When the words were out, he sat still, staring at the little flasks. He felt as if he had vomited up something foul and it lay, stinking and steaming, between them. He saw Carson’s hand touch one of the glass containers and then draw back from it. His voice was always deep. Sometimes, when he was holding Sedric in his arms and he spoke to him, Sedric felt the words vibrate in him, chest to chest, as much as he heard them. But now his voice was the deepest Sedric had ever heard it, and confusion weighted it.

“I don’t understand…Isn’t that what you accused Leftrin of doing? Of using Alise so he could harvest dragon parts? And Jess…oh.” For two quiet breaths, Carson thought it through. “I see, now. That’s why Jess assumed that you’d help him kill Relpda, isn’t it? He knew. He thought that you and he could collect parts from her, and then take the boat and head back to Trehaug. Or Chalced. Had you been working together then?”

“Sweet Sa, no! Never!” He looked at Carson’s face now and what he saw there clove his heart in two. Carson’s face was closed, his eyes unreadable. Waiting. Waiting to hear how he’d been deceived, how he’d been played for a fool. Wondering if even now Sedric had a plan. Sedric had to look down. “Jess knew what I’d done. He saw me come back to the ship one night, saw me throw my bloody clothes away. But I’d…I don’t know why. I’ll never know why. I drank some of Relpda’s blood that same night. You thought I’d been poisoned. I hadn’t, but the way it affected me, I might as well have been.”

He reached back to those days. They seemed distant now, unreal. “A couple of times, I woke up to find Jess in my room. I thought he’d come to check on me, the same way that you and Davvie did. But now I know that he was just there to search. He knew I had this stuff. That day, that day that I…I killed him, he’d shown me the red scale from Rapskal’s dragon. Alise had given it to me to draw for her journals. But afterward, she forgot about it, and I kept it. Jess knew about it and he found it. He said he hadn’t found the other stuff. But I think he’d talked to Greft, and Greft found what Jess couldn’t. I think that’s why Greft took the boat last night. Not to try to get back to Trehaug. Not even to try to take the stuff to Chalced and sell it. But to try to cure himself with it. To fix what was going wrong inside him.”