pair of menacing curving horns. Gariath’s lips peeled backwards to expose twin rows of teeth.
‘Oh … there you are,’ Lenk said sheepishly. ‘I was … just …’
‘Tell me,’ the dragonman grunted. ‘Do you suppose there’s anything you could say while looking up a Rhega’s kilt that would make him not shove a spike of timber up your nose?’
Lenk blinked.
‘I … uh … suppose not.’
‘Glad we agree.’
Gariath’s arm, while thick as a timber spike, was not nearly as fatal and only slightly less painful as the back of his clawed hand swung up to catch Lenk at the jaw. The young man collapsed backward, granted reprieve from the voice by the sudden violent ringing in his head. He sprawled out on the deck, looking up through swimming vision into a skinny face that regarded him with momentary concern.
‘Do I really want to know what might have driven you to go sticking your head between a dragonman’s legs?’ Dreadaeleon asked, cocking a black eyebrow.
‘Are you the sort of gentleman who is open-minded?’ Lenk groaned, rubbing his jaw.
‘Not to that degree, no,’ he replied, burying his boyish face back into a book that looked positively massive against his scrawny, coat-clad form.
From the deck, Lenk’s eyes drifted from his companion to the boat’s limp sail. He blinked, dispelling the bleariness clinging to his vision.
‘It may just be the concussion talking,’ he said to his companion, ‘but why is it we’re still bobbing in the water like chum?’
‘The laws of nature are harsh,’ Dreadaeleon replied, turning a page. ‘If you’d like that translated into some metaphor involving fickle, fictional gods, I’m afraid you’d have to consult someone else.’
‘What I mean to say,’ Lenk said, pulling himself up, ‘is that you can just wind us out of here, can’t you?’
The boy looked up from his book, blinked.
‘“Wind us out of here.”’
‘Yeah, you know, use your magic to—’
‘I’m aware of your implication, yes. You want me to artificially inflate the sails and send us on our way.’
‘Right.’
‘And I want you to leave me alone.’ He tucked his face back in the pages. ‘Looks like we’re all unhappy today.’
‘You’ve done it before,’ Lenk muttered.
‘Magic isn’t an inexhaustible resource. All energy needs something to burn, and I’m little more than kindling.’ The boy tilted his nose up in a vague pretext of scholarly thought.
‘Then what the hell did you take that stone for?’ Lenk thrust a finger at the chipped red gem hanging from the boy’s neck. ‘You said the netherlings used it to avoid the physical cost of magic back at Irontide, right?’
‘I did. And that’s why I’m not using it,’ Dreadaeleon said. ‘All magic has a cost. If something negates that cost, it’s illegal and thus unnatural.’
‘But I’ve seen you use—’
‘What you saw,’ the boy snapped, ‘was me using a brain far more colossal than yours to discern the nature of an object that could very well make your head explode. Trust me when I say that if I “wind us out” now, I won’t be able to do anything later.’
‘The only thing we might possibly need you to do later is serve as an impromptu anchor,’ Lenk growled. ‘Is it so hard to just do what I ask?’
‘You’re not asking, you’re telling,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘If you were asking, you’d have accepted my answer as the decisive end to an argument between a man who is actually versed in the laws of magic enough to know what he’s talking about and a bark-necked imbecile who’s driven to desperation by his conflicts with a mule-eared savage to attempt to threaten the former man, who also has enough left in him to incinerate the latter man with a few harsh words and a flex of practised fingers, skinny they may be.’
The boy paused, drew in a deep breath.
‘So shut your ugly face,’ he finished.
Lenk blinked, recoiling from the verbal assault. Sighing, he rubbed his temples and fought the urge to look between Gariath’s legs again.
‘You have a point, I’m sure,’ he said, ‘but try to think of people besides yourself and myself. If we don’t reach Teji by tomorrow morning, we are officially out of time.’
‘So we don’t get paid in time,’ Dreadaeleon said, shrugging. ‘Or don’t get paid at all. Gold doesn’t buy knowledge.’
‘It buys women with knowledge,’ another voice chirped from the prow.
Both of them turned to regard Denaos, inconsiderately long-legged and slim body wrapped in black leather. He regarded them back, a crooked grin under sweat-matted reddish hair.
‘The kind of knowledge that involves saliva, sweat and