The Dragon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  “Better.” She said it with relief and even gratitude, not the bantering tone of one who has scored a point. “When properly made, ’tlei, such a request is easily fulfilled.” The purring, husky tone was back in her voice and added a honeyed warmth to her words which hadn’t been there before. She clapped her hands together twice and stepped to one side.

  A man came in, one who made Aldric take an instinctive snap-step backwards. Not because of who the man was, just a liveried servant, but what he was, and that was huge. He stood head and shoulders taller and those shoulders were a piece with the rest of him, bulky with muscles whose outlines showed even through his clothing. This man was an excellent bodyguard whose presence alone was a weapon, and from his expression he understood the sharp, discourteous way his mistress had been addressed. And he disapproved.

  In his arms, neatly folded, were clothes Aldric recognised like old friends. They were mostly black leather, tunic and breeches and boots. But there was something else as well, not leather but fur; a coyac of black wolfskin. Aldric felt a small churning deep in the pit of his stomach. In his secret heart of hearts he had hoped not to see that thing again. It was a memento of events he preferred to forget, and of a man he had killed. Destroying it himself would kill the man twice, but if an accident happened… Well, he wouldn’t make any great effort to prevent it.

  Of everything I own, I wish that one was burned to ashes, and the ashes scattered on the wind.

  His clothes were dropped unceremoniously onto the bed with no regard for their neat folds, and one boot slid with a thump to the floor. It was the right boot, of course, and it balanced upright for a moment then toppled over. The knife which fell out made an accusing tinkle that drew all eyes.

  It was Aldric who looked up first, feeling that despite their expressions of astonishment the knife’s presence didn’t surprise anyone. The whole affair had been stage-managed from the start, as deliberate as the choice of overrobe he wore. He ducked down, picked up the knife and turned it over in his fingers once or twice, then returned it to the sheath stitched inside the boot’s laced and buckled top.

  “Thank you.” The remark was addressed to nobody in particular, and so neutrally voiced that it was impossible to tell if he was pleased, amused, or blazing with anger. The big servant glowered at him, and Aldric took note of the diagonal belt across his chest supporting a makher, the leaf-bladed shortsword favoured by the Drusalan military. So she has an escort after all. But one I can handle. Size is just more meat for the blade. He met the other stare for stare and it was the bigger man whose gaze dropped first. No satisfaction at the small victory showed on Aldric’s face by even a flicker of eyelids, because he was growing more and more certain that someone was testing him for a purpose of their own.

  But what was it?

  “Get out.” His command was so quiet it was little more than an exhalation of breath. The servant hesitated and then, though it required a glance towards his lady and her nod of assent, he left without further protest and closed the door behind him as a good servant should. The woman remained. Aldric paused in the act of laying out his clothes on the bed and flicked a look towards her, then made a gesture with one finger, a little circle drawn horizontally on the air between them.

  “Turn around, lady,” he said, and waited until she complied. Albans were modest folk, except in situations where modesty was an affectation. Those situations usually involved bedmates, and this Drusalan female wasn’t in that category yet. Given how they had met, he preferred to keep it that way.

  “I had not,” she said to the wall, “expected a man of men who value honour to be a man who threatens unarmed women.” There was a hint of disapproval in her voice, distinct and deliberate if not quite sincere.

  “I didn’t threaten you. Not even once.”

  “You did, and I saw you do it. You held your sword, and you looked at me, and you wondered if you might have to put the blade to my neck before you got out of here. Oh yes.”

  “Was I so obvious?”

  “I hadn’t expected it of a guest in my house,” she repeated. This time Aldric said nothing. He dropped the cymar to the floor and drew fresh linens from one of his saddlebags, then busied himself working one leg into the tight-fitting trousers he wore beneath his leathers. “And I hadn’t expected such a one to need long underwear.”

  He froze, balanced on one leg with the other raised beneath him like a stork, half in and more importantly half out of the garment in question as he blushed all over. Except for his left leg from the knee downward, ‘all over’ was visible beyond dispute. His head snapped round faster than she expected, and caught the tag-end of an expression he hadn’t been meant to see. She was looking over one shoulder with an impish smile on her lips, but her eyes glittered with malicious amusement. It wasn’t honest good-humour created by her ridiculous, inaccurate but apt observation. Oh no. It was a nasty wallowing in the undignified embarrassment her words had caused. That wallowing, and the pleasure stemming from it, was stilled even as Aldric realised its existence. But the fact he had seen and recognised it troubled him.

  “Not underwear, lady. Trousers. Proper trousers.” He hitched the trews up and fastened them at his waist. “Try wearing combat leathers next to your so-tender skin, then ask again why I wear these if you still have to.”

  Without further insistence that she look away, since she clearly had no intention of doing any such thing, Aldric finished dressing in clean clothes from the skin out. Somebody had been decent enough, if that was the word he wanted, to shave him and bathe him whilst he was unconscious, so he wasn’t hiding anything she hadn’t seen. Loose white shirt and knee-length hosen came next, then the black of breeches, boots and tunic. Finally, unwilling to wear it but more unwilling to let her see his reluctance, he pulled on the wolfskin coyac.

  Its fur was as he remembered it on that rainswept day when it was first pressed into his armoured hands, payment for the death of a man who might in other times or circumstances have been his friend. The pelt was deep, warm, and redolent of the herbs which Drusalans liked to strew in their clothes-chests. Yet underneath it all was the faint reek of fire and spoiled, rotting flesh.

  The woman watched in silence as he enclosed himself in a black made deeper still by its points of contrast between white fabric or burnished metal. On someone else it might have seemed over-dramatic, but there was an aura about him, introspective and brooding, which stifled ill-chosen remarks at the source.

  “Combat leathers, Alban? Surely you don’t—”

  “Intend to do without them, or my weapons? Not until I’m clear of this place or much more confident of the company I keep. May I be open with you?”

  “I see no way to prevent it.” That derisive undertone wasn’t a pleasant thing to hear in any pretty woman’s voice, and especially hers because she was so very pretty. No, she was beautiful. Naturally beautiful, expensively beautiful…

  And dangerously beautiful, because she knew the power it gave her.

  “I don’t trust you, lady. I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this whole affair, from the fire at the tavern to your apparent generosity. For that much at least, I thank you. But I can find no proof for the feeling, nothing I can hold, nothing I can be sure of. So I have to accept your motives at face value.”

  “That’s good of you.” Her words were flat and the thought behind them probably vicious, but even though her tone scoured him like ground glass, Aldric was glad he had made himself plain. At least it proved he wasn’t as naïve as she might have thought. “And if you didn’t accept them, hlensyarl?” It was the first time he had heard that particular Drusalan word among the smoothness of her Jouvaine, and it jarred. “What would you do?”

  “What would I do?” he echoed, picking up his tsepan with the ghost of a respectful bow, a small swift inclination of his head, before slipping it into place on his weapon-belt. There was a moment’s hesitation as if considering what to say next, and in that hesitation he lifted Isileth and looped her
cross- strap across his shoulder, hooking it low so that the longsword rode slantwise across his back. Her hilt reared alongside his neck like an adder about to strike, but for all her threatening appearance the taiken was being carried in peace posture.

  It was a courteous gesture and a compliment of sorts, one understood by whoever had set the longsword on her stand with her straps wrapped just-so according to lore and ancient practice. But it was also an insult, one so subtle that only the same knowledgeable person would appreciate it, if ‘appreciate’ was the right word with insults. Wearing a sword like that in the presence of a suspected enemy proclaimed unconcern and disdain. It announced I consider you no threat in elegant cursives clear as the noon sun to those who knew how to read them.

  “What would I do?” he said again, almost tasting the words. His grin was a pleasant thing to see, but the words that accompanied it weren’t pleasant at all. “Lady, I have no idea. But I warn you, now and later, don’t press me hard enough to find out. Neither of us would enjoy the result.” His bow this time was from the waist, not an Alban obeisance but a false, theatrical sweep of movement and another insult to any who chose to see it so. “And now,” he lifted his saddlebags and hefted them into a comfortable carrying position on one shoulder, “I thank you for your kindness, and I take my leave.”

  “Leave, Alban?” He heard surprise and shock, either genuine or feigned so well that she was a talented actress as well as a seductively beautiful woman. That last was why he wanted out of her house, out of her city, and out of her circle of influence. One of the more world-wise philosophers of history had said ‘A wise man knows his own failings’, and Aldric Talvalin knew his only too well. He wasn’t an indiscriminate lecher but he was susceptible to a pretty face and striking figure, and the first thing about setting any trap was to bait it properly. Most lures merely attracted; this one, he suspected, could actively entice.

  “In the name of the Father of Fires, what are you running away from? Why leave so soon?”

  “Because as you say, lady, I’m Alban. I want to go home, and… And if this is Tuenafen, there should be a ship to suit me in the harbour.”

  “I think not.”

  Had her voice been amused, or mocking, or several other things he was in no mood to hear, he might have dropped the saddlebags and drawn on her. Woman or not, pretty or not. Beautiful or not. But she sounded, looked, perhaps was, sincerely annoyed and regretful. Enough at least to calm a response as reflex as the bristling back of a kourgath wildcat from the Alban forests. Even then he had to draw in a slow, deep breath so the thunder of his heartbeat wouldn’t come vibrating up to leave a tremor in his voice.

  “Explain.”

  “There have been no ships in Tuenafen Port these two days past. Not that it would have mattered. What with the blow on your head and the drugs my physician recommended, you were unconscious for almost three days and nights.” Her expression changed as eddies of thought and consideration fled across it, and if she really was acting then it was masterfully done. “But after all, this is for the best.”

  “Is it? What is?”

  “You being here with me, and I in your debt.”

  “For those damned horses?” The foggy recollection of their earlier one-sided conversation was growing clearer. “All I did, lady, was to make a reasonable attempt at killing myself. To no good purpose.” She tut-tutted at him and waved one finger in the air, as reproving as any tutor.

  “Not without purpose, I insist on that. Those horses weren’t just damned, especially the carriage ponies. They were – and are, thanks to you – damned fine, damned expensive and damned healthy. I owe you, Alban. Let me at least repay a little of it.”

  “Lady, I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

  “If there was a ship in the harbour today, now, this very minute, and you boarded to buy passage for yourself – oh yes, and for your own horses – you would be wasting your time. Because you can’t afford to, not since the fire. Your money is gone. All of it.”

  A chill like the touch of an ice-dipped razor slithered down Aldric’s spine as he saw the bars of a cage closing around him. But there was still one possible key that no one knew about. He forced his voice to a flat calm.

  “How much damage was done? I… I missed the end of it.”

  “Enough and to spare. The fire gutted the tavern, burnt it to a shell. Stables, kitchen, tap-room and most of the guest-rooms too. Yours among them. Somehow your saddlebags weren’t there—”

  Yes, they bloody were! He caught the snapped contradiction just in time; let her think she was playing him for a fool a little longer. But his saddlebags were always in the room where he slept. Even leaving aside his money, they contained the clean clothes and razor needed first thing every morning. So who had moved them?

  “—but once found they were investigated—”

  “Of course they were!” This time he interrupted aloud, but his sarcasm seemed almost an expected response and passed without comment.

  “Investigated,” she spoke with heavy patience, “for any idea of who you were. Because at one stage my principal concern was to find true words for your grave-marker.” Aldric stared at her and his mouth twitched without completing any of the dozen things he might have said, not one of them with words the Drusalan woman would have liked. For her part, she lifted both shoulders in an ostentatious shrug and let it go at that. Why worry now? the shrug said. You’re still alive, aren’t you?

  “There was no money in those saddlebags, none at all. Nor in your pockets. If there had been, it would have come to me for safe-keeping. Yet the innkeeper insisted you were rich. ‘Free with Imperial silver,’ were his exact words. Not any more. Whatever wealth you might have had is melted slag beneath the ruins of the inn. Now do you understand what I mean when I say I owe you?”

  “I understand I can’t pay my way in the Drusalan Empire any more,” Aldric said coldly. Either the silver in question was destroyed, which was unlikely, or was beyond his reach to convey that impression.

  “As you say. So until I repay my debt, Alban, you’re my guest. Otherwise you’re a pauper.”

  “Oh.” Aldric set his saddlebags down again and let his shoulders sag. Not all of it was relief from the weight, but likewise not all was pretence. This woman wasn’t the only one who could play a part. Everything was far too neat, far too clearly planned in advance, and far too obviously planned for his benefit – if benefit was the right word to describe it and he didn’t think it was. But for all her seeming omniscience she didn’t know everything, and in that lack of knowledge lay his one chance to get clear of this mess before the cage had fully shut.

  “I want to see my horses, lady, and check that all my gear is as safe as you assure me. Then I want a look at the harbour.” It felt odd not having used her name once despite all they had said to each other, but he didn’t yet know it. And she didn’t know his, and that was for the best. Time enough for names, even assumed names, when they could be of use.

  “I’ll have a servant escort you,” she said quickly, too quickly for Aldric’s liking.

  “I’d rather go alone.”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “No. It would be too dangerous.” He quirked one eyebrow at that. “You’re a foreigner. Inyen-hlensyarl. And people are wary of foreigners right now.”

  “I’ve noticed that much already.” His mind went back to the attitudes in the tavern common-room. “Why?”

  “Kaven var hlenseyarlek egit im-anah tlavarek egyit,” she said in Drusalan, and Aldric made sure to look blank until she translated. “The things outlanders do are not the things we do.” Odd that she didn’t trust the explanation to Jouvaine first, even though they had spoken it comfortably up until now, as if the Drusalan version carried more weight. Or maybe not so odd at all. In a strange country, inhabited by strange people, strangeness becomes ordinary or at least acceptable. He had found that true enough in Seghar and the Jevaiden, where it was strangers who
became a threat.

  “Why,” she asked, as if the answer was obvious, “do you think I had your bedroom door locked?” Aldric blinked. He had planned to spring that same question on her and glean what he could from the expression it provoked. Now it required an effort of will and facial muscles to prevent the position being reversed.

  “To keep me from running away?” The woman stared at him. Was that contempt he saw in her eyes, or was he imagining it?

  “No.” The denial was flat and toneless, “it was to keep everyone else out. Otherwise… Oh, Father of Fires, I don’t know. Call it too much caution and let it go.”

  “Understood,” Aldric lied, reluctant to let it go at all. “Now, I want to stretch my legs, check my horses then see the harbour. All right?”

  “All right.” She turned to leave, then hesitated and swung back with one hand extended. There was something nestling on the palm, a thing of looped steel and silver wrapped in white buckskin. It was the spellstone of Echainon, and Aldric’s heart came crawling crookedly back up his throat. “This is yours. I kept it safe. As I would with anything belonging to a guest.” Aldric thought she came down over-hard on the last word, but passed no remark. “It’s a beautiful gem.”

  Gem? She had called it nothing more, and the Jouvaine word’s meaning was plain enough. So the stone had kept its own secret and concealed the eldritch blue glow which would have marked it as much, much more than just a jewel. Aldric’s mind worked rapidly to make his position more secure, to explain away what she might have read from his eyes.

  “Not even a gem, lady. Only quartz, without value except for the sentimental kind. Of course it is very old, and there are those who set a price on age.” The glibness of the lies unsettled him. It was as if someone, or the stone itself for all he knew, was prompting him for its own protection. “But it’s an heirloom I inherited, and for that if nothing else I feel it has worth.” His fingertips closed on the talisman and hooked it off her hand, confirming repossession even as he bowed to her, this time in the proper style. There was nothing insulting about a formal Alban Third Obeisance, even his abbreviated version, but the bow gave him opportunity to relax the muscles of his face which felt like they were cramping into a permanent expression of careful neutrality. Only the light film of sweat on the palms of his hands might have betrayed him, but the shaking of hands was Gemmel’s custom, not his. “Again I thank you, lady.”