Steal the Dragon

by Patricia Briggs

  When Laeth entered, engaged in a loud, boisterous and not particularly sober conversation with his cousin Terran, who was frantically trying to quiet him, Rialla fell in behind. She held out Laeth's chair and helped seat him, then stood back against the wall so that she wouldn't get in the way of the servants. In their own way, the nobles were as fascinated with her as the servants had been. They were merely more discreet with their stares, so as not to appear too interested.

  It was almost fun to pretend, knowing that she was fooling all these people; especially since Laeth had already outfaced her former owner. It was odd, Rialla reflected, that she'd never felt less like a slave than now when she was pretending to be one.

  She didn't notice Lord Winterseine until he spoke in her ear.

  "You shouldn't have run away from me. Little One," he whispered. "You know what happens to slaves who run from me. Don't think the young whelp will keep you from my wrath. I have plans for him."

  His rage boiled over onto her like molten lava when he gripped her arm… These fools! Think that they can toy with me, do they?… She was pulled out of his grasp and his mind by a strong hand on her wrist.

  "Slave girl," said Laeth in slightly drunken tones, "get me the brandy that I brought from Sianim. Terran, here, said that he's never tried Rethian brandy, despite having visited Reth on numerous occasions." He shook his head chidingly at his cousin, as he shoved Rialla in the direction of the entrance.

  She fled the room gratefully and darted up the stairs, not slowing until she reached Laeth's suite and shut the door behind her. As she tried to locate the brandy she'd just packed, she attempted to figure out what was bothering her about Lord Winterseine.

  She had expected him to be angry, but his anger had been disproportionate. She had been valuable, but not irreplaceable. His rage had a hard edge of insanity about it, and of paranoia. From the little she'd caught, she thought Winterseine was angry most of the time… perhaps frightened as well.

  When she'd speculated that her former owner was the man who called himself the Voice of Altis, she hadn't really believed it. She could now. He'd changed in more substantial ways than a few gray hairs in his mustache. Arrogance was necessary to a man who turned other humans into slaves, but Lord Winterseine's arrogance had grown tremendously.

  Finding the bottle at last, Rialla started through the hall to the stairs. She stopped in front of the dining room to catch her breath, then strode in with studied grace.

  Winterseine was on the other side of the room from Laeth, who was engaged in being thoroughly obnoxious. Rather than interrupting him, Rialla set the bottle on the table, well out of reach of his exaggerated gestures, stepped back to the wall and let herself be distracted by his antics.

  In the middle of the serving of the hot cherry torte, Laeth, who had allowed Terran to keep him quiet through the previous four courses, suddenly jumped to his feet.

  "I don't care who the princess marries; she can marry a donkey if she cares to: I just can't stomach a Darranian princess marrying that Rethian ox. The only thing good to come out of Reth in the last hundred years is this brandy." He grabbed at the bottle Rialla had brought down and missed. Giving it a puzzled look, he jumped on top of the table and managed to locate it near his ankles.

  He swung the brandy toward his brother with such enthusiasm that even Rialla, who knew that he was about as drunk as she was, winced; but somehow he managed to hold onto the neck and keep from falling off the table at the same time.

  "You, Karsten, are the reason that our poor princess is being forced to marry that brainless hunk of bear bait." His voice held such melodramatic sorrow that Rialla felt a grin tug at the corner of her mouth. So that was why he'd been making such a spectacle of himself.

  After this performance, it would be clear that Laeth would be sympathetic to a plot that would halt the union of Reth and Darran. He was hoping that he would be approached by someone who would give them a suspect for the attempted assassinations—someone other than his uncle. Rialla was afraid that he wasn't going to find one.

  Lord Karsten sat pale and composed at the head of the table, but Rialla thought that his lack of color was more from his recent poisoning than from the antics of his incorrigible brother. It was Marri who stood up and proposed that everyone retire to the music room for the evening entertainment. Terran and Lord Karsten, between them, managed to talk Laeth into getting off the table. Karsten poured several cups of something that a hastily summoned valet swore would sober Laeth.

  Laeth allowed himself to be quieted and appeared almost normal, if sleepy, by the time he finished the drink. He was led cautiously into the music room and seated in the back. Terran was left with him to ensure his good behavior.

  The music room was actually a small auditorium. Rialla felt a moment's panic at the thought of trying to fit three hundred people into it, but apparently an evening of amateur entertainment was not the highlight of the celebration. Although the room was not huge, there were still plenty of empty seats.

  She found out why when the first performer stepped on the stage.

  Two hours later Rialla had fallen into a comfortable doze that gave her some relief from the neophyte troubadour performing on a poorly tuned lyre. The performances weren't without merit. Marri was an acceptable alto, but Rialla's favorite was a middle-aged woman whose dramatic rendition of a classic monologue was eclipsed by an untimely rip in her overly tight gown.

  Laeth, who had lapsed into a convincing drunken coma, sat up and rubbed his eyes and peered bleary-eyed at the stage. When it was obvious that no one was on it, he stood up and motioned Rialla to follow.

  Rialla could hear her pulse pound in her ears, and adrenaline made her muscles taut and responsive. She'd almost forgotten how much she enjoyed performing. Before, it had been tainted by her slave status; this time she was performing by choice.

  In the men's club in Kentar, there had always been a drummer to provide a beat for her, but here she would have to dance to her own music. Laeth stopped at the bottom of the stage and motioned her to continue up the stairs. She took off her black cloak and struck a demure pose, waiting for the audience to quiet. It took time for the people in their seats to realize what she was waiting for and quit talking.

  She tested the chamber by a subtle movement of her foot, and the bells rang out with a clear and sweet tone. She had chosen her dance carefully, as the dances that she had used most often were unsuitable for public display. This was an obscure dance that one of the older dancers in the club had taught her; the story of a young girl who is lost in the woods at night and killed by a shapeshifter.

  Rialla let herself become the girl, concentrating on the sweet refrain of the bells. Her movements were soft and furtive as she snuck out of her parents' house, then light and graceful as she dodged through the woods to find her lover.

  He wasn't where they were supposed to meet; but she wasn't worried and danced to the night and the moon, accompanied by the musical babble of the tiny bells that she wore.

  In the middle of an agile leap, she heard a noise. Landing, she crouched, momentarily frightened. She remembered that her lover should be coming. Her fear changed to excitement as she searched eagerly for him. He was not there.

  With a shrug, she gave herself back to the dance. Her movements were lithe and willowy, but she was obviously tiring when she heard another noise. This time it was her lover in the form of a black cloak cleverly wielded in her hand. They danced together, laughing and passionate— until she noticed something on his clothing: something sticky that stained her hand.

  She looked at him, questioning, and saw a great ravening beast in the place of her lover. She turned and ran, but he flew ahead of her and dropped over her, knocking her to the ground. She struggled uselessly and then they were still,

  Rialla lay facedown on the cool wooden floor and panted, listening to the silence that was as much a tribute as the applause that followed.

  Laeth stumbled up the stairs with exaggerated care a
nd pulled her to her feet. He grinned and waved at the assembly, managing a credible bow that tested Rialla's ability to maintain her slave face over her laughter, and tugged her off the stage and out of the room by a side exit.

  Safe once more in the suite, Laeth pulled off his alcohol-soaked shirt and undershirt while Rialla washed her face in the cool water in the ewer.

  "How did you do that bit with the cloak where it flew up and then dropped?" Laeth's voice was muffled as he pulled a clean tunic over his head. "Is it weighted?"

  "It's weighted, but it still takes a lot of practice to get it to fly just right." Rialla sifted through her bag and finally came up with a clean tunic. With it in hand she went to the changing room and stripped out of the dancing costume. The cotton tunic felt feather-light in comparison, though it was longer than most of its kind and hung well past her knees.

  Barefoot, she returned to the bedroom and dumped the costume on top of her traveling bag. The bells protested her lack of care, but she ignored the noise as she knelt beside the bag and fought to snug the laces. "Shouldn't you have performed your drunken sot routine a little sooner? There's only one day left before we return." The bag taken care of, she sat cross-legged on the heavy carpet that padded the floor.

  Laeth flung himself backward on the bed and said, "Seeing that the primary suspect seems to be my uncle, I suppose it was better to do it today then never. Maybe another slave-training worm will come crawling out into the open, and become the next suspect as Karsten's failed assassin."

  Rialia could only see his legs from where she was sitting, but she didn't have to see his face to understand how he was feeling. "I'm sorry, Laeth. It might not be him. The slave girl could have belonged to someone else."

  "No," he replied. "I told Terran that I had seen an unusually colored slave girl arrive, and he said she was Uncle's. She died last night."

  "She might have been from somewhere that I've never been. There are a number of peoples in the far South, by the salt seas or over the sea, that I have never seen. My empathy is not so infallible that I could tell for sure she was from the East." Rialia was responding to the misery in his voice rather than out of any conviction of her own.

  "I don't doubt that the girl was from the East. It's all right, Ria, you don't have to make excuses for him. Even if he isn't trying to kill Karsten, he is not the man I thought he was. He is not only a slave trainer, but a slave trader." He gave a half laugh. "You know, it probably wouldn't have bothered me before I met you."

  Laeth sat up on the bed and crossed his legs underneath him, ignoring the damage his boots were doing to the bed tick. "I always wondered where he got his wealth, but I was never interested enough to find out. Before he inherited the Winterseine estate from a cousin, the only land he owned was a small property in the South, good for farming but not much else. Everything that Grandfather had went to Father, and then Karsten. If Uncle earns his money through slavery, it gives him a definite motive for killing Karsten."

  Rialia reached up and touched him on the knee, a rare gesture from her. "Lady Marri might not have been far off when she claimed someone was trying to blame you for the assassination attempts. If Winterseine manages to pin the blame on you, then he gains control of all the wealth Karsten holds, as well as a good deal of the power."

  He gave her a tired smile. "I suppose we'll just have to see to it that my brother doesn't get killed. Then I won't have to worry."

  The great ballroom had been cleaned and polished for the occasion. Even its healthy size was barely capable of handling the crowd of people who had come to celebrate the birthday of the most powerful lord in the realm. There was scarcely room to stand, let alone dance.

  The gentry, and the more wealthy merchants and farmers of the surrounding areas, had been invited to mingle with the powerful aristocrats. Mostly, thought Rialla as she dodged through the crowd with the cool glass of ale she had brought from the kitchens, so that Karsten could house some visitors with the local gentry rather than trying to cram them even tighter in his keep.

  She had gone on many such errands this evening, allowing her to mingle despite her slave status, but she'd managed to overhear nothing more interesting than a clandestine affair. She'd managed to avoid Lord Winterseine, chiefly because he had not sought her out, but she found herself constantly aware of his presence.

  Approaching Laeth, Rialla observed that his little group had been invaded by Lord Karsten and Lady Marri. Laeth's brother looked pale and had spent the better part of the ball sitting down on one of the couches set up here and there along the edge of the room. Marri kept her hand on his arm and her eyes lowered, like any good Darranian wife. Laeth's cousin Terran stood quietly in the background with several other young men.

  "… lucky that the healer is as good as he is." Rialla caught the tail end of Laeth's statement as she handed him the vessel she carried.

  "Indeed," agreed Karsten, "I sent an invitation to him this morning requesting his presence here so I could suitably reward him."

  "Did you offer him enough of a bribe that he would show up? If you don't express your gratitude to him, people might think that you were lacking in manners."

  Laeth's comment drew a gasp from someone, but his brother only laughed.

  "As a matter of fact, I told him I wanted to talk to him about reducing the amount of payment that the village owes me," said Lord Karsten, exchanging a boyish grin with Laeth. "If that doesn't make him show up, I don't know what will."

  "Lady Marri looks thirsty," observed Laeth laconically. "Would you care for something from the kitchens? Some ale, perhaps?"

  "Please," she agreed. With a gesture, Laeth sent Rialla scurrying back to the kitchen.

  She was almost to the door when some instinct caused her to spin around and look up. In a corner of the domed ceiling a shadow coalesced and condensed until it took on a monstrous, writhing, floating form that seemed to swim through the air as if it were buoyant.

  Someone else noticed the thing and screamed. The creature, now fully materialized, slowly twisted through the air toward Lord Karsten like a giant snake with tentacles. Then it hesitated, as if something caught its attention. At the same time, Rialla felt a tentative touch on her mind; gentle and seductive, it froze her where she stood.

  The thing shifted direction with a swiftness that something that size shouldn't have, whipping its tail behind it with an audible crack. Green and brown patches of scraggly fibers that looked remarkably like weeds hung here and there from its body, dropping off as if the creature had leprosy. The end of its tail was armed with sharp black spikes that glistened wetly in the light of the ballroom chandeliers. The only bright color on it was the red of its eyes, all six of them glittering like a king's ransom of rubies as they focused on its prey—Rialla.

  Rialla absently took a step closer to it, as it hovered slightly in front and above her. While she was standing there, the better part of the crowd fled the room in a blind panic, until the space around her was unoccupied, leaving only a knot of people near Lord Karsten on the far side of the room. It stretched out one of its black, cordlike tentacles and touched her carefully, ruffling her hair.

  There was no pain, only a slight tugging to indicate what it was doing, but the contact opened it to her empathic senses, and she knew its nature. Older by far than any creature she'd ever touched in that manner, it too was empathic. It fed on emotions until there was nothing left, then consumed the body of its victims—she could feel its anticipation.

  The creature was too alien for Rialla to pick up any but the most basic of memories, but she could tell what its intentions were; finding an empath was an unexpected treat—something it hadn't fed upon before.

  Casually, giving her no warning, it projected a stray thought, and Rialla screamed in terror that she could feel the thing absorb—but the terror broke her trance. Frantically, with a dancer's agility, she twisted out of the cord and ran. Grabbing a gilt-edged sword hanging from the nearby wall, Rialla ripped it from its mountin
g and held it in front of her with practiced ease. She could taste the blood where she had bitten her lip.

  The sword was obviously made for decorative purposes—it was ill-balanced and unwieldy. It was also, unfortunately, dull. She thought wryly that she would more likely be able to bludgeon the thing to death with the sword than cut it.

  Another black cord stretched tentatively toward her. When she struck out at it, it merely wrapped itself around the sword and tugged it gently away, dropping it carelessly on the floor out of Rialla's reach.

  Muttering a filthy word, Rialla grabbed a black cast-iron candle holder and knocked the candle off the sharpened spike at the end. The candle snuffed itself out on the floor.

  The candle holder was almost as good a weapon as the sword. The point was sharp enough to skewer almost anything, but it was only two hand-spans long. Judging from the creature's size, that was almost long enough to enrage it. The holder was also heavy; she could just manage to hold it if she rested the base on the floor. Unless the creature was as stupid as an enraged boar, her makeshift weapon wouldn't do her any good. From what she could sense, the beast was smarter than she was. Though she had strengthened her mental protection as well as she could, she felt the creature laugh at her.

  Rialla dropped the end of the useless candle holder and stepped back to avoid its bounce. Then, with deliberate calmness, she waited for the creature to touch her again. There was one weapon she hadn't tried. Though she had never done anything like it before, she knew that it was possible to turn the creature's attack against it. If she were strong enough.

  A slender cord wrapped itself around her neck so gently it almost tickled. Sweat trickled down Rialla's neck as she waited for its mind to touch hers. When it did, she welcomed it—luring it deeper and deeper. Then with a savage, desperate wrench she tore down the scarred barriers that kept the emotions of everyone around her out of her mind, and poured everything she could gather from the crowded ballroom into the creature's mind. Theoretically, if she could rid herself of it fast enough, only a token of the full effect would touch her.