“Nothing here for meself but yerself,” the dwarf replied. “And if ye’re to be staying, then ye’re to be buryin’ yer head in the books and the training and all the rest what goes with being a brother here. And a brother, err sister, here ain’t what I’m meaning to be, no offense intended.”
Afafrenfere wanted to argue, but he really couldn’t. He steeled his jaw and tried not to cry, and nodded as he replied, “None taken.”
The proprietor really was an attractive woman, with her copper-colored hair and those bright blue eyes shining in amazing contrast. Straight, tall and slender, she wore the finest clothes to accentuate every curve, to reveal enough of her breasts to tease. She wore a green dress this day, slit up high on one side to show the creamy skin of her strong and shapely leg.
Yes, this one was indeed a beauty.
The curly-haired little girl moved about the curiosity shop, making a point to lift and inspect every item. There were other shoppers milling about, but most wandering about briefly before exiting.
The child, though, lingered.
Soon she had the eyes of the copper-haired proprietor watching her from afar, she knew, and to confirm it, she fumbled one fabulous piece of blown and shaped glass, catching it as it started to tumble.
She found the copper-haired woman’s gasp very telling.
At the same time, the door opened, the bells set atop it tinkling, as another woman entered the shop. She, too, was quite attractive, though dressed in plainer and more modest clothes. She was shorter than the other, and with strangely wide shoulders and a head that seemed a bit too small. Her hair was thick and rich and strawberry blond—which surprised the child, for she had remembered it being more gray than blond.
Then again, it was the woman’s illusion, so she could do with it as she pleased, the little girl supposed.
The little girl moved along the aisles, trying to get closer to listen to the conversation, for the two were clearly agitated as they spoke in hushed tones.
“Too many guards,” she heard the blond whisper, though she seemed to be too far away to hear a whisper.
The little girl’s ears were keener than they now appeared, after all.
“All of a sudden,” the other woman agreed.
“I warned you,” said the blond.
Yes, she was always the more cautious of the two, the little girl remembered.
The other sighed and conceded the point with a nod. “Ever since that idiot Frostmantle decided to return to Heliogabalus,” she lamented.
“Helgabal,” the other corrected, and both of them sighed in apparent disgust.
“We could kill him and the whole of his court,” said the tall copper-haired proprietor. “Such messy business.”
“And with no guarantee that whoever replaced him would be any better, of course. More than a fair share of scalawags and fools among the Damaran nobility these dark days.”
“There is that truth.”
“There is always that truth with humans,” the blond said with a shake of her head. “So self-important and thinking that they will have a lasting effect, and a shift of the wind blows them and their pathetic accomplishments away.”
“Many of the Damarans might welcome his death.”
The other sighed more dramatically and shook her head. “So much effort and so much risk,” she lamented.
“Oh fie, let us just destroy the whole city and have fun doing it!” the proprietor exclaimed.
This time, the little girl’s juggling wasn’t faked and a piece of sculpted glass fell to the floor and shattered.
She swallowed hard, and before she could begin to say anything or do anything, the copper-haired woman was there, towering above her, glaring down at her.
Staring through her.
The child felt very small.
“What are you about, young fool? And where are your parents?”
She made a little whimpering noise, thinking the only road of survival surely lay in presenting a pathetic facade.
The copper-haired woman grabbed her by the ear and hoisted her up to her tip-toes. “I should swat you good,” she said.
And likely launch me across the city, the little girl thought but did not say, for she knew the truth of these two women, of course. A truth she had hinted at to the soldier …
“Do you have the coin to pay for that?” the proprietor asked.
Of course she did, a thousand times over, but she wasn’t about to admit that. She swallowed hard and whimpered pathetically.
“Oh, make the toddler work it off,” said the other from the counter near the door. “The shop is a mess, as always. You could use the help.”
“Bah!” said the copper-haired woman and she hoisted the little girl a bit more, gave a little twist to elicit a yelp, and dropped her back to her feet.
She really was exciting when she was angry, the little girl thought.
“Well?” the woman asked.
“Well, Ma’am?” she asked sheepishly.
Her words hit the copper-haired woman hard, apparently, for she straightened and stared at the little girl hard, and with great incredulity. Her expression seemed to say that she knew something wasn’t right. She even sniffed at the air a bit, her pretty button nose crinkling, and she looked at the little girl even more curiously then.
Yes, she had recognized that something wasn’t quite right, but she couldn’t place it, the little girl realized, and she had to work hard to suppress her grin.
“You will clean,” the tall woman insisted. “Every day until you have paid your debt in full.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Ma’am? What is Ma’am?”
“It is an expression, dear,” said the other woman. “One usually reserved for older human women.”
The vain copper-haired woman turned back on the little girl and gasped, and for a moment, the child thought she would slap her—which would likely take her head clean from her shoulders!
“Well, you cannot deny the passage of time, dear,” the other woman said, injecting a much-needed bit of humor.
“There are rags in the back,” the copper-haired woman said, and again she looked at the little one curiously, as if there was something she almost could make out, but not quite. “Not a speck of dust is to remain when you are done.”
She moved back to the other woman, and the little girl ran to find the rags, a satisfied grin on her face.
Perfect, she thought, but did not dare say, did not dare even whisper. While her little ears were not human ears, and indeed were far superior, their ears, she knew, were much keener than her own!
He was the richest man in the Bloodstone Lands, a noble by inheritance and king by the deeds of those his money had bought. Even those closest to Yarin Frostmantle didn’t like him very much, a fact that kept the man insecure, and kept the gold flowing from his coffers. Most kings had a spying network among their court, of course, but Yarin kept three at his call.
Everyone spied on everyone else. Informants were well-rewarded, while anyone smelling of treachery was thoroughly discredited if they were fortunate, thrown into a dungeon and tortured to death if not.
Long dead were any who dared to give voice to the rumor that Lord Yarin had ascended to the throne of Damara by murdering Murtil Dragonsbane, the last in the line of beloved King Gareth and Lady Christine.
Still, the circumstances of King Yarin’s ascent remained an open secret in Damara these twenty years later, and in quiet corners of out-of-the-way reaches, the lament and the hope that another in the line of Dragonsbane might someday be found was oft-whispered.
Tapping his fingers nervously on the burnished wood, he sat on his throne this day, behind the huge and fortified table, faced, sided, and lined with glassteel windows to protect from arrows and the like.
“It is just a rumor,” Queen Concettina reminded, drawing a scowl from Yarin that set her back in her seat. She dared say no more. She was the seventh queen of Yarin Frostmantle’s reign, after all, and after t
hree years in his bed, she had done no better than her predecessors in producing an heir.
She had heard the jokes whispered about the court. “Poor King Yarin. What foul luck to marry seven barren women. What odds!”
And if she had heard them, so too had he.
King Yarin had divorced his first four wives, and had sent them away to live in small homes on the borderlands of Vaasa, or even within that foul kingdom to the north. Apparently such arrangements had become too expensive for his appetite, or perhaps it was just his mounting frustration—and the rumors that at least two of those fallen queens had subsequently produced children of another man’s loins, but the last two of his prior six wives hadn’t fared as well.
King Yarin kept a guillotine in one of the hedge-walled gardens.
His fifth wife had been accused and summarily found guilty of treason for taking substances to prevent pregnancy. The claims against the sixth, Driella, were even more extraordinary, claiming that she had given birth to a son, but had murdered it in her bed. None of Driella’s ladies in waiting spoke on her behalf—indeed, none of them spoke at all, and none of them had been seen again anywhere near the court of King Yarin Frostmantle!
Even the statues King Yarin had erected in the back gardens for those last two wives were now headless.
To serve as a poignant reminder to the most recent wife, to be sure.
Queen Concettina knew that the sands of the hourglass were fast-falling. She was a young woman, barely into her twenties and more than three decades younger than King Yarin. Her family wasn’t from Damara, as she had come to Helgabal on a diplomatic mission her father had led from the port city of Delthuntle in Aglarond. Concettina’s father, Lord Delcasio, had set up a lucrative trade agreement with King Yarin on that visit, and Concettina had been the guarantee of that agreement, binding the two families in marriage.
The young woman had accepted her father’s choice and knew what was expected of her in her role. She attended Yarin’s every need, and served the court with excellence, for she had been finely bred in a house of Delthuntle nobles. She was a diplomat and possessed of great charm and warmth, and all who met her, loved her.
None of that mattered, she had come to understand, in light of the greater events circulating around her.
King Yarin wanted an heir.
King Yarin did not much like being the butt of crude jokes.
If things worsened, the agreement between King Yarin and Lord Delcasio would not save her from disgrace, or worse.
The witness finally appeared before them, an elderly woman hustled in by a pair of King Yarin’s personal elite guards, two brutish men as familiar with an executioner’s hood as they were with the fancy caps favored for palace celebrations. They brought the old woman to stand right before the fortress-like table and backed away a step, then bowed and moved to the far end of the hall on a wave from King Yarin.
“You own a store along Wall’s Around?” King Yarin asked her.
“Aye, m’lord.”
“You are familiar with the proprietors of the two curiosity shops in question?”
“Aye, M’lord, Mickey and Lady Zee. I think they’re sisters, though they don’t let on.”
“And why would you think that? They have run their shops in Helgabal for several years, I have been told, and have no family that anyone knows of.”
“Several years now, but they been there before,” the old woman said.
“I was not aware …” the king started to reply, but the woman inadvertently interrupted him, saying, “When I was …” as she tried to finish her previous answer. Realizing her error, she sucked in her breath, her eyes widening in terror, and she lowered her gaze immediately.
“Go on,” King Yarin bade her.
“When I was a little girl,” she said.
“When you were a little girl, what?” asked a confused King Yarin.
“They were there,” the woman replied.
The King and Queen exchanged puzzled looks, for they knew of the woman in question, Mickey and the one known as Lady Zee, and neither were half this old crone’s age.
“Where?” King Yarin asked incredulously.
“On the merchant row, in Wall’s Around,” the old woman answered. “My Da’s Da owned my shop then …”
“Mickey’s Bag of Holding and A Pocketful of Zzzzs were known in Wall’s Around when you were a little girl?” the king asked loudly, and he looked to the side, to the Minister of Records, directing his question to that man, a monk from the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, as much as to this old woman.
The minister shrugged, clearly at a loss, and a scowl from King Yarin had him rushing away to his trove of records. The city had been quite fastidious in keeping these over the decades, back to the very beginning of the line of Dragonsbane. The paladin kings had desired order, and so had used the offered resources of the great monastery to record the histories, the families, the merchants, and many other details of the Damaran cities, particularly Heliogabalus.
“Don’t know that they were called that, then,” the old woman sheepishly replied.
That brought a scowl from King Yarin, and he slammed his hands on his great table and jumped up to his feet.
“You don’t know?”
“No, M’lord.”
“But there was a shop—or a pair of shops—run by these same two, you say? By, what, Mickey and Lady Zee?”
“Aye, M’lord, I’m thinking …”
“Thinking or knowing?” King Yarin demanded.
“It was so many years …” she started to answer, but Yarin had already motioned to his guards. They came running up and took the woman by the arms and hustled her away.
“This is a fool’s chase,” the king said as the Captain of his Court Guard moved up from behind to join him. “A puzzle of whispers and hints and nothing more. It is excitement for the sake of gossip, and gossip for the sake of excitement.”
“My King, we must investigate,” replied the Captain of the Court Guard, a slender fellow named Dreylil Andrus. “This gossip is serious …”
“That there may be a pair of dragons living in Helgabal?” the king asked skeptically, and he snorted with derision at the preposterous idea.
“Remember the line you succeeded,” Captain Andrus warned. “Remember the name, Dragonsbane, and how well that name was earned. Little could be more damaging to your reputation among your citizens than these whispers.”
“You believe them?” the king asked incredulously. “You heard the old fool.” He swept his hand out to the woman, who was now at the far end of the grand hall. “Could she even remember her Da’s Da’s name, let alone those of two women from nearly a century ago who might have resembled these two now.”
“It is a damaging rumor,” Andrus warned. “Even if untrue.”
“Am I to capture and execute a pair of merchants on such evidence? How might that entice future merchants to Helgabal, or comfort those now plying their wares here?”
Captain Andrus could merely shrug in reply, and offer, “It is a difficult situation.”
“Learn more,” the king demanded.
“My spies are about.”
“Yes, and so are mine,” said King Yarin, an open reminder that there were always forces at work on the forces at work in King Yarin Frostmantle’s city of Helgabal.
THE LURE
CATTI-BRIE WAS FIRST TO THE BATTLEMENTS NEAR TO THE NORTHWESTERN corner of Nesmé’s wall. Before she got off that ladder, though, her way was blocked by an armored guard, a burly and brutish-looking man with his sword out of its scabbard and swinging threateningly at the end of one muscular arm.
“Here now, lass, you go back down and go find yerself a comfortable bed,” he said.
“I came in with the group who saved the Rider of Nesmé known as Giselle,” Catti-brie protested.
“Oh, I know who you are,” said the guard. “I was in the gatehouse when you entered the city. But I tell you again, back down the ladder and find your way to a com
fortable bed. There is no place on Nesmé’s wall for those who are not of Nesmé’s garrison.”
“We’ve another two friends on their way in,” Catti-brie replied.
“And we’ve the sentries to see them and open the gates for them,” said the guard. Other soldiers moved closer to the pair up on the battlements, looking to the guard captain and nodding their support.
“Ah, ye dolt, move aside,” came the call from behind Catti-brie, and Bruenor bulled his way up the side of the ladder, scrambling past her. “Got no time for yer foolishness. We’re lookin’ for our friends, and ye’re owing us at least that.”
The guard pointed his sword at the dwarf, but Bruenor never slowed, huffing and puffing up the last few rungs and hopping up to the top rung of the ladder to stand directly before the burly man, daring him to strike out.
On the ground at the base of the ladder, Athrogate bellowed a great laugh and Wulfgar clenched his warhammer, ready to take out the guard if the man moved on Bruenor.
“Ye stubborn fools o’ Nesmé make an ass’s cooperation seem more akin to that of a trained dog,” the dwarf remarked. “Ye likely got a fight coming, don’t ye know?”
At that proclamation, all the soldiers on the wall tensed.
“Not from us, ye orc-brained fools!” Bruenor said, noting their moves. “And ye’ll be glad to have us on yer side when the fightin’ starts if ye’re not so stupid that ye’re drivin’ us away afore it.”
“What fighting?” asked the burly guard blocking Bruenor’s way, and he moved aside and allowed the dwarf up on the battlement.
“Giselle said you destroyed those orcs and their allies,” said another.
“Their allies in the group that come against us, aye,” said Bruenor. He helped Catti-brie off the ladder, and Wulfgar came up right behind her. “There’ll be more, though we’re not knowin’ what they’re about.”
“That’s what our friends are out there trying to learn,” Catti-brie added.
“Indeed, do tell,” came a request from below, and they all turned around to see a sturdy man dressed in fine armor moving up to the base of the ladder, soldiers flanking him on both sides—and pointedly moving Athrogate back from the man’s path.
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