He didn’t like to think about it, and not just because he was pretty certain the man would be hard to kill. He didn’t like to think of himself as a man who killed inconvenient people. But Jess had indicated that he was going to be much worse than inconvenient.
There were, he reflected, lots of ways to kill a man on the water, and many of them could be made to look accidental. He considered it coldly. Jess was tough and sagacious. Leftrin had been foolish to growl at him today. He should have pretended interest in his offer, should have chummed him in close. He should have invited him to make a midnight raid on the sleeping dragons. That would have been the prime opportunity to do him in. But the man had irritated him beyond any sort of strategic thinking. He hated how Jess snickered around Alise. The rat knew how Leftrin felt about her. Leftrin had a feeling that Jess would be happy to ruin all that simply because he could. And he’d seen Jess’s face when Alise had come back on board with the dragon scale and so delightedly exhibited it to all of them. He’d seen the fires of greed kindle in the man’s eyes and worried for her then. Leftrin walked a few more steps down the deck and then stooped to tidy a coil of line that was already tidy enough.
Two nights ago, Jess had come to Leftrin with his new scheme. He’d maddened Leftrin with his insistence that Sedric would be amenable to “their” plans. He refused to say what he based that opinion on, but twice Leftrin had caught him lurking around the sick man’s room. He only smiled that sneery smile; it was plain that he thought Leftrin and Alise and Sedric were conspiring together about the dragons. He thought it was an alliance he could break into and use for himself. Sooner or later, he’d talk to Sedric. Sedric would easily believe that Leftrin was complicit with Jess’s plotting. He could just imagine the Bingtown man’s reaction to Jess’s suggestion that Leftrin could kidnap Alise and carry her off to Chalced, with the understanding that, given enough money, Sedric would also be happy to go to Chalced. Or Alise’s reaction to the idea that Leftrin was just waiting for an opportunity to butcher up a dragon.
The man was a loose cannon. Leftrin had to do away with him. A cold certainty welled up in him; he could feel Tarman accede to the decision. Almost, it was a relief to reach it.
There would be consequences to killing Jess, he supposed, even if he made it look like an accident. The Chalcedean merchant Sinad Arich would wonder what had become of his hireling when Jess failed to contact him. Well, let him wonder! The Rain Wild River was a dangerous place. Men just as competent as Jess and a lot nicer had died there. He felt the decision settle in him and sink down to his bones. Jess was going to die.
But he’d have to set him up for it. And that would mean trying to convince him that he’d had a change of heart. He wondered if he could make him believe that he’d lost interest in Alise as well. If Jess didn’t see her as a weapon he could use against Leftrin, he might stop haunting her. After that, it would be a matter of waiting for the right opportunity.
Tarman nudged him. “What?” he demanded of his ship and stood. A quick scan around betrayed no perceptible danger. Despite his excuse to Alise, this part of the river was a fairly easy stretch. It was edged with reed beds that ventured out into the channel, so that the barge moved through them. The fishing would be good, and he suspected that the dragons would feed fairly well along today’s path.
Then he saw a shivering in the trees behind the reed banks. Every tree shook, and a few dropped yellowed leaves and small twigs. An instant later, the reed bank rippled like a wave, a wave that moved out into the river, trembling water and grasses. The motion slapped the barge’s hull and then moved past it, almost vanishing in the deeper water.
“Quake!” Swarge raised the cry from the stern.
“Quake!” Big Eider bellowed the warning to the keepers in their small boats.
“So it is!” Leftrin shouted back. “Move Tarman away from the banks as much as you can, but don’t lose our grip on the bottom. “Ware, now!”
“Ware!” his polemen cried him back.
As Tarman edged away from the bank, Leftrin watched another rippling move the trees. On the shore, small debris of leaves, twigs, and old birds’ nests showered down. An instant later, rank after rank of reeds bowed to the river, followed by a wavelet that rocked the boat. Leftrin scowled but kept his eyes on the trees. Quakes were frequent in the Rain Wilds, and for the most part, little tremors were ignored by everyone. Larger ones endangered not only the underground workers in the buried Elderling cities, but could also bring down old or rotten trees. Even if a tree didn’t hit the barge directly, he’d heard of falling trees that swamped boats. In his grandfather’s time, supposedly a tree had fallen that was so large it had actually stopped all traffic on the river and had taken workers nearly six months to clear away. Leftrin was a bit skeptical about the full truth of that tale, but every legend had a grain of truth. Doubtless a very big tree had come down somewhere to spark that one.