The Dragon Mistress

by R. A. Steffan

  Aristede held up an imperious hand, commanding silence for several more moments. I held my breath, listening, but I couldn’t even hear the guards’ footsteps anymore.

  “Relax,” Eldris said in a normal voice. “They’re gone.”

  Aristede lowered his hand, and I let the air out of my lungs.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  I glared up at Aristede, knowing I probably resembled nothing so much as a dust mop at this point. “You are as mad as a drunken hare in a dog kennel,” I accused. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Eldris laughed, a low, masculine sound that came dangerously close to distracting me from my incredulity.

  Aristede only shrugged. “What? The ruse worked, didn’t it?”

  I continued to glare at him. “You’re also way too practiced with that whole, ‘Quick, under the bed!’ routine. Just saying.”

  “Yeah… he’s had extensive practice hiding people in his bedroom who weren’t supposed to be there,” Eldris said.

  There was an edge to his tone that I couldn’t decipher, but I was still hung up on my exasperation with Aristede. “In what world is that something you practice?”

  Aristede only raised one gracefully swept eyebrow at me. “I wouldn’t call it practice so much as real world experience. After all, you’re here in my bedroom when you’re not supposed to be, aren’t you?”

  Eldris made another noise I couldn’t parse, but Nyx interrupted the pointless exchange. “What do we do now? We can’t wait around for days to organize transportation out of the city.”

  I tried to tell myself that a single close call with guards didn’t mean I’d be relentlessly hounded. Not as long as I didn’t go out in daylight, anyway—because no doubt word of the golden-haired girl wanted by the guards was spreading like wildfire around the city.

  “We could take ’em up to the cave,” Eldris said. “They’d be safe there.”

  Aristede looked at him so sharply that it took me by surprise. His whole demeanor changed in a heartbeat, from smooth and playful to cold and distant.

  “No,” he said.

  Chapter 11: Night Flight

  “WHAT CAVE?” I ASKED. “What are you two talking about?”

  Eldris’ eyes flickered to mine briefly before he focused on Aristede again. “You know we’ll have to do something eventually, Ari. Maybe these two stumbled back here for a reason.”

  “Ahem.” I cleared my throat meaningfully.

  “And you know the risks,” Aristede retorted, paying me no mind. “You want to bank on some nebulous concept of fate, Riss? Really?”

  I dragged my dust-coated self up from the floor and pushed between them, grabbing Aristede’s loose tunic-front in my fist. “I don’t appreciate being talked around any more than I appreciate being abducted into a harem. Now. What. Are. You. Talking. About.”

  Steel-gray eyes landed on me heavily. I won’t lie—I was finding this sudden facet of coldness in him disconcerting.

  “My associate is suggesting something dangerous for everyone involved,” he said, and I wondered when Eldris had gone from someone whose chair-back he leaned casually against to an associate. “You’ll have to forgive my lapse in manners, but for now, this is between the two of us.”

  I frowned, but released his clothing.

  “We could sneak them out on horseback tonight, riding double along the riverbed,” Eldris said. “We’d have to rest the horses more often, but we could be there in a little more than a day.”

  I backed off a step so I could watch them both.

  “And if the you-know-what showed up?” Aristede shot back. “What then?”

  “Then there would be five of us rather than three,” Eldris replied evenly. “Like I said, you know we’ll have to do something sooner or later.”

  Aristede stared at him unflinchingly for so long that the air in the room started to turn heavy. Eldris didn’t move or break gaze, even though it was all I could do not to start jumping up and down, demanding answers. Good gods, much longer and all four of us would drown in the stifling atmosphere.

  “Fine,” Aristede said eventually, still not giving any ground with his cold eyes. “But I leave it to you to explain the decision to Rayth.”

  Eldris only shrugged. “Rayth is his own worst enemy. You know that as well as I do.”

  “I fear that can be said of everyone here, my friend,” said Aristede, his manner finally softening to something more like what I was used to.

  I eyed them warily. “So you propose to take Nyx and me to a cave where Rayth is staying? Why is Rayth staying in a cave?”

  “To avoid prying eyes,” Aristede said unhelpfully.

  “It’s remote, and it’s private,” Eldris said. “Seems like just the thing while we figure out what to do next, Trouble.”

  I frowned at him, though I couldn’t exactly dispute it. “All right. So, where is this place? In the mountains somewhere?”

  “Yes,” Aristede said. “It’s difficult to get to. Most wouldn’t bother to try. But there’s a spring-fed lake nearby, foraging to be had— even game to hunt.”

  “And Rayth is there, instead of staying here at a nice inn? Does the spring run with wine instead of water?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “You should give Rayth more of a chance,” Eldris said. “Just because he bested you in a sparring match—”

  I felt my cheeks flush at the reminder. “That’s got nothing to do with it,” I lied.

  “Mmm,” Aristede hummed, and shot another look at Eldris. “You understand my reluctance, here?”

  “Pfft. They’ll get used to each other.”

  I was on the fence about needing to get used to Rayth, but this was still the best offer I was likely to get. I shifted my focus to Nyx, who was still sitting on the floor next to the bed. “What about it? Want to come with us and share a cave in the mountains with an infuriating, angry drunkard?”

  Never let it be said that I couldn’t sell an idea to someone.

  Nyx let his shoulders lift and lower. “I lived up there for a little over a year after—” He cut himself off. “Well… it was a time when I didn’t really have anyplace else to go, that’s all. It’s not too bad if you know how to trap game and which plants are safe to eat. It won’t even be cold at this time of year.”

  I turned back to the other two. “In that case, I guess we’re going to visit Rayth. You want to leave tonight?”

  “Yeah,” Eldris said, “That’d be for the best. The longer you’re here in Safaad, the more chance someone’ll see you and tell the wrong person.”

  Aristede seemed resigned to the new plan, if not precisely happy. “You should both get some more rest while you have the chance. It will be a difficult journey.”

  “You and Eldris should rest, too,” I pointed out. “I already got a shot at the bed today. Lend me a bedroll and I’ll be fine on the floor. Nyx and I even dusted it earlier.”

  Aristede shook his head. “Don’t be daft, Frella.” He eyed the generously sized mattress. “That will fit three, if you’re not bothered by sharing with Nyx and Eldris. I don’t sleep all that much anyway.”

  “You should try to grab a nap, at least,” Eldris said. “Fording the river bend is tricky at the best of times, never mind in the dark. Don’t want to be falling asleep at an inopportune moment.”

  “I will,” Aristede promised, “but there’s no point in me tossing and turning in bed, keeping everybody else awake. Eldris, would you mind fetching up a ewer of water for the washbasin before we retire? Since one of the serving girls is after me.”

  Eldris huffed, but rose and headed for the door. “With the trail of serving girls you’ve left behind, mate, it’s a miracle there are any inns left at all where you can show your face.”

  “I’m certain I have no idea what you mean,” Aristede said blandly.

  Eldris returned a few minutes later with water, and the four of us freshened up before extinguishing the candles. I claimed the middle of the bed, with Eldris jammed
against the wall and Nyx closest to the edge. It wasn’t an unpleasant place to be, I decided, with a big grumbly bear on my left and a shy, beautiful stag on my right.

  With my eyes closed, I heard Aristede shuffling around for a moment before the chair by the window creaked, and I took a moment to wonder what troubled his dreams so badly. Before long, though, I was asleep—my previous slumber evidently not enough to overcome the exhaustion of the last couple of days.

  It seemed like barely any time had passed at all when a noise woke me. I blinked, the room coming into focus as silver moonlight streamed through the window. Nyx was no longer lying next to me, but rather sitting on the edge of the bed, elbows resting on knees, watching the figure slumped in a chair across the room.

  Aristede must have drifted off with his head on his arms, upper body resting on the table. Now, though, he was twitching restlessly, low sounds like child’s moan of fear emerging, half-muffled, from his lips. I’d seen enough night terrors to recognize one, and I experienced a flash of irritation that Nyx was just sitting there, watching it like some sort of a show.

  I swung into a sitting position, trying not to jostle Eldris awake, and scooted around Nyx’s body until I could get to my feet. A hand closed around my wrist, halting me before I could take a single step. I whirled on Nyx, whose green-ringed eyes moved to meet mine in the weak light.

  “Don’t,” he said, barely more than the shape of a word. “Never wake a dreaming soldier.”

  I drew breath, but without knowing what words I wanted to say, it stayed in my lungs, trapped. Before I could untangle my tongue, a larger, darker form brushed past, Eldris moving almost silently despite his bulk.

  “What a load of rot,” he muttered. “Always wake a dreaming soldier. Just be ready to duck when you do.”

  I subsided in Nyx’s grip, and his fingers slid away from my wrist.

  “Ari,” Eldris said, and grasped his shoulder in one hand. “C’mon. Get your head out of the past.”

  I caught my breath as Aristede snarled and came up swinging. Eldris blocked the first blow with a forearm and darted his head back, quick as a snake, to avoid the second. Aristede nearly fell out of the chair when his fist met no resistance, and Eldris steadied him with a hand splayed across his chest, over his heart.

  “Wha—?” Aristede croaked, his voice hoarse as though he’d been screaming. Maybe in his head, he had been. He blinked owlishly in the moonlight. “Oh. Sorry. I woke you again.”

  “You woke all of us, mate, but don’t worry about it. We should probably get going anyway.” Eldris let him go with a final pat to the chest, and Aristede scrubbed a hand over his face, running his fingers through the smooth length of his hair. My fingers itched to do the same, brushing it back from his pale features.

  I shook my head, trying to wake up the rest of the way. There was far more to the man slouched in the chair than the silver-tongued temptation I’d originally assumed him to be. How much of him was that, how much was the cold, calculating logician I’d seen the previous evening, and how much was the desperate dreamer fighting for his life as he awoke remained to be seen. But if there was a single word I could use to describe what I’d seen of Aristede so far, it was complicated.

  “Are we leaving, then?” I asked in lieu of any comment on what had just happened.

  Aristede’s jaw cracked in a yawn. “Yes,” he said. “Might as well.”

  “You go get the horses saddled and bring them around back,” Eldris said, stretching until his spine cracked. “Probably for the best if these two leave by the window. I can lower them down and then leave the regular way.”

  Aristede nodded, gathering up his weapons belt and a pair of saddlebags as he left without a word. I’d slept in my boots again, but I strapped on my throwing knives and splashed water from the basin on my face. That didn’t stop me from feeling like I was stumbling around in a daze, but if Eldris was serious about lowering us through the window, I suspected that would wake me up in a hurry.

  Figuring that it might come in handy, I refilled Nyx’s stolen lantern with oil from one of the lamps and handed it to him, along with one of my six daggers. He stared at the blade in his palm for a long moment as though unsure what to do with it, but then he stuck it in his boot.

  It wasn’t all that long before a soft whistle like a birdcall drifted through the window.

  “Ready?” Eldris asked.

  “To be lowered through a window?” I asked. “How would you like me to answer that?”

  White teeth flashed in the dark. “I can send down the packs and bedrolls first. We’ll see how they fare.”

  “Ha,” I told him, not amused.

  “I’ll go first,” Nyx said in his soft voice. “I can catch you at the bottom.”

  That actually did make me feel a bit better, and I tried to smile at him. His eyes had already slid away, though. He was awfully good at making me forget he was there, and I resolved not to let him use that trick on me so often. “Thanks,” I said, taking a chance and brushing his jaw with my fingers, guiding his gaze back up to mine.

  Though his expression was uncertain, he didn’t flinch away. I gave him the smile I’d tried to convey earlier. His mouth moved as though he might have been trying to smile back, but had forgotten how. I wished for more light in the room.

  Eldris was already tossing the packs and bedrolls down to Aristede. When he was done, he turned to us. “C’mon then. Let’s get a shift on.”

  Nyx took a deep breath and crossed the room, lifting his legs through the window with a strength and grace I wouldn’t have expected from someone so uncomfortable in his own skin. He twisted on the sill and grasped wrists with Eldris, who barely seemed to strain as he lowered the smaller man down as far as he could reach.

  “Three… two… one… and down you go,” he said, and I heard feet hitting gravel a moment later.

  “Is he all right?” I asked, crowding forward to peer at the ground below. Nyx waved up, unhurt.

  “Have a bit of faith, Trouble,” Eldris chided, and nudged me with an elbow.

  I let him support me as I scooted into position, wondering if he could hear the nervous galloping of my heart. The darkness, while far from complete, made it difficult to judge distances, and anytime I peered down from a height, my mind tried to recall the feeling of losing my footing on loose shale and tumbling down the rocky cliff face in the forests outside of Draebard when I was ten.

  Eldris’ grip was firm and reassuring, though. Rather than look down, I focused on his face as I walked my feet down the outer wall. As he had done with Nyx, he lowered me effortlessly until his head and shoulders were outside the window, his arms and mine stretched out straight.

  “I’ve got you,” said a quiet voice from not very far below me.

  “You’ll be all right, sweet thing,” Eldris assured. “Get ready in three… two… one… and go.”

  It was all I could do to pry my fingers from his wrists at the same moment he let go. I pushed away from the wall with my feet and focused on staying upright, not locking my knees. A decidedly girly squeak made it past my lips despite my best efforts, but then hands were closing around my waist, softening the impact of my boots with the ground.

  “Well done,” Aristede murmured from nearby.

  The hands let go of me, and fortunately my shaky legs took my weight without buckling.

  “Let’s not do that again. Ever,” I said, glad my voice didn’t tremble.

  “Those are the words of someone who needs more practice,” Aristede teased.

  I glared at him. “Those are the words of someone who has a totally valid reason for not liking heights,” I shot back.

  “How do you want to do this?” Nyx asked before the sniping could continue further. “You and I together are probably about the same weight as Eldris and Frella together, but his horse is more powerful than yours.”

  “We’ll need to rotate between walking and riding,” Aristede said. “But the animals should be able to handle all four o
f us long enough to at least get out of the city. The faster we do that, the better.”

  “Agreed,” Nyx said, though he looked uncomfortable—his shoulders stiff in the moonlight.

  I remembered the way he’d cringed back from Aristede’s extended hand upon their first meeting, and the careful way Aristede had avoided getting too close to him since then.

  “Is riding double with someone going to be a problem for you?” I asked Nyx, deciding to take the bull by the horns.

  There was a beat of silence. “Is there a choice?” Nyx asked.

  Aristede regarded him steadily. “Not really.” He seemed to weigh his words for a moment before continuing. “Whoever it was, though… in your past, I mean—I’m not him.”

  “I know that,” Nyx snapped in the closest thing to anger I’d heard from him.

  “I know you know. Do you have a weapon?”

  I thought of the knife I’d handed Nyx, now stowed in his boot.

  “Yes,” he said. “A blade.”

  Aristede nodded. “Then you’ll ride behind me with your dagger within easy reach. You saw my ghosts earlier. For reasons I’m not inclined to discuss, I don’t like the idea of having an armed stranger at my back. We can be equally uncomfortable. Fair?”

  Nyx mulled over his words. “Fair.”

  Aristede’s bay mare snorted and tossed her head while I was still trying to unpick the threads of that short exchange. Eldris appeared around the corner a moment later.

  “We ready?” he asked.

  “I think so,” I replied.

  Aristede had already stowed our gear on the horses. He swung onto his mare with an easy motion, and held her still while Nyx accepted a leg up from Eldris. Once they were settled, Eldris took up the reins of his chestnut gelding and mounted. Obviously remembering the trip to Safaad, he reached a hand down to me and grinned.

  “Any excuse to get you cozied up to me, sweet thing,” he quipped.

  I grinned back and took the proffered hand, swinging up behind him. I had to grab his jerkin with my free hand to drag myself into place on the tall, stocky animal, but Eldris was immovable in his easy strength and bulk. He didn’t so much as shift as I used him as a climbing trellis, settling my rump behind the cantle of the saddle.