by Jordan Reece
Hobbe was on the far side of the street, his head turning in bewilderment to the commotion. A dragon puppet swooped down to the road and blocked his view. Far in the distance was Westen, who never looked back at the noise. Still striding for the temple, he assumed it was just from the parade.
Elario was propelled back into his body. A soldier had clamped a hand over his shoulder. Reeling back, Elario threw up his arm to break the hold. Then he turned and ran.
The soldier called to his compatriots. They knew. Elario felt it with conviction. They knew who he was, these one-pipped soldiers from the bank, and they ran after him.
The parade was still marching down the promenade. Horns and drums and flutes resounded as the puppeteers fought to control their mighty, airborne beasts against the wind. Elario bolted between drummers to the opposite side of the road, searching for a gap in the crowds to slip through.
A dragon with shimmering, multi-colored scales dipped down to the road, scraping it with its belly as beads flew from the woman upon its back. Elario jerked to the side and almost too late; the dragon puppet had nearly landed on him.
Four soldiers were pursuing him, three with their hands upon sword hilts and one reaching for a pistol in its holster. Perhaps it was the dragon’s eye, perhaps it was animal instinct, but Elario snapped out his pistol, swung around, and fired in one liquid movement.
His aim was true. The soldier with the pistol staggered and fell, the audience screaming and the music faltering. Elario took aim and fired again. A second soldier dropped and trembled with the energetic blast, his cap falling off. The last two soldiers were waylaid by fleeing musicians.
Elario ran with the weight of the satchel dragging him down. He thought briefly of shucking it, but the ammunition, all the ammunition that he would need for . . . something . . .
You know where he is taking you.
No. No, Elario didn’t know. The dragon’s eye might know, but it did not reveal the answer to him.
Another soldier in tan-and-greens pushed his way out of the crowds ahead. Prying his pistol from the holster at his hip, the regimenta took aim at Elario just as Elario took aim at him.
A shadow swiftly lengthened over them, blackening the road under their feet. Then another scaled, coiling dragon was scraping its belly upon the pavement, blinding them from one another at its tremendous height. This one was not mounted by a rider, but protruding from its scales were bars for handholds.
Elario shoved his pistol away and grabbed on.
The dragon ripped him off the ground, nearly taking his arms out of their sockets. In sheer seconds, he was high in the air. The breeze swept the dragon over the audience, who were running away from the promenade to side-streets and fighting to get into the shops and taverns to take cover. The dragon rolled and turned onto its side, Elario clinging on for dear life as it swung past the buildings.
The soldiers were now shoving into the crowds, convinced that this was the way Elario had gone. He drew up his legs as the dragon righted, heading down at a furious pace. A scream went up; someone had spotted him.
The dragon swooped downwards and hit the road, its long stomach coiling back and forth with the puppeteers running along behind. A furious gust of wind blew it up and Elario was aloft again. A voice cried to the puppeteers to stop, but they couldn’t. The wind was too strong. Flying to the other side of the street, Elario ran along the brick wall of an inn’s uppermost story so he would not be crushed. Then the inn disappeared beneath his feet, which flew out into space. The roof of a shop was below.
He let go of the handholds and dropped to it, landing with a painful crash that sent jolts up his legs. It would become clear very quickly that he had not remained upon the dragon, nor had anyone seen him drop to the sidewalk, so he could only be within or upon one of these buildings. Hissing at the pain in his ankles, he jogged over the roof.
The temple was much closer now. Though this section of the parade was in pandemonium, the head of it continued around the temple and down another block. Leaping onto the next roof, which belonged to the last building in the row, Elario skirted the chimneys and stopped at the edge.
He was two stories up. How was he to get down? He was not so slim that a chimney presented an avenue of escape, nor were there doors to the roof. But there was a balcony, if he was willing to slip down to it.
There was no choice. Getting down on his stomach, he tipped his satchel over the side and dropped it. It fell to the balcony. Elario swung his legs over, then his torso, until his hands were gripping the roof. He released it and collapsed atop his satchel.
Through a glass door was a bedroom. This was another dormitory for students of the university; two narrow beds were separated by study areas containing desks and music stands. The door was unlocked, and he let himself in.
His reflection in the mirror over a bed almost made him scream. Fumbling with the patch, he drew it up over his dragon’s eye.
They were looking for a man in a cloak. He sloughed it, turned it inside out, and tied it around his satchel. This would not fool anyone for long when the patch over his eye gave him away, but a stall of seconds was still a stall. Straightening his clothes, he went out to a hallway.
The sounds of a harp being tuned came through a closed door. He sneaked along the carpet to a stairwell, where he descended to a foyer. Two young women in white robes pushed in through the door and gave him a startled look; he nodded briskly as if he belonged there, ignored their giggles, and exited to a busy street just off the promenade. The giggles made him suspect that this was a dormitory reserved for women.
The temple was just a short walk, but the foot traffic was thick. In one minute, he heard several versions of what had happened: a drunken brawl and the ringleader escaped, a man sick with plague collapsing to the sidewalk and causing a panic, an armed pickpocket or bank robber running away from soldiers with his loot. Some said two soldiers were shot, others three or four; a man claimed that the perpetrator was still being sought and a vociferous argument was borne when two other men shouted he was caught. They had seen for themselves the soldiers taking a man in a dark cloak away.
Elario slipped through the streams of people, glancing back to where the brawl began. The parade halted, musicians and puppeteers were standing around grounded dragons. Their tongues, legs, and tails rippled with the breeze; the puppeteers were tossing sandbags atop the appendages to pin them.
Soldiers were canvassing the crowds and shouting for everyone to stay where they were. Elario looked away fast to hide his patch and used a group of students for cover. He broke away from them at the curb, listening in vain for a cry of Senert.
The temple was ringed by a staircase. Sitting upon the flight were many dozens of beggars, rattling cups at the patrons going up to worship or leaving. One bit, just one bit, for the love of Elequa, the littlest silver. Eyes counted the flounces upon Elario’s trousers as he climbed the steps and quit him for men with more. A few asked him for coppers, just one copper, please, Elequa praise him for a copper.
When Elario was halfway up the flight, a vesper stepped between two columns and shouted for the beggars to move along. Like a flock of pigeons, they rose and soared to another place upon the steps, where they settled down and continued to beseech. The vesper threw up his hands in irritation and withdrew.
Climbing to the top, Elario passed beneath the roof. Sunlight traded for candlelight, and a temple acolyte no older than seven stopped before him with a wooden bowl carved in vines along the rim. A scattering of silver bits and coppers was at the bottom.
“All roads lead to Elequa,” the boy said, bowing his head in supplication and lifting up the bowl.
Elario dropped in a copper and the acolyte went away to approach a woman. Between the columns were red mosaic paths inlaid within the gray stone of the floor. He set foot to a path and followed it in.
Dark curtains hung about each of the golden, life-sized totems of the gods and goddesses. Their pedestals were garnished in flowers a
nd fruit and coins, and below them were racks of candles. Some of the divine had every candle flickering, and others only a few. Inoch was in the latter category, his totem glinting weakly from the mere four candles lit in the rack. The totem of Anazeta was ablaze, having not one but three racks around the pedestal. Nearly all candles were aflame, since expectant parents put hands to her feet in prayer for an easy birth and a healthy child.
After Anazeta, the mosaic path took him by Tezina, where an acolyte girl was stationed to keep men away. Scant paces from her, an acolyte boy did the same to keep women away from Ocadre. Beyond that god was Palesta, Elario’s feet pivoting to her of their own accord. He needed to locate Westen and Hobbe, he needed to get out of Betala, but it was wrong to ignore the goddess who gave Elario his humble gift of herbal healing. She would be insulted. Doubly wrong when there were many paths into this enormous temple holding hundreds of gods, and he had chanced upon the one that led straight to her. The dervesh were not gods, he believed that now, but Palesta was, and she deserved her due. It would take but a minute.
He looked up to her kindly face and the carved bunch of herbs in her outstretched palm. No, he was not capable of great acts, but sometimes what was needed were his small acts. Those small acts had saved sick infants, and gave relief to those in terrible pain. It healed the lacerations of that terrified palomino horse to run with them out of Sable. Palesta chose to bless Elario with a small gift, and it was not his place to question why it was small, but express gratitude. She could have given him nothing since she owed him nothing, yet he owed her everything.
He took out a copper, and then exchanged it for a gold. Placing it between her feet among the flowers, he helped himself to a strike-stick and lit a candle in the rack. Many others were alight for her, the flames reflecting in her dress and the underside of her arm.
-he was weak because she was she, a she-dragon sleeping deep beneath the earth of Alming, and the aithra from her bones rose and rose through the layers of dirt to the surface, seeking purchase, seeking to live through a new life-
The dragon’s eye was awake. He saw his mother gravid with him among the graves behind their home. She was young, so young, scarcely twenty, and beautiful. Barefoot in the summer heat, she was ringing the gravestones with flower wreaths. And below, with Kosta Repse unknowing, the dragon bones sensed her presence. Elario was no she in the womb but a little of the aithra found its way to him, as his mother was standing directly above the skeletal remains of far more than her husband’s kin.
He is taking you to the dragon he is taking you to the dragon of-
“That’s him.”
The satchel was stripped from Elario. His hands were tied behind his back with metal bracelets linked by a chain. From a great distance, he saw Westen slipping down the paths through the temple, hunting for him. Then, through Westen’s horrified eyes, he saw himself being escorted away from the totem of Palesta by Dragons of the Blood.
Chapter Sixteen
“You are Master Elario Repse.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sitting upon a hard chair, Elario shifted to relieve the discomfort of having his arms held behind him for a prolonged period of time. The common room of this inn in Betala had been cleared of its patrons and servers so hastily that half-eaten meals and full glasses of wine still sat upon the tables. Stationed at each door and window was an ensigno with an impassive face, all eyes trained upon Elario. More soldiers were outside.
His satchel was disemboweled upon the table to his side. Every item had undergone close scrutiny: his clothing, shaving kit, and herbal case searched, his personal coin purse and the one from Westen dumped out and parsed, the boxes of ammunition opened and emptied. Even the chambers of his pistol were inspected, and the bullets removed.
Four pips shined on the collar of the white-haired Dragon of the Blood. High Commander Petro Deldave was his name. Seated upon another chair, he surveyed Elario’s belongings with thin lips. This was a man who cared little for mystery or uncontrollable happenings; he preferred order, and Elario was disrupting that order. Though the thin lips were the only indication of expression, a malicious aura clung to him as his dark eyes resettled upon Elario.
Elario was strangely serene. This was a place beyond fear or panic. In his absolute inability to do anything to help himself, he was unexpectedly finding peace. What would come . . . well, it would come, and he would have no choice but to accept it. Perhaps his peace was due to an influence from the dragon’s eye, which was bared to the room.
Deldave did not flinch before it. He was not the sort of man to flinch before anything. Even dervesh. It was his cold hand that signed papers sending certain companies of Red Guard to the Wickewoods; in his younger years, it was his cold stare that fell upon families torn apart in investigations. That was the dragon’s eye, letting Elario peep into his heart. It beat only for himself, and the position he served with honor.
Looking at his scarlet iris, the High Commander said, “Where are you from?”
The man knew the answer, and Elario knew that he knew. He gave the correct reply, seeing no reason to obfuscate. This eye betrayed all. “Alming.”
“When did you begin to plot against the Crown?”
“I have never plotted against the Crown, sir. I am a farmer, a spice-gatherer, and an herbal knacker.”
“One can be all of those things and still harbor a plot.” His tone was dismissive. “Who are your traveling companions?”
“Traveling companions?” Elario said quizzically. “I left Alming alone, and I am still alone.”
“How long have you been under the traitorous tutelage of Master Hydon Repse?”
The vast leaps in the questions were disconcerting, but Elario remained in this strangely calm emptiness. Worry nibbled at the edges of his mind, unable to intrude further. “I grew up believing my uncle to be dead. I have never met him in person, or communicated with him in any fashion. He left Alming before I was born-”
The old soldier slammed his hand upon the table, causing the coins to jump and clatter back down. “Do not lie to me, boy!”
“Does not your own intelligence bear me out, sir?” Elario asked, growing calmer still in the face of Deldave’s sudden flare of rage. The slamming of the hand was an act to frighten and intimidate; every movement the high commander made was by careful design. “Ask anyone in Alming. They will confirm that Hydon Repse died as a madcap in the Wickewoods, as all madcaps are fated to die for their lunatic dreams.”
“There was never any proof that he died.”
“If a man jumps off a cliff, does anyone need to search the rocks below to know he is dead?” That was a Westen-like reply, logical yet insouciant. Had they been contemporaries, Elario and Westen, would Elario have liked him? Elario liked him now, for all his queerness.
His wandering thoughts ended with another question spoken like a statement. “Then you received a package from Master Hydon Repse just weeks ago.”
“No,” Elario corrected. “A package came from my uncle addressed to my late father. I opened it in his stead.”
“Was there a letter inside?”
“Yes.”
A show of ill temper puffed the commander’s cheeks. “What did it say?”
“It told me not to open the small box inside the package but hasten it to Drouthe. I did not want to do this on the advice of a man I thought dead. Still, I went. My father would have honored his brother’s wish, and I desired to honor my father.”
“What were you to do with the box in Drouthe?”
“I was to leave it upon the counter at the haberdashery, and return home.”
“Did you question these directions?”
“No. I was curious, but the business wasn’t mine.”
“But then you attacked an ensigno in the aerial.”
“That is a lie,” Elario said. His voice was flat. “The ensigno attacked me, opened the box, and spilled its contents upon my chest.”
The dragon’s eye pushed him for the
span of a second into Deldave’s mind. The matter of who attacked who in the aerial was an irrelevant and inconsequential aside. Elario could have killed that ensigno and tossed his body out the window for all that Deldave cared.
That dark gaze stayed on him without blinking. “What does it do within you? The eye?”
“It looks.”
“Nothing else?”
“No. Is it supposed to do something else?”
“What happened to you in Drouthe?”
“I arrived only to find out that the owner of the haberdashery was put to death as a master thief. When I went to the shop, it was trashed. I thought members of his family might be able to assist me, but the owner had none. Since there was nothing to be done, I left Drouthe.”
“And the men you traveled with?” The High Commander circled back to this question from another angle. “You were seen in the company of two men.”
Elario pretended to be confused. “The only time I had company was when two mechanical men approached me. They were very old, and abandoned in the woods south of Drouthe. They trailed after me for some time, begging to be taken to a tinkerer for updates, but I refused them. Once in Cathul, they trailed after someone else upon the Arkway.”
A lie? A truth? The information was so damnably scant. The ensigno posted to the aerial reported that Elario was traveling alone; the ticket seller remembered Elario as buying passage for one; the mechanical man Nollo had given an account of Elario speaking companionably, not secretively, to Brother Shanus. The scholar’s interview contained Elario’s fake name and that he had asked questions about the Hethai and the Corpse King. However, these topics generated from the scholar, and the Corpse King was a common subject for conversation on tours of the Great Cities. Out-of-date mechanical men were often dumped in the woods . . . The three horses, the still-missing Red Guard horses from Drouthe, had Elario been involved in that? He had had a horse at one point. But he was not found with a horse, or near others with horses, or near anyone . . . Irrelevant.