Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  Elias’s jaw tightened at the recognition, and the dark, sardonic acknowledgment of where the skill to sense it came from. He was surrounded by a riot of mournful color, and couldn’t shake the sense that it was ready to erupt into a whirlwind of red.

  Then a horn sounded, and the focus changed. Elias turned and watched as two lines of crimson-robed, armored figures approached, the billowing cloth of their vestments stirring in the unique way garments did when heavy armor was worn beneath. These, then, were the Captain’s Guard: the highly trained, elite warriors responsible for the defense of the behemoth’s late commander. Their gauntleted hands carried tall banners, the first of which bore only the simple black glyphs of the guilds known as the Twelve. After them came a riot of heraldry as the principal households of Iseult’s officer class were carried forward.

  Next, six figures walked with a bier on which rested the silk-draped form of Captain Amut’s corpse. The petals of aurora orchids surrounded the dead man, and little objects – the keepsakes of crew and family, Elias supposed – lay on either side of him in reverence. A glass apple. A simple long knife. A crudely carved wooden comb.

  Elias shifted from foot to foot, put his hands in the pockets of the black and green long coat he’d acquired for the occasion. Oath of Aurum’s pommel brushed against his arm from where the sword hung on his hip. The steel was warm today, though Elias didn’t feel particularly virtuous. In the face of vast ceremonial grief, his own emotions were muted by exhaustion and over-exposure. For all that it seemed wrong to feel that way, sometimes a body was just a body. He’d seen plenty.

  They carried it past him. The first two pallbearers were men in black robes, silver-lipped, heavy-eyed, bearing short boarding swords. Behind them, a pair of officers in pale blue uniforms walked stoically, and last came what seemed to be a priest, and the man that had addressed Harkon on the bridge of Elysium. Rachim, Elias seemed to recall. He was shorter in person, with rounded shoulders, and a limp that slowed his fellow pallbearers. He must have been dear to the late captain, to be afforded such an honor at the attendant expense of the aesthetic these people clearly prized.

  Elias wondered how the man had lost his left eye. He didn’t seem accident-prone, nor did he look like the sort of man who went hunting. But the stance, the way his face surveyed his surroundings, the lilt of his hard-edged stoicism, those told a story. Elias felt a wan smile tug at the corner of his mouth. So, Rachim was prone to getting into fights, and often enough to pay a price for it.

  No wonder he and Harkon were friends.

  Elias turned and watched as they passed him, headed for the place where the delegation from Ishtier would receive the body. Glancing down the line, he had a perfect sequential view of his crewmates: the twins, Vant and Vlana, wore simple black fatigues, their boots freshly shined, brooches he’d never seen them wear before on their chests.

  Clutch stood immediately to their left. The brown-skinned pilot was a study in practiced aloofness. Her blue hair was elaborately braided down the center of her head, and her leather flight jacket had been freshly patched and cleaned. Her arms were folded. Her gray eyes watched the proceedings with a lazy sort of interest.

  Next was Bjorn. Him Elias understood, mostly. The old white-haired mercenary was of even height with Elias, with a barrel chest and immense hands. His beard was thick and – at least today – set with rings, and his big coat was furs and leathers sewn together. They’d hardly spoken since he’d cut Elias’s hair.

  Beside Bjorn, Harkon Bright cut an understated, imposing figure. Perhaps it was the legends that clung to him, or the mixture of gravitas and mischief inherent in the mage’s dark eyes. Perhaps it was that Elias owed him an unpayable debt. Either way, the young man couldn’t look at him for long, so instead he shifted his gaze to Harkon’s apprentice.

  Aimee de Laurent had laid aside her long blue coat for dark apprentice’s robes that draped flatteringly over a slender, athletic figure that somehow managed to stand relaxed, poised, and yet brimming with a fierce curiosity all at once. Her gold hair was bound up in an intricate knot at the back of her head, and her silver apprentice’s chain was clasped behind her pale neck. She was looking away from him, just then, her bright blue eyes fixed on the procession currently passing her with a somberness that didn’t quite hide her academic fascination. Alone among the crew, she knew the full extent of the crimes he had committed, the things he had endured, and the nebulous, still foggy time before the Eternal Order had taken him.

  He tried not to dwell overmuch on what that fact meant. The emotions it evoked were tempestuous at best, sharp in their pain at worst. After a handful of seconds, Elias looked elsewhere. It was no more complex than it was with her teacher: a debt was owed. He could never repay it.

  Perhaps that was a lie, but lies had their uses.

  A voice sounded from the priest as the coffin was laid down, and Elias turned to watch. The ceremony was beginning.

  An hour later, and the young man in green and black was doing his best not to get lost in an ocean of painted faces. The ceremony had been brief. The ruling class of Iseult cleaved to a strain of the thousand-god faith that held the soul of the departed as a righteous burden that had to be carried to where it would rest. Having given Amut to his own people in Ishtier, they now celebrated his life with the candid relief of those who were no longer burdened.

  Or, at least, that was what he’d managed to suss out from the handful of conversations he’d had. Elias stood now on the black marble steps at the far end of a vast ballroom with a ceiling enchanted to display the open sky. All around him, the officer and courtier classes rubbed elbows and spoke with the unique affectations of an upper class that fancied themselves meritocratic, but guarded the gates to their status with invisible vipers.

  Elias was on edge. During his time as Azrael he had watched places like this burn to cinders in the heavens. There was no accounting for that, and deeper down, a part of him acknowledged that every second he lived was stolen time. Nonetheless, the fear pulled at him, making him tense. If any of these people should recognize his face…

  It didn’t do to obsess. Instead, he did his best to pick out who the power players in the room were. He watched courtiers move, their gestures and their posture. The secret language of head-lilts, eye-twitches and gesticulating fingers that all people spoke with their bodies. Learn, Roland’s recalled voice repeated in his head, to find the most powerful people in the room. Learn what they want.

  Elias grimaced. I’ll never be rid of you, my Lord, will I?

  He made a careful circuit of the room, affecting the stance of a simple courtier. Men and women stared at him as he passed. Eyes raked him from boots to face. That wasn’t unusual. Birth had given him physical beauty. A lifetime of hard training had honed it into an effortless grace and charm. But these traits came with as many problems as benefits. It wasn’t that it made going unnoticed impossible – the world was full of empty heads with pretty faces – but that managing that attention required nuance. One form of carriage could make him the focal point of everyone in the room. A small adjustment, and only certain people would pay any mind to the handsome man in black and green. The key was being aware of what was needed, and when.

  He adjusted his posture: slack, relaxed – Gods, that wasn’t easy right now – and molded his smile into something casual, self-absorbed, and not as smart as it presumed. The looks he received changed almost immediately. Only certain sorts of people eyed him now, and none of them in a dangerous way. Now he could move.

  It took him the better part of twenty minutes to discern who in this room had real power, but once he’d memorized a few faces, he stopped short, briefly wrong-footed standing beside a refreshment table. He was still falling into the old patterns: learn who the powerful people were, assess them, examine them, and then what?

  His own words as Azrael echoed in his ears, as if they still rang in the throne room of Port Providence. “Absolute oblivion, majesty.”

  His veneer ne
arly cracked. He wrested it back into place. Azrael had been trained to assess everyone in the room, find the powerful, discern what they wanted, and use it to destroy them. Elias still had the skill, but he didn’t know what to do with it. He scanned the crowd again. Vlana and Vant were talking to a man with the brooch of the engineers’ guild on his shoulder. No good. One of them was ambivalent to him, the other wished him death. Clutch he barely knew, and she was being happily chatted up by a high-collared helmsman. Bjorn was by the window getting solidly drunk.

  Harkon. Harkon could make use of this. He spotted the old mage standing on the opposite side of the hall, sipping a glass of some dark, amber alcohol. Elias started towards him, only to stop halfway across the elaborately tiled floor when Rachim and two other men stepped between them, and the three began a quiet, urgent conversation that was quickly carried out onto a balcony. It was well that Elias was trying to seem a bit like a foolish courtier. Standing stumped in the center of a funerary soiree – empty-headed was how he felt.

  Damn.

  Move, fool, his mind reminded him. Standing here in the open like this was conspicuous. He turned and cast his eyes about for the only other person to whom he could give this information, when suddenly there she was, right in front of him. Aimee arched an eyebrow at the look on his face. “You look lost.”

  Elias stumbled for a moment. Her eyebrow climbed higher. He offered her his arm. “Just go with it,” he muttered. She took it.

  Once they’d walked to the side of the room previously occupied by Harkon, Aimee looked up at him, fixing him with the curious stare of her blue eyes. “Alright,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s just because I know you–” they both looked briefly askance at that, it was an awkward subject “–or if you’re just that high strung, but you look like you’re ready to jump through the nearest window. Explain, please. It’s making me nervous.”

  Elias looked away, scanning the room again. “Well,” he answered, measuredly, “not the window.”

  “Oh for the gods’ sake,” Aimee placed a slender hand on her forehead. “That wasn’t an invitation.”

  “Wasn’t an offer, either,” Elias replied. Before they could digress again, he launched into as clean an explanation as could be mustered. “I was trained in the arts of the court,” he said, “rigorously, from just as early as… everything else. I have a trained reflex to size up the room, figure out who the resident power players are, and what they might want.”

  Aimee nodded, following his gaze, as if by so doing she could suck that information out of the air with her eyes. Information was a siren call to the young sorceress. “Alright,” she said, folding her arms under her chest and leaning against a black pillar, “I’m not understanding the problem, though. That sounds useful.”

  “I learned how to do it so I would know who in the room I needed to manipulate or kill.”

  Understanding registered in her gaze. “Ah.”

  “You see my problem.”

  She eyed him mildly. “Assuming you’re not going to–”

  He frowned. “Of course not.” Then he sagged back against the pillar opposite her, resting the back of his head against the cool stone. “But that’s part of the problem. Absent that mission I don’t know what to do with the information.”

  She processed that. Aimee de Laurent had a way of looking unnervingly calm when she was assessing a thing. “Well, that’s obvious, then. Tell me.”

  “That was plan B,” he admitted.

  “I’m assuming plan A wasn’t ‘kill everyone in the room,’” she said.

  “Hilarious,” he deadpanned. “No. Plan A was telling Harkon.”

  Aimee’s smile was catlike; both curious and irritated. “And now he’s not here. So spill.”

  Elias nodded. “Fine.” He shifted to face the crowd and gestured across the room. “Do you see the white-haired man covered in medals?”

  Aimee shifted closer, the better to follow his finger. She was wearing some sort of perfume. It was distracting. “Yes,” she said, nodding.

  “Notice the way he’s responding to everyone?” Elias said. “Reserved–”

  “–but cold. There’s no warmth behind the smile,” Aimee finished. “I track. But the way those people are surrounding him–”

  “–he’s someone who matters,” Elias confirmed. “Someone who holds position, but elicits conflict.”

  Her smile was cunning. “So,” she said, giving him a sideways look. “Who’s he fighting?”

  “When you see a grudge,” Elias said, “check the shadow first.”

  She didn’t need him to point. Her eyes flicked to the second figure. “So he’s got an issue with that pale-haired Violet-Imperium fellow in the red uniform,” she murmured. “And… the woman in the ochre dress, with lapis lazuli hairpins. The former of those two is more ambitious than the latter, but pretends he isn’t.”

  Elias smiled. “That’s a step further than I’d taken it.”

  “I’m astute.”

  “Perhaps,” Elias suggested, “you don’t actually need me to point out the others.”

  She frowned sideways at him. Her blue eyes narrowed. “Not fair.”

  “You’re already taking my observations several steps forward,” he said. He leaned against the pillar and leveled his gaze on her. “You’re smart enough.”

  “That’s the fun of it,” she sighed in mock exasperation. “How am I supposed to enjoy myself if I’m not one-upping your assessments?”

  Elias shrugged. “Birdwatching?”

  She swatted his arm. The first real laugh he’d had in weeks rumbled up from his chest in retort. “The others,” he relented, “are a group of identically robed individuals being sought out by half the important people in this room. They’re all wearing black samite and rings with opals in them.”

  “A soldier,” Aimee said, “a nobleman, a wisewoman, and a council of some sort.” The sorceress brought a hand to her chin and pursed her lips in thought. “With the captain dead,” she said, “everything in the webs of power will be bending towards who influences the choice of the new one.” She held up a hand to forestall his objection. “You said the next step was figuring out what they wanted, and that’s the obvious lead-in.”

  “Please don’t follow my process to its logical conclusion,” Elias said. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  She waved away the remark, focused on her thoughts. “Everything I’ve heard today is that Amut’s death was sudden and unexpected.”

  “And then there was Rachim’s tone in his communique with Harkon,” Elias added. “There are wheels turning here. Immense ones. The trick is seeing them.”

  “Why ask us here,” she continued, “if not because of that?”

  They suddenly looked at each other, and Elias realized in the snap of the moment that they’d both come to the same conclusion.

  Then Harkon Bright reemerged from the balcony and, sighting them, made a direct line to the pair. “Get everyone together,” he said in low tones. “I’ve just accepted a request to mediate the ruling council’s deliberations to appoint Iseult’s new captain. When this behemoth leaves port tomorrow morning, we’re going with them.”

  Elias’s eyes flashed to Aimee’s. And at the same time, they both muttered, “Shit.”

  Chapter Four

  Behind the Gilded Curtain

  It would have been easier for Aimee to focus on the chart in front of her if Vant wasn’t screaming in the middle of Elysium’s galley. The mug of coffee steamed furiously beside her – not hot enough, it was never hot enough for two in the morning – and the sky outside was star-dappled blackness broken only by the glow of thousands of running lights.

  “Always,” Vant shouted on his third circuit around the table. “He always does this.”

  “Can we calm down for a second?” Vlana asked. “It’s too early for yelling.”

  Vant slammed his gloved hands down on the table. “Could I get more than twenty-four hours’ warning before I’m having to do a ru
sh job flushing the chaos dampers? I was up all night doing that. You don’t want to know the stuff that came out.”

  “To be fair,” Vlana said, holding up a finger, “this is what you get for waiting a week to get to it.”

  The engineer’s mouth hung open. Then it closed, and he stared at his sister through slitted eyes. “I had to wait.”

  Vlana sighed. “You were reading trashy Kiscadian romances in the metadrive room.”

  “Oh gods,” Aimee interjected. Her hands pressed to the sides of her head, trying to banish the mental image. “I do not want that knowledge in my head.”

  Vant glared, then he pointed a finger at his sister and hissed, “It is a very sensitive piece of machinery.”

  “Not. Better,” Aimee said.

  The engineer stalked back down the corridor, passing Bjorn on his way back up. The gunner paused in the main area and simply asked, “Do I want to know?”

  “No,” the two women said together.

  Bjorn blinked, then shrugged. “Last bit with the portmasters has been cleared. Clutch’ll be casting off in a few minutes. Best you all get to your stations.”

  Aimee straightened, feeling the as-yet-unbanished ache of interrupted sleep complaining in her muscles. She stretched and yawned and picked up her papers. “Where’s Harkon? I’ve been at calculations since I got up and my brain is about ready to melt.”

  “Talking to Rachim,” Bjorn grunted. “What are those calculations for, anyway?”

  Aimee blinked twice, then held up her papers. “I decided to plot the number of jumps necessary to get us back to Flotilla Visramin based on the coordinates Harkon passed on. Not my responsibility, I know, but my brain started noodling on it last night, and I realized that the portalmages on Iseult aren’t being efficient.”

  Bjorn nodded slowly. “…Aren’t being efficient,” he repeated.

  Aimee rolled her eyes. “Oh please, don’t give me that look,” she rebuked the mercenary. “Their work is just sloppy in the way that bored professionals get when everything is rote repetition. I’m not about to pick a fight with Iseult’s portalmages, I just want to do a better job.”