She jerked around to stare at him, lowering her hand from the cloak. “We?”
“Did you think I intended to let you go alone?”
“You’re not a thief. What good are you to me if you draw suspicion upon yourself?”
Xavier chuckled. “Give me a little credit, would you?”
Rosalia folded her arms against her chest and gave him a long stare. “You’re dressed like a wealthy merchant, you’re twice my height—”
“Exaggeration.” He had maybe six inches on her, but still, he was rather tall for an elf.
“—elven, and easy to spot in a crowd.”
“I didn’t intend to traipse behind you like a bloody shadow.”
“And your fair skin draws attention to you in a kingdom of people who are brown, just to let you know.”
Xavier pressed his mouth into a thin line. Amusement flickered in her eyes, a hint of mirth he’d wanted to see returned to her expression, but not at his expense. “I’m well aware of that, and while I’m unable to change the appearance of my current state, I can do this.”
The rainbow dragons of Ilyria had the ability to change appearance on a whim when in their draconic forms. It was a well-kept secret among them, shared among few people outside of their kind. But for Rosalia, he was willing to give everything.
The change swept over his body from head to toe once he chose the form he wanted to adopt. Concentration shunted the enormous bulk of his mass and dispersed it into the cosmos, stowed away until it became necessary to assume his man shape again.
From the ground, he gazed up at her, no larger than a desert sand monitor but certainly deadlier.
15
THE FIERCEST RAINBOW
HER MOUTH FELL OPEN. The mighty dragon she’d expected to accompany her was as large as her hand and no longer the shade of volcanic glass. Now he was burnished gold, like sunlight and rainbows given physical form.
Rosalia crouched and offered him a hand, thrilled when he crawled from the pile of clothing onto her palm. He couldn’t have weighed more than a pound or two.
“You’re small.” Unable to resist, she traced one finger down his back between his wings, which were soft to the touch like worn suede broken in over the course of many winters.
“I am a rainbow dragon. My particular breed has many gifts, ability to manipulate our size and color the least of our talents.”
She wanted to rub her cheeks against his body, wanted to feel the warmth of him against her skin and inhale the rich aroma of smoke and sand that seemed to be part of his very being. “You’re... adorable.”
Draconic faces were quite expressive when one had the time and inclination to admire them, easier when they weren’t showing two dozen foot-long teeth. His snout wrinkled back and revealed a few of them. They’d been reduced to a size smaller than toothpicks. “Dragons are not adorable,” he disagreed, bristling. A few of his scales raised along his back, until he resembled a surly cat.
“When they’re palm-sized, they are.”
Xavier snorted, releasing twin plumes of dark smoke from his narrow nostrils.
“You’ll stand out though unless I tuck you somewhere.”
He sighed. His entire body wiggled from side to side and a transformation swept down his form from nose to tail. Before her eyes, the copper-gold shade darkened until he was blacker than coal and a miniature of the form that had chased and rescued her. Only his eyes shone vermillion. “Is this better?”
“I... Yes. It is. I believe this will work.”
“Excellent. I’ll retake my other form again.”
Xavier glided down from her open hand to the floor. Realizing the pile of clothing wouldn’t reappear on his body, she spun and placed her back to him.
“Shy?”
“Not at all. It’s just awkward having an important discussion with a man you barely know when he’s dangling around in your face.”
He chuckled. Silence fell between them as clothing rustled. Finally, he spoke up. “I’m decent.”
She twisted around to face a man again, a fine and handsome man with ears that tapered at the tips with delicate points, visible beneath the wild spill of his blue-black hair. Depending on how the light hit it, there were strands of amber and violet amidst his hair. It took all her control not to step forward and run her fingers through it to find the rainbow again.
“Now, as I was saying before that demonstration, there are many things here that’ll suit your needs.” He removed the cloak she’d admired and placed it around her shoulders. It shimmered and took on the appearance of their surroundings. The back of his hand grazed her cheek. A knuckle skimmed her jaw. She bit her tongue and watched him.
“It fits as if it had been made for you,” he said in a soft voice. “Is it not better than the cloak you wore when you visited my vault?”
A breath shuddered from her. A shadowglider cloak would have cost her hundreds of gold coins, and even then, the matter of supply and demand made them impossible to find. The elves guarded their silk farms jealously and harvested limited amounts each season. “It is.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a beautiful gift. Almost too great to accept.”
“Then consider it a loan and repay me.”
“With what? I have nothing.”
“By reacquiring the mirror and rescuing your friends.”
Rosalia blinked a few times and nodded. “I will. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that I took the job. If I’d known... if I had realized what it was—”
He touched her chin and raised her face until their gazes met. “You would have taken it anyway. No one believes the old stories anymore. They’re myth. Legends. Fables told by the old and superstitious to a generation who refuses to believe. Now, are you ready to view the rest of the armory or shall we stand here admiring your fine new cloak until nightfall?”
A bit of laughter bubbled from her. Gods, it felt good to laugh after so much misery and pain. She followed him deeper into the armory. Many of the weapons appeared to be nothing unusual, the collection of old longswords peppered with unfamiliar armaments she’d never seen before.
“You’ll need boots and practical gear. While we can darken anything with soot if it’s inappropriate in color, the fit is what concerns me. Ah, here. These are dwarven leather, sized to their people.”
He offered her a pair of glossy leather boots. She tried one on and wiggled her toes, forced to tighten the laces for them to hug her shins. “Not too thick in the sole, but definitely inflexible.”
Xavier drew a shining dagger from a wooden case with a glass lid. “Leave that to me. I’ll break them in. This is an elvish anellan, also known as a snake’s fang. See this groove?” He touched a groove along the edge of the curved blade. “It’s designed to hold poison.”
“Why do you collect so many things?”
“Why do thieves steal?”
“Because we’re assholes?”
He opened and shut his mouth, a moment of silence passing before a deep belly chuckle shook his shoulders. “No, I meant to say because it is in our nature. As I said before, we are packrats, and it’s part of who we are. When I see a beautiful thing, I feel compelled to have it. To protect it.”
The way he gazed at her turned her legs boneless. He may as well have transmorphed them with a flesh-to-water spell or some other rubbish.
Dammit. Stop staring at him. “Most of this is junk,” she blurted inelegantly.
His eyes twinkled with humor. “It is, but as I said before, it’s been acquired over generations of knights and armored adventurers hoping to find plunder in a dragon’s lair. Sometimes I melt down the metal again for use in my work.”
Rosalia shuddered. “That’s disgusting.”
“Be thankful I’ve removed some of the skeletons that once inhabited them.”
She stared at him.
Hours later, after Xavier had taken in the seams on a leather tunic and blackened the rest of her new gear with soot, Rosalia stood a
t the entrance of the aqueduct, wondering how the hell she could accomplish the impossible.
Most people couldn’t wait to escape jail. She had to break in to one.
16
A VALUABLE WEAPON
THE JAIL WAS A DARK, dank place beneath the barracks where the city watchmen lived, reported for duty, and took complaints from citizens. It would be crawling with guards wielding truncheons and swords, every one of them familiar with Rosalia’s face and ready to pummel her into a fine paste if she was found on the premises.
Until two days ago, she’d never seen the inside of it before. Thieves went out of their way to avoid it. It wasn’t that they were too smart to steal from the watch—many of her blackguard brothers were cunning enough to ease the purse off a watchman’s belt if they were so inclined. On his worst day prior to his injury, Hadrian had the finesse and sleight of hand to steal a watchman’s smallclothes and leave a banana wedged between his cheeks.
The problem with the watch barracks had nothing to do with a lack of cunning, talent, or courage from her light-fingered mates, and everything to do with the mysteries beyond its steel doors and the two dozen men inside who knew its every inch, blind spot, and corner. Thieves couldn’t work in certainties, but they also liked to learn as much about a job as they could through observation, study, and casing a mark before springing their plans. Shy of stealing a uniform and praying the others didn’t recognize the stranger in their midst, she’d never heard anyone devise a clever stratagem to safely enter the building.
And a thief without a plan didn’t remain in the career for long.
Rosalia sighed, gazing up at three stories of sandstone brick. Each entrance—and presumably the corridors as well—was lit with alchemical lanterns enchanted to make thieves soot glow brighter than emberfly larvae. “This feels like a poor idea.”
Did she really need friends?
“If rescuing your friends from the executioner’s block isn’t great enough motivation, perhaps I should appeal to your greed. Do you want your things or not?” Xavier’s voice sounded tiny in her ear. The way he’d curled around her neck and held on prickled his claws against her skin, a mere annoyance but solid reminder that there was a tiny dragon clinging inside her hood.
A tiny fucking dragon. Of all the adventures she’d ever undertaken across the city, she’d never have bet for a thousand ducats that she’d be infiltrating a prison in the company of a weredragon.
Despite her advantages, the place may as well have been a fortress or Sandfire Palace itself. Only a single thief had breached those walls before, and he’d claimed the halls within were a twisting maze patrolled by a man in every corridor. When another man attempted to recreate his fortunate journey to the beyond and back, he was found and made an example of by the night’s watch on the next morning, drawn and quartered before an eager crowd after the magistrate had his say.
The people of Enimura loved an execution, and a thief’s execution was favored above all.
“Of course I want my things, you bloody scaled git. I’d just prefer if I didn’t walk into the execution you saved me from. And... I do want my friends.”
“You won’t be caught. And if you were, I’ll get us out of it as I explained before.”
As much as she’d love for Xavier to crash into the building and rip the roof off the barracks, it would only raise the citywide alarm, and there’d be dozens of soldiers there within minutes to fend him off with bows and enchanted steel. Dragons, while tough, weren’t impenetrable.
Which was why he’d devised a plan to infiltrate the building, incapacitate the guards with a sleeping charm, and then use a little earth magic to burst into the sewer system under the jail. They’d be in and out before the city watchmen knew their captives had flown the coop.
With a devious, problem-solving mind like that, Rosalia thought he would have made an excellent thief.
Rosalia’s palms began sweating inside her kidskin gloves. She missed her old ones made from absorbent shadowscale hide or even the fancy pair she’d borrowed from Mira. Those were the very same gloves she’d been wearing at the time of her capture. “Are you certain I won’t glow beneath the alchemical lamps?”
“I swear upon all the gold in my hoard. Wait here for a moment while I scout ahead. There’s an open window on the third floor.”
Xavier hurried away and scaled the wall with ease, his small toes silent against the sandstone bricks. By the time he returned, she’d started to fret over his absence, waiting any moment for shouts from within the barracks. She crouched and scooped him up again, placing the palm-sized dragon on her shoulder.
“Well?”
“I was right. Most of the watchmen are asleep. According to the roster, they’ve already had the evening shift change.” A wide grin spread across his reptilian face, revealing many of his teeth. “I had a peek.”
“What’s behind that window?”
“Sleeping quarters. While I was scouting ahead, I overheard that most confiscated goods go to the jailor’s office before redistribution and auction, but burglary is not my forte.”
“But it is mine.”
He shot her a look, reptilian eyes narrowing. “As I am well aware.” She swallowed down the sour taste of shame in her throat. He was within his right to hold that against her. “There was also no way I could sneak it out without someone noticing a fairy dragon with a bundle of stolen goods. There’s one thing, however.”
“What?”
He hesitated a moment. “Your friends. They’re not here. Cells are all empty.”
“What?”
“They were here until this evening, but they’re gone now. All I know is they weren’t executed. I could have hung around for a while longer to eavesdrop, but I wasn’t comfortable with leaving you here alone to wait.”
“Then I’ll have to go in and find out.”
Rosalia stared at the open window above them. They were framed by a set of heavy curtains with reflective white sides designed to keep rooms cool and dark during the scorching sunlight hours, ideal for men who worked nights and slept during days. Sleeping quarters meant tired guards, and tired guards weren’t likely to notice her. Finding handholds in the bricks, she climbed up the wall and eased through the open window.
Two rows of identical cots stretched across the barracks floor, but only a quarter were empty. Men in varying states of dress occupied the others, most clad in only their smallclothes or short breeches. The room smelled of maleness, tobacco, and Nairubian musk oil, a favorable scent of the season used by many bachelors of low-to-middle class wealth.
Crouching, she made her way across the room’s perimeter while praying to the twin god and goddess for luck. Though if Xavier could be trusted, she made her own luck and needed no additional blessings from Inja and Islena.
Most of the candle lights had been extinguished save for a couple on bedside tables on the distant side of the room. Another stroke of luck had placed the window and the open door in a favorable position, granting her a direct route from the dormitory room. Unnoticed by all, she snuck into a corridor with five other doors, only two of them shut. A man stood with his back to her in one, chatting with another watchman.
“What’ll we do now that there are no thieves to take bribes from? I don’t know if I can support my family on this pay alone.”
Rosalia wrinkled her nose. It was nice to see where the concerns of the watch lay after carrying out genocide against an entire subset of the city’s people. All of her friends were dead or imprisoned, and he was worrying about his purse.
His companion chuckled. “Nobody told you to go and have eight children. Wages aren’t all that bad.”
“Speak for yourself. You’ve got lieutenant’s pay at least. The salary of a mere watch sergeant is barely a few silvers more than common pay.”
After ducking down low, she swept past the talkative pair and toward the end of the hall where the staircase descended to a landing lit by a single lantern. Trusting Xavier’s magic, she
hugged the wall and made her way down.
“You’ll take the staircase to the lower floor,” Xavier whispered. “There, you’ll find a door leading to the prison level where the head jailor keeps his office. He’s away at the moment, facilitating some kind of exchange. I didn’t remain long enough to overhear everything.
“Blast.”
Too bad she couldn’t see through his eyes like a proper familiar. She’d heard of mages who had such pets, using their animal’s sense of smell, hearing, and sight by imbuing a portion of their own soul into the creature. Then again, she didn’t want her soul tangled with Xavier’s at all in any way.
Nearing the landing with the enchanted lantern had an unexpected, opposite effect on her cloak. The shadows gathered around her, and the light dimmed. She lingered for a second, fascinated by the way it muffed the alchemical device.
“I told you.”
Smug bastard. She ignored his little voice, even if she wanted to grab him from within her hood and kiss his scaled face over and over. When she resumed her path to the ground floor, the building’s acoustics carried voices to her from below. The low murmur grew in volume, then three men appeared, bringing with them the scent of smoke and sweat. Panic beat behind her breast with the force of a dozen galloping horses. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.
“Down, quickly,” Xavier hissed in her ear. “Become as small as you can.”
Rosalia dropped into a low crouch and tucked her body into the fetal position with the cloak thrown over her. It was cool beneath it. Somehow, the double layers of fabric didn’t dim her sight beyond its black silk.
“Can’t believe a dragon is in Saudonia. How long do you think it will take before the hunters locate and slay it?”
“Days perhaps. Once the hunters arrive and get on the trail, its days will be numbered. I heard the king hired the best.”
“Yeah?”
The conversation came upon her, growing louder as both men passed her on the stairwell, blind to her presence. Their voices trailed and grew softer when they reached the top of the stairs. Seconds later, they were gone, leaving only her and Xavier behind.
All That Glitters: a Fantasy Romance (Daughter of Fortune Book 1) Page 13