Baern moved forward at the pace of one counting his last steps as he approaches the guillotine. But he wore the confidence of one who knew something that the executioner did not.
Lavery followed, sticking himself beside Baern’s arm. They rounded a bend, and that’s when Lavery saw it: a huge, crimson-colored face of leathery skin framing the cavern mouth.
He didn’t bother asking himself if it was what he thought, because there’s no mistaking the face of a dragon.
That face opened up like a rift, and Lavery saw teeth the size of a man’s hand. He saw a tongue, coarse and pink and thick. Then he heard a rumble. Not a rumble born in a thunderstorm, but one found in a raging forest fire being fed by headlong winds.
The dragon neck retracted, then thrust forward with a violent exhale. What should have come next was certain death. One ought to sizzle and burn when a whitish-red fire pours from the mouth of a Crimson Clutch dragon.
But Lavery did not burn. The flames bent around him as if a sphere of godly protection hovered over.
The dragon roared and wiggled his head out of the cave.
“Go!” Baern said, gnashing his teeth.
The Keeper! cried a dragon.
We leave, now.
No. They’ll know. Everyone will know.
Lavery stumbled outside, catching his foot on a pried-up slab of rock. When he looked up, he almost stumbled back inside.
Dragons—twelve of them, maybe. No, more than that. Sixteen, twenty, all gathered beneath a milky, hazy moon.
Some scoured the manor, smashing cottages with their talons and crumbling fences with swift tail swipes. Others hovered in the sky, necks craning, vigilant eyes searching. Most were the color of violet, but one—the dragon who had attempted to turn Lavery and Baern and Laythe into ash—was different. An armoring of crimson scales covered him, and he had a thin yellow patch down his chest. It looked as if the fire from inside his belly had scorched his flesh.
When the dragons on the ground noticed Baern, they screeched and vaulted into the air.
“I’m taking one down,” Laythe said. Baern looked at him severely. “As proof.”
He cannot hold it forever, said a dragon. Now that they were within eyeshot, Lavery could tell which dragon spoke. It was, despite the lack of vocalization, no different than identifying who was talking between Laythe and Baern.
It’s only him, a boy and a meager farmhand. If we break the Keeper…
“Do it,” Baern told Laythe, fingers swirling as he kept hold of the gift from the realm of life.
Laythe smiled. “My pleasure.”
A crimson dragon rose high into the air, circled around, then plunged. Its wings were tucked. It was soaring. It was coming.
Laythe’s face paled. It wasn’t simply the redness leaving his nose or the blood in his cheeks diverting to his limbs. This, Lavery knew, was something else entirely, because he’d never seen an absence of color like this. It looked, aptly, like the color of death. He fell into what appeared to be a stupor.
Maybe I should Walk, Lavery thought. He wanted to help, not stand around like a simpleton. But Baern wouldn’t approve. And plus, where would he Walk to? He doubted there was a past or future where merchants who sold Dragon Killing Serums existed. That time in the forest, meeting a man with the torches—that had been rather fortunate. Lavery doubted he’d be that lucky again.
So he stayed put and hoped that whatever occult sorcery Baern had reached his hand into continued to work. Otherwise, he wouldn’t live to see his twelfth birthday, and that’d be a shame. He heard twelve was when things really got good.
A deluge of flames poured from the dragon’s mouth and glanced off the invisible shield around Lavery and Laythe and Baern. Talons clanked off the shield, too, and Baern grimaced. His hands trembled persistently now, not only with each strike. He had a certain frailness to him that Lavery had never seen. He looked like a vulnerable old man.
The crimson dragon readied himself for another flyby. He climbed again, gathering momentum. Then he plummeted. With a lift of his head, he straightened himself out a few feet before the ground would’ve minced him up.
Baern made noises. Grunts. Indescribable sounds that people make when they’re beat up, thrown out and left in the streets for thieves, rapists and, eventually, vultures.
His connection to the realm of life was fragile now. It’d break soon. Maybe it’d withstand one more incursion.
Maybe not.
Only a dead tree with peeling gray bark stood between the crimson dragon and its ever-weakening meal. Or rather, its soon-to-be barbecue.
“Come, you bastard,” Laythe whispered.
The dragon opened wide. With a single exhale, fire would flare from its nostrils and gush from its mouth.
It hadn’t, however, counted on Death impeding it.
As it came upon the tree, a bare branch with a single knot flung itself out and wrapped around the dragon’s wing. The beast cried as blighted tendrils sprouted from the branch and coiled around its phalanges. The tendrils spread, spooling out across the wing and smothering it like suppressive and choking ivy in a garden.
The dragon attempted to spin out, but the tree yanked back. And dragons, large and looming as they may be, prove no match for a rooted tree. Especially one that’s been reborn.
It was hurled backward, its yellow-painted chest aimed at the sky. It flapped its wings and kicked its legs, each movement weakening as the tendrils clamped down and multiplied.
With a splash of mud, the dragon found itself slammed to the ground. A huff of fire hissed from its mouth.
Rain began falling then. It smelled of poison.
Necromancer, a dragon said.
“Get inside,” Laythe barked.
Lavery looked on, wide-mouthed and wide-eyed. He again heard the order to get inside. But he couldn’t move.
Laythe wrapped him up below the waist, threw him over his shoulder and trudged into the cavern. The frantic voices of the dragons chased them.
Leave him.
It’s burning! It’s burning!
Acidic rain… go, now.
The dragons screamed in pain as the rain pelted them, drawing blood from beneath their scales as if each drop contained fragments of crushed glass. They opened their mouths and breathed just like the crimson dragon had breathed fire into the cave.
But these breaths were strange. Each one disturbed the air around it, vibrating and twisting the very space that occupied the manor.
“What are they doing?” Lavery asked, huddled beside Baern.
“Leaving,” Laythe said.
Small breaches and fissures formed where the dragons had breathed. The beasts flew into them, and they vanished.
Laythe stood. His head went listless for a moment. The rain stopped then, and he fell into the wall, exhausted.
“It’s been a while since I’ve wanted to lie down and sleep for a month straight,” he said.
Baern wiped his mouth. “I’m sure it has been.” He fixed a hard look at Laythe, then mouthed something silently.
“What was that?” Lavery asked.
“Dragons,” Laythe said, taking deep breaths.
“No, not that. That.” He threw his hands out at Baern, then at Laythe. “Whatever, I mean—the tree, the rain, the shield.” He shuffled over to Baern. “Are you a sorcerer? It wouldn’t surprise me. You’ve hidden the truth from me since I was born.”
“Lavery…”
“No,” he said, his eyes downcast. “Tell me the truth. Are you a sorcerer?”
Laythe slid down the wall to his butt. “Would that change things?”
“Yes.”
“And why is that?”
Lavery’s mouth fidgeted. “Sorcerers aren’t—they’re sinful. Their existence isn’t normal.”
“Neither are Wraith Walkers,” Baern said, “if you go ’round believing those dogmas.”
“I can’t help that I’m—”
“Nor can sorcerers help who they are, just as a
goat can’t be anything but a goat.”
“The tree,” Lavery began, before stumbling into another thought and saying, “those dragons called you a necromancer. I heard them.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Laythe said. “If I’m a necromancer, then no one’s ever told me.” That drew a glare from Baern. A long, firm glare that made Laythe look away. “Our options are limited. Dragons are coming.”
“It sounds like they’re looking for someone,” Lavery said.
Baern scratched his beard. “This is Oriana Gravendeer’s estate. I’m not certain how the heiress to the throne of Haeglin could get mixed up in the business of dragons, but we need to find her.”
“Rubbish,” Laythe said, skipping a stone across the cavern floor. “Finding her won’t do squat. The whys don’t matter, Keeper. The clutches are returning and that’s all we need to know. You know what needs to be done.”
Lavery hated this. They treated him like a spy who’d go blab to the enemy if he got an earful of hot information. No, he thought, spies are too important. They think of me as a child unable to handle the truth.
“Tell me what you are,” Lavery demanded of Baern. “A sorcerer?”
“I prefer to be simply called a man. Or a person.”
“But you practice sorcery. You must. You saved our lives with… with magic.”
Baern regarded him for a moment, then ignored him for Laythe. “The Valiosian tombs—”
“I know.”
“Of course you do,” he said, eyes buried in his lap. He slowly looked up. “Take care of him, or I will take care of you.”
A weak smile touched Laythe’s lips. “Might put that on my grave; a threat from the Keeper. Not a bad quote as far as those things go.” He clapped his thighs and got to his feet. “All right, Lavery. We’re leaving.”
“Go with him,” Baern said, a nod of his head.
Lavery waited for the punch line, because this clearly had to be a joke. But neither Baern nor Laythe seemed to be holding in laughter. And they weren’t smiling.
“You’re serious,” Lavery said. “I don’t understand. I—”
“The clutches have returned,” Baern said grimly. “And you’re the only one who can stop them.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Elaya had just fallen asleep when Tig and Rogg woke her, clamoring and hollering.
“We went for a li’l hunt,” Tig said, “and we sacked a trophy.” Holding Jocklun by the scruff of his neck, he shoved him forward. He threw a foot out and tripped him to the ground, eliciting laughter from Rogg.
Elaya sat up. Through a small, flicking fire she stared at the man who had almost ended her life. He looked frightened, a bit unhinged. He certainly wasn’t clapping and clamoring about the payment he’d receive from Olyssi Gravendeer.
“Had this on him,” Tig said, tossing to her feet a sack with steel edges sticking out.
“For you!” Jocklun cried. “See? I come bearing gifts, weapons for my lovelies and—”
“Here,” Elaya said, unsheathing a skinning knife from her belt—or rather the dead Jackal’s skinning knife and the dead Jackal’s belt—and tossing it through the flames. It landed beside Jocklun.
Lying on his belly with a face full of mud, the weaselly Conductor of Grim blinked at the offering. “Er.”
“It’s so you can slit your throat. Because if you don’t, I will.”
“Ah. Well, let me tell you, that is completely unnecessary. See—” He attempted to push himself up to his knees, but a boot thumping into his back flattened him out like a pancake. He groaned. “O…kay.”
A bat flew overhead, zipping in and out of the hastily moving clouds. Elaya took a walnut from her collection that sat near the fire. She’d gathered them earlier. With a whack of the walnut against a rock, the shell shattered.
“Ah, yes,” Jocklun said, “I see you have dandy, deee-lightful survival skills.”
“Your mouth continues to open,” Elaya said. “I don’t like that. Did you know you cannot talk without a tongue?”
A tangled strand of black hair fell into Jocklun’s eye. He puffed it away. “Er, I don’t particularly like where this is going.”
“I like my world free of bad people. You’re a bad person. Can you guess what that means?”
He tried righting himself, but again Tig placed a boot right between his shoulder blades, pinning him in the mud.
“Can you please let me up? Is that too much to ask?” He flailed about while screaming, “Let me up!”
Tig smirked. “Aww, piggy don’t like gettin’ dirty?”
“Not really, no.”
“Let me clean you off, then.” With his foot, Tig began scooping cold, soppy mud onto Jocklun’s back and his shoulders and his neck. He bent down and lathered his hair in the stuff, then yanked his head back. “Look at me,” he growled. “I’ll do whatever the fook I want to you, you coont.”
Elaya watched with disinterest, cracking another walnut. “I’d use the knife, if I were you. End it quickly, because we might not.”
“I’ve got—” Jocklun strained as Tig kept his head tugged back so far he could feel the base of his skull touching his shoulders.
“Let the idiot speak,” Elaya said, flicking a husk into the fire.
“I’ve got a deal for you. A good deal. A fantastic—”
“Shut the idiot up.”
Tig elbowed him in his head, splashing his face into a puddle.
“This deal better be so amazing Tig shits himself in awe.” Rogg and Tig roared with laughter.
Jocklun spat out a mouthful of dirt. Mud slathered his teeth. “The Gravendeers have a vault. I, Jocklun, Conductor of Grim, intend to steal it.” His eyes lit up in anticipation of Elaya’s reaction.
“Let’s just slit his throat,” Elaya said.
“Wait, wait, wait! I know how to do it. I swear! Swear upon everything I love—which I grant you, isn’t much, but I do have affections for certain wonders in this world. I’ll split the booty with you seventy-thirty. You get the big seven-zero.”
Elaya stoked the fire with a prod of a wet stick. “You’re a miscreant.”
“A degenerate,” he agreed.
“How can you possibly plunder the Gravendeer vault?”
Jocklun tried pushing himself up yet again. This time, Tig allowed it. “Hold on to your britches,” he said, slapping muck and sludge off his legs, “because this one’ll knock ’em off. I used to be a Jackal.”
With a titter, Elaya pointed at him. “You were a Jackal? For some reason, I doubt that.”
“Doubt it all you want. It’s true. Quite very much true. I’ve even got my cloak pins still to prove it. Carry them around with me everywhere for good luck and in case of a rainy day. Pure gold, you know? Someone’ll buy ’em. Check my pockets.”
Elaya nodded to Tig, who patted Jocklun down, or rather forcefully slapped the shit out of him while also looking for the aforementioned pins. He turned his pockets inside out and there was a flash of gold.
Tig tossed the pins to Elaya.
“See?” Jocklun said.
Elaya placed the pins in her palm. They looked real enough, and they matched the golden howling wolf that pinned every Jackal’s cloak to his shoulders. Still, it didn’t prove a thing. “You could have stolen these.”
“Well, I could have, I guess. But why would I do that? So you want more proof, is that it? Hmm. Try this one on for size—the Peak, where I assume Olyssi held you prisoner, I can tell you its every detail, right down to what kind of shrubbery grows there.”
Elaya gestured for him to continue. He did, and everything he said matched what Elaya had seen and experienced in the Peak. She remained unconvinced. “Grim’s a land of the depraved. I’m sure some have who’ve been to the Peak have passed through, said this and that about it, gave you enough of a picture to paint it clearly.”
Jocklun sighed. “Fine. I served as the personal guard for Lord Garum, master of coin. Every day for lunch he would eat one leg of duck a
nd one fillet of haddock. If neither were available, he did not eat. I’m sure that’s obscure enough you probably can’t tell if I’m making it all up, but also so esoteric that I couldn’t possibly make it up on the spot.”
Elaya pinched her eyes. “Why?”
“Why what? The haddock and duck? Well, if you ask me it’s—”
“No. Why do you want the Gravendeer vault? Why not skip on back to Grim and have yourself a merry little life?”
Jocklun clapped his gloved hands. “Ah, the why. The great question, the big unanswered—”
“I swear to the gods,” Elaya said, “I will cut your tongue out of your mouth if you don’t shut up and get to the point.”
“Right-o. Well, the reason is fairly simple. I’m rather fucked. See, I envisioned Olyssi paying me a bounty of gold that I could use to fuck, drink and sleep the rest of my days away. She gave me a pouch of useless gems. And I can’t go back to Grim, surely you know this. Conductors who leave don’t return as conductors still. Blood was probably spilled twenty minutes after we departed, and a new Conductor named shortly thereafter.
“So I am going to take what should have been mine. And more. A lot more. As much as I can carry, in fact.”
Elaya pulled her knees up to her chin. “Why do you need the Eyes?”
“Because I can’t do it myself.”
“You had plenty of help from Grim last time I saw.”
He clicked his tongue. “Yeah… not anymore. We made camp and I, uh, sneaked away. They would have killed me, you know. Promising buckets of gold and delivering a few gems doesn’t endear you to anyone, much less killers and thieves.”
“You would have deserved death,” Elaya said. “You still do.”
“Maybe. Do you really assign me so much blame for what happened? I had to sell you out. What choice did I have? I’m not your friend. I’m not your lover. You meant nothing to me. Why would I pass up the chance to put you in chains and deliver you to Haeglin if it meant a lifetime of wealth?”
As much as she despised him, Elaya admitted to herself that he had a point. In a way, it was her fault for going to Grim. She wouldn’t have ventured there if she’d known Olyssi already had a bounty on her head, because Jocklun was right—the depraved and the reprehensible swear no allegiances except to themselves. They’d swindle their mother if they could, and many probably had.
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 24
