Dragon Hunters

by Marc Turner

  “Says she saw the Drifter get stabbed, but not the face of the person who done it.”

  Kempis looked at Sniffer. “What about the other Drifters that were killed? Anyone see what happened?”

  The Untarian shook her head. “I stopped by the two scenes before I came here. No one saw a thing.”

  Not that they’re admitting to. Above Kempis one of the brothel’s windows was thrown open. A woman stuck her head out. Her face was plastered in white makeup except for her blood-red lips. She began screaming at the septia—something about scaring away her girls’ custom. Kempis paid her no mind. “How do we know it’s just one assassin we’re looking for? Sniffer, how were the other Drifters done in?”

  “Single blade thrust through the heart, just like the one here.”

  “Times?”

  “There was a bell between the first and second stabbings, half a bell between the second and third. It’s the same killer, sir.”

  A wave broke round Kempis’s boots. He took a hurried step away from the sea, earning himself a snort from Sniffer. “Right, here’s what we’re going to do.” He jabbed a finger at the Untarian. “You, go and find me some witnesses to the first two killings. Ain’t no way two Drifters get pricked in the Shallows without anyone seeing or hearing nothing. Start with whichever bastards picked the bodies clean.” He swung to Loop. “You, find out which mages can make themselves disappear into thin air. Ask round at the Watchstation. Hells, go to the library at the Founder’s Citadel if you have to.”

  “But I can’t read.”

  “So it’ll be a challenge.”

  Duffle came to attention. “What about me, sir, Septia, sir?”

  “Get back to the Watchstation and sort out a few lads to keep an eye on the Drifters tonight. Nothing too conspicuous, mind. I don’t want them scaring the assassin off before she shows.”

  “Where will you be, sir, Septia, sir?”

  “Think I’ll drop in on an old friend of mine. This is a pro job, right? Means someone will have paid for it, and paid big since the assassin dabbles in sorcery. Can’t be many people in Olaire who can organize this shit. Maybe Inneez can point me in the direction of one of them.”

  The others turned away.

  “Oh, and, Duffle,” Kempis said, bringing the youth up short, “if you ever give my name to a blueblood again I’ll cut your arms and legs down till they fit that Shroud-cursed uniform of yours, got it?”

  CHAPTER 3

  STANDING AT the prow of her father’s galleon, the Crest, Kalischa Agenta Webb studied the waterway leading to Olaire’s harbor. To either side of the ship black-tiled roofs rose from the sea, draped in fireweed and beaded with spray. Farther ahead the upper floors of flooded buildings could be seen protruding from the waves, their white plaster fascias peeling to reveal black stone underneath. From the windows of those buildings, faces looked back at Agenta, and more people watched from atop the roofs: a shaven-headed man who wolf whistled at the kalischa—so flattering; an Untarian woman hanging washing from a line between two chimney stacks; four children gathered about a honeyfish sizzling on the sun-drenched roof tiles.

  On the deck behind, Agenta heard the Crest’s crew scuttling about in response to the captain’s bellowed orders. From below came a rhythmic splashing as the galleon’s oars dipped and lifted in time to the beat of a drum. Then a creak of boards sounded as Agenta’s father came to stand beside her. Rethell’s face glistened with sweat, and his hair was plastered to his scalp. For a while he and the kalischa stood in silence. Not a comfortable silence, but a customary one.

  “Last time I was in Olaire,” he said finally, “the old harbor was still in use—to the south of here. When the sea rose to claim it, a new one was built inland. It’s said the Storm Lords had to dig through a hundred armspans of rock to make the harbor deep enough for ships.”

  Agenta looked at the partly submerged houses all about. “What caused this?” she asked. Her father had spent so much time telling her about the city before, she supposed she should try to appear interested. “If water levels had risen here, they would have risen in Gilgamar too.”

  “Olaire is slipping into the sea, has been for decades. The Untarians say a fire demon is imprisoned in a mountain to the east, and that in its struggles to free itself it is shaking the island apart.”

  “And the real reason?”

  Rethell shrugged.

  The thrum of the distant harbor was growing. As the Crest turned a bend in the waterway—the Causeway, Rethell had called it—Agenta saw a forest of masts above a line of warehouses. She scanned the city beyond. Dominating the district to the northwest was a brooding fortress, while farther south a circular edifice towered over the buildings round it. It was capped by a dome of glass that sparkled in the sunlight. Agenta nodded at it. “Is that the palace?”

  Rethell shook his head. “The palace is on the coast to the north. That domed building is the Round—the Storm Lords’ principal countinghouse. When the wind picks up you can make out the flags of the embassies round it, and to the west is the Mercantile Court—see that building with the steepled roof?”

  “I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of it in the days to come.”

  Her father’s expression tightened. “Have faith, Agenta. Imerle will deal.”

  The kalischa held back a smile. Faith? What was faith but the last bastion of those who had abandoned all grip on reason?

  “The year before last,” Rethell went on, “Locio Low lost a ship to a storm off Peron Ra. The Storm Council paid up within a week.”

  “What cargo was the ship carrying?”

  “Fellwood.”

  “Worth, what? A few thousand imperial sovereigns the lot? Our duskstones are worth a thousand times that. Somehow I doubt the emira will be so helpful when she is presented with our bill.”

  “Then I will just have to convince her. I knew her father from the time he ran the sea lane to Palana Utara. He made a name for himself driving pirates onto the rocks off the Claw and was raised to the Storm Council when Lord Forte caught a stray arrow on Dragon Day. A formidable man.”

  “There was a time people would have said the same of you.”

  Rethell continued as if he hadn’t heard. “There’s history between the Storm Lords and Gilgamar, yes, and this dispute over the Levy couldn’t have come at a worse time. But Imerle is too smart to risk alienating the Ruling Council while Piput is stirring up trouble in Dian. If she’ll see us today—”

  “If?” Agenta cut in. “Since when has that word been in your vocabulary?” She waited for him to respond, then added, “If you have no stomach for this fight, perhaps you should let me do the talking when we get to the palace.”

  For a heartbeat she thought she saw anger spark in Rethell’s eyes, but it was only the sun reflecting in them. He turned and walked back to the quarterdeck.

  Agenta watched him go. She’d hoped her words would provoke some reaction in him, but it seemed even her taunting could not rekindle his old fire—a fire he would need today in his confrontation with Imerle. It was not hard to deduce the reason for his reserve. It was almost a year since her brother, Zelin, had died. Even Agenta had found her thoughts straying back at unguarded moments to the memory of his final days: of his eyes weeping blood as he screamed out his last breaths; of Rethell sitting at his bedside, clinging to his hand as if that contact alone could keep Zelin’s soul from fleeing his body. For Agenta the memories held no more sting than the bite of a needlefly, because the numbing effect of the tollen drug she’d taken had long since robbed them of meaning. Rethell’s mood, by contrast, had spiraled steadily down as the anniversary of Zelin’s death approached. But then her father had lost far more than Agenta had that day. For with Agenta’s mother having passed through Shroud’s Gate a few months previously, within the space of a year Rethell had lost the two people in the world who mattered to him most.

  A shouted curse brought the kalischa back to the present. She looked down to see a fisherman franticall
y rowing his boat out of the Crest’s path. Ahead the Causeway widened as it entered the harbor. Judging by the flags fluttering in the breeze, every city in the Sabian League was represented here in readiness for Dragon Day. It took the Crest’s captain quarter of a bell to secure a berth. Rethell sent a runner to the palace to request an audience with the emira, then hailed a sedan. Agenta took the seat opposite him amid a fog of perfume that did nothing to mask the smell of sweat from the sedan’s previous occupant. Sensing her father did not want to talk, she settled back on the gilded cushions and let the sounds of the harbor wash over her: the hammering of shipwrights from the dry docks to the north, the lowing of temlocks unloading cargos, the cries of hawkers selling manabread or honeyfish or blue oysters.

  As the sedan moved clear of the harbor, Agenta tugged back one of the curtains and looked out on the city. Olaire might have been the jewel in the Storm Lord crown, but it was a jewel no less tarnished than any other capital. A stream of slurry ran down the center of the main street, and the alleys to either side were choked with rubbish. And while the buildings fronting the road possessed an unmistakable grandeur with their wrought iron gates and wide staircases leading up to doors framed by columned porticos, it was a grandeur that had decayed to leave crumbling, salt-rimed fascias and weed-infested grounds. Still, at least the street corners here weren’t cluttered with tollen addicts as they were in Gilgamar—addicts who had served as an unwelcome reminder of the cravings gnawing at Agenta’s guts.

  Over the drone of the crowds she heard Trita Warner Sturge and his men shouting to clear a path. Still the sedan seemed to spend as much time stationary as it did on the move, and the chair pitched and swayed as it was jostled by the throng. After half a bell the sedan began to climb above the stench of salt and humanity. When it reached the foot of Kalin’s Hill the crowds thinned, and the sedan’s pace increased. Here the streets were wider and tree-lined. Agenta looked for the Round and caught a glimpse of its glass roof between the Erin Elalese and Androsian embassies.

  Another quarter-bell and the roads became so steep the kalischa, sitting with her back to the direction of travel, had to hold on to her seat to stop herself falling into her father’s lap. A breeze set the curtains ruffling, carrying on it a haze of dust. When Agenta looked back the way they’d come she saw a shimmering expanse of roofs stepping down to the harbor like a giant’s stairwell. A Thaxian ship was being towed along the Causeway by two rowboats. Beyond, the sea sparkled like a jewel of a million facets. Easy up here to forget the stink and the bustle and the privation of the lower city, but that was the point, wasn’t it?

  Agenta looked at her father and saw his eyes were closed, his features quiet—too quiet considering the importance of what they would be discussing with the emira. The loss of their cargo of duskstones had left a gaping hole in the family’s finances. More troubling, though, was the damage it would cause to Rethell’s standing if he was unable to recover the cargo’s worth. Agenta’s smile was wry. Two decades it had taken her father to claw his way to the top of the human slagheap that called itself Gilgamar’s Ruling Council, yet now all he’d worked for stood to be snatched away in an instant. But then nothing was meant to last. The kalischa had learned that lesson from her brother’s death and her mother’s before that. She’d said as much to Rethell when they set out for Olaire. She’d even argued against coming, yet now that she was here she couldn’t deny a prickle of anticipation. And not just at the prospect of meeting the vaunted Imerle Polivar either. For too long her father had kept her cooped up in their home at Gilgamar on the strength of mere rumors of a Seeker conspiracy against her. Surely he couldn’t object if she did a little exploring while she was here?

  The sedan passed through the gates of the palace. Set in immaculately groomed gardens, the palace was a single-story building so nondescript that Agenta thought she and Rethell had been brought to the servants’ entrance. Standing beside a fountain with a statue of a sea dragon at its center was an elderly, pinch-faced courtier waiting to take them to the throne room. Agenta had expected to have to wait for an audience, but it seemed the emira had agreed to meet them straightaway. Had Imerle foreseen their coming? Foreseen and prepared for, most likely.

  The courtier told Warner and his men to wait outside before setting off through the palace’s corridors with Agenta and Rethell in tow. His pace was so measured it was all the kalischa could do not to take him by the arm and hurry him along. When he finally brought them to the underwater passage leading to the throne room, Agenta had to stop herself gawping like some moonstruck youngling. The throne room itself was even more breathtaking, with its glassy ceiling and rippling walls. To the east the kalischa saw the rotting bones of a sunken galley, while from above and behind came the muted crash of waves.

  At the opposite end of the room were three figures. Agenta’s gaze passed over the metal-clad giant and the man with the gray eyes of an oscura addict—Chief Minister Pernay Ord, her father whispered—before coming to rest on the emira. Imerle’s eyebrows were arched in a way that gave her a perpetual look of mild surprise, and there was a calculation in her expression that put Agenta in mind of a hafters player, forever weighing each move and countermove. A thinker, then. Someone not given to hasty judgment. And doubtless a more daunting adversary for that.

  The pinch-faced courtier departed without announcing Agenta and her father, so Rethell bowed and said, “Emira, I am Kalisch Rethell Webb of Gilgamar. This is my daughter, Agenta.”

  Imerle’s gaze swung to the kalischa. “So you are the one. The newest member of the Seekers.”

  “Those allegations were never proved,” Rethell said stiffly.

  Never proved? A stirring defense, that. “The Seekers are no friends of mine,” Agenta told the emira.

  “And the other … rumor we heard? That they put a price on your head?”

  “Why, are you looking to collect?”

  “Not at all. We were just wondering what you could have done to upset them so. Since you were never one of their number, of course.”

  Agenta smiled. She’d score that first round even.

  Rethell appeared keen to change the subject. “I am grateful to you, Emira, for seeing us at such short notice.”

  “Why would we not? The Storm Council is anxious to know why Gilgamar has withheld its tribute.”

  “Gilgamar has paid the Levy, just at last year’s rate.”

  “You think the uplift is unwarranted?”

  “My Council’s position,” Rethell said, “is that it wishes clarification on certain issues before settling the amount in full. The Levy has nearly doubled in three years, yet the storms from the Broken Lands have abated and the dragons remain barred behind the Dragon Gate.”

  Imerle’s face was impassive. “Your Council’s position, Kalisch? You are the head of that Council, are you not? And yet here you are, distancing yourself from its decisions.”

  “I am the Council’s spokesman, not its leader.”

  “Such a humble man.”

  “In any event,” Rethell went on, “I did not come to discuss the Levy—the Ruling Council will make formal representations to you in due course. I am here on a personal matter.”

  “Oh?” Pernay said, the glint in his eyes suggesting to Agenta he knew what was coming.

  “I am referring to the disappearance of my ship, the Gadfly. It was lost off Rastamira three weeks ago with its cargo of duskstones.”

  “You have come to claim compensation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must have taken a wrong turn on your way to the Mercantile Court. I can direct you there, if you wish.”

  “I was hoping that would not be necessary.”

  Pernay chuckled. “Of course. Why bother with courts at all? Why not open the treasury to every beggar who comes before us with hands outstretched?”

  Agenta winced, awaiting her father’s inevitable outburst. In Gilgamar’s council chamber it was said the echoes of his voice could be heard several bells
after he’d finished speaking, and that the fierceness of his temper was matched only by the strength of his look. Last year Agenta had seen him carry a debate by glaring at an opponent until the man’s conviction fled and his words dried up. That was before Zelin’s death, though. The loss of his son had cut Rethell deeply, and judging by the whiff of disdain in the throne room, both the emira and Pernay could smell blood.

  “How was your ship lost?” Imerle said.

  “I cannot be certain,” Rethell replied. “There were no survivors.”

  The chief minister snorted. “No witnesses, you mean. The Storm Council does not compensate traders for piracy by their own crew.”

  Rethell’s gaze remained on the emira. “I have a copy of Cinsar’s harbor log stamped with the harbormaster’s mark.”

  “Proving only that the Gadfly set sail from that port,” Pernay said. “Can you also prove it never arrived at its destination?”

  Agenta laughed. “And how are we supposed to show that? With an empty page in Gilgamar’s harbor log?”

  Rethell struck a more reasonable tone. “As I understand the law, Chief Minister, since I can prove the ship set sail from Cinsar, it is for you to show the shipment did arrive in Gilgamar, rather than for me to show it did not.”

  Pernay made to respond, but the emira held up a hand. “The kalisch is correct, of course. And even if he were not, one need only take a stroll through Olaire’s Jewelry Quarter to see the Gadfly’s cargo did not reach its intended destination. In case you were unaware, Kalisch, Olaire’s markets have been flooded with duskstones this past fortnight. It is too much of a coincidence, surely, for them to be anything other than your missing shipment.”

  Agenta cocked her head. “You accept our claim, then?” she said, waiting for the catch.

  “Some elements of it, yes.”

  “Some elements?”

  “The law is clear,” Rethell said. “In return for payment of the Levy, the Storm Lords guarantee the safety of all Gilgamarian shipping in the Sabian Sea.”