Dragon Weather

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Besides, Mistress, the dreaded manager of the House, had almost caught him the other day. He had barely gotten the closet door closed when she had marched in with the guards behind her and begun upbraiding Sweet for being too openly unenthusiastic about Lord Jerial’s fancies.

  Arlian had seen the marks Lord Jerial had left; he had had to fight down the urge, unarmed as he was, to leap out and defend Sweet.

  Sooner or later, if he stayed, either someone would discover him accidentally, or he would give in to one of his impulses to confront those who abused the occupants of the House of Carnal Society. In either case, he was likely to be killed without accomplishing anything.

  In the morning he would leave; he would slip out a window and be gone, bound for Manfort. It shouldn’t be too difficult for a charming, well-dressed, well-muscled young man to make his way there. The girls had spent the winter making his wardrobe, teaching him etiquette, explaining everything they knew of human nature, training him out of his rural accent, and educating him in many other ways, as well, in preparation for whatever he might encounter in his search for revenge on Lord Dragon.

  His strength had been built up by years in the mines, and he had kept his arms and back strong by carrying the poor crippled women hither and yon; he had not let himself go soft despite the luxury of his surroundings.

  Even his attic was luxurious now; obtaining bedding that was deemed too stained to remain in use downstairs had been easy, and his lamp was dented and had therefore been discarded, but was still entirely serviceable. He would bundle it all up and bring it with him, one more small addition to his fortune.

  He had a few other additions, as well. Occasionally the whores were given coins or other tokens by their customers, and Sweet, Rose and Hasty had collected a modest sum and bestowed it upon him—as prisoners here, they had nothing they cared to spend money on.

  Furthermore, Rose had taken him aside one night and whispered a secret to him.

  “Sometimes our customers tell us things,” she said. “Many of them come here drunk, after all, and then when they’ve had their fill of us they’re often relaxed and careless.” She added bitterly, “And after all, what harm can it do to tell us? We’re trapped here.”

  “I understand,” Arlian said soothingly.

  “Well, one night when Lord Kuruvan was exceptionally drunk and sentimental, he told me he was one of the owners of this place—one of my owners—and that if anything ever went wrong, he’d come and get me, and we could flee into exile together. And he said he had money hidden away, so that we could live in luxury even then. And he told me where it is.”

  Arlian looked at her warily. “I’m not a thief,” he said.

  “I earned that money for him, Triv,” Rose said fiercely. “I, and the others here. He never lifted a finger for it. And if we can’t have it, then I’d rather you did.”

  “I’d rather that you did,” Arlian replied. “After all, as you say, you earned it, not I.”

  “But I’ll never be able to get it, Triv, and someday you might.”

  Arlian frowned thoughtfully.

  “You do what you think is right, Triv,” she said. “You always do.”

  “No,” he said, “or I would have left long ago. I owe you all more than I can repay.”

  “Well, you can repay me by taking that money Lord Kuruvan hid!” she said. “He’ll probably never even know it’s gone. It’s in a keg marked ‘sour wine’ in the northeast corner of the cellars under an inn called the Blood of the Grape, on the road to Manfort.”

  “I’ll remember,” Arlian had told her.

  He still hadn’t decided whether or not he would actually try to find Lord Kuruvan’s little cache; he was already so far in Rose’s debt that he quite literally saw no way he could ever repay her, and that troubled him. Still, she wanted him to find it …

  Well, he would decide once he saw how he fared in the outside world. The money, if it was there at all, had stayed hidden for years; it could wait awhile longer.

  With or without that cache, he was ready to move on, but he knew he would miss the women here, all of them—beautiful Sweet with her joyful laughter, practical, motherly Rose, Daub the amateur portraitist who was constantly studying his face, poor bewildered Hasty, moody Sparkle … all of them.

  Sweet most of all, of course. The thought of leaving her here, not seeing her again, was painful—his heart ached every time he looked at her and remembered that they would be parting. He hoped he could come back for her someday—but still, he had to go. There were things he had to do if he was to live with himself.

  He lay back on the downy bedding, ready for sleep—when a thump and a bang sounded from below, and he snapped his eyes wide, suddenly alert.

  He heard Rose complaining sleepily, though he couldn’t make out the words through the ceiling and closed trap door; then he heard Mistress’s harsh bellow.

  “… been hiding someone! At first I thought I was imagining it, but the more I thought about it—bedding is missing, and you’ve been using up fabric without new gowns to show for it, and food’s cost more this winter than it should. So it’s been going on for months! And you haven’t been sneaking him in and out—I’ve changed the guards, and there weren’t any tracks. So you’ve been hiding him, but I couldn’t think where he could be—until ten minutes ago I remembered the attic…”

  By the time she got this far in her speech Arlian was squatting on one of the beams, all his belongings gathered into a hasty bundle. He wrapped them in a small roll of canvas Daub had provided out of her painting supplies, and bound them with a pair of leather belts as he considered his options.

  “I know he’s up there,” Mistress shouted. “Is he armed? Tell me!”

  Arlian could not make out the words of Rose’s reply—unlike Mistress, Rose was not yelling—but he could tell from her tone that she was feigning innocence.

  Mistress undoubtedly had at least two of her guards with her. He might be able to surprise them, and in the mines he had learned something about brawling, but they would have swords and know how to use them, and there might be more than two. The brothel employed six at various times, and for something like this Mistress would have summoned all of them.

  He would have no chance of defeating six armed men, and even escaping them seemed unlikely.

  He could surrender—and be put to death. Even if he was never identified as an escaped slave, he was a thief and a trespasser.

  That wouldn’t do.

  There was a third alternative, however. If he avoided the guards entirely, went around them, he might well be able to flee with his skin intact. And he had an idea how he might accomplish that. He rose—not to his full height, which would have slammed his head into the rafters overhead, but to a crouch—and began to move quickly away from the trap door.

  Rose was still protesting, but Arlian didn’t listen. He was searching.

  During the long winter he had spent many long hours, both day and night, hidden away in this attic. He had, simply out of boredom, explored it thoroughly. The walls were solid stone; the roof was good tin over heavy planking; there were no windows. The only vents were under the eaves, and quite aside from the thirty-foot drop they were far too small for him to squeeze through.

  The floor, however, had weak spots; it had never been intended as a floor at all, but merely as a ceiling for the rooms below. Arlian had noted them only to avoid them, for fear of detection, but now he deliberately sought out a board that was half eaten by ants and rot. Apparently the roof about it had leaked at one time, and the moisture had done its work. The roof had been repaired; the damaged ceiling had not.

  He stepped from beam to beam in the dark, moving by feel and memory, until he knew he had reached the right area. He heard the muffled sound of a blow, and knew someone had struck Rose, knocking her against something; his mouth tightened, but he did not stop. He moved along the beam, pressing his foot on the boards below until he found the rotted one. It was low under the sloping rafter
s, just where Arlian had remembered.

  Mistress was shouting again, but he was far enough away now that he couldn’t hear her words.

  The trap door flew open and rattled against the beams, and light fountained up. A guard’s head appeared, lit from below, scanning the attic. Arlian set both feet on the rotten board, braced his back against the roof and pushed.

  The ceiling crumbled beneath him, and he plunged through feet-first, the jagged broken ends of the boards tearing at his clothes and his bundled belongings. His right elbow slammed painfully onto still-solid wood, and he flung his arm upward to free himself, dropping farther into the unlit room below.

  Someone screamed, a loud, high shriek of terror.

  Arlian’s plummeting feet struck the edge of something soft, something he couldn’t see in the darkness, and slid off to one side, throwing him off balance; he sprawled sideways, tumbling onto the floor in a tangle.

  He rolled free of whatever he had struck and clambered to his feet, still clutching his bundle.

  The room’s occupant screamed again.

  “Hush!” Arlian called. “Where’s the door?”

  Even as he asked he thought better of it. The moon was up, and the curtained window was faintly visible, a square of dim gray light in the blackness.

  “Triv?” a voice asked wonderingly.

  Arlian did not bother answering; instead he ran full-tilt for the window, knocking aside a table that happened to be in his path.

  He recognized the voice as Sparkle’s and now realized that when he fell he had landed on the side of her bed and slid off onto the floor, but he had no time to worry about such things. He could already hear heavy footsteps in the corridor outside her door.

  Sparkle’s room was at the far end of the corridor from Rose’s and faced the street, rather than the stableyard; that was good.

  He didn’t bother opening the casement; he slammed against it with his bundle held in both fists, and the glass and lead shattered. He shoved the bundle through the opening and dropped it, then climbed up on the windowseat and turned around.

  Fists were pounding on the door of Sparkle’s room, and he could hear crunching in the attic overhead. He took hold of the windowsill and began lowering himself.

  “Good-bye,” he called to Sparkle—after all, it could do no harm at this point. “Give the others my love.” Then he was hanging by his fingers, his arms stretched to their full length, as far down as he could climb.

  He pushed off with his feet and let go.

  The fall seemed eternal, though he knew it was probably only a fraction of a second; then he slammed onto the mud of the street, flat on his back.

  He lay dazed and aching for a moment, the breath knocked out of him; then he blinked and saw a dark shape leaning out of the now lit square of Sparkle’s window.

  He forced himself to move; he rolled over onto his knees, groping for his bundle. He found it, grabbed it, and pushed himself to his feet.

  His back hurt, and one knee didn’t seem to want to work properly, but he staggered on, choosing his direction at random.

  The cool night breeze smelled of fresh soil and woodsmoke. The mud was cold between his toes, and he realized for the first time that his feet were bare—but that was hardly surprising; after all, he had been preparing for bed, not for flight. He had a pair of velvet slippers in his bundle—the women had been unable to manage boots—but he was not about to take the time to put them on.

  Behind him lights were appearing in several of the brothel’s windows, and he heard several voices shouting; he struggled to pick up his pace.

  Before him the moonlight showed him the late-night streets of Westguard—shops and houses, porches and wooden sidewalks, and streets of dirt and mud, the only color anywhere the yellow lamplight in a few windows. The town looked lifeless and empty.

  The town’s hired guards were probably making their rounds, though, and he needed to avoid them. If Mistress decided to make enough of a fuss even the sheds and stables he had used before wouldn’t be safe. He had to find somewhere they wouldn’t look at all—or some way to keep them from recognizing him when they saw him.

  And that might not be too difficult to manage, he realized a hundred yards farther down the street, as he caught sight of a signboard depicting a man leaning heavily on a staff. His pursuers hadn’t seen him clearly, if at all; they would probably expect him to look like a vagabond, as he had when he arrived.

  Sweet and Rose and the others had spent months making him look instead like a young lord, and he could capitalize on that. He limped up to the closed door below the sign and began pounding on it.

  “Ho, landlord!” he bellowed.

  The windows were dark, and the door was locked, but there could be little question that the place was an inn—probably the Weary Traveler, which he had heard mentioned a few times.

  An upstairs window opened, and a face appeared—but at the same time Arlian heard the jingle of armor and the crunch of boot steps. Fortunately, it came from the right; the House of Carnal Society was to the left. This was simply a guard making the rounds; Arlian ignored the sound and looked up.

  “Ho, there!” he called, doing his best imitation of the lordly manners he had observed at the House of Carnal Society. “I know it’s late, my good man, but my blasted horse threw me—have you a meal and a bed?” He glanced at the approaching guardsman, but did his best to appear completely casual, as if he knew he could not possibly have anything to fear from a mere guard.

  The innkeeper glared down at him. “At this hour?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t have been this hour if the confounded beast hadn’t run off!” Arlian shouted back, exasperated. “I’ve been walking for hours—barefoot, since one boot caught in the bloody stirrup—will you look at the mess it’s made of me? Surely you won’t turn me out like this!”

  The innkeeper still hesitated. The guardsman had come up behind Arlian and was listening closely—though he was distracted by a commotion up the street, in the vicinity of the House of Carnal Society. Arlian turned to him and asked, “He’s an innkeeper, isn’t he? Doesn’t he have to let me in if I ask?”

  “That’s up to him, sir,” the guardsman said.

  Arlian glared at him, a glare Rose had had him practice for hours. “Sir?” he said.

  “My lord,” the guard corrected quickly.

  Arlian nodded his approval and looked up at the innkeeper. “I’ll pay a little extra, if you like,” he said.

  “Then your funds weren’t all on your horse?” the innkeeper asked. “I won’t give credit.”

  “Do I look like a complete fool?” Arlian demanded. Then he held up a hand. “No, don’t answer that—I don’t want to know what I look like at this point! Yes, I have good coin, if your prices aren’t utterly savage.”

  The innkeeper hesitated for another second or so, then gave in. “I’ll be right down,” he called.

  “Good,” Arlian said, as the window closed. Then he turned back toward the brothel, as if just now noticing the noise. Two of the brothel’s guards were approaching at a trot.

  “Whatever is going on there?” he asked the town guardsman.

  “I don’t know, my lord,” the guard replied.

  “Does it have anything to do with that ragged fellow who went running past a few minutes ago?”

  The guard was suddenly alert. “What fellow, my lord?”

  “How in the name of the dead gods should I know who he was?” Arlian said. “He was a young man in dreadful torn clothes who went running that way.” He pointed away from the House of Carnal Society. “His nose was bleeding quite spectacularly. Do you suppose those two are looking for him?”

  “I don’t know, my lord; they might be.”

  “Well, why don’t you go ask them and see? I’d like to know.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the guard said. He trotted obediently off.

  That, Arlian thought, would keep the brothel guards busy for a moment, explaining the situation to their compatr
iot, and it should give him time to get safely inside the inn.

  None of his pursuers had gotten a good look at him, he was certain, and he hoped the women would have the sense to lie about his appearance; his best chance, he was sure, was simply to insist that he was what he claimed to be and had no connection with the intruder in the brothel.

  Maintaining his imposture as a rash young lord would not be easy; for all he knew he had already made half a dozen slips. Still, he could not think of any better ruse.

  The door of the inn opened, and the scent of stale beer wafted out. Arlian slipped quickly inside.

  14

  Deceptions

  Arlian tensed as the inn’s door opened again and the town guardsman stepped in. He quickly forced himself to relax, to appear calm, as he took another bite of the slightly stale bread the innkeeper had provided.

  His bundle lay at his feet; he had had to open it to pay the landlord in advance, and the price of a bed and a meal had almost exhausted the money Sweet, Rose, and Hasty had given him. The meal before him was simply bread, cheese, a few dried plums, and a flagon of ale—the innkeeper insisted nothing else could be had at this hour, and Arlian had not argued beyond the minimum he felt necessary to stay in character, for fear of wiping out his funds completely if the innkeeper did find something better. He chewed slowly and picked up the ale as the guardsman approached, with a half-formed idea that if necessary he could fling the beer in the man’s face and make a run for it.

  “My lord,” the guard said. “You wanted to know the cause of the disturbance.”

  Arlian swallowed the bread and washed it down with a mouthful of cold ale. “Yes, I did,” he said. “Whatever happened? Was someone murdered in his bed?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” the guardsman assured him hastily. “It seems that one of the young women at, uh … a certain establishment was hiding someone from the management. He was discovered, and fled—making quite a mess in the process.”