Tactin’s Fist had originally been constructed as a settlement for ancient northernmen making their first expedition south. It had eventually become a place of drink—sixty-six different wines, don’t you know—rest, and entertainment. Adom had gone there a month ago to purchase it outright from its owners and banish all outsiders.
Elaya was happy to see he’d been successful in both of those ventures. She hoped the other Eyes she’d sent to acquire food, tents, medicine, weapons, horses and so on had been equally successful.
Adom was kneeling on a pitched roof beneath a mango-colored sun when he saw Elaya.
“Holy piss!” he hollered, hammer in one hand and block of wood in another. “That’s a whole lot of mouths to feed. I mean, we’ll feed ’em, but… I didn’t expect this.”
Elaya turned on her saddle. A sea of bodies swept down the grassy knoll and beyond. Far, far beyond—where the horizon slips away into the brightness of the sky. She’d told Adom to expect an army, but this surpassed even her expectations. Close to one thousand had taken the pledge to follow her.
She called them the freemen.
Tig rode up next to her mare. “How you wanna do this? We gotta find them beds, straw at least, I’d hope. Fatigue’s gonna be hittin’ ’em hard soon.”
“Kaun should have procured plenty of tents to pitch, along with other supplies. Go find him, and you two begin helping everyone settle in.” She motioned for Paya to come forward. “You and Rogg begin passing out the food. Keep it organized, all right? Take Hal if you need an extra set of hands.”
“Where you goin’?” Tig asked.
“To speak with Adom. We’re leaving here soon.”
Tig lifted his brow. “Er, how soon?”
“As soon as possible. I want to catch Silderine by surprise. If we linger here too long, a scout or spy is bound to pass by.”
Elaya started down the raked dirt ramp and into the heart of Tactin’s Fist. She stopped before the tall and slender inn whose roof Adom was perched upon. “What are you doing up there?”
“Practicin’ my carpentry. Go inside and tell me if there’s still water comin’ in.”
“I can promise you there is no water.”
“Ah,” Adom said, lifting his hammer, “you think it’s a good seal too, huh?”
“Adom, it’s not raining anymore.”
The bald-headed mercenary looked up, then down, then back to Elaya. “I see. All right, comin’ down.” He crawled to the chimney, cautiously pushed himself butt-first toward the edge and stepped down onto the first in a series of bricks that protruded in zigzagging fashion down the outside wall.
“I’m fairly certain that isn’t what those are for,” Elaya said.
“Why else would they be there?” He dropped his hammer and block of wood on the ground and clapped his hands free of dirt. “You ready for a surprise?”
She squinted suspiciously. “Will I like this surprise?”
“Eh, not necessarily. Won’t hate it, either. Rather bland on the emotional spectrum as far as surprises go.”
That made her even more suspicious. She followed Adom into the inn. Or more accurately, she followed Adom as far as the doorway, under which she froze, staring at a mop of yarn-like salt-and-pepper hair.
“What are you doing here?”
Baern gave her a sidelong glance, pausing his conversation with a mercenary. “I could ask the same of you. Far as I remember, some family of redheads owned Tactin’s Fist, not the Eyes of Aleer.”
Elaya took a couple cautious steps forward. “Who told you we were here?”
One of his bushy brows climbed up his forehead. “I didn’t come here for you. You think too much of yourself, you know that? Anyone ever say that to you? I just did, but I can’t be the first.”
“You want me to believe this is a coincidence?”
“Trust when I tell you that, where I came from to get here, no one gives a bloody hoot about this place. I’m waiting on a couple friends.” He reached for a bowl. “Crackers?”
Elaya glared at Adom. “You’re feeding him?”
“What am I supposed to do, let ’im wither away? He takes that shirt off and I bet you already can see his ribs.”
“They’re tasty,” Baern said, offering her one.
“Who are your friends you mentioned?”
Baern popped a cracker in his mouth and washed it down with a mug of something or other. “Only one’s a friend, really. The other is an associate. A lackey.” He tapped his chin and added, “A necessity, actually.”
“Who?”
“Lavery Opsillian is the friend.”
Elaya pulled up a chair and sat on it backwards. “If I didn’t know for certain that gods did not exist, I’d chalk this up to divine intervention. What are the chances, after all? Unless you’re lying to me.”
Baern pushed the bowl of crackers in front of her. “Are you sure you’re not hungry? I become enraged when I’m hungry. It’s one of my worst qualities.”
She shoved the bowl away from both of them.
“Ask yourself this,” Baern said. “Why would I want anything more to do with you? While in your company, I witnessed the near-death of Olyssi Gravendeer, was almost devoured by a cursed tree and the gruesome crones that served it, and was taken prisoner by a fanatical miscreant who then sold me to the aforementioned Olyssi Gravendeer, at which point I truly thought I’d spend the last of my days in chains before being tossed off the spire of Haeglin.
“You and your mercenaries have not been a source of great luck for me. Although to be fair, I wouldn’t have died, but that’s neither here nor there.”
She refused to believe him. Too many times had he tried running a game on her: buried treasure he’d promised her, the “people he knew” who could fix her Olyssi Gravendeer problem. Why would she fall for his lies again? As far as she was concerned, Baern was out for Baern and only Baern.
“We’ve not been good for you,” she conceded. “So why not off us?”
The laughter he coughed simmered to a weak, ill-at-ease smile. “You’re not laughing.”
“It wasn’t a jest.”
Baern drew his nail across the table, tracing nonsensical designs. “The only entity I’ve had a hand in offing in the last century has been a dragon. Funnily enough, that happened two months ago.”
Fantastic, Elaya thought, now I’ve got to fear dragons right after I dig up buried treasure. She rolled her eyes.
Baern stuffed a hand into the pocket of his bulky wool coat. He slapped a crimson scale on the table, then sat back and smiled disdainfully.
Elaya kept her arms crossed on the back of the chair. “What is that?”
“It would appear to be a dragon scale. Go on, you can touch it.”
With hesitation, as if reaching into a pot whose contents could be either effervescent or boiling water, Elaya slowly stretched across the table and placed a fingertip on the scale. She retracted it quickly, not expecting to feel such a coarse and jagged texture.
“Where did you get this?”
“No one listens to me. No one ever listens to me. I done told you, I killed it. The dragon, that is.”
“Where, not how.”
“On an estate belonging to one Oriana Gravendeer.”
Elaya cupped her hand around the scale and slid it closer. She turned it over, surprised to see its backside hollowed. She wondered how scales were attached. Were they like the dragon’s skin, or an outer armoring that was fused together by bone and muscle and tendon?
“Sadly,” Baern said, “Bastion and your sister are content with the world going away. Or at least our species going away. They won’t help, so I am now forced to rely solely on dead things. This makes me unhappy, as you can imagine.”
Elaya glanced up in an explain-yourself-now sort of way. After Baern didn’t decipher her body language, she said, “Explain yourself, now.”
“Not until you tell me why you’re here.”
She chewed her cheek, looked to Adom, who rema
ined at her side. He shrugged and said, “What’s it matter?”
“I’m taking Silderine.”
Baern sniffed and nodded, as if he’d heard something as mundane as the weather. He took a cracker, broke it in half, but never bit into either side. Instead, he regarded Elaya with a sideways head. “Might I ask… how? Kidnapping a king was buckets o’ impressiveness, I’ll grant you that. But slitting the throats of ladies who, if you ask me, are sorcerers fused with demons, and taking their kingdom—well, you’ll need an army for that, I’m afraid.”
Elaya nodded her head toward the door.
“Hmm?”
“Go see.”
He laid his crackers down and scooted out from the table. The inn door opened and, moments later, it closed. He returned, sat down, and tossed half a cracker in his mouth. He chewed silently, swallowed, and sniffed again. Then he used his beard to wipe his lips and stared at Elaya. “So, you’ve an army.”
“I do. The freemen.”
“What?”
“I call them the freemen.”
“I’m not going to ask how—”
“I’ll tell you anyhow,” Elaya said. “We bagged up gold from the Gravendeer vault. Adom and a couple others set off to negotiate the purchase of weapons and armor and food and herbs—supplies an army needs to thrive. And I, in the meantime, delivered justice to those who desperately deserved it. And for that, they followed me. For that, they’ll fight for me. For that, they’ll die for me.”
“They’re not trained, then.”
“You need only a hand to swing a sword.” While that was true, Baern’s concern was the one blemish on her plan. And it had needled her every hour of every day. Training slaves and poor laborers to fight would take time, and time was not something she could afford.
Silderine did not maintain a large standing army, though. Daughters numbered in the low hundreds, and the remainder of the kingdom consisted of the same oppressed and subservient cattle she had freed. If Elaya could overwhelm the Daughters with numbers alone, then perhaps those cattle would flee their pens and form a resistance with her.
“This makes a small problem of mine less worrisome,” Baern said. “If you’ll help, that is.”
“Why would I?”
“Because you want to continue fighting the good fight. And by that, I mean living. You do want to continue living, yes? Dragons have returned, and the only hope Avestas has of enduring is shattering the seal. Lavery, I dearly hope, is on his way now to help accomplish that. But we’ll need access to Silderine.”
Elaya knew all about the seal, or at least everything the Twin Sisters’ teachings wanted her to know. She couldn’t be sure all of it was true—for that matter, any of it—as indoctrination begets disinformation. She’d been told, as all Daughters had, that the Twin Sisters themselves had formed the seal six hundred years ago, to trap Death’s legion from entering and destroying the goodness of Avestas.
She was fed wild stories of grotesque amalgamations of bone and rot beyond the seal, straight from the realm of death itself. By a young girl, such stories are easily believed and eagerly digested. But as a woman, and especially one who had broken free of the Daughter’s grasp, she thought them no more than tales intended to spook children.
“Not everything you were told was a lie,” Baern said, as if he could read her thoughts. “Death does lurk behind that door, but we can control them. Lavery can control them. They marched into the heart of Avestas once, and they must again. Without them, this world will burn.” He reached for her hand. “Help me. I plead.”
Elaya felt her hands turn cold. Even with Baern’s touch they did not warm. She didn’t understand any of this. Her always-present skepticism told her that she should question all of it, but she couldn’t shake the intense crushing feeling in her chest that every word Baern spoke was true.
He wasn’t lying to her. He wasn’t running a game on her. Not this time.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’ll help. Not you, but this world—and everyone who exists here.” She paused. “It’s what I was born to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Spires and peaked roofs dominated the sky, splashed with soft, sprightly shades of cerulean and dandelion. The innards of Torbinen were arranged with unification and organization in mind; streets intersected one another at right angles, forming a well-defined frame.
On either side of the main cobbled road that ran straight through Torbinen rose enormous stone buildings, clad in ornate facades and stonework and buttresses. Designed with a priority of verticality, each structure vaulted upward as if in an attempt to puncture the clouds.
Oriana walked the city’s sand-dusted cobbles, constantly reminding herself to lower her head and look straight ahead. Moments after she’d heed her own advice, she’d find her eyes drifting upward again, ogling and admiring.
She saw a woman sitting on a balcony eighty feet above the ground, bouncing a newborn on her knee. She passed robust men and plump-cheeked children. Luxurious silk dressed almost everyone, save the clergy, who got by on thick cotton vestments.
But none of it was gaudy. Even grandiose wasn’t a word that fit. Elegant? Sure. Ostentatious? Not a chance. Even though Oriana wore a mere loosely fitting smock cut to midthigh and tall leather boots worn and blemished by age and the elements, she didn’t feel at all out of place.
Still, the impressiveness of Torbinen was undeniable. It was said that the commoners ate like kings, dwelled in the sky, and laughed more richly than any in all of Avestas.
The people had Farris Torbinen’s social policies to thank for that. Perhaps, Oriana thought as a wheelbarrow full of exotic gems rolled by, they should also thank their fortunate proximity to plentiful and rare resources.
There was one small problem with the extraordinary quality of life enjoyed by those in Torbinen: they were less likely to indulge in war unless backed against a wall they could not plow through. This, Oriana knew, would make her hope of negotiating an alliance with Farris difficult. Unless she brought proof that dragons were not only returning, but were already here.
She clutched a small wooden box with small holes against her chest. It squirmed. “It’s okay,” she whispered, patting the side. “We’ll be there soon.”
A man with hair bundled in purple silk approached from the side of the street, twirling a rose. “A fragrance for my lady!” he said in a sharp, tongue-twisting accent.
Oriana smiled. “It’s very lovely, but I’m afraid I’ve no coin.”
He pushed the rose toward her. “It’s compliments of the Perfumer Fartook.”
“Oh. Well, give my appreciation and thanks to Perfumer Fartook.”
“You gave them to him yourself,” the man said, bowing and retreating back to the street edge.
What a lovely city, Oriana thought. She wished Haeglin was as friendly. And clean. And bright. She looked at the box. It made a noise. One day it will be. I’ll make sure of it.
She smelled the rose deeply, its scents exotic and otherworldly. It was tangy with a hint of sweetness, and on its petals glistened a wax that, when touched, melted into Oriana’s skin and seemed to suffuse her entire body with warmth.
Down the perfectly straight road she walked, a smile still affixed to her face and a warm sun overhead. Far ahead rose a spiraling citadel. Atop its roof lay a squat formation of stone resembling a miniature tower. From this flew the yellow flag of Torbinen, centered with a blue jagged-toothed eel swimming in raging waves.
Oriana went up the wide steps to a landing leading to the citadel’s tall, sweeping doors. Potted flowers skirted the landing, blooms of violet bells and orange bulbs, of golden lips with pink centers and frosted tips that drooped and sagged.
Had there not been two guardsmen posted at the doors, Oriana would have harvested herself some new flora. They probably wouldn’t grow in sand, anyhow.
Oriana smoothed out her smock and straightened herself before the guards, who were known as the Tridents: essentially Torbinen’s standing a
rmy that both fought abroad and kept peace at home.
“Men of the Tridents,” she said, “I request an audience with your honorable and gracious queen, Lady Farris Torbinen.” Such a request would be sacrilegious in Haeglin, and for that matter, throughout most of Avestas. But Farris… well, she was different.
“I ain’t in charge of bookin’ audiences,” said one of the guards. He wore loose chain and held a pike. “Sir Dorull takes care of that sort of thing, but I can promise ya the queen is all taken up for the next month. Maybe more.”
“I’m sure she can make time for the daughter of Raegon Gravendeer.” Oriana smiled. “I forgot to mention that I’m Oriana Gravendeer.”
The guard put a hand over his heart. “Dear me, deepest apologies, Lady Oriana. I didn’t—”
She readjusted her grip on the small box she carried. “It’s quite all right. Cohorts of armed men do not travel with me, and I wear little to distinguish myself from the less fortunate.”
The guard looked at his partner. “What are you staring at? Go fetch Sir Dorull.”
“You’re the new face ’round here. You go play chase ’n’ catch.”
He looked enraged. “We’re in the presence of a lady! If the queen hears about this… if Lord Kraen hears—ah, dammit, Quen.” He propped his pike against the citadel, then grasped the door handle with both hands. He lurched back, and slowly the enormous door opened. Before going inside, he glared at the apparent Quen and said, “They warned me about you.”
Quen chuckled. “Tell you what I’d like to do right now,” he said, slouching and staring at Oriana’s chest. He licked his lips. “I’d like to drown myself in liquor.” He laughed. “Do you like rum? I could show you the best damn still you’ve ever seen, comes out clear as crystal every time. Some say it’ll make you half-blind, but I still got eyes, don’t I?” Those eyes of his swerved from one breast to the other. “And thank the gods for that.”
Oriana crossed her arms. “I don’t think becoming a Trident was the right choice for you.”
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 32
