The gray and white stone used to make the bridge and walls were also implemented in Manvi itself. Three and four-story buildings appeared more common than one and two-story ones, and apart from a few exceptions, I had never seen a city so devoid of wood and plant life. It’s as if someone made it a law against it. Perhaps there was. Maybe less plant life meant less invasive rats. I did not care enough to find out.
After getting a little something to eat at our chosen inn, Kiku left to explore the city, something she rarely got to do in service of her master. Her tone and body language implied she wanted to do this on her own, so I figured she simply wanted some time alone. Not counting her Little One, of course. I actually felt somewhat rejected by her indirect insistence on going out alone. It was a fleeting feeling.
My brain battled against itself for a minute. It struggled to decide between doing a little exploring on my own or going to my room. I wasn’t exactly all that tired yet, but not knowing the native language convinced me to not risk a lonesome excursion. I drank my almost depleted treatment and went to bed.
My dream barely began before I woke up. A slit in the wall acted as my window. It revealed a night still young and boisterous. While not as strong as the initial relief, a dulling tingle remained on the surface of my skin. I lied in bed for a while, enjoying the tingling and a few minutes of an empty head.
My fragments of thought eventually coalesced in my brain. It told me to check Kiku’s room to see if she had returned. I did not expect her to come back so soon, and I expected her to be the one to provide a topic to talk about if she was there, but I was really just looking for something to do. Her door was only two doors farther into the hall, but as I never liked the idea of being caught off-guard, I still took the time to put on my armor before heading out.
I knocked. No answer.
On turning to head back to my cramped room, a man who had been strumming a lute-like instrument got up from his spot near the stairs. He patted the back of a furry, white animal sleeping in a corner to get it to wake. I suspected it to be a dog or a large cat, but the creature that uncurled turned out to look like something crossed between a monkey and a fox. Its general body shape was that of a lean simian, but it had the ears, snout, and tail of a fox. Its big eyes would enchant any child. The monkey-fox yawned and stretched much like a feline would.
The monkey-fox’s clean shaven partner, who looked to be in his late twenties, wore dark blue warrior’s robes, though no weapon hung anywhere. I did see a sheath for what appeared to be a flute or something. His most distinctive fashion feature was a wide brim black hat secured under his chin with a string. Wanting to know whether I was his point of interest, I stood still and waited.
The monkey-fox started out by walking on all fours, but when its human companion stopped in front of me, it stood on its hind legs. Its pink nose, now about waist high, sniffed the air in front of me.
“Still smell it?” the man asked what had to be a summoned beast.
The monkey-fox responded by stuttering out a trilling sound several times.
“Smell what?” I asked.
“Shifa here smells the scent of a dragon around you.”
“That so? She’s smelled a dragon before?”
The man opened his mouth, then creased his face into a confused mien. Looking down at Shifa, he asked, “Hey, how do you know the scent of a dragon?” Shifa’s throat exploded into a hail of chirps, bleats, and weird chirrups not natural to Orda. “All right, all right, calm down. It was a fair question.” To me, he said, “Sorry, drenindru can be touchy.”
“You understood all that?”
“Uh, mainly the nouns. It’s easy to point at something and ask how she’d say it. I have to use the little common sense I have for the other stuff. Now then, we’re getting off topic. My life is presently of little consequence to the world, but if you’re who I think you are, well, I’ll find that much more consequential. Are you the Alslana dragon knight?”
After a moment of thinking it over, I said, “I’m trying to get back to him. Your little friend there is probably smelling the dragon scales I’m wearing.”
“Oh, okay. I suppose that’s almost as good. Where is the dragon knight, then? How did you end up here?”
“Jegeru is under attack, so I had to leave it in a hurry. Now I’m trying to get back to Wregor. The rest of my friends should be there. Maybe with their help I can… reconnect with the dragon knight as well.”
“Jegeru is fucked, huh? Who’s doing the fucking? Those Hoic-Dro people?”
“With help from some resurrected giants, yes.”
“Oh… Uhh, should I be running? Should everyone be running?”
“They’ll undoubtedly move on from Jegeru if left unopposed. If you don’t hear about Wregor armies invading Jegeru lands in the next couple of months, I would recommend keeping Shifa in her own realm and getting everyone else you care about to run as far from Jegeru as possible.”
“A couple of months, eh? Good, not too bad.” He glanced at the door I knocked. “You’re here with someone else?”
“Aye. She still appears to be out, however.”
“It’s a lively town at night. I wouldn’t expect her to be back anytime soon. There are plays to go to, taverns open all night long, games to bet on, and upstanding people to help out of trouble.”
“Ah, and you wanted the dragon knight for that last one.”
“Well, it didn’t have to be a dragon knight. I was looking to hire a little support before Shifa sniffed out a dragon’s scent. When I saw a human foreigner was the cause, I assumed he was the dragon knight himself. Alas, I’m not despairing. A friend of the dragon knight must still be quite the warrior if he’s worthy of dragon scales, yes? I would be doing my own friend a great disservice if I did not attempt to secure the best aid possible, no?”
“So it’s your friend who needs the help?”
“Ah, good, you’re receptive. Yes, my friend is currently in dire straits. Perhaps he placed himself in said situation, but I still say her father and her betrothed’s family are overreacting. It’s not like he’s been keeping faithful. Anyway, the only reason he hasn’t hanged yet is due to his own rich name. Dae-Won is counting on me to set him free before the riches of two men beats out the other.”
“It sounds like being caught trying to free your friend will get you to hang with him.”
“That’s why I won’t be caught. I already have a plan. I just prefer adding all the help I can get, but if I had to do it with what I have now, I’m still fairly confident I could free him. His lover doesn’t want him dead either, so she’s been helping me. All there’s left to do now is get the rope and the girls I hired.”
“Girls?”
“That’s right. Five promising entertainers looking for their big break. They’ll provide a little distraction while the operation is underway. So, are you in?”
I surprised myself by not instantly declining his appeal. There was still a part of me that felt no reason to care what happened to a misguided stranger, but there was another part of me that wanted to embrace what I started in the slaver’s cave. If ruthless slavers could not overthrow my half-soul, then what did I have to fear from a few nobleman’s guardsmen? And freeing a wayward lover sounded like an amusing diversion compared to slaughtering a crew of slavers.
“You planned on freeing him tonight?”
“More like when it felt right. It definitely feels right if you’re coming along.”
“All right, let’s see where this goes. Just know I will abandon you if I have to choose between my life or yours.”
“Hey, fair enough. I get it, you’re important, I’m not. Name’s Ujin Ro by the way.”
“Mercer.”
“All right, Mercer, let’s go get the rope and the girls!”
Ujin lowered his shoulder to invite Shifa to climb on. The otherworldly creature took him up on the offer. The brim of the hat made it impossible to sit up, so she draped herself over his shoulder as though she
were a fashionable pelt. It did not look especially comfortable, but she seemed to like it.
Before leaving the inn, I had Ujin tell the innkeeper to tell Kiku that I would be back if she ended up asking around about me. My conspirator and I went over the particulars of the plan as we walked to wherever the girls lived. With me now part of the calculations, Ujin could take on a little less risk than originally intended. He would stay down with the girls while Shifa went with me and add a distraction by burning something if necessary. Assuring him that I had recently been largely successful in silent infiltrations, my job was to do the actual freeing.
Not unlike the other structures in its neighborhood, the cobblestone building Ujin entered was stained by water and yellow moss. He came out of it a couple of minutes later without the girls.
“Well?”
“They’re getting ready, but we have to go get Yunsoo. The other girls will be a sorry sight without her leading them.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s singing in a high-class tavern not far from here. She’s always been the busiest one. Come on.”
Seeing that Ujin seemed to know his way through the streets, I asked, “How long have you lived here?”
“Oh, uh, since last summer.”
“Then you’re here visiting your friend?”
“That’s part of it. I’m a wanderer at heart, so I would have visited this place eventually, though it’s good to see an old friend. We hadn’t seen each other in five or six years. We met back in this nice coastal town I lived in, which his family sometimes visited.”
“But what do you do for coin? You’re no craftsman or warrior.”
“Hey, how would you know I’m not secretly a master blacksmith or martial arts master?”
“Your hands are too smooth and clean. You don’t take in your surroundings very often, so you’re not worried about what’s behind every corner or tree. Your long strides suggests-”
“Okay, okay, you got me. I don’t do physical labor well. I usually help out other music makers when I have to earn a little coin for myself, but I’ve learned that making friends in the right places works out even better. Anyway, don’t think you have me figured out. I can cast summoning spells pretty well. Even most of you warrior guys can only ever attune their prana to a single beast and an object or two. I can attune my prana to multiple items and beasts without much trouble, and I haven’t honed my spirit in years. I always wondered what I would be capable of if I really devoted myself to training.”
“A force to be reckoned with, I’m sure.”
“Hmm, a sardonic one, aren’t you?”
Crossing a few more streets led us to a cleaner, brighter side of Manvi. The outsized, two-story, high-end tavern we walked toward was named The Delighted Jester.
“Why is the name in the shared tongue?” I asked Ujin.
“The shared tongue is still the tongue of coin, yes? It’s why tutors still teach it to those in the upper classes. Restricting the shared tongue also helps add another layer of separation between those with coin and those without, so anything with the shared tongue here is pretty much seen as a status thing.” He opened the door. “Do warriors go in first or last?”
“Last.”
“After me, then.”
When it was my turn to step through the entrance, I noticed that the dark wood decorating much of the stone foundations partly absorbed the bright light inside the tavern. In the middle of the expansive space was a small, raised stage with four stools. A man playing a large harp and a harmoniously singing woman sat on this platform.
“Is that her?”
“Nah. Yunsoo is younger, thinner, and with long, long hair. Let’s go and-”
A big man in dark gray leather armor strode up to us. With a condescending tone, he asked, “Are you two in the right place?”
Ujin lifted part of my shirt. “See these scales? I could sell one and buy this whole place if I wanted to. Go ahead, feel them. It’s like steel made out of feathers. Do you think someone like him would leave his homeland behind only to buy second-rate service somewhere else?”
The bruiser snorted. “Make sure you buy something.”
Going deeper into the tavern, I asked Ujin, “Couldn’t you just have answered ‘yes’?”
“Eh, it’s his job to be hard on strangers, so you have to act like you belong.” Walking by the long bar counter on the left side of the building, Ujin asked me, “Want a drink?”
“Not the drinking type. Just ask the barkeep where Yunsoo is.”
Ujin separated from me as I let him squeeze through a small crowd of people to get to one of the barkeeps. He eventually returned with a mug filled with a dark liquid. Drinking from his cup, he pointed at the stairs leading up to the second floor.
After taking his gulp, he said, “She apparently works as a server when she’s not singing. She must be more strapped for coin than I thought.”
“That doesn’t seem to be the case for those she’s serving.”
“Yeah, this place is getting half of this city’s wealth drunk right now. We’re rubbing elbows with the greats. Don’t give any of them the evil eye or that bruiser will kick both of us out. And no matter how much you may want to, don’t touch the girls here too much. Places like these attract the best girls by promising to treat them better than the competition.”
“Noted.”
A smaller bar above supplied drinks and food to the patrons wishing for a higher point of view of the building. While the first floor had rectangular tables capable of seating a large party, the round tables that filled the balconies of the second story were better suited for parties of three or four. With fewer people able to fit in this space, it was a little more muted than the one below, though neither space resembled the typical tavern in terms of potential rowdiness. A good number of patrons actually seemed to be listening to the music being strung and sung.
“There she is. Uh, let’s sit down. The barkeeps probably won’t like it if it looks like she’s wasting her time talking to some friends.”
Not bothered by the idea, I let Ujin take me to a small table against a balcony railing in what appeared to be Yunsoo’s section of responsibility. Shifa bounded on to the table and waved over Yunsoo when she turned to look in our direction. She cracked a smile for the summoned beast, but it wasn’t there for the humans.
Yunsoo picked up two empty cups, put them on her tray, and walked over to us. She and Ujin spoke in their inborn tongue. Even the drenindru added her own chirps and chitters into the mix. No one looked too thrilled with what the other had to say.
As Yunsoo walked away, Ujin said, “Hmm, she won’t give me a straight answer.”
“About what?”
“About when she can leave. She said something about me inspiring her somehow.”
“Are you putting words in her mouth?”
“No, no! I mean it. I think she’s talking about my plan to free Dae-Won.”
“She’s inspired by that? Then she wants to do something daring herself.”
“My thoughts, yes.”
“Fine, tell her we’ll help her so she can help us.”
“Sounds fair to me. I ordered us two vegetable dishes. It’s nothing they have to heat or too complicated to make, so it’ll be here quick. I’ll eat yours if you don’t want any.”
With no kitchen in the second floor, Yunsoo gave our order to one of the young men going up and down the stairs. It was he that returned carrying our meals. Shortly after our bowls were set down, Yunsoo came back on the pretense of refilling Ujin’s cup and handing Shifa an apple. Another round of alien words bumbled into my ears while I tried out the food. I recognized the green beans, peanuts, cabbage, and cucumbers, but there were also what appeared to be two different kinds of unknown seeds. Everything was cold, crunchy, and crisp.
Someone calling for Yunsoo cut the conversation short. Ujin, seeing his food as more interesting, did not inform me what they had been talking about. The flurry of activity that came
between performers being replaced kept Yunsoo busy long enough for me to finish much of my salad bowl by the time she returned. The new performers were a pair of older female singers dressed in spotless white gowns. I listened to their sad sounding melody during the dialogue’s continuance. They went on for a good while this time.
I could see both of their expressions gradually progress from a neutral-stern state to one that better fit the relaxed contours of their faces. However, as she opened up more, she regressed back into a dour mien. She also lowered her voice to a loud whisper.
When she walked away with our dishes on her tray, Ujin, in a similarly loud whisper said, “Well, well, she’s out for revenge.”
“Against who?”
“A man who owned her half-sister.”
“Wait, even Shia citizens can be slaves?”
“When they have at least half the blood of the Igseti-Ky, yes. It seems this half-sister of hers died after her owner refused to aid in the birth of her child, which was probably his. Hearing that I will risk my life for my friend has compelled her to risk her own life to avenge her sister.”
“And how does she plan on achieving her revenge?”
“She took a job here because she knows her sister’s owner frequents the tavern. Indeed, he’s here now, near the stage. Do you see him? Ripe fellow with the gray hair, skinny beard? She wants to poison his food, but only if he orders a particularly dangerous meal. That may take a while.”
“What can be so dangerous about a meal?”
“She wants him to order a poisonous fish that swims in the Siti Bin River. The ploplu, I believe. I hear the taste is like no other fish on this side of Orda, but it can come at a steep price if prepared wrong.”
“Who would order that?”
“I doubt it’s all that big of a risk. I’m sure there’s just as high a chance of someone choking on a chicken bone than dying of this fish’s poison, but no one gets to tell the story of how one successfully ate a chicken. Still, if Yunsoo can add her poison to the fish…”
The Dragon Knight and the Light Page 23