The priest led the procession beyond the wagons and out into the darkness. They formed a circle when they stopped, joining others who came out from a different place between the tents. Fes didn’t see any sign of the priest who had taken his dagger.
The chanting continued, though it was in a language he didn’t recognize. Every so often, they would punctuate the chanting, raising the fire into the night, and their voices would soar, rising higher and higher. Fes listened, annoyed more than anything. It was a waste. How much time and energy was spent on such things?
Too much. That was the easy answer.
The dragons were gone. As far as Fes was concerned, it should stay that way, with the fire mages providing the empire with their protection.
If only they had been around to protect his parents, but they’d been lost making what should have been a safe crossing through the empire, leaving him and his brother Benjan orphaned and forcing Fes into the streets of Anuhr to survive. This city had become his home, but it wasn’t supposed to be his home. And after losing Benjan…
He forced those thoughts away. It was only times like this when he didn’t have a task that he thought about what he’d lost. He needed to find the priest, reclaim his dagger, and wait for Azithan’s next assignment. Sitting here wouldn’t help him with either.
The chanting continued, the voices splitting the night, and Fes turned away.
Chapter Four
Fes wasn’t typically the person to track people through the city—most of his jobs involved things rather than people—but Azithan had claimed it would be worth his time, and the jobs the fire mage hired him for were always worth his money. If nothing else, it distracted Fes from his failed search for the priest.
It had been nearly two days since he’d seen him, long enough that he could have disappeared from the city. Taking another job might distract him, but his heart really wasn’t in it. The longer he went without finding his dagger, the more irritated he became.
The job was simple. Follow the woman through the city.
“Follow her only,” Azithan had said.
“Just follow her?” That had been an odd assignment. “Nothing else.”
“If all goes well, that will be all you will need to do.”
“And if all doesn’t go well?”
“Then you may intervene.”
“You want her to travel safely.”
Azithan had nodded.
“Then why not hire someone else? I’m not an enforcer.”
“No, but you have other skills. Besides, I think you are more than adequate for this assignment.”
Fes hadn’t argued. Not with the price offered, but as he sat here, he had to wonder what about the woman was worth Azithan’s protection.
“What does she mean to you?” he’d asked.
Azithan had frowned. “She has something to do with your last assignment. As you were mostly successful there, I thought you would prefer a chance to prove yourself again.”
“The priest?” he’d asked, hopeful.
“I don’t think she’s with him, but it’s possible they are connected.”
Now that he saw her, he decided that she didn’t look like the merchants. They had a particularly colorful style of dress and hers didn’t seem any different than others in the city, mostly unremarkable.
Other than her dark raven colored hair and her incredible beauty. She was incredibly striking. Fes had never seen anyone quite like her but didn’t think that it was her attractiveness that had appealed to Azithan. The fire mage didn’t strike him as someone who was all that concerned about external beauty. Azithan cared more about items of power. With those, he could probably buy or coerce his way to acquiring beauty like this.
Fes had to go about it the old-fashioned way, which meant that he rarely had a chance with someone like this. The last beauty he’d been with had left him. Or he’d left her. Either way, he hadn’t seen Alison in the better part of a year. It was best that way for both of them. He took jobs that actually paid, and he didn’t get in the way of her progressing with Horus.
As he tracked Azithan’s woman, Fes decided that it was possible she was someone Azithan had hired. Fes didn’t harbor any misbeliefs that he was the only person who was hired for jobs, especially when there was value in the end result. No, Azithan had a stable of people who he hired, and while Fes liked to think that he was the most skilled of them, that didn’t mean that there weren’t others who had a similar level of skill. Not all would be trackers. Some would be informants, and some would be enforcers.
She turned down a side street, disappearing into an alleyway. From here, there weren’t many other places that she could go. There were shops, and there were other homes, but there would be limitations to how easily she could escape.
When she disappeared into one of the buildings, Fes waited, lingering on the street. She was gone for an hour, maybe more, before she reappeared. This time, she was carrying something in a small pack that she hadn’t been carrying before.
If that was what Azithan had been after, he could have said so. Instead, he’d instructed Fes to follow. Nothing more.
Could that be what Azithan wanted? Was she a courier?
Fes trailed after her. When she turned a corner, there was a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye that caught his attention.
Two men approached, and one of them had a sword unsheathed. They were street thieves; at least, he thought so at first. The way they headed straight toward the woman made him wonder if they might be something else.
Could Carter be after the same things as Azithan—again?
Fes swore under his breath. And here he had begun to hope the job would be easy.
He positioned himself so that they would have to come through him to reach her. He continued to trail after her, not wanting to lose sight of her as she headed through the city, and when she turned a corner, moving out onto a busier street, the men tried to lunge around him, but Fes stuck out his foot, knocking one over. The other spun, swinging his sword around.
Fes jumped out of the way, reaching for his dagger.
The other man had righted himself and unsheathed his sword, whipping it around toward Fes. Definitely not simple thieves. These were the kind of men Carter employed.
He slipped off to the side, getting out of the way of one of the attackers, before slicing forward, sliding the dagger along the flesh of the man’s arm. The man dropped his sword, and Fes kicked it out of the way.
There was more movement, and Fes rolled, knocking down the first attacker. He went flying out into the street, and the crowd had to part around him, moving out of the way. If they took too long, not only would Fes lose sight of the woman, he’d draw the attention of a patrol.
The other man stood in a ready posture, the kind that told Fes that he had experience with the sword. This wasn’t a man to spend much time trifling with.
With his dagger, he doubted that he would be able to combat him very easily.
So he threw it at him.
It flipped end over end and caught him in the stomach.
The man dropped to the ground, reaching for the dagger, but Fes got there first and pulled it free, giving it a twist as he removed it. He kicked the sword out of the way, keeping him from attacking again, and quickly wiped his dagger on the man’s shirt.
The fight had lasted a moment, and he still feared that he’d lost track of the woman, but he found her heading into a busier section of the city. It made it even harder to follow her. Maybe that was the reason Azithan had wanted him to follow her. Had he known that she would disappear into the city? If this were only about keeping an eye on her, it would be challenging.
Fes squeezed through the crowd, shoving his way forward. Every so often, he’d pause and make certain he could still see her, but she hadn’t gotten away.
When the crowd finally thinned enough for him to catch up to her, he noted three men trailing after her.
He wasn’t a fighter and hadn’t been
since leaving the slums. Horus might have used him in that way, but that wasn’t the reason Azithan hired him.
One of the men moved forward the woman and grabbed the pack.
Fes kept his dagger sheathed and stumbled forward, pretending to be intoxicated. “I’m sorry,” he said, knocking the man over before he could grab the pack. He’d used that trick before in the slums.
The man shoved him, and Fes managed to twist, falling forward into the man and pushing him back. The other two with him helped restrain Fes, trying to grab him, but he threw his arms up as if he were falling, and they weren’t able to hold him.
One of the men tried to kick Fes, but he grabbed the man’s leg and twisted, shoving him away.
The woman glanced back, and her eyes went wide.
She started off, racing forward through the street.
He couldn’t let her get too far ahead. Jumping toward the next attacker, he drove his fist into the man’s nose, crushing it. As he spun around, his elbow caught the next man, dropping him.
Where had she gone?
So far, there had been five people after her, and if that was the way this was going, he needed to catch up to her before any others thought to attack.
He hurried along the street, trying to catch up, and found her lying on the ground, motionless. Blood poured from the side of her head where it had struck the stones, and she moaned, apparently in pain. The pack was missing.
Fes searched around the street but saw no evidence of where it had gone.
He returned to the woman and crouched down next to her. “Where did they go?”
She blinked, trying to look over at him but didn’t seem as if she could focus. “Who are you? You can’t have it.”
“What was it? Where did they go?”
“No,” she said, trying to scramble away from him.
It drew the attention of others in the street and Fes looked around, realizing that he had better do something or people would begin to approach. Plenty of people in the city were unwilling to keep street thugs from attacking, and the way he was crouching next to her, with her head bleeding as profusely as it was, it likely appeared as if he had been the one to assault her.
“Let me help you,” he said. He tried to pitch his words loudly enough that anyone else who might be thinking that he was trying something with her would realize that he was only offering his aid. He wasn’t sure that he was successful.
“Please, don’t hurt me again.”
The crowd behind him was beginning to murmur, and regardless of the job, he would need to take off and get away from her before they became unruly. It was hard enough for him to handle facing off against two or three men individually, but trying the same against an entire crowd?
He stood and started backing away.
Fes slipped into an alley and watched her get up, her hand pressed against her head, and turn back the way she came. He followed her until she reached the building where he’d first found her, keeping a safe distance. There were no other attacks.
They’d been after the pack.
Which meant Azithan had been after the pack.
Why not simply tell him?
Azithan had some explaining to do.
Fes made his way to the palace. When he reached Azithan’s rooms, he took a seat in his usual chair, waiting for the man to appear. He looked around but didn’t see the bone that he had brought him earlier.
Even the fire was cold. How long had it been since Azithan had been here? A stack of books on the table looked as if he had been here and researching recently, but there was no other sign of the man.
When the door opened, Fes was near the back of the room, his gaze drifting along the surface of the desk where Azithan kept the stack of books, making every effort not to snoop.
“Fezarn. I was not expecting to see you quite so soon,” Azithan said. As he made his way into the room, his hands slipped into the sleeves of his maroon robes, and he fixed Fes with a strange expression. “Did you finish the job?”
Fes shook his head. “I followed her. The woman was attacked—“
“Attacked? Your job was to follow her.”
“And I did. I prevented two attacks, but the third got in front of me.”
Azithan frowned. He took a step toward Fes and heat began to radiate from him. Fire mage magic. That was what he had to be, but Fes had never been quite so close to it.
“Who attacked her?”
“I don’t know. They were more than simple street thieves.” He hesitated before deciding to tell him about Carter. “Carter followed me when you sent me after the bone. And since this job was related…”
He frowned, turning his back to Fes and looking at the hearth. “She remains far more involved than she should.”
“She does. I don’t know who she works for.”
“No. Neither do I, which troubles me.” He turned back to Fes. “The woman you were asked to follow would have had an item on her. Did you see this?”
“She was carrying some sort of package, but I didn’t see what happened to it. She was bleeding on the street when I found her.”
“She was alive?” Azithan asked.
“I followed her back to her home. She’s alive.” As Azithan stayed near the fire, flames sprang from the coals. Fes couldn’t help but be impressed. He didn’t get to see fire mages working their magic that often. Few outside of the fire mage temple ever really got to see it anymore, not like they once had. With the empire safe and secured, there was no reason to flaunt that magic. “Who is she to you?”
“It’s not who she is to me, but what she was carrying.”
Fes didn’t know that he believed Azithan. “If you would have sent more than me…”
“More than you would have drawn even more attention.”
“Why? What did she have?”
Azithan sighed and turned back to face him. There was a sense of power from him, and Fes wondered why he should feel it so clearly. “I don’t know. She follows the Path of the Flame.”
“A priestess?”
“Again, I don’t know.”
“Is she connected to the priest?”
“You mean the one who has your dagger?”
Fes glared at him. Azithan didn’t care about his dagger, but Fes wanted that blade back. He needed it. “Is she?”
“Probably.”
“Then I need to find her again.”
“You won’t.”
“I know where she lives.”
“That’s not where she lives. It’s where she’s staying. The priests don’t like to linger in Anuhr for too long. They fear the fire mages.”
“Fear or dislike?”
Azithan shrugged and turned back to the fire. “Does it matter?”
“Or so much as it impacts the jobs you offer me.”
“There might be a way for you to find him again, but you won’t like it.”
“Because there’s no money in it?”
“There’s always money, but in this, I think I can offer you something more than what you’re looking for.”
“More than the dagger?”
Azithan turned to him. Power swirled, making Fes take a step back. Why should he detect that power? “I can help you find the reason you value the dagger.”
He tensed. That had been one thing he’d been careful about with Azithan. He didn’t need the fire mage knowing about his past, nothing more than what he had already discovered when he had plucked Fes from the slums for his ability to sniff out dragon relics.
But the way he said it suggested he knew something more.
What did Azithan know about his parents?
“It’s a family heirloom. Nothing more.”
“Nothing?” He arched a brow and Fes understood that Azithan knew.
“What do you know, Azithan?”
“Only that there are answers to questions you haven’t asked yet.”
“What kind of answers?”
Azithan crossed over to him and jerked back his jack
et, revealing the remaining dagger. He lifted it by the hilt and twisted it in his hands for a moment before slipping it back into Fes’s sheath. “The kind that would tell you why you’re in possession of a priceless dagger.”
He’d known they were valuable but had never contemplated finding out how valuable. There had been no reason. “The priest knows?”
Azithan shook his head. “Doubtful, but there are things I can tell you. First, you need to learn what he’s after. Then I’ll provide you with answers.”
“That’s not how our arrangement works.”
“No? You would prefer I pay rather than answer your questions?”
“It helps.”
Azithan chuckled, turning his attention back to the fire. “I suspect this will be well worth your time. But you must see it for yourself.”
“You suspect? You don’t know?”
“As I said, you will have to see for yourself.”
“See what?”
“Whatever the priest is after.”
“You don’t know?”
“Not this time, Fezarn. There are… reasons… that it’s difficult for me to learn.”
Fes debated what to do. Azithan offered to pay, but only if he completed a job that might not have an easy endpoint. If he did it, he might get more than a payday. He might get answers.
As long as he’d been in the slums, he’d wanted answers. Not only about what had happened to his parents, but about why they had traveled where they had in the first place. Anuhr had been the closest city for Fes to reach, but that wasn’t where his parents had intended to end up.
And the daggers were priceless, for more reasons than Azithan knew.
“How can I find him?”
“I believe the answers will be with someone you know well.”
He tensed, not liking the sound of that. “Who?”
“Horus.”
“No.”
Azithan tipped his head. “I know you don’t want to see him again—”
Fes squeezed his eyes shut. “You don’t understand.”
Dragon Bones (The Dragonwalker Book 1) Page 6
