by Devin Hanson
“That won’t work,” Andrew said after watching her for a minute.
“I do not understand,” Iria panted. “It is just leather, and not much of it. How is it so strong?”
“Alchemy,” Jules answered.
“More precisely,” Andrew added, “it was created with rune words.”
“Andrew,” Jules frowned, “is it right to tell her about it?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “If there is one thing that is going to change, it is the veil around alchemy.” He looked as if he was going to say more, then shook his head and turned away. He sighed. “I don’t know what being a Dragon Speaker means,” he said softly, almost to himself, “I don’t know what the future will bring. But if Iria knowing more about alchemy makes the difference between success and failure, I’ll burn before I hold my silence because of a tradition of jealous secrecy.”
Jules held up her hands in a placating gesture. “You’re right. We’ve got a bit of a walk before we reach the city walls. Iria, what would you like to know about alchemy?”
Iria looked back and forth between the Speaker and the Lady Vierra. Andrew seemed mollified, and Iria was struck once more by how quickly the noblewoman ceded to the Speaker’s demands. Among Maari nobles, blood would be spilled before a giving way to anyone but the Emperor himself. “I do not know. The beginning is as good a place as any other.”
“The beginning.” Jules nodded. “Very well.”
The sun had drifted down below the horizon before the immense blue walls of Khar Bora rose to block the night sky. Under the red light of Maeis, the walls were stark ebony. It would not be until Romeda rose that any detail would be visible on the walls, and then they would be luminescent, practically glowing in the matching light.
As promised, Jules had delivered a dissertation on the subject of alchemy. She was a gifted instructor, whereas Andrew’s attempts to add to what she was saying only confused things and muddied the understanding Iria was forming. Fortunately, he seemed to recognize his shortcoming and let Jules do the talking.
All her life, Iria had thought that alchemy was unnatural, a perversion of truth and a twisting of reality. Really, though, alchemy was only partially that. It was true that it changed reality, making iron as light as a feather, glass stronger than cast iron and thin leather strips stronger than all the force Iria could bring to bear, and hundreds of other alterations and uses. But it was not unnatural, not in the sense that she had always assumed.
Nature was what she could see about her, the true condition of things. Alchemy represented a second nature, one that she was not usually exposed to, but it was nature all the same. Dragons were as much a part of the world as humans were, and condemning anything that behaved as dragons did was silly and close-minded.
It would take some getting used to.
The gates they finally arrived at were closed against the night. A guard challenged them and refused to open the gate until Iria drew out her balai badge. The guard’s attitude underwent an immediate revision and the gates were opened smartly.
From the outside, the city looked much like Nok Norrah, if more impressive. An imposing stone wall several stories tall circled the city, much as Nok Norrah’s did, but where the northern city was home to over a hundred thousand humans, Khar Bora housed nearly half a million. The city walls stretched for miles along the coast of the Silent Sea, studded with gates and sally ports, bastions and bulwarks, the whole stretch painted a brilliant blue.
Once inside the wall, the differences between the cities became even more pronounced. Nok Norrah was a cultural backwater, little more than a way station to the true heart of the Maari Empire. The people of Nas Shahr revered science, and in Khar Bora, they had built a monument to that craft.
Iria smiled to herself as she led her Salian companions through the streets of the city. They were awed by the soaring architecture, the intricate stonework and the precise engineering. Stone was the only building material the Maari had in plenty, and they had perfected its use.
The western end of the city rose slowly up to a promontory overlooking the Silent Sea and the Emperor’s Palace soared skyward on top of it, the Palace of a Thousand Arches. The entire palace was constructed of red marble and, by Imperial decree, no other structures in Khar Bora were allowed to be built with it. Under the red light of Maeis, the palace shone, a crimson beacon in the night.
The palace was Iria’s destination. As they worked their way up the slope, the nature of the buildings changed. The architecture to the east was solid and impressive, but the wealthy in the city migrated westward, and their commissioned architecture, while not daring to surpass the palace, took on the delicate styles and prevalence of arches until the whole approach up the promontory was a lacework of soaring stone.
There were other signs of the technological prowess of the Maari, but they were so commonplace to Iria that she couldn’t figure out why the two Salians were stopped on the side of a bridge, staring down at a party being thrown by some wealthy magnate.
“What?” Iria asked, “What is it?”
“Those lights,” Jules exclaimed, pointing excitedly, “they do not have a fuel source! No oil or gas is being supplied to them.”
“It’s probably in those thin pipes the lamps are hanging from,” Andrew argued. “They must be made from a very thin-walled metal.”
It took Iria a few seconds to figure out what they were discussing. There were no pipes, what were they talking about? “Jules is right,” she said, guiding them away from the party before one of the nobles attending took offense at their ogling. “There is no fuel as you would think of it; it is a dynamotive light. Those are braided copper strands holding them aloft, not pipes.”
“I’ve never heard of that before,” Jules said. “What is dynamotive?”
Iria shrugged. Science for its own sake had never interested her, preferring to spend her time outside. The invention of the lights had happened sometime before she was born, but they were still a rich man’s toy, expensive and dangerous. If you stayed in Khar Bora for any length of time, you were bound to hear wild tales of new ways to use the dynamotive force, everything from rapid-fire crossbows to flying. She chose to ignore the rumor mill as much as possible, but progress was made in spurts and starts.
“It is beyond my knowledge,” Iria admitted.
Andrew lingered, walking backwards to keep the party in view as long as possible. “This city is incredible,” he said after the glow from the lights faded behind. “In Andronath, the things people do with alchemy are amazing, but in the end, it’s just alchemy. This… this is humans making their own way, without the power of vitae.”
“One would think the first Speaker in two thousand years would show a little solidarity with alchemy,” Jules said with a smile.
“As interesting as the lights are,” Iria said irritably, “shouldn’t we be focusing on the hundreds of dragons about to destroy everything?”
Her words smothered the light mood like a soggy blanket thrown over a campfire. “You’re right,” Andrew said. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Iria pointed up the rise toward the Thousand Arches, a red coal framed between the buildings on either side of the street. “We go to get answers. There are those among the balai I trust.”
“The balai are in the Emperor’s palace?” Jules asked.
“Where else would they be?”
Jules nodded, ceding the point. “Okay, and once we’re there?”
“I do not know about you,” Iria replied, “but I could use a bath and a doctor.”
The Palace of a Thousand Arches may not have actually contained a thousand arches, but Andrew would be burned if it wasn’t close. Counting stories was pointless, as the builders had used the myriad arches to lead to as many different elevations as there were arches. There were so many clever uses for the arches that Andrew soon stopped trying to count and simply enjoyed the new sights as they came.
Iria led them without hesitation through the maze-like st
ructure, up ramps, down spiraling staircases, across narrow bridges and through galleries until Andrew was completely lost. Eventually, they stopped going up and started going down. The palace had as much square-footage below ground as it did above. The people they passed were dressed in armor and flowing dun robes rather than the silks and gauzes of the higher floors. Sand masks were in evidence, though only a few in a great hurry actually wore them, and the people parted to let them go by without comment or instruction.
Deep atriums had been carved down into the promontory; galleries and rooms were carved into the sides a score of levels down. In this more utilitarian section of the palace, the arch theme had been forsaken in favor of stark functionality. The depths inside the promontory embodied a simple demand for space in proximity to the palace.
Andrew followed Iria off the thoroughfare through a side passage into a courtyard with an atrium passing through the center. People in dun robes smiled at Iria and a few waved a greeting as she passed, but the bustle of the thoroughfare was gone, replaced by a feeling of calm lassitude. Andrew saw a girl in a yellow dress serving drinks to a table and slowly realized that the whole courtyard was the common room of an inn, but on a scale he had never imagined.
Iria flagged down one of the yellow-uniformed waiters and spoke a few words in rapid Maari. The woman bobbed a bow and moved swiftly off to disappear into one of the dozens of doors encircling the courtyard.
“What is this place?” Jules asked.
“The Sunken Flagon,” Iria said, “The closest thing I have to a home.”
“You live in an inn?” Andrew asked, puzzled.
“Balai do not stay in one place very much. What would I do with a house that I only visit a few times a year? Most balai without families live in places like this when they are not on assignment. The innkeeper, Nasim, keeps my belongings, such as they are, while I am away. Ah, here she comes now.”
Andrew was expecting a portly fellow with an apron and flour dust on his hands. Nasim did not fit those expectations in the least. Six foot eight, Nasim was taller than Andrew, her hair braided back along one half of her head, a scar running from her chin up through one eye covered with an eyepatch and disappearing into her hair. Despite her size and profession, she moved with a predatory grace as if she was on the brink of picking up one of her chairs and getting into a brawl with it. Her apron seemed out of place next to her broad, scarred hands and wide shoulders.
The towering innkeeper scooped Iria into a bearhug, sweeping the diminutive balai off her feet. Andrew heard ribs creak from where he was standing. After an exchange of Maari too fast and nuanced for Andrew to follow, Iria bid the innkeeper a farewell, promising to come back out for food and talk after they had washed the sweat of their travels away. Nasim handed Iria a keyring with a pair of weighty keys on it and waved them off, pantomiming holding her nose against Iria’s stink.
“Not what I expected,” Andrew commented after Iria glanced at the wooden placard on the keyring and moved off into the depths of the inn. The hallways here were higher than Andrew could leap to touch and wide enough to swing a sword in comfortably. Doors were spaced frugally along the hallway, promising spacious rooms.
“Nasim was my mentor when I joined the balai. She took over the inn after she lost the eye in a border skirmish to the south across the Silent Sea,” Iria explained.
“Is this the same kind of arrangement you had with Jeb back in Nok Norrah?” Jules asked.
“It is wise to have allies in the cities you travel to,” Iria said simply. “Here, this is us.”
The balai unlocked a door and pushed it open, revealing a suite with vaulted ceilings, the rough-hewn granite walls and floors softened by thick rugs and polished wooden furniture. Despite being hundreds of feet below the surface, the air was fresh and there was none of the dampness Andrew associated with caves. The walls had, much to Andrew’s disappointment, normal oil lamps rather than the dynamotive lamps, but there were enough of them to make the rooms bright.
“Oh, this is lovely,” Jules exclaimed, “I can see why you would choose to live here.”
The suite had two bedrooms, the smaller of which Andrew was directed to. He dropped his travel pack on the chest at the foot of the bed and stripped down to give himself a vigorous sponge bath. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten for hours. Bending over to wash made him realize how battered his muscles were after that dragon ride through the real land.
He missed Ava. The great dragon was never far from his thoughts, but the absence of her solid presence was an ache like a recently knocked out tooth. The desert dragons were awesome in their power, but even Nerivakosso paled in comparison to Ava. Still, he didn’t regret the chain of decisions that led to Khar Bora. He wanted to help people, to create a world where man could live in safety. He was doing exactly that, and while there were downsides, he felt deeply satisfied with his life as it was in a way that the Andrew of a year ago would never have dreamed possible.
Andrew was getting dressed in the cleanest clothes he had, moving gingerly to favor the muscles in the small of his back when someone rapped on his door.
“Yeah, I’ll be out in a second,” he called, and pushed his way through a few seconds later, still tucking in his shirt tails. He stopped in his tracks, eyes wide.
Jules laughed at the look on his face and gave a little twirl. “Iria had clothes that fit. How do I look?”
Andrew swallowed before he could trust his voice. “Good. Uh, you look good.” Jules had on some sort of green wrap-about that made her eyes brilliant against her tanned skin; it was a layered silken garment, diaphanous but opaque, the light coming from behind her hinted at curves and the weight of her breasts. A high slit in the side of the skirt showed a long length of leg as she spun. Light desert sandals the same as those Iria wore peeked out from beneath the hem.
“Told you,” Iria said.
Andrew’s eyes snapped to the balai, his cheeks reddening. “You look nice as well, Iria,” Andrew said quickly, and it was true, she did. She was dressed more simply, in a deep blue, and for the first time she looked comfortable, her guard relaxed. It changed the way she looked, smoothed the hard planes of her face and the iron in her eyes was softened, if not totally gone. Her figure wasn’t as full as Jules’s, but he was a little surprised at how much the leathers and robes she usually wore hid her body. Even as the words left his mouth, Andrew knew he had made a mistake, but Iria only rolled her eyes and walked out of the suite.
“Smooth,” Jules said with a smile and a twinkle in her eye. “Hungry?”
“Starved,” Andrew replied, thankful for the reprieve.
“Then come on, let’s get some food.”
Jules slipped one hand inside Andrew’s elbow and frogmarched him out of the suite. For his part, Andrew tried not to step on the hem of her dress and struggled to think about anything besides the warmth of the woman on his arm.
Chapter 15
To Catch a Dragon by the Tail
By the time Andrew finished eating, he couldn’t feel his mouth. The burn from the peppers hadn’t so much faded as driven his nerve endings into apathy; the burn was still there, but his nerves were too fried to properly telegraph the pain.
Jules, it seemed, wasn’t having the same problem. Or maybe she had simply eaten less of the peppery meat. She sat across from Andrew, radiant in her dress, attracting stares from all over the courtyard. They had a table in a corner which drastically cut down the number of people walking by, but to Andrew, it seemed that an inordinate number of men suddenly had pressing business in the vicinity.
Still, the closest table was a solid thirty feet away, and they had as much privacy as could be expected in a city as crowded as Khar Bora. As he ate, Andrew found his eyes constantly returning to Jules. He had grown used to her as a travel companion, and had thought himself past being stupefied by her looks. It wasn’t even that she was beautiful, though she was, or that the dress hinted at things that left his pulse pounding and his
mouth dry, though it did.
It was, he finally decided, that she was trying to be attractive. And that put a whole new spin on things. The Lady Vierra and he had been to some incredibly strange places together and had developed a relationship over time that was deeper than friendship. There had been some casual flirting and Andrew had usually been the one to draw the line, painfully aware of his social standing. What was Jules going to do? Bring him home to her father? What would he say?
Circumstances were different, now. He might not have a noble title, but being a Dragon Speaker brought with it an undeniable power, both physically and in the Alchemists Guild. Andrew Condign, dung collector, could never be with Jules Vierra, Salian noblewoman. Andrew Condign, Dragon Speaker, on the other hand, could.
Never once since he had first met Jules had the noblewoman made an effort to be attractive. That wasn’t to say she didn’t turn heads and put other woman to shame by her simple presence, but that was very different from consciously working at it. And there was no doubt that she was doing it for him. Her glances and smiles for him were enough to make him sure of that.
The thought made him a little light-headed and even distracted him from the discomfort of his mouth.
He suddenly realized both of the women were looking at him. “Sorry. Um. What’d I miss?”
“The Lady Vierra was saying how it might be a good time to discuss our next move,” Iria said, her face carefully devoid of emotion. “Twice, I believe.”
“Uh, right. Sorry. That’s a good idea.”
“Where do we even begin?” Jules asked.
“We need to make every effort to gather intelligence. I asked Nasim to make some discreet inquiries, but if we need to make a scene to attract the attention of the Incantors, that might be the next step.”
“I know we’re on a tight schedule,” Andrew said, “but setting ourselves up as a target for alchemists is the same as jumping off the ledge over there. We’d never survive.”
