

He only wanted her to give up and die peacefully.

Why would not she do that for him? He had always been a friend to her.

But she ignored him now, reaching past him to speak to the others that shared his wood.

She spoke to him, but they listened, and their listening echoed through him, vibrating his soul.

‘I need to live,’ she begged. ‘Only you can help me. There is still so much I must do in my life. Please. If there is any bargain we can strike, tell me. Ask of me anything, and if it is in my power, it is yours. But help us live. Close up your seams, and stop the cold water flowing. Let me live.’

‘Amber. Amber.’ Against all wisdom, he spoke to her. ‘Please. Just let go. Be still. Be silent. We will die together.’

‘Ship. Paragon. Why? Why do we have to die? What changed, why are you doing this? Why can’t we live?’

She would never understand. He knew it was foolish, but he tried anyway. ‘The memories have to die. If no one remembers them any more, then he can live as if they never happened. So Kennit gave the memories to me, and I was to die with them. So that one of us could live free.’

They were listening still, both of them. The Greater spoke suddenly, his thoughts ringing through his half of the hull. ‘It doesn’t work that way. Silencing memories does not make them stop existing. Events cannot be undone by forgetting them.’

He felt Amber’s shock. Valiantly she tried to overcome it. She spoke to him as if she had not felt the Greater. ‘Why does Kennit do this to you? How can he? What is Kennit to you?’

‘He is my family.’ Paragon could not conceal his love for the pirate. ‘He is a Ludluck, like me. The last of his line, born in the Pirate Isles. A Bingtown Trader’s son took a Pirate Isle bride. Kennit was their child, his son, his prince. And my playmate. The one who finally loved me for myself.’

‘You are not a Ludluck,’ the Greater interrupted him. ‘We are dragons.’

‘Yes, we are dragons, and we wish to live.’ It was the Lesser, managing to insert a thought of his own.

‘Silence!’ the Greater one quashed him. Paragon’s list became more marked as the Greater asserted his control.

‘Who are you?’ Amber asked in confusion. ‘Paragon, why are there dragons in you?’

The Greater laughed. Paragon knew better than to try to reply.

‘Please,’ Amber begged of them now. ‘Please, help us live.’

‘Do you deserve to live?’ the Greater demanded of her.

He spoke with Paragon’s mouth in Paragon’s voice, taking control of the figurehead and booming his voice into the wind.

It did not matter to him that Amber heard his thought through her hands.

He spoke as he did, Paragon knew, to prove to the ship how strong he had grown.

‘If you did, you would see it is right now within your power to save all of us. But if you are too stupid to see how, I think we should all die here together.’

‘Tell her how,’ pleaded the Lesser. ‘It is our time, come again, and you will let us die because a human is stupid? No! Tell her. Let her save us so we can go on and –’

‘Silence, weakling! You have kept company with humans too long. The strong survive. Trapped as we are in this body, we are better off dead if the humans aboard us are stupid. So let her show us that she can make our life worth the living. If she can fathom how to live, we will let her give us eyes again. A Paragon we shall be, but not Paragon of the Ludlucks. Paragon of the Dragons. Two made into one.’

‘What of me?’ Paragon cried out wildly. Rain cascaded down his blind face and his chest. He gripped his beard and dragged at it fiercely. ‘But what of me?’

‘Be with us,’ the Greater said. ‘Or do not be. That is the only choice that remains to you. The serpent spoke true. There remains to us a duty to our own, and no other dragon or dragon-made-ship has the right to deny it to us. We can be only one. Be one with us, or do not be.’

‘We’re dying!’ Amber cried. Her voice was weak, hoarse from the smoke she breathed. ‘Fire burns above us, and water fills the hold. How can I save you, or myself?’

‘Think,’ the Greater one commanded her. ‘Prove yourself worthy.’

For an instant, Amber rallied. She reached strongly after the Greater, as if she would steal from him what she must know.

Then, a fit of coughing shook her. Every spasm of it set her scalded flesh to screaming.

As the coughing passed, Amber faded from Paragon’s awareness.

He felt her pass to transparency, and then nothingness.

As she died, he felt both grief and relief.

The heaviness of the cold water in him dragged him down.

The waves were getting taller. Soon they would wash over his deck.

The fires would go out as the waves took him down, but that was all right.

The fire and smoke had accomplished their work.

Then, like an arrow striking home to a target, Amber was suddenly within him.

She gasped as she plunged deep into the memories of dragonkind.

Paragon felt her floundering, overwhelmed by the unending chain of memories, going from dragon to serpent to dragon to serpent, back beyond to the very first egg.

She could not hold it all. He felt her drowning in the memories.

She fought valiantly, searching for what the Greater withheld from her as he allowed his memories to flood her.

‘It is not in my memory, but in your own, little fool,’ he told her. He witnessed her struggling as one watches tree sap flow over a trapped ant.

She wrenched clear of him as if she tore her own hands from the ends of her arms. Paragon felt her fall, and knew that she dragged in breath after smoky breath, striving for fresh air that was not there. She began to fade again, slipping below consciousness. Then, slowly, she lifted her head.

‘I know what it is,’ she announced. ‘I know how to save us. But I will not buy my life at Paragon’s expense. I will save us if you promise me this. You will be, not two made one, but three. Paragon must be preserved in you.’

He could feel her fear. It ran from her with her sweat, she expelled it with every breath. He was struck dumb by the idea that someone would be willing to die rather than betray him.

‘Done!’ the Greater announced. A faint thread of admiration shimmered through his words. ‘This one has a heart worthy of being partnered with a dragon-ship. Now let her prove she has a mind as well.’

Paragon felt Amber strive to rise, but she had spent the last of her strength.

She fell back against him. For her, he tried to close up his seams. He could not.

The dragons would not let him. So he fed her such strength as he could, pouring it from his wood into the frail body that rested against him.

She lifted her head in the smoky darkness.

‘Clef!’ she called. Her great exertion produced such a weak call. ‘Clef!’