by Matt Forbeck
I’d let Belle steer me away from her parents forever. It was common knowledge that they didn’t care for my kind — by which I meant non-elf — and I’d respected her wishes. I’d had a hard enough time staying together with Belle without getting her parents involved, and when it ended between us, the point was rendered moot.
Now, though, I needed to speak with them, and I wasn’t going to let her stop me. Before I’d been afraid she’d side with them and break my heart. Now she couldn’t shatter it into any more pieces than she already had.
“I suppose we’ll just have to sit here and enjoy the sunwine until they become available then,” I said.
Belle’s perfect jaw took on a determined set. “You’ll run out.”
“I’ll bet they have a whole cellar full of this stuff,” Schaef said. “We could be here for, well, hours at least, depending on how we pace ourselves.”
“They keep the sunwine in an atrium, actually,” I said, pointing farther up the mountain into the Sanguigno estate. “We could send the dragonet up to fetch us a few bottles. I bet he wouldn’t mind.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Belle’s nostrils flared at me.
A bit of my heart fused back together every time she looked at me, and I wondered if she might not be able to hurt me again after all. I knew, though, that not being able to keep her from being executed would grind those last bits of my heart into dust. I couldn’t let her throw me off.
“Hey, the little guy’s got to earn his keep, right?”
Belle steamed at me for a moment, working her jaw as if she couldn’t decide whether to kick me out or go straight to killing me. She wound up doing neither.
“All right,” she said. “Come with me, but you need to leave the dragonet here.”
I shrugged. “I can try, but he’s got a mind of his own.” I looked over at Schaef.
He put out an arm. “I’ll do my best to keep an eye on our little friend here.”
I shrugged the dragonet onto the halfling’s arm like I was handing over a hooded hawk to him. I just hoped the creature would stay put. I didn’t really have any control over him.
“Hang out with Schaef,” I said to him. “I’ll be right back.”
With that, Belle turned on her heel and strode back into the estate proper. She didn’t wait for me, and I had to scramble to catch up. She led me through her elegant family home, into parts of it I hadn’t ever seen before, and then up a staircase formed from flattened branches that stabbed out from the side of a tree like spokes from a wheel. At the top, we worked our way down a hallway created by the canopies of trees until we reached a wide and open space shaded from the southerly sun but with a spectacular view of the Dragon’s Spire above us.
A pair of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen in any part of the city rested on a low hill made of soft moss in the center of the room, facing in the direction of the Imperial Dragon’s home. The man had Belle’s dark hair, while the woman shared her delicate features, right down to the pouty bow shape of her pink lips. They were each dressed in flowing robes that could have been their version of pajamas but were still made of finer cloth than anything I’d ever owned.
The two of them lay there with their eyes closed, and if they were breathing, I couldn’t see it. If not for the hints of color that pinked their pale cheeks, I might have thought they were dead. A dragon essence pipe made from the finest crystal and wrapped around with gold wire sat between them. It looked well used, and thin wisps of smoke still curled from it.
“Father. Mother,” Belle said as we emerged into the open air. “We have a visitor.”
Their eyes fluttered open as if they were drawing themselves back to consciousness from a dreamworld far more engaging than the reality in which I lived. They pushed themselves up from their mossy bed with reluctance, as if their bones worked against their efforts. They did not turn to look at me the entire time until they were on their feet and had stood up to stare at the Dragon’s Spire and bow deep in its direction.
When they finally turned to see me on their wobbly legs, the woman gasped in unconcealed horror, and the man’s eyes burned at me with unrestrained fury. Belle shot me a hard glance of her own, then stepped between us before anyone could speak.
“Mother and father? Allow me to present to you my friend Max Gibson. Max? Please meet Nicoló and Chiara Sanguigno, my parents.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said to them with a nod. “I just wish it was under better circumstances.”
“I wish that I could say the same,” Nicoló said. He wrinkled his nose at me as if I’d stepped in something horrible and dragged it into his home. Then I realized that it was Belle who’d dragged me into his home instead, and I was what she had stepped in.
“Mr. Gibson,” Chiara said, a tremor in her voice. “How can we help you?”
“I’d like to ask you about Fiera.”
“I think you know enough about our daughter. She’s dead, and you killed her.” Nicoló spoke with such venom that I felt compelled to look for a weapon in his hand. If he’d had a pistol within reach, I’m sure he would have made good use of it.
“Nicoló!” Chiara scolded her husband with a pained expression, then turned to me. “I apologize for my husband,” she said. “As you can imagine, these are emotional times for us, and despite our years, we have little experience with the loss of someone so close to us.”
“I’m trying to keep you from losing Bellezza as well,” I said.
That seemed to put Nicoló back on his heels, at least for the moment. Chiara reached out to take his hand, and the two of them steeled themselves to deal with me. I don’t know what bothered them more — the fact that I was asking them questions or that they were coming from a human — and I didn’t much care.
“Were you here the night that Fiera died?”
Chiara glanced at Nicoló and waited for him to nod to her before she responded. “Yes. We were much as you’ve found us right now.”
“Is this how you spend most of your time?”
“I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.” Nicoló stepped toward me, but Chiara grabbed his arm and pulled him back to her side. She answered me with a blush of shame and a nod.
“We didn’t know what had happened to Fiera until the Guard arrived.” Chiara pushed back the tears welling in her eyes. “I believe you were gone by the time we made it to the balcony to have Bellezza explain what went wrong.”
I nodded in agreement. “Why didn’t you let the Guard take the body with them right away?”
I heard Belle’s breath catch in her chest. Her father’s mouth curled into a snarl, but Chiara spoke up before he could lay into me.
“I suspect you’re not aware of the reverence with which our culture cares for the dead,” she said as evenly as she could manage. “It’s traditional to have the body on display in its home for three days so that friends and relatives can pay their respects before it’s taken off to be cremated.”
“Even a body in a state like that?” I realized I was treading on thin ice here, but I had to understand this.
Chiara winced. “It’s an unusual enough situation that we don’t really have rules for it, and in any case, the tree was still burning at the time. We thought it wise to let it cool before we sent Ford down to retrieve the body.”
“And she wouldn’t have been in that state if not for you and that blasted spawn you stole from the Emperor!” Nicoló couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.
“If she hadn’t been trying to kill me, it wouldn’t have been necessary.” I wasn’t about to give this clown any ground, elf or no. Drugged up as he was, I might be able to draw my gun if he attacked me. I wouldn’t give myself any sort of odds of managing that against a sober elf, but he looked like he hadn’t had a clear head since before I’d been born.
“You scummy little short-timer. To think that the whole of your life would be worth a single day of hers.” He spat at my feet and started toward me. “It’s appalling!”
“Father!” Belle stepped between us before I could even reach for my gun.
He shoved her aside and dove for me. I repaid his efforts with a solid right to his perfect nose. I felt the bones in it give. He sat back flat on his ass, blood streaming from his nostrils.
Chiara fell to her knees and held her husband upright, staunching the flow of blood from his face with the sleeve of her robe. He stared at her with glassy eyes, unsure about what had just happened.
Belle gaped at me as I shook the pain from the punch out of my hand. “It’s all right,” I said to her. “I can show myself out.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was getting dark, but I just couldn’t stomach going back to Danto’s quite yet. I had Schaef drop me off at the Quill instead. I rationalized it by telling myself that I needed to grab some clothes and things — what little I’d picked up since my place had been destroyed — for my stay in the wizard’s tower.
But while I was there, I didn’t see the harm in grabbing a drink or three.
The bar was packed when I got there, but Thumper had kept my table clear for me. In all the years I’d been coming to the Quill, I hadn’t ever had a single table I’d called my own, but now that I was living upstairs from it, I found that I’d gotten a bit more particular about where I sat. Maybe I was getting old, or maybe just paranoid, but I liked having my back to the wall and a clear view of the door.
When I walked into the room, the roar of conversation and clinking glasses ground to a halt. In the silence, everyone turned to stare at me. The dragonet, who’d been dozing on my shoulders for the entire flight down from the Elven Reaches, picked up his head to look around at all the people goggling at him.
“Hey!” Thumper, my favorite bartender in the world said as he waved me in. “It’s Max!”
As if that answered every question everyone in the room might have, they turned back to whatever they’d been doing, and the dull roar in the room started up again, just a bit more muted this time. For the most part, the patrons there ignored me. A few gave me uneasy, sidelong glances, but if they had anything to say about me and the dragonet, they kept it to themselves.
Wise folks. I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of trouble. More to the point, I was in the mood for a fight, and if anyone got in my face, I was likely to give it to them.
By the time I reached the bar, Thumper had a beer waiting for me in a magically chilled mug. I tipped my hat at him in thanks, then made my way to my table, only to find Moira sitting there with Kells, Cindra, and Kai.
“Oh, hey,” Kells said. He stood up to apologize. “We didn’t think you’d be in tonight, so Thumper gave us your table. If you want some privacy —“
“Then you’re out of luck,” his wife Cindra said. She stood up next to him and wrapped me in a heartfelt hug, taking care not to squeeze the dragonet in her embrace.
I actually tensed up for an instant, unsure of how the dragonet would take someone being that familiar with me. He had good instincts about friends and foes, I had to admit, and they held true. Instead of bristling at Cindra’s approach, he brought back his head and licked her ear with his tongue instead.
She pulled back with a giggle, a girlish sound I don’t know if I’d ever heard from her before. “That tickles.” She wiped her face clean, smiling, then reached up to pet the dragonet, who leaned into her touch and purred in appreciation.
Kai stayed seated and snapped a salute at me, and Moira raised her glass toward me in her one good hand. “The way you took off during dinner, I figured you’d be out all night — or at least head straight back to Danto’s. You learn anything?”
“A little,” I said. “Maybe. I found out that Belle’s parents are repulsive.”
“I could have told you that,” Moira said.
I sat down in an empty chair. “If you know everything about them, then, can you tell me what they did with Fiera’s body?”
“You think they had something to do with it going missing?” Cindra said, concern marring her face.
Kells shook his head. “That doesn’t seem likely. They’ll have to give one of themselves up to the morgue in her place then, won’t they? Makes for an odd motive.”
“They’re odd people,” I said. “Even for elves.”
“They got any enemies?” Kai said. “That’s where I’d start looking.”
“Are we talking now?” I said. “Didn’t you try to sell me to a bunch of thugs working for the Ruler of the Dead.”
He snorted. “All the other shit I’ve done in my life, and you’re going to hold that against me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that. “They’re elves. Of course they have enemies. Probably other elves with obscenely long memories who have been hoping for a chance to take them down since before our grandparents were born. How am I supposed to untie that knot?”
“You been paying attention to your backside while you been roaming around town?” Kai said.
I squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”
“He seems to think you’re being followed,” Kells said. “He won’t shut up about it.”
“I don’t think it,” Kai said. “I’ve seen it. They were outside the place we were at last night, ready to seal the deal if the jokers inside blew it.”
“Which they did,” said Cindra. “So why didn’t they attack Max then?”
“We had a whole gang of guards around us,” Kai said. “And then we flew off in a Guard chariot. You figure it out.”
“Who are we talking about here?” I said. Kai might not be the most trustworthy of my friends, but he knew the streets of Dragon City as well as anyone. If he said I was being followed, I believed him.
He gave me a cold stare, daring me to disbelieve him. “Black Hand. Four of them.”
Moira shuddered so hard at that name she almost dropped her glass. I took a long belt of my beer to help hide my own nerves. She and I had almost been killed defending ourselves from a single Black Hand assassin. The bastard had killed her boyfriend and taken her hand off at the wrist. I’d fed him to the zombies outside the Great Circle for his troubles.
“You have to be kidding,” Kells said. “I thought there was only one.”
Kai held up his own hand, his fingers spread wide. “It’s a hand,” he said. “There are five. Max killed one of them.” He folded in his thumb. “That leaves four.”
“Four of the greatest assassins in the world, working together and pissed that you took out their thumb?” Cindra gave me a pitying shake of her head. “Speaking of people who know how to make enemies, you’re no slouch, Max.”
“And you say they’re after me? Still?”
Kai smirked. “You’re not dead yet, are you?”
“We can’t just sit here and wait for them to attack,” Moira said, her head snapping back and forth as she tried to keep an eye on every window in the place. “We need to get Max out of here.”
“Already on it,” Kai said.
“You?” Moira gawked at him. “You’re just sitting there!”
Kai nodded. “But Danto’s not. He’s in the stairs outside of Max’s room here, casting an illusion to keep the killers busy.”
I put down my beer. “And you don’t think we should be doing something about that?”
He waved off my concerns. “We’re safe for now. They think you’re upstairs, and even if they figure it out, you really think they’re going to come in here and take on a whole bar full of your friends?”
Cindra grunted in agreement. “They might be good, but I’ll bet they got that way by picking their battles better than anyone else. It’s the key to winning any fight: set it up on your own terms, not those of your foe.”
“But what happens when I want to leave?” I wanted to kick myself for not going straight to Danto’s instead of coming here first.
Kai leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “We get you out of here through the secret tunnel behind the bar.”
“If they’re that good,” I said, “what makes you
think one of them’s not already in there?”
As the words left my lips, I heard a crack of thunder in the upstairs part of the bar. I could smell the ozone in the air.
The entire bar went silent again, but for the sound of scores of people reaching for their weapons. I put my gun in my right and my wand in my left.
“I think they might be upstairs,” Kells said in a tone both sarcastic and scared. “But that’s just a guess.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Everyone stay where you are!” I said as I marched toward the stairs, my friends dogging my heels. “We’ll take care of this.”
Cindra grabbed me by the shoulder as I got to the foot of the stairs and pushed me aside. “They’re expecting you,” she said. “I’ll go first.”
I wanted to argue with her, to point out that she and Kells still had to get back to their kids tonight, but the sight of a pair of twinned revolvers in her fists — hand cannons, really — put an end to that urge. In the old days, Cindra had always been first into the fights, and for good reason. I’d never seen anyone as handy with a gun as her.
Despite that, I wasn’t about to let her race up there on her own. As she moved past me, I took the opportunity to slough the dragonet off my shoulders and send him flapping toward Thumper, whom he knew as well as anyone, having spent the last week here. If these killers were after the dragonet, I wasn’t going to offer him up to them on a platter.
I let Cindra get two steps ahead of me, and then I followed right behind her. Kai came up after me, and Kells brought up the rear. Moira had disappeared somewhere, but that was the way she’d always done things. She wasn’t much use in a toe-to-toe fight, but she was fantastic at slipping a knife between an unwary foe’s ribs.
Cindra stepped over something at the top of the stairs, and I looked down to see Danto lying there on the floor. His robes had been scorched black, and what little hair he had left all stood on end. I knelt down to check if he was breathing and stared into his wide-open, unblinking eyes. He’d been stunned, but his chest was still moving.