He gave little thought to finding out more about dragon’s-eyes. Better to leave it untouched for now, he believed, than to push too hard and incur Nona’s suspicion. So he told himself, and enjoyed the journey, forgetting origin and destination both.
It wasn’t until they were two weeks out from Wullfort that he remembered, and that only because of the dragon. One of his oxen had demonstrated the intelligence of its kind and had wandered through a patch of knifegrass, lowing anxiously once it realized what was happening. Skald cursed everything about the north and bound the dumb animal’s cuts, but it was still lame, and thus his wagon lagged well behind the rest.
They weren’t quite so far behind, though, that he couldn’t tell when something had happened. Rafe, the one with the lazy eye, even stood up in his wagon and tried to signal to Skald, waving both arms like a deranged puppeteer before his partner dragged him down.
Keia ran up to him. “Dragon’s hunting,” she said, out of breath but still alight, as she was with any news of dragons. “Nona says to stop and wait until he goes over.”
“What, so we can make an easy meal for it?”
She shook her head. “They don’t attack humans; they don’t like anything we’ve touched. All the stories say so. And it won’t attack me.”
“Sure it won’t,” Skald said, or started to. A huge buck, antlers still dangling scraps of their winter velvet, charged around the side of the closest hill. Behind it came the dragon.
It hung so low in the air that its claws split furrows in the long grass, wings sweeping the air like bloody sails. All down the train, oxen lowed and balked, and the drovers flattened themselves against the boards. The buck screamed and ran straight for the treeline—and for Skald’s wagon. “Keia, get down!” Skald yelled.
She only stared.
Skald was almost ready to let the oxen bolt and grab Keia instead when the buck faltered half a wagon’s length from them. Two sets of black-stained talons, each as long as Wail or Moan, sank into it, and the deer went down with one last strangled cry. The oxen lurched and strained, but the dragon ignored them, settling down to pare the skin from its prey like an urchin with an orange.
The reins went slack in Skald’s hands as his oxen froze. “Keia,” he whispered, “don’t make any sudden moves—” He turned his head in time to see Keia walking toward the dragon.
She approached the dragon slowly, hands held out as if in surrender. It was nearly skeletal, skin stretched over long bones and tattered wings flapping like the gaunt-children in the midwinter parades. It looked up and blinked at her through milky, opaque eyes. “Hello,” Keia said. “It’s me.”
The dragon snorted, hot bloodied breath so powerful it struck Skald in the face even from this distance. He rose, still clutching the reins. “By all that’s unholy, girl—”
The dragon’s head snapped up to glare at him. It hissed, sank its claws deep into the dead buck, and leapt into the air. Keia ducked away from the carcass, and spots of blood spattered over Skald as the dragon flew overhead. It disappeared into the woods, still dragging its half-peeled meat.
Keia bounded to her feet. “Did you see? Skald, did you see? They know me. They recognize me—”
“I saw.” Skald was suddenly exhausted, weary to the bone, as if a score of evenings had settled on him at once. “Go up to your mother. Tell her we’re fine. Get.”
~ ~ ~
Keia didn’t speak of her bravery, if bravery it was, and the other drovers either hadn’t seen or weren’t talking about it. Skald, though, couldn’t shake the dread he’d felt, and so he went to Nona. To his surprise, Nona just laughed. “Good for her! She knows dragons don’t eat humans; she’s not about to shriek and run like a fragile city girl.”
“It was more than that,” Skald insisted. “She was reckless. She deliberately put herself in danger.”
“I didn’t send Keia to the Coldwell Sisters just so she’d learn to be a fainting idiot. They’re good teachers, and Keia’s a good learner. She knows what she’s doing.” Nona sighed and patted Skald’s shoulder. “Look, I know you mean well, but this isn’t the city.”
Skald just shook his head. “It was a stupid thing to do.”
Nona regarded his sour expression and sighed. “Six-Blade, if you were any more protective I’d think you were her mother. I just have more faith in her than you do.” She squeezed his shoulder. “And she certainly shouldn’t fear anything from dragons.”
He didn’t get far from Nona’s wagon before noticing Rafe watching him. “Worried about the girl?” Rafe asked.
Skald grimaced. “Yes.” It was an uncomfortable feeling, not something he was used to.
Rafe grinned. “She’s no trouble. She’s her mother’s girl, in’t she? And Nona’s never said boo to a dragon.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Special that way.”
“Special.” Later he’d think it was his temper that made him pry so clumsily; later still he’d wonder if it was deliberate, if he didn’t really want to find out what he’d been sent to learn. “Is that how she brings in the dragon’s-eyes? Because she’s special? Special like the royals were, the royals and their dragons?”
Rafe’s face closed down, and he lowered his hand. “That’s nowt of my business, and less of yours.” He folded his arms and leaned back against the wagon.
I could make you tell me, Skald thought. You value your hands—two twists with the small screws, at most, and you’d be squealing. I could make you tell me.
Something in his face must have hinted at his thoughts. Rafe paled, pressing himself against the wagon’s side to get further away from Skald. Skald blinked, and the lens of the city slid away from his vision. He walked away without an explanation, the weight of his blades dragging at his steps.
~ ~ ~
It only got worse. The farther they traveled from the city, the more his old trade seemed to distort what he saw, forcing the faces he’d learned over the last few weeks to conform to the city vision. This one will break after a day, he would find himself thinking as the other drovers hailed him. This one will only need to be shown the instruments. This one is strong, but he favors his left knee; use the hammers first. This one will beg. This one will not break on his own, but hurt any member of his family and he’ll tell you anything just so you’ll stop.
Had he always looked at people in this way? Or had he only learned to do so, to keep himself from seeing the faces behind the men Bronze Michel deemed unnecessary? And there had been so many of those—rivals for the razormen at first, then the heads of those gangs, then others, and others. . . . Were dragons even necessary for Bronze Michel, now?
He thought of a man strapped to a table, whispering his secret, the secret Bronze Michel would not have believed.
Keia helped him, though she didn’t know it. She told stories over the fire in the evenings, talking while Nona smoked and nodded approval. In the firelight he couldn’t see how thin Keia’s wrists were, how easily they’d break. And the stories did distract him, enough that sleep could come.
Mostly stories about dragons, now that he noticed it.
They made the long climb up to Wullfort in time for the festival, and once there the whole train had stories to match Keia’s. The mountain slope went up further, claimed one of the drovers, up to the Basin, a crater a thousand leagues wide and brimming with smoke. There the dragons held their yearly parliament, and always they agreed to slaughter humanity, but they always forgot about it within a week, and so that one week was the only time dragons were dangerous to people. No, said another, the basin used to be a lake, and the dragons people living on it, but their tempers were so fiery that they burnt it all up. No, said another, that was all rubbish, but the truth was dragons were hatched here, and they killed any who came near the eggs. More than enough dragons for Keia’s taste.
Keia had a story of her own, though, and one that she held till Skald had settled in, as if it were just for him. It was an old one, about how the first royal’s grandfather had given his daugh
ter to be eaten by a dragon.
“But the princess was smart,” Keia said, her eyes flashing in the firelight. “So she put on twelve dresses, one over the next. And the dragon, seeing her unfit for eating, told her ‘Princess, take off your dress!’ And she said in return, ‘Dragon, take off your skin!’ And he did, and she did.”
One of the drovers grinned and nudged another. Skald glared at them both.
“And so they did again, down to the twelfth dress and the twelfth skin, but by that point the dragon had shed all that made him a dragon, and was only a man. And they lay together, man and wife, and in the morning the king gave his kingdom over to them.” She leaned forward and stirred the fire. “And from them came the line of royals, who united the plains and ruled for centuries. And it was said that no one who lacked dragon’s blood in their ancestry could hope to rule the plains ever after.”
Skald thought back to the city and Bronze Michel’s private obsession. He ruled most of the city now, and even if the old nobility remained, it was one thing to rule through them and another to rule in your own name. And so he’d gone to Skald, whom he trusted as much as anyone. Go follow up about dragon’s-eyes. Find out whether the dragons really are migrating further south in the winter. Get the names of those families with dragons in their heraldry. Here’s the name of a man who claims he knows the secret language of dragons; see if he’s telling the truth.
He winced outright at that last memory. Keia turned her bright smile on him. “That’s why the dragon’s-eyes were in the crowns, Skald. That’s a royal lineage if there ever was.”
“Maybe,” he grunted. “Seems to me there’s no great honor in saying your great-great-grandmother fucked a lizard.”
Keia’s eyes went wide with shock and fury, and wider still when the drovers burst out laughing. She leapt up and ran away from the fire, but not so quickly that Skald couldn’t hear her first sobs.
Enough of this. Skald got to his feet and went to find Nona. She’d set up a real tent, not a half-wagon as they’d used on the road. A wide, flat chest served as a table, and Nona stood beside it, inspecting a pair of heavy leather greaves, the kind that fighters in the ring used if they weren’t forbidden armor. A blunt dagger, its tip squared off like a chisel’s, lay beside them. “Evening, Six-Blade. Hold this, will you?”
She handed him the greaves and bent down to check the laces. Skald cleared his throat. “I think we’ve reached the end of our deal,” he said.
“Have we? Oh, the passage to Wullfort. Yes, that’s done.” She pulled out a rotting lace and grimaced. “I wouldn’t mind keeping you on, though.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“Kind?” She snaked a new lace through the greaves. “I don’t take on anyone who’s no good, and I’d rather keep the best. Besides, Keia likes you.”
Skald grimaced at that, but let it go. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “I have business in Wullfort, and once that’s done, I’ll be headed back to the city.”
“Will you, now?” She set the greaves down and regarded him. “And here I was thinking your business was with me.”
Skald didn’t move. “And what would that be?”
“Dragon’s-eyes. Or so I’d thought. Am I wrong?”
He closed his eyes. The instinct of years in the city told him to cover his tracks in the way only a razorman could; the Skald of ten years ago would have done so already. “No,” he said, opening his eyes again, trying to see her without the lens of the city. “You’re not wrong.”
Nona nodded. “Ha. I wondered if that Bronze man was getting ideas.”
He forced a smile. “You see things pretty clearly.”
“I have to see things as they are, Six-Blade. You start seeing things that aren’t there, you miss the stuff that’s there.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “For example, I know where you keep that seventh blade of yours.” Her grin narrowed. “It’s in the other boot, isn’t it?”
Skald stared at her, then laughed. “Yes. Yes, it is.” He flexed both feet, and the two Surprises gleamed in the lantern light. “Usually people only see one, or if they’ve seen it in the left they assume I switched it to the right. They’ll tell themselves anything so that they don’t have to admit to missing something.”
“Thought as much.” She shrugged. “Well, you can tell your man in the city that if he wants dragon’s-eyes, I’ll bring them to him same as to any other. I’ll even give him a discount. And if you change your mind, I’ll be here this time next year.” Her smile curled, became very like Keia’s secret one. “I’m always here for the Spring Festival. Luck.”
“Luck.”
~ ~ ~
Despite what he’d said to Nona, Skald didn’t leave the wagon train right away. He stayed in his own small tent for a day, long enough for Nona and Keia’s noon argument. Nona wore the long greaves that he’d seen the night before, and anyone who’d ever been a parent or child could follow the conversation: why can’t I, you said you’d, it’s not fair. Nona finally tousled Keia’s hair and walked off, up the slope away from the walls, ignoring Keia’s protests.
He didn’t go into Wullfort, saying his goodbyes instead, trying to keep the last of the journey as a shield. But word moved faster than he did, and when he returned late in the evening there was a note tacked to the center post of his tent. It was from a man in Wullfort, a man very like a younger version of Bronze Michel. It expressed interest in “a man of such skill” coming to town, and suggested a few clients he could “see to.” It named a place, and a time, and a price.
It didn’t name him as Skald Six-Blade; that name belonged to a razorman, one who might have the sins of razormen to his name but no more than that. And he wasn’t a razorman to the gangs of Wullfort, not now that he was close to threescore years; his edge was gone, and in the slums and gardens of the city you lived or died by that edge. This man wanted him for his other trade, the one with drawers full of little bright tools and tables with straps at the corners.
Could he have one trade and not the other? He’d kept his blades clean, he’d never brought them into his work, left them outside the door when he put on his hood. It should have meant more than it did.
Skald folded the letter into five parts, so that ill luck couldn’t find its way out, and tucked it into his shirt. When he left his tent, he saw a flicker of movement on the hill. Keia.
He watched her a moment, then went back and took the long leather leggings from his pack. They weren’t as good as ringfighters’ greaves, but they had turned aside knives and teeth and worse. A moment’s work fastened them on, and he checked all of his blades before setting out.
He followed her over the moonlit ground, watching the flicker of her lantern. He wasn’t much of a woodland tracker, but Keia wasn’t bothering to hide her tracks. Unfortunately, his skill at being silent didn’t help when a stick found its way under his foot and snapped in two.
Skald cursed, and Keia, halfway up a rock spur, spun and lost her footing. Her cry of surprise told him all he needed to know. “Don’t move!” he called. “Keia, don’t move.”
“Hell with you,” she said, but there was a thin, high edge of pain and panic to her voice, and she stayed put. She had fallen on her side with one foot tucked under her, in the midst of a patch of silver-edged grass, limned by more than moonlight. One tuft brushed her elbow, and a thin line of blood followed it.
“You’ve fallen in knifegrass,” Skald said. “See those edges? The grass makes a little knife, and it’s serrated, so it cuts quick. Stay where you are and I’ll come get you.”
She made a high-pitched noise, but didn’t argue. He wrapped a leather strap around one hand, trying to judge just how much knifegrass he’d need to push out of the way. Knifegrass and cow-screwers and dragons, that’s all that you found in the north. . . . Bronze Michel had tried to transplant knifegrass to his garden, all along the inside wall, but it’d died in the next hot summer. . . .
He waded into the grass, the blades sawing at his leggings, and hel
ped Keia onto his back. As soon as they were onto safe stone, Keia kicked him, and he let her slide down. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“Following you.”
“This is none of your business! I have to—” She caught herself. “My mother’s up there. I have to see her.”
“Up there?” He glanced over his shoulder, to the long slope rising up to the crater. “You know, if people tell you that no one ever goes to a place, maybe you ought to figure out why first. That’s all knifegrass up there.” He nodded to her clothes—festival wear, unsuited for even the lightest of hikes. “Those’ll get torn to ribbons in five strides.”
She glared at him, but her lower lip trembled. “I have to go up there.”
Skald regarded her a moment longer. “You’ll do it whether I say yea or nay?” She nodded. “Then I’ll take you up the path.”
“You will? I—” She stopped. “You can’t tell anyone. Not a living soul.”
“I promise,” Skald told her.
He carried her up the slope, through the knifegrass. Below them, Wullfort was a blot on the hillside, lit here and there by faint gleams of torches, people up too late or too early. Moonlight gave way to pale dawn, and then to the first gleams of real dawn. The last stretch up to the basin wasn’t steep, but it was thick with knifegrass, so thick that blades began to find their way between the lacings of his leggings, scoring his legs with fine red lines.
Smell had never been the best of Skald’s senses, even before years of city smoke. So it wasn’t until they reached the very edge of the basin that he caught the hot bloody reek of dragon. He stopped dead, and Keia slid from his back with a cry of joy.
Fluttering gaunt wings and scaly hides filled the entire basin, a bowl scooped out of the hilltop maybe a thousand feet across. The closer dragons, gray and milky-eyed, turned slowly and without curiosity to look at them; on the far side of the basin, past a wide swath of knifegrass, a cluster of bright red and brown dragons twitched away, watching the sky like rabbits in an open field.
And between the clusters of dragons, knee-deep in thick knifegrass, Nona stood above a fallen dragon.
The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Online Magazine, Year One Page 14
