"Yes, please," Arlian said. He asked the footman,
"Would you be so kind as to see us out, sir?"
" I . . T h e footman looked at Opal as Black slipped away toward the study.
"Do it," she said. "Make sure he and his lackey are off my property as soon as humanly possible, and that they take nothing with them they didn't bring!"
"Lord Wither did leave Lord Obsidian certain papers ..." Shuffler began.
"He can get them later! I want him out of here now.r She stamped her foot and pointed at the exit.
"And you will not be welcome at my lord's funeral—
do not trouble yourself to attempt to attend!"
That last hurt Arlian bowed again, and strode toward the door. "For anything I have done that troubled you, my lady, I do apologize," he said. "I have but acted in accord with the dictates of my conscience."
The footman stumbled, then snatched up his lamp and headed after Arlian.
"I can't afford a conscience," Opal retorted, as Black emerged from the study with the bundle of weapons. "I don't have time."
"You have a lifetime, my lady," Arlian said.
"And you have a dozen! Get out!"
With that, Arlian left the room, die footman close behind, and Black a step behind the footman, leaving Horn and Shuffler with Lady Opal. Silently they made their way along the corridor and down the grand staircase. They saw no sign of the steward or anyone else as they made their way through the vast dark rooms; Arlian had half expected the house to be bustling already with news of the master's death.
When they reached the echoing entry way, as he was fetching Arlian's hat, the footman hesitated and then asked, "My lord, are there perhaps any openings on your staff?"
It was the first complete sentence Arlian had heard the man speak, and it caught him by surprise.
"Black?" he said. "Are there?"
"Not as such, my lord," Black said, "not unless you intend to restore the Grey House to a full establishment. But with the baby an extra hand could be of use."
Arlian absorbed that, remembering that he had been planning to sell one house and dismiss several servants. He had hardly intended to hire anyone new.
Then he looked at the footman, who stood awaiting a reply, still holding Arlian's hat. "I take it you do not expect to stay on in Lady Marasa's employ?"
"I would prefer not to, my lord, even if she would have me."
Arlian nodded. "Black, even if we cannot use him, surely we could find this man a position more to his liking?"
"Surely," Black said, a trifle sourly. "However, might I suggest, my lord, that we not do so immediately? Lady Marasa is irked with us as it is; if we ab-scond with one of her servants, and furthermore one of the witnesses to Lord Wither's death, I suspect she would take it ill and find it evidence of some sort of dire conspiracy."
"A good point," Arlian admitted. "A very good point. Perhaps, sir, you might give your new employer ten days' notice—I'm sure you can find a way to phrase that to give no offense, and ten days cannot be too much to bear. By then I'm sure my steward will have found some position more to your liking, though perhaps not in my own establishments—come to the Old Palace and ask for Black."
"Thank you, my lord," the footman said, bowing and almost crushing Arlian's hat against his belly as he did. At the last moment he remembered the hat was there and held it to one side, and when he straightened again he handed it to Arlian, who clapped it onto his head.
"Let us be off, then," he said. "And I wish you well, sir—you and all within these walls."
A few minutes later, in the coach, the impact of everything that had happened in the preceding twenty-four hours seemed to strike Arlian all at once; he fell back in his seat, trembling.
"Oh, gods and powers," he said.
Nail and Wither were dead, both their human selves and their draconic descendants, and Arlian knew that he ought to be pleased, that the number of potential dragons in the world had just been reduced by two, but somehow just now he could not see past the fact that two old men had died, two old men he had, despite his oaths of vengeance, rather liked.
He looked at his hands, but saw no blood in the uncertain light of the coach's interior.
He had not killed them, not the human portions at any rate, but their blood had been literally on his hands.
And he had slain the dragon that had been all that remained of Nail—be didn't really know how much of the human parent survived in the new dragon. It could be that a new dragon was a mere parasite, bearing nothing of its ancestor's spirit or intelligence, or it could be that a new dragon was a fresh incarnation of the departed—Arlian had no way of knowing. He had seen something of Enziet in that dragon's eyes, and something of Stiam in the other, but what did that mean!
Had he truly slain Nail?
The dragon that had addressed him in the bloody bowl had clearly held Arlian responsible for a death, but was it Lord Stiam's?
Lady Opal certainly thought Arlian was responsible for Wither's death. And Lady Opal, who had until now been a lady by courtesy but of no great significance or power, had just inherited one of the city's great estates, and had clearly come to blame Arlian for her own mortality. That might have unfortunate consequences.
She still wanted to extend her life, to become a dragonhead— that might have unfortunate consequences, as well.
And Black, whom Arlian had thought completely on his side and always to be trusted, seemed to think such a fate might be worth pursuing, as well. That was startling and upsetting—but now that he thought about it, Arlian could see how Black would think so. He had had no direct dealings with dragons other than aiding in Nail's death, and had far less contact with other dragonhearts than Arlian had. A thousand years of life, a quick suicide in the fashion of Wither's—wasn't that better than an ordinary lifetime?
Arlian had not thought so; his own life had hardly struck him as enviable, and the other members of the Dragon Society had all seemed, right from the outset, to be damaged both inwardly and outwardly. Black saw it differently, though—and peihaps he was right.
Nobody ever called Black a madman.
Until Nail's final illness, Nail and Wither had still thought their lives worth living; Nail had fought death right up to the end, refusing the offer of a quick demise, and only Wither's hatred of the dragons had driven him to his own death. Two long lives had ended, two minds snuffed out and gone, all their memories lost forever.
Two hatchling dragons removed, but at a cost that Arlian was suddenly finding hard to bear—and there were more than three dozen members remaining in the Dragon Society altogether, all of whom he theoretically intended to see dead. He saw their faces in the darkness around him, imagined them all awash in blood...
And what would the dragons do if he began to slaughter their unborn offspring? Plainly they could somehow sense what happened in Manfort, at least as it related to themselves; he could not hope to keep a campaign of extermination secret from them, and they had said they would retaliate.
They might already be preparing to retaliate for his refusal to lie to Black and Wither, and for his allowing Wither's suicide. They might be emerging from their caves even now.
Since the day Enziet's men pulled him from the cellar of his ruined home, Arlian had dedicated his life to vengeance on the dragons that had wiped out his village, and vengeance on the people who had wronged him and those around him. More than half his lifetime had been devoted to revenge. He had never, in all those years, seriously doubted the righteousness of that revenge. He had been willing to die in pursuit of it Dying, it appeared, was only a fraction of the cost Now, for the first time, he began to wonder whether that cost might be more than he could stand to pay.
And be also wondered whether it might be too late to avoid it
When he washed his hands that night he studied the basin carefully, wondering whether the image of a dragoo might appear, wondering whether he would have a chance to address his foes again and leam, one w
ay or the other, whether they would remain in their caverns.
No image appeared, and at last he dried his hands and tried to sleep.
Arlian slept poorly the night of Wither's death, and likewise the night of Wither's funeral—which, at Lady Opal's insistence, he did not attend.
On the following morning, during his regular visit to Hasty and Vanniari, he found himself impatient with the baby's cries.
"What do you suppose troubles her?" he asked Hasty, as Vanniari refused the proffered breast and continued to wail.
"Oh, it could be anything," Hasty said, cuddling the infant. "Sometimes babies just cry. I remember my mother telling me that when my brother was behaving like this."
"You have a brother?" Arlian asked, startled.
"I had three of them once, two older and one younger, and an elder sister, as well. They're all dead, along with my parents." She did not look at Arlian as she spoke; her eyes were fixed on Vanniari. "There, there, Vanni," she cooed, "it's not that bad."
The baby apparently agreed, as she changed her mind about nursing and fell abruptly silent
"What happened to them all?" Arlian asked.
"Plague," Hasty said, gating lovingly at her daughter. "I was the lucky one—I survived and made my way to the next village, where slavers caught me. I was nine."
"Lucky?" Arlian's gaze fell to the stumps of Hasty's legs.
"Well, I lived, didn't I?" Hasty said, looking up at Arlian. "And you rescued me eventually, even if you did kill Vanni's father doing it, and here I am." She lowered her eyes again. "Isn't she beautiful?"
"Like her mother," Arlian said.
Hasty's smile broadened.
"Some might say that your family was more fortunate," Arlian said. 'Their trials are over, their suffering was brief."
"But they're dead," Hasty said, looking up. "Then-joys are gone as well, and aren't those more important?"
"Are they?" Arlian asked.
"Well, I think so!" Hasty said. "What else is life for?
We have our friends and our families, however large or small they might be, and we have sunlight and wine and song, and handsome men and good food, and those are always there, sooner or later, when the pain aids. I lost one family to the plague, but now I have another, and my memories of the first, and I'm happy."
"I'm glad you are," Arlian said sincerely.
She looked up at him. "Aren't you happy, Triv?" she asked "You have all the money you could want, and this fine big home, and your friend Black, and Lily and Kitten and Musk and Cricket and Brook and me—you know you could have any of us any time you want, though you've been too sweet to ask. And you have all your secrets, and you've slain your enemies, and the Antheian magicians will do whatever you want them to. Aren't you happy?"
Arlian looked at the mother and child, both content, both with their needs of the moment met and little thought for anything more, and for a moment he wished his own life could be so simple for just a day or two.
And then he thought about Hasty's question and answered honestly, "I don't really know."
"How can you not know?" Hasty asked. "You were a slave, and now you're a great lord—isn't that enough?"
"No," Arlian said. "I never cared much about the money, save as a means to an end, or about having people bow to me and call me 'lord.' And my parents'
little house on the Smoking Mountain was more than enough; living in this palace makes me no happier."
"Then what do you want, Triv?" She smiled curiously at him, her head tilted to one side.
"Justice," he said. "I want wrongdoers to be punished. I want the deserving to be rewarded."
"Well, you're a lord," she said. "You can punish anyone who disobeys you, can't you? And you can give money to anyone who you think deserves it."
Arlian grimaced. "I can't punish other lords as freely as you suggest," he said. "And I can't find a way to punish the dragons that killed my parents without starting a new Man-Dragon War."
"Oh, dragons," Hasty said with a shrug that almost dislodged Vanniari. "You can't punish them at all, any more than you could punish a storm, or the plague that killed my parents. They're just a part of the world."
"No." Arlian shook his head. "I know how to punish them. I don't know whether I can kill the adult dragons, but I know how to kill their young."
Hasty's gaze had slipped back to her baby, but now her head snapped up and she stared at Arlian.
"You know how to kill their babies!" she said. "But the babies haven't done anything!"
"It's not so simple as all that," Arlian said, raising a hand. "Each newborn dragon has killed a man or woman—and it's a dragon. Hasty."
"But it's just a baby!"
"Not really, it... it's complicated."
She frowned at him. "How complicated can it be?
You wouldn't really kill a baby, would you, Triv? Not even a baby dragon?"
"I have," he said. 'Twice, in fact. But the first was trying to kill me, and the second would have had it lived a moment longer."
"Oh, don't be silly. No one has ever killed a dragon."
"I have," Arlian said quietly. "Enziet taught me how."
Hasty started to say something, stopped, and shook her head. "I don't know what to say," she said. "Killing babies to punish their parents is just wrong."
"Of course it is," Arlian agreed. "But these were dragons."
"And you said they were trying to kill you, so I suppose it's not so terrible," she said. "But it's still not tight to use that to punish the dragons that killed your parents! The babies didn't kill your parents!"
"But they would have grown up to kill other innocent people, Hasty. That's what dragons do."
"I thought they mostly stayed in deep caves, and only came out when the weather was right."
Arlian hesitated. The thought that the dragons might be emerging haunted him, but he did not want to tell Hasty that. It might still be possible to avert that disaster.
Still, Hasty seemed to have missed a crucial point
"But when the weather is right, they kill innocent people, and burn entire villages," Arlian said.
"And if you want to punish them for that, why, that" fine," Hasty said. "But the babies haven't done that yet."
"But they will, if they live long enough."
"Then it's not punishment," Hasty said. "It's preven-tion"
'True," Arlian conceded.
"So you aren't really avenging anything," Hasty said. "You aren't hurting the dragons that killed your family, you're just trying to make it harder for dragons to hurt anyone else."
"Well, so far," Arlian agreed.
"Well, then," Hasty said. "So is that why you aren't happy? Because you haven't found the dragons that killed your parents and made them pay for their crimes?"
"I suppose so," Arlian said, startled. He had never thought of Hasty as capable of that much insight.
"So you're still trying to hunt them down? And if you find them and kill them, then you'll be happy?"
"If it doesn't cause open warfare between humans and dragons, I think so, yes."
"Why would it start a war? Are those particular dragons especially important?"
Arlian sighed. "Hasty, up until very recently, no one had ever killed a dragon. No one knew how until Enziet figured it out. We were no threat to them, so they were content to leave us alone while they slept underground. But if we start killing dragons, any dragons, then they'll fight back."
"And start a war?" She made a face. "I hate politics.
I used to hear the lords talking about it sometimes, back in Westguard, and I always hated it. All that fighting."
"That's the way things are."
"Well, it..." She stopped suddenly, staring at nothing, clearly thinking hard, then said, "But then you can't ever be happy!"
"What?"
"Well, you can't kill those dragons if it would start a war! You can't do that. So you'll never have your revenge, and you'll never be happy."
"It might be
worth starting a war," Arlian said. "We could put an end to the dragons forever, so that no more innocents would ever die from their attacks."
Hasty shook her head. "Oh, no," she said. "If there were a war, Vanni might be killed. There mustn't be a war."
Vanniari had finished her meal and fallen asleep as they spoke, but now as Hasty made her vigorous protest the motion sent Vanniari's head flopping backward, awakening her. She let out a small wail, and Hasty quickly snatched the child back to her breast.
"I'm sorry," Arlian said. "I may not..
"I don't want to talk about this any more," Hasty said, cuddling her baby. "There won't be any war. The dragons have been in their caves for seven hundred years, and they'll stay there, won't they, Vanni?"
"Of course," Arlian said.
He left just a moment later, sooner than he had intended, and much sooner than his wont
He wished he were as sure as Hasty that there would be no war. He wished he could even be certain that the war had not already begun.
And he also wished he were as sure as he said he was that humanity would win such a war.
They would win only if people fought the drag-cms—and people like Hasty probably wouldn't. They would hide, or they would allow the dragons to enslave them as mankind had been enslaved long ago.
And the people who did so would probably be happier, and live longer, than the people who fought—yet the dragons must be fought.
Though he had to admit he found it hard to imagine how anyone, even someone armed with obsidian spears, could fight an attacking dragon. Catching them asleep was one thing, but fighting them openly ...
He decided he didn't want to think about it. He busied himself with his household affairs for a time, re-viewing expenditures and employment, but quickly tired of that as well. It was almost a relief when a footman, the young man named Wolt, informed him that he had visitors.
"Show them in," he said. "I'll meet them in the small salon."
"They asked that you meet them at the front door, my lord," the footman said.
Puzzled, Arlian said, "Oh? Who are they, then?"
"I do not know, my lord; they gave no names."
The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) Page 17
