by Jordan Reece
Dieter was nonplussed to be going to Havanath, which had little distinction in comparison to sprawling, wave of the future Loria or decadent Isle Zayre. “You know what they all are there, do you, friend?” he called to Arden. “Clockmakers.”
“I doubt all of them are,” Arden said. Volos was traveling behind him today and had fallen asleep, a warm, arousing presence on Arden’s back. To keep himself steady, Volos had dropped his shackled arms over Arden’s head and to his waist. The unconscious brushing of his hands against Arden’s trousers had given him an erection.
“Clocks and tiny mechanics, many of them,” Dieter said dismissively. “Long books and little bakeries, the rest of them. I see them come to Lighmoon on business and holidays, standing in huddles and dressed too warm for the weather. It’s cold in Havanath. The last interesting thing they did was their dragon army. That was centuries ago. Now they just read by the hearth and fiddle with screws.”
“And educate their women as highly as their men, and permit them any station to which they are qualified,” Keth said. Heads turned back to the tracker, confirmed he was asleep, and turned away. “I was a fool to not think of Havanath! Their old, widowed queen caused a scandal in her youth by marrying a man lower in station.”
“Not that much lower,” Master Maraudi said.
“He was noble, but of no great family line. A political appointment only. Isle Zayre would not recognize him, and still calls him the pretender even after his death. Loria would not receive him at a royal reception for decades! And their children and grandchildren did not have arranged marriages, which frayed Havanath’s ties with the other kingdoms further. This is as good as a Lorial convent. Havanath will not send her back to Odri. She hired a Hav man who knows the back country to get her there.”
Volos woke up then. The chain kept him snug against Arden, who wanted to be held so closely without it. Shackled hands brushed by accident against the stiffness in his trousers. “Thinking of dragons, Arden?” Volos whispered in amusement.
“Not quite.” Arden was so bothered by the urges of his body that every muscle he had was taut. Soured by it, he hissed accusingly, “You will say anything to be free, just as the man before you said anything to get into my bed.” If it happened to be a most convincing ploy for freedom, Arden would be distraught. Then he’d head west. The king could find some other penchant for the perindens.
“You have the ability to push into my mind yet do not, so you do not believe this,” Volos said.
No, Arden didn’t believe it. He couldn’t let himself believe it. Volos said, “This is no game I am playing with you. I do not like games of the heart.”
“Promise me this.” Arden dared to press back into Volos, who tightened his arms.
“I promise.”
“I have heard a man’s empty promises before.”
“Yes, as have I, and they wounded us. So we will promise to always be honest with one another. Here is my honesty: I do not think you’ll be so keen on dragons once you’ve been in my bed.”
“Here is honesty returned: you think quite well of yourself, Volos.”
“Yes, I do, when it comes to my strengths. I track pleasure just like anything else, and I’ll find yours unerringly. You won’t have to say a word. The smell of you will tell me what I need to know.” Volos swore softly about the shackles, which were reddening the skin of his wrists. “I am eager to rid myself of these forever.”
“Lord Zamin should not have done this to you.”
“That nasty old man does what he likes, and what he likes is to collect rare objects with which to amuse his family and impress his friends. I was just another acquisition, like his ancient vases and the garden forever-blooms.”
“How did he even know of trackers? I had never heard of such a thing until you.”
“He learned of trackers through old stories that traveled low the Cascades, and for years paid his thugs to stand about in the High Reaches hoping for one such creature to traipse their way. It mattered to him not that a tracker turned out to be a man. He owns many slaves in his properties upon Isle Zayre. It did irritate him that I did not agree to my own enslavement. And yes, oh yes, how he will be irritated further to lose me. But my dreams for my life do not include a cage and servitude, so I am afraid that I must disappoint.”
“He was going to lose you regardless,” Arden confessed. “I have orders to finish this track and bring you to the zoo.”
“Then more than Zamin will be disappointed, and it serves them right. I am going to die a happy old man in the pearls with many grandchildren to carry my body to the goddess rocks for its final fire. Stars light me to my last home among them. And you?”
“I have still to plan for my life, let alone my death.”
“What will you plan?”
“There was only ever a dream.” Arden was embarrassed, but Volos squeezed him reassuringly. “I have dreamed not to go home to an empty hut.”
“But to a man,” Volos finished for him. “A man, and one day children, a line of shoes beside the door, a table set for more than one. Yes. To live among more than animals as your family.”
“Yes,” Arden whispered. “But these are impossible fancies to me.”
“Fancies are only impossible if you allow them to be so. If I allowed myself to think of my home as an impossible fancy . . .”
“It is not.”
“Neither is yours. Fancies stay fancies to those who do not believe that they can be achieved. Perhaps you will not like me a year from today, and decide that I am not the man you wish to see every morning on the next pillow. Perhaps you will wish the baskets to bear naught but sons, and receive only one son but eleven daughters. Your fancies may not come in the same light as you thought, yet some of them you will have if you fight for them.”
“I wish the king had never taken me. I was different then than how I am now.”
“I wish Zamin had never taken me, and for much the same reason. But these things have happened to us. So what are we to do with them?”
“Arden! Come up here and deal with these blasted bugs!” Master Maraudi ordered. Arden kicked his horse to do so, and thought that one day soon, he would be obeying his last order.
And after that, he was free.
****
Each of the brothers was separated by a stretch of forest. When they came to the first ferry stop, they could hardly make their voices heard over the piercing cries of birds and screeches of tiny dragons in the trees. A small, dingy white ferry was coming along slowly over the wide stretch of the river. It was steam-powered, plumes of smoke rising from it to cast a mist over the swath of green trees on the far side.
No one else was waiting at the shore to go on to Havanath, and all there were for accommodations was a very tiny inn and an ill-tempered, gray-haired barkeep who informed them the ferry would not be crossing again until tomorrow. Master Maraudi fingered coins and spoke to Keth about how much could be considered persuasive to an extra trip. As they mumbled to one another, a little blue dragon flew through the door and alighted on a counter. Snatching up a broom, the barkeep chased it out and screeched even more loudly than the creature itself. Then she slammed the door shut, which seemed a witless solution to the problem when every window in the establishment was wide open.
Dieter, Volos, and Arden took seats on benches outside and watched the ferry chug over. Far more impressed with evidence of Lorial steam technology than Havanath’s clocks, Dieter soon got up to walk along the pier and take a closer look at the nearing ferry. Unfortunately, previous travelers had been feeding the dragons. Several flapped after Dieter, who was treating himself to candy from the packs, and when Arden withdrew jerky for him and Volos to share, they were nearly assaulted. Arden sent them off with a silent order and said wearily, “How numerous are the dragons in the pearls?”
“You will be pleased,” Volos said. “A rarity. Does this persuade you?”
“It might.”
“I don’t care how much money you f
lash at me!” roared the barkeep, her voice cracking through the window. “My husband’s bloody well entitled to a rest now and then, isn’t he? So is his crew! All of you rich ones coming through, you’re all the same! Do this! Now! Do that! Now! Like we’re machines! Like you’re spoiled children! I’d take a switch to children such as that. You can stuff that gold away and-”
Keth’s voice was cold. Her sword scraped as it was drawn from its scabbard. “Perhaps you would prefer another metal.” Silence. The sword scraped again. “I see. Then you will accept our first offering, and I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement.”
“Yes,” the barkeep muttered in a strained tone. Unwilling to cede so easily, she asked, “Is this really so important that it cannot wait until tomorrow? He will leave at first light.”
“It really is so important,” Master Maraudi said cheerily. “We are in pursuit of a thief. You may have had her stay here just now. Young for a criminal, and traveling with a man going the same way we are. Have you seen them?”
“Is that so? A lady thief?” Something in the woman’s voice was strangely keen at the information. “There haven’t been many travelers. Book binders going into Odri, package carriers, and other than them, it’s been quiet but for bunny trappers and stragglers.”
“Did she not take the ferry?” Arden whispered to Volos.
“She took it,” Volos said confidently. “Her smell is thick here.”
“Describe the stragglers,” Master Maraudi suggested.
The barkeep sighed dramatically. “How can I describe them? He was a man. A man who was a man.” Volos and Arden snickered together at the barkeep’s thoroughly unhelpful description. “He offered to pay plenty for an extra trip, but it isn’t easy for my husband, going back and forth and back and forth. He’s getting on in years. He has arthritis. Healing penchants charge an arm and a leg for their spells.”
“How lovely that you can now afford several,” Master Maraudi said very pleasantly. “And the woman?”
“I never saw her face, did I? Had a filthy, ratty shawl drawn over herself all the while, and my husband said it was the same the whole ride over. The man seemed awful cuddly with her, if you know what I mean. A rich man slumming with some poor girl, but you’d think he would buy her a nicer shawl. Maybe she was deformed in the face. Some men go for that, missing limbs, split nose and lip, there’s a perversion for every man and every man has a perversion-”
“I could listen to her all day,” Volos whispered, his hand slipping over Arden’s. It was safe for now. Keth and Master Maraudi were still at the bar; Dieter was waving at the ferry, a green dragon whirling around his head. Heartbeat quickening, Arden turned over his hand. They interlocked their fingers.
“I have decided that if you are lying, I will go west to the Salts,” Arden said.
“Good,” Volos said. “But I am not lying. Is it so hard for you to believe that someone might have an interest in you? You are many things, but a man of conceit, never. May I ask what that funny shape is in your coin pouch?”
Still holding onto Volos’ hand, Arden took out the carved dragon with his other one. “It belonged to my mother. I thought that I might carve a pile of shuffle to go with it.”
“Breath of the goddess, spare us. The smell has worn off you at last. Carve a second dragon and give it to your children to play with one day.” Volos took the toy and ran his finger down the scales along its back. “Tell me of your mother, so your grief is also mine.”
No one had really asked about Arden’s mother since Otas so long ago. “I do not remember much of her, but . . . happiness. We lived in a little apartment in Lighmoon, and I played with this dragon in the light from the window as she mended clothing. She worked for the tailor who had the shop downstairs. She’d save scraps of fabric and put them in a bag for me to play with. The purple and blue scraps were a river for the dragon to fly over; the green and brown scraps were the trees; the white a blanket of snow.” He was encouraged to go on by the sympathy in Volos’s eyes. “I made a little kingdom with her mending and humming in the background. If people never returned to the tailor to reclaim their clothing, or refused to pay, he gave the clothing to my mother. She would make it into little clothes for me. I was very proud of my fine red coat and wore it everywhere in winter. And this . . . this is about all I remember. Then that illness came through Odri and took her away. It was queer how it killed those in their prime and left behind the old and young. The tailor carried me to the orphanage. I do not know where she was buried, or if her body was burned. I . . . I do not know if I could even find my way back to the tailor’s and that apartment. I was just too small.”
“Was the orphanage a terrible place? It must have been.”
“No, not at all. The matron had too many children to look after, but she was kind to us. We were fed and clothed, and she made sure the older children did not bully the younger ones.” Tolaman’s anger and cruelty had come as a shock to Arden, who was inexperienced with blows, and had never been the victim of anything beyond childish teasing until then.
Volos breathed in the wind. “We are very close to this woman.” Having gleaned from Arden’s look that she was not, in fact, a jewel thief, but someone of importance running away with a man, he whispered that he was rather sorry to be catching up. “Why must all my tracks low the Cascades be for such disagreeable reasons?”
“You must miss sheep.”
“Yes, I miss sheep. Zamin rented me out to a man desiring to find his wife who quit him for good cause long ago, and an old woman enraged that her son lived in hiding from her temper. This woman-” he gestured into the inn, “is a kitten in comparison. The other was a harpy. Were she my mother, I would have gone into hiding myself.”
“What do you do when approached for a disagreeable track in the pearls?”
“I use my discretion. A drunk wanting to chase down some old grievance to settle a score . . . I gently but firmly dissuaded tracks such as that.”
The ferry arrived and they parted their hands. The soldiers were still trying to get information out of the barkeep; Dieter ran about in boyish excitement as a handful of passengers unloaded. A horse was brought up from below.
The captain looked even sourer than his wife. He shooed away two roughly dressed girls who had brought lines of dead rabbits with them, saying he was sick of rabbit meat and he’d better not find them weathering the night in his barn. The girls approached Dieter next. Fingering the bodies expertly, he selected the plumpest two and handed over coins. The dragons bothered them for the meat and one of the girls cracked a horsewhip in warning. When they didn’t give off, she beat them with it until they did.
The old man also had to be convinced that gold was the preferable metal for another crossing of the river. His wife packaged up a dinner for him, threw an accusing stare to their party as the crew took the horses onto the ferry, and stalked inside. A dragon shot out a moment later, flying in panic for its life.
Arden had never been on a steamboat, or any kind of boat whatsoever. He boarded in nervousness, but that feeling quickly faded as their trip got underway. The boat moved so smoothly that he barely felt like he was traveling through the water. Holding onto the railing near the big red paddle wheel, he and Volos watched the shore shrink as the boat carried them away. Waves undulated, ducks lifting and falling upon the ripples.
Dieter and his excitement made an unlikely friend out of the irascible captain, who barked at him about how fire was heating the water in a boiler, and when the pressure got high enough, the steam was released to the engine shaft. That was connected to the paddle wheel. But one had to be very careful of the boiler or the whole boat would blow up. He took a weird relish in loudly describing incidents such as that, almost as if subtly warning his unwelcome passengers that their doom could be imminent on his boat. Then he complained at length about an Odri-Havanath proposal moving through their governments to install a train between their countries, which would effectively eradicate the captain’s position. Th
at ended the blossoming friendship with Dieter, who was even more excited about a train than he was the ferry, and made the mistake of not concealing it. High above, a white bird flew by at great speed and neatly dodged two battling dragons.
When they made it to the other side, it was time to quit for the day. Dieter fixed a fire in an already-made pit to cook the rabbits. The road to the next brother was crude indeed, the little that Arden could see of it, and so narrow that they would not be able to ride even two abreast once daylight arrived. Road was too grand a word for what was truly just a path. The captain concluded that he could not make it back safely in the growing darkness and settled in for the night with the crew on the boat.
An abandoned inn was on this side of the river, and the search party commandeered it for the night. The sheets were worn and stained, the pillows missing, and the walls bashed through in some of the rooms. The soldiers took the whole rooms; Dieter and Arden had the ones with the crumbled wall between them. Volos was tied to a chair.
Master Maraudi woke them up at dawn to move on. Riding in front, Arden was alert at all times to redirect dragons and insects. Volos had to ride behind him for this reason, and spoke warnings when he spied a predator that Arden did not. Clever birds with an eye to their food packs, a snake slithering along the path, there was little of civilization here except that which belonged to animals. Only once did they pass a log house, set back far in the forest. An old man was sitting outside it and making foothold traps. Only once as well did they pass a person on the road, and that was a boy with an insolent whistle and a line of dead dragons over his shoulder. As dragon meat was nearly as noxious as dragon shuffle, Arden assumed that they had been trapped for their scales. The boy soon left the road and vanished into the trees.
They would leave by night, Arden and Volos, when it was time. He was feeling more certain about this. Once everyone was asleep, he would unlock the shackles. Then they would creep away without the horses. There would be little light to see by, but he could call night animals to him. They would see what he and Volos couldn’t, and guide them on. If luck rested on their side, no one in the search party would notice their absence until morning. They would be miles away by then. Arden could charm a horse from a field and use it to carry them further. And if the soldiers caught up anyway . . . Arden hated to consider it, for they had not been cruel to him, but he would use his penchant to chase them off.