“Told you he could talk.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s really human,” said another voice, and Selden realized there were two of them staring at him. Young voices. He pulled his legs tighter under his bedding, and the chain around his ankle rattled on the deck as he did so. The blanket had stuck to the oozing wound on his shoulder, the one that had won him this trip aboard a ship.
“I’m human,” he asserted hoarsely. “I’m human and I’m really sick.”
“He’s a dragon man. See that scaling. So I was right and you owe me the bet.”
“Do not! He says he’s human.”
“Boys!” Selden spoke sharply, trying to bring their attention back to him. “I’m sick. I need help. Hot food or at least something hot to drink. Another blanket. A chance to get up on deck and get some—”
“I’m getting out of here,” one of the boys announced. “We’re going to be in trouble if anyone finds out we were down here talking to that thing.”
“Please, don’t go!” Selden cried, but one of the boys had fled already, his bare feet pattering away into the darkness of the hold. Another coughing fit took Selden. He curled around the stabbing pain in his lungs. When it finally calmed and he wiped the tears away, he was surprised to see that one of the youngsters was still standing there. He rubbed his eyes, but the brightness of the lantern and the stickiness of the discharge made the boy’s form a blur still. “What’s your name?” he asked.
The boy cocked his head, his pale hair falling in a ragged sheaf across his eyes. “Uh . . . not telling you. You could be a demon. That’s what the other fellows said. You should never tell a demon your name.”
“I’m not a demon,” Selden said wearily. “I’m a human. Just like you. Look. Can you help me at all? Can you at least tell me where we are, where I’m being taken?”
“You’re on the Windgirl. And we’re making for Chalced. The city Chalced what’s the capital of Chalced. That’s where you get off. Your new owner paid a lot for us to head straight there, no stops on the way.”
“I’m not a slave. I don’t have an owner. I don’t believe in slavery.”
The boy made a skeptical noise. “But there you are, chained to a deck staple. Seems like what you believe doesn’t matter much.” He paused and thought about this for a moment, perhaps considering his own plight. Then, “Hey. Hey. If you’re a human, how come you look like you do? How come you got all those scales?”
Selden pulled his blanket in closer. He’d taken the cleanest straw from the floor and scraped it into a heap before he lay down on it and put the blanket over himself. For a time, it had cushioned his aching body from the rough timbers of the deck. But it had packed down and shifted under him in his restless sleep. He could feel the cold, splintery deck below him. A blanket over him was small use when the cold planks under him sucked away the warmth of his own blood. He needed the boy’s help. He spoke quietly. “A dragon made me her friend. Her name is Tintaglia. She changed me, as you see. To make me special to her.”
“If you got a dragon for a friend, how come you got taken to be a slave? Why didn’t your dragon save you?”
The boy had come a few steps closer. By his worn clothing and shaggy hair, Selden judged him to be on the lowest rung of sailorhood. Probably a street boy, taken on in the last port, to see if he could be hammered into use as a deckhand.
“The dragon sent me out. She feared she was the last of her kind, for the other dragons she had seen hatch were weak and sickly things. So I set out from Bingtown with a group of people I thought were my friends. Tintaglia asked me to travel afar and ask for news of other dragons. And for a time, that’s what I did. I went to a lot of places. Things went well, and people listened to me and my tales of my dragon. But I didn’t hear of any other dragons. Then my supply of money began to run low. And my friends proved to be false.”
He saw that the boy was hanging on the tale. He paused. “Bring me something hot to drink, and I’ll tell you the whole story,” he offered. Not that he wanted to remember it himself. They’d drugged him in a tavern, probably something dropped into his ale. He’d awakened in a wagon with a canvas tossed over him, his wrists bound behind his back. A few days later, he’d been put on display as the “Dragon Man.” How many months ago had that been? A year? More than a year? For a time, he’d tried to keep a tally of his days. He’d lost count of them during his first bout of fever and realized the uselessness of it since.