The Dragon's Banker

by Scott Warren

“I do disapprove,” I said. “No person should have the power to wave his hands about and make his will manifest without a notary authorizing it and two men to witness. Alchemy is the domain of educated men. Not mystics. More critically, it’s not limited by the luck of one’s birth. It’s a mastery, not a gift. And most important of all, it contains many moving parts. And when many parts move in concert…”

  “Money is made,” said Dahli in a reasonable facsimile of my own tenor. She yawned, brushing her hair back from two small gold hoops in her ear. “Only you would describe over-land transport as attractive. I think you’d marry a caravan if they’d let you,” she teased.

  I broke eye contact before more than simple summer heat could start to burn my cheeks at the suggestion. Instead, I glanced through the high windows. The moon had climbed near to its zenith while I was in my throes of monetary acquisitions, and I had in fact kept Dahli far later than was safe for a lone woman in the streets of Borreos.

  “Come,” I said. “I shall walk you home.”

  Now it was Dahli’s turn to shy away. Her cheeks were just light enough that some color might show there at the thought of the escort. She did, after all, work for me with the express purpose of eliminating such mundane inconveniences that might occupy my admittedly valuable time. But as it happened, she did work for me and so indulged my unnecessary heroics of making sure she was safely back to her boarding house. In truth, I am not a violent man and if confronted by footpads would have had little choice but to buy our freedom with the very fruits of my labors. Most footpads were after coin, after all, not blood. Of the two, I could afford to lose one much more than the other.

  I dropped Dahli at the house where she maintained a suite with the modest salary I was able to offer her. We said goodnight, and then I turned east toward my own home.

  Trudging up the path to my estate was a much lonelier affair, full of long shadows and the strangled mists that rolled in on the evening tide, dampening the twilight mutter of Borreos’ streets. The lanterns had been snuffed in the windows of my estate, no surprise with the exotic hour that heralded my return. The staff would be long in their beds, my maid snoring away and my cook dreaming of whatever it is cooks dream about. Probably making more dough, just like us bankers.

  So absorbed was I in my wit—or lack thereof—that I failed to recognize two shadows just a bit longer than the rest. They detached from a nearby awning to the south and drew up close on either side of me.

  Chapter 6 – Gold and Silver

  I am not a fearful man, it should be said. Terror holds no grip on my heart in times of danger, nor does its touch set my hands to shake and quiver like a palsy as it does in some men. But fear and surprise are two close cousins, and when the owners of those two shadows spoke, I jumped as if branded by the living lightning of a grenndrake.

  “Hold ye a moment, Master Kelstern,” came a voice from my left.

  “Aye, fine night for a chat,” followed another from my right.

  Recall I mentioned that most footpads were after simple coin and would depart once it was acquired. The simple financial calculations of a thief weighed the strength of a score against the likelihood of apprehension—the latter of which increased dramatically should the rogue linger or cause true harm to the mark. I would have preferred this type. The men standing between me and the safety of my estate walls were not after coin. Not for themselves, at any rate.

  Both men had made my acquaintance on the occasion of Lord Brackwaldt’s latest visit to the banking house. I recognized the two gold teeth on the left, glinting in the sparse light of the oil lamp posts. The other I recognized by a particular thread-of-silver embroidery on the corners of his lapels, like waves lapping against a merchant caravel. It matched the plain, unadorned silver rings on each index finger. Beyond these differences, the bald pates and billhook noses of the men were identical, as they were twins. The thick, stubby cudgels clenched in their thick, stubby fingers could have also been twins. I had no desire to be introduced to those. But a dark part of me suggested that it was not my decision.

  “We just wants a word,” said Gold Tooth as he advanced.

  “No need fer a shout, aye, Master Kelstern?” said Silver Thread.

  It came to mind that this was perhaps the only sight of gold and silver together that did not immediately give me joy. Sure enough, my heart began to quicken, and my head grew lighter, especially as Gold Tooth tapped his cudgel into the meat of his palm. You may also recall I mentioned terror having no grip on me in times of danger? At that precise moment, I was quickly reconsidering that stance.

  “It’s late,” I said, trying to keep all tremor from my voice. “Hardly the hour for this. Perhaps if you—”

  “Oh aye, late. On that we can agree,” said Gold.

  “Late for you to be making good on your word. My Lord Brackwaldt thinks you need a bit of a reminder,” said Silver.

  “Reminder what happens to blokes who skimp on Lord Brackwaldt,” said Gold. His grin revealed his valuable dental work.

  I took a step back, hands raised and with half a mind to turn and run. But one does not offer chase to a mountain cat—so I’m told—unless one admits that he is prey. “Gentlemen,” I said. This time there was no keeping the tremor from my voice. It cracked, and as it did the grins of Brackwaldt’s thugs grew wider. I wondered if running was not such an ill-conceived idea. “Perhaps we can come to some arrangement?” I asked. It had not been intended as a question, but I found that over the length of the remark, I somehow lost the fine control of my vocal inflection.

  “Oh, we’ll arrange a few things, aye,” said Gold.

  “Like where yer knees meet yer legs,” said Silver.

  I backed up once more, or tried to at least, before my head thumped against the mist-moist façade of the baker’s wherein I typically enjoyed taking in the morning’s news with my tea. Now it trapped me, and the question of running had been decided.

  “Beating me won’t bring back his money,” I protested.

  “No, it won’t,” said Gold.

  “But it will make the next bloke more careful afore he misplaces it,” said Silver. “Hold still, this don’t need to be drawn out.”

  “Places to be,” said Gold.

  The twins advanced, but as they drew close enough for me to smell their rancid, unwashed bodies, the night breeze shifted. And instead of rancor, it carried an exotic spice, one that until today had been foreign to my palate.

  Gold Tooth and Silver Thread noticed it too, nostrils flaring in concerted confusion. Their watery eyes met each other’s, and then followed my own gaze to behind them where the dark, slender silhouette of a woman cut through the column of mist in the street. Both stared as Lady Arkelai approached, hands on her high hips and each step cracking like a slaver’s whip against the deserted cobblestones. As I had only witnessed her sitting form, Lady Arkelai’s towering height struck me then as something remarkable, even considering the heeled boots that so sharply punctuated each languid step. As she drew close, I noticed that she was taller than either of the twins by a full hand and a half.

  Brackwaldt’s bruisers lowered their cudgels, less concerned about witnesses than struck dumb by the very presence of Lady Arkelai. Her array of platinum stood stark white on her chest, and at that moment I could swear those amethyst eyes glowed in the night with a snake’s slit pupils.

  “I shall have to inform you,” she said, her voice high and clear as a church bell, “that Master Kelstern is under my employ and therefore my personal protection.”

  Gold and Silver recovered quickly. I must say that the two agents dispatched to inflict Lord Brackwaldt’s wrath caught on rather more quickly than I did when it came to recognizing the intrinsic danger of Lady Arkelai. Perhaps it was the complete lack of trepidation or fear in her voice. Perhaps in comparing them to mountain cats I should have also attributed a beast’s keen sense of identifying a superior predator. In any case, both were quick to turn their backs to me to address this new and unkn
own threat seeking to usurp their quarry.

  “Mind yer own, Lady,” said Gold.

  “We’re just having a chat, none to do with you,” said Silver.

  Arkelai sneered, lips drawing back over sharp canines. “Hardly. I’ve my own business with the banker. For your safety, it had best not involve you. Remove yourselves from this street and my sight immediately.”

  Whatever animalistic warning Gold and Silver may have felt warred with their rational minds and the feminine figure before them. Oftentimes irrationality and outright stupidity are attributed to such thugs, but one did not survive on the streets of Borreos without the triad of wits, strength, and a healthy sense of self-preservation. Some scholars argue that, when threatened, some base level of our mind seeks either to flee or to fight like a simpler creature. In the case of Gold Tooth and Silver Thread, their minds chose poorly. Perhaps fooled by their eyes, their brains elected to tell them it was wiser to fight than simply flee into the night like a fox driven before a hound.

  Almost before my eyes registered the motion, the cudgels raised high like the tails of two scorpions. Both twins had covered most of the distance to Lady Arkelai while she had yet to move. One of my greatest regrets in all of this is that I closed my eyes against the impending violence of that moment. I could tell you that it was out of desire to spare myself the brutality about to befall the woman in the heeled boots, and that would be partially true. I am not a violent man by nature or circumstance. As the cudgels fell, my eyes met the Lady Arkelai’s, and in that moment the twins’ mistake was laid bare. I clamped my eyelids shut to spare myself what would follow.

  Short snarls and yelps like those of beaten fighting dogs filled the streets for perhaps two or three heartbeats, followed by the snap of (I hoped) wood furniture on my left and the tearing of cheap cloth.

  When I dared to open one eye, Lady Arkelai stood in much the same position as before. The twins did not. One of them, in fact, had been thrown halfway through the shattered window of the bakery. Silver embroidered coat tails snagged on broken bits of the wooden frame. Of the other twin, the only sign he had ever been there at all was the glint of two small gold lumps, gleaming from the cobblestones near Lady Arkelai’s slowly tapping boot toe.

  The look she wore was one of self-satisfaction. Perhaps contentment. Where before she’d displayed a sneer, the corner of her mouth had curled up into a small smile that seemed, if anything, more dangerous. Her harsh, spicy musk was stronger than ever, and her breath steamed in the humid night.

  “Now, Master Kelstern, you’ve had ample time to consider my father’s offer, and it’s time for you to meet him.”

  In the wake of extreme stress, adrenaline leaving the body takes with it a debit. A wave of fatigue passed over me as I slumped back against the wall and slid down to the cobbles.

  “Lady,” I began, running a hand through my damp hair and examining the tooled stonework between my knees. “I’m grateful for… whatever that was. Truly, I am. I am in your debt, as it were. But my position has not changed.”

  “Indeed, it has not.”

  When I looked up, Arkelai had moved forward, and she knelt before me now, platinum discs swinging in the gentle breeze. Her eyes stared into mine, and I saw that it was fine smoke, not steam, that drifted from between her lips. It occurred to me that even had she time to light one of her exotic home rolls, her hands were conspicuously empty.

  She looked down at me, face shrouded in the shadows of the early hour. Her mouth opened, and from it issued forth a thick cloud that stunk of cinder and harsh spice, stronger even than it had been in the carriage. In my shock, I inhaled a lungful and coughed, as though breathing deep of a monk’s burning censer. The edges of the buildings, the cobbles, and Lady Arkelai herself began to blur along with my senses.

  And I wondered if I would not have been better off with the twins.

  Chapter 7 – The Jaws of the Mountain

  I awoke to the dichotomy of cold on my back and heat on my face. My short ribs tightened and shivered even as a hot breeze blew grit and dust against my lips. I unclenched my fists and forced open my gummy eyelids, spitting out bits of rough gravel from the stony bed of rocks upon which I had lain for seemingly some time.

  The cold suggested one fact: I was far from the coast, and so my light jacket of brocaded elven silk was ill-suited for my new locale. Familiar stars still hung above: the Shepherd and the Four Kings hovered low in the sky. It seemed several hours had passed, and the first hints of sunrise were creeping up on the eastern horizon.

  I climbed onto unsteady feet, head still swimming from whatever Lady Arkelai had done to me. The woman stood on a slate precipice. Her back was to me as she surveyed the foothills and smaller peaks below her. Her short red curls seemed to dance in the starlight as I staggered over. I could just make out the glow of Borreos in the distance, a blotch of light where the land met the sea. With the shoreline and the stars to orient me, I concluded that Arkelai had conspired to transport us the length of many days’ journey west by caravan, and she had lifted us higher in the mountains than all but the most dedicated trackers would climb. Even in the early summer, stubborn bits of snow clung here and there, in recesses the sun would struggle to find. Glancing to either side told me that no other peak was this one’s equal in altitude.

  The heat pressed into me from my right flank as I walked. It came from the jaws of an open cave splitting the rock face wide enough for ten or twelve men to link arms and stroll into. It was a volcanic edifice, as sulfurous fumes seemed to ride the currents from its depths. I had occasion to recognize sulfur from my dealings with chemists and alchemists. Its purest forms were particularly valued in Grenn and the Gaeldoc Peninsula to the northeast where grenndrakes plied their secret formulas for black powder.

  Lady Arkelai had resumed smoking. Whether the act was a charade, an illusion, or she held a genuine vellum wrap, I couldn’t say. She once again appeared to have a thin cigarette held idly between the ringed fingers of her right hand as she looked down across the slopes. Those long, slender fingers with the filed black nails hardly looked capable of violence, but there was certainly a strength to them, a surety of confidence in every subtle flick of ash.

  She made no sign that she had noticed my awakening, except to exhale a long trail of silky smoke that hung in the still air like a pale serpent. Her eyes were flat, staring at nothing in particular so far as I could tell. From our pinnacle, you could see all the way from Borreos to the northern territories where farmers tilled arid soil for wheat, rye, and squash. Beyond that loomed the southern dunes of the Borrean Wastes where the sand elves dwelt. The entire country was visible, save for the eastern coast hidden behind the dense hills and jungle. Following that coast north would eventually take you past the Wastes and onto stony plains unclaimed by any ruler except bandits and raiders, and further on to the territory of the grenndrakes.

  Behind me lay the thicket of cinder cone peaks separating Borreos from Whadael and Lethorn. In the South, they were known as the Redfangs, though in truth they were a continuation of the Kaharan Mountains. Some low passes would have opened up with the coming of spring, but even now they were treacherous for caravan traffic.

  It was much more practical to sail south of the cliffs, circumnavigating the hellish straits of the Kraken’s Teeth. The teeth were said to be an underwater extension of the Redfangs that continued almost four hundred miles beyond the shore and claimed the lives of captains foolhardy enough to brave their churning white-waters. Navigating around them made for the safest path to the wizard’s college or Aedekki. The college and the surrounding free city of Whadael was blocked entirely from view by the mountains.

  I had never considered how very wide the Redfangs were; it seemed like looking at the hide of a spiny lizard that stretched as far as human eyes could bear witness. It’s funny the way altitude can make things seem small and also put into perspective just how large the world is. I had sent men and women scurrying here and there across the land
s and seas of Varshon, which seemed so vast. Now, I could blot entire cities with my thumb if I so chose or trace the route of the Northern Waste Road with my finger in a few heartbeats. If it were really that simple, I would be a much, much richer man.

  A banker develops a keen sense of geography and distance if he hopes to make money. I knew, to the mile, the distances between any of these points. And while my rambling might have seemed random, it served to triangulate my precise location. I stood atop Bastayne, the King’s Sword. It was the tallest mountain south of the Wastes. I could see it from my estate on clear nights, just as I could see Borreos now.

  Eventually—after what felt like hours but must have, in truth, been mere minutes—I broke the night’s silence by addressing Lady Arkelai.

  “Are you… a sorcerer?” seemed to be the most I could muster. Once it hung in the air among the drifts of her spicy smoke, it seemed a silly thing to ask. I wished I could pluck the question from between us and smother it in my jacket pocket.

  The tall woman smiled at my query as her eyes drifted down. While before she stared at nothing, now she looked at something only she could see: a memory inside her mind’s eye. A bittersweet one if the angle of her brows did not mislead.

  “Nothing quite so simple, I’m afraid, Master Kelstern.”

  “Sailor,” I said. Those gemstone eyes turned to regard me, and the glow had not been my imagination after all. To this day, I’m unsure how I retained my composure under their scrutiny. “In our first meeting you endeavored to call me Sailor. There’s no need for you to stand on ceremony now.”

  Another breeze brought that sulfurous waft to sting my nostrils, and I indicated the cave with a nod. “What is that?”

  Lady Arkelai finished her cigarette and faced the cave. “The Jaws of the Mountain. My father waits within,” she said. She began to take long strides toward the opening. I was compelled to follow, if ungainly, as I attempted to keep pace. Lady Arkelai continued speaking as she walked. “Long ago this mountain spewed forth fire and brimstone and clastic flows of searing rock.”