The Dragon Thief
Sorcery and Sin, Book One
Justin DePaoli
Cover design by Ebooklaunch.com
Edited by Eliza Dee (www.clioediting.com)
Proofread by Donna Rich
Conduit Books
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
A Free Book and a Cheap One
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 by Justin DePaoli
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The Land of Avestas
Chapter One
Lavery scuttled along beneath the earth, chased by the susurrations of his own footsteps and the endless echoes of his boyish voice.
“No, sir,” he said, ambling through another corridor. It wasn’t readily apparent who exactly he was talking to. The innards of the Valiosian mausoleum trapped an obliterating darkness within, one that stole sight of your fingertips if they wandered so much as a few inches from your face.
Lavery used to venture down here with a torch, but that was a lifetime ago, when his fear of the unknown, sticky webs, and the tap, tap, tap of eight legs scrambling across the ceiling had made for a crushing feeling in his chest.
But he was eleven now—eleven! You’ve got to put away your childish fears, he knew, if you want to prove you belong in the tough, cutthroat world. He didn’t know exactly what was so tough and cutthroat about the world, but his father had used those two words often to describe the universal state of affairs, so it must’ve been true. Fathers, after all, never lie.
They do, however, die. Lavery had learned this sad fact seven days ago. Craigh Opsillian had been overburdened with both weight and worries, and he’d departed this world after his heart had simply given up.
“I’m not sure,” Lavery said, hurrying his pace through a narrow hallway. This section of the mausoleum always made his palms sweaty; it felt like the walls were closing in on him. “I hope not. I don’t want to be a king. Because! It’s boring.”
If one could pierce the abyssal veil and look behind and to the sides and all around Lavery, one would see nothing but dusty walls draped with cobwebs, overturned coffins splintered and rotted, and some old bones of rats who had incorrectly thought they’d find food down here. One would certainly not see the recipient of Lavery’s musings.
The boy walked alone.
“Sometimes I think about running away. No, I don’t think so. It’s just thoughts. I wouldn’t actually do it.” He paused, mouth shifting as if he knew he shouldn’t say any more but couldn’t help himself. “Probably not, anyhow.”
The hallway widened, and Lavery nimbly navigated around pillars he could not see but remembered were there.
“Lavery Opsillian,” a booming voice thundered into the mausoleum. “Are you down there? Is that you I hear?”
Lavery grumbled. “I have to go,” he whispered. “Lord O’Keefe is gonna be angry. I know he’s not a lord, but if I don’t call him that, he gets upset. Okay, bye.”
“Lavery? If you force me to squeeze myself through this hole and into that damned graveyard—”
“I’m coming, sir,” squeaked Lavery. He hurried now, jogging around pillars and over busted casket lids. At the end of the hallway stood a ladder bolted into the wall. He climbed the rusted rungs, his mess of chestnut hair poking up through a crudely made hole and into the dimly lit mausoleum foyer.
Many generations ago, Valios undertakers had carved out a wide swath of earth, hollowed out its belly and constructed small but elaborate hallways joined by offshoots of depressed plots of earth where caskets would rest. Time, the elements, and an unfortunate meeting between a small sulfur deposit and a torch had caused the complex tomb to more or less collapse.
A small opening still existed, and through it one could navigate the tomb, but few did, except Lavery and the Keeper.
Lavery hauled himself up onto the cracked cobbles of the foyer. The stern face of Maren O’Keefe, the Valios master-at-arms and commander of the Silver Swords, stared back at him.
To say Maren had the mug of someone who’d been in too many bar fights and had visited too few savants would be truthful. But it’d be more accurate and far more succinct to simply say what everyone thought: he was damned ugly. He had a fat crooked nose, one intact eyebrow and one that’d been scorched right off his forehead. A chunk of his lip had either been sawed off or, perhaps more likely, become self-aware and jumped off when it realized the horror it was attached to.
“Kings,” Maren said, “do not wander into tombs. Look at yourself. Your hair is full of cobwebs, and you smell like mold.”
“I’m not a king,” Lavery said. He aimed to sound indignant, but the words rather fell out of his mouth limply as he looked at Maren’s greaves. The man’s face was too intimidating, and so was the rest of him, gussied up in mail and a thick wool cloak.
“I know people who would kill to be in your position.”
Lavery swallowed. The way Maren said it, the vileness of it—kill—he meant it.
Maren put a fist into his hip. “I heard you talking to your invisible friends down there. Do you have any idea the work I’ve put in to ensure you succeed your father? And you’re gonna piss it all away by acting like a little boy who hasn’t had enough playtime. I will not stand for—”
“Sod off, Maren,” came an old bellowing voice.
Maren ran his tongue along his teeth. He swiveled himself around and crossed his arms at the laggard approach of a lanky man with a frayed white beard that hung to his concave chest.
“Did your mother never teach you manners?” Maren said. “Interruptions are terribly frowned upon, and in some societies, it’d be enough to free your tongue from your mouth.”
The old man nodded. “And in some societies, you’d be labeled a barbarian and flushed out like smelly sewer water into a river. Now, sod off.”
Maren lifted his hands in a placating manner and gave the man a wide berth; this was not a fight he was willing to stage.
Likening Maren O’Keefe to sewer waste was, generally, not a conversational angle most in Valios would prefer to take. Largely because most in Valios enjoyed keeping their heads atop their shoulders and looking forward to another day.
But the elderly man in the mausoleum was Baern Ellis. And Baern Ellis was the Keeper of the Tomb. And the Keeper of the Tomb answered to no one except the king. The reasons why had long be
en muddied and lost to time, but traditions are like addictions in the difficulty of stopping them.
“Don’t let him frighten you,” Baern said, gripping Lavery’s shoulder. “Men like him, they feed on fear.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Lavery said, the breath returning to his lungs, and his heart not beating quite so fast anymore. He peered into the gaping hole leading to the innards of the mausoleum. “He calls them invisible friends. He doesn’t know—”
Baern gave a firm squeeze to Lavery’s shoulder. “It’s better that he doesn’t. Go on, now, clean yourself up.”
“Baern,” Lavery said, ringing his grimy fingers, “I saw something today.” He pointed at the hole. “Down there.”
There was an imperceptible flinch of the old man’s throat. “Oh?”
“Everything was… it suddenly turned gray, and these men—there were six of them. I think. They were carrying something. A casket, perhaps. I’m not really sure; it was rather small. They brought it right past me. They walked right past! But they acted like I wasn’t there. And then it all went away, and the blackness returned. I felt very tired then. Baern, am I sick?”
“Do you feel sick?”
“I heard Granny talking once about fevers. She said they can make you hallucinate. I don’t think I have a fever, though.”
Baern smiled. “No, I don’t think you do, either. Sometimes the darkness plays tricks on our eyes. But you should keep this between us for now, hmm? No need to have Maren O’Keefe hearing about it, is there?”
Lavery shook his head. “I won’t tell anyone.” He bit his lip, opened his mouth and then paused. “Do you think they’ll make me king?”
Children are infamous purveyors of questions that force you to grimace inwardly and wonder how you’ll ever brush this one off with an innocent, boring answer. Sometimes you can’t brush them off. Sometimes the truth is dirty and inflexible. Sometimes you have to be blunt.
“I’m not sure,” Baern said. “But if they do, you’ll make a good king. Trust me. Your father was the best Valios has ever had. And you’re very much like him. Now get a move on and get yourself cleaned up. You look like you jumped out of a spider nest and rolled around with the pigs. And you don’t smell much better.”
Lavery laughed, thanked the old man, and tore off out of the mausoleum.
Baern watched him go, his uncoordinated limbs going this way and that as if they were connected by string and wire.
The Keeper sat on a stone bench in the foyer. The smell of cold rain filtered in. He could feel the weather in his knees, the sharp twinges and forceful stabs. With a hand in his pocket, he produced a small, hardened scale no larger than his thumbnail.
It was the color of crimson and in the shape of a long, flattened diamond. The spymaster, Horace Dewn, had given it to him as evidence. The two had discussed actions to take in light of its discovery, but neither had come to a conclusion.
At least not in front of one another. Baern had made his decision in secret, and it was one he was neither proud of nor particularly joyful about. It was a decision that took him on a several-day journey southward, to the mountains. To a place he had hoped never to visit again.
He regarded the scale disdainfully, wondering if he’d made the right decision. Lots of those moments had come to pass in his life—the what-ifs and momentary pangs of regret. When you’ve been kicking around for over six hundred years, you have more negative experiences than most people.
With a thumb massaging the scale, he sighed.
Maren O’Keefe sat himself at a long table, in the company of four men and three women who had long been seated. Two vast plates lay before them, filled with carrots and celery stalks and broccoli, all untouched.
Maren clicked his tongue. “Did I miss an edict from the late king that replaced the appetites of his Council with those of rabbits?”
A servant stepped forward from the edge of the room. “It’s all that was prepared at the time, sir.”
Maren rolled his eyes. He threw his hands onto the table. “Let’s get this over with. The boy is the clear choice.” He cast a long look down both sides of the table, searching for dissent and opposition.
“He is eleven,” said Lady Aylee.
“That’s a very astute observation,” Maren noted. “Any other fascinating conclusions about him? Perhaps that he has two arms and two legs? Or a pair of eyes and a nose, and”—he gasped dramatically—“he even breathes.”
With a heavy sigh, Chamberlain Evander Ladenmol propped his elbows onto the table. “The economy of Valios will crash. Capital kingdoms will rework trade negotiations in their favor, slashing our earnings. And if the boy-king doesn’t give in, they’ll withhold goods until he does. They’re up against an eleven-year-old, not an experienced statesmen. Hell, I’d expect smaller families and their houses to do the same; they’ll feel empowered.”
“We will be the invisible hands guiding him along,” Maren said.
“He has the final say,” Lord Griff countered.
“Unless you wish to rewrite the legislation,” Lady Aylee put in.
Maren grabbed a sizeable chunk of broccoli and held it up for everyone to see. “Let me attack this from another angle. This is Valios fifty years ago.” He severed a floret and then another, followed by a third. “This is Valios now. We have gone from a proud kingdom to a middling one. From an empire that was the epicenter of trade, from whose mouth all money flowed and who dictated terms, to one reliant on the whims of others and the state of Avestas.
“From the most powerful damn kingdom in the world”—he slammed his fist on the table, and the plates jumped—“to one that had best damn hope her allies answer her call if war should ever arrive at her walls, because we’re weak. We’re fragile.” He allowed the impact of his words to linger, to set in like lotion into flesh. “Now, I don’t know about all of you. Maybe—maybe you’re content with the slow, agonizing downfall of this once great kingdom. Maybe you figure the Reaper man will have already come and taken you by the time these walls fall.”
The hand of Lady Emory went up. Maren gestured for the pruny, quivering-lipped woman to speak.
“Allow me to dispel your worries, Lord Griff, Lady Aylee. You two have the misfortune of not bearing children, but I’ve reared four. An eleven-year-old may well have his own mind, but he will cede to the whims and wills of those above him. He will be our yes-man. Or yes-boy, as it were.
“The rut I’m afraid we’ll find ourselves in,” she continued, “lies not with little Lavery, but in this room. Can the eight of us rule by committee? Will there not be infighting and unquenchable urges to be the first to have Lavery’s ear?”
“A fair point,” Maren conceded. “But the alternative presents a much more immediate danger. We are an elective monarchy by name only. The Valiosians have ruled this kingdom for over two hundred years. If we put another ass on the throne besides Lavery’s, the people will sense a coup. If you want unrest and riots and undesirables combing the streets looking to spark a rebellion—”
Lord Griff grumbled. “It’s too bad that wench wasn’t infertile like the rumor went.” The wench he referred to was Lavery’s mother, Kyla Frosch, who had long ago checked out. She had woken up one day and never again uttered a single word. Her eyes were dead, skin clammy. She lived still, but only by the care of servants and savants who bathed her, fed her, wiped her.
“Oh, please,” Lady Aylee said, with a flippant fling of her hand. “You don’t honestly believe Lavery is Kyla’s child, do you? She suddenly becomes pregnant eleven years ago but doesn’t emerge from her chambers till Lavery’s born? Craigh bedded a whore who he kept hidden till she popped Lavery out, then she got bagged in a back alley somewhere. I promise you this.”
“Legitimate or not,” Maren said, flicking away broccoli bits in disgust, “he is Craigh’s son. The people expect him to be king. And he should be king. He’s young, naïve, and, most importantly, malleable.”
Lady Emory clasped her hands. “He’ll
need to learn much. And quickly.”
Lord Griff offered to personally counsel young Lavery, and Lady Aylee offered—or rather insisted—on teaching him proper etiquette.
Already each Council member was racing to be the first in Lavery’s ear. Maren smiled inwardly at this because they were all too late. He’d won that race long ago and he would be rewarded for it. He’d make sure of it.
Chapter Two
Elaya never figured she’d live this long, to be truthful. Most mercenaries bite the dust before they turn thirty, and those that don’t are usually missing a few fingers, some toes, maybe an eye or a hand. Her faculties were all there, and besides her bitching ankle that flared up in the mornings—shattering bones have that lingering affect—she was mostly intact.
But gods was she hungry. Stale bread loses its appeal after the first bite. Before the first bite, really.
She and the Eyes of Aleer sat around a small burbling fire. The morning sky had finally stopped spitting on them, but the fat gray clouds above threatened to start again at any moment.
“How do you figure this works?” said Adom, sliding a whetstone mindlessly along the edge of his dagger.
Elaya dipped a chunk of bread in a pail of rainwater to soften it. “How’s what work? The rain?”
“Naw. Naw, I know how the rain works.”
She lifted a brow. “Oh? And how’s the rain work?”
The whetstone stopped screeching. Or perhaps it was the blade edge that stopped—a question that has stymied philosophers everywhere.
“Well,” said Adom thoughtfully, “see, the clouds, you know. They, er, do this”—he waved his hands around—“and the rain, the water, it—well, it’s real complex. But that’s not what I was talkin’ about.”
Elaya chewed her soggy bread with a smirk. “Go on, I’m listening.”
“Look at this place,” Adom said, swinging his dagger out in a wide arc, gesturing in the thick brush of the lowlands. “Big, huge area like this, you’d think there’d be, I don’t know—at least some rabbits. Deer somewhere. I’m not asking for a lot. Just something, you know.” He shook his head. “Something more than bloody stale bread. Elaya, we’ve got to do somethin’ about this. I mean, we’re sheddin’ mercenaries faster than I’m sheddin’ hair.”
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 1
