“She?” Erik asked. It was no shock—among his line, the women fought nearly as much as the men, and such had been more common even among mortals in his parents’ day—but it was a surprise to hear as much from modern lips.
The young man rolled his eyes. “Not that there hasn’t been a bit to say about it. But her husband’s dead, and they’d no children, so…” He shrugged. “The world’s not over-blessed with men these days, no?”
He crossed himself as he said it, and Erik joined him. “TheHawk,” he said.
“Down at the end,” said the young man, and waited expectantly until Erik handed him two pennies.
The docks creaked beneath Erik as he walked toward his destination. That sound, and water lapping against wood, brought back memories from his youth: fishing out in boats on the loch with his cousins, with more joking than actual fishing being done in the end. Cathal and he had been of about an age, or close enough to make little difference among the MacAlasdair youths. Together they’d hidden from tutors, run races, and later planned to court kitchen maids.
Cathal had been the one to explain Erik’s current mission—or, rather, his wife had. A charming woman, unnervingly intelligent and more unnervingly familiar with the magic that Erik had only half learned in his youth, Sophia had been the one to unearth the relevant legends. Sophia and Cathal’s two daughters had served the evening meal while Sophia told stories, their eyes as grave and brown as their mother’s, but with a dragonish gleam in their depths.
Such an evening left a man brooding, apt to consider his own past and perchance the future to come.
Such a man, Erik told himself, would do well to concentrate on the task at hand, ere he fell into the harbor and earned himself an unpleasant evening. He turned his attention to the ship he was approaching.
TheHawkwas a flat-bottomed cog, its oak boards weathered smooth by the ocean but to all appearances solid and sturdy. As it lay in harbor, the single sail was furled against the mast. Above it, a blue flag displayed a single yellow silhouette that might have been a hawk, an eagle, or indeed a giant bat. For certain it had a head and wings, but that was all Erik could make out from a distance. The ship looked to be a good length, eighty feet or so, and sat well in the water.
Two figures stood on the deck. At such a distance, a mortal man might not have known that one of them was female. The dragon-blooded had better eyes, but save for her sex, her height—greater than that of most women—and the gleaming copper-red of her hair, Erik could make out no more of her.
Approaching, he hailed the ship. The captain set her hands on her hips, considering, and then nodded. “Wait there,” she called, gesturing to the docks, “and I’ll come ashore.”
Erik heard a familiar note in her voice, but he couldn’t place it. Not until she reached the docks and he looked into a tanned face with wide, almost-black eyes, in which gleamed small specks of golden fire, did he know her. Then, laughing in amazement, he saw the joke of the flag.
* * *
If the man before her hadn’t gaped and then broken out laughing, Toinette would have thought herself wrong about his identity. The world had big men in plenty, and blond men—whole countries full of big, blond men. There might even have been a few big, blond men with the same shimmering blue-green eyes as this one.
But his expression convinced her.
“Erik MacAlasdair? What are the odds?”
Not so great as all that, come to think of it. The world could be small, and it was growing smaller of late. In truth, there’d been times when Toinette had wondered if her blood would be all that was left.
Best not to brood on death. Better to step forward and let Erik embrace her. His lips brushed lightly over hers: a quick kiss of greeting, as between any friend and another, quite unlike the rather messier and more daring one that she remembered receiving behind the forester’s cottage at Loch Arach so many years ago. His arms were stronger, though, and Toinette stepped back feeling a tingling echo of the same thrill she’d had at sixteen.
“A pleasant surprise,” he said, and the accent of Scotland in his voice called back memories of hunting and hawking, of stone halls and the triumph of controlling her heritage for the first time. “Captain Toinette?”
“Captain Deschamps, rightly.”
“I heard,” he said, and bowed his head. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you. It was ten years ago now, so—” She spread her hands, smoothing the air as time did pain.
Erik looked slightly surprised. “Ah. Not the plague, then?”
“Only mortality—though you might say the plague counts. He was middle-aged when I met him. A very kind man, and not a very curious one.”
“God rest his soul.”
“Yes,” said Toinette. “Quite likely. And how many times have you wed since we last met?”
“Two.” He made sure that none of the crowd were likely to be listening, and then added, “Both longer past than your man.”
“Quite a crowd in heaven, I’m sure. Children?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t ask in return. Toinette would not bear to a mortal; the blood didn’t cross that way. Men could crossbreed, with difficulty and rituals. The older ones, like Toinette’s father, didn’t even need those. Whether mortal or magical, though, bearing the child of a man with dragon’s blood had certain risks unless you yourself had it to begin with. To Toinette’s mind, it was a bad deal either way.
