Fool's Gold

by Jon Hollins

  “So you’re putting this on me,” he said. “That’s it, right? I have to help you now or it’s on my head.” His smile was bitter.

  She continued her slow approach until she was standing on the edge of the ditch beside him. She felt the urge to reach out to him. She resisted for a moment. Business and pleasure were already at significant risk of getting very confused. But then she let herself give in to it. She rested her hand upon his shoulder. She could feel a fine tremor beneath her palm, as if some current ran through him.

  “Come on, Will,” she said. “This is a chance for you. Mattrax isn’t the only dragon shitting on people’s lives. They’re all as bad as each other. We have the opportunity to hurt another one. You have the chance to help all the people trailing after us.”

  “I thought you said they were all dead whatever we did.” It was not quite a snarl, but it was closer than he usually got.

  She nodded, but did not take the hand off his shoulder. He was a source of warmth on this cold day. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “Maybe.” She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, but she knew that Will perceived it. “Who knows? If we did enough damage…”

  Will laughed again, still cynical, but a little closer to the true feelings she knew lurked within him.

  “You think we can take down the whole Dragon Consortium? Honestly?”

  “Honestly?” She left a sliver of humor enter her voice. “No.” She let that sink in. “But I think we can hurt them. I think, with you, we can make them think twice.”

  He didn’t reply at once, only leaned back. That was a good sign.

  “Come on, Will,” she said. “You know you can help us. You know you can make a difference. You know you want to.” She firmed her grip on his shoulder. “Don’t give in to fear.”

  This was not her first seduction. Far from that. But it was one of the uglier ones all the same. Her heart was not in it, not truly, despite the promised payday, despite Will’s hard, flat muscles.

  She wasn’t sure what was happening to her. Was this what being a better person was like? This weakness?

  Will still didn’t say anything. She licked her lips. She could feel words lurking at the back of her throat, but none of them stepped up, presented themselves as the right ones. She tried to keep her face warmly neutral, while inside she cursed. She was losing him.

  Will looked down at the knot of grass in his hands. It looked impossibly complicated to her. The beginning lost in the end. A continual complex loop.

  He followed her gaze. A smile broke through the clouds on his face. “My mother showed me how to make these,” he said. “Eternity knots. She made one for my father when he asked her to marry him. He wore it around his neck on their wedding day.”

  She couldn’t tell where this thread was going. She decided to follow it on impulse. “That’s sweet.” An encouraging smile.

  “They rot in the end, though,” he said, tossing his away. “The name’s bullshit.” He looked away from her, down into the brown muddy water of the ditch. “These people, the ones following me, they die whatever we do, don’t they?”

  The abrupt turn caught her off guard. She hesitated.

  “Yeah,” Will said. “I thought so.”

  She closed her eyes. Gods piss on it.

  “We run; we’re caught. We hide; we’re caught. We fight them; we’re caught.” His voice sank with the utterance of each sad little fact.

  She tried to work out how she would explain this setback to Balur.

  “So we steal from them.”

  She looked up. Will was looking at her. His eyes weren’t bright exactly, but there was the flicker of that fire in him. A little more heat than she’d seen in days.

  “Because it hurts them,” he said. “Because maybe it achieves shit all in the long run, but for just a little while, we can piss them off something awful.”

  33

  The Prophet of Profit

  “All right,” Will said, “this is how it’s going to go down.”

  Quirk didn’t know how Lette did what she did, but clearly she was very good at it.

  They were all back in the thaumatic cart, on the move again. Will’s train of followers stretched off down the road after them, longer than ever now—another thirty souls had joined them while Will vacillated by the side of the road.

  She would have to get back to them all soon. She owed them that much at least.

  The widows.

  The widowers.

  The orphans…

  She closed her eyes, pushed the creeping thoughts back down.

  “First,” Will said, “Firkin and I never planned this. He supplied the facts about Dathrax, but we never got as far as an actual plan. So I’m pulling this together based on what he told me.”

  That sounded like nothing but a recommendation to Quirk.

  “Be telling us the plan already,” said Balur. “This is being enough with the foreplay.” He, at least, seemed to agree with her.

  Will sighed, shook his head. “Dathrax,” he said, “lives in the center of Athril’s Lake. Specifically on an island at its center. Alone. No guards. No castle.”

  “So he is being a fucking idiot.” Balur clapped his hands together. Quirk felt the sound resonate deep in her gut.

  “He doesn’t have them,” Will said, “because he doesn’t need them. Athril’s Lake is home to the Leviathans.”

  That got Quirk’s attention. She pulled her gaze back from the road and the miniature geography of ruts and puddles. “The Leviathans?” she asked.

  Will grinned. “I thought you might like them.” He glanced at Lette before he went on. “Monster fish. Nobody is quite sure where they came from. Most say they were regular fish once. Then cast-offs from Dathrax’s meals began slipping down into the lake, and the fish grew fatter and fatter living off them. And as they grew bigger, they developed more and more of a taste for flesh.”

  Quirk quirked an eyebrow. She’d heard enough old wives’ tales in her time to recognize one when she heard it. There again, just because Will’s etiology of the Leviathans was incorrect did not mean that they did not exist, nor that they held no interest for her. Perhaps she could discover their true origin. Perhaps she could observe the feeding rituals, how they mated and bred. Perhaps she could peel back the mystery of their existence scale by scale, muscle by muscle.

  She flashed back to the moment in Mattrax’s cave. Her hand outstretched. The scales barely a hair’s breadth beyond the reach. Then falling away. Being denied.

  The widows.

  The widowers.

  The orphans…

  “Wait.” Balur interrupted her introspection. “So the lake is being full of these giant killer fish?”

  Will nodded. “The Leviathans. Yes.”

  “And there is being a fishing village there.”

  Will nodded again. “Well, a town. But yes.”

  Balur nodded back. “So, I am wondering, are they replacing the fishermen every day? Is it being where suicidal fishermen are going?”

  Will rolled his eyes, though it struck Quirk as a reasonable enough question. “The Leviathans stick to deep water,” he explained. They’re big. As long as the fishermen stick to the shallows, catch small things, everything’s fine. It’s just when you want to get to the island that you get in trouble.”

  “So,” said Lette, “how do you get to the island?” She was looking up at Will, rapt. It was unlike her to be so unaware of herself, so unguarded.

  “Well,” said Will, “that’s the thing. Dathrax, like all the dragons, is a greedy bastard. He collects exorbitant taxes from everyone who lives around Athril’s Lake. And he uses a garrison of troops to do it. But, because he’s a dragon, he’s also a lazy bastard. Doesn’t want to be bothered with these little drabs of gold coming in now and again. Far too much work for a giant sack of scales and shit like him. No, he likes it coming to him all as one big lump sum. So all the gold sits in the garrison in the town of Athril right up until its yearly trek across the lake.”r />
  “But what about the Leviathans?” Lette asked. She was leaning forward, chin propped on both hands. Quirk thought that if in that moment, Will had asked her to eat candied bonbons out of his hand, she would’ve agreed to do so. Was it love? Greed? Infatuation?

  Romantic entanglements were not a thing Quirk knew much about, truth be told. Her childhood had not allowed for such things. Nothing soft, or warm, or good had been permitted.

  And after that… Well, she had been too busy dealing with the aftermath of such a childhood to get romantically involved with anyone, no matter how many students and professors had been intrigued by the rabid young thing the deacon had dragged in.

  And now? Well, now she was entrenched in her studies. Her studies gave her focus. Focus gave her control. And she could not afford to be distracted.

  Widows.

  Widowers.

  Orphans…

  “The garrison uses a heavily armored boat to take the taxes to Dathrax,” Will said, looking at Lette with no less intensity than she possessed when looking at him. “The Leviathans attack, but they can’t chew through.”

  It all sounded so simple, as Will laid it out. So easily put together. Quirk tried to take a step back. She had thought the same the last time she’d heard Will lay out a plan.

  But that had not been without its casualties.

  The widows…

  The—

  She shook herself, threw off the litany. She couldn’t wallow in self-pity. Would this honestly help all the people following them? She had assumed Lette had promised Will that to get him here. And she believed Will when he said that he cared about the followers. He may not have asked for the responsibility of caring for them, but he seemed decent enough to accept the role. But how far astray would Lette and Balur be willing to lead him?

  And what about herself? Did she truly see this as a chance to save these people? Or did she see it just as another chance to see a dragon?

  Or, perhaps, instead of worrying about which of those it was, she should think about the risk of experiencing significant stress. Could she be sure that she would be safe to be around? Could she guarantee the safety of the people who followed them?

  Yes, was the knee-jerk response that flashed through her mind. Of course.

  Except hadn’t events and Mattrax’s cave demonstrated that no matter how many times she repeated it, no matter how deep a groove it wore in her mind, her knee-jerk answer was not the whole truth?

  Yet if that was not true, then who was she? Was she still that poor rabid girl who had been pulled from the scrub, dragged into civilization?

  She shuddered, trying to shake off all the questions rising in her mind.

  “Are you all right?”

  Quirk became aware that Will was staring at her. She shook again, less violently this time. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just a chill, that’s all.”

  They were still all looking at her. Time to put their attention elsewhere.

  “So,” she said, “a heavily armed garrison is easier to steal from than a dragon?” She supposed that was probably true, though it seemed like a matter of degrees to her.

  “Oh no,” Will said, “the gold in the garrison is just the yearly stash. The real bulk of the wealth is with Dathrax out in the middle of the lake.”

  “It is being past the Leviathans?” Balur asked.

  “Past the Leviathans,” said Will.

  “So your plan is involving us crossing a lake full of deadly giant fish?” Balur followed up.

  “Yes,” Will agreed.

  Balur chewed on this. “I know we are not getting into the specifics of this yet,” he said, “but so far I am thinking your plan is a bit shit.”

  Now Quirk was prone to agree. But she would have said any plan that involved getting past a small private army, and a lake filled with monstrous fish, to get to an island populated solely by an enormous fire-breathing lizard was questionable at best.

  “Hear the farm boy out,” Lette told them all.

  But Quirk’s mind was off again. She was thinking about the bags of gold. They promised freedom from the Consortium. But that was not all they promised.

  Did she want to be rich? The thought had never really crossed her mind before. Money didn’t really play a part in her life. The university gave her a stipend that she used for food, and for new clothes if her current ones developed more holes than society seemed willing to put up with. But she didn’t have to pay for books. She hadn’t needed to pay for the supplies for this trip. The university provided.

  But knowledge—that was what she really wanted. And that did lie across the lake, and on that island.

  Will was grinning. “Okay,” he said, “what one part of our plan with Mattrax actually worked?”

  “We got the gold,” Lette said, patting a sack beside her.

  “Yes,” Will said. “But it came with this whole ridiculous crowd problem.” He looked about them. Playing up the drama, Quirk supposed. He was far removed from the morose, cursing figure who had stormed off earlier now. “In my opinion,” he went on, “the one part of the plan that went off flawlessly was the actual Snag Weed potion. We got it into a cow, and we got the cow inside Mattrax, and he went down so hard, he slept through Balur murdering him.”

  Balur shifted uncomfortably. “Still counts,” he grunted.

  “Still completely counts,” said Will, with an indulgent nod.

  “So we knock out Dathrax,” Lette said, as if checking something off on a mental checklist.

  “Yes we do.” Will nodded some more. “And no need to murder him this time, so we limit the amount of additional heat we pull down from the Dragon Consortium.”

  A little optimistic, Quirk thought… but it would be another unconscious dragon for her to study. A live one this time.

  Despite herself, she started to get excited.

  “But how do we get the potion in him?” she asked.

  “Okay,” said Will. “Bear with me on this one. So, Dathrax, like Mattrax—”

  “Wait,” Balur interrupted. “Mattrax and Dathrax? That is honestly being their names?”

  Will shrugged. “I fantasized about robbing dragons. I couldn’t tell you a thing about their naming conventions.”

  Which was, Quirk thought, rather a shame.

  “Right.” Will was anxious to get back to his main point. “So what I was going to say is that Dathrax likes to fly around, survey all that he rules over.”

  “So,” said Balur, “we are going to the island while he is flying around and we are stealing the gold then?”

  “No.” Will didn’t even bat an eyelash as he shot the Analesian down. “The time frame doesn’t work. Because now we know how long it takes to load a cart with a dragon’s gold.”

  Six hours, Quirk knew. She’d had six glorious hours to examine Mattrax. Could she have longer here? If Dathrax lived alone, how many days would he have to miss his daily flight before his guards came to check on him? If he ruled by fear, as Mattrax had done, it could be a long time. She could brew up enough potions for days…

  “Still,” Will went on, interrupting her imaginings, “we can use that flight. When Dathrax goes out, he’s looking for cows to eat. People to terrorize.”

  Lette smiled. “He eats cows. So we drug a cow. That makes sense.”

  “No.” Will was authoritative even with Lette. He was starting to enjoy the position of power, Quirk thought. She should be more troubled by that. But the thought of that island, of that uninterrupted time…

  “We can’t know which cow Dathrax might choose,” said Will. “And we can’t drug every cow around the lake. It’s just not possible. So what is the one thing dragons love more than cows, and power-mongering?”

  He reminded Quirk of a professor, one who was really into the swing of a lecture, barreling along on a favorite research topic.

  Balur opened his mouth.

  “Gold.” Will cut Balur off before he could speak, just as Quirk had expected him to do. “They want gol
d. If he sees gold, he’ll go after it like a shot.”

  Silence met that. And to her surprise, Quirk found herself smiling into that silence, because there was actually some brilliance there. She could see it in Balur’s look of horror, in Lette’s moment of realization that she had let the reins out a little too loose, in Will’s slowly spreading grin. It had cost him to get this far, but it would cost them too, and he knew it. He’d known this would be their reaction.

  “We are giving him our gold?” Balur’s voice actually sounded timid. Because they were all in on this. They had bet everything on Will.

  “We are using our gold as bait.” Will was merciless in his calm.

  “When a fish is eating the bait,” Balur pointed out, “you are not getting it back.”

  Will was still grinning. “Where will he take the gold? Back to his island. And where are we going?”

  Balur perked up. “I am knowing this one,” he said.

  “But how are we getting there?” Quirk felt this point was still lacking clarity.

  “Ah.” There was a glint in Will’s eye as he looked at her. Then his gaze moved to Lette. “Well, guess who’s hidden among all that treasure, armed with Snag Weed poison?”

  Balur opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  Even Quirk felt her eyebrows rising. “You plan to hide among the gold?” she asked. It wasn’t a hard concept to grasp. Just the thought of actually doing it… It was like tying your tooth to a door handle and then slamming the door. Everyone had heard of the concept, but who had actually tried it themselves? “You plan to have Dathrax carry you to his island himself?”

  Will had the decency to look a little sheepish at that point. “Well…” he hedged. “Lette and I, actually.”

  Quirk managed to suppress the eye roll.

  “What?” There was a growl in Balur’s voice. The seeds of rage. “You are looking to steal another kill from me? You are looking to take my rightful glory?”

  “No, no, no.” For the first time in a while Will looked wrong-footed. “The reason it’s only Lette and I that go… well it’s two reasons. First off, she and I are small enough to fit in a treasure chest together. You aren’t. And the second is that getting onto the island isn’t the hard part.”