The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1)

by Justin DePaoli

  “How did you find us?”

  “Unexpectedly,” Jocklun said. “After escaping my soon-to-be death, I went back to Haeglin. Planned to jack the vault myself, even if I’d probably kick the bucket doing so. Imagine my surprise when I saw the Eyes of Aleer filtering out through a dark alley and hurrying through the gate. Don’t know how you escaped, and don’t care. Well, I do care, but I don’t expect you to tell poor little Jocklun.”

  Jocklun was right. Elaya wouldn’t be divulging that information. Not to him or anyone she ever met. She wanted to forget the moment her chains had broken, because the man who’d shattered them had made her feel a primal fear that she never, ever wanted to relive.

  He’d said no words as he freed them, but his eyes, his nose, his long spindly fingers—they were all wrong. At a passing glance, nothing seemed out of place, but the longer you looked… everything seemed cobbled together like a patchwork monster.

  Elaya had an overwhelming urge to kill him, but she didn’t know why. She tried forgetting it, but that craving, that desire to see him dead, hadn’t yet gone away.

  Elaya nodded to Tig. “Tie him to a tree.”

  “You’re not accepting my offer?” Jocklun asked. “I brought you weapons and—and—if you look inside that bag there, you’ll find more bags. Lots of ’em! For hauling gold out of the vault, of course. How could you refuse me?”

  “I’m not the only one who decides. Not anymore.” She stood and called for attention, requesting the Eyes to gather around for a meeting.

  Once Tig and Rogg returned from lassoing Jocklun to the big fat walnut tree, she told her mercenaries everything Jocklun had told her.

  At the end, she asked one simple question. “Should we do this?”

  “Can we trust ’im?” asked Kaun.

  “On this matter, yes. I think so.”

  “We need the money,” said Adom.

  “Fook that,” Tig said. “We can get money other ways. We’re mercenaries!”

  “You need contracts first,” Adom said. “And I don’t see a damn village with a message board askin’ for hired swords anywhere ’round here, do you? Plus, we’re wanted boys and girls now. We happen upon the wrong pissy lord and it’s right back to the Peak with us. Gold, though… that’ll buy us freedom.”

  “It’ll buy us more than that,” Elaya agreed.

  Paya put her hands atop her head, doubtful. “We just escaped that place. If they catch us, we won’t escape again.”

  “You’re right,” Elaya said. “We won’t. We will die there.” She paced behind the fire. “But we have nothing. We’ve not fame or fortune, and I don’t think we’ve very much respect, either. Know that I blame myself for these failures, but if you’ll trust me once more—if we loot the Gravendeer vault—the world will know the Eyes of Aleer. But if you would rather, you may take your fair share and leave my company forever; there will be no hard feelings. If you wish to leave now, you may do that as well—I will hold no one here against their will.”

  Kaun stepped forward. “You have a plan? And not for thievering some gold. For what happens after.”

  Elaya faced her mercenaries with a stiff jaw and confident posture. “You all have your reasons for joining me. Some of you wanted adventure, some fame, some wealth. Some of you wanted freedom.” She looked at Adom and added with a smile, “Some of you were just bored.”

  Adom snorted. “Good way to cure boredom, joining a bunch of bastards like you.”

  Hearty laughter broke out among the Eyes. “I’ll drink to that!” Tig cried.

  “Whatever your reason,” Elaya said, the return to seriousness in her voice hushing the Eyes, “I promise to fulfill it.” She paused, letting the anticipation intensify. “After all, what could possibly be more adventurous, more daring, and make you more famous and wealthy and free than overthrowing a kingdom?”

  All the mercenaries had an uncertain look on their faces.

  “I aim to take Silderine. I aim to free the slaves and oppressed that suffer there every day. I aim to recapture my homeland and turn it into something good. I aim to slide my sword across the throats of the Twin Sisters. They may be physically dead, but their legacy remains. I intend to murder it.” Her jaw shifted to one side. “Who’s in?”

  Adom interrupted the silence. “You’re damn right I’m in. Could you imagine? Adom, Lord Swordsman of Silderine, at your service.”

  “What the fook’s a lord swordsman?” Tig asked.

  “A title I just made up. You can do that when you overthrow a kingdom.”

  Kaun smirked. “Well, I’ve always lusted after danger. Makes me feel alive. So of course I’m in.”

  “Ah hells,” Tig grumbled, “you know my ogreish ass’ll go anywhere with you, Elaya. Let’s have it, bust up some noggins.”

  A small, grateful smile formed on Elaya’s lips as one by one her brothers and sisters affirmed their support and allegiance. Elaya, Queen of Silderine, had a nice ring to it. But first they had to steal the Gravendeer vault.

  And they needed to get out of Haeglin alive.

  For a second time.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Oriana had planned to depart for the Blue Coast after a restful sleep. That was before everything went to hell. After witnessing her sister splattering Maren O’Keefe’s brains throughout the Great Hall, Oriana ran. And she never stopped running till she had her locus wrapped her up in a big illusionary hug.

  Less than one hour later, she brought the locus down and left her estate forever. That was almost two months ago. She hadn’t seen another soul besides those that traveled with her until now.

  “Croak me right now, goddess. Is that a dragon?”

  With a single icy eye, Sarpella glared at the man. She followed closely ahead of Oriana.

  “Why, yes, it is,” Oriana said. “Be a good man and don’t tell anyone.”

  She had gone through the Crags specifically to avoid prying eyes. It would figure they’d pass a fisherman holed up in a jagged grotto of rock.

  The man peered out from his cavern, and his mouth dropped open to form a big O. That sort of expression tends to appear when you’re a balding, white-mustachioed fisherman cooking some perch on spits and the closest thing to a dragon you’ve seen are those pesky seabirds who swoop down into the water and muck up your fishing holes.

  “Is there a war? Are those more dragons? Am I dreaming?”

  Hiking up a path that cut through craggy whitewashed rock were sorcerers, children, farmhands, Jeremiah the leatherworker, Hal and Loo the blacksmiths, lots of wagons carrying chickens, weapons, food and supplies, and crates full of very irritable and loud whelps. Also, there were dragons who obediently walked even though they preferred flying.

  “There is no war,” Oriana said. Not yet. “Just… keep quiet, okay? We’ll be on our way now.”

  “Keep quiet?” The fisherman was beside himself. “How am I to do that? Dragons! You’ve got dragons.”

  Rol patted the man on his shoulder. “Go ahead and spill the news, my man. No one’ll believe you. ‘Boys, gather ’round, you won’t believe what I saw at my fishing hole today. Dragons!’ ‘Oh, we’re sure you did, just like that time you caught the mythical twenty-foot fish.’”

  “I just… I’ve never—can I touch him? Or her.”

  “No,” Rol said. “By the way, have you heard of the Grateful Throne?”

  “What about it?”

  “Raegon Gravendeer’s dead. Poisoned. Anyways, good luck with your fish.”

  He jogged to catch back up to Oriana, where he found himself the recipient of scolding eyes.

  “Why did you tell him that?”

  He shrugged. “It’ll get his mind off the dragons.”

  “It will not. It’s a good thing he wasn’t a Torbinen Trident.”

  “What would a Torbinen soldier be doing held up here?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just saying. We’re getting close now.”

  Rol sniffed. “I smell the sea.”

  “
You smell the salt.”

  “Which is in the sea, so I’m still correct. Did sand crawl up your britches, by chance?”

  She shot him a sidelong glance. Then, with a softened expression, she said, “I’m sorry. I try to not think of my father, but—”

  “No, no,” Rol said, “it’s me who should be apologizing. I won’t bring it up again, not front of ya at the least.”

  “It wasn’t you. He’s been on my mind since we left. If you could have seen his face—I don’t think Maren O’Keefe killed him.”

  The seemingly eternalness of midnight had begun to relent a while ago, and they now walked under a scorching sun. The Torbinen coast never cared much that autumn had arrived. Rol swiped beads of sweat off his brow.

  “Bastion,” he said. “Sounds like something that ugly bastard would do.” A pause. “All right, I’ll admit he ain’t very ugly, but he’s still a bastard. From what I hear.”

  A gull flew overhead, attracting Sarpella. Oriana shushed her, telling her to leave it. It took a bit of convincing, but the dragon eventually looked away. Now that she was an adolescent, controlling her urges to hunt was becoming more difficult.

  “I don’t think so,” Oriana said. She opened her mouth, started, then stopped before anything came out.

  “What is it?”

  She frowned. “Would you think me insane if I said I thought my sister did it?”

  “Olyssi? Er,” he said, scratching his head, “not insane, no. Sounds like a stretch, though.”

  She figured he’d say that. “If we take Bastion at his word, what reason would Maren have for assassinating my father?”

  “Seems like a guy who wanted unrest.”

  “Calculated unrest,” she noted. “Not chaos. If he wanted anything from my father beyond more attractive trade terms for Valios, it’d be his hand in a war against Bastion. My father would have never agreed, of course.”

  “Maren likely knew that.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, “but again, what does he gain by killing him? My sister stood to gain the most.”

  Rol pushed his hands into his thighs, rubbing out the cramps and aches. They’d been going uphill now for almost six hours. “You deserved that throne, you know?”

  She forced a smile; it was a nice compliment, but it didn’t mean a lot now. “I couldn’t have taken it anyhow, not with the clutches knowing my location.” She thought about telling him about the reeve’s hesitance when naming Olyssi heiress to the Grateful Throne. He paused and wrinkled his forehead, confused, surprised—unsure of why he was reading the words.

  Olyssi had altered the will. Oriana was sure of it. She had bigger problems to juggle right now, but one day she’d find the truth. And her sister would find herself six feet under. No, maybe a couple feet above the ground, roped to a pyre. Seemed the best way for a murderous, betraying wench to leave this world.

  “So, do you sorcerers have your cliques?” Rol asked.

  “Our cliques?”

  “Sure. Y’know how roughnecks and nobles, they don’t mingle or any of that. They stick to their own kind.”

  Oriana traded Sarpella’s reins off to her other hand. “Are you asking if there are different types of sorcerers?”

  “Already know that answer. You’re an illusionist, Brynn and Davok too. And then, er, most of the others… what’d you call them again? Mentalists?”

  Oriana laughed. “Elementalists, not mentalists.” Elementalists tapped into the primal planes of fire, water—often in the form of ice—and wind. “No, we don’t have cliques. That I know of.”

  Rol rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Wonder what kind of sorcerer I’d be.”

  “An oathbreaker,” Oriana said. “That’s not an insult, by the way.”

  “Thanks for the clarification.”

  She made a face. “Their sorcery branches off from the realm of life and—”

  “Realm of life?” Rol interrupted. “That sounds like somethin’ I’d be interested in. Living forever… yeah, I could see myself doing that.”

  A pile of loose rocks shifted beneath Oriana. Rol caught her by the elbow, keeping her from driving her face into the craggy ground. “Thanks. Can’t wait till we’re off this mountain. Anyhow, oathbreakers don’t live forever. They tap into the realm of life and pull from it protective elements. Think of them as a living, breathing shield.”

  “Hmm. I’m more of a beater, y’know? An attacker. Not much a shielder. And what’s with the name? Oathbreaker… kinda ominous.”

  Oriana shrugged. “Legends and myths and gods.” She didn’t think he’d be interested in hearing more, but he looked at her expectantly. “During a war to drive out corruptness within the ranks of gods, Shirma, the watcher and protector of Louravil, the god of life, turned on her master.”

  “Mm,” Rol said, shaking his head, “what a bitch, huh?”

  “Shirma was both a he and she, but sure. So the story goes that the servants of Shirma ripped her aegis from her hands and shielded Louravil, saving his life but breaking their oath to Shirma. I’m sure oathbreakers weren’t always called such, but that’s the story behind their name.”

  “I should study gods,” Rol said.

  Oriana shook her head. “No, you really shouldn’t. It’s boring stuff, mostly. Trust me on this.”

  “S’pose I’ll take your word for it.”

  Oriana readjusted her grip on Sarpella’s reins. She’d thought about letting her walk freely but was thankful Rol had axed that idea. The dragon had looked to the sky far too many times on this journey, and had Oriana not given her a quick tug, that blue beauty would have been soaring high and majestically, hunting deer, swallowing birds who had the misfortune of flying in that particular part of the world that day, and, most importantly, called a lot of attention to Oriana’s convoy.

  The Crags were one of three ways she could have navigated her excursion to the Blue Coast and by far the most secluded. About seventy years ago, an expedition had set out from Torbinen with the intention of clearing a passage through the Crags to better facilitate trade between Torbinen and Haeglin. They got a good ways across the rugged mountainside, but disease, sly mountain cats and a few one-way trips off the cliffs had cut their journey short.

  Even with a carved trail before her, Oriana found each step exhausting. Her feet were bloodied and heels blistered. She’d stepped on so many loose rocks and twisted her ankle so many times, she was sure she’d have a permanent limp by the end of it all.

  But by midday, she crested the top of that jagged, sun-bleached mountain, and the cracked lips and parched throat and aches and pains were almost worth it for the view alone.

  She felt like she stood atop the world and all the land had offered itself to her. The mountain sloped gently downward, into a vastness of pure white sand and an endless, sparkling green sea. There were no whitecaps on the water, barely a wave rolling in. This was not the Plundered Sea to the south and most certainly not choppy, ice-ridden Fissured Sea to the north—it was unique among its oceanic peers and called the Glass Sea for a reason.

  The plateau Oriana stood on stretched a mile to either side, so she offered rest to her… they were her people, weren’t they? She wasn’t sure what to call them. Friends, yes. Family, even. But she’d gathered them all, through favors, money, a promise of freedom.

  Rol closed his eyes and soon after snored like a summer thunderstorm. Oriana wanted to sleep, but the urge—the need—to take this all in had her on feet, walking along the plateau. The possibility of never seeing this again was very real to her.

  Humid, salty air filled her lungs as she took deep breath after deep breath. With an arm across her forehead, she shielded her eyes from the pink sun and squinted, tried to pull into focus as much of the beach as she could.

  It seemed like another plane of existence down there, where only nature was permitted to live. She wondered if any villages had been settled on the shoreline. She hadn’t heard of any, or of any Blue Coast tribes, but it seemed like the perfect place
to put up a few posts, build a couple cottages and retire for the remainder of your life.

  She kept hold of that idea, in case one day the opportunity presented itself.

  Fifty or so miles down the eastern coastline lay the capital kingdom of Torbinen, its spires and peaked roofs dominating the skyline. Oriana couldn’t see the city from here, but she had little trouble imagining it. When she and Rol had come this way to acquire the whelps and bring sorcerers, children and all the others back to her estate, they’d flirted with the outskirts of Torbinen.

  That was dangerous work. If Farris Torbinen had gotten word… Oriana’s actions might well have started a war. Suspicious behavior by the daughter of a king—and bringing dragons back to Avestas certainly counts as suspicious—tends to have wide-ranging and severe consequences.

  But near Torbinen stretched the Pinnacle, a narrow triangle that reached about thirty miles into the ocean; it served as the closest point between Avestas and Baelous Because the tides tended to sweep across the triangle, the land wasn’t settled, so it was the perfect spot for inconspicuous trading. Oriana would arrive there with a cartful of gold from the Gravendeer vault, and her intermediaries would unload the goods her rogue friend, Catali, from the Enclave had procured.

  She’d thought about casting her illusion there, but there was no reason to get so close to Torbinen. The farther away she was from meddling fingers and intrusive busybodies, the better. Fifty miles from civilization and on a beach whose sand probably hadn’t seen footprints for fifty years was the perfect location.

  Oriana started that way again, after allowing her people and her dragons to rest until a noon sun was overhead. It took all afternoon, the entire night, and the better part of the next morning before the final vestige of the Crags eased them onto the shoreline.

  “We settle here,” Oriana told Rol.

  He took a sarcastic bow. “Aye, Your Highness. I’ll inform the others.”

  “Shut up.”