Smoke and Shadow: An Epic Fantasy Progression Series (The Dragon Thief Book 3)

by D. K. Holmberg

  At the time though, he had wanted only to try to understand the dragon, but also wanted to have the opportunity to use that so that he could find information about his parents. That was still the case, but now there were other reasons for him to chase this. His brother. The dragon itself.

  “I’m ready.”

  Dorian regarded him. “Then we will begin.”

  Ty was determined to succeed. Not only for himself, but also to maintain this connection to the dragon, to maintain the understanding that he now had, and to ensure that he didn’t have that extra power stripped away.

  He needed the smoke dragon. He needed to have that connection, and he needed to be able to use it, if only so that he could find a connection to the dragon, and to save that power so that he didn’t have to fear someone like Roson James.

  If James were to come at him again, Ty would be ready.

  He was determined to be ready, determined to make sure that he couldn’t harm him. Which meant that he had to find a way to gain control over the dragon.

  Somehow.

  Chapter Five

  He was tired. The last few days had not gone well. Each day had been spent working with Dorian, trying to better understand the connection to the dragon, but each time he’d found no greater success than he’d had when he’d been with Gayal. It was as if the connection, while there, was muted, making it so that he could not reach that power or find what was needed. Working with the dragon—and failing—was surprisingly exhausting.

  When he had been working with Gayal, he had realized it was more than what he had expected, but he also hadn’t found that he got nearly as tired as he was now. It was almost as if something had changed.

  Maybe it was the way Dorian continued to call upon the dragon, trying to strip it off. Or maybe it was the fact that regardless of what he’d done, he had not managed to find any greater connection to the dragon. Ty could feel the smoke within him, the heat and energy that boiled within him, but he had not managed to do anything more with it than he had the very first time.

  Any time the smoke dragon had reacted, it had been of its own accord, not with any sort of control he used. That was the problem. He recognized that he needed to find control, and yet without it he also realized that he would lose the dragon.

  Strangely, that bothered him more than he had expected.

  The last few days, having no sign of Gayal and knowing she had gone in search of Roson James, had given him a different emptiness. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to spend time with Gayal—not that he wanted to admit that to himself—but it was more that she was one of the few people in the city that he knew. It was a comfort. Companionship. It was familiarity.

  Having Bingham in the city should’ve made things easier, but Bingham hadn’t been present or available either. Short of coming to him the very first time and revealing his presence in the city, he hadn’t done anything more. It was almost as if he had wanted him to know that he was there, but that was it. He hadn’t visited with him, though to be honest, Ty had been preoccupied with his training and had returned to the tavern each evening exhausted, not wanting to go and visit with Bingham.

  More than that, Ty suspected that Bingham was caught up in trying to rekindle everything with Esme. It was the reason he was here. The real reason, though he would never admit it.

  And Ty understood. He wanted him to find a way to reconnect with Esme. He wanted Bingham to find happiness. How could he want anything else?

  There were issues with Albion that Ty tried to move past, but it was difficult. His brother had left him in Zarinth, almost as if he were not concerned about Ty, though Ty suspected that wasn’t the truth. Maybe it was just that Ty was isolated. Lonely, were he honest with himself. Losing Eastley, the only friend that he really had, was a burden to him.

  And then there was the fact that he hadn’t gone after rumors of his parents in quite some time.

  He stumbled toward the tavern. He had even stopped looking behind him, no longer scouting for the possibility that somebody trailed after him, though he didn’t think anyone did. In the time that he’d been in the capital, there had been no sign of anybody after him. That didn’t mean that he was safe.

  The Order of the Flame still posed a danger even though they hadn’t presented themselves in quite a while. He would need to find either control over the dragon or he would need to run. The Order of the Flame was powerful. Ty didn’t know if they had a connection to the dragons, if they were Dragon Touched, or if they simply used some other power. He didn’t know. Worse, Gayal hadn’t shared anything about that with him, either.

  He reached the tavern, looking along the street, and didn’t see anybody there. Once inside, he started through the tavern, heading toward the stairs, when he heard a voice call out his name.

  “Ty.”

  He spun, looking around the tavern.

  It was a measure of his fatigue that he hadn’t spent that much time looking around the inside of the tavern and hadn’t surveyed it nearly as closely as he should have. He should have been paying more attention. Now that he was aware, he focused, seeing the tavern for the first time and realizing that it was fairly empty.

  A man sat near the hearth wearing a dark robe of the Flame—a priest, or at least someone who wanted to look like one. It had been a while since he’d seen his brother, though Albion had looked no different than the last time he’d seen him. Maybe a little thinner, which surprised him, especially as Albion should have recovered after having been released from prison, but he still looked otherwise well.

  Ty could scarcely move.

  His brother.

  After all this time, here was Albion, out of prison and in a tavern, waiting for him.

  It felt like he had so many questions, and he had no idea if Albion would provide any answers to him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I would visit with my brother.”

  He looked around the inside of the tavern. There were only a few other people within the tavern. It wasn’t empty, not quite, but it was vacant enough. That was rare, though, especially as Esme preferred to keep her tavern as active as possible, pulling in musicians, singers, and other entertainers to draw in a crowd. She was a skilled businesswoman, he had learned.

  “You can visit with your brother, but I am surprised that you are here.”

  “Why would you be surprised by that?”

  “You are the Dragon Thief, after all.”

  “Careful with that,” he said softly, flicking his gaze around him.

  “Careful with what, the truth?” He dropped down in the seat next to him, looking across the table. The hood of his cloak was pulled up, casting his face in shadows, almost as if he intended to try to keep from revealing his presence here. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you,” Albion said.

  “If you really wanted to see me, you would have done it before now.”

  “I had a few things that needed to be done,” Albion said.

  “Such as hiding from your brother?”

  “I didn’t hide from you.”

  “You didn’t find me, either.”

  “You didn’t need me to find you. You never have.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  He leaned forward. Albion had a leaner face now and dark eyes that took his in. “I’m more sure about that than I am of anything else,” he said.

  “I suppose I should take that as a compliment.”

  “You can take it however you want.” Albion lifted a mug of ale that Ty hadn’t even noticed sitting in front of his brother, swirling it. “I am sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  “Which part were you sorry for? When I was abandoned by our parents? When I started thieving to try to find information about them? When I very nearly died—”

  “Yes,” Albion said, looking up and meeting his eyes. “All of it.”

  Ty let out a frustrated sigh. “You don’t need to wish you were there for me. You�
��re right. I am capable.”

  He should have been more capable than what he had proven to be. He might not be the Dragon Thief—not like Albion—but he was still a skilled thief. Bingham had seen to that. And he had lived on his own long enough that he was an adult. He made his own choices. Anything that happened to him was of his own doing.

  There was no point in blaming Albion any longer.

  That realization took a weight off his shoulders for some reason.

  Albion had abandoned him, but it didn’t matter. Not any longer. It could not.

  He grabbed a hunk of bread off the blade sitting next to him and took a bite.

  “You look tired,” Albion said.

  “I am.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “You can ask, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  He cocked his head to the side, frowning at him. There was no burning in his belly, nothing that suggested that he might be able to pull on the power of the smoke dragon. At this point, that was what he wanted more than anything else. He wanted to be able to have that power, to use it when he needed it, but that power never came to him when he actually might’ve found it useful. It only seemed to bubble up when it wanted to.

  “You didn’t tell me anything about yourself, so I figure that it’s only fair.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Albion said, smiling at him. “It doesn’t change the fact that I’m your older brother, and I am worried about you.”

  “And that doesn’t change the fact I am your younger brother, and I didn’t know I needed to worry about you.” Ty shook his head. “Why did you come here?”

  Albion looked around the inside of the tavern. “This is a pretty comfortable place. You did well finding it.”

  “You’re not going to talk around this,” he said.

  Albion turned his attention to Ty, grinning. “Whoever said I was talking around anything?”

  “I can see what you’re trying to do,” he said. “I know this technique.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Only I’m not the only one who has taken on a different line of work than we knew about.”

  How much did Albion know about what he had done? How much could he know? As far as Ty knew, Albion was well connected within the kingdom and even connected to the king, but he didn’t know if Albion was so well connected as to know the kind of task that he’d been assigned. He didn’t think he did, but maybe this was some sort of test.

  Still, he wouldn’t put it past Dorian to test him in such a way. He wouldn’t put it past Gayal either, though that seemed a bit more of a stretch. She had never seemed as if she wanted to test him, to challenge him, not at all like this at least.

  “I never became the Dragon Thief,” Albion said.

  “No, but you did become a thief.”

  “And you know why.”

  Ty nodded. “I know why.”

  He rested his hands on the table, fidgeting with a stone ring on one finger. It was a marker of a Priest of the Flame, something that, given the truth of how he served, he found a bit amusing to find in his possession. How was it even possible that he would have been given a ring like that? Perhaps it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he was now here, sitting in front of him.

  He leaned back. His mind was tired from trying to reach for the dragon, and despite that, he also wanted to get some information from his brother. He had done so much in the time since he had last actually spoken to Albion without somebody listening, and he felt as if he wanted to have dozens of questions answered. Mostly they were about what Albion might have learned about their parents. Despite what he felt about his brother, with Albion’s access within the kingdom, there was a very real possibility that he had learned things that Ty had not. And his anger might not matter when it came to Albion.

  This was a man who was nothing like the person he’d grown up with. This was a man who’d willingly deceived others and who had presented himself as something else while stealing, pulling jobs in the kingdom, and becoming the Dragon Thief.

  But he was more than just that.

  As far as Ty could tell, he had been serving the king. Indirectly, perhaps, though maybe there was more of a direct connection than what he had known. Gayal had danced around that topic with him.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it here,” he said.

  Albion tipped his head, nodding. “I would agree with that.” He smiled, leaning back, tapping his fingers on his lap for a moment before looking up at him. “Would you be willing to meet someplace safer? Perhaps tomorrow evening. I have something I need to do in the interim.”

  “Another job?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Ty frowned at him. “If you’re pulling another job and you aren’t going to be gone that long, then where is it? In the city?” He didn’t think that Albion had worked any jobs within the city, but what did he really know about Albion?

  “I’m afraid I can’t share that with you.”

  “There seems to be many things that you can’t share with me.” There was a long pause. “When we meet, I expect answers from you.”

  Albion leaned forward, clasping his hands together. One of his fingers twisted the ring, the marker of the Priests of the Flame. “Will I get them from you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ty hated the idea of keeping anything from his brother. This was his big brother, somebody he had always wanted to please while growing up, but at the same time this was not the same person he had believed his big brother to be. And Albion had done nothing to help their parents when they’d disappeared.

  At least, that was what Ty had long believed, though he no longer knew if that was the truth or not. It was entirely possible that Albion had been looking for their parents on his own the entire time. He simply didn’t know.

  But what bothered him more than anything was that Albion had not revealed what he had done on behalf of their parents. If he had been looking for them, and if there was anything that he had uncovered, why would he have kept it from Ty?

  “Here,” Albion said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a slip of paper and sliding it across the table to him. “Find me tomorrow night. We can talk.”

  “Just talk?”

  “That’s all we need to do, Ty.” He got to his feet and looked around the tavern. “This is a comfortable place. You did well.”

  “Thanks for your approval.”

  He chuckled. “I imagine you don’t think you need your brother’s approval.”

  “I don’t,” Ty said.

  Albion shook his head. “No, you don’t. You’ve done well.” He started to turn but stopped. “Bring the dauvern with you when you come.”

  “Is that what this is about? That’s the only thing that you want? You came here just to tell me that?” It seemed ridiculous, but Ty shouldn’t have been upset. He was happy to see Albion. “You could have sent me a message.”

  “Would you have answered?”

  Ty didn’t know. Probably.

  “I thought I could talk to you here, but maybe there are too many other ears.” Albion breathed out. “There always are. But when you meet me, I can make sure there aren’t.”

  “All of this for the dauvern?”

  “I want the dauvern, but that’s not the only thing I want.”

  He stepped out, leaving without a look back, and Ty stared at the door after him.

  Gradually, he got to his feet and tried to push down the fatigue and frustration within him. He was tired, but none of that fatigue made any difference. There was nothing he could do about it, nothing he even wanted to do about it. He was trudging toward the back door when he heard the door to the kitchen open.

  “Oh. He’s gone.”

  Ty glanced over to see Esme coming out of the kitchen. She was an older woman, though she still had something about her that struck Ty as distinguished. He imagined sh
e had once been a beautiful woman, though how long ago had that been?

  “He left. Let me guess. He didn’t pay?”

  Esme shrugged. “I imagine he intended to, but you know how priests can be.”

  He shook his head. Did his brother really think he was supposed to pay for him? After all of that, this irritated him almost more than anything else. “You can put it on my tab,” he said.

  Esme shook her head. “Oh, no. I don’t need to put anything more on your tab, Ty. Besides, Jarson wouldn’t be too pleased if I told him I was charging you for some priest.”

  “I’m sure he’d understand.”

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t change that I don’t really want to do that to him. Or to you.”

  Ty looked over at the door where his brother had disappeared, shaking his head. Albion owed him. “How long was he here?”

  “Jarson? Bingham,” she corrected herself, shaking her head and saying the name as if it were a struggle for her. “He hasn’t been here in a while. You know how he can be,” Esme said, waving her hand and stopping behind the counter to grab a few glasses. “Besides, it’s better for me if he stays out of the tavern. You know how that can be.”

  “I suppose I do,” he said.

  “And what about your priest friend?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Ty said.

  Esme watched him, her hands wiping the counter briefly with a rag. “You keep some interesting company. First the thief. Or perhaps two thieves, considering that boy I first saw you with. How is he, by the way?”

  “Dead,” Ty said, looking back down at the table.

  Esme froze. “I’m sorry. That was poorly said on my part.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t, but I am sorry nonetheless. I take it the two of you were close.”

  “We were friends. And I don’t have many of them.”

  “What about that petite soldier I’ve seen you in the city with?”

  Did she mean Gayal?

  It surprised him that she might’ve seen him with Gayal, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. He and Gayal hadn’t necessarily been secretive about the time they were spending together. And there weren’t many who would necessarily identify her as one of the Tecal.