“Why would Jess even talk to you, let alone confide such things in you?” He heard the small doubts piling up in her mind. Detail might convince her.

“Believe it or not, he thought I might help him get close to the dragons. Because of how I go among them with you. He knew you had given me that red scale to draw. He actually stole it from my cabin while I was sick. He said it alone was worth a small fortune. He thought that if we could get a scale from a dragon, perhaps we could get more things. Enough to make us all rich.”

She stared at him through the gloom. He could hear her breathing. “Leftrin would not be a party to such a low scheme.”

“He was. I fear he is. And I fear that if you bring it up to him, he may become violent. Or find a way to get rid of both of us. Alise, I’m telling you the truth. And you have to ask yourself, if you don’t know this about him, what else do you not know?”

“I think I do know him. I think I know him better than you might suspect.”

She flung those words at him and he knew. The depth of the lurch he felt surprised him. She’d slept with the man. Slept with that smelly, ignorant riverman. Alise, the sweet little girl he had known since her childhood, the respected Bingtown lady, had gone to the bed of that man. For a moment, he was wordless with dismay. Then he knew he had to do it. Deploy his final weapon against her blind infatuation.

“Alise, you think you know him. You thought you knew me, and Hest. But we deceived you for years and you never suspected us. I’m sorry for that, truly sorry. And that’s why I’m trying to keep you from falling prey to that type of trickery again. Leftrin isn’t worthy of you, Alise. You need to stay away from him.”

In the dim light of the galley, he could see the motion of her shoulders as they rose and fell. She was fighting back sobs. She caught her breath. Her voice went shrill with the tightness of her throat. “Did I say I didn’t hate you, Sedric? I think I was mistaken.”

“Hate me, then,” he replied. “I probably deserve it. I’ll accept it as the price I pay, as what I owe you for how I deceived you for years. But don’t waste yourself on that lout, Alise. You deserve better.”

She made no reply to that, only shut the door firmly behind her as she left.