by Shae Ford
“Well forgive me for wanting to keep your health,” Mrs. Bimply said through pursed lips. “You’ll eat yourself into an early grave if you don’t take care of your heart, just like your father did.”
Uncle Martin leveled his cane at her. “Don’t bring Papa into this. The war is between you and me, Bimply, and I intend to win. Cake!”
She opened her mouth to retort, but Lysander stopped her. “It’s not worth the bloodbath,” he said quietly. “He’s likely to have an attack just screaming over dessert.”
Mrs. Bimply threw up her hands and disappeared into the kitchen. A few moments later she returned — carrying a tray nearly bent under the weight of a sprawling chocolate cake.
Uncle Martin cackled in triumph and tucked his napkin under his chin. “Ah, my very favorite. Kyleigh likes the edge pieces, if I recall. And I’ll take one from the middle. I want as much sugar as possible on the top!”
Kael thought if he tried to stuff anything else down his throat, his stomach would toss it right back. The pork was sitting heavy and the warmth made his eyelids droop. So while the others argued over cake, he slipped away and headed for his room.
He climbed the spiral staircase and nearly tumbled straight back down when a maid leapt out from the shadows and said: “Your room’s right this way, Master Kael.”
“Thanks,” he muttered, and followed her down the hall.
A large bed that squatted next to the window took over a good portion of his room. The hearth nearly covered one entire wall. A small dresser sat off to the side, and in the opposite corner crouched a bath. Steam rose up off the water in lazy tendrils, and he suddenly realized how very filthy he was.
“There’s spare clothes in the dresser, should you need them,” the maid said, with a quick glance at his wretchedly stained shirt. “Do let me know if you need anything else.”
“All right.” He turned to the bath again, but he could feel the maid staring at him. “What?”
She was young, barely his own age, and when he spoke, her cheeks turned pink. “Begging your pardon, sir. But is it true what the kitchen maids are saying? That you were the one to slay the Witch of Wendelgrimm?”
Something about the way she stared made him uneasy. He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose so. It was my dagger that found her heart, but I had plenty of help,” he added quickly when she gasped.
“You’re a true hero, then.” She clasped her hands tightly in front of her and smiled in a way that made him take a step back. “I’ve never met a hero before.”
“I’m not a hero,” he snapped, hoping his temper would scare her off. But it didn’t.
She giggled, and gave him a long look. “Well … do let me know if you need anything, Master Kael. Anything at all.”
“All right, fine.”
When she finally left, he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d stripped off his shirt and boots when a knock came at the door. “Yes?” he said, and hoped to mercy it wasn’t that odd maid again.
“It’s me. Why on earth is your door locked? Are you expecting an attack?”
“Something like that,” he muttered as he let Kyleigh in. She had her hands behind her back and raised an eyebrow when she saw him. “Good lord what?”
“You’re testier than usual,” she said with a frown. “I’ve only come to say I have something for you.” She brought her hands out and showed him what she’d been hiding.
It was a bow, though unlike any bow he’d ever seen. The wood was rough and gray with age. Where the string attached, three short branches stuck out of it — like the maker hadn’t even bothered to fully shape it. The grip was made of simple leather and cracked from years of rough use. Strange, swirling patterns covered the length of it. He imagined the previous owner had carved them in: perhaps a soldier trying to steady his hands before battle, or a knight counting his victories.
He held it, and marveled at how light it was. He pulled back and nearly gasped when the string went straight to his chin without a fuss. It may not have looked like a King’s bow, but whoever made it certainly knew what he was doing.
“Where did you find this?” he said, pulling the string back again.
She shrugged. “In Wendelgrimm, of course. I knew you wouldn’t choose anything for yourself, so I dug through the treasure and found something I thought you might like.”
She’d given him a gift that he had no way of repaying. He’d just settled his debt with Lysander and had no intention of gaining a new one. “I can’t accept this,” he said, thrusting it back at her. But she wouldn’t take it.
“Don’t be ridiculous — I can’t use it. Besides, Harbinger gets jealous if I keep another weapon around,” she said with a grin. “Just keep it. Now, I’ve got to get back down there and make sure Martin hasn’t nicked my cake —”
“Hold on a moment.” Kael narrowed his eyes at her. “You won’t eat vegetables because they’re prey food, and yet you’ll have dessert?”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not really. I just wonder who we’re going to have to bury first — you, or Uncle Martin.”
“Clever.” Though her look was more amused than annoyed. “But I think I’ve got a few years on him. Go back to your bath, whisperer.”
“How did you know I was about to take a bath?”
She raised an eyebrow again, and this time her gaze went to his chest. That’s when he remembered how very horribly bare it was.
“Don’t cover up,” she said with a laugh, prying his arms away. “It’s not like you’ve got anything to be embarrassed about.”
“Yes I have! I’ve got skin the color of paste, ribs poking out every which way, and what else? Oh, yes,” with a heave, he pulled her forward, “a great bloody mark that puts me at the very top of His Majesty’s execution list,” he hissed, though for some reason it only made her laugh harder. “Let me go!”
She did, and he stumbled backwards. “All right, Master Kael,” she said with a curtsy. “And I want you to know that you don’t owe me anything — I consider our score more than settled.”
“What? Why?”
She stopped in the doorway, turned, and with an impish grin looked very pointedly at his chest.
He hurled his shirt at her, but she ducked and disappeared into the hallway. After a few moments, he thought she was gone. Then he went to close the door and heard her whistle loudly from somewhere in the shadows. “Get out of here! I had no idea dragons were such pests!” He slammed the door on her giggling, locked it, and climbed into the tub.
She could be such a fool sometimes, and he didn’t understand it. Why did she get so much joy out of embarrassing him? Why did she tease and otherwise torment him to no end? Why … why?
As he scrubbed the filth away, he twisted everything he felt into anger, because anger was easier to deal with.
Chapter 32
The Unraveling Plan
For one entire week, Kael could wake when he wished and face the day however he chose. Most of his time he spent exploring the mansion, looking through every strange quarter and passageway.
He found a training room the first morning, complete with several body-shaped targets, and spent hours riddling them with arrows. It was amazing how well his new bow responded, how easily it bent to his every command. He supposed it was because the wood was so broken-in by its previous owner that he didn’t have any trouble pulling it back. He would narrow his eyes at whatever point he chose: eye, hand, even a single fiber of the burlap skin — and no sooner did he imagine it than his arrow would strike its mark.
When the targets were so badly maimed that their stuffing leaked out, he moved on to another room.
The enormous library was easily his favorite refuge. It was two levels tall — breached by a grand staircase that spilled from the upper level and fanned out onto the ornate rug beneath it. He’d spend hours in one of the many wide, cushioned chairs, reading armfuls of whatever tomes struck his fancy. Though he was interested in ancient civilizations, mining and the h
istory of giants, he never found anything on the topic he was most interested in: dragons.
Before they arrived in Gravy Bay, he’d gone to gather up his belongings and noticed that Tales of Scales was missing. At first, he thought Jonathan had hidden it as a joke. But when he adamantly denied it, Kael had been forced to consider other options. Lysander swore he hadn’t reclaimed it and even let him tear his cabin apart looking for it. Noah had no interest at all in books. As far as anyone knew, the only things he ever read were the fronts of cards.
“Just ask Kyleigh,” Lysander had said as he watched Kael dig through the shelves for the third time. “I’m sure she can tell you whatever you’d like to know.”
He’d already thought of that, and he’d already tried. The problem was that Kyleigh wouldn’t tell him anything.
“Just read about it, if you’re so interested,” she’d snapped over dinner.
“I’ve lost my book,” he’d said through gritted teeth. “If you could just answer one thing —”
“No, because one thing will lead to another, and soon I’ll have wasted my whole evening talking about it,” she retorted. “Do you think you’re the first to ask to hear my story? Great skies, there’s no end to the people who’ve asked!”
“Well, why don’t you just tell them?”
She squared her shoulders. “Because I don’t like their look, that’s why.”
“Their look?”
“Yes. They all look at me like I’m some sort of creature behind the glass. And I don’t like being treated like a … specimen.” Then she’d stood up and marched off, taking her plate with her.
Oh, the whole thing peeved him to no end.
But then he’d discovered the mansion’s library, and renewed hope along with it. Surely, somewhere among the countless thousands, there was a book about dragons.
He combed through every shelf, climbing ladders to reach the tallest and crawling on his hands and knees to scan the very bottom. It was a maddening task, but he refused to give up. Sometimes he would reach a section and his heart would begin to hammer. He would run his hands across the spines, reading their topics in a frenzied rush.
Dice games, dogma, dormice … druids.
And there, right where dragons ought to have been would be an empty space and a trail of dust — left behind from where someone had snatched a book from its shelf. And he knew exactly who that someone was, who it must have been:
Kyleigh.
But by trying to stop him from learning, she only made the fires burn hotter. Now he was certain she was hiding something. And whatever it was, he was determined to find out. She couldn’t have possibly taken all the books. There must have been one she missed and by mercy, he was going to find it.
He was high atop a ladder, squinting to read some far off titles when Lysander wandered in. “I thought I might find you here.”
He jumped, and the ladder jerked sideways on its mechanism, nearly bucking him off. “You can’t just bust out yelling at people!” he raged as he very shakily made his way down.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Lysander said, though the amused look on his face said quite the opposite. “I’ll try to remember to scuff my shoes on the rug, next time. Do you have a moment?”
“Sure,” Kael grunted.
“Excellent.” Lysander met him at the foot of the stairs and lowered his voice. “My informants have arrived — remember the men I told you about?”
“The ones from the Duke’s circle? Sure.”
“Well,” and he lowered his voice even further, “we aren’t exactly friends, and I can’t say I really trust them enough to tell them about your … gifts. So I think I’ll introduce you as strategist. What do you think about that?”
Kael didn’t get a chance to say what he thought before Lysander cut his fist across his chest and declared:
“On to the meeting room!”
*******
There were no windows in the meeting room and hardly any decoration. The only light came from the lanterns hung across the wall. They’d been set so crookedly that the flames ate the candles at sharp inclines, leaving the wax to pool and drip out the bottom. The only smells were burning wick and old parchment. A few high-backed chairs ringed an ancient table — and they looked stern enough to be a punishment.
It took Kael a moment to adjust to the dimmer light, but after he blinked a couple of times, he noticed a man standing next to the hearth. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a neatly-trimmed beard. His face looked like a perfect match to those chairs.
“This is Chaucer, one of the Duke’s most prominent managers,” Lysander said. When Kael shook his hand, he couldn’t tell if Chaucer was pleased or put off to meet him. “And this is Geist.”
He turned in the direction of Lysander’s nod and very nearly bumped into the man called Geist. He was short and … well, Kael had a hard time trying to find anything unusual to remember him by.
“Charmed,” Geist said. Only he didn’t look charmed. He looked bored.
“Geist is a man of many, ah, talents,” Lysander said lamely, as if he was grasping to find some way to set him apart from the curtains. Then he introduced Kael as a strategist — about which neither man seemed to have any opinion — and invited them all to sit.
“I admit I was surprised when you finally answered my letter,” Chaucer said as he pulled out a seat. For such a big man, he moved very lightly. His chair didn’t even groan when he sat.
“Yes, well, I’ve been busy,” Lysander said offhandedly.
Chaucer smirked. “I heard some interesting news the other day. Apparently, Copperdock is up and running again. It seems the Witch of Wendelgrimm has finally been defeated — and by a ragtag band of pirates, no less.”
Lysander snorted. “I doubt they were ragtag — or pirates at all, for that matter. Wherever did you hear such a wild tale?”
“I have my sources,” Chaucer said. And he watched Lysander like a hawk eyeing its prey.
Their staring match had the potential to drag on for hours, but Kael had no desire to spend the rest of his day locked in a windowless room with the three of them. He tried to get things moving. “I have a question: what’s in it for you? I know what Lysander and I hope to gain, but why would a manager and a … whatever, want to sack Duke Reginald?”
“I have absolutely no interest in the matter,” Geist said dully, and Kael believed him.
“Why?” Chaucer made it sound like it was easily the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “I’ll tell you why: because there’s no sport in it anymore. I’m a merchant, bred from a long line of merchants, and I’m not being allowed to trade. It was thrilling at first, the idea of buying up all of the ships on the High Seas and driving prices skyward. But now we’ve got all the gold and all the bread. What’s there left to do?” He propped one elbow up on the table and kept his fist clenched at his head. “The Duke calls us his managers because that’s what we are — we herd his ships across the Seas, delivering whatever cargo he tells us to. We aren’t merchants anymore — we’re couriers. Overthrowing the Duke would allow us all to reclaim our dignity and our trade. That’s why.”
Not once, not even for a breath, did Chaucer mention how his conquest had enslaved the people of the High Seas. He had all the gold in the region, and now he was simply bored. Kael wanted to reach across the table and knock every last tooth out of his pompous mouth.
“Regardless of the reason, we’re grateful for your support,” Lysander said, shooting a warning look at Kael. “I trust the other managers have come around?”
Chaucer nodded, ever so slightly. “Most feel the same way I do about it. There are a few who don’t … but I’ll take care of them.”
“Right.” Lysander turned quickly to Geist. “Do you have the map?”
He produced a large roll of paper from somewhere in the folds of his coat and handed it over.
“He’s been working on this for months,” Lysander said as he spread the parchment out on the table.
&n
bsp; Kael found it hard to believe that the man staring aimlessly at the wall had rallied his interest long enough to draw something so detailed. And yet, the plans were exactly that: every room was drawn to scale, down to the arrangement of the furniture inside of them. Windows were marked by width and height, entrances labeled by the tumblers in their locks. Out to the side, he’d even written in cramped letters when they might expect the guards to change their shifts.
“Excellent.” Lysander clapped his hands together so loudly that Chaucer flinched. “Now all we have to do is figure out someway inside …”
*******
Hours later, half of every candle was burned away and they still hadn’t figured out how to crack the Duke’s fortress. It was on an island of stone with nothing but ocean for miles around. They thought about attacking by sea — but quickly realized that if they were spotted, the Duke’s battlemages would have no trouble blowing them to pieces. And, as Chaucer so bluntly pointed out: “Waves aren’t usually tall enough to hide behind.”
They very briefly entertained the idea of coming by land and charging across the mile-long bridge on foot. But when Chaucer mentioned it was rigged to burn, they dropped the idea entirely.
“He’ll wait until you’re out in the middle before he lights it. I don’t think even the pirates can outrun fire.”
Lysander looked up from where he’d been massaging his forehead and glared. “Just what do you mean by that?”
Chaucer shrugged. “Perhaps charging in isn’t your best option. Aren’t thieves usually better at throat-slitting and backstabbing?”
“You tell me,” Lysander retorted, and he went back to the map. “There’s got to be a way … some method of attack we’ve overlooked.”
“We could always sprout wings and fly,” Chaucer muttered, propping his boots up on the table.
“That’s a grand idea, I’ll hire a catapult,” Lysander said sarcastically. “And if you don’t get your feet off my table, I’ll let you be the first to try it out.”