“No. Have you?”
“Not really. So we’ll go to the kitchens—it’s too late for a proper meal.”
Black nodded, and the mention of the kitchens reminded Arlian of something.
“By the way,” he said, “we’ll want to have some rooms prepared—Lord Nail … that is, Lord Stiam will be turning two more women, Musk and Lily, over to our care.”
Black glanced at him, startled. “That’s good,” he said. “How did you manage that?”
Arlian thought for a minute, then said, “I’m not entirely sure.”
Then the doorkeeper opened the great front door, and they stepped into the familiar foyer of the Old Palace.
* * *
The following day found Arlian and Nail chatting again, as they had after Arlian’s initiation, but this time in the Old Palace rather than the Society Hall.
“Why did the six of you establish the House of Carnal Society in the first place?” Arlian asked, as he poured wine. Musk and Lily were getting comfortably settled in their new home, none the worse for their two-year stay in Nail’s mansion; Nail had overseen their delivery personally, and at Arlian’s invitation had stayed for a drink. The two men were comfortably settled on the blue silk couches in the small salon, sharing a bottle of good red wine from Kan Parakor, in the western hills. “Surely you could have found better investments.”
Lord Nail pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I don’t know that we could have,” he said. “Oh, financially, perhaps—though in fact it was quite profitable—but there were other uses.”
Arlian’s own lips tightened. “You took your own pleasures there, I suppose?”
Nail snorted. “I? No, I did not. Kuruvan did, certainly, and I believe Drisheen as well, and perhaps Toribor or Horim on occasion, but not I, nor Enziet.”
“Then what uses do you refer to?”
“Political uses, my boy,” Nail explained. “There are those in Manfort we find it expedient to control, one way or another, and inviting them to Westguard, as one hot-blooded nobleman to another, provided a means to accomplish that.”
“Ah…” Arlian hesitated, but then asked his question bluntly—despite calling Arlian a young fool for his honesty, Nail did not seem to believe in wasting time with euphemism or indirection himself. “Bribery or blackmail?”
“Both,” Nail said. “Sometimes at the same time, men being the odd creatures they are. Intimidation, as well. And other things—some men, after such an experience, find themselves saying things they would not ordinarily reveal.”
Arlian could hardly doubt that, given what Rose had told him about Lord Kuruvan—whose death had been reported that morning; his wounds had indeed been mortal.
And Arlian had killed him—an idea that was uncomfortable, frightening and satisfying at the same time. He wasn’t the first man Arlian had killed; that had been that bandit on the southern slopes of the Desolation. Kuruvan, however, was the first Arlian had deliberately hunted down, fought, and slain.
He had surely deserved it, despite what Hasty said; the image of Rose lying dead was always lurking in the back of Arlian’s thoughts, troubling his dreams. Still, it was odd to know that he was a killer himself, even a justified one.
It was also odd to be sitting here calmly drinking wine with another of the men responsible for Rose’s death, both of them knowing that Arlian had not forgiven the crime and still meant to someday avenge it.
“We put the House in Westguard for several reasons,” Nail said. “One was so that our guests would not be seen by their neighbors or family; another was so that there would be time, on the ride back to Manfort, for loosened lips to spill secrets.” He sighed. “And of course, that’s why it had to be destroyed,” he said. “We had too many people who could not tolerate the thought that they might be spied on there, or might have been spied on there. When we found out you’d been hiding there … well, it was safest to destroy it.”
“Was it necessary to kill four of the women, though?”
“No, I suppose not,” Nail said. “One gets out of the habit of thinking of slaves as human, though—or at least, I have. And their lives are so short and pointless anyway that … well, it doesn’t seem to matter if they die.”
“It matters to them,” Arlian said. “Because they have so little, you feel free to take what they have? There’s no justice in that.”
“No, there isn’t, is there?” Nail gazed into Arlian’s eyes. “You do have the dragon’s heart, but you haven’t yet lost your own. I’m not sure I can say the same anymore.”
Arlian shifted uncomfortably.
“You still want to kill me, to punish me for what I did to those girls, don’t you?” Nail asked quietly.
“You saw them, being carried in here,” Arlian said angrily. “None of them will ever walk again. And I don’t suppose you saw the others lying dead in the smoke, but I did—lying there with their throats cut as the flames spread…” He shuddered. “You did that. It’s only right that you pay for it.”
“I suppose it is,” Nail mused, his face turning aside for a moment. He sipped his wine thoughtfully. “I suppose it is, at that.” He looked at Arlian again. “You’ll understand, though, that I’m in no hurry to do so. I’ve lived well over nine hundred years now, and while I do grow weary, I am not eager to end it. I’ve seen little justice in all those years; the good perish and the evil thrive—sometimes, at any rate. Other times the evil die and the good live, and throughout it all most people are neither good nor evil, but merely human.” He put down his glass. “I’ll tell you what, Lord Obsidian—I will meet you outside the gate, on even terms, my sword against yours, for a fair fight to the death, once you have dealt with my four surviving partners. I sincerely feel that my fault in this is less than theirs, for I was brought in out of friendship for Enziet, Drisheen, and Horim, not because I had any great interest in the benefits that might accrue. I have all the wealth I need, and little interest in power, but I do try to oblige my friends. You’ve seen I didn’t harm the two women I took; I doubt my partners can all say the same. And though I can’t prove it, I voted against the destruction of the brothel and the murder of those four. So I will meet you, but only when you have first met the others.”
“And if I die fighting one of them, then you’ll go unpunished,” Arlian said.
Nail smiled and shrugged. “You understand me too well,” he said. He picked up his glass again. “Life is not fair, my young friend, and justice is not always done.” Then he raised the glass in salute and finished the wine in a gulp.
He stirred, evidently about to rise; he had clearly meant that as his parting shot. Arlian, however, had more to say.
“And will you help me coax the others out of the city?” he asked.
Nail hesitated. Then he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I will not. Whatever love I may have for justice, I have more for my friends and myself. I do not deny we did wrong, but I find myself able to forgive and pardon our crimes. That you do not is certainly understandable, but I trust this is one failing on my part you will find equally understandable.”
“Of course,” Arlian said. He stood as Nail stood, and watched as the old man departed. Then he turned to find Black standing in the other doorway, observing him.
“You’re getting to like the old bastard, aren’t you?” Black asked.
“After a fashion,” Arlian said.
“But you still plan to kill him?”
“I don’t know,” Arlian admitted. “I think so.”
“Those two women, Musk and Lily, have nothing against him,” Black said. “After the first month they barely saw him.”
Arlian shrugged. “That’s not the point,” he said.
“Oh? You’re not in this for the sake of rescuing pretty women from horrible fates?”
“Not really,” Arlian said. “I certainly don’t want any innocents to suffer horrible fates, but that’s not what I’m after. I’m trying to see that evil does not go unpunished, so that the
world might be that much better to live in.”
“And a man like Lord Nail does such evil that you’re sure the world would be a better place without him?”
Arlian hesitated.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not a god, able to see past and future and look into people’s hearts. I only know that Lord Nail and the others did do wrong. They committed a hideous crime, and that crime calls out for vengeance, and I am the only one who might avenge it.” He shrugged. “Perhaps the gods who still live, if there truly are any and they see us at all, will intervene, and make sure that justice prevails; perhaps they’ll show me a vision, or see that I learn something that will make me forgive my enemies. Perhaps the workings of Fate will ensure that I never touch a hair on Nail’s head. Left to my own devices, though, I intend to continue as I have. It’s not as if I’m murdering any of them in their beds, as they murdered Rose and Silk; we fought an honest duel, and Kuruvan might have killed me as readily as I killed him.”
“You have the dragon’s heart, as Kuruvan did not.”
“And who else among my foes is so bereft?”
“A good point,” Black acknowledged. “So you’ll trust to Fate, then, to see that you aren’t butchered like a hog when you do coax Horim or Toribor outside the walls? These men have far more experience than you, after all.”
“As you say,” Arlian said. “I’ll trust in Fate, the gods, your training, and my own skills.”
“I don’t particularly like that idea,” Black said. “I’ve never found the gods to be much use.”
Arlian shrugged.
He was unsure whether there were gods guiding his destiny, or whether he was part of some fate working itself out free of divine meddling, or whether the only agents working upon him were natural and mortal, but he could not help but see, in his escape from the destruction of his village, his escape from the mines of Deep Delving, the vast fortune that had fallen into his possession, and his admission to the society of near-immortals, signs that his life had a purpose beyond mere survival. It was plain to him that he was meant to pursue justice and revenge, that he had been spared and given power so that he might right the wrongs done to those around him. If he died in that pursuit, then at the very least he had lived longer than the rest of his townspeople, had tasted freedom before he died, had set an example in Lord Obsidian’s refusal to traffic in slaves, and had achieved at least a partial vengeance for Rose and Silk and the others.
He would much prefer to live, of course, and to enjoy what Fate had given him, but if it meant simply accepting the evils done around him—no, he could not do that.
“I don’t suppose you would be willing to ambush or assassinate the rest of them,” Black said.
Arlian shook his head. “I won’t stoop to that,” he said.
“The odds are that you’ll die before you’ve dealt with all of them,” Black pointed out.
Arlian shrugged again.
“I don’t want to inherit anything from you,” Black said.
Arlian looked at him thoughtfully. Just yesterday he had been contemplating what had seemed the near certainty that he would outlive Black by centuries, yet here he was, facing the prospect of throwing away all those years.
“I do intend to fight them all, and kill them all,” he said slowly, “but there’s no great hurry.” He remembered the duel with Kuruvan, how he had trembled at the outset, how the swordplay had degenerated into clumsy hacking and stabbing. “Would it comfort you if I asked you to continue my training with the blade, and put off any attempt to lure my opponents out of the city in the next few days?”
“It certainly wouldn’t distress me,” Black said.
“Well, then,” Arlian said, “let it be so.”
41
Challenges Made
Arlian was seated comfortably in a corner of the Dragon Society’s main hall, in a velvet-upholstered chair with each arm carved into a dragon’s head, his feet under a round oaken table. Diagonally across from him sat Lady Rime, and the two of them chatted amiably.
“Are any of the members married?” Arlian asked. “I haven’t heard anyone but Lord Wither mention spouses.”
“Lord Spider and Lady Shard are married,” Rime replied, leaning back in her chair, “though I don’t know how much longer it will last. They’ve been together more than a hundred years, and few marriages survive beyond that.”
Arlian had met Lady Shard, but had heard no previous mention of Lord Spider. He had met most of the members now—his own initiation had taken place some four days ago, and he had come here every evening, when Black declared the fading light inadequate for further swordplay.
He still had not encountered Lord Horim, Lord Drisheen, or Lord Enziet, however, save for one brief meeting with Lord Drisheen, a chance encounter on the Street of the Black Spire just outside the Society’s door as Drisheen left and Arlian arrived. Arlian had recognized Drisheen’s perfume first, and then his face, but by then Drisheen was around the corner, and Arlian had thought better of pursuit.
“Lord Spider’s true name isn’t Horim, is it? Or Enziet, or Drisheen?” Arlian asked. He did not like the idea of killing a married man.
Rime shook her head. “No, no. Horim calls himself Lord Iron, and Enziet and Drisheen we simply call Enziet and Drisheen. Enziet has used a dozen other names over the years and we can’t be bothered to remember them, while Drisheen has never used any name but his own. Our Lord Spider’s true name is Dvios, and Lady Shard’s is Alahi.”
“Is Lord Iron married, then?”
“No. Nor is Enziet. Nor Drisheen, nor Nail, nor Belly. You needn’t worry about leaving any grieving widows.”
“That’s just as well,” Arlian said. Then he noticed the curious half smile on Rime’s face, and the way she was watching him as she toyed with the bone she always carried. “Do I amuse you?” he asked.
“In fact, you do, dear Obsidian,” Rime said. “You can’t seem to make up your mind whether you’re a warmhearted fool or a cold-blooded killer.”
“I would prefer to be neither a fool nor cold-blooded,” Arlian said.
“A warmhearted killer is something of an oddity, though, wouldn’t you say?”
“And are we not all oddities here?” Arlian asked, taking in the entirety of the hall with a sweep of his hand. “For example, you say that none of the men I’m sworn to kill are married—surely, that’s rather odd, that none of a group of five men would have a wife?”
“For ordinary men it might be odd,” Rime agreed, “but you’re speaking of five dragonhearts, and furthermore, five who once owned a brothel. Would a man with a wife at home invest in such an enterprise?”
“Why not?” Arlian asked. “Do you think it would offend a wife’s sensibilities?”
“It very well might.”
“Did it offend yours?”
“In fact, it did.”
“Yet you did nothing to stop it.”
“What could I do? They broke no laws, defied no ducal edict.”
“Yet you thought it wrong?”
Rime sighed. “No. I thought it, at worst, inappropriate. It was none of my business, and unlike yourself, I do not generally choose to meddle dangerously in matters that do not concern me.”
Arlian frowned and leaned back, unsatisfied; for a moment the two sat silently, Arlian motionless, Rime holding her bone in one hand and running the fingers of the other along its polished length.
“You call them dragonhearts?” Arlian asked after a moment.
“It’s a useful term,” Rime said. “And I call us all dragonhearts, my lord—you and myself as well as the rest.”
Arlian nodded. “Of course,” he said. “And are Spider and Shard the only married dragonhearts, then?”
“Oh, I believe three or four have mortal partners,” Rime said. “I couldn’t say which; I don’t keep track.”
“Because they die,” Arlian said. He didn’t need to make it a question.
“Yes, because they die. I have lived
four hundred years, Obsidian; I can’t be bothered to remember details that may not last a score of years.”
“And have you never married?”
Rime’s fingers stopped their stroking, and the smooth white bone dropped to her lap.
“I was married,” she said. “I had a husband and four children when the miners from our village disturbed a dragon’s rest. I fell into our well, bleeding and aflame, as I fled from its anger, and the water put out the fire and hid me. My husband was not as clumsy as I.”
“I’m sorry,” Arlian said, ashamed that his question had caused her pain.
“The well was poisoned after that,” she said. “Venom, or the dragon’s foul breath, had tainted the water. I tasted it, and knew it was unfit to drink, so when I grew thirsty I sucked the blood from a gash on my hand.” She held out her left hand, and Arlian saw a faint white scar across the palm. “I’d cut myself on the stone as I fell in, you see, and venom must have gotten into it somehow, though I didn’t know that for certain until years after.”
“And your leg—was that from the bad water?”
“That?” She glanced down at the wooden peg below her left knee, then lifted the bone in her hand and studied it for a second. Arlian, who had heretofore considered the bone merely a minor eccentricity, like Black’s insistence on wearing black, suddenly realized that what she held was a human shinbone.
And he had little doubt as to whose.
“No, no,” she said, lowering the bone. “That happened years later, when I was snowbound in the Sawtooth Mountains. I was more or less intact when I climbed from the well and found what was left of my family.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Arlian said.
Rime shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”
“And you’ve never remarried?”
“Why bother?” she asked bitterly. “I can’t have any more children; what do I need with a husband? I’ve built a fortune simply by living long enough to save and invest, so I don’t need a man’s money. Companionship?” She snorted. “Look around; do you see any of these men who would make a decent husband, knowing that we’ll both live for centuries? Oh, an affair or two, certainly, but a marriage? And as for anyone other than our fellow dragonhearts, I don’t have any interest in growing to love a man, and then watching him age and die while I can do nothing to prevent it.”
Dragon Weather Page 37
