King's Exile: Chronicles of the Dragon-Bound: Book 1

by William Culbertson

  Kolla busied herself getting things around for supper. When she got back to the kitchen, the plate was gone from the window. Good, she thought. The poor little beggar looked as if he needed something good to eat. She made a mental note to go check for the plate in Gerege’s shed tomorrow.

  #

  Later that evening, Kolla stopped in the kitchen for a moment on her way to bed. Glancing at the window, she noticed the empty plate sitting back on the ledge. She smiled. Well, wasn’t he a good boy!

  She opened the window to retrieve the plate. When she picked it up, she noticed something shiny on the ledge where the plate had been. Curious, she picked it up. It was a round coin. She was touched. The poor dear looked as if he had not eaten a good meal in a week, and he had tried to pay her for the pie. Not many like that around these days.

  Kolla clutched the coin in her palm and put the plate in the basin with the rest of the supper dishes before she went back to the fire to pick up her shawl on her way to bed. Curious, she glanced at the coin in the firelight before she put it in the small crock they kept on the mantle for spare coins that came their way.

  She blinked and looked twice at the gleam of gold in her hand. The coin was heavy. It looked like gold, but that was impossible. She closed her hand and opened it again. The coin was still there. The mark of Stone Harbor Castle was on it . . . and it was still golden.

  Trembling now, she went to their bedroom. Mit was still awake, and he reached out to snuggle her close. She batted his hand away. “Wait,” she whispered. “Come here and tell me what you see.”

  Mit joined her by the fireplace and stared with open-eyed astonishment at the coin and the sketchy story Kolla told. If this was truly a gold coin, their lives were about to change for the better. Much better.

  Chapter 5

  Dax awoke early feeling refreshed. On too many nights his empty belly woke him before dawn, but last night, satiated from that wonderful pie, he had slept soundly. Although he did not want to, he had to move on today. Surely the good woman who had given him the pie would come looking for him this morning. Even if she did not, she might tell someone, the guard might hear, and Dax needed to be somewhere else.

  The covered nook beside the little-used shed had been a decent shelter for the last few nights. It had kept the rain off night before last, and not too many vermin lurked in the cracks and crevices. Dax scratched at a bite on his lower belly. At least not too many vermin besides those he had brought with him, he thought ruefully. For the last few weeks, he had taken cover wherever he could find it.

  His first night back in Tazzelton had been a revelation. Before, when he had traveled with his father, they had stopped at village inns along the road. That night, thinking he would sleep in a bed and have a chance to clean up, Dax had found a likely-looking inn outside the outer wall. One street over from the river road itself, a broken wagon wheel hung above the door. The wheel’s colors had faded in most places, and its shabby look matched the inn itself. Although it was past the normal supper hour, Dax hoped there would be something left from the evening meal. He also hoped fewer customers would be in the common room, and that those who were there would be more interested in their ale than in a stranger.

  He pushed through the door. Inside, rough, worn benches and tables matched the dilapidated exterior. Three burly fellows, each with his own mug, sat at a corner table away from the fireplace. They had their heads close together, talking about their own business, and ignored him. Dax approached the counter and waited. Eventually a large, round man appeared from the back. He wore an apron, but it was so soiled it was hard to tell what the original color might have been. He was fleshy, and his jowls shook when he thumped his elbows down on the counter to look down at Dax.

  “Yeah?” he grunted.

  Dax tried to look pleasant and ignored the strong smell of drink on man’s breath. “Sir, I would like something to eat if you have it. That and a room for the night?”

  “Now don’t you talk pretty, but this ain’t the castle, lad.” He pulled up the edge of his apron and wiped his nose. He looked back at Dax and said, “Talkin’ like a noble’s cheap. You got money?”

  Reaching into the pouch at his belt, Dax put a silver on the counter and smiled. “Will that do?”

  The man looked at the coin then at Dax. “So where’d you steal that, you little thief?” Before Dax could react, the man reached across the counter and seized him by his collar. “Some fine gentleman’s out there right now talking to the guard about the street brat that lifted his purse,” he hissed. “Next thing I know, they’re in here talking to old Arnaldo. All my regular customers leave ’cause they don’t like the guard. And then the futzin’ guard will take that fine little silver back to the gentleman, and I ain’t got nothin’.”

  As he spoke, he pulled Dax closer and closer across the counter until the man’s drink-laden bad breath was almost unbearable. With a flip of his fleshy arm, the innkeeper sent Dax sprawling on the floor. Dax started to get to his feet, thinking desperately how to mollify the innkeeper, but the man came around counter with speed that belied his bulk and delivered a kick to his chest that carried Dax several feel closer to the door.

  Dax’s anger surged down deep inside of him. Rage-fueled energy flooded into his body, but before he could move, the innkeeper seized him by the collar and the seat of his pants and lifted him from the floor. “Now get your smelly little thieving hands out of my inn.” His throw carried Dax through the door into the street. The door to the inn slammed shut. Dax rolled to his feet just as the door burst open again. The innkeeper threw something that hit him the chest. “And take your ill-gotten money with you, you little villain!” As the innkeeper turned to go back inside, he muttered, “A silver for the night. What kind of lord does he think he is?”

  Dax was stunned. Whenever he had traveled before, innkeepers had fallen all over themselves to offer service for a silver. But then again, this time he was not traveling with the monarch. Although he was rightful king of this realm, this evening he hardly looked the part. He bent down and picked the silver piece out of the dirt of the street.

  Smelly? Well, the coat had stunk of fish when he had gotten it, but after a couple of days, that odor went away. Dax had not noticed any smell since then, but he remembered once when he and his father had returned from a hunting trip. Mathilde had scolded them both for the way they reeked of smoke, man, and the outdoors in general. He had smelled nothing then, either. He looked at his hands. They were dirty, and his fingernails were black. Although he could not see his face, it must be dirty too. Well, he had not had a bath since before he left. He looked at the inn’s closed door and sighed. It did not look as if he would have one tonight, either.

  #

  In the weeks that followed, Dax still did not get a bath, but he managed to clean himself up from time to time with water from public wells. Once, early in the morning when no one was around, he used the cold water in the pool beneath the Fountain of the Rock. He had been all over the city, both old and new, searching for shelter and handouts wherever he could find them. He watched the beggars work a street corner and tried to emulate some of their ploys. Although he had learned how to strike up a conversation with a likely person, the fact that he had all his limbs and eyes limited his success. He had even thought about trying to copy the mannerisms of a deranged person, but decided that gambit might risk an interview with a guardsman.

  He definitely did not want to attract the attention of the guard. They seemed to be everywhere these days, and they all had the sunburst insignia on their shoulders. Dax asked a few people, but no one seemed to know for sure what, if anything, it meant. One had heard it was some elite new group of guardsmen tasked to protect the castle. Another had heard that there had been trouble, and that the boy king had ordered it as a badge of loyalty. Dax was grimly certain the boy king had done no such thing. No, it had to be a badge designed to show loyalty to Castellan Keir—and behind him, Mathilde.

  They were searching
for him. Dax had seen them pull aside young boys to question. One day he struck up a conversation with a worker rebuilding a gate outside a manor house that Dax thought he might have visited once with his father. This day, however, Dax looked like a scruffy street urchin, and he would never be admitted inside. The worker, though, was happy to talk as he shaped a crosspiece with a small block plane. He told Dax that one of his apprentices had been taken and held for two days before being released just the day before. The guard had questioned and beaten the boy before they let him go. Rather than return to this job, the craftsman had told his apprentice to stay at his shop and work for now.

  Dax moved warily on the streets during the day. He avoided any part of the city where there were more guardsmen than usual. Patrols were smaller these days, but from the way the workman’s apprentice was treated, the guard had not forgotten they were looking for a young boy.

  #

  Dax had stored his pack and now lived on what he could find on the streets. It was little enough to carry in his pockets. The day after he had returned to the city, he saw that his pack made him stand out. With it, he looked like a traveler, but he was too young to be traveling alone—unless he was a royal refugee from an assassination plot. The pack was also attractive to other street people. Dax saw a number of idlers watching him, and he was sure they were wondering what was inside his pack. If any one of them had known of the valuables the pack actually contained, Dax would have lost his entire kit quickly. He had to hide it.

  He had poked around in back alleys, looking for places where he could safely stow the pack without worrying it would be found. Although the city was full of narrow walks and lanes to the point of being labyrinthine, Dax could find no place whose safety he trusted. At one point he had even investigated the sewers. He had a theoretical knowledge of those places, but the reality showed him how meager his imagination had been. Although the sewers were safe enough from visitors, only the most desperate of the desperate would have considered them a hiding place. He knew the sewers could flood in a heavy rain, and the pack might wash away. Even if it did not wash away, it would be soaked with offal. While sewage could hardly hurt the gold, he feared everything else in the pack, including his egg, would be ruined.

  After several days of searching, he remembered a hunting trip where his father had shown him the Kotkel boneyard—at least that was what he had called it. There was not much to see, only a half-dozen or so tumbled stones lying piled against each other. Supposedly it was a haunted place, an old burial site, but his father said that he and Herne had explored it when they were young and saw no spirits.

  His father had shown him an opening where one block lay supported by another. Hidden underneath, a narrow crawlway opened into a small chamber scarcely big enough for two people. It was dark, but once his eyes had adjusted, the chamber’s ceiling had glowed faintly with an eerie greenish light. Dax thought the place was spooky, but neither his father nor Herne seemed worried by it. Herne had found the place when he was a boy and had shown it to Dax’s father.

  The boneyard was just up the North Road and off in the wilds toward the coast, but it had taken Dax two days to find it again. The tangle of brush that surrounded the fallen stones had shown it was still unfrequented. He had left his pack in an upper corner of the hidden chamber back out of sight where he was satisfied it would be safe and dry. Best of all, he could reach the hiding spot and return to the city in less than a day. That was important because whenever Dax felt particularly lost and hopeless, holding the dragon’s egg gave him solace, and his dark thoughts retreated.

  #

  One day he sat in the shadows in a narrow alley, watching the back door of an inn, waiting for someone to put out the trash. While he waited, Dax’s thoughts turned to Evnissyen and what the man had taught him in their daily lessons. On the streets Dax saw no evidence of the treaties, trade agreements, and political alliances he had studied so diligently.

  However, his time in the city had taught him a great deal about the lives of the people he ruled. Would have ruled, he corrected himself. People in the streets saw a different world than people who lived in castles and manor houses. They were concerned with their own lives—worries like what kind of person their new neighbor was, where they could find fresh vegetables for the evening meal, who had served as supplicant at last week’s temple service . . . Their list of daily concerns was long and important to their lives. Common people lived day to day. They did not think much about politics and kings. He nodded to himself. Maybe that was a good thing. If people thought mainly about their own lives rather than the way the realm was ruled, it meant they were happy . . . or at least not unhappy. He would have to take that up with Evnissyen the next time, if ever, he saw him.

  Dax never spent much time in any one area. He was tempted when he found an easy source of food, like a regular pile of scraps put out after an inn closed for the evening, to settle in and take advantage. Although it would have been easy to linger, others on the street quickly noticed easy food or shelter. A day or so after any discovery, he usually had competition. Dax feared meeting and interacting with people on a regular basis. If a guardsman asked a question, it was dangerous to have people remember him.

  He also paid attention to the way others spoke on the city streets. His encounter with the innkeeper made him listen to the way people actually spoke to each other. If he wanted to blend in, he had to sound like they did. Greeting a delegation of visiting nobles required formal and proper speech, but chiding someone in the street for stepping on your toe required a different style and vocabulary.

  Days and nights had passed without count since he had fled the castle. Dax knew it was well into summer. The days were hot, and nights were warm. He had cached his coat along with his pack in his hiding spot outside Tazzelton. Although it rained occasionally, shelter was easy enough to find in the city.

  Taking silver and gold coins with him had been folly. People in the city did their business in coppers. A silver was serious money. A gold was almost unimaginable. Therefore, Dax kept most of his money stashed in his hidden pack. He smiled in amused satisfaction at how he had used some of his coins. Since no legitimate businessperson seemed to want to take his money, and Dax certainly did not want any of the shadier sort to realize he had money, Dax had rewarded several citizens of “his” realm for their aid and comfort to a poor, wandering boy. He remembered the pie woman who had been the first. He hoped the coin he had left would be useful.

  Once he had been able to change a silver piece into coppers after he had gotten to know Stannis the silversmith by running several small errands for him. Stannis had asked him his name of course, but Dax had been prepared. He told the man his name was Leith. It was the truth because Leith was one of his names, but it was a middle name and one that few in the castle, let alone Tazzelton, had ever heard. He had even practiced saying, “Call me Leith,” a few times just to be sure he could say it aloud.

  Stannis was a good man, and he paid Dax a half copper for an afternoon’s work. Dax finally had the courage to ask the man to change a silver into coppers. Stannis was suspicious and gave Dax only half the number of coppers the silver coin was worth. Although Dax went back to the man’s booth several times after that, the usually garrulous Stannis had little to say to him. And he never asked Dax to run any more errands. Dax quietly took the hint and did not return.

  Fortunately, Stannis was not the only merchant willing to pay for a little help or an errand run, and Dax picked up an odd piece of copper here and there. Those coppers, along with diligent scouting for fresh scraps of food from behind the city’s inns and wealthier homes, were enough for him to get by. Getting by, however, left Dax frustrated. He did not want to just get by. He was not living much better than he would have if he had stayed in the countryside, and he certainly was not doing anything to regain his throne.

  #

  The Temple of the Goddess was another place to get food and shelter. Not the temple itself, of course, but the Brot
hers of Benevolence operated their Mercy Mission from an adjoining building. It was a dangerous place for Dax because the guard patrolled this area of Old Town. Nonetheless, he had eaten several good meals there on evenings when the guard’s attention was elsewhere. While the roomful of street people ate, one of the brothers would speak about the Goddess and the Great Plan. The philosophy was familiar to Dax. It gave him a measure of comfort to be reminded that the Goddess had a plan for all, because his own day-to-day life was anything but planned.

  This night the brothers had served up a hearty stew that had some meat in it. Dax ate two bowls, and for the first time in a week, he had a comfortably full belly. He would have loved to have accepted their offer of a warm bed for the night, but he had seen the guard watching the doors of Mercy Mission in the morning too many times to feel safe. He sighed at the thought of passing up a warm bed and got into the queue to receive the blessing at the door to the street.

  Usually one of the brothers gave the blessing, but tonight a priestess from the temple was there. She laid her hand on Dax’s head and started to mutter the ritual words when her fingers twitched. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed quietly.

  Dax’s first instinct was to run past her to the safety of the streets, but she laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be afraid. There is no danger here.” Her tones were soft, not accusing like a guardsman’s. “My name is Sister Hennet.” Dax looked up at her, and her eyes were calm. Her hand lay upon his shoulder, but she did not grip him. “Please,” she urged, “the Great Mother wants to talk to you.”

  Dax knew the Great Mother was the head of the temple, a figure renowned for loving compassion. However, he had been recognized. Recognition was dangerous. His heart beat faster, but he wavered.