Dragon Hunters

by Marc Turner

  The throne room was cold and dank in spite of the heat from the braziers, and the Guardian could feel the weight of the sea about him. Imerle was seated on the same throne as yesterday, the executioner behind her. To her right sat the chief minister, and to her left one of the Storm Lords—a thin-faced man with ginger hair. There were more new faces present, too. By the wall across from Senar stood a tall black man in the robes of a Chameleon priest—Caval Flood, the chief minister had named him. He was speaking to two other Storm Lords: Thane Tanner—a bear of a man who looked more like a warrior than a sorcerer with his crooked nose and scarred chin; and Mokinda Char—an Untarian male with long black hair who returned the Guardian’s gaze with bright curiosity.

  Senar had no wish to join the discussions. Instead he let the murmur of voices wash over him. In those voices was a noticeable edge of restlessness, for Gensu had still not arrived. Earlier the emira had dispatched a water-mage in her service, Orsan, to find the Storm Lord, but Orsan had not come back.

  The conversation in the room broke off momentarily, and Senar looked round to see Mazana Creed striding toward him from the direction of the underwater passage. Round her neck hung her air-magic pendant, and she wore a black dress no less revealing than her red dress had been yesterday. A lady should always leave something to the imagination, Jessca had once told Senar. But the alternative did have its advantages. The light from the braziers struck copper notes in Mazana’s hair and cast a ruddy glow on one side of her face. As she joined Senar, he detected no trace of awkwardness from their encounter yesterday.

  The Guardian bowed. “You are alone tonight, my Lady?” he said.

  “I am. The belligerent Greave wanted to come, but I said no. He demands a rematch, by the way. Something about your use of the Will giving you an unfair advantage.”

  “And no mention, I take it, of the armor that spared him from my first strike.”

  “His memory can be a little selective, it’s true.”

  A male servant approached carrying a tray of drinks. Mazana waved him away.

  “I owe you an apology,” Senar said. “For last night. I had no right—”

  “Nonsense,” the Storm Lady cut in. “As it happens I learned much from our conversation. It seems I have allowed myself to become too close to my brother, and in doing so lost sight of the threat he represents. I have you to thank for restoring my objectivity.”

  Senar winced. She was mocking him, but perhaps he had earned as much. Abruptly he sensed he was being watched, and he looked round to see the emira staring at him. Her expression was unreadable.

  Mazana said, “I could not help but notice the insignia on the pommel of your sword. Four crossed blades … that is the emblem of the Guardians, isn’t it?”

  “The sword belonged to my former master, Li Benir.”

  “Former?”

  “He is dead,” Senar said flatly, not wanting to talk about it.

  Mazana was unperturbed by his tone. “And the ring?” she said, nodding at Senar’s right hand. “It bears the same insignia, does it not?”

  The Guardian had forgotten about the ring. It felt heavy on his finger, and he covered it with his halfhand. He’d had it made for Jessca shortly after the attack on the Black Tower. But just two months later he’d had to reclaim it from her corpse when she was brought back to Arkarbour …

  He shook his head. No, he would not think on that. Too often of late his thoughts had slipped toward the maudlin. To allow that to continue would be to focus on one bad memory to the exclusion of the good ones.

  The Storm Lady’s voice softened. “Strange,” she said, “for a man to have a ring so small he wears it on his little finger. Unless of course it was once a woman’s ring.”

  “Mazana!” a new voice said, and Senar looked across to see the Storm Lord who’d been talking to the emira approaching. The man drew up in a fog of moonblossom scent. In one manicured hand he held a roll of parchment. “A delight, as ever,” he said to the Storm Lady, taking her hand and kissing it.

  Mazana was slow to look away from Senar. “Lord Cauroy,” she said eventually. “You have met Senar Sol? A Guardian from Erin Elal.”

  Cauroy’s gaze remained on Mazana, exploring her. “And what are you here to defend?” he asked Senar. “Not Mazana’s honor, I trust. I assure you my intentions toward her are as honorable as she wishes them to be.”

  “I can breathe easy then, my Lord,” Senar said. Perhaps he should have felt grateful to Cauroy for arriving to spare him some uncomfortable questions, yet oddly he found himself resenting the man’s intrusion.

  “Would you like a closer look at my pendant?” Mazana asked the Storm Lord, lifting it from where it hung between her breasts. “You appear to be staring at it a great deal.”

  Cauroy cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, remarkable craftsmanship.” He pretended to admire the jewel.

  Mazana gestured to the scroll he was holding. “Is that your summons? May I?”

  “Of course.”

  She unrolled the parchment and read its contents. “The wording is the same as mine. Now I think of it, the handwriting bears a striking resemblance to your own, my Lord, wouldn’t you say?”

  Cauroy’s cheeks reddened. “Certainly not!”

  The look Mazana shot Senar had a flash of mischief in it, together with something else he could not place. “No, see here,” she said, “the slant of the characters, the ridiculous ostentatiousness of the loops.”

  “If the summonses had been mine, I would hardly have composed them in my own hand.”

  Senar said, “You got someone else to write them?”

  “Yes! I mean, no!” Cauroy’s mouth opened and closed. “What do I stand to gain by calling the Storm Lords together? Answer me that! And if I had, why would I keep up the charade now with everyone but Gensu here?”

  “By the same logic,” Mazana said, “all of those present would be absolved from suspicion.”

  “Precisely! Gensu sent the summons—it is as I have always said!” He leaned closer, his voice dropping. “Although my chamberlain tells me that the man who delivered the parchment to my house was an Untarian.” His gaze flickered to Mokinda.

  Mazana raised an eyebrow. “Why not just sign his name on the summonses and be done with it?”

  Cauroy seemed not to have heard. “Then there is our friend Thane. Apparently he received a consignment of dyes and iron ingots three weeks before the summonses arrived.” When Mazana and Senar remained silent, he went on, “Don’t you see? They are just what he would need to make a copy of the emira’s seal!”

  Senar nodded. “You may be on to something there. What other possible use could Thane have had for such a cargo?”

  Mazana said, “Although since we’re dealing with dyes, would not the vessel carrying the shipment have sailed from Peron Ra? We cannot discount the Peronians, surely.”

  “I knew it!” Cauroy crowed. “The Peronians have always coveted…”

  His voice trailed off as a male servant appeared at the end of the underwater passage and made his way toward the thrones. When he spoke to the emira, it was in a voice too low for Senar to hear. The message was evidently a lengthy one. Through it all Imerle listened without emotion. Beside her, Pernay frowned. Cauroy drummed a foot, while Thane stood clasping and unclasping his hands. Only Mazana seemed unmoved by the growing tension, for when her gaze met Senar’s she rolled her eyes at the theatricality of it all.

  Finally the servant finished speaking. At the emira’s nod, he retreated to the passage.

  Just then a rumble sounded, deepening in pitch as if something were stirring in the deep. Tremors shook the chamber, each more intense than the last. The mosaic floor rippled. Instinctively Senar looked up at the horizontal span of water above him, but the throne room had no ordinary ceiling that it could be brought down by a few shakes. A brazier to his left toppled into the sea, and its glowing coals were smothered by the darkness. Opposite, a second brazier fell. The shadows about the chamber closed in. A c
rack opened in the mosaic floor, tracing a jagged line along the Sender’s forehead and giving the god a look of disquiet that must have mirrored Senar’s own.

  As quickly as the quake had come, it subsided.

  The Guardian stood motionless, expecting an aftershock.

  None came.

  The tremors had lasted for perhaps ten heartbeats, but the silence that followed went on much longer. The Storm Lords exchanged looks. Cauroy had seized Mazana’s arm during the quake, but his touch now lingered, and she threw him off. Pernay sat white-faced in his chair, his hands quivering so violently it seemed the room must still be in the grip of the tremors. In response to a word from the emira he gathered himself and rose.

  A brazier beside the executioner chose that moment to topple, spilling coals under the thrones. Pernay flinched, then spun with flashing eyes toward the giant as if he thought the brazier had been overturned deliberately. Senar wished he’d had the idea himself.

  The executioner remained staring at nothing.

  Clearing his throat, the chief minister turned back to the chamber. “My Lords and Lady,” he said. “The harbormaster reports a ship flying Gensu’s flag has been sighted in the Causeway. He will be with us shortly.”

  * * *

  Agenta heard the scrape of wood on stone as a handful of the bar’s patrons pushed their chairs back from their tables and lurched upright. The sea had begun to ooze up through the gaps between the floorboards.

  Balen.

  At the next table the water-mage wore a look of such concentration it would surely catch the eye of anyone glancing his way. Agenta tutted. She’d ordered Warner to tell him only to prepare a diversion, not to initiate it, meaning either the mage had got twitchy or the trita had ignored her instructions. She looked at Sticks’s companions. The two men were watching her, and she rose and strode to their table in an effort to keep their gazes from Balen.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  Blank looks.

  “Where’s Sticks? I’m not waiting here—”

  “Sit down,” the man on the left interrupted, nodding at Agenta’s table.

  Or what? the kalischa wanted to say. Instead she turned and walked toward her companions. Warner, Iqral, and Jayle stood up. Behind Agenta, the sound of creaking floorboards told her Sticks’s men had also risen. When she looked round, she saw them making for the doors through which Agenta had entered. Evidently Sticks had commanded them to stop her leaving, and why would he do that unless he had seen through the kalischa’s disguise?

  “Let’s go,” Warner said as she reached him.

  Agenta paid him no mind.

  A splash of footsteps signaled the approach of three of the bar’s Untarian patrons—two women and one man. They were heading for the doors now watched by Sticks’s companions. As they drew near, the guards’ hands strayed to the hilts of their swords. Agenta thought Sticks’s men would turn the Untarians back, but after a pause they stood aside. One of the Untarian women looked at them askance as she threw the doors open. There was no boat waiting outside, so she raised two fingers to her lips and whistled.

  “Let’s go,” Warner said again.

  “And do what, swim for it?” Agenta said. “We wait for the Untarians’ boat.”

  A breath of wind blew through the doors, carrying on it the smell of rotting fireweed. Agenta looked outside, searching the night for an ambushing party. She could see nothing except a line of distant buildings and the reflection of the moon in the water—a reflection that disappeared as one of Sticks’s men moved across her line of sight. The guard was eyeballing Warner, and the trita looked him up and down before smiling faintly as if to say he’d taken the man’s measure and found him wanting.

  Agenta lowered her hands to her sides. Keeping her motions slow and steady, she flexed her wrists just so. Her throwing stars slipped from their sheaths into her palms. When the trouble started, the guards would expect the threat to come from Warner and his soldiers rather than from the apparently unarmed kalischa. With luck she might be able to take one of them down before they realized their mistake.

  A hundred heartbeats passed and still the Untarians’ boat had not arrived. Agenta looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Sticks emerge from the smoke that covered the bar. Was he reporting to someone at the other end of the room? Or had he left the building through a door hidden from Agenta’s view? Maybe he’d suspected all along she would try to flee and was now waiting outside to attack her, but then why order his two companions to bar her exit? A thought came to her. Perhaps she should take one of Sticks’s men captive to interrogate later.

  She was about to suggest as much to Warner when she heard a splash of water outside.

  The Untarians’ boat.

  Then she noticed one of Sticks’s guards nudging his companion and pointing at something behind her.

  Agenta turned to see Sticks thirty paces away, approaching through the smoke with four men at his back. There was a hardness to the scarred man’s gaze, an unmistakable purpose in his stride.

  A stride that increased in length when he saw the kalischa’s party on its feet.

  Agenta hesitated. For all her misgivings, was it possible she’d misread his intentions? Could he have returned to resume the negotiations? But if so, where was his boss? Not among his companions, that much was clear, for Sticks’s friends were all walking behind the man, not alongside where a superior would be.

  “Balen!” the kalischa called.

  The air about her convulsed. With a hissing noise the water on the floor vaporized to form clouds of steam that rose up to engulf Sticks and his entourage.

  From behind Agenta came the whisper of swords being drawn from their scabbards. She remembered the two guards at her back. In one smooth motion she spun and hurled the throwing star in her right hand. It took one of the men in the neck, and he went down clutching his throat. Jayle sprang to engage the other guard. Agenta saw nothing of their clash, though, because Warner was already pushing her toward the open doors and the boat waiting beyond.

  Ahead, Iqral barged between the Untarians, a shortspear in each hand, before leaping down into the craft. Agenta arrived in time to see him tugging a spear from the chest of a man—the boat’s owner, she presumed—who toppled backward into the sea. The Kalanese extended a hand to her, but before she could take it Warner shoved her in the back. Cursing, she pitched forward into Iqral’s arms, and they staggered into the starboard gunwale, teetered, almost followed the boatman over the side. Agenta untangled herself just as the trita stepped down behind her. She lurched to the bow to make room, stepping over the oar-bench.

  From within the smoky common room came a burst of light as if someone had overturned a lantern. The clang of swords sounded. Agenta saw Jayle aim a cut to her opponent’s chest before a wall of mist rolled over them. If Balen had been in the boat, Agenta would have ordered him to take off, Jayle be damned, but the water-mage was only now appearing from the steam.

  To the kalischa’s right, a crossbowman advanced along the apex of a submerged roof. He pointed his weapon at the boat. Transferring her second throwing star from her left hand to her right, Agenta pulled back her arm—

  Just as Balen jumped into the boat. It rocked precariously. The kalischa stumbled a pace to her left, then grabbed for the gunwale, missed, and fell to her knees.

  A crossbow string twanged, and she felt a disturbance in the air as a bolt whipped past her face. She smiled. Life or death decided by a hairbreadth. That’s just the way it was.

  The crossbowman began reloading his weapon. Agenta clambered upright. Her throwing star was cold against her palm. She tried to set her feet for a throw, but the boat twitched beneath her again, and she swayed as the crossbowman pulled back on his weapon’s crank. At that moment a wave rippled over the rooftop. The man was set staggering too. The absurdity of their plight struck Agenta, and she felt laughter rising inside her. She drew back her arm once more.

  One of Iqral’s shortspears buried
itself in the crossbowman’s chest. He gave a squawk and fell into the sea.

  More men were approaching across the submerged roofs. Of Agenta’s companions only Jayle remained unaccounted for, but the masked woman suddenly materialized in the bar’s doorway and half jumped, half collapsed into the boat. Iqral caught her, and the two went down in a heap.

  Agenta’s gaze found Balen’s. The mage was staring at her like he needed telling what to do next. “Get us out of here!” the kalischa said.

  Wide-eyed, he nodded.

  The boat rose a handspan into the air on a wave of water-magic. The bow swung north to take them back the way they had come.

  “Not that way!” Agenta said. She gestured south. “The sea!” Better to be out on the open waves than run the gauntlet of the Deeps’ flooded alleys.

  Another nod from Balen, and the boat changed course before skimming away across the waves at a speed that set the kalischa’s hair billowing.

  A man appeared in the doorway to the bar. Agenta thought it was Sticks come to wave them good-bye. But then a ball of flames sparked to life in his hands, making flickers of light dance across the waves. The fireball swelled to an armspan in diameter.

  The man thrust out his arms and sent it streaking toward the craft.

  “Fire-mage!” Iqral shouted, as if Agenta might have missed the signs.

  “Left!” she ordered Balen, pulling on his sleeve.

  The boat veered in that direction, and the kalischa stumbled into the gunwale again. Heat seared her face as the fireball roared past, leaving a trail of steam behind. It struck a house to her right, demolishing a section of wall before detonating inside to send flames spouting from the windows. A man flung himself shrieking into the waves. Tough luck, your house getting hit by fire when it was surrounded by the sea, but at least the man wouldn’t lack for water to put the blaze out.

  Just then a crossbow bolt thudded into the boards between Agenta’s feet. To her right two crossbowmen stood on the roof of a building. As the first man reloaded, his companion placed a quarrel in the slot of his weapon and fired. Agenta never saw where the missile struck because Warner was already bundling into her, bearing her down into the bottom of the boat. She stretched out her hands to break her fall, but still her temple struck the boards, making her vision swim. The grain of the wood was pressed against her cheek. She smelled tar and pine pitch.