Heat rushed to Jev’s face. The man’s words made him furious, largely because there was so much truth in them. He wouldn’t be here on Zenia’s behalf—no, on his behalf—if he didn’t want to marry her.
“Let’s be reasonable men, Morningfar,” Jev made himself say, unclenching the fists he didn’t remember clenching. He noticed the butler had left and wouldn’t be surprised if he had gone to get younger reinforcements. Given Morningfar’s personality, he probably kept bodyguards on the premises to protect him from people he irritated. “Neither of us is perfect, but this is a chance for you to do something good. Something right. Zenia doesn’t want anything from you. As you said, I’m the one who’s life would be easier if she could put a zyndari title in front of her name. She doesn’t even know I’m here. If you were to acknowledge her—”
“I’d have simpering twits from all over the city at my doorstep, claiming to be my children. And it’s all dragon balls. Those common wenches sleep with every zyndar man they can in the hope of being able to get one of them to acknowledge their brats and thrust their way into a better life for themselves. If that wasn’t their intention, they would drink their tea so they wouldn’t get pregnant. It’s their fault if our seeds find fertile soil. Yet they come at us and try to act like we were responsible. You have to watch them, Dharrow. And you’ll find that out for yourself soon enough, if you haven’t already. Your common girl is probably already pregnant, and that’s why she’s trying to wheedle her way into your marriage bed.”
“I am positive that’s not the case,” Jev said stiffly. This was going nowhere, but he hated to leave, to give up when there might be some way to sway the man.
“Why? You haven’t slept with her? She’s got your prick leashed when she hasn’t even shoved it between her legs yet?” Morningfar threw back his head and chortled.
Jev’s face grew hotter, and his fists re-clenched. To the side, Cutter drew his hammer and slapped it in his palm.
“Then she’s probably slept with someone else and wants to marry you and make you think it’s yours,” Morningfar said, still laughing. “Count the days back when the kid shows up, Dharrow. Common women are all sluts angling for zyndar titles and money. You think she’s any different?”
Jev couldn’t control his fists any longer. As he’d fantasized about doing ever since Zenia shared her history, Jev slammed a fist into Morningfar’s nose.
Morningfar staggered back, grasping his face. “What the rot is wrong with you? Damn, that hurt.”
“Good.” Jev wanted to punch him again and again, but he wasn’t a worthy opponent in any sense of the word. “That you’d call your own daughter a slut is beyond despicable. If it was in my power to revoke your zyndar status, I would. You’re not worthy of your title.”
Morningfar jerked his hands down to his sides, revealing a trickle of blood flowing from one nostril. He clenched his fists, as if he would launch a punch. Jev lowered into a crouch, curling his fingers into fists again. He would love an excuse to hit the bastard a few more times.
But Morningfar cooled and merely sneered. “Very little is in your power, boy. As you’ll find out when I talk to your father. It’s a shame he lost his younger boy and that you’re his only option for an heir. It must keep him awake nights, imagining you in charge of his estate.”
Cutter let his hammer slip out of his hand, and it flew to the side and cracked Morningfar in the kneecap. Hard. The man yowled and bent, almost crumpling to the ground.
“Oops,” Cutter said. “I’ll get that.”
As he plucked his hammer up from the walkway, the butler returned, striding out with two pistols in his hands. He glanced at his master. Morningfar was gripping his knee and panting in pain. The magic in that hammer must have given it more heft than usual.
“Leave,” the butler said, one weapon pointed at Cutter and one at Jev.
“We were planning on it.” Jev waved for Cutter to back toward the gate and did the same himself. A window was open on the second floor, a lantern burning inside, and he couldn’t help but call loudly, “May the founders bless the woman who has to live with this troll.”
The butler glared, but his fingers didn’t tighten on the triggers. He had to know he would be a dead man if he shot a zyndar, and Jev couldn’t imagine Morningfar truly inspired that much loyalty. But he kept his eyes on the pistols and the butler until he and Cutter had backed through the gate and a stone wall separated them from the two men.
“You negotiate a lot like a dwarf,” Cutter observed.
“Meaning ineffectively?”
“Meaning hammers and punches were involved. Most dwarven negotiating ends in blows. If it doesn’t, then the topic in question wasn’t worth the spit it took to bring it up.”
“So you approved?”
Jev couldn’t be surprised things had gone the way they had, and he hadn’t minded punching that blowhard, but it would have been better if Morningfar had been willing to acknowledge Zenia. It wasn’t as if it would have cost the curmudgeon anything. There weren’t many precedents for women inheriting zyndar land and wealth, and none where daughters born to common mothers were involved. Zenia never would have wanted anything from him. She might have refused his name even if he’d offered. This had been a waste of time.
“I approved of you punching that orc-butt-licker. And I was pleased to try out my hammer on more than metal. I barely tossed it, and I think it cracked his kneecap. I heard a satisfying crunch, at the least.”
“I’m glad you’re on my side, Cutter.”
“Dwarves make excellent friends.” Cutter punched him in the arm.
It jarred his injured ribs and almost knocked him over, but Jev made himself respond with an agreeable, “Yes.”
Zenia knelt in the corner of her room where she kept her small prayer rug, candles, and a statue of the Blue Dragon, trying to meditate. She longed to clear her mind of conscious thought and let her battered body relax.
She hadn’t been hurled around the elven tower the way Jev had, but she’d been a conduit for the magical battle her dragon tear had fought against that creature. A shadow golem, Jev had called it. Zenia had seen rock golems before and knew there were other kinds of them in the world, but she had never seen anything like the strange shadowy entity. She was glad her dragon tear had known how to battle it, because she hadn’t had a clue. The golem hadn’t seemed to exist fully in this world, but it hadn’t had any trouble throwing Jev around.
Onjiwa, she said silently, the mantra she’d been taught long ago at the temple by a monk instructing her in the ways of meditation. Onjiwa, onjiwa, onjiwa…
Every time her mind wandered, she brought it back to the mantra, three syllables that had no meaning, that merely existed to break up conscious thought, to let her mind relax. She was even burning pine and myrtle incense tonight to fill the air with calming scents. It wasn’t the kind of incense the Temple mages used to encourage visions. She didn’t want visions. And she especially didn’t want nightmares. That was why she was attempting to relax her mind, in the hope that she might sleep well tonight. It had been so long since she had.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
Zenia sighed, opening her eyes to the dragon figurine resting on her makeshift altar, and debated ignoring whoever was out there. But it might be Jev. Maybe he’d heard something about Lornysh and needed her assistance.
She pushed herself to her bare feet and padded across the sheepskin rug to the door. Rhi stood in the hallway, nibbling on her knuckle. She wore the same clothing as she had in the office earlier in the day and didn’t appear to have gone home at any point.
Rhi sniffed the pungent evergreen scents wafting out of the room. “Oh, sorry. Are you meditating? I can wait and talk to you tomorrow.”
“Is something wrong?” Zenia asked.
“No.” Rhi lowered her hand. “I’m just not sure how to respond to something and if there could be ramifications if I make the wrong response.”
Zenia waved for her
to come in. “What is it?”
“You know that friend of Jev’s? Zyndar Hydal?”
“I met him for the first time this morning.”
“Me too. But I’ve already met him again. And he gave me a book.”
“A book?” Zenia had been more interested in recruiting Sevy than in chatting with her older cousin, especially since the topic had been women vying for Jev’s attention, so she hadn’t noticed much about the man, except that he had a bookish mien.
“On the history of the Water Order and the Blue Dragon. He said it had been on his shelf for ages, and that nobody in his family had been interested in it, so he thought I would like it.”
“Maybe you should let him know your preferences lean toward murder mysteries and those stories about the dragon who longs to be human and helps an inquisitor solve crimes all throughout the kingdom.”
“I read those as a girl.”
“The whole collection was on the shelf in your room in the temple,” Zenia pointed out.
“Because I enjoyed them as a girl.”
“Including two volumes signed by the author.”
Rhi propped her fists on her hips. “When did you root through my bookshelf?”
“When you were first assigned to work with me. I snooped. I’d seen you around the temple, and you seemed brutish and surly, so I had concerns.”
“Did the presence of books on my shelf alleviate them? It’s a shame there’s that rule about no locks on doors in the temple.”
“It did,” Zenia said, amused that Rhi was more distressed at the idea of someone looking at her bookshelf than of thinking her brutish and surly. “I figured I could work with someone with whimsical tastes.”
“They’re not whimsical. They’re normal. Listen, I have a question about Hydal. I think he wants to ask me on a date. You know where I ran into him? At the little eating house down the street from the farmhouse where I stay. He acted like it was a coincidence, but why would he have been carrying that book around if he hadn’t expected to see me? And what was a zyndar doing in that part of town? It’s a poor neighborhood.”
“It sounded like their family isn’t wealthy, but I concede your point about the book. Perhaps he wanted to bring it to you at the castle but, since he’s supposed to be a secret informant, figured he shouldn’t come up here twice in the same day.”
“So instead, he found out where I live and hung out in an alley until I went out for dinner? Zenia, that’s disturbing.”
“Maybe he was going to go to your room, but you left and went to the eating house first.”
“I fail to see how that’s a vast improvement. Zenia, I don’t want to date him. He’s skinny and wears those goofy spectacles. You know I like a man with muscles and an ass you can grab when you’re riding him like a stallion.”
“Er.” Zenia rubbed her face, trying to vanquish the image Rhi’s words conjured.
Rhi didn’t look apologetic for her sexual outburst. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean. Jev has a nice ass.”
Zenia rubbed her face again, in part because she felt the need, and in part to hide the rush of heat reddening her cheeks. “If he asks, can’t you just say no? I’ve seen you turn down men before.”
With Jev—and his anatomy—now on her mind, Zenia thought of the way he’d introduced Hydal to Rhi that morning. It had been awkward. Had he been trying to set them up? Jev was the last person Zenia would have expected to play matchmaker.
“Not zyndar men.” Rhi walked in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Zyndar don’t ask me out. They always want big-breasted vapid young things that will bat their eyelashes and make pouty faces with their kiss-me-now lips. Those are the kinds of women they take as mistresses.”
“That seems like an overly generalized generalization, but even if it’s true, I’m not sure how that changes anything. If he asks you to dinner, and you’re not interested, just say no.”
“Can I? Or will there be ramifications if I do? Commoners aren’t supposed to turn down requests from zyndar for anything, you know.”
“I don’t think that extends to sex,” Zenia said, surprised Rhi would worry about obeying such societal norms, even if they existed. “Not in this century. In the past… Well, thankfully we don’t live in such ridiculously unfree times.” She thought of Jev’s arranged marriage and debated if the times were truly as free as she would like. An improvement over the past, perhaps, but… no.
“But he’s Jev’s friend, and I got the impression— Was Jev trying to get me to go out with Hydal?” Rhi frowned. “You don’t think he promised Hydal a date in exchange for becoming a spy, do you?”
“I don’t think Jev would presume to do that. Maybe he promised an introduction, but that shouldn’t obligate you to anything.”
Rhi grunted dubiously. “I don’t know. Zyndar all know each other and all do favors for each other. I wouldn’t want to lose this job because Jev got irked with me for not sleeping with his friend.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Since I left Archmage Sazshen with cross words, my options are limited.”
“Your job is safe, Rhi. But why did you throw cross words at her before leaving? The temple archmages aren’t the best people to irk.”
“I was defending someone who wasn’t there to defend herself,” Rhi grumbled, looking toward the sheepskin instead of Zenia.
“Oh. Thank you.” Zenia walked over and patted her on the shoulder. “Just say no to Hydal if he asks you on a date and you’re not interested. But maybe you shouldn’t reject him based on his spectacles and backside. Weren’t you telling me that you’ve been finding sex with random partners boring? Perhaps you would enjoy spending time with a man with some substance, not just some muscled pretty boy from the gymnasium.”
Rhi curled her lip. “He looked up where I live and found me. That’s intrusive.”
“He looked up where you live to give you a gift he thought you might like based on what he learned about you. Don’t you think that promises he would be attentive in a relationship?”
“It promises he’s desperate.”
“Or smitten.” Zenia thought of Targyon’s interest in the elven princess. Smittenness was going around.
“How can he be smitten? He just met me.”
“Maybe he liked the way you wielded your bo.”
Rhi’s expression switched to one of exasperation.
Zenia had nothing invested in seeing them together, so merely spread her hands. “If you don’t want to give him a try, I’m sure he can handle your rejection. There won’t be ramifications from Jev or anyone else in the office.”
This time, Rhi rubbed her face. “All right. Good. Thank you.” She stood up. “I’ll let you get back to your meditation.”
“For what good it’s doing,” Zenia muttered, the words more for herself than Rhi.
But Rhi heard them and looked back, frowning. “Is everything all right with you? You seem tired every morning in the office. I would have assumed your weariness was due to riding the Dharrow stallion all night if you were also smiling and happy with life, but you’ve mostly been grumpy.”
“I’m fine.” Zenia couldn’t help but glance toward the bedside table. She’d removed the dragon tear when she had changed into her nightgown, and it lay on the wood, the silver-and-gold chain in a spiral around it.
Rhi followed her gaze to the gem. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“So, you’ll come into the office perky and well-rested in the morning?”
“I’ll try.” A part of her wanted to confide in Rhi, but she’d already confided in Jev, and it hadn’t done any good. But Rhi truly looked concerned, so she admitted, “I’ve been having some bad dreams and not sleeping well since I got the dragon tear. It’s a fair tradeoff, since it’s helped us out of some tight situations—we couldn’t have gotten those magically slumbering dwarves off their ship before it blew up without it.”
“I’ve never heard of a dragon tear giving someone nig
htmares.”
“This one is special.” She smiled, meaning it as a joke, even if it was true.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. It’s a good thing the king gave it to you and not Zyndar Garlok or some other twit in the office. You can handle it.”
Even if Zenia hadn’t intended to confide in Rhi, she found herself cheered by this simple statement of faith. “Thank you. And you can handle Hydal.” She smiled.
“I would be a lot more interested in handling him if he had an ass.”
“It must be difficult being a slim man.”
“Scrawny. I don’t believe Jev’s claim that he has hidden ferocity.”
“At least he brought you a book,” Zenia said. “That suggests he’s literate.”
Rhi squinted at her. “I don’t think we have the same requirements when it comes to men.”
“That’s very possible.”
Rhi opened the door. “I’ll bid you goodnight. Try rubbing your dragon tear before you go to bed. Maybe a massage will make it less likely to inflict dreams on you.”
“I’ll keep the suggestion in mind.” Zenia waved as her friend shut the door, then went to the nightstand, picked up the dragon tear, and sat cross-legged on the bed. She didn’t rub it, but she did hold it and gaze at the dragon carved into the front of the gem.
A feeling emanated from it. Sorrow? Lament? An apology?
Could it know it was causing her nightmares? If so, she believed the sharing was inadvertent. Despite Cutter’s warnings that having a gem linked to a dragon, if that was indeed what had happened here, was dangerous, this soul had only tried to be helpful thus far. Not always in the most socially correct manner, but one could hardly fault a dragon for not knowing what was appropriate among humans.
“Thank you for the help with the golems today,” Zenia whispered, touching her thumb to one of the carving’s wings.
Even though she had come to dread bedtime, she didn’t want the entity linked to the gem to feel bad. If dragons could feel. She definitely sensed that this one did. She wondered if it lived and breathed somewhere in the world or if it had died long ago and some portion of its soul had been embedded in the gem. Maybe it had even died in that cave she kept dreaming of. Was it possible she’d been reliving the dragon’s last hours?
Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series Page 93