Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps

by Shannon McGee

  “Taryn… it is quite all right. What brings you out here at such a late hour?” Her eyes went to the wetness on my sleeve and crinkled in sympathy. “Here.” She extended a handkerchief, which I took, hesitantly, dabbing at the water.

  She was so much less insidious here than she had out in the bright sun. Away from her guards, that faint feeling of danger was absent. Gone too was the fast-moving fan and the deliberate gestures. Her voice was sweet, and her question seemed genuine, not a simple pleasantry that one person made before brushing past another. I stopped my hand midway as I realized it was reaching for the braids I had already undone for the evening.

  “Your ladyship, I couldn’t sleep.” I glanced behind me to see if I was still flanked. The servant had vanished, but that didn’t make me feel necessarily more at ease.

  “Nor could I; we have that in common. Is everything all right?” She noted my hesitation and ducked her head. “Forgive me, but I know that I frightened you this afternoon. My lord husband tells me often that I am not always tactful in this language. It can be… difficult to relay the correct message.”

  I blinked at her in surprise. I had not thought of that. “I was startled,” I admitted haltingly, now wringing the handkerchief between my hands. “To me, my magic is connected to a past I would rather forget. I was not prepared to have you mention it.” None of which was a lie.

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Your family had magic?”

  “Yes, your ladyship.” I twisted the handkerchief in my hands. I was feeling a little more tired now. There was a soft scrape of a door opening and shutting down the hallway, but I found I didn’t care what it might have been as I normally might have.

  She had shifted slightly, and I could not quite see her face in the shadows, but her voice was forlorn. “I can understand how, if your parents were unkind to you and they had magic, you might be inclined to ignore your own.”

  I wondered if this was a reflection on her own feelings for the stepmother I had heard of. “My parents were amazing,” I said honestly. “It was my brother. My twin. He had the magic.”

  “And you are estranged from him now?”

  “He’s dead, your ladyship.”

  She winced, pressing a slim hand against her chest. “I am sorry. I have done it again. You must pardon me. It was not my business to ask. I wish to assure you my intention is only to help, but perhaps Anya is right. She says I treat the whole world as though it is one of my confidants from home. Always asking too much and sharing too much.”

  I felt sympathy for Lady Famai. I couldn’t help it. I still didn’t trust Gabriel and Anya as far as I could throw them, but could my shock have caused me to misjudge Lady Famai? She didn’t speak the language, and she missed her friends. It was only natural that she would put her foot in her mouth on occasion. Why had I been so suspicious of her wanting to help less fortunate children? By Ito and Belinda’s own admission, having too much magic stored inside of me could make me feel off. That wasn’t the fault of the lady or her servants.

  What proof did I have that it was she who had freed my memories? And if she had, what proof did I have that her intentions had been malicious? Could it not have been that she saw I was blocked in some way, and had as she said tried to help?

  “You don’t need to apologize for asking,” I hurried to assure her. “I was once told strangers are like confession booths. We are so easy to speak to, and it feels good to talk sometimes, especially when you know the person can do nothing with the information, like someone close to you could.”

  Aella had told me that, but I didn’t want to think about Aella now. Not when this beautiful lady was being so kind to me. I wanted to make amends for causing her to feel like she had erred, when clearly I had been oversensitive. I pressed the handkerchief to my shoulder once more and then offered it back to her with an apologetic smile for its soggy state. She waved it away.

  “Keep it. I have so many. I would ask you though… Only, I fear you will find the question intrusive.” She turned away from me, as though considering her question.

  Pocketing the handkerchief, I leaned after her. “Anything, your ladyship. I promise, you will not offend me.”

  “How did your brother die? It may not shock you to know that I have powerful forces behind me. I could help bring whoever harmed him to justice.”

  Flames roared up around me, crackling and hissing. There was smoke in my nose. It was in my eyes. I shut them, and the flames winked out. When I opened my eyes again I was back in the barn. I could smell horse dung and the oils that burned in the lamps.

  “He died in a fire,” I said weakly. My mouth was paper dry. I felt a little dizzy. Lady Famai had turned back to me, and she reached forward now, as if to steady me.

  “Taryn?” The voice came from behind me. Leaning against the rough wood of the empty stall, I turned to see who the newcomer was. It was Victor, his bald head gleaming in the light of the candle he carried. “What are you doing up still? It’s past time to be abed.” He paused as he took notice of my companion.

  When I looked back at Lady Famai, she was cast in relief of the candle. There was a strangeness to her eyes. It was as though they had not adjusted to the new light quickly enough. As she met my gaze, her pupils shrank too slowly. Goosebumps rippled over my skin. I had seen her eyes do that before. I had seen someone else’s eyes do that before too.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I told Victor, still looking at the lady.

  “Well being down in the barn isn’t going to help you sleep any. I’d suggest you get a move on back to your cot—er, your bed. We hunt in the morn.”

  Lady Famai had been oddly silent through the first part of our exchange. Now she beamed at him apologetically. “You are from Taryn’s mercenaries?” Victor nodded stiffly but made no move to bow or even to smile back. This had not been the reaction she had expected. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Please forgive me. I am Lady Famai, of Elyria and Donegal. I am afraid I am responsible for keeping your warrior up.”

  He grunted. “No harm done, your ladyship. We’ll be retiring now.” He took one of my arms in hand and began to lead me away. Still a little woozy, I did not resist. “Nice to meet you, your ladyship.”

  As we walked, flames licked at the corner of my vision, but I ignored them. Only when we were in the stairwell did I dig my heels in to make us stop. I gripped the wooden railing hard and breathed deeply, trying to center myself. When I was about as calm as I likely to get, I rounded on him.

  “What was that about? I’m not a child who needs to be bustled off to bed, and you were rude to the lady.” I wasn’t really mad at him for pulling me away, but I felt like I needed to be mad, or I’d just be scared all over again, and I was tired of being scared.

  His face was impassive, neither stern nor apologetic. “Aella sent me to look after you. She didn’t want to involve the higher-ups. She seemed to think you wouldn’t come away for her, and o’ course Lucas would have just gotten distracted by the likes of yon.”

  I latched onto that, heating up. “Aella is not my keeper—and how did she even know where to send you?”

  “She followed you. Through the outer stairs.”

  The stairwell carried echoes too well for me to yell. Instead I gritted my teeth. “What exactly did she tell you to do? To come fetch me? That clueless Taryn needed minding? That I needed someone to tell me what was good for me?”

  Victor looked unimpressed, but he let me speak my bit without interrupting me. Rather than make me feel better, this made me feel like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I let my tirade peter out, though I continued to fume silently. When he seemed convinced I was not going to continue, Victor spoke.

  “She said you were with a mage woman down in the stables, and that she hadn’t had a chance to tell you that woman had been asking the servants questions about you all day.”

  My throat tightened. “What sort of questions?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t ask. We met in the hall and she said she tr
ied to talk to you, but you were asleep when she came back to the room. Said you woke up, and she thought you’d gone to the privy, but when she went to follow you to speak with you, you came down here instead. Said the woman seemed up to no good. So, I came and got you. Glad I did.”

  “And why is that?”

  “She was doing something. Dunno what, but,” he waved a hand over his eyes, “some mages get a funny look about them when they’re doing something. Even if it’s something small, like talking to one another inside their own heads.”

  I thought of Michael, sitting at the dinner table, his pupils too large. They had done the same thing in the barn the night of the bonfire. Lady Famai’s eyes… I shook my head. I should have realized. But did doing magic mean that she was doing something wrong? My hand wandered to the handkerchief she had given me. It was soft and still slightly damp. Even asking questions about me wasn’t necessarily bad if she had feared she had frightened me. She might have been trying to learn about me in order to make amends.

  A small voice reminded me that she was a noble. Nobles, even kind ones, did not really care if they hurt the feelings of commoners. Gods only knew that the baron who owned the land Nophgrin sat on hadn’t even been out to those lands since I had been alive. He sent clerks, and letters, and collected taxes, but he didn’t care about the commoners. Why should Lady Famai be any different? Something about her talk of justice and powerful forces rang a familiar note in my head, but I couldn’t place it. And if she wasn’t any different than other nobles, then what could she want from me?

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say you’ll go to bed, so I can get to mine.”

  I agreed and together we trudged back up to our floor. Back in our room Aella was waiting up for me. She was sitting against the wall that her bed was pushed against. I could see her outline in the low light that came in through the window.

  When I had climbed back into my own bed, she whispered, “Are you all right?”

  I rolled over and refused to reply. She didn’t ask again. With some determination, I managed to fall asleep close to midnight.

  Though the change was only apparent to me, and perhaps the few who knew of my magic, the second ride to the sewers felt strange and awkward. I had reached the point where I felt comfortable taking part in early morning chatter. Now, it was as though I was back to the first few weeks on the road with them. I didn’t know who I could trust or what any of these people truly thought of me.

  I didn’t think much of Victor not speaking to me. Though I liked him well enough, he and I were not close. He had only ever spoken to me in passing, or on the rare occasion that he had helped me in the training field at Forklahke. The same went for the majority of the rest of the company. As a rule, I avoided Harold and Tess; Afua and Cassandra did not enjoy small talk in the morning, so their silence was unsurprising. The rest—Lawrence, Tate, and Gilbert—had never seemed to care much for me. They had always been curt, at best, when I had spoken to them. I supposed it would not do me any good to return to dissecting why that was. They were just angry men who resented the inconvenience my arrival caused them.

  The commander and her seconds were their regular brisk and unflappable selves. If I was honest with myself, I would have been more unnerved if they had shown any change in behavior. I appreciated having orders barked at me as though nothing had changed.

  But then there was Aella. She had seemingly given up on trying to talk with me. She pointedly spoke only to Luke, asking about his evening and the women he had seen. Luke did his best to answer in his usual way, but from the looks he kept shooting me over her shoulder. I knew he sensed that a fight was going on, even if he was unwilling to ask about it directly.

  On the other side of that coin, the mages were too helpful and kind. They took turns asking if I was overtired from the small amount of training yesterday, and whether the magic felt any different today now that I was fully aware of it. That, more than anything else, rankled me. I didn’t need them hovering over me like mother hens. It was a relief to descend into the sewers, and the businesslike silence that followed.

  Our path began the same as before, until the first crossroad of tunnels. This time, at Aedith’s direction, we turned down a tunnel that we had bypassed before. The stench was easier to adjust to this second time, as was falling into the sort of loose formation in which we walked. It was two abreast unless the path narrowed.

  At the next split, the party divided in two. The markings on both sides were too clear and recent for us to determine which way was more promising, though Belinda assured me that it was very normal. I was with the half of the company who had been on the same side of the tunnel opening as me during the first hunt. Those who had gone down the tunnel itself split themselves to join each group. Our additions were Aella, Kaleb, and Victor.

  Aedith was leading the other party, and so were Dai and Ito. Losing sight of them caused my heart to race, and I had to force myself to breathe. The reasonable half of me knew that they were more than capable of taking care of themselves. Still if they did need help there would be no way for us to know, unless the mages could communicate, and then we would still have to find them.

  I stumbled over a divot in the brick. Thoughtlessly I thrust the fist that clutched my torch into the wall closest to me for support. Muck smeared across the knuckles of my leather gloves. As I steadied myself, I also mentally harangued myself for letting my focus drift. The rest of the group slowed to wait for me, and I could feel my cheeks heating up.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, keeping my head bowed and pushing off the wall.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Lucas said. “Look.” He had been walking ahead of Belinda and myself, and he came closer, gesturing for me to lift my torch back up. My hand had wiped aside some of the grime, the light of my torch revealed what had caught his attention. Three deep grooves dug into the stone of the wall.

  “Claw marks.” Lawrence, who was on Luke’s right, looked only mildly interested.

  “Aren’t they old?” I asked doubtfully. “They were covered in… whatever.”

  “Let’s see.” Kaleb had to stoop in many parts of the sewers if he didn’t want his curly hair to brush the grimy roof. He did so now as he squeezed through to the back of the line where we stood. He made a noise of pleasure. “There’s nothing actually growing in the tracts yet. Just stuff dripping down over it.”

  I glanced between the more senior members. “So, it’s fresh?”

  His grinned at me briefly, speaking as he made his way back to the front. “Fresh enough. We’re on the right path. Good eye.”

  A wave of smugness passed over the line at this. The sooner we found the beasts, the sooner we could all climb back out. Not to mention, the other half of our company was likely going to trek through these disgusting tunnels without even getting the satisfaction of a fight.

  Not long after that discovery, the path split again. Kaleb stopped us there. “Take a look,” he said to Harold and Lawrence.

  Both men were on the more experienced side when it came to tracking. Both of them had been hunters in their past lives. They crowded close to each set of tracks in turn, holding their torches near and far.

  At last, Harold grunted, “They’re both fresh.”

  “No way to tell which way is more likely. We could guess?”

  “The drakes are three months and some weeks old. They will be branching out at this age. So, we will as well,” Kaleb said after some deliberation. “But split no further on your own. I don’t want us in groups any smaller than four.”

  Once again, we split in half, each group containing four mercenaries. Aella and I went left with the two oldest men, Lawrence, and Victor. Lucas and Belinda went with Harold and Kaleb to the right. Victor and Aella took point in our group, with Lawrence next and then me at the rear.

  The deeper down this section of sewer we went, the more it veered into disrepair. I’d thought the places where hovels had been dug out had been
bad before. Here, the sandstone siding was more frequently dug out than it wasn’t.

  Those holes were almost always empty, though there were signs that they were actively used as homes—fresh fire pits and bedding were piled in their corners. There was one that contained a lump of blankets that shifted away from the light of our torches as we passed. The occupant made no move to bother us though, so we lent them the same courtesy.

  The further we went, the more traces of drakes we found. Since their parents had been disposed of and the young drakes had to hunt for themselves, these signs were abundant. They left meal scraps in the form of rat bones and half-melted pieces of brick.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t make tracking them exactly easy. Much like gryphons, drakes were maddening in that they understood how to make their trails difficult to follow. That included a tendency to climb, switching which side of the putrid river of waste they walked, as well as swimming in the water for lengths at a time.

  “Creatures should never be this clever,” Aella muttered as she was forced to inch across a wobbling wooden board to discern which way our trail went next. “And if they are this clever, then they’re at least as smart as half the people I’ve run into. They ought to be paying taxes like the rest of us.”

  Victor was bent in half, inspecting a dead rat. “You’ve never paid taxes,” he said blandly.

  I snorted. Halfway across the makeshift bridge Aella glanced over her shoulder to grin at us. “When they do, I will.”

  Like a geyser, water jutted upward to her left as a dark form shot out of the water and onto the damp stone pathway. Caught by surprise, Aella’s arms flailed for balance. The torch in her hand fell into the water where it went out with a hiss, shrouding her in shadows. Before she lost her footing entirely, she managed to bend her knees and leap for the walkway. She hit awkwardly, taking the brunt of the fall on her shoulder. The rest of us didn’t wait for her to gain her footing. The drake was already closing in on her.