Dragon Unleashed

by Grace Draven

  Estred chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t want to pick the wrong one.”

  “It won’t matter. You’ve won the three games you needed to win the wager between us. I’ve already agreed you can stay up longer this evening.”

  Not to be hurried by her impatient father, she stared at the cards as if to will them into giving up their secrets to her. “If I win this one, then maybe I can stay up tomorrow too?”

  Gharek arched an eyebrow. At seven years old, his daughter was a consummate negotiator. What a diplomat she’d make once she was an adult. The thought nearly crushed him. No matter her natural talent and intelligence, Estred would never go beyond the walls of this city, maybe not even the walls of this courtyard. Not if he failed in the task handed to him by the empress.

  “Out of the question,” he replied. “You can win the next dozen games, and you’ll still go to bed at the usual time tomorrow. You’re lucky I weakened tonight, especially when I suspect you might have cheated at the last play.”

  She bristled. “I won that game fair and honest, Papa!”

  He held up both hands, prepared to apologize, but stopped at the light footsteps entering the solarium.

  Estred’s nurse, Siora, stood in the doorway. When he met her eye, she inclined her head toward the hallway.

  He turned back to Estred. “My apologies. I only tease. I know you don’t cheat. Keep studying your cards. I want to have a word with Siora in private. When we’re done, I’ll return, and we can finish the game.”

  She tapped her small, bare feet on the floor in an excited dance and grinned at her nurse, who was standing behind him. “Can I have a bowl of honey pudding since I’m staying up late tonight, Siora?”

  The woman pretended to consider the question as if the world’s existence hinged on her answer. “I’ll think about it. Let me talk to your father first; then I’ll give you my answer.”

  Siora possessed a voice that always soothed his daughter, yet Gharek found it uncanny for no reason he could explain. Her gaze, as well, made him uncomfortable every time it landed on him. And yet he trusted her with his daughter’s care. With a single act of profound courage, she’d proven her devotion to Estred and earned a place in his household, no matter how uneasy she made him.

  She followed him down the hall, finally stopping near the courtyard entrance. Siora gestured toward the gate leading from the courtyard to the street. “There’s an Unknown outside with a message for you.”

  Gharek’s breath caught. He hadn’t expected this, not so soon. He’d heard nothing from Koopman since giving him the fee for information. Not a word, and he was prepared to extract the monies given to retain the wily merchant’s services from Koopman by force if he didn’t earn them. Not that a fat purse of belshas would help Gharek when he approached the empress to explain he’d failed in the task she’d given him. He’d simply use the money to get Estred safely out of the Empire and away from Dalvila’s vengeful clutches before she had him vivisected in front of her terrified court.

  “Did he say anything?” He flinched at the idiocy of his question.

  Siora’s inscrutable expression never changed. “No, master. All Unknowns are mute.”

  He scowled. This beggar woman made servant never failed to make him stumble in a way no one else did. “Keep Estred occupied. I don’t need her sneaking into the courtyard to hear. She’s too curious for her own good.”

  “Be careful, master. An Unknown never comes bearing good news.”

  Gharek stared at her, caught off guard. Was that a note of concern he heard? He shook his head. He was more tired than he thought if he imagined such things from the enigmatic Siora.

  He left her in the hall for the courtyard. A lush oasis within the teeming city, the space provided Gharek and his small family and staff a sanctuary surrounded on three sides by the house itself and closed off by a stone wall on the fourth, with a stout door and gate that led to the street and was barred and bolted from the inside.

  The sultry air hung redolent with the scent of night-blooming flowers. In the daylight, the garden gave privacy and a place for Estred to play and study, away from the cruel taunts and prying eyes of people who saw only her deformity instead of her character.

  At the moment, the courtyard wore a layered cloak of shadows, turning it into an eerie place, made vaguely sinister by his awareness of the messenger waiting patiently for him in the narrow space between door and gate.

  Gharek eyed his visitor, who offered no greeting or salute. Whatever expression the Unknown wore lay hidden behind a blank white mask whose only embellishments were cutouts for the eyes, nose, and mouth.

  Unknowns belonged to a mysterious guild whose members were gleaned from the poorest of the poor within Kraelian society. Offered the chance to escape starvation, prostitution, and a myriad of other miseries, juveniles older than nine clamored to join the cryptic guild of messengers.

  Such beneficence came at a high price. The Guild required that their recruits cut all familial ties, shun all friendships, and pledge their loyalty only to the Guild. They surrendered their identities and their names, as well as their tongues. Like eunuch guards castrated for their service in a royal concubines’ prison, Unknowns had their tongues cut out upon entering service. A mute messenger couldn’t be tortured into revealing the information they conveyed between parties.

  Once healed and trained, they took up their new role, mute, masked, and nameless to anyone outside the Guild. Their unique attributions made them valuable to the Empire’s aristocracy and nobility as well as the empress’s vast network of spies.

  The one who stood before Gharek now passed him a sealed letter and stepped back to give him privacy to read. No emblem marked the seal. Gharek didn’t need it to know who sent it. The faintest hint of sorcery hummed against his fingers as he ran them over the wax depression before breaking it open.

  Under the flickering light of a hanging lamp, he scanned the contents, heart speeding up with each sentence he read. To anyone else, the letter was a dull, nonsensical soliloquy. Gharek, however, read the real message beneath the mundane one. The mother-bond had surfaced in the Maesor market. Koopman requested Gharek’s appearance at his stall as soon as possible.

  “Is anyone waiting for you to return with an answer?” At the messenger’s nod, Gharek removed one of the rings bearing his family seal from his finger and gave it to the Unknown. He didn’t have the time to draft a response, and while the ring would verify his receipt of the message and confirmation of his impending arrival, its value was minimal. He could afford to lose it to Koopman, who’d no doubt forget to return it to him.

  The Unknown tucked the ring away, then silently waited until Gharek unbarred and opened the gate. Once on the street, the messenger swiftly joined the darkness, disappearing from sight.

  Gharek returned to the solarium, finding it empty and dark. A light and voices drew him to the kitchen, where he discovered Siora sitting at the preparation table with Estred, sharing a bowl of honey pudding. Limber and supple as a ribbon, the little girl gripped the handle of her spoon between her toes and tucked spoonfuls of pudding into her mouth with her foot. She giggled at something her nurse said.

  Siora’s gaze fell on him. She set her spoon down and pushed the bowl closer to Estred. “Finish up and don’t forget to put the bowl and spoons in the dry sink. I’ll turn your bed down for you.”

  Once more they met, this time in a different hallway. “I have an errand to attend that can’t wait.”

  Unlike his other servants, Siora didn’t always accept his statements with a silent nod or quiet acquiescence. She didn’t argue with him but never failed to make a point that left him with the certainty he’d just been lectured, no matter how gently done.

  “These are hours that make any journey through the city, no matter how urgent, perilous to the traveler. Footpads rule the streets right now.”

  �
��I’m capable of defending myself, and the Unknown made it here without injury.”

  Siora looked through him as if he were a window to a scene only she could see. “Even the stupidest thief knows not to touch an Unknown unless they want their entrails knitted across the city gates, and you go where even an Unknown refuses to travel.”

  All the hairs on Gharek’s nape rose. What did this strange woman see? He didn’t have time to interrogate her. Koopman knew no one else could match what Gharek was willing to pay for the mother-bond, but he didn’t trust the man to hold it for him indefinitely. He couldn’t afford to let it slip through his fingers.

  “Tell Estred I’ll see her in the morning.”

  “Of course. She’ll wonder why you aren’t here to bid her good night. What do you want me to tell her?”

  “Whatever you think will pacify her. I won’t be long.”

  The streets of Domora were mostly deserted at this hour. Unlike destroyed Kraelag, Domora was a more genteel city on the surface. Murderers and thieves, slatterns and slavers, still patrolled the avenues and alleyways as they did in the old capital, but were far more subtle about it.

  Siora’s warning that he’d battle packs of footpads never materialized, though figures observed his passing from dark alcoves. It was true he wasn’t an Unknown, but he was the empress’s cat’s-paw, with a reputation that made the city’s wolves think twice about attacking him.

  Koopman’s letter contained directions to a brothel set back from the main avenue. A grand affair, it served a wealthy clientele, complete with guards at the door to keep undesirables away.

  A guard allowed Gharek through once he uttered the password Koopman had included in his missive. Inside, a young woman, as silent as an Unknown, led him through the brothel to a set of stairs. He followed her up the carpeted treads, their steps soundless, until they reached a landing from which three corridors branched off in different directions.

  His guide pointed to the shortest, most dimly lit of the three and finally spoke. “Enter the last door on your right.” She left him there, her task complete. Had her perfume not still teased his nose after her departure, he might have thought her a figment of his imagination.

  While the hallway’s distance looked short from his place on the landing, he had the uncanny sensation he walked ten times its length, maybe more, before he stood in front of the door the prostitute had instructed him to open. A chill buffeted his face as if he stood within the swirl of a winter wind. The door lever under his hand burned with cold.

  No gateway to the Maesor market was ever the same or appeared in the same place. The sorcerers who created the gates possessed varied skills. Whoever created this one wielded a talent for manipulating temperature.

  Gharek shivered in his summer garb, depressed the handle, and pushed the door open. The busy street traffic of the Maesor greeted him, ebbing and flowing around him like a silent river over stone. A few people glanced his way before returning their attention to their tasks.

  Though he had entered and departed through the ensorcelled gates before, Gharek’s senses reeled, and he paused to gain his bearings. Behind him, the door had disappeared, and he stood in front of a stall selling the shrunken heads of various creatures, including humans.

  The Maesor’s glowing amber sky remained unchanged, and the chill surrounding the gate gave way to balmy temperatures with no wind blasting through the streets. The market’s location, a place between places, a time between times, protected it from the elements of the real world and the laws of the Empire, which made the Maesor and its denizens rogue.

  More familiar now with the spiderweb network of thoroughfares and avenues that made up the sprawling market, he found Koopman’s stall in little time. The blind guard and his ratty mongrel were as he remembered, still tasked with vetting all comers to the rug merchant’s place of business. The dog growled when Gharek passed through the entrance, but its master remained quiet, milky gaze following Gharek into the stall.

  Koopman welcomed him inside with an avaricious smile and invitation to stay for tea. Gharek eased past a stack of the vile, soul-infested rugs the merchant stocked, accidentally brushing the edge of one. He leapt away when something cold and moist slithered against his shoulder.

  “Careful with that one, friend,” Koopman said. “I’ve the soul of a pimp woven into that carpet. A man out of Kevesin Province just bought it for a handsome sum as a gift for his future mother-in-law.”

  Gharek eyed the ripple of motion oozing between warp and weft. Apparently Koopman’s customer wasn’t fond of his bride’s mother.

  “I received your letter. Do you have the mother-bond?” He wasn’t interested in niceties nor did he wish to stay in the market any longer than necessary. His heartbeat drummed double time at the thought of the mother-bond close at hand.

  Koopman crooked a finger, eyes shining in the stall’s gloom with a feline luminosity. “Follow me.” They moved toward the back of the stall, and like the brothel’s hall, the space seemed to go far beyond what one saw of the stall from the street. He stopped in front of an ornate cabinet and produced a key from a pouch belted at his waist.

  Anticipation tested Gharek’s patience as the merchant blew on the key’s tip with a gentle breath and muttered an incantation. He then fitted the key to the cabinet’s lock. The locking mechanism hissed as he turned the key one way, then growled when he twisted it in the opposite direction. A snick and click followed before he opened the doors to reveal a succession of small drawers stacked one atop the other, each outfitted with its own lock. A second key, with a spell of its own attached to it, unlocked one of the drawers.

  He reached inside and pulled out a nondescript dagger, its blade encrusted with dried blood, and presented it to Gharek with a flourish.

  Gharek stared at it, then Koopman, then the knife again, puzzled by the man’s strange humor. “What is this?”

  “Blood from the man who came to the market with the mother-bond.”

  For a moment, Gharek wondered if he was supposed to laugh at what was a terrible joke; then he noticed Koopman’s expression, excited but lacking any dark humor that came with a prank played. “Where is the mother-bond?”

  Koopman’s features froze and his grip tightened on the dagger’s hilt. Gharek tensed, waiting for a sudden lunge or fast swipe with the knife. He hadn’t come here to fight the merchant, but so far none of his expectations were manifesting as he’d hoped.

  The rug merchant relaxed his grip, and his face eased into its usual jowls and creases. He didn’t let go of the knife and warily eyed Gharek. “You paid me to keep an eye out for the mother-bond. I did, and the man who has it arrived in the Maesor this evening just as you thought he would.”

  “Did you see him yourself?” Gharek worked to control his disappointment so he could think clearly. He had assumed too much when he read Koopman’s note. A mistake he’d never make again.

  The other man nodded. “He came here, said he’d heard I might be the man to talk with about brokering the sale of a rare artifact. He was a free trader just arrived from the new market in Goban territory.”

  Koopman’s last revelation blunted Gharek’s frustration. Dalvila’s spies had said the bone had disappeared in or near that market. “Did he try to sell it to you?”

  Koopman sighed. “It’s what I was aiming for. He was jumpier than a ground spider. When I asked to see what he had, he told me he didn’t have it with him, that he’d only bring it if he were guaranteed a sale, sight unseen. I told him that wasn’t how I or anyone else in the Maesor did business but that I was still interested in setting up negotiations between him and a buyer. I demanded a blood accord from him.” He pointed to the bloodied dagger. “I used a different blade to draw my blood.”

  This trip hadn’t been a complete waste, and Gharek no longer despaired at the thought of a future meeting announcing his failure to the empress. Not yet at le
ast. “Do you think he’ll return?”

  “Who can say?” Koopman lifted one shoulder. “As I said, he was more skittish than a virgin before her first bedding.”

  Gharek glanced around him, at the rugs and tapestries with their repulsive occupants woven into the threads. “I couldn’t imagine why.”

  “Me either, but I got his blood for a reason.” The merchant crooked a finger for Gharek to follow him farther back into the stall to another small room, empty of goods and furniture except for a loom on which was stretched a colorful swatch of woven wool. “This bit of rag is useful for my line of work,” he said. “We can put it to good use right now.”

  Wary of any of the tapestries or carpets in Koopman’s stall, Gharek reluctantly edged closer, seeing nothing out of the ordinary about the square of cloth. “What makes it so special?”

  Koopman puffed up like a proud parent bragging on a favorite child. “It’s a trap shadow, smuggled out of the haunted city during my father’s youth. It traded hands a few times before I got it. It can decipher memory and images from blood.”

  Gharek recoiled. That it came from cursed Midrigar was bad enough. That it was a trap shadow made it beyond grotesque. Infused with a soul condemned to slavery and bound eternally to the fabric, a trap shadow had the ability to harvest impressions and bits of memories from things and people living and once living. If the mage who owned one were caught and executed for their sorcery, the spell enslaving the soul was broken. Owning a trap shadow carried many risks. The soul, sentient, often hostile or half mad from its long enslavement, looked for any opportunity to betray its master. Koopman obviously enjoyed a life of peril combined with lucrative payoff if he held on to a trap shadow out of Midrigar. The gods only knew what manner of entity slithered through the cloth.

  “And it can harvest images from the free trader’s blood?”

  Koopman nodded. He pressed the flat of the blade against the fabric’s surface.

  Gharek inhaled sharply as the pattern of colors shifted, rearranging themselves as if rethreaded by the hand of an invisible weaver. They snaked around the blade, drawing the blood off the steel into the fabric’s threads. A draft of cold air, smelling of decay, wafted up from the swatch. He covered his nose against the stench.