The Death of Dulgath

by Michael J. Sullivan

  Fawkes glared. “There ought to be.”

  “If we are speaking of things that should be, you would have been born a dairy farmer in Kelsey instead of the cousin to King Vincent. Although that would have been a terrible injustice to cows, which I’m certain is what Maribor was thinking when he made you a landless lord.”

  Sherwood was exceedingly pleased that Lord Fawkes no longer held his precious bottle of Beyond the Sea. The Maranon lord of no-place-in-particular sucked in a snarl. His shoulders rose like the fur on the back of a dog. Before he could open his mouth to cast some vile insult, Sherwood cut him off. “Why are you still here? The funeral was more than a month ago.”

  This had the effect of pouring cold water on a flame. Fawkes blinked three times, then settled into a murderous glare. “In your single-minded efforts to enter Her Ladyship’s bed, it may have escaped your attention that someone is trying to kill her.”

  “And what does that have to do with anything?”

  “I’m staying to protect her.”

  “Really?” Sherwood said with more sarcasm than he intended, but he was more than nettled with the lord. “Perhaps it has escaped your attention that she has a contingent of well-trained guards for that. Or is it your belief that the only thing standing between Lady Dulgath and death is the assassin’s fear of the king’s second cousin?”

  This comment did nothing to alleviate Fawkes’s glare, but his gaze did shift to the easel again.

  Sherwood knew what the lord was thinking and took another step forward. The painter had no grand illusion of beating Fawkes in a brawl. A law did exist making it illegal to strike a noble, even a despicable one. Sherwood’s advance was a bluff, but the artist tried to sell it as best he could by rising to his full height, which was an inch taller than Fawkes, and returning that venomous glare with a firm jaw and ready hands.

  Bluff or not, Fawkes chose to merely spit on Sherwood’s shoe before walking out.

  He, too, slammed the big door, but this time it stayed shut.

  Chapter Three

  Maranon

  The weather remained horrible all the way to Mehan. If the clouds weren’t following them, as Hadrian imagined, and all of northern Avryn was suffering the same deluge, then Wayward’s pond was likely a lake after the three additional days of downpours that soaked Royce and Hadrian’s travels south. On the morning of the fourth day, the skies woke clear and blue, a huge southern sun shining upon a land of gorgeous rolling hills.

  Most of the jobs Riyria took occurred in and around Medford, with a few sending them only as far south as Warric. Although Hadrian had grown up less than fifty miles from the border, this was his first trip to Maranon. If the peninsula of Delgos were a mitten, Maranon would be the thumb, and a green one at that. A land that was deep, velvet-rich, and the color of a forest by moonlight stretched out in all directions, broken by small stands of leafy trees. Maranon was known for its horses—the best in the world. At first, Hadrian thought he saw deer grazing in the meadows, but deer didn’t travel in herds of fifteen or more. Nor did they thunder when racing across the fields, shifting and circling like a flock of starlings.

  “Are they owned? Or can you just grab one?” Hadrian asked Royce as they rode their mangy northern mounts, which were at least clean thanks to three days of rain.

  Royce, who had thrown his hood off and was letting his cloak air-dry on his shoulders, glanced at the horses racing over a distant hill. “Yes and no. They’re like deer up north—or anything anywhere, really. There’s nothing that isn’t claimed by someone. Those are wild, but everything here belongs to King Vincent.”

  Hadrian accepted Royce’s expertise. Despite his partner’s lack of idle conversation, he knew Royce had traveled extensively—at least in Avryn. He appeared most familiar with the congested areas around the big cities of Colnora and Ratibor, those places a thief and former assassin would find the most work. For Hadrian, the trip to Maranon felt like Riyria was taking a holiday. The change in weather only added to the sense that they were in for some relaxation.

  Rising in his stirrups, Hadrian gazed across the open land. Aside from the road they followed and the mountains in the distance, Hadrian didn’t see a soul, city, or village. “So what’s to stop me from roping one and taking it home?”

  “Aside from the horse itself, you mean?” Royce asked.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Nothing really. Unless you’re caught, in which case you’ll be hanged.”

  Hadrian smirked, but Royce wasn’t looking. “If caught, we’d be hanged for most of what we do.”

  “So?”

  “So, this looks nicer. I mean…” He gazed at the few puffy, white clouds, which cast fleeting shadows over the hills. “This place is incredible. It’s like we crawled out of a sewer and wandered into paradise. I’ve never seen so many shades of green before.” He looked down. “It’s like our Medford grass is sick or something. If we have to steal, why can’t we take horses for a living? Got to be easier than climbing trellises and towers.”

  “Really? Ever try grabbing a wild horse?”

  “No—you?”

  “No, but explain to me how a man on a horse catches a riderless horse. And a Maranon one at that. In a land of endless rolling hills, there’s no place to trap them. And even if you were to catch one, what then? There’s a difference between a wild horse and an unbroken one. You know that, right?”

  In one of the back corridors of his mind, Hadrian recalled having heard something like that, but he hadn’t remembered until Royce brought it up. Horses born on farms were raised around people. They weren’t trained and didn’t take to having folk hop on their backs any more than a dog would, but they were still relatively tame.

  “Got just as much chance with a wild horse as you would have saddling a stag.”

  “Just an idea,” Hadrian said. “I mean, how long will we do this for?”

  “Do what?”

  “Steal.”

  Royce laughed. “Since I teamed with you, I hardly ever steal. Annoying really. There’s a certain beauty in a well-done theft. I miss it.”

  “We stole that diary.”

  Royce turned to give Hadrian a pitying look and a sad shake of his head. “That’s not theft; it’s petty pilfering. And now this. The idea of preventing someone from assassination feels…”

  “Dirty?” Hadrian asked.

  Another look, this one baffled. “No. It feels wrong, like walking backward. Seems simple enough in theory, but it’s awkward. I’m not even sure what they want me to do. Am I expected to talk to this woman, this walking target? Don’t usually chat with the soon-to-be dead.”

  In three years, this was the most Royce had ever said while riding. The angry tone explained it. Royce hadn’t been this far outside his comfort zone since the Crown Tower debacle. The master thief was rarely off balance, but when he was, Royce became chatty.

  “She’s noble,” Royce went on. “I don’t like nobles. Always so full of themselves.”

  “Brought up that way,” Hadrian said as if he were worldly.

  Hadrian had known a number of nobles, but they were all Calian, and that was like saying he knew rodents because he’d fed some squirrels. Calian nobles were nothing like those in Avryn. They were more casual, earthy, less pompous, and far more dangerous. Hadrian thought Royce would actually like most Calian nobles, at least until they hugged him. Hadrian had learned early on that Royce Melborn wasn’t a hugger.

  “Exactly.” Royce nodded. “And this one is a woman—a Maranon woman at that.”

  “What’s so different about Maranon women?”

  “Remember that storm on the Uplands near Fallen Mire? The place where the breezes coming across Chadwick slam into the winds coming down off the ridge?”

  “Oh yeah.” Hadrian nodded, remembering a night when neither of them had slept.

  “They’re like that.” Royce waved his hand dismissively at the lush, beautiful countryside that ran as far as Hadrian could see. “Look at
this place. Do people here work hard? Do you think common folk’s mattocks go dull on the rocks in this soil? Or that people go to sleep hungry three nights a week? The serfs on these manor farms live better than Gwen. Now imagine what their nobles are like. I expect this Dulgath woman will be the worst possible sort. Did you know the Province of Dulgath is the oldest fief in Avryn?”

  “Exactly how would I know that?” Hadrian smiled at him, entertained by a talkative Royce.

  “Well, it is,” Royce said, irritated, as if Hadrian had disputed him. “If Albert can be trusted to know the history of the various noble houses, Dulgath was founded around the same time as the Novronian Empire, and the family that rules here is as old as the First Empire’s origins. Most nobles adopt the name of the region they’re given stewardship of, but here it’s the other way around. The Province of Dulgath was named for the people who founded it. So, given that, how entrenched do you think Lady Dulgath’s sense of privilege is? Her family goes back for hundreds of generations. And I have to save her?”

  “Technically, I think they want to know how you would murder her.”

  Royce gave Hadrian a wicked smile. “The hard part, I expect, will be not carrying it out. Having you whispering in my ear not to kill may be of benefit for once.” Royce looked up at the perfect sky stretching far and wide. “There’s no way I’ll get out of here without blue bloodstains.”

  The road forked; A left turn hooked south while their path continued into the distance where the green hills ended at a wrinkle of green mountains.

  Royce paused for a long time, staring down the left branch, which made Hadrian look as well. The road was straight, level, and followed along the skirt of the green ridge toward larger stony mountains tinged blue in the late-morning sun. Minutes passed while Royce continued to stare, and Hadrian became certain his partner had lost his way, something which was more than odd. For three years, Hadrian had never known Royce to lose his inner compass through dense forests, amid fog as thick as a wool blanket, during starless nights, or even in a blinding blizzard. And yet, the thief continued to sit on his horse, staring down that long southern route.

  “Is it that way?” Hadrian finally asked.

  Royce looked up, as if he’d been asleep. “What?”

  “Is that how we get to Dulgath?”

  “Down there?” Royce shook his head. “No—no, that’s not the way. That doesn’t lead anywhere.”

  Hadrian looked at the broad well-worn track marred by the passage of wagon wheels and the half circles of horses’ hooves. “Pretty well traveled for a dead end.”

  Royce smirked, as if Hadrian had made a vulgar joke. “Yes, it most certainly is.”

  Urging his horse to stay on their path, Royce continued to look back at the road more traveled, as if he didn’t trust it. Whatever haunted him, he didn’t say, nor did Hadrian ask.

  When they’d first begun working together, marrying their unique skills for mutual gain, Hadrian had tried on numerous occasions without any luck to pry open the box of Royce’s history. Only near-death brushes—or, as it would seem, the anticipation of meeting Maranon nobles—managed to loosen that lid. Wherever that southern road led, Hadrian wouldn’t learn about it from Royce. The two things he was certain about were that Royce had been down that road and it went somewhere.

  The road they were on went somewhere as well. Up.

  After several hours of silent riding, it narrowed through a series of switchbacks until it snaked into a tight pass beyond which a vista opened onto another world. This one even more beautiful than the one they’d left behind. Wildflower meadows and leafy forests sat beside an ocean, a vast expanse of water that cut jagged coves and bays from massive cliffs. Hadrian guessed they had come to the western edge of Maranon and the start of the Sharon Sea. This was his first time seeing it, but at that distance it looked no different from the eastern oceans. On this backside of Maranon, where the roads were narrower and little more than grass-covered greenways, there were more trees, more streams, and many more waterfalls.

  Tucked inside a space less than ten miles from mountains to sea was a shadow-valley, cozy and snug, dangling its toes in the vast blue that crashed white against a stony point. Castle Dulgath stood on a singular promontory that hooked south like a crooked finger. Built from cliff stone, it blended with the tortured rock except for the straight edges of its towers and its flags flying blue and white.

  “Pretty,” Hadrian said.

  Royce huffed. He pointed to the red berries along the trail. “So are those, but I wouldn’t suggest eating any.”

  The trip down was quick and silent. Royce drew up his hood as they neared the valley’s floor and farms and travelers started to appear. The homes were built of fieldstone, covered with neat, thatched roofs. Often the buildings were multistoried, and always picturesque. The people were darker than those in Melengar: black-haired, olive-skinned, and brown-eyed. Well fed and healthy, they dressed in colorful clothing of greens, oranges, and yellows, a stark contrast with the people of Melengar. There, the poor wore a natural-wool uniform dyed with dirt to a dingy gray. Mud was the pigment of the north, but the south delighted in color.

  Heads turned and friendly faces looked up at them as they passed. Royce never paused, never slowed. Once, he urged his horse to a trot when a man said “Hello,” which sounded like yellow in the Maranon accent. Hadrian, on the other hand, smiled and returned waves, especially from pretty young women.

  “We should move down here,” Hadrian said.

  “Our contacts are up north. I know my way around better, and we have resources and a reputation. Down here, we’d be starting from scratch and working blind. We don’t even know the laws.”

  “But it’s pretty.”

  Royce glanced back. “You said that already.”

  Hadrian spotted another young woman, this one with painted eyes. She smiled at him. “It’s gotten prettier.”

  They traveled down the road through dappled shade and to the songs of peeping tree frogs. Before long, the sounds of wagon wheels and conversation replaced the frog calls as Royce and Hadrian reached a cluster of buildings. Rounding a bend, they entered into a proper village with candle shops and cobblers. Buildings here displayed tiled roofs, glass windows, shutters, and eaves. Moss covered old foundations, and thick ivy climbed chimneys and wreathed windows. The grassy trail became a stone-covered broadway where it passed through the village, although it was difficult to see the road, given the crowd gathered upon it.

  Men and women clustered in the village square—an open market where merchants and vendors might set up displays to sell buttons, copper kettles, and the day’s fresh catch of fish. Instead, a crowd surrounded a large smoking pot suspended over an open fire. At first, Hadrian thought the two of them had stumbled on a festival. He imagined being welcomed to a communal picnic, but he didn’t smell any food. Instead, he smelled the gagging stench of boiling tar. In the middle of the throng of townsfolk, a dozen angry men held an elderly fellow with his wrists bound behind his back. They led him past four sacks of feathers toward the cauldron of bubbling tar.

  “We should do something,” Hadrian said.

  Royce lifted enough of his hood to see him clearly. “Why?”

  “Molten tar can kill an old man.”

  “So?”

  “So, if we don’t do something, they’ll kill him.”

  “How is this our problem?”

  “Because we’re here.”

  “Really? That’s your argument? We’re here? Haven’t won too many debates, have you?” Royce looked around. “You’ll notice we aren’t alone. The whole village is in on this. That poor bastard is probably a criminal—a poisoner of children, torturer of women—maybe a cannibal.”

  “Cannibal?” Hadrian shook his head. “Honestly, the way you think. It’s—”

  “Practical? Sensible?”

  “Sadistic.” Hadrian pointed. “Royce, look at his cassock. The man is a priest.”

  Royce scowled. “Worst
sort of criminal.”

  Faces had turned their way. People were pointing at the pair of strangers watching them from horseback. Hadrian, and his three swords, received the most attention. The crowd quieted, and four of the bigger men from out front approached and stood boldly before them.

  “Who are you?” the biggest one asked. Shoulder-length hair didn’t quite hide the bull neck that was nearly as wide as his head. Broad jaw, wide nose, eyes sunk deep beneath an eave of brow, he narrowed his eyes into a quarrelsome glare and then cracked the knuckles on two massive hands.

  Hadrian grinned and introduced himself by name.

  Royce cringed.

  “No reason not to be friendly.” Hadrian said while dismounting. Then more quietly he said to Royce, “What difference does it make? We aren’t doing anything illegal.”

  “Not yet,” Royce whispered back.

  Hadrian stepped forward and offered his hand to the four men.

  None took it.

  “You a knight?” the bullnecked man asked.

  “Me?” Hadrian chuckled. “No.”

  “Probably another vagabond lord here to freeload after the funeral.” This was said by the slightly shorter gent to Bull Neck’s right, the one whose friendly orange tunic undermined his efforts to appear menacing. Another of the four, who liked his hair short but didn’t know much about cutting it, nodded his agreement.

  “Maybe they’re from the church? Seret and Sentinels consider anyone who doesn’t bend a knee at Novron’s altar a heretic,” said a man standing in the back.

  “Well, whoever you are,” the bullnecked man said, “you shoulda brought more men with you if you plan to stop us from feathering Pastor Payne.”

  Hadrian let his shoulders droop. “Actually, we don’t—”

  “Need more men,” Royce broke in.

  Hadrian turned to look at him. “We don’t?”

  “No,” Royce confirmed. “But they do.” He rose up in his stirrups and waved for the other men who were holding Pastor Payne to come forward. “C’mon up here. Your friends are going to need your help.”