by Jon Hollins
“Well, I suppose that given that you had failed to kill me earlier, this was a touch predictable.” Still not a tremor in her voice, or her smile.
Be the surface of the lake. Be the stillness of the wind. Repeating the mantra in the back of her head.
The Emperor, who had seemed happy to watch them spar, abruptly lost his aura of stoicism. His head jerked quickly back and forth between the two of them.
“I must assume,” he said in his rough tones, “that you are speaking in a metaphorical manner.”
Ferra just watched her. She had unsettled him, she thought. He had not expected her to attack so quickly.
“I wish I did,” she told the Emperor. She kept her voice even, her tone almost demure. She did not meet his eyes. She was the perfect subject. It hurt to cast away the months of growing familiarity and trust, but this was more important than pride.
“A serious accusation,” said the Emperor. His eyes flicked for a moment to Ferra. The dragon’s emissary still hesitated. She pressed forward.
“Indeed, and yet one I must make. Several hours ago—”
“Hours ago?” The Emperor cut her off sharply.
Quirk permitted herself only a hair’s breadth of a pause even as she felt the ground she was basing her argument upon shifting beneath her feet. “Yes,” she said. No room for uncertainty. She would use the truth like a club. “I was in my rooms—”
“This, then,” the Emperor cut her off again, “is not some slight from years gone by?”
The time for demureness was gone. Quirk let herself meet the Emperor’s eyes. She let a tongue of flame uncurl in her chest. And she let the Emperor see that it was loose. “I would hardly call slipping into my chambers at night and assaulting me with magic a ‘slight,’ your eminence.”
Behind her, she heard the court marshal draw a sharp inhalation.
The Emperor looked to Ferra once more. And for the first time, Quirk felt a stab of the emotion that she suspected had struck all the Emperor’s old advisors and diplomats when her star had become ascendant at court. Fear mixed with jealousy.
Ferra nodded his head slightly.
“That,” the Emperor said, “would have been difficult, given that Ferra has been with me all night.”
And suddenly the ground on which Quirk’s argument stood was not simply shifting, it was a mess of rotten planks tumbling down into the void.
Ferra let himself smile. All his confusion had been a feint. And she was still a fool.
“All night?” She was scrambling at straws and she knew it. “He didn’t step away for even a moment?”
“A thirty-minute constitutional hardly provides enough time to get to the university, let alone attempt to kill you in your chambers and return here, Bal Tehrin,” the Emperor snapped. Ferra didn’t even have to lay it out for the Emperor. The man was already convinced of the answer.
Quirk had lost academic debates before. She knew when defensive maneuvering was called for, but this man was a killer, and he sat at her emperor’s right hand.
“He is a mage of unknown power, your eminence.” She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. “Who knows how long it takes him to get anywhere?”
The Emperor sighed, no longer exasperated, but just sad. “Quirkelle, please. For a great deal of time you have given me trusted advice. This is unbecoming. Master Ferra warned me that your prejudices would lead you to try to discredit him. Though I don’t think even he expected your attack to be so desperate or so pathetic. I spoke in your defense. I am beginning to regret that now. Leave us now.” He gave her a kind smile.
She hated that smile. And for a moment the desire to burn the room and bring the roof crashing down around all their ears was almost overpowering.
“If I leave you,” she said, her desperation laced with exasperation now, “then I leave you with an assassin.”
“Gods!” the Emperor roared. “You try my patience. This man has come here to try to save us all from the anarchy of a pantheon gone mad, and whether you agree with him or not, that is a noble goal, and speaks of a noble heart. I know you have prejudices against dragons, colored by your experiences, and your past. But I shall not allow my ears to be stoppered by your bigotry. Maybe the time has come for the gods to fall. Maybe a new pantheon is required. And while I have valued your opinion in the past, that does not excuse rudeness or impertinence now. I am your Emperor. You exist in this nation because I permit it, Bal Tehrin. Do not forget that. Not ever. Not one single time.”
The room quivered with the Emperor’s rage. Quirk could feel it thrumming about her. She could hear the anxious panting of the court marshal behind her, and his feet scuffing on the rich carpet as he attempted to scuttle behind the door and out of sight. She could see the Emperor’s body shaking with it, hands gripping the edge of the table, where he had stood up in his anger. She could feel it in the racing of her heart.
Only Ferra looked at ease, leaning back in his chair, smile spreading like a sickness. He had done his work well. Had not even needed to fight his own battle. She and the Emperor had done it all for him.
But this was only another skirmish. There would be more and she would be better prepared.
Quirk turned, and made a tactical retreat.
7
Money Talks
Not for the first time in her life, Lette wondered what in the name of all the gods she was doing. As she stared into the inn’s mirror, the closest thing she could come up with was indulging my chronic addiction to idiotic life choices.
Then she checked to see how her profile looked.
She regretted it instantly.
I left him.
One week. It had been one week since Will had found her in the bordello. One week on the road together. One week with him staring accusations at her. One week of not knowing if she felt guilty or indignant. One week of asking herself what in all the names of the gods she was doing.
Fighting, she told herself. Because it was an answer she liked. Even if she wasn’t sure it was true.
There was, at least, a fight to be fought. Word of the dragon Theerax was spreading throughout Batarra faster than the clap through a whorehouse. She, Will, and Balur would arrive in a town, and already the air would be abuzz with talk of dragons. A dragon that had come to save them from the gods.
There were even rumors of dragons in other countries. One called Gorrax in Salera. Diffinax in Tamar. Jotharrax in Verra. All of them equipped with the same mad promise: that they would tear the gods out of the heavens. That they would replace the debauchery of the current pantheon with law and order. But if Lette knew one thing, it was that if you saw a dragon making promises, you tore out its tongue and throttled the beast with the thing.
Not that there had been any sightings of actual dragons yet. Which was odd considering most of them were large enough to be judged part of the geography in several small countries. And so while technically it was a fight, there was nothing for her hit. Which left her with the unfortunate fact that she had nothing but her thoughts about Will with which to while away the time.
Oh gods …
Will did look good still. There was that. Some of the muscle was gone, but there was a darker look about his eyes too. And that was definitely working for him.
And he still wanted her. Gods, that much was obvious too. In between the accusations, his desire was as raw as ever. And there was some flattery in that.
But she had walked down that path. She had tried. She had buckled down and committed. She had birthed lambs and scythed wheat. And Will … Will had been just so cursedly happy. So satisfied. And she had …
Gods, what could she truly have done except leave? What could she have asked of him? To accompany her back to the life she had sworn to leave behind?
So she hadn’t. Instead she had simply left. And the thing that had really hurt, if she was honest, here in a tavern’s bathroom, examining her reflection in a piece of polished tin, was that it had felt like cowardice. Will had made a coward
of her.
So fuck him. And fuck his accusing glances. She had tried. He had failed.
Except, of course, here she was examining her reflection in a piece of polished tin.
To save what scraps of her pride remained, she left the mirror and headed down to the tavern’s common room. Balur was there, right where she had left him, slumped over a table. A barmaid swept fresh wood shaving onto the floor around him, with the look of a woman asked to declaw a lion.
And Will, of course. Will was there too.
Will opened his mouth to speak. Quickly Lette picked up one of the stale tankards the barmaid had not dared to remove from Balur’s table and slammed it down hard next to the lizard man’s ear. He came awake shouting, “—said fourteen donkeys, you b—” Then his gaze settled on Lette, and he said more morosely, “Oh. You.”
“Breakfast,” Lette said to the barmaid. “Something that used to bleed, and now looks like ash.”
Unfortunately, the time it took for Lette to make sure the barmaid had comprehended this allowed Will to get a word in edgeways. “So,” he said, coming over, holding a bowl of steaming oatmeal. “I scouted out the village square. It sounds like most people will be passing through in about an hour, so we should secure a good spot for our talk soon.”
Lette decided that it would probably be good for both her and Will if she reached over the table and slapped him. So she did.
In retrospect, she should have waited until he swallowed his mouthful of oatmeal.
“What in the name of Lawl’s black eye?” he spluttered.
“Talks,” she said. “I have had it up to fucking here with talks.” She demonstrated the height by slapping Will again around the head and neck.
So far on their travels, Will had given three separate talks about the dangers of dragons in three separate villages. The best-attended one had had five people in the audience. Four if she didn’t include the chicken. But to be honest, the chicken had seemed a little more engaged than most of the others.
She had been behind the idea at first. The dragons were waging a war of ideas. Surely they should do the same. But the problem was that the dragons were having fun making grandiose, groundless promises. Will was stuck with the truth. And the truth was boring at best, and downright depressing most of the time.
So now, she reasoned, the time had come to help Will recognize that fact.
“Get your shit together,” she told him matter-of-factly. “We all know you’ve been a lucky bastard with plans in the past but this one isn’t working.”
For a moment there was nothing but hurt in his eyes, and that look made her chest ache like a blade had slid between her ribs. But then her anger flared higher, because that sort of shit was exactly the problem. That he should somehow feel entitled to have a shit plan, and entitled to use it to screw up her life.
He opened his mouth.
She slapped him again for good measure. “Shut up,” she told him. “I’ve changed my mind. You are actually banned from coming up with gods-hexed plans until you extract your head from your arse. Now it’s my turn.”
The barmaid arrived with Lette’s formerly alive, now burnt thing. Lette hacked a chunk of it free and chewed. It was awful, but in the pleasantly familiar way that most tavern food was awful.
“The dragons want the will of the people,” she said, ignoring the wounded looks Will was shooting at her. “Well, fine, let them have it. In this world, your opinion only actually matters if you can afford to have a servant who’s dedicated to wiping your arse on sheets of gold leaf. Money is power. Not how pleasing peasants find you. Why bother working from the bottom up? Screw the little people. Let’s go to the capital, march up to the Batarran High Council, knock some heads together, and get them to kick some sense into everybody. They have an army.”
She hacked off another chunk of burnt whatever. She chewed some more. Overall, she thought, it was acceptable.
Balur nodded. “I am liking the part where we are knocking heads.”
Lette glared at him. “I don’t give a shit what you like, you lump of iguana meat. We’re doing it.”
Will opened his mouth again. Balur laid a hand on his arm. “Now is not being the time. Unless you are particularly wanting to carry your balls around with you in a small purse for the rest of your life. But I am finding that having both hands free is more helpful for fending off further attacks.” He shrugged. “It is being up to you.”
Will hesitated, considered his oatmeal. Then he got up and walked away.
Lette thought about it, but she didn’t go after him. Along with the new plan, it made her feel considerably better.
It was eighty leagues to Bellenet, capital of Batarra. Ten days of travel across fields and plains. Sheep and cattle grazed around them. Farmers hacked at browning wheat and corn. Windmills waved their arms in lazy circles. Starlings chattered and taunted in skies ragged with clouds.
They passed through farmsteads, villages, and towns. They slept beneath hedges, in tavern rooms and stables. They set campfires and exchanged small talk so diminutive it could hide in a gnat’s arsehole. They murdered two groups of would-be bandits, and that raised Lette’s spirits further.
But everywhere they went, word of Theerax had already been. Men gathered around tavern tables and griped about the gods, about how libations had not helped with blight among the potatoes this year. About how old mistress Novak had sacrificed her prize bull to try to save the rest of her herd, but that disease had still taken them all. Women pumped water in village squares and told how all their prayers to Cois had still left them disappointed on their wedding nights. How Knole had disdained to make their children any smarter. And those idiot children played “chase the gods” in between market stalls, one with arms spread, roaring, hunting the others who dashed about squealing and laughing.
And then, on the tenth day, Bellenet appeared on the horizon, like a vast ship rising out of a sea of cornfields. The roads slowly clogged with farmers’ carts. A bard stood in the back of one juggling and singing a bawdy tune. He winked as Lette approached, and added red hair to the song’s female lead. Lette tossed her knives, and knocked his juggling balls out of the air one by one. The bard decided to take a break from entertaining the crowd.
The oozing traffic finally congealed into a clotted mass at the city gates. Soldiers inspected wagons with painful thoroughness. Will, Lette, and Balur queued with increasing impatience for their turn to pass through the massive oak doors and under the yellow stone arch of the city walls.
And then they were through and into Bellenet proper. Noise enclosed them. Carts crammed into whatever space they could find, their owners not even pulling back their covering cloths before they started hawking their wares, mostly to the men and women they’d been queuing with only moments before.
Lette saw Will staring around wildly, trying to take it all in. It was probably the first city he had been in. Fields were what he knew. This place was more foreign to him than some rice paddy in the Fanlorn Empire might be.
For herself, Lette had grown up in Essoa, the Saleran capital. Her childhood had been a thrum of noise and energy. Family after family packed into a single house, meals a mess of siblings and cousins, the streets outside always bursting with life and sound.
She still liked cities. Their energy. Their potential. That she could always find a certain type of room containing the certain kind of man who always had the certain kind of job that required her particular talents. In a city there was always someone whose death would profit you.
Though, of course, she was still trying to leave that part of herself behind, trying not to be the woman who had plotted eight escape routes from these crowded, cluttered streets, or who had prioritized its occupants in the order of whom to kill first.
The question was, what to do instead? Four months after she had left Will, the best answer she had managed to come up with was pissing away all of her not-inconsiderable wealth on hedonistic pleasures. Which was all well and good until your e
x wandered in on you in the arms of four whores. Which, no matter how stonily you set your face, couldn’t help but be a touch embarrassing.
They pushed on through the clog of warehouses, wagons, and horseshit that made up the city’s outer layer. They entered streets where children ran back and forth between slumping houses, and the smell of shit was no better than it had been back among the horses. Those led them to cobbled streets, strung with flowerpots and small market squares like beads on a merchant wife’s necklace. And then, at last, the streets truly opened up, and the buildings stretched for the heavens. City guards wandered the streets greeting the populace with deference instead of suspicion. And that populace didn’t scurry or bustle. Instead it took slow, refined steps, usually either to or from a carriage that waited, gilt gleaming, horses clicking their freshly shod hooves on sharp flagstones. The horses defecated here, just as they did at the city’s limits, but their dung landed in baskets lined with rose petals, and there was an air of elegance to the whole business that Lette had never really anticipated before.
At last, with the sun slowly dipping toward the horizon, they arrived at the High Council buildings. They were a series of blunt limestone boxes set off from the streets by a high, wrought-iron fence. The gates were ostentatiously elegant. It was the first time Lette had seen filigree used as a weapon.
Just in case that didn’t work to deter people, a squad of eight soldiers had been posted inside the gate, though how they were supposed to fight under the weight of all the braiding that decorated their costumes, Lette wasn’t entirely sure. Fighting one of them would be like fighting a particularly well-coiffed sheep.
She hitched their horses to some posts outside a goldsmith’s a few yards down the street.
“We’ll need a plan,” said Will. “Some sort of distraction to pull the guards away. And we’ll need to be high up to go over the fence. Probably to one of the sides. And—”
While Lette was happy to see Will taking an active part in things again after ten days of sulking on the road, this was also a horribly misguided active part.
