by Jordan Reece
Deldave looked to the coins, which were organized in neat rows. “A great deal of money for a farmer, spice-gatherer, and herbal knacker from south of the Hopcross. You’ve stolen this. From where?”
“I have never stolen so much as a copper. As I was unaware of the price of an aerial voyage when I left home, I took all of my family’s savings.”
“This much gold would buy you an aerial!” Deldave spat. It wouldn’t, but he was again trying to rattle Elario into blurting truth.
“If you say so, sir. I am a man of Alming, born and raised. We don’t know about these things where I hail from. I have never known anyone to ride an aerial. Most people have never even seen one.”
“But surely you are aware that this much gold can buy you a fine home in Ballevue or Penborough,” Deldave pressed. “Why eke out a living on a farm in Alming when you have the coin for comforts?”
“This money is held in trust for a poor future. Taxes often increase; the house could fall to ashes in a fire; or the fields fail as they did in Piper Hollow this year. The Repses are taught to save so that poor future is weathered as painlessly as possible.”
The explanation was foolish in the face of so much money. Neither he nor Deldave believed it.
They circled again. “Who else was in on this plot with you?”
“I told you, sir: there is no plot.”
“Then why are you headed to Ruzan? To the palace?”
“I dare not go home to Alming, so I have wandered around the cities of the golden ring to find some new place to settle down. Ruzan was not my destination for ill purposes. I have no destination.”
“Oh, you do have a destination in Ruzan.” Deldave smiled chillingly. “It is called the Shivves. Have you heard of it, boy?”
“I know a little of it.” Elario blinked to near blackness, seeing a ragged form huddled against an icy stone wall, hearing screams echoing through the crudely dug out cells.
Deldave had been to the Shivves. He liked the Shivves. “It is where we put that which is dangerous to the Crown, dangerous but useful for what can be tortured out from an unwilling throat. Better to have no use, yes? Better to be put into the Red Guard and marched into the mouths of dervesh. How unfortunate for you, Master Elario Repse, that you have use. Maybe it is true that you know nothing, but that is not my concern. One does not wave a foot before a snake in the hope it has no venom.”
“Should you think to extract venom from me in the Shivves, you will be disappointed,” Elario said staunchly. “I am loyal to the Crown.”
“Your eye tells a different tale.” High Commander Deldave snapped at an ensigno. “Pack all of this back into the satchel, save the pistol. Has the prison carriage arrived?”
“Yes, sir. It did just now.”
Deldave tucked his chair back under the table. He was a fastidious man. Then he examined the dragon’s eye one last time. “They’ll get this out of you, boy, by hook or crook, nail or pincher. They will enjoy the challenge. What you have there concerns the Crown itself. The Marchos has already informed the Shivves to spare no mercy in extracting information. They’ll pull it from you even if it kills you, and you’ll pray to Elequa that it does.” A daily report from the new captain commander of the Shivves and they would see just how fast this Elario Repse’s story changed . . .
A hood was dropped over his head. Rough hands pulled him up and guided him through the room. Sun warmed his shoulders as he was taken out to the sidewalk and to the road, where he was lifted into shadow. A soldier clambered in and placed him upon a bench. Footsteps went away. The thud of feet landing upon the road was succeeded by the slamming of doors. A slide-bolt rattled shut.
He shook his head until the hood fell off. The inside of the prison carriage was all made of metal. His satchel was slumped in the corner. The ammunition was in there, but not the pistol, so the bullets would do him no good even if his hands were free.
A small window in one wall was barred on both sides around the thick glass. Elario got up to peer out. A brace of ensigno were below, nodding crisply to Deldave’s muffled orders. Plenty of lower-ranking soldiers were holding curious onlookers back from the carriage.
The sight of ensigno and regimenta were nothing remarkable to the people of the golden ring. Nor were they in awe of a woman out there with the three pips of a Captain Commander. But Deldave’s presence was stirring up as much excitement as the prison carriage. It was decidedly not as common then to see a man of his rank, a heartbeat away from Marchos, and beyond Marchos was the king himself.
A horse was brought around and Deldave mounted it, refusing assistance. The carriage rocked as the two ensigno climbed to the driver’s seat. The captain commander approached Deldave, appearing to insist that he take a larger contingent of soldiers with him. Deldave shook his head, castigated her in muffled words, and she went away quelled. He kicked his horse and rode ahead of the carriage.
This has always been about power, Elario. Power and control. It was Westen’s voice. Elario looked for him in reflex, but of course he was not there. Yet Westen had never said these words to him. The Crown does all it can to retain its power and control. The Corpse King is long dead, but his game continues. Can you imagine the fear of these men, of Denelan and his most loyal councilors, when they realized how close they were to losing their hold over the country? The queen ran for her life, true, but she ran to gather her power as well, and power rallied to her with all the pent-up wrath to build through Denelan’s reign.
Denelan was without the military might to quell the whole of the Great Cities. He knew this, so he destroyed them instead. He broke the back of his own country and shattered his own people. Even when he was gone, their descendants remain shattered. This is by design. This is your enduring punishment as the children of traitors. They will never seek to rectify the imbalance between the north and south, because again, it is about power and control. As long as dervesh run rampant through the middle of this country, as long as it is possible for this act of war to be done again, Phaleros will not and cannot mend.
“To the Shivves!” The carriage lurched into motion.
This was the last time that Elario would see the world. He stared out to it, drinking in every detail. There was the temple in the background, beggars swarming the steps below the columns; there was a family ambling down the street, father and mother and a pack of children like goslings following after them. A student played a violin upon a corner, nodding in gratitude to an old man who dropped a copper into the upended hat; scarlet leaves tumbled upon the breeze and dropped to the ground.
Several blocks beyond the temple, the city of Betala turned into pasture where horses and cattle grazed. The serenity abandoned Elario, who pressed a trembling hand to his mouth to stop his cry of despair. A hole in the earth, a torturer’s tools . . . Better that Elario killed himself now than be taken to this fate, but how did he do it? If the blade from his herbal case was still in the satchel, a slash to his wrist would end it, yet his bound hands prevented him from accessing the blade! He thrashed in his cuffs and accomplished nothing for his efforts but pain.
Though the promenade continued through the fields, they quit it for another road that delivered them to woods. The Shivves were north of Ruzan, out of the way and in a location that only military knew. Well, those like Elario to ride there knew as well, but as none of them ever left alive, the knowledge died with them.
BOOM.
A horse screamed at the blast of a pistol. The ensigno soldiers in the driver’s seat shouted and the carriage rocked to a halt. Elario staggered at the sudden stop.
BOOM.
He jumped back to the barred window, but all he saw were trees. “Hello?” he shouted. “What is going on?”
BOOM.
A body hit the ground with an audible thump. Footsteps paced along the carriage, and the slide-bolt was undone. Afraid, Elario backed away from the doors as they opened.
Westen looked in with affront and held up a key upon a chain. “How dare t
hey arrest my stock-boy! Who will shelve my sexual stimulants? Am I to do it myself? How fare you, Senert?”
“Westen!” Elario cried, hurrying across the carriage. Clumsily, he got down onto the floor and clambered out to have his cuffs undone. Then he threw his arms around Westen.
“Is it so good to see my loathsome face?” Westen asked, pausing before he embraced Elario in return.
“There is nothing loathsome about you.” Elario let go before the embrace grew overlong; Westen looked touched by both emotion and puzzlement at emotion.
Hobbe came around the carriage with an unconscious Deldave over his shoulder. “Well met, sir.”
“Well met, Hobbe,” Elario said, rubbing at his aching arms. The mechanical man dumped Deldave into the prison carriage and doubled back for a driver, who was sprawled upon the pavement.
“You’re as white as snow,” Westen said after Hobbe tossed the driver in after Deldave. “Did they beat you in custody, Elario?”
“I am unhurt.”
“Then why are you shaking so?”
“I was going to the Shivves. Were you a normal man, it would be reason enough for you to shake.”
Westen smiled fondly and retrieved the satchel. “You remind me over and over of what it is to be human, and I think that I have missed it a little. But you should not have feared: had you been put in the Shivves I would have hauled you out, for you cannot so easily rid yourself of me, despite how much you wish it.”
His irreverence did not agitate Elario as it once had. Indeed, he felt affection for it now. As Hobbe flailed about to understand humor, so was Westen flailing in the face of feelings he left behind long ago to spare his sanity.
Hobbe chucked the third soldier into the prison carriage and closed the doors. Sliding the bolt, he said, “Where should I drive the carriage, Master Westen?”
“Just off the road where it can’t be seen through the trees, and quickly,” Westen said. “We’ll give a nod to the mechanical security guard and harbor for a few days in the Thranan estate while I try to think of some new way to get where we need to go.”
“To a dragon,” Elario blurted as Hobbe hastened to obey. “It takes a dragon to find a dragon. I know that’s where you’re taking me. We’re going to the Great Cities, aren’t we?”
Westen looked at him. It was not with the gaze of a dragon, looking through Elario, but with the weight of centuries upon his shoulders. Gravely, he said, “If you wish to run, I will not stop you.”
“Would you have stopped me before?”
“I would have prevailed upon you in any way I could, including tying you up and having Hobbe carry you, but . . .” Westen ran a hand through his long hair and shook his head. “No. I chose this; Hydon chose this. You never did. If you wish to go, then go. This ugly affair was never supposed to involve you. I am not blind to the unfairness of it. You should have lived out the days of your life in Alming untroubled.”
Curiously, Elario felt no regret for the twists of fate to bring him here. “One of the dragons to die in Alming had the ability to heal, which is why a few of its daughters, and one of its sons, have the herbal knack. There must be a dragon whose gift was to bring a peaceful death, as we have that knack, too. So, somewhere in the twelve Great Cities, lie the bones of a dragon who caused the dervesh knack to be born in its human children. Have I sewn this together?”
“You have. But not somewhere in the twelve Great Cities. The dervesh knack never appeared in the children of Vallere, or the Crescent Islands or Kingsprow or many others, so we know the dragon bones are not resting in those places.”
“You told me this. Those born with the dervesh knack were in Nevenin and Olehalem. The southern side of Nevenin and the northern side of Olehalem. How do you know so specifically that it is there?”
“Lifetimes of study,” Westen said with a weariness that ran more deeply than Elario could comprehend. “Lifetimes as a bodyguard for various noble families, listening to their private conversations and picking through their old ledgers, visiting libraries and sneaking into their restricted materials. I narrowed the search area, and narrowed it further, working with historical scraps and verses from songs, tracing each dervesh knacker’s life back to the precise place it began. I reduced the search area to a region of several square miles, but without a dragon’s eye to guide me further, I have little hope of finding the bones. I cannot dig up everything.”
“So I will find them.”
“All I need from you, Elario, is the location where they lie. For you to stand above the bones in the earth. Then I will rush you away from the Wickewoods to somewhere safe to live for the rest of your days. I have more gold in banks; you will live in comfort.”
“And you?”
“I will spend as many lifetimes as it takes to dig up those bones. I can only work as long as I remain undiscovered by dervesh on each attempt, so it may truly be lifetimes to excavate. The bones could be fifteen paces down, or seventy. That is not your concern but mine. Your part in this is just to tell me where to plant my shovel.”
Westen extended the satchel to him.
Elario accepted it. “They took the pistol.”
“We recovered it from the driver’s seat. Am I to understand then that you are coming of your own free will?”
“Yes. What will you do with the dragon bones after you’ve dug them up?”
They set off into the trees after the carriage, which was trundling through foliage ahead. “Do you know there is a law that should one dig up large bones, work is to cease immediately and the bones be left alone?” Westen asked. “No, of course you don’t know; no one in Alming has ever dug so deeply as to strike dragon bones. Before there was a Red Guard, the price of disobedience was execution. Common people and even most nobility did not grasp the reason for the edict, the connection between dragon bones and knacks, but they respected it. Wherever bones were reported, the throne issued a cap to be placed over them, as a warning to those in the future who might think to dig there, and stone plinths to rest atop the soil. There is one such plinth in the Grand Market, which you may have encountered in the temple at the totem of Elequa.”
“I thought it was a decoration!”
“No. It is a warning to the owner of the land that dragon bones rest below, and the soil must never be disturbed. To build a temple atop it is acceptable; to root about in the earth is not. Because, Elario, if you destroy the bones of a dragon, you likewise destroy the knack that it produces. You destroy the knack in every carrier of it. If someone were to dig up that dragon of healing in Alming, hack it to bits or set fire to it, you would suddenly have no knack at all.”
“But there are none who wield the dervesh knack now, so you have another aim.”
“I carry this with me everywhere, in trust that I will have a chance to use it.” Westen held up an ampoule of yellowish oil. Wax sealed it shut. “To destroy the bones, as I will do one day with this elvrash oil, also destroys what bears that skill. Should you have charged some herbs with your power, those herbs would lose it-”
Racing ahead to the conclusion, Elario said, “It will eliminate the dervesh energy in the dragonwood staffs!”
“When those bones turn to ash, there will be no more dervesh in the Wickewoods. There will be no dragonwood staffs keeping them alive in perpetuity; there will be no spelled jewelry or other objects in this country; anything and everything and anyone imbued with dervesh energy will fall silent. Hard times still await beyond that end; the Crown will have no love of relinquishing its power. This has always been about power, Elario-”
“All of what you are about to say, you said to me through the dragon’s eye not an hour ago,” Elario said.
“Then shut up and listen to it a second time, for it is wise.” That made Elario laugh, and Westen took his hand before saying all the words again with their fingers entwined.
Chapter Seventeen
The noble family of Thranan had maintained the same yearly schedule for the last three centuries, which W
esten knew from working for them in the past. Winter was spent in their riverside apartments in Alencia, near the royal home where the ruling family weathered the season. To their estate in outermost Reves they went in the spring, where nobles presented their young adult daughters and sons at a series of lavish balls and galas. Summer found them with the royals, wherever it was in the country that they traveled, and in autumn they stayed in Ruzan to be in proximity to the palace.
Close kin to the royal line, there was always a Thranan holding a seat upon the Council; many more of them fleshed out the Malave family’s retinue as secretaries, court lords and ladies, royal stewards and estate managers. They occupied the highest levels of the military as well. The Thranan family was one of the greatest powers behind the throne, nobles currying their favor even more than they did the favor of the royals. To be shut out of court by the Thranans was a death knell to one’s social standing. Westen found it fitting to stay in their Ruzan home upon this mission when it was the late High Commander August Thranan responsible for acquiring dervesh knackers for the throne in the Troubled Times.
Elario asked how Westen could be so sure that they had already quit their Ruzan home for Alencia, and received a snort in reply. “It’s almost Hallowmas, farm boy! Trust me: they left for the river weeks ago to prepare for the festivities. There will be no one home.”
Elario trusted, and Westen was proved right upon their arrival. A mechanical security guard was the sole inhabitant upon the expansive property. There was no need to quell him, as it turned out; though Westen had never met this guard with a sun emblazoned upon his cheek, he seeded a program of his own design into the guard he knew generations ago. With every change-over, it was downloaded into successive guards along with the blueprints of the home.