Swarge was supposed to be on watch, but he’d sent him off to his bed. The entire crew was asleep. The river was down, Tarman was safely snugged on mud for the night, and his crew deserved a rest. It would be the first full night of sleep any of them had had since the wave hit. They all needed the rest. Everyone needed to sleep.
Even Alise. That was why she had sought her room early. She was exhausted still. He began another slow circuit of the decks. He didn’t need to walk laps around his ship. All was safe and calm now. He could have gone off to his own bunk and slept and left Tarman to watch for himself. No one would fault him for that.
He passed Alise’s door. No light shone from under it. Doubtless she was asleep. If she had wanted his company, she would have lingered at the galley table. She hadn’t. She’d vanished immediately after dinner. He’d hoped that she would stay. He faced that fading hope frankly. It would have been the first and only night that they’d been together on board his ship without Sedric’s presence as a reminder of who and what she was. He had hoped to steal this one night from her Bingtown life and possess it as something of their own.
But she’d excused herself from the table and vanished into her own room.
What did that mean?
Probably that she was a lot smarter than he was. Which, he told himself, he’d known all along. What intelligent man would want to share harness with a woman stupider than himself? His Alise was smart, and he knew it. Not just educated but intelligent.
But he wished she hadn’t chosen to be smart on this particular night.
And what sort of a man was he, that he felt Sedric’s absence as a sort of relief rather than a loss? The man had been Alise’s friend since childhood. He knew that. He might find him an annoying spoiled twit of a fellow, but Alise cared about him. She was probably wondering if he was dead or in dire circumstances tonight. And here he was, brutishly thinking only that the watchman was gone.
He finished his circuit of his ship and stood for a time on Tarman’s blunt-nosed bow. He leaned on the railing and looked at the “shore.” Somewhere there the dragons slept in the mud, but he couldn’t see them. The forest was pitch before his eyes. He spoke to his ship.
“Well, tomorrow’s another day, Tarman. One way or another, Carson will return. And then what? Onward?”