The Dragon Round

by Stephen S. Power

  A scream wakes him up.

  6

  * * *

  A scream in the Harbor at night is not unusual, nor is a person yelling at the screamer to shut up. When he hears guards blowing horns, he gets up, closes his windows, and lies on the floor. The rug is more comfortable than the couch. He falls back asleep.

  Felic rings the ship’s bell Livion keeps on a shelf to announce the morning. He brings in a basin of water, a cloth, and a small pot of soap, then leaves to get him some breakfast. This isn’t the first time Livion’s spent the night in his office, although usually it’s paperwork that keeps him and he wakes at his desk. Felic returns with a green stirrup of coffee from the Round, an okono, and Ravis.

  Ravis says, “It’s urgent.”

  “So I brought him straight up,” Felic says.

  Livion, having washed up and tucked himself together, pours coffee into a bowl. “Have you found Omer?” he says.

  Felic shakes his head.

  Ravis says, “The general wants you at South.” The wall around the Upper City has five sides; four named after the directions they roughly face and “Gate” in the middle, named after its centerpiece. The city guard’s headquarters buttress the south wall.

  Livion unwraps his okono. Crab. “Why?” he says, and takes a healthy bite for appearances.

  Ravis says, “I’ll take you. He’ll explain.”

  Livion puts down his okono and drains his bowl. The coffee doesn’t wash away the crab. He follows Ravis past Felic, realizing that the casual observer might think he’d abandoned the Shield. Given the threat he felt yesterday, he’s grateful for the xiphos hanging beneath Ravis’s arm.

  Unlike most of the buildings uphill in Hanosh, which are faced with stucco, whitewashed, and roofed with blue tile, South is a broad stone structure built out of the gray granite wall itself. Ravis leads Livion to a side door. Two guards outside recognize him and knock. A guard inside looks through a wicket, bars are removed on both sides, and the door is opened. Beyond an antechamber and a door made of iron bars, stone stairs plunge beneath the Upper City. Livion follows Ravis. The door guard locks and bars the exterior door, then unlocks the inside door. Ravis takes a lantern from the wall and starts down.

  Livion doesn’t. He says, “Why aren’t we going in the front?”

  “The general will meet us at the cells,” Ravis says.

  “Keep moving,” the door guard says. “Can’t keep the door open all day.”

  This doesn’t feel right.

  “Afraid of the stench?” the door guard says. “It’ll get worse below, but after a few minutes you won’t even smell it. Your partner will, though. Tougher to get out of your clothes than blood.” He laughs. “Go.”

  Livion can’t see how he could refuse. He descends.

  The stairs turn twice before entering a vaulted room with a damp flagstone floor. Ravis says, “We’ll wait here” and sets the lantern on a small table beside, unbelievably, the remnants of someone’s breakfast. Boiled rat, which a live rat is gorging itself on. The lantern doesn’t concern it. Livion is regretting that one bite of okono.

  Ravis stands in front of a wooden door with a hang lock. Livion looks through the iron bars of two other doors in the room. They lead to barely lit passages lined with cells. The flag of Blue Island is painted on the wall at the end of each. These are holding cells, the least valuable investment in the complex because prisoners don’t stay in them long enough to pay for board and sundries and the maintenance fees the city pays are minimal, although, like the other cells, Ject does guarantee that nine out of ten will be occupied.

  Several minutes later, the general marches up one of the passages carrying a lantern. His mustache sags from lack of sleep; not a single fold of his uniform does. He produces two keys and hands them to Ravis, who uses the first to let Ject into the small room and the second to unlock the wooden door.

  Ject says, “I need your experience.”

  “In what way?” Livion says.

  “You’ll see.”

  Ravis opens the door. Livion gags at the smell of fresh blood. The others don’t. Around the walls of a large room are scarred chairs, split bamboo rods, coils of rope, heaps of chain, iron bars with pins, and other implements. Chains with hooks hang from the ceiling. In the middle of the room atop the drain are three bodies shrouded in bloody burlap.

  “Let’s start with the one on the left,” Ject says.

  Ravis unwraps a woman. Livion’s seen men burned to death and drowned. He’s seen limbs torn off and bodies horribly scarred, but he’s never seen a person eviscerated. Her rib cage has been wrenched wide to get at her heart and lungs. A black chiton still dangles from her shoulders and covers her thighs demurely.

  “She was found on the roof of a warehouse in the Harbor,” Ject says, “spotted by someone farther up the Hill. There was no access to the roof from the warehouse. Now that one.”

  The middle bundle is roughly the same size as the first. The canvas is peeled away. Livion follows a barely crusting line of blood from a bare foot up to a scrawny knee and the hem of a black chiton. Blood pools in the fabric. Her neck is gouged halfway through. One side of her face blushes purple, grit embedded in the skin.

  “She’s our girl,” Livion whispers. He realizes he doesn’t know her name. She’d only been with them three months. Trist doesn’t think it worth learning a girl’s name until after she’s served a year.

  Ject is surprised. “When did you last see her?”

  “Last night,” Livion says. “Seven chimes. A little after. She brought me a note from my partner. Where did you find her?”

  “Her dorm mother found her in a cut through between two Servants’ lanes,” Ject says. “The mother was out looking for our first victim, actually. She lived in the same dorm and hadn’t come home after reportedly meeting some man. Did your girl go back to your house?”

  “Yes,” Livion says. “Maybe. My partner wasn’t waiting for a response. She might have gone back to her dorm.”

  “When did you go home?”

  “I didn’t,” Livion says. “I stayed in my office, waiting for word about Omer.”

  “Of course. Let’s see the third.”

  The third body is a man’s. His belly is ripped open, his viscera apparently gnashed to pieces. The rest of him is strangely untouched, but for a bruised chin and dried blood on his lip from a shattered tooth.

  “And that’s my rider,” Livion says.

  “He was found not far from the piers,” Ject says, “tucked in an alcove in an alley. Curious, you knowing two of them. And you might have been the last to see each alive.”

  Livion edges toward the door. “I had nothing to do with—”

  “Did I say you did?” Ject says. “Are you sure you don’t know her?” He points to the first body.

  Livion shakes his head.

  “Come here. I want you to look at these wounds.” Ject squats beside the hollowed girl and waves Livion to him. He says, “What happened here?”

  “She looks . . . eaten. I’ve seen rats do this to galley cats.”

  “Pretty big rat, don’t you think?” Ject pulls out his dirk and holds it over the wound. “Even if it took two bites to tear away the belly, its mouth would have to have been at least this wide.”

  “Where is this going?” Livion says.

  “What has a mouth that wide that could also leave a body on top of a roof?”

  Livion can’t say it. It seems impossible. Ject does. “Your dragon’s moved north.”

  “Dragons avoid cities.”

  “Maybe this one is too young to realize it should,” Ject says. “Hanosh would look like a feeding trough.”

  “What really happened to them, though?” Livion says. “He does look devoured.” Dragons, he saw during the first attack, savor the organs. “And our girl, maybe a knife did that. Maybe
a claw.”

  Ject stands beside him and pats his back. “You’ve already done the right thing,” he says, “by speaking. However tough that was, it’ll be tougher to keep doing the right thing. But you’ve survived two dragon attacks. Few can make that claim. Your word, on top of what you said at Council, on top of your status, can stop this madness.”

  “What if I bring the madness down around me?” Livion says.

  “You already have,” Ject says. “I could easily say you’re behind these deaths, couldn’t I?”

  Livion stops at his door to collect the breath he spent running from South. As he reaches for the latch, Trist’s friend Asper opens the door.

  She’s dressed as usual in a white silk tokar and turban, from which descends a cloud of white veil. Her partner, Gaster, was killed by the plague before the Comber returned to Hanosh, and her outfit, worn decades after mourning ceased to be fashionable, has earned her the sobriquet the White Widow. Her inheritance made her extremely wealthy, which Livion considers some recompense. She’s lately befriended Trist. Her relationship with Chelson is cool, given her attempts to make her silent shares in the Shield more vocal, and the scuttlebutt is that she hopes to influence him through his daughter. Livion’s more concerned with her influence over Trist, who spends more time at her house than theirs.

  “You’re here early,” Livion says.

  “I spent the night,” Asper says, stepping outside. “I can’t approve of what you did at Council,” she says, “but I do think Tabs feels more betrayed than she should. Why did you—”

  A whistle’s shriek from above cuts her off.

  “Because it’s true, whatever you heard,” Livion says, “and possibly worse.” He looks up. “She’s on the sundeck?”

  “Yes. Herse says—”

  “I have to see her,” Livion says and slips inside. He flips the door closed. The whistle echoes through the house.

  A pergola keeps the sundeck cool with a drapery of grape vines and paper flowers. Tristaban stands at the railing with his whistle.

  “That girl didn’t show up this morning,” she says. “And she won’t come now.” The whistle shrieks again.

  Livion feels a pang that her fury at the girl has distracted her from being furious at him. “She’s not coming,” he says. “She’s dead.” He sits on a bench. “I saw her body. Several bodies. At South. It was horrible.”

  “How?” She actually sounds upset, not inconvenienced. “Why did you . . .”

  “The Guard wanted to know what I thought.”

  “You?” And she’s back, the daughter of a shipowner who married a lackey. “Ject is not a friend, Livion.”

  “I’m not sure anyone is at this point,” he says. “And I’m worried about your safety.”

  Tristaban looks incredulous.

  “The girl’s wasn’t the only body I saw. I saw my informant’s too.” He makes room on the bench.

  She doesn’t leave the railing. “The one who fed you that dragon nonsense?” Tristaban says. “I guess his lies caught up with him. You can’t be the only one he sold them to. Father says Herse is furious. And Herse is our friend.”

  “There was another maid too,” Livion says. “I saw her wounds. I saw theirs. I’ve seen them before. It was a dragon, a small one, like the one that attacked Solet.”

  “How convenient,” she says. “Herse is right. You and dragons. You had your moment. Now you want more.”

  “I don’t want anything,” he says, “except for you to be safe.” He gets up. “The maids were found nearby. One was ours. Something is hunting around here. And it’s getting closer and closer to you. Ject is organizing a search.”

  “During which I’m sure he’ll go lane by lane, house by house, to say Ayden didn’t attack our ships, it was this dragon.” She pokes her finger at him the way her father did. “He’s using you.”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “So’s your father.”

  “That’s why he pays you!” she says. “You’re not Hanosh’s hero. You’re his.”

  “I saw what I saw,” he says. He stands in front of her by the railing. “Look,” he says, “I’m scared. Maybe I didn’t see what I saw. But I know what could happen if there is a dragon here.” He reaches for her wrist, which doesn’t move an inch. “Do me a favor: Stay home today.”

  He does look worried, the way he did when they snuck around behind her father’s back. She remembers finding that endearing.

  “I have appointments,” she says. “Business. Do you know how that will look?”

  “Like you trust me,” Livion says, “the way I trusted you so your father wouldn’t catch us.”

  “I can’t just think about you,” she said. “I have to think about him. And the Shield. And the future. And so do you. It’s what you chose when you chose me.”

  “Think about them inside today,” he says. “I wouldn’t even stay on this deck.” He would say “please,” but she would consider that absurd.

  Tristaban looks through the pergola. “What happened to the girl?”

  “She had her throat torn open. The other maid was scooped out like an avocado.”

  Her wrist shifts against his hand. “I’ll rearrange some things,” she says. “I’m tired anyway. I didn’t sleep.”

  He kisses her knuckles.

  “You’re going out.”

  “To help the search,” Livion says.

  “When will you be home?” she says.

  “Dusk. Maybe later.”

  “I’ll see you then,” she says and smiles at him. He feels refreshed and leaves.

  Tristaban goes to her bedroom where a dozen dolls watch her from shelves around the room. There’s one appointment she can’t miss and now she has more time than she thought she would. She holds up two peploi, one bright green, one a silvery perse, and asks the dolls what they think.

  Livion likes the green too much, they say.

  She tosses it aside. At a basin she washes the scent of yesterday’s vanilla from her neck and puts on some shega oil. She’s never worn it around Livion. It’s not for him. It makes her feel weightless, no, unencumbered. And sparkly.

  Between two houses across the lane a man in a beard and black shift watches Livion leave the sundeck. Then his attention goes to Tristaban’s window.

  7

  * * *

  By noon the guards are spreading across the city, searching district by district. They start in the Harbor, which runs along the base of the Hill. One group continues up the West Hill to Servants, then to Lesser Silk, where Livion lives amid other juniors, deputies, and senior clerks, and Greater Silk above it. A second group climbs the East Side, from the poorest section, the Rookery, through the workers’ lanes to the workshops, artisans, and petty trading outlets just beneath the Crest. That section is handled by an elite squad of guards drilled in diplomacy while guards search the Upper City clockwise around the Blue Tower.

  Workhouse denizens are impressed upon to help, and many workers also join in, trading a day of labor and possibly tomorrow’s employment for the golden ticket of a share of renderings. Armed with kitchen knives and craftsman’s tools, armored in undyed cotton and bellies full of wine, they make so much noise that the guards send them ahead like beaters. And bait. Nothing is biting, though.

  By midafternoon, the wine has soured in the workers’ bellies, the temperature has risen, and the guards are quelling fights more than they are searching likely lairs: old buildings, cellars, obscure alleys and nooks, anyplace big enough a cow could crawl into. By dusk, even the guards, anxious to prove themselves every bit the warriors that Herse’s soldiers are, grow discouraged. They and the workers agree that perhaps the search is some grand Aydeni joke.

  At the Harbor, Prieve’s men search under the docks and crawl up runoff pipes without any luck. He also has galleys searched, which does more to turn up contraband than
any dragon. His patrols return with reports of clear skies and no wreckage from any ship that might have been attacked.

  After being shown the bodies, Herse volunteers his force to help the search. Ject refuses them, saying it will be an inside operation. So Herse searches outside his walls, starting with Hanoshi Town, which spreads around the city like beggars around a trash fire. His soldiers take the opportunity to see who is supportive, while Herse sees no downside in finding a dragon. A prize is a prize, and he could make a great deal by killing a dragon. The day brings him no luck either, however.

  Only Rego, Herse’s adjutant, finds something intriguing.

  He goes to the alley where Omer’s body was found, then to the nearest pier, where three galleys are berthed.

  He’s trespassing in Prieve’s jurisdiction, but he won’t wait for official leave to investigate. It’s stupid, having three security districts answerable to the Council, not an overall leader. Herse will change that.

  The crew of two of the galleys, Swan Two and Heron House, both out of Meres, haven’t seen Omer, but the first mate of King of Birds, a spicer from the Dawn Lands, might have. His fingers flex. Rego remarks on the number of Aydeni being questioned as spies and how a broader net might need to be cast. The mate indicates that Omer was brokering the sale of some cinnamon with a shipping company so they could pay their port fees, but he never returned with the money. Rego asks which company. The mate’s memory goes slack. Rego points out that paperwork, like receipts for fees and records of people in the system, appears and disappears mysteriously. The mate says, “It sounded like ‘wield.’ ”

  Livion returns home at dusk. His neighbors are gathered on the lane. Most belong to shipowners and trading companies, and none are happy to see him. They didn’t appreciate being questioned by guards or having a rabble of workers searching their lane.

  A man from Blue Island, Eles’s greatest ally and the Shield’s greatest rival, says, “Getting too big for your boots? Hoping to bag another pair?” His neighbors chuckle. Fortune is a zero-sum game.

  Livion unlocks the door and notices Tristaban’s beaded hamondey is not on the shelf by the door. She never leaves home without her bag.