The camp was finally stirring as they made their way back down. Tal sat up and stretched, blinked heavy eyes. Marith smiled at him.
‘Pleasant sleep?’
‘My Lord King … Gods … My Lord King …’ Groggy look on his face, that horrible feeling one got from sleeping in armour, sticky clammy like the skin was half rust. ‘My Lord King … My Queen …’
‘You’re forgiven. Everyone seems to be asleep this morning. Get people awake and a bath drawn. Some breakfast.’ Marith went into the tent, began pouring himself a drink. Thalia’s hand came to rest on his arm.
‘You promised.’
Kill her. Destroy her. If she will not destroy you. ‘It’s not every day one commands a dragon, beloved.’
She considered this. Smiled. A wide, delighted smile. She picked up the flask and the cups and led him through into the sleeping area. ‘That’s true. Marith the dragonlord. Marith to whom dragons kneel in homage. That, we should celebrate.’
A very nice day. Wine and love, and he could almost forget what she had done. Get deliciously drunk and fuck for hours. In bright sunlight, and in the evening shadows, and in the dark by candlelight. In the mountains, the empty places, it all seemed so far away. I’m wrong, he thought again. Osen was wrong. Thalia gave Landra a necklace. So what? I destroyed Landra’s home and all her family. Left her less than I ever was. Why should I grudge Landra a necklace? She sold it to buy bread. Bread! Thalia is so beautiful and so alive even the gods come to worship her, and yet she stays here with me. In the cold emptiness, in the tent, it reminded him of being in the desert, facing down another dragon, triumphant, glorious, beneath the endless sky. They whispered to each other of the dragon. Wondered in it, together. How can I think she will betray me, Marith thought, when we together have seen and done such things? Whatever comes after, she has stood by my side and seen such things. ‘Marith the dragonlord. Marith to whom the dragons kneel in homage.’ Ah, gods, yes! Wine, and love, and memories of the desert, when he first met her, and that night they stood together drunk and laughing and watched dragon fire burn in mountain heights through soft spring rainfall, and stumbled together back into bed.