Dragon Unleashed

by Grace Draven

  He had the original portrait made of her with him. While he refused to admit to it, he’d looked at the woman’s visage, with its blend of gentleness and resolve, more often than necessary. The artist he’d employed to draw the likenesses of those people revealed by the trap shadow had a gift for capturing more in his subjects’ features than just their bone structure and surface expression. There was something arresting about the younger woman’s face, something that made Gharek wonder how she moved, how she sounded when she spoke. He would soon find out.

  The bridge he waited on was an ornate affair, spanning a wide man-made canal that served as both irrigation and a watery avenue on which pleasure boats slowly glided. It was a popular place and crowded. Gharek had chosen it for this meeting for that reason. The men he’d hired blended in well enough not to draw attention, and the woman would be far more willing to meet him in a public place where the illusion of safety worked to his benefit.

  He spotted the second messenger and his companion. The woman was of average height, with a round face and defined jaw. Days in the sun had burnished her skin a light bronze, highlighting her high cheekbones and leaving streaks of blonde in the brown hair she wore in a long, loose braid. Gharek recognized the likeness between her and the free trader.

  When she finally saw him, her generous mouth thinned. The messenger bowed and introduced the woman. “As you’ve requested my lord, I bring you Hamod the trader’s relative. This is Halani.”

  Halani. A soft name for a soft woman. Gharek offered her a hand in greeting. “Your portrait doesn’t do you justice, Halani. Your eyes are even more memorable. I’m Gharek of Cabast.”

  Considering the circumstances that prompted this meeting, he hadn’t expected a friendly response, and he didn’t get it. Halani ignored his outstretched hand and raked him with her flinty gaze.

  “Where’s my mother, and how do I get her back?”

  Gharek’s eyebrows arched. Blunt and to the point. After the complex manipulations he’d navigated in his dealings with Dalvila, where every word had layered meaning and the wrong expression displayed could get you castrated or worse, he found it refreshing to negotiate with someone with no inclination to engage in such antics.

  “I wondered how she was related to you, though you bear a stronger resemblance to the trader. Your father?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Does it matter? Chatting about who I look like isn’t why I’m here. What do you want in exchange for my mother?”

  This would be far easier than Gharek had hoped. One never knew what relationship a parent had with a child. He’d have let both of his parents rot in their captivity. “Information,” he said. “That’s all. Help me, and I’ll take you to your mother. You can both be on your way after that.”

  Killing the old woman was more trouble than leaving her alive. She still stared off into space, only now she did so inside the confines of an abandoned forge not far from the palace. Gharek had used her blood in the same way Koopman had used Hamod’s—fed it to Koopman’s trap shadow to see what images it might weave from her memories. Dread mixed with no small amount of anticipation surged through him at the images the trap shadow wove—of Halani again, this time tending a man suffering from arrow wounds and liberally decorated in scars that resembled a tree’s leafy branches. The man didn’t interest him at first. Halani was obviously the healer in her caravan tending to a free trader who’d likely crossed the wrong people. Nothing interesting until the trap shadow wove a scene in which the man’s entire body was wreathed in smoke, and he hurled Halani out of the wagon without ever touching her. Gharek trusted his instincts, and they were screeching in his head that within the dark workings of the trap shadow’s weave, he stared at the draga disguised as a man. The moment he returned from the Maesor, he moved the crone out of his house and to the forge, guarded by two men who understood the value of their discretion.

  Halani chose a blunt approach in her dealings, but Gharek adopted a more subtle one. Led in the right direction, people always revealed a secret or two. “Several people saw you enter the city with Malachus and ride to Hamod’s camp. What is he hoping to do once he recovers the mother-bond?”

  The briefest flicker danced behind the mist of her eyes, and Gharek bit back a triumphant smile. He’d guessed right. His silent, unresponsive guest hadn’t made a peep until he placed the mother-bond in her palm, and then she’d only said one word, a man’s name. He’d taken her blood then to feed the trap shadow and learn more. The images of the man in the weave and the name the crone spoke had no overt connection between them. Gharek had played a hunch, and it had just paid off.

  Halani gave up her secrets in tiny increments. “Why do you think I’d know any of Malachus’s business? I healed him when he was injured. He offered to help me find my mother as payment for my help. That’s all.”

  Malachus. The name the crone whispered. “Is that so? And do you usually bed the men you heal under the light of the stars?” When the watcher he’d assigned to the free trader camp reported back to him with those details, Gharek had admonished him for wasting time when he should have kept an eye out for Hamod trying to sneak back to the camp. It seemed that bit of voyeurism now had a use.

  Halani blushed to the roots of her hair, and the flare in her eyes was one of embarrassed affront. “Did the spies you planted around our camp have nothing better to look out for?”

  He shrugged. “I asked the same thing at the time. Let’s try again, shall we? And the longer you delay in telling me what I need to know, the longer you have to wait to see your precious mother.”

  Before he could repeat his question regarding Malachus’s search, frantic movement in the corner of his vision made him turn. His steward raced toward him, face white, eyes wide as he plowed through the meandering crowd. Gharek gestured minutely to the men who accompanied him on the bridge. They positioned themselves in spots that cut off any escape. Halani had no chance of bolting away, though he doubted she would. She wanted her mother back.

  His steward almost ran over him, stopping at the last moment to gasp out a panicked “Master, news!”

  Gharek raised a finger to the frowning Halani. “One moment.” He grasped the steward’s arm and wrenched him a short distance away. “What is it? And keep your voice down.”

  The man struggled to catch his breath for a moment. “You must come home. A visitor, unexpected, awaits you. He says his name is Malachus, and he’s come for the old woman.”

  Gharek’s heart seized in his chest. He gripped the steward’s arm so hard, the man yelped. “Estred,” he bit out. “Where is Estred?”

  The servant audibly swallowed. “She’s still there. Except for me and her, he’s locked the rest of the staff in the buttery and is waiting for you. He let me go to bring you the message.”

  Gharek abruptly pivoted, strode to where Halani waited, and gripped her by the base of her braid, yanking her into his arms. Her shocked gasp changed to a pained one, and tears sprang to her eyes. “What trickery is this?” He used his other hand to grasp her chin and glared into her wide eyes. “How did you and your lover know I’d be here?”

  She garbled something at him, made incoherent by his hold on her jaw. He loosened it enough for her to speak but didn’t let go. All around them, people eddied and flowed, sparing only quick glances for the tableau in front of them. If the free trader woman thought she’d find help from that quarter, she was mistaken.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You were the one to reach out to me. You said meet at the bridge. I’m here at the bridge.”

  The pulse under her jaw raced. Confusion, pain, and terror clouded her features, but not guile. Gharek could scent a lie better than a hound could a spoor. Halani wasn’t lying. She had no idea what game was up at his home.

  He gestured for the hired guard closest to him. When the man drew near, Gharek shoved Halani into his arms. “Take her,” he said. “And make
sure the empress gets my message.” He ignored Halani’s outraged cries and sprinted across the bridge for home.

  His steward called after him, but Gharek didn’t halt. In those moments when he ran through Domora, he wished he could fly. His thoughts raced as fast as his feet, fueled by terror and horror—terror because he had a draga in his house with his daughter, horror because all his plans for luring the draga to him before it reached the empress had come to fruition but in a way he never intended.

  The street on which he lived was a quiet one, set away from the main boulevards with their bustling crowds and noise. Here the buildings’ facades were meticulously kept and the streets swept clean of detritus. A genteel neighborhood populated by those who lacked the pedigree of the heritage nobility but who possessed the money, ambition, and snobbery to emulate them.

  Gharek’s house was plainer than his neighbors’. Whitewashed stucco without adornment, its only bit of visual interest, the heavy iron-and-wood door built to withstand the abuses of a battering ram. Gharek halted in front of it, breathing hard from his run. His heart slammed against his breastbone at the sight of the door cracked open, as if it mocked all his efforts at keeping Estred safe from the cruelties of the world outside.

  He touched the outline of the mother-bond hidden behind the layers of clothing he wore. It pulsed softly against his chest with a life of its own, a pulse that accelerated much like his own the closer he got to his destination, until he felt as if he had two hearts pounding under his ribs. The mother-bond sensed its master’s nearness. No doubt such a connection worked both ways, and the draga simply waited for Gharek to make an appearance.

  Sneaking in served no purpose. He had a few choices at hand, all of them bad: get rid of the mother-bond by tossing it in an alley or midden pit in the hopes the draga would go after it like a dog, hold on to it and use it to bargain with the draga for a bit of its blood as he originally intended, or just hand it over and beg the creature to spare his daughter.

  He eased the door open, stepped into the courtyard, and closed the door behind him with a soft click. The courtyard bloomed with all the lush shades of summer, flowers of every variety spilling over the pathways and down the high walls.

  No one was about, neither Estred nor a single servant who might have escaped imprisonment in the buttery, but he heard voices through the open door between the foyer and the courtyard, one childish and full of excited delight, the other deeper, adult, obviously male. Gharek’s terror gave way to cold calculation. He unsheathed the dagger he always carried. Who knew what use it might be against a draga, but he’d paint the parlor walls with its blood if the creature so much as put a scratch on Estred.

  He eased into the foyer and crept down the hall on silent feet. His stomach somersaulted at the sight greeting his eyes. His daughter stood in front of a dark-haired man of similar height to Gharek and a build that suggested strength and whipcord speed, but still just a man. One currently wreathed in tendrils of smoke that drifted off him like meandering revenants and made Estred laugh in delight.

  The intruder’s indulgent smile suddenly hardened, and his dark-eyed stare shifted to Gharek hovering in the doorway. That stare held within it something not human. A slender hand settled on Estred’s narrow shoulder, interrupting her chatter. He spoke softly, in tones that might soothe an anxious child to sleep but made Gharek’s hackles rise. The man turned Estred to face the door. “Your father’s here, Estred. Just as I promised. Tell him hello.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Were he not wide-awake, entertaining a child without arms while he waited for her father to appear, Malachus might have thought he dreamed once more of riding on Golnar’s back, a child himself, flying too close to a sun that threatened to burn him to ash. The blood bubbled in his veins like the fiery rivers that sometimes spilled down the faraway Sameris Mountains. Smoke plumed off his body, and inside him the draga snarled and writhed, sensing its freedom in the mother-bond’s nearness.

  Estred jumped up and down in front of him but stayed where she was instead of rushing to her father. “Papa, you came back! I was afraid for you.”

  The little girl’s concern revealed more to Malachus than he was sure the cat’s-paw wanted him to know. To his credit, the man standing in the doorway retained a stoic expression, though he couldn’t hide the horror—or the fury—in his eyes at seeing his daughter with Malachus.

  He gestured with one hand to Estred while keeping his other hand just behind his back out of sight. Malachus had no doubt he held a weapon. “I always come back for you, Estred. Now, come to me.”

  Malachus prepared to tighten his hold on Estred in case she chose to follow Gharek’s command. He had no intention of harming the girl, but he didn’t need her father knowing that at the moment. If he let Estred go to him, Malachus would have to kill him in front of her. Fortunately, she did as he’d instructed her earlier, shaking her head and remaining in place, much to Gharek’s consternation.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Malachus says you could get hurt if I do.”

  For a moment, the stoic mask cracked, a promise of murder flickering in Gharek’s eyes as he met Malachus’s. “What bewitchment have you put her under, draga?”

  He laid down the gauntlet with that address. Malachus didn’t accept the challenge. “None. I’ve simply told her the truth. Staying by me guarantees your survival.” He didn’t say what they both understood. To turn over Estred to Gharek meant Malachus was no longer interested in negotiating for Asil’s whereabouts or the mother-bond. He’d simply kill Gharek, take the artifact, and figure out on his own where Asil was. This was mercy, albeit a dangerous mercy, and Malachus still wasn’t sure if Gharek deserved it. Fortunate for him that Estred had proven herself a child for which her parent was worth not killing.

  Gharek didn’t see it the same way. He tried again, crouching down to crook his fingers in a come-hither gesture. His voice was soft, coaxing. “He’s telling you a lie, Estred. I’m your father, and I love you. I won’t lie to you. Nothing will happen to me if you come here.”

  The little girl didn’t budge, though the look she gave Malachus now held a touch of doubt. He patted her shoulder. “Children are uncannily good at knowing when an adult is lying to them and when they’re telling the truth. I’m neither bewitching nor lying to Estred.”

  Gharek rose from his crouch. “But you’re still using a small child as a pawn.”

  “Just as you’re using an old woman with the mind of a child as one,” Malachus snapped. A dull thump sounded within the deeper recesses of the house. “Your staff is enjoying a brief sojourn in your buttery,” he said.

  “Siora is in there too.” Estred grinned. “She said not to worry. That I was safe with Malachus, and you’d be home soon.”

  The murderous glint in Gharek’s eyes was no longer reserved for his current adversary. “Is that what she said? Thank you, love. I’ll remember that.”

  Malachus wondered if the child’s nurse had any idea of her employer’s nature. He wore two faces, one that of a protective father, the other that of a cold-blooded extortionist. No doubt he’d also embraced the role of assassin a time or two.

  “What do you want?” Gharek bit out the question. His disdainful gaze swept Malachus and the smoke wafting off him. “Or should I say ‘what do you need?’”

  His patience diminishing at the same rate his own desperation grew, Malachus narrowed his eyes at the continued pretense. The time between him sending the terrified steward to fetch his master and Gharek’s arrival on his doorstep hadn’t been long. The cat’s-paw had come running the instant he received the news of his uninvited guest. “Don’t be tiresome. We both know what I’ve come for. The only thing you get to decide is what you’re willing to sacrifice to keep them from me.” He glanced down briefly at Estred.

  The draga inside him convulsed, beating like a tide against his senses, raging to be free, sensing the mother-bond�
��s nearness and its call, bright and clear as a bell’s peal. Gharek had the mother-bond somewhere on him. For Estred’s sake, Malachus played her father’s game. He wouldn’t for much longer; he couldn’t.

  Gharek’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “It’s said draga blood is magic. That it imparts great healing powers, even restoring limbs. It also gives one who drinks the blood the gift of long life.”

  Malachus swallowed a groan. Gods, were humans truly that ignorant regarding draga-kind? That stupid to believe such nonsense? Had he not witnessed the flare of desperate hope in the other man’s eyes as he described such magical properties or seen Estred’s disfigurement, he might have scoffed at such ridiculous notions. “And you believe this drivel?”

  The cat’s-paw’s casual shrug didn’t fool him. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. The empress does, though, and she’s had me and a bevy of spies looking for you and anyone associated with you.”

  Oh, it did matter to this man, with his innocent daughter watching her father as if the stars rose and set at his command. “And yet as unimportant as you say your beliefs are, you’re the one in possession of the mother-bond, not the empress. And you’re holding a woman I call friend as your hostage. Not the actions of someone only operating in the service of the empress’s interest. What do you want from me? Or do I even need to ask?”

  Gharek was quiet for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully. “The empress will butcher you when she gets her hands on you. Help Estred, and she’ll never know you’re here.”

  Gharek was Malachus’s enemy. Still, a faint sympathy touched him at the other man’s fruitless hope in something no more real or true than a mirage cast by the summer’s heat, and he wished with all his soul he could grant his request and make Estred whole. It was not to be.

  He exhaled a long sigh. “Whoever ascribed such powers to draga-kind was wrong. Humans have slaughtered us based on fables, greed, and the fear of dying.” He paused before saying more, watching as the spark of hope in Gharek’s eyes guttered. “It is the nature of draga to live long and heal quickly, nothing else. One can’t share it or give it to another. Drinking their blood or bathing in it would have no more effect than spreading human blood on a dog. One is longer-lived than the other; it doesn’t mean a man can impart the gifts given to him as a man onto his favorite hound.”