by Hanna Dare
Tris shrugged. He was glad of the extra flesh on his bones — the nights were cold up in his attic bedroom. “You want some more water?”
In answer, a clay cup was flung at the bars. Tris sighed, but he had learned in the past few days to store extra cups in the room and kept the wicker broom handy in the corner.
“You can throw things and call me whatever names you want,” Tris said as he set about sweeping up. “I reckon if I were on your side of the bars, I’d do the same thing.”
He was speaking more as a reminder to himself, but the man on the other side of the bars looked up.
“Oh, are you saying you forgive me?”
Tris kept sweeping. “Just that I understand, is all.”
His fine eyebrows drew together. “You don’t understand anything about me. If you did, you’d realize how much I despise you.”
Tris flashed a quick smile. “No, you’re pretty clear on that. It’s all right, though, it doesn’t change anything.”
The man dragged out a long sigh. “Because nothing can get through that lumpish head of yours?”
Tris picked up the debris and headed toward the door. He looked back, shoulders set. “No matter what, I’m going to find a way to get you out of here.”
Tris gave him a quick nod and left, but not before he saw the sneer drop off the other man’s face, replaced by a look of surprise.
“Lost another cup, Helda,” Tris said as he returned to the kitchen.
“I suppose you can be cheery about it; you don’t have to explain to the Earl about the crockery budget.” She eyed the tray as Tris set it down on the wide kitchen table. “He don’t eat much, do he?”
Tris had eaten some of the food on his way back, but he agreed. It was the first time he could recall Helda acknowledging the man in the cell. Usually, she prepared and accepted the trays without comment.
“I tried asking him what he likes to eat the other day, but he threw the plate at me.”
“Well, I won’t be sending over hot soup,” Helda sniffed. “For your sake at least.”
He laughed. Helda gave him a sour look in return, but Tris was taking whatever friendliness he could get in this damp and distant place.
“Is that for the Earl?” He saw that Helda was setting covered dishes on another tray — this one far more polished than the plain wooden one Tris had carried.
“Aye, his lordship’s taking his breakfast in his study again.” Helda’s expression made clear her disapproval. Tris supposed if he had to look after a grand house and saw only a few rooms of it actually used, he might be cranky too. Though probably not as much as Helda.
“Let me carry that for you.”
She looked at him skeptically while Tris gave her his most innocent face, but the tray did look to be too heavy for her thin arms.
“Fine.” Helda sniffed. “I suppose you are just sitting around.”
To his disappointment, Helda planned on accompanying him to the Earl’s study. “The door to the study is kept locked,” she said. “Even when he’s inside, his lordship locks it behind him.”
“I could take the key,” Tris suggested. “And bring it right back.”
She gave him a withering stare and swept out of the kitchen.
Helda used one of the keys from the chain that hung among her skirts to open the ironbound door to the Earl’s study. She shook her head warningly as she stepped aside for Tris and his tray.
“Your breakfast, my lord,” Helda said in a deferential tone.
The room was brighter than most in the house, lit with several lamps placed well away from the shelves of books and scrolls. One entire wall was hung with a tapestry that Tris was delighted to see showed a dragon battling a knight. In front of that wall hanging sat the Earl himself at a wide table covered with books, bowls, and mortars and pestles. He had a lens over one eye as he peered down at what looked to be a red jewel.
The Earl barely glanced up at their arrival, raising a hand to wave distractedly. “Set it down over there.”
The Earl’s gesture was vague enough that Tris had no idea where to put the tray, but Helda jerked her head toward a smaller round table. It was covered with maps and scrolls, but Tris did his best to avoid them as he set the tray down.
Helda was still at the door. Tris ignored her pointed stare and tried to find a reason to linger. One of the maps caught his eye.
“I can see the valley on this map,” he said excitedly. “Shadow’s Vale.”
Helda seemed ready to hiss at him, but the Earl raised his head. “I forgot,” he said, “you’re from my home.”
“Born and bred,” Tris said. “My family raises sheep, and my sister Lily runs the inn.”
Tris couldn’t imagine that the Earl had ever been to the inn, but his eyes turned faraway. “I remember the valley well. The way it smelled in the spring and those blue flowers that bloomed on the meadows.”
Helda spoke up. “We’ll be leaving you to your work, my lord.”
“Fine, go,” he said with another half-wave as he fixed his eyes on Tris. “Tell me, is my castle still there?”
Helda retreated, shutting the door behind her, and Tris turned his attention back to the Earl. “The keep? Oh yes, it’s a landmark in the valley. But, uh, it’s not what it was, on account of the fire and all.”
“Yes, quite right, I’d just wondered if my people had rebuilt.” He seemed to forget that he had fled from the rage of his people.
“I think maybe it’s been left as sort of a monument?”
The Earl looked touched. “They are good people. Easily confused, but I know they remain loyal in their hearts.” He nodded to himself, blinking rapidly, and for an embarrassing moment Tris was afraid he was going to cry. Then his face hardened. “It was the dragon’s doing, of course. Terrifying my people and causing them to lash out at the wrong target. You must see better than most the danger of these creatures?”
“Aye, I saw up close how powerful a dragon can be.” In his head, Tris let himself soar briefly and felt the wind rushing past his face before the Earl brought him back down to earth.
“The dragon in the cell, has he given you any signs as to his true nature?”
“Well, he’s angry,” Tris said carefully. “But so would any man in his place. I’m sure I don’t know much about dragons, surely not as much as you, but he doesn’t seem like he could be what you say, m’lord.”
The Earl shook his head, his eyes dropping once more to the jewel on the table before him. Tris could see that it was roughly shaped and a dull red color, like dried blood.
“I am certain,” he said, though his voice sounded less so. “My spells, the calculations were all correct—” The Earl’s face grew stormy. “Go now. I have work to do.”
Tris bobbed his head hastily and moved to the door. Fortunately, Helda had left it unlocked. He paused, feeling like he was pushing his luck. “If you ever want to talk of home, m’lord… It’s just that I miss it so.”
The Earl ignored him, and Tris let himself out of the room. But, as he carefully shut the door behind him, he heard the Earl sigh with sad longing.
Once the door was safely shut, Helda seized him by the ear. “Whatever you’re up to, I won’t have it,” she said in a low voice. “Don’t be pestering people far more important than you.”
He rubbed his smarting ear as she locked the door and berated him all the way back to the kitchen.
The person Tris ended up speaking to the most was Marius. As the days stretched on, he turned out to be friendlier than Tris expected, though he was probably just bored. Marius had little to do with only one grumpy not-dragon to guard and a quiet forest all around them. He would go out hunting most days, bringing back rabbits and once a magnificent stag. Tris helped with the cleaning of it. He wasn’t squeamish, but he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the proud beast, eyes gone dull and the points of its antlers dragging in the dirt as they hung it upside down from a tree.
“Are you going to save the antlers?” he asked
Marius. “For a trophy?”
Marius raised a shoulder in a shrug, his hands bloody. “I’m used to bigger trophies than this.”
Tris normally would’ve pressed him for stories of dragons, but with the maybe-dragon in the cell, the slaying parts of such tales seemed far too real.
“Those dragons that you hunted,” Tris asked carefully, “did you ever talk to them?”
“Wasn’t much to be said.” Marius worked his knife into the deer with precision. “Listen, kid, I know you think you can find a dragon and turn it into your pet pony, but they’re monsters. Actual fucking monsters, come out of nightmares to hunt us down. A dragon can rip a horse’s guts out with one swipe of a claw and bite off a man’s head a second later. You hear the wings and see one drop down on you from the sky, and all you can do is close your eyes and hope it grabs the man next to you.” He turned a hard, cold face to Tris. “I know these things because they’ve happened to me. You might feel sorry for the brat in the cell, but if he is what the Earl says he is, he’d kill you without a second thought.”
“So why hasn’t he?” Tris asked more to himself. “Why would anyone stay locked up if they could fly?”
Marius looked as though he was about to say something rude, but then he stopped. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Maybe you’re the one to find out.”
They went back to butchering the deer. That evening, Tris found he had no stomach for the venison stew Helda had prepared. He’d been taught not to waste food, so he simply refused any supper and went up to his room early. He lay on his bed, trying to ignore his growling belly and imagining the sky and the stars that he knew were beyond the roof and the rain and the clouds.
The man in the cell was unusually quiet after Tris had told him he was going to find a way to get him out. He didn’t respond to Tris’s chatter — which was usual — but he didn’t insult Tris or throw anything either. He barely looked at Tris and stayed sitting on his bed, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.
Tris was from a place that had long, dark winters, and he worried that the man was getting lost in the kind of gloom that came from lack of sunshine. Tris was wracking his brain for a way to persuade the Earl to let the man outside for an hour or so when the man got up from the pallet and walked over to the bars of the cell.
Tris was crouched by the hatch, sliding the midday meal tray through, and he looked up to see bright brown eyes meeting his own. This close, he could see hints of gold in them.
Tris kept his hands well back from the opening — he didn’t want to get stabbed by any unaccounted for cutlery — but he looked at the man quizzically. “All right?”
“My name is Ormur,” the man said in his soft, deep voice.
It seemed like a thread stretched out between them, freshly spun and fragile. Tris shut his mouth, which had dropped open, and remembered his manners.
“It’s good to meet you, Ormur. My name is Tris,” he added, though he’d mentioned it a dozen times before. This was different. They were introducing themselves.
The man — Ormur — nodded and bent to pick up the tray. He took it over to the pallet and sat down cross-legged. Tris watched him, waiting for something more, but Ormur said nothing more and began picking at the food at the tray. Tris picked up the jug from the table for want of something to do with his hands as he tried to suppress the grin spreading over his face.
“I’ll get you some fresh water… Ormur.”
As he went through the door, he heard Ormur say softly, “Thank you, Tris.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ormur.
Tris kept turning the name over on his tongue until he could taste it. It seemed like a breakthrough, an important moment Tris imagined would change everything between them. He and Ormur would be allies now, friends even. At the very least, Ormur would stop throwing things.
“Good morning, Ormur,” Tris called as he shouldered open the door, the breakfast tray in his hands.
“Fuck off,” Ormur said, only somewhat muffled by him lying facedown on the pallet. “Only birds and fools are this loud so early in the morning. And you’re no bird, Tris.”
Tris set the tray on the table and turned up the lamp. He left it burning low in the night so that Ormur wouldn’t be in total darkness, even though Helda was on him about the amount of oil he was using. The brighter light allowed him to see that Ormur had smashed another cup against the bars.
“You know it’s early?” Tris asked as he fetched another cup from a shelf.
“I know you’re loud.”
“I expect that if you had dragon senses you would be able to tell when the sun’s up.”
Ormur raised his head to sneer, his face creased from the pillow. “Dragon senses? Did you just make that up?”
“Dragons have eyes,” Tris said reasonably. “And… do they have ears? It’s hard to tell. But of course they have senses.”
He kept hoping Ormur would reveal that he really was a dragon, but on some secret quest that required him to stay hidden. Then at some point he would trust Tris enough to reveal the truth.
“Why are you so keen on dragons?” Ormur sat up and stretched as Tris knelt near the bars with the tray. “Don’t all the stories say they’re greedy, lazy beasts, sitting on their hoards of treasure?”
Tris sat back on his heels. He noticed how Ormur’s tunic had slipped down to reveal one bare shoulder and averted his eyes, unexpectedly feeling a little heat warm his cheeks. “I don’t know about greedy. They like treasure, sure. But maybe it’s more about how like calls to like.”
Ormur’s narrow face scrunched in a frown. “Whatever are you going on about?”
“Well,” Tris said, “dragons are of the earth, right? Like gold and gemstones are, so maybe it’s natural they’d be drawn to those sorts of things.” It was strange that after all the so-called dragon experts, the best insight he’d got had been from old Gilbert.
Ormur’s sleepy eyes widened, and Tris got the feeling it was another one of those moments where he’d surprised him. Then he scowled. “Then why not collect a big pile of rocks? It’d be the same thing.”
“Dunno,” Tris said. “I’d have to ask a dragon.” He blinked innocently at Ormur until the other man rolled his eyes. Tris shrugged. “Could be beautiful things are a comfort to them. My ma says there’s no practical reason to plant flowers or embroider a collar except that every now and then we need a reminder that life’s not all about hard work.” He gestured at his sweater, which was the color of porridge but still had a raised cable pattern in the shape of intertwined hearts. “You gotta make time to look at something pretty, I guess.”
“That sweater of yours is supposed to be pretty? How many sheep died for that monstrosity?”
“You don’t kill sheep to get wool.”
“I think they would throw themselves off a cliff to know they were part of something so dull and shapeless.”
Tris barked out a laugh. Ormur’s lips twitched in something Tris thought was almost a smile, but he turned his face to the wall and ignored any more attempts at conversation.
At the end of every week, Helda counted out coins from a locked strongbox. She took a key from the chain that hung from her waist, carefully took out the coins, and locked it up again before giving Tris the money, as though she expected him to snatch more from the box. He was surprised by how much he was getting, though.
Helda noticed and fixed him with a hard stare. “You’re paid very well for doing very little. Just remember part of that money is to keep your mouth shut.”
“Who would I talk to?” Tris asked, genuinely curious. He hadn’t seen a single trader or traveler come up the road. He knew that there were folk who lived in the forest — the sisters who worked in the house went home each night to somewhere close by and Tris had seen a few trails on his walks — but this was an isolated place and Rivermouth was nearly a day’s ride away.
“You won’t be here forever,” Helda said in a way that made it sound like she didn’t expect Tris to last a
nother week. “And his lordship doesn’t need you spreading stories. He’s an important man doing important things — not that I know what he’s doing.”
“Have you worked for the Earl long?”
“Long enough,” she said with a sniff. Helda wrestled the heavy strongbox into its own locked cupboard. Tris knew enough not to offer to help. But with everything secured, she relented a bit. “This house was a hunting lodge for cousins of the Earl. A lord and lady. I worked for them since I was a girl.”
“That was nice of them, to take the Earl in and let him live here so long,” Tris said, “but I guess they’re family.”
Helda’s mouth twisted. “That and they died soon after he arrived.”
“Both of them? So sad. Was there a sickness or an accident or—”
Helda turned her back to him, her back straight and movements brisk as she sorted root vegetables. “Remember how I said you were paid to keep your mouth shut?”
“Aye… Oh, you mean right now?”
Helda ignored him, so Tris took his wages and left the kitchen.
Tris had been taught that gambling was a quick way to lose money, but there wasn’t much to do in the evenings and so after his attempt to cheer up Ormur by singing some old herding songs had ended with a spoon hitting him above the eye, he took a handful of copper coins and went to play cards in Yonah’s cabin.
Marius was there too, with a twig between his teeth and his booted legs stretched out under the rough table as he studied his cards.
“Hide your purse, Yonah,” Marius drawled. “We’ve got a card sharp.”
“He’s joking,” Tris said hastily when Yonah blinked at him in alarm. “I can barely play.” They both looked at him with interest. “And I brought very little money.”
“Have a drink,” Yonah said, pouring a murky-looking liquid into a wooden cup. “We’re just passing the time anyway.”
