by Jordan Reece
No, Tolaman wouldn’t do much of the beating. He would make Arden do it. Arden had to find a way to suggest to the first lead that the tracker be withdrawn from the exhibition branches and kept in a cage in a stock room. The kitchen, a back room, anywhere but out in public. But Tolaman would not heed the advice purely due to its source.
This was a mess, a disaster now and a disaster in the making, and to keep the tracker isolated in a stock room was cruel. There had to be a better solution than that. He was of near-human intelligence, likely capable of performing small tasks in animal care, doing some of what Mavic shirked. Yet he couldn’t be monitored every minute to prevent escape attempts, and he was violent.
This wasn’t at all what Arden had envisioned the tracker to be. It had been a most pleasant day, but this was a very unpleasant and overwhelming end. The size of the problems exceeded his abilities to find solutions, so he was going to knock on Master Maraudi’s door in the servants’ quarters until the man let him in and got to work on solving them.
“I’ve seen that look from somewhere,” the tracker mumbled sourly. “Where was it? I remember now. On the village idiot when I was a boy. Scratching his cock and balls and picking gold from his nose in the square, ten words in his hollow of a skull cavity, but even he didn’t stink of shuffle. Zamin usually has standards for his grooms. How did you come about? He must owe you or your family a very large debt.”
Arden was frantic to return to the servants’ quarters. He got to his feet and dropped the ladle back into the bucket. “Good night.”
“No,” the tracker said.
“No what?”
“I can’t bid you good night. Do I look like a prophet? How am I to know what kind of night you are going to have, good or bad? Are you a prophet? I doubt it. You can’t even wipe your arse. I’m not going to have a good night in here, so don’t tell me to try. Stars light you home. That’s what you say in the mountains. But I don’t want them to light you home. I hope you fall off that ladder and break your neck. Now, are you going to stare at me all night? I’d like to not sleep on these bars and filthy hay.”
Sleep, Arden thought into his mind. With a creature this smart, Arden’s penchant wouldn’t be as long-lasting or as effective. Still, the tracker closed his eyes and turned his head away, and Arden hurried out of the barn.
****
In the morning, the tracker was hollering inside the barn as water splashed and guards yelled. The search party had a large, delicious breakfast in the servants’ dining room and then went out to the garden where Lord Zamin had just arrived home.
A fancy carriage was in the driveway, servants again removing packages and rolls of parchment and dashing around to obey the old man’s commands. He beckoned Master Maraudi to come to him. Dieter went to the barn to tack up the horses and reappeared by Keth and Arden only a minute later. “Lord Zamin’s grooms did it for us and put extra supplies in the packs. Cleaned the cobwebs from the cage, too, shined it up fine. Plenty nice, innit?”
“It is never that easy, squire,” Keth said quietly, even though Master Maraudi and Lord Zamin were speaking at a distance. “The king will now owe him a small favor for the use of his tracker, and another for his silence on this affair. The small favors will become much larger ones when the tracker is claimed from him to serve the needs of the Crown. Lord Zamin is the linchpin upon which trade between Odri and Isle Zayre turns, and he should not be antagonized.” Dieter said nothing more about niceness.
Master Maraudi had taken Arden’s news with equanimity. Lord Zamin knew the true purpose of their mission, but there was absolutely no need to inform the tracker about it. They would maintain the fiction that the woman they sought was named Ri Ques, the divorced wife of a banker who had helped herself to his family’s jewels upon the dissolution of their union. The banker wanted to avoid the public scandal of the theft by having her found, and the jewels either returned or paid for handsomely. Let the tracker shout it out if it pleased him. There was no Ri Ques, or Ques family whatsoever.
Grooms led the search party’s horses from the barn. The tracker was inside the cage being drawn behind Keth’s horse, and a wholly different sight from the night before. Bathed, shaven, and his long hair trimmed, he was in a clean, open white shirt and tan trousers. If not for his thin frame and sullen expression, the shackles on his wrists and the others on his ankles, he would have presented a very handsome sight. Someone on Lord Zamin’s staff had a mild healing penchant. All of yesterday’s bruises were well faded, and some were gone. The chain of last night that had connected his ankle cuffs to his wrist cuffs was no longer there either. It occurred to Arden that he had never gotten the tracker’s name.
The tracker blinked in the daylight and yelled at Lord Zamin, “When’s my half-day, old man? Everyone else gets a ruddy half-day off from work each week.” Dieter gaped at the creature for addressing a lord so rudely; a flash of surprise passed over Keth’s face at how human he was.
Jovially, Lord Zamin said, “A beast of burden works from Oneday to Sevenday and never have I heard a complaint.” Master Maraudi gestured to the search party and they went to the horses. Withdrawing a scrap of material from her pocket, Keth tied it to a bar of the cage.
Although she tried to speak to the tracker of its purpose, the beast’s eyes had alighted on Arden. “What, ho! You still can’t wipe out your own arse. This scent is killing me.”
“It’s dragon shuffle,” Dieter said in an attempt to defend Arden.
“Dragon shuffle!” the tracker cried, moving in his cage to get closer to them. “There’s only one reason for a man to smell like dragon shuffle, and that’s a very nasty reason indeed. Like the Lorial sea dragons, eh? Those are popular for that sort of thing, I hear.”
Arden had never imagined a human approaching a dragon for sex until the day before, and now it had come up a second time. The tracker noticed his grimace and crowed in triumph as Master Maraudi bowed respectfully to Lord Zamin and kicked his horse. Dieter and Arden had mounted; Keth tried once more to speak about the fabric and got waved away impatiently. The tracker said, “I know what it is. You’re making me work on my half-day. But I’m not done with this one.” There was an evil glint in his eye as he looked at Arden. Keth mounted and kicked her horse to walk after Master Maraudi. Arden and Dieter pulled in after her, which left them very near the cage.
The tracker swelled up his chest and began to unload further thoughts on Arden and his love of dragons. In umbrage, Dieter said, “He’s no dragon lover, is he? He’s a zookeeper and that’s the reason he’s got a whiff of shuffle scent to him. And he has a penchant for animals so he can make you keep a civil tongue in your mouth.”
“A penchant!” the tracker said. “My-oh-my, a penchant! You don’t say. So he won’t need to hold those dragons down with bars and cuffs when he comes to satisfy his queer lusts. They say it’s an extra slippery ride in a dragon, fire out one end and sea from the other-”
“Are you quite finished? We have a woman to find,” Arden said, strangely reluctant to force his will upon such a smart animal. To think that Arden had found Etto handsome! A month of hearty meals three times a day and the tracker would outshine him. This current thinness did not mute the prettiness of his green eyes, which were startling when paired with a tanned complexion and long black hair. Then Arden chastised himself for thinking of an animal this way. Some of the mermaids were handsome men on the top half, and Arden certainly hadn’t given a second thought to them in that light. Just the idea was revolting.
Tartly, the tracker said, “You’ll have to wait until my half-day is over. What shall I do? Forgive me for not going along with you to the back room of the brothel for a dragon bout; they aren’t to my taste. And you, boy squire? What do you do on your half-days? Oh, don’t tell me. You stuff your face with ale or candy, sit on a wall somewhere with your friends and drool at those amazing twin lumps that women carry about under their shirts. But not this woman, eh?” He motioned up to Keth, who didn’t turn around
to acknowledge his remark. “No, I won’t go to the brothel with Arden, nor to raid a candy shop with the boy, and you can tell from just one look at that graveyard-of-a-face woman that she has no fun at all.”
They had gotten to the end of the driveway. A young guard sneered at the tracker and said, “They’ve got you now. Don’t even need to beat you bloody, the penchant will take care of you handily.”
“Bet you wish someone would take care of you handily,” the tracker retorted. “Even when you flash your silver at the cheapest Straits brothel, they won’t do a bit for you, will they? No, not with that pair of ears you have. Legs snap shut all around and the closest you’ll ever get to a bit of handiness is when you grant it to yourself.” The guard did have unfortunate ears, and they reddened at the insults. He smacked the bars with his club as the cage rolled by, and then the search party was on the road.
“Did they feed you this morning?” Arden asked the tracker.
“No, but why do you ask, Arden? Did you filch a few horse carrots for me? Bring along that filthy bucket with the muck in the water? You didn’t? Ride back and get it, there’s a good lad,” he said to Dieter.
The tracker wanted to rile them up, like the pegasus with Tolaman. Arden addressed him very calmly. “We need help finding the jewel thief who owns that scrap of material on the bar. I figure that you’ll find her faster if you’ve eaten.”
“Of course, you don’t need to eat,” Dieter said antagonistically. “Arden can just make you work on nothing, tell your brain that it’s not hungry.”
“What kinds of things did the Lord’s grooms pack for us, Dieter?” Arden asked.
Dieter leaned back and lifted the flap of a pack. “Meat and cheese, hard biscuits, fruit, these odd little candies that are all sorts of colors.”
“Meat,” the tracker said. “I want meat.”
Arden extended his hand to Dieter, who passed over a strip of beef jerky. He nudged his horse up to the cage and handed it through the bars. The tracker quieted to eat it, his expression blissful as he tore off strips and shoved them into his mouth.
“Waste of good meat on the beast,” Dieter said. “Why are you being so nice, Arden? Show him what you can do.”
“Just like no one likes a sore loser,” Master Maraudi called back, “no one likes a sore winner either. Arden has a penchant, making him the ruler of all animal-kind. Let the beast spit and swear, boy. Arden has the winning hand for what counts.”
“Giving it a bit of rein,” Dieter said in understanding, and his attention was drawn away to an open carriage. Four young women in beautiful gowns were sitting in the back, their voices ringing out over the street about a party that had lasted all night. Each had a covered cup in hand, and the rich smell of Isle Zayre coffee rose from them. The driver of the carriage was also well dressed, and something of his languid posture put Arden in mind yet again of Etto. He kicked himself for indulging the fantasy that one night of heat was going to stretch to the horizon of their lives. He kicked himself a second time for glancing at the tracker and getting caught up in those sea green eyes.
An animal. He was an animal. Arden didn’t have queer lusts. He wanted the companionship of a man, not a beast. If only this creature had horns or a tail, something to make him less reminiscent of a human male! But every feature of him that Arden could see was undeniably human.
Another open carriage was passing up the hill as they passed out of it, three more jewels of femininity sitting in the back with coffee and Dieter trying not to be too obvious in his stares. The morning light was making the silver and gold threads in their gowns and hairpieces glitter. The guards of the road stopped everyone for inspection, instantly waving the carriage on and coming over to Master Maraudi to speak.
Arden drew up to the cage as they waited. “Which way is the scent?”
The tracker breathed deeply. “I’ll tell you after my half-day.”
“We both know that I can force you,” Arden said. The tracker made a face. “Yes, it is repugnant to you that I can simply walk into your mind and make myself at home. There’s no need for me to beat or starve you, nor have I the inclination to do these things just for my own gratification. As you would prefer to keep your mind to yourself, and I don’t wish to threaten or harm you, let’s handle this as civil beings.”
“Civil beings,” the tracker echoed. “You speak of civil beings when I am shackled and in a cage.”
“I will remove the wrist shackles.” Arden motioned to Dieter, who rode ahead to Master Maraudi to retrieve the key. “We can’t humor a half-day. This task of ours is time-sensitive. If the lady sells the jewels before we locate her . . .”
“Your problem, not mine.”
“It has become your problem now.” Arden took the key from Dieter. The tracker put his hands out of the bars to have his cuffs unlocked. Arden brushed against his skin in their removal. Mermaids looked human but were as cold as anything else to swim in the sea. The tracker was as warm as Arden, if not warmer. Arden pulled the cuffs away and the tracker rubbed his wrists.
“Catch more flies with sugar, eh?” the tracker mumbled. Then he straightened and looked at Arden indignantly. “I want a proper meal. Not whatever maggoty, half-rotted scraps were packed for me, but something as good as what you have. There’s an inn farther down the road that serves big plates of flapjacks and eggs and coffee. I’ve been riding past it for months. That’s what I want, enough to fill me up like my mother always filled me up on Sevenday dinner before I was stolen, and then I’ll tell you which way.”
“The nerve of him!” Dieter exclaimed.
“He’ll work better when he’s not thinking about his stomach,” Arden said, and the guard waved them on.
The inn was duly visited and the plate acquired. It couldn’t fit through the bars of the cage. Thinking sit, Arden undid the lock and put the plate on the floor of the cage. The tracker didn’t sit, but he didn’t charge the door. It was going to take forceful commands from Arden’s mind to the tracker’s to make him obey. But there was no need for it now. Sit had at least made him stay in one place until the door was closed and locked again.
The tracker sat down and stared bad-temperedly at his food. Exasperated, Dieter said, “Good money went to that, you buffoon!”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Arden asked.
“I’m not a ruddy pig to snuffle and root about in a trough! I want a fork,” the tracker said. Arden sent an angry Dieter into the inn to get one.
Once the tracker had the fork, he fell on the food with the passion of someone who hadn’t been fed well for a very long time. Cross-legged, he downed heaping forkfuls of flapjacks dripping with melted butter and maple syrup, chunks of scrambled eggs and slices of fruit, pausing only to sip at his coffee and then drink the water that Arden offered. When everything was gone, he tipped the plate sideways and passed it out with the fork. Then he sat back as those were returned to the inn and closed his eyes in satisfaction.
“He’s going to stop wasting our time and tell us now!” Dieter cried.
“Yes, he is, but give him a moment,” Arden said.
The tracker took two moments to salvage his dignity. Then he got up with a moan of boredom, undid the fabric from the bar, and held it to his nose. The four of them watched as his chest moved up and down rhythmically, the fabric shrinking with his inhales and fluttering out with his exhales. His green eyes were keen. The tracker was so very, uncomfortably close to being a man.
“Shattered Hill,” the tracker said after some time.
“The pr . . . the woman has gone to Shattered Hill?” Arden asked. Keth and Master Maraudi had gathered closely to the cage to listen.
The tracker breathed in the fabric one more time and then retied it to the bar. “No. The crest of Shattered Hill gives me the best place to separate out a specific scent. Ride steadily and we should make it by afternoon.”
“I thought you could follow any scent,” Arden said.
“I can. But I’ve got to catch a whif
f of it first and there are billions of scents in the wind. She’s not around here at any rate.”
“This had better not be a waste of our time,” Dieter grumbled.
“If you doubt me or my abilities, you plug-nosed boy, then ride back to Old Man Zamin and ask him how many searches have begun with a trip to Shattered Hill. The only time it didn’t was when I was ordered to find Lady Amiere’s missing uncle. The rot of that body was so thick that I led them straight from her home to his corpse in the woods fifty miles away.”
“Then we will ride for Shattered Hill,” Master Maraudi said, and they were on their way.
“How many searches have you been on?” Arden asked, riding alongside the cage.
“Willing or unwilling?” the tracker asked.
“Willing,” Arden asked. That seemed less charged.
The tracker gripped the bars for balance as they traveled over the uneven road that led out of Brazia. “I’m one of two trackers in all of the pearls, and the other is getting on in years, yes, she is. The pearls are the villages in the mountains, each lovelier than the last, some so high you can’t find your breath, some so low that they butt up to the fishers. Not that you or anyone in Odri would know.”
“Your mountains aren’t by the fishers,” Dieter said.
“I wasn’t talking about Odri fishing cities. I’m not from your country. I’m talking about the fishers who live by the mountain rivers, and within the scrap of northwest land between the mountains and the sea. Those fishers. My fishers. Like I said, not that you would know. You don’t travel through the Cascades unless you’re born to them, with someone born to them, or feel like getting squashed by falling rocks.”
He gave the boy a look of disgust for his ignorance and returned to Arden’s question. “When someone goes missing in the snow or a child wanders off, the family of that person comes to a tracker for help. I don’t know how many searches I went on. I never counted. My home was filled, though. People are very appreciative when you find their loved ones or their wealth in livestock. I had cows and chickens, a feather mattress, baskets of fruit and vegetables appearing on the doorstep. Trackers are very respected in the pearls, you see. They come in ones or twos each generation, never more, sometimes less, so we are greatly favored.”