by LeRoy Clary
The dragon flew over us again as if keeping a wary eye on Kendra, which was probably true. At the elaborate City Gate of the port, a familiar figure lounged against one stanchion and waited for us, arms crossed over his chest in careless disregard. He appeared totally at ease, almost part of the landscape as he stood unmoving, only his eyes followed us. It was a man known as Avery, the head servant for the Heir Apparent, the next King of Dire, and a rival of mine for years. He was sent here on an unknown mission by his master.
I pulled up next to him and waited to see if he greeted me in a friendly manner or the snide way that was normal in our relationship at Crestfallen Castle. Kendra stopped beside me before he spoke, addressing both of us in his superior manner, yet he seemed to allow grudging respect to enter his manner.
“I heard the two of you were returning this way.”
“So, you came out in the damp and chill just to greet us? How thoughtful,” I said pleasantly.
“Ah, Damon. If nothing else, we know you are loyal to the crown, and that will be remembered long after you depart this foul place and return to your shared apartment. Loyal to a fault, some might say.”
“Loyal to my princess.” After a glance at Kendra to make sure it was okay to continue sniping at him, I said, “Have you heard any good rumors or even a few true facts we should know about? Or, did you travel to this miserable city to stand in the cold and damp for pleasure?”
My barbs missed as he casually brushed them aside with a tilt of his chin. “Do you have specific rumors in mind that you wish to know? There are so many juicy rumors floating around this port that the largest of the ships in the harbor could sail upon them if they were water.” His smirk at his choice of colorful words usually enchanted both of us. In truth, he always had a way to turn and twist words to his advantage.
In our past encounters, Avery had always been busy with palace intrigue and politics, and he was perhaps the best at it of all the servants. Even when the palace was located several days away, he searched for advantages he could use in the future. Still, there was certainly news he would know of Mercia that we didn’t, and that could help us. His greatest ability was to ferret out tiny threads of rumor and truth and weave them into a tapestry of interest or fact. While rivals, we served the same crown.
In my most pleasant voice, I said, “No doubt you’ve heard about the Mage War we’re engaged in, and how they kept the last dragon penned in a cave and drew on its strength for their personal benefit and the source of their magic. What you may not have yet heard is that we believe they used that same magic to make our king ill, on his deathbed some say, and four people in this city intended to replace him with a double who now lies dead in the rubble of an inn here in the port. Kendra has freed the dragon and prevented the future misuse of magic, and we think our king may have healed with the release of the dragon but have not yet heard if that is true.”
There was a lag as Avery processed obviously new information. He shifted, so his body faced me, instead of only his head and eyes. “Meaning the king may rule for many more years, and you believe me disappointed?”
“Are you?” My question was pointed, direct, and honest. He was the head servant to the Heir Apparent, the son who would be the next king.
He thought about that for the space of a few breaths, and that action of consideration made me like him more than at any time since we’d first met. It told me he was thinking about the answer instead of stating the obvious first thought that entered his mind. If the king died, his position would be instantly elevated. He would serve the new king, a position more powerful than all but a few in Crestfallen. Few would dare cross him. Yet, he was also loyal to the old king—in his own manner.
He said, sounding sincere for a change, “That would be wonderful news if he lives. Have you dispatched messengers to know for sure?”
“Princess Elizabeth rode to Crestfallen and is returning here as fast as possible, and if there is any change in his health, she will know.”
He sighed, “That will take days. Too bad you couldn’t have kept one of the damn mages alive or in captivity, so he could use his magic powers and ask the mage we left alive at Crestfallen about it.”
I felt Kendra’s eyes boring into the back of my head. She said coldly, “Two questions, Avery. Without convoluted answers. Are mages able to speak to one another over long distances? And is Twin, the young mage we left at the palace able to do it?”
Avery placed one foot on a raised wooden sidewalk and leaned closer, his hands braced on his knee. “I thought you already knew the first, and the second is, yes. While Twin lacks many of the flamboyant abilities of the other three mages at Crestfallen, he is excellent in passing messages over a distance.”
Kendra said, almost as a dismissal, “We are staying at the Blue Bear Inn if there is a room available for us. Would you care to join Damon and me for dinner and open, friendly conversation?”
“Open?” Avery asked, pretending puzzlement. “Friendly?”
She continued, “Conditions in the kingdom have changed in the past few days, and I suspect there will be more in the coming days that will touch us. All of us. It would be nice to know that all we do in the future supports your Heir Apparent—and also our present king. Together, we can perhaps identify and stand unified against the usurpers.”
Again, he hesitated, and again, I understood and appreciated his reluctance to make snap decisions. We had been bitter political opponents of a sort for ten years. Things like that do not change overnight. He had little reason to trust us, other than that we may now work towards a common goal that may help him in his efforts on his unknown quest.
He said, “If you cannot find accommodations at the Blue Bear, leave a word with the innkeeper, and I will find you for dinner. In the meantime, there are several interesting rumors for me to sniff out.”
He turned theatrically, and his cloak swirled out in a manner that told me he must have spent many afternoons in front of a mirror practicing the spin to get the perfect effect. He threw us a wide self-satisfied smile over his shoulder as he walked purposefully away.
“That went well,” Kendra said.
“Better than we had a right to expect. Avery may not support us, but it seems he understands we are on his side—or at least, we are on the side of the crown, no matter who wears it,” I agreed.
“He’ll make a better friend than an enemy.” She spurred her horse in the direction of the inn, and hopefully the redheaded girl waiting for me. The people moving about their business on the street in front of us moved apart as if we were a snowplow pulled by four sturdy oxen. They stood aside and silently watched us pass with undisguised interest and more than a few whispers. None cheered, jeered, or changed expressions at all. They all knew from rumors who we were, they knew some of what we’d accomplished with destroying Mercia, and they didn’t know if their lives would change for the better or worse because of us. They were wary.
Oh, there were a few who flashed tentative smiles our way, here and there a hand waved slightly, and more than one attractive young woman tried to catch my eye. Young men tried to get Kendra to notice them, but her focus remained fixed directly ahead until her eyes flicked in the direction of a tall, thin young man with a neatly trimmed beard. She had a type.
At the inn, we turned our horses over to a pleasant stable boy of eight or nine. He promised to put them in clean stalls next to each other for company. He would provide all the feed and water they wished for a single small copper coin and brush them for another. We left the horses in his good hands and made our way to the front door.
We quickly found the innkeeper. He was short, round, and his cheeks were as red as the morning sun in summer. He was the sort of man who never settled down to rest. His hands moved constantly. His eyes darted from place to place searching for small things to be done for his customers, and often his motions silently directed his employees to needed tasks. His toe tapped to a silent tune that was probably playing endlessly inside his hea
d.
“We’re full up with the overflow of refugees from that dragon flattening Mercia. But, I got myself an idea,” He told us with his accented good humor.
With that, the innkeeper hustled across the room and talked to a man sitting by himself at one of the smaller tables. The man shook his head vigorously at the innkeeper and tried to go back to his meal. The innkeeper moved closer, spoke again, and the man’s head shook a second time. The innkeeper didn’t stop. He leaned even closer, and his voice rose. The third time, the man slowly nodded. A large copper coin quickly changed hands, and the innkeeper returned.
He said with a lopsided grin, “The fine gentleman at that table over there has graciously agreed to share a room with another. That means I have a single room the two of you can have.”
Kendra said, “How much?”
“Two meals a day, your choice of which. It will cost a full copper a day for each of you.”
Kendra said, “I meant, how much did you pay him to clear out of that room for us? From here, it looked like a full Chamberlain Coin, far more than you’re asking us to pay for the room, which is bad business. That makes me wonder.”
His cheeks turned even redder. He said, “It was indeed a full Chamberlain, but he wouldn’t accept less. But there are no more rooms in the city for you, so you should be thankful.”
“But why did you do it?” she persisted. “Or maybe I should ask if you will you do the same for the next person who wishes to stay here?”
He shrugged innocently as if excusing the action. “Just good business for me, not a bad thing, as you suggest. You see, after you’re gone, I’ll tell the tale of how the woman who released the dragon from Mercia insisted on staying only here at my fine establishment, and nowhere else. Your fame will draw in more clients to my humble inn. I will say that you loved the good food and the clean room, and I may even suggest this is the only place you ever stay when in the Port of Mercia. With that true story to spread along the waterfront, I can raise my rates, serve a better clientele, and make more money.”
Long before he’d finished, both Kendra and I were laughing. He would earn back ten times what he paid to vacate the room in the first month. It was as he said, just doing business. The cost of advertising. Kendra placed her hand on his shoulder and pulled him closer. She took his hand in hers and gave him a few coins, one of which was a Chamberlain to replace his cost, as she said, “We pay our own way in full. You can tell your tales before we leave as well as after, and we will even agree to support them—only if the cleanliness is as you say, and the food is as good.”
He showed us the room, a space no larger than my smallest clothes closet in the palace. It was barely wide enough for two to sleep on the floor side by side, and then only if nobody opened the door. On the positive side, nobody would sneak into our room while we slept, and he was correct about the cleanliness. The straw was yellow and fresh, the blankets, three of them, were aged, but clean and without signs of insects.
“The food?” Kendra asked him after inspecting the room. “We are hungry.”
“As much ‘endless stew’ from the pot you can hold, or chicken soup with rice and whatever vegetables my cook could get her hands on. There is also hard-bread.” The innkeeper smiled. “And wine or ale, but you pay for them by the mug.”
“Hard-bread?” I asked, having only heard the term once before.
“Baked just for me, right down the street to my specifications. You’ll break teeth trying to gnaw it, unless you let it soak in the stew or soup, first.”
I grinned at him. “I think I may have had the same bread at an inn near Crestfallen.”
“A nasty sort of an innkeeper up there, was he? Bad temper and dirty hands?”
“He was.”
“That would be my younger brother. Is he doing well?”
“He sold me four tired horses while I paid for royal stallions, if that answers your question. Then he claimed to the other patrons that I’d beaten him on the haggling so badly his children would go hungry.”
The chubby innkeeper laughed, slapped his knee and waddled off to serve his other customers while we found a table in a corner. I watched the eyes in the room watching us. More specifically, I watched for eyes not watching us. We were celebrities. Everyone knew us, or about us, and we were strangers. They were curious. So, any not looking our way were suspect—and trying to hide from me. None were, and I relaxed as much as a body can with all eyes in a room full of watching people.
Kendra said, “How much of that story you told the innkeeper was true?”
“Half.”
She flashed me one of the smiles most men in the kingdom would die for. We both asked for white wine when the barmaid came our way. She was maybe thirty, dark-haired and pretty in an ordinary sort of way. That means, she was not the redheaded girl I was searching for, so she was ordinary in comparison. The one I sought, I’d seen for only a fleeting moment, but knew we’d get along like the best of friends. Nearly any of the other women in the port would pale in comparison.
Asking about the redhead was not something proper to do, especially not with Kendra sitting with me. However, if Kendra knew of my quandary, she would take it upon herself and ask, then devise a reason to leave the two of us together. That would be great, until tomorrow when we intended to climb that mountain of stairs, giving my sister all the time in the world to remind me of what a favor she had done for me, and how I owed it to her to share all the details.
There are some things better done alone. We had asked for the chicken soup with rice, and of course hard-bread. It arrived, and the soup was as good as the innkeeper said, not considering we hadn’t had a full meal in four or five days. A few fried meat pies and whatever apples and such we carried had been our meals while sitting in the cold night air, and even in the snow at the top of the mountain pass.
Now we sat in a warm, smoke-filled inn with a warm fire, at a table with steaming hot soup and hard-bread and wine in front of us. He might have served last week’s stew with nothing else, and we would have eaten like a pair of sows. The white wine was actually very good, a rare occurrence outside of the palace. Here, it was sweet and strong. The effects took hold after only a few sips. I motioned for a refill.
Kendra tried to eat the small round loaf of bread the size of her fist, to my amusement. She couldn’t bite into it and tried pounding it on the edge of the table to break the crust open. More than one person smiled at her failing efforts.
I placed mine in the bowl, at the edge where I could still scoop out spoons full of soup as it soaked. She eyed me and watched. After allowing her to wait and watch long enough, I lifted my hard-bread and took a massive bite that caused soup and wet bread to drip down my chin to my chest.
It tasted wonderful, warm and full of unknown spices. What was even more wonderful was the stealthy approach from behind of a young woman. She leaned over my shoulder and used a white napkin to wipe the excess soup away. Her wild red hair tickled my nose, as strands stuck out every which way, refusing to be contained.
My tongue refused to cooperate and speak, my mind went blank, and I knew I had to say something impressive, words that would make her wish to spend unlimited time with me that evening.
I stammered, “H-hi.”
CHAPTER TWO
T he girl with the wild red hair smirked as she finished wiping spilled soup off my chest and chin. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to finish the task, and why should she after I’d nearly made her swoon with my elegant oration and kingly table manners. Kendra was smiling at me, but my eyes had no time to look at her. The girl leaning over my shoulder paused and spoke, her lips very near my ear.
“Hi, yourself,” she said in a husky voice.
Those were the two prettiest words ever spoken.
That is until Kendra stood and said a few pretty ones of her own, “Well, it’s been a long day. I should excuse myself for the night. Don’t stay up all night, Damon.”
She disappeared into the hallway with t
he doors leading to the sleeping rooms. I asked the girl standing at my side, “When do you get off work?”
She said, “I did when I saw you come in. I asked the innkeeper. He agreed that I should keep you happy and entertained. He said it was good for business.” She sat in Kendra’s chair and said pointedly, “I love white wine.”
Later, Avery strolled past the table, caught my eye and raised his eyebrows, asking if he could join us. I shook my head, and he quietly disappeared. If he had important news, nothing would have deterred him.
People called her Flame, she said. I can’t remember her real name because the other fit so perfectly. She talked, I listened. Then the other way around. When I finally looked up, the common room of the inn was empty, the coals in the fireplace were dead, and I dreaded the coming sunrise. My romance had lasted a full evening, yet it was all I could think about, even after she left me sitting in the same chair. I threw back the remainder of my wine.
Being quiet while trying to slip into our little sleeping room didn’t work. After forcibly taking a single edge of one of the three covers away from my sister to use for myself, sleep wouldn’t come. Finally, I dozed just as the first pots banged in the kitchen, and early risers arrived for their morning meals.
Kendra stirred, shook me and said, “We should grab some food to take with us and eat. We have a lot to do and need an early start.”
The cook kindly filled a cloth bag with enough food for four people. I intended to eat for three. Food might help the hangover and prevent the crossing of my eyes. The stable boy was asleep on his cot in the corner, but we woke him, and he had our horses saddled by the time we were ready. We rode out of the stable into the foggy darkness and the chill of dawn on the coast, the coldest and quietest part of the day.