They walked up Canal Street together, making a strange pair that drew a lot of confused glances. Bershad could hear people stop and murmur after they’d passed.
To their left, where the hills of the Dainwood rose over the city, a trio of Blackjacks popped out of the canopy and chased each other in a loop across a streak of Daintrees with yellow flowers blooming off the top. One of the dragons raked his claws along the canopy, causing a shower of shredded petals.
In any other city in Terra, three fully grown dragons that close to the city would have gotten the alarm bells booming and turned the people into a panicked mob, running for basements and root cellars. But Deepdale was different. This time of year, hundreds of Blackjacks swarmed the forests around the city, gorging themselves on mango and monkey and deer after their long flight back from the Great Migration.
“Trotsky says that you talk to the dragons,” Grittle said. “Tell them to protect Deepdale from the skyships, but also to stay outside the city.”
“Who’s Trotsky?”
“One of my regulars. He fought in the Balarian War.”
“Old-timer, is it?”
“Yeah.” They crossed a narrow bridge over the canal that was made from two sagging planks, the underside festooned with thick moss that smelled flowery and thick, like basil. “So, did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Tame the dragons and tell them to protect the city?”
Bershad glanced at the Blackjacks, who were still doing loops in the sky and skimming across the canopy.
“Those dragons aren’t tame,” Bershad said.
“But why don’t they attack the city?”
“Years of experience.” Bershad pointed to one of the dragon lookouts above them. “Why fuss with a city of troublesome humans who’ll shoot arrows at you when you have a canopy full of ripe mangos and fat monkeys?”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.”
She shrugged. “I liked the idea of you talking to the dragons, that’s all.”
Bershad gave her a look. “Those Blackjacks are protecting Deepdale from the skyships. They just aren’t doing it because of me.”
Bershad left the last part unsaid, which was that the Blackjacks would be scattering across the jungle within the next few moons, once the mangoes and monkeys started to thin. When that happened, the wall of impenetrable and aggressive dragons would be gone, and the skyships would have a clear route into Deepdale.
“I should have known it wasn’t true,” Grittle said. “Trotsky is always telling me lies because I’m little. He also said the big gray one follows you around everywhere and gives you magical powers.”
Bershad grunted. Didn’t say anything.
Grittle pointed down a narrow tract ringed by sagging buildings. “The Cat’s Eye is just down there.”
* * *
The tavern was locked up when they got there. Grittle took out a set of keys and opened the place up. Once they were inside, she hopped over the counter and lined up a bunch of ceramic mugs. Inspected them carefully, and cleaned a few that needed it.
“My regulars will be coming in for their breakfast beers soon,” she explained. “Got to be ready for the rush.”
“Your parents around to help?” he asked.
“My parents are dead.”
“Then who runs the tavern with you?”
“I do,” said another girl’s voice as she came up from a downstairs cellar, carrying a cheese wheel in one hand and a stale loaf of bread in the other.
When Grittle had said that she ran the Cat’s Eye tavern, Bershad had figured that her mother or father owned it and let her sweep the floors or something. But this girl—a sister, judging from the similar shape of their nose and mouth—wasn’t much older than Grittle.
“Just you and her?”
“That’s right.”
“What are you, fourteen?”
“Fifteen,” she corrected. “And if wardens can go to war at sixteen, I think I’m old enough to run a tavern.”
“Fair point. What’s your name?”
“Nola.”
“Nola,” Bershad repeated. “It’s good to meet you.”
She glanced at him, lingering on his tattoos a little longer than she probably meant to. Most people did.
“Likewise, Lord Silas.”
“Just call me Bershad.”
She scoffed. “Not likely, Lord Silas.”
“I could have you beheaded for addressing me in a way I don’t like,” he warned.
“I find that even less likely, Lord Silas.”
Bershad smiled.
“I promised him a beer,” Grittle said from behind the counter.
Nola sighed. “Of course you did.”
She came around the counter, too. Grabbed one of the mugs Grittle had cleaned and started filling it from an oak keg.
“I brew the rain ale myself. Since the war started, I’ve been watering down my pours so things last a little longer, but seeing as you’re our first customer of the day, and lord of the city, I’ll serve you straight.”
Bershad gave a little grunt. The girl was funny. “Appreciated.”
He took a sip. Savored the flavor of flower and hops and strong alcohol. “Not bad.”
“Not bad?” Nola repeated, frowning. “That’s the best rain ale on the shady side.”
“You’re pretty confident.”
“Easy to be the best when you’re the only tavern still brewing it.”
“Hops hard to come by, these days?”
“They are. And the fact that all the lords are hoarding ingredients for their homebrew doesn’t help. Such a tragedy. Rich folks always screw up the floral notes.”
“If the lords are hoarding hops, how is it you have a full cask?”
She smiled. “Got my ways.”
“Uh-huh.” Bershad took another sip. “And how is it that two girls with barely a score of years between them wound up with the run of the best tavern on the shady side?”
The girls’ faces both changed. Nola took a rag out from behind the bar and started wiping down the counter, which was already clean.
“Our mother died having Grittle,” said Nola. “Our father got eaten by a Blackjack that same summer. But we had three older brothers to raise us. They were Jaguars, but they hung up their masks when the Grealors took over the Dainwood. Said that dying on behalf of an Atlas Coast asshole was its own kind of crime. So, they started this place up. We ran it together as a family for years. That’s how I learned everything. But when Grealor got killed and the Jaguars rebelled, my brothers picked up their masks again. Joined the fight.” She picked at the rag with dirty fingernails. “They went down the river last summer.”
“High-Warden Carlyle came here himself to tell us,” said Grittle. “He said they died bravely, protecting a very important bridge.”
“They always tell you that,” said Nola, a barb in her voice. “Even if you die screaming and crying for no good reason at all.”
“You don’t varnish the truth of things for her much,” Bershad said.
“Most of the varnish that exists in this world is made from dragonshit.” She looked at him. “Do you tell people the truth of how their sons and husbands and brothers die?”
“No,” Bershad admitted. He turned to Grittle. “But your brothers don’t sound like cowards to me.”
“You’ve heard four sentences about them,” said Nola.
“They stood up against Grealor. A lot of others didn’t.”
“Since when is hanging up your mask a brave thing to do?” Nola asked.
“For a soldier, fighting for the man in charge is easy,” said Bershad. “Standing up to him isn’t.”
“I guess.”
Bershad drank more of his beer. Nola gave him a long look.
“You’re not like the other lords I know.”
“You familiar with a lot of nobility, are you?”
“Familiar enough to know they don’t generally praise people for standi
ng up to them. And they do generally wear shoes.” She motioned to his bare, dirty feet. “Lord Cuspar’s got a different pair on every time he shows up to collect his take.”
“Thought you owned the place.”
“We do. Most of it anyway.” She looked down, a little ashamed. “I kept us independent for as long as I could, knowing it’s what my brothers would have wanted. And I was managing until the skyships started salting the farms and everything turned twice as expensive. The supplies that come in from Dunfar help, but I couldn’t afford the up-front cost on my own. So, I went to see Cuspar. I tried for a straight loan—even if he was gonna rake me over the coals on interest—but you know how lords are, always trying to dig their fingers deep into your skin and keep them buried there.” She looked at him. “Uh, sorry. Wasn’t talking about you. The lords who wear shoes, I mean.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Bershad. He remembered Cuspar from when he was a kid. The man had stakes in businesses all over Deepdale. And Bershad knew that he’d thrown in with Grealor faster than most after his father was executed and he was exiled. “How much of a stake does he have?”
“Thirty percent,” said Nola. “But he insisted on a minimum threshold of a hundred silvers a moon’s turn, whether I’ve got a profit to show or not. I was short last month, that’s why I’ve been sending Grittle out to try and catch the paku. Help us scrounge a little extra until the next shipment from Dunfar gets here. Assuming the lords and gangs don’t take it all, first.”
Bershad tightened his grip on the ceramic mug. Took another long gulp. He’d gotten the blue bars before he’d had to deal with the realities of being a high lord. Running a city. Running a whole province. He was back now, but with the war on, he hadn’t needed to face that life. Being honest, he wasn’t in a big rush to. The whole thing was a big web of shit and lies, strung together by unfair laws and vile traditions.
“When I came back and saw what Deepdale had become, I wanted to kill them all,” Bershad said quietly.
“Kill who?” Grit asked.
“The lords who stood with Grealor.”
“Oh.” Nola seemed to think on that for a moment. “The queen stopped you, didn’t she?”
Bershad raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know that?”
Nola shrugged. “Cuspar turned over most of his wardens for the war effort. If you took his head, might be they’d keep fighting for the Dainwood. Might be they wouldn’t. Hard thing to risk right now.”
That was almost exactly what Ashlyn had said.
“You’re pretty clever.”
She shrugged again. “You don’t have to be that clever to see the right choices with a war on. It’s the Balarians who need dealing with first. Everything else has to wait.”
“Yeah,” Bershad said.
He finished his beer. Savored the last swallow with a purpose. Then he dug some coins out of his pocket—far more than one rain ale was worth, and far less than the girls needed—and slid it across the table.
“Thanks for the beer.”
“Thanks for paying. You didn’t have to.”
“Yeah. I did.”
He headed for the door, but when he reached the frame he turned around. Nola had already gone back to her duties, but Grittle was still looking at him.
“The paku is hiding in the reeds on the southern side of the island in the lake. Swim out in the afternoon and wait there till dusk, until he forgets about you and the bugs lure him out. And they like fruit more than the worm you were using. Try a Daintree berry.”
Grittle smiled. “I will. Thanks, Lord Silas.”
Bershad left the tavern. Made his way back uphill to the castle.
The old fort looked the same as it did when he was a kid. It was built from gray stone, but the walls were mostly covered by flowering vines sprawled across the different sections, their white petals busy with hummingbirds and bees zipping around. Thirty-two stone jaguars lounged along the ramparts, one for each Bershad lord who had ruled from those halls.
The only two lords who didn’t have a jaguar were him and his father. Leon’s had been torn down on orders from the king. His had never been built at all.
The main difference between the current situation and Bershad’s memories was that they’d set up the infirmary in the main castle yard—erected tents and filled them with cots where the wounded could be cared for. The air smelled like pus and bile and shit and vomit. Men were groaning and muttering in pain. Others were screaming as they endured their surgeries.
Even from across the city, he felt the Nomad rile as the rotten smells of the infirmary filled her nose, too. Bershad hoped she wasn’t causing a scene by the city gates.
He spotted Cormo as he was leaving one of the surgery tents. Despite the fact that he was a pirate, not an alchemist, he was wearing the gray robes of the order. Said it made his patients more confident in the outcomes. His sealskin gloves were slick with blood, and he was in the process of wiping them with a goatskin cloth.
“Silas. Hey.”
“How are things going here?” Bershad asked.
“A lot of amputations this time,” Cormo admitted.
“You sure they’re all required?” Bershad asked. “As I recall, unnecessary amputations is what got those bars drawn down your cheeks.”
“Almost wish I could blame booze and bad decisions on my part—those problems have clear solutions. But no. Those Balarian longbows come in with such speed the arrowheads break bones like eggshells. Nothing to do but take the limb. But we’re having good success with Master Jolan’s latest anti-infection tonics after the surgery. People lose the limbs, but they keep their lives.”
Bershad nodded.
“You want me to try pulling those last few crossbow bolts outta your back one more time?” Cormo asked. “I don’t like leaving jobs half finished.”
Cormo and Silas had met after a band of pirates had porcupined him with crossbow bolts. Cormo had pulled most of them out, but two remained, stuck deep in the bone.
“You nearly ripped my spine out last time you tried,” Bershad said.
“But I got some new pincers that might do the trick.”
Bershad waved the notion off. “Sometimes you just have to let old wounds be. Trust me on that.”
Cormo shrugged. “Guess you’re the expert on that front.”
“Do you know where Ashlyn and Jolan set up shop this time?”
“Last ruckus I heard sounded like it was coming from the grain pantries toward the back.”
Made sense. Ashlyn and Jolan used a lot of equipment for their work, and given all the food shortages, the pantries were available.
“Thanks, Cormo. I’ll see you later.”
* * *
Bershad moved through the empty halls of the castle, thinking back to his childhood when the castle was always bustling with people, and then actively trying to forget it because he felt his mood sliding toward darkness.
He reached the grain pantry. The door was closed, but not locked. He went inside.
Ashlyn was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room with her left arm stretched out, palm facing the ceiling. Her eyes were closed and there were four orbs the size of coconuts hovering above her head. There was a fresh cut above her left eyebrow.
Her outstretched arm was wreathed in banded, black metal from elbow to fingertips. The bands near her elbow were three fingers thick. The ones along her fingers were as thin as rings. All of them were studded with gray lodestones of various sizes that Bershad had salvaged from the spines of murdered grayskins. The bands were spinning in a complicated but orchestrated sequence, powered by the Ghost Moth nerve that was bound to Ashlyn’s forearm.
“Careful with the upward polarity on number three,” Jolan warned from his place behind a massive dragon scale that he was using as a shield. “It’s starting to lilt downward on the vertical axis.”
Bershad took a step forward, but Jolan motioned for him to stay where he was.
“I’m aware,” said Ashlyn, keep
ing her eyes closed and stretching her fingers a little farther apart. The bands on her index and pinky fingers spun a little faster for several heartbeats, and one of the hovering orbs rose in the air so that it was aligned with the other three.
“That’s it,” said Jolan. “Okay, that’s corrected. Ready for the fifth?”
“Ready.”
Jolan took another lodestone out of a cloth sack and checked the complicated script that was etched into the side of it.
“How fast?” he asked.
“Full speed.”
“You sure? After last time, I feel like—”
“Just throw it, Jolan. Another bruised eye isn’t going to kill me.”
The kid shrugged, then threw the stone at Ashlyn’s face as hard as he could, grunting from the effort.
Three bands near Ashlyn’s wrist whirred. The lodestone stopped an inch from her nose. Hung there as if it was attached to an invisible string.
A series of finger bands turned in a slow cascade, and the fifth lodestone rose above her head and joined the others in a line.
“Full control?” said Jolan.
Ashlyn nodded. “Give me something to break into.”
Jolan moved over to a table that was covered with an assortment of different-sized lodestones and started moving some of them into a wooden tray.
Bershad didn’t pretend to understand the inner workings of Ashlyn and Jolan’s work. They’d tried to fully explain it to him once, but the conversation had ended with Bershad extremely confused and Ashlyn so frustrated that she’d stormed out of the room.
Eventually, Jolan had managed to describe the basics.
Ashlyn’s arm and Osyrus Ward’s grayskins were both built on the foundation of lodestones. A single lodestone wasn’t much different than a regular rock. A pair of them could be made to either repel or attract to one another. But a larger group—which they called loops—could do far more complex things. That’s how Ashlyn was controlling the lodestones hovering over her head, and how Osryus created his nearly indestructible creatures—their artificial organs and spines were powered by lodestones.
Because they shared the same foundation, Ashlyn had spent the first few weeks of the war tearing out grayskin spines as easily as a farmer pulls weeds from the earth.
Fury of a Demon Page 5
