Page 4 of Of Scale and Blood

What towing?

I sent a mental picture of her skimming the waves, ropes in her claws, hauling the vessel through the rough seas.

How far tow?

Hopetown. There’s no safe port between here and there.Eastmead might once have been a possibility, but Eastmead had been erased.

She continued to circle as she contemplated my reply.Could do, if air master helps.

My heart began to race.Are you sure?

She did the mental equivalent of a shrug.Can try. May fail.

Then I need to get onto that first boat and arrange for several ropes to be cast forward.It’d probably be easier for her to grab multiple ropes rather than just one, and if the saker sitting at the bow of the boat could haul in a pod of white fins—the largest fish to call these seas home—then it’d surely have the strength to withstand the forces a drakkon could bring to bear. Or at least it should for the few hours we needed it to hang on.

I fly low. You drop.

It was said in a blasé manner, as if leaping off her back and landing on the pitching, crowded deck would be the easiest thing in the world to do rather than one of the riskier things we’d tried in the short time we’d united against our common foe.

It’s far too crowded for me to jump safely onto the deck of that boat. It’s better if I aim for the water and swim to the nets everyone else is using. It also means you don’t have to worry about clipping the mast with your wings or tail.

Not that careless.

Mistakes happen, I said, amused.

My mistakes meant.

I laughed and tugged the bow and sword from my shoulders. If I was going in the water, it was better to do so without anything that could hamper my movements. I clipped them to the rope leashed around her front spine, on the opposite side to the hooded quiver—a suggestion Mom had made, and one designed to keep the arrows in place if Kaia banked sharply or turned upside down—and my backpack, which contained not only food and medical supplies, but also a scribe quill and tablet. Scribes—which used magic to pair one quill with another, meaning what one wrote on one tablet, the other copied onto its pair—were a recent development, but now used widely throughout the mainland and the islands simply because they weren’t restricted by distance, though being deep undergrounddidhamper effectiveness. Mom had started insisting I carry one whenever I went aloft with Kaia, and given the number of times misfortune had chased our tails over recent days, it certainly made sense.

Fly straight up once I jump,I said to Kaia.There’s an old harpoon saker aboard that boat and one of the men down there might be fast enough to fire it at you.

What saker?

I hesitated.It’s similar to a ballista, but the bolts are smaller and have a multi-pronged head designed to lodge into flesh.

Of course, drakkon scale was far tougher to penetrate than white fin, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t cause her harm.

They fire, you burn.There was a hint of anger in that snapped command.She might have been very young when the ballistas had been in action, but she obviously hadn’t forgotten the damage they’d done.

I’ll try.

Not try, do.

And that, right there, was my queen speaking. With another grin, I unlocked my harness from the front ropes and kicked my feet out of the stirrups.Let’s get this done.

She didn’t reply. She simply tucked in her wings and dropped. The force of our descent flung me back, and a gasp escaped my lips, the sound torn away by the rain and the wind whipping past.

Her chuckle ran through the back of my thoughts but before I could say anything, she banked sharply and said,Jump.

I scrambled to my feet and leapt high, not forward but back, over her wing and past her hind legs and tail as she shifted position and rose vertically. Then I was dropping fast toward the unnaturally calm sea. After checking I was in no danger of landing on anyone, I crossed my legs at the ankles and held them tightly together in an effort to avoid them being forced apart by the impact. Then, after clutching my right elbow tightly with my left hand and holding it close to my chest, I used my right hand to cover my mouth and pinch my nose tightly closed—all the things the yearly evacuation drills Esan’s sailors were taught as a matter of course, and everything I’d forgotten to do the one time Ihadbeen caught in a sinking boat. Of course, I also hadn’t really had time to think about protocols—I’d been too busy trying to free myself from the chunk of wood dragging me ever deeper into the black depths.

Butthatexperience had taught me just how damn cold the water would be, and the last thing I needed was to be instinctively sucking in a breath that was nothing but sea.

Shouts filled the air, drawing my gaze to the boat. They’d seen me. What they thought about my sudden appearance I’d uncover soon enough.

I hit the water feet first and plunged deep. Shock rippled through me, and a gasp rolled up my throat, but I fought the urge to release it or suck in air and started kicking toward the surface I really couldn’t see, guided by instinct and the occasional bubble that drifted past my face.

When I broke the surface, I quickly spun around, looking for the boat. Saw the now listing remains of the second boat and the half dozen people in the water between it and the sole remaining one. It was a good one hundred feet away from where I was bobbing, and while I was no swimmer, even I could make that distance easily enough.

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