It was strange to be back here by myself, I thought as I walked through the darkened hallways and breathed in the musty air. It seemed half a lifetime since the day I’d come here asking Salcombe for a loan to help cover Brolian’s debt to a local gang so Carina wouldn’t be forced to sell her share of the shop. Instead, I’d been sent to Lord Tavarian’s estate to steal the first piece of heart. Not knowing the importance of the object, and desperate for cash, I’d done what he’d asked, only to wind up with a newly hatched dragon.
My life has changed in so many ways, I thought as I picked up a vase sitting atop a side table in the hall. Tracing the blue vines that curled over the glossy white china, I recalled that Salcombe had brought the piece back from Ailand, a country in the far east. Most of the art and artifacts in the house came from an expedition, but this had been something I’d seen in the shop window, and Salcombe had bought it when he’d caught me admiring it. He didn’t often show affection, but those small acts of kindness had kept me by his side for much longer than I would have stayed otherwise.
I wonder if he was merely trying to manipulate me into thinking we had a bond, or if he genuinely cared, I thought as I set the vase back down. It didn’t matter now; he was my enemy, and we’d passed the point of no return.
Shaking off the old memories, I climbed up to my old tower room. It was a small room with a single mattress, a chest of drawers, an armoire, and a shelf that had once been filled with books and small finds that Salcombe had allowed me to keep as mementos from past expeditions. Most of the touches in this room that had made it mine were gone—even the bedding had been stripped—but I rummaged through the dressers and came up with the cloth cap I was hoping to find. I’d used it often during my thieving days to hide my distinctive red hair, and I did so now, bundling my hair into a knot at the top of my head and pulling the cap over it. The last thing I needed was for the muncies to give me a hard time—some of them might know I was a fugitive from the military and would be only too happy to haul me up to Dragon’s Table, where I would be detained. Once my hair was secured, I left the house and headed to the market to gather the supplies I’d need for the next week.
It was time to get to work.
16
Since I couldn’t go to Dragon’s Table myself, I sent Lessie up on our second night in the city to warn any dragons who might be up there of the impending invasion. She reported back that four dragons were temporarily staying at the academy stables, but none in the city itself, and that all had taken her warnings seriously.
“Actually, it turns out that they all know about the incoming invaders,” she said as we curled up together in the grass outside Salcombe’s house. The moon was a mere sliver in the cloudy night sky, making it almost impossible for anyone flying overhead to spot Lessie unless they were actively searching for her. “One of them had just returned from scouting the army’s progress. He destroyed a couple of bridges on the way back, which should slow the invaders down a couple of days.”
A couple of days. Not enough to turn the tide of the war, but better than nothing.
The next morning, I returned to the shop to meet Carina, Kira, and Brolian. As I expected, the impending war had caused citizens to tighten their purses, and traffic was lighter today, enabling us to work on stocking the underground cellar. In between customers, Brolian and Kira continued to carefully pack and move pieces underground, while I went to the orphanage to enlist some extra hands. It didn’t take much to convince Miss Cassidy, the orphanage mistress, to lend me a few of her older charges, especially when I flashed a bit of the coin Carina had given me. The four of us went to the market and bought a large supply of dried beans, grains, hams, and other long-lasting foods, which we laid in the orphanage’s cellar. Prices were already beginning to climb, thanks to the rumors swirling about, but I managed to buy enough to last several months. The supply would hopefully feed not just Carina, myself, and the employees, but the orphans as well.
The volunteers, touched by our unexpected act of generosity, asked what else they could do to help. After a moment’s thought, I gave them the rest of my coin and ordered them to use it to buy and distribute supplies to the poor families with children, and help them secure their homes if possible. Starvation was a city’s greatest enemy during a siege…and although it might have been optimistic of me to assume we’d even last long enough to endure a siege, I still wanted to be prepared.
Once I had that sorted, I returned to Salcombe’s house for a shower and to feed Lessie, then headed to bed early. The hot water helped ease my sore muscles some, but as I flopped onto the bed, my back throbbed in protest. The orphans had helped a lot, but I’d still had to pull heavy carts, lift large sacks of grain and beans, and shuffle various art and artifacts of all sizes as we struggled to fit as much food and supplies in the cellar as possible. We’d also had to smuggle in bricks and use them to wall off the supplies so that the invaders wouldn’t be able to find them. Exhausted didn’t even begin to cover it.
Lulled by the softness of my former bed—which was surprisingly comfortable despite its size—I drifted off to sleep. I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to sleep in Salcombe’s house, but Lessie’s solid presence in the garden was reassuring. If anything happened, I could count on her to tear their heads off or char the flesh from their bones.
Who knew that the thought of something so violent could be so comforting?
“Zara.” Lessie’s voice tugged me awake. Part of me wanted to burrow into the pillow and go back to sleep, but the sense of urgency in the bond had me opening my eyes to check my watch. Two in the morning. “I think someone is in the house. I hear movement on the lower floor.”
I bolted upright, completely alert, and slipped my feet into my spelled boots. Creeping to the door, I opened it, my dragon blade in hand. At first, I heard nothing, but as I crept down the winding staircase and through the hallway, I caught the faintest noise of someone rummaging through drawers. The sound grew louder as I rounded the corner, and I paused at the sight of the study door open, candlelight spilling onto the carpet. Could it be that Salcombe had returned? He’d taken all of his dragon lore books, and the city guard had confiscated much of his belongings, but many of his books remained in the house. Was there something of importance here that one of us had missed?
Steeling myself, I approached the open door, prepared for a confrontation with my old mentor. But to my surprise, it wasn’t Salcombe. A hooded figure stood behind the desk, but he was too tall, his shoulders too broad, and the way that he searched the drawers methodically, opening each one, told me he was not familiar with the space. I wondered how he’d gotten in without alerting Lessie.
A shadow moved in the window behind the intruder as Lessie approached the house, preparing to catch the intruder if he decided to escape through the window. The stranger closed the drawer, swearing softly under his breath, and I darted to the side so he wouldn’t see me when he looked up. I held my breath as his footsteps approached, but they stopped before they reached the doorway. I peered around the door to see him scanning the shelves, as if looking for some hidden box or compartment.
He was so intent on his search that I was able to slip behind him easily and press the tip of my dragon blade into his back. “Turn around,” I ordered. “Slowly.”
The man did as I said, and I hid a gasp. It was Red Beard, the leader of Salcombe’s dragon god acolytes! I’d last seen him in the catacombs beneath the death temple, performing some kind of ritual dedicated to the dragon god before he and the other acolytes had drunk the dragon heart elixir. In the light from the flickering lantern, I could see his face clearly—he was a pale-skinned man in his mid-forties, with a thick head of hair the same color as his beard. His hazel eyes narrowed in recognition as he studied my face.
“You know who I am,” I accused, placing the tip of my blade right above his heart. “Tell me who you are, and why you’re trespassing in my home.”
“Your home?” the man said in a haughty tone as
he lifted his chin. “This house is the property of the city government, not some squatter. If anyone is the trespasser, it’s you.”
I opened my mouth to threaten him when he moved, his form blurring. Suddenly he was behind me, and I cursed, remembering the dragon god elixir gave him enhanced speed and strength. Spinning around, I chased after him just in time to see him disappear up the hall through an opening in the wall I hadn’t known existed. I nearly reached the opening when it closed behind him, the edges of the door sliding so seamlessly into place that I wouldn’t have known it was there if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
Cursing, I slid my hands along the wall, searching for the trigger mechanism. It took me nearly fifteen minutes to find it, and by the time I followed the tunnel, which led to a cellar beneath a general store a few blocks away, he was long gone. Furious, I retraced my steps back to the house, then went back to the study with a canvas bag in hand.
“What were you searching for?” I muttered as I emptied the contents of the drawers into the bag. I took the lot with me to my tower room and dumped it out on the bed, then sat cross-legged on the mattress to sort through it. But it was almost completely scholarly correspondence—the locations of certain manuscripts, bills for rare volumes, and so on. I assumed the city guard had already gone through all of this when Salcombe was first unmasked, and left it where it was, having deemed it as useless as it appeared.
It can’t all be useless, I thought. There must be something here.
I finished going through everything and found only one item of interest: a short letter from a treasure hunter whose name I was vaguely familiar with, who had passed away a couple years ago. Your hypothesis regarding the origins of the child checks out, the letter read. A full report will arrive at your doorstep, along with the bill, next week.
I scowled, checking the date. It was written only a month after Salcombe had taken me in. The writer had to be referring to me, and yet why would Salcombe employ a treasure hunter to check into my background rather than a private eye? Or had this man been both? It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of a treasure hunter moonlighting—not everyone was good enough to make a living at this. The letter was sent from Rovin, a small town in southwestern Elantia. Could that place have anything to do with my origins, or was that where this particular treasure hunter had hailed from?
Blood pumping, I rummaged through the letters again, searching for the report, then went back downstairs and tore the study apart. Of course it isn’t here, I thought crossly, slamming a drawer shut with more force than I’d intended. Had Red Beard taken the report? But what would he want with such a thing? It was infuriating to think that the secret of my parentage had likely sat here for over a decade, just out of reach. I’d snuck in here countless times as a teenager and had never suspected.
“At least you have one clue,” Lessie said, trying to console me. “Perhaps when this is over, we can go to Rovin and ask around. Surely there can’t be that many dragon rider families living there if the town is as small as you say it is.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I couldn’t find it in myself to be optimistic. Rovin wasn’t in the path of the invading army, but that didn’t mean it was safe. What if the town was destroyed before I ever got a chance to visit?
Annoyed with my pessimism, I returned everything to its proper place, then began searching through the volumes on the shelves, hoping to find stray pieces of correspondence tucked between the pages of a book. I was so intent on the search that when Lessie called my name again, I barely heard her.
“ZARA!” Her voice reverberated so sharply in my skull that I was hit with an instant headache. “The muncies, at the garden gate!”
“Shit!” I dropped the book and raced up the stairs to my tower room. The front door banged open as I hurriedly shoved my meager belongings into a pack. I rushed to the window, unlatched it, then flung myself through and onto Lessie’s back just as she passed below. From the alarmed shouts, I could tell that more than one of the guards had spotted her.
“Damn,” Lessie growled, and I blinked—it was the first time I’d heard her swear. “Where do we go now? I won’t be able to stay in the garden any longer.”
I didn’t answer right away, my mind racing to come up with a solution as Lessie pushed us higher into the clouds. Unfortunately, it was daylight now, and it didn’t take very long before four large dragons surrounded us on all sides.
“Zara Kenrook,” one of the riders barked, and I nearly fell off my saddle when I saw it was Major Falkieth. The other three were older riders I didn’t recognize, likely from the reserves. “You are wanted by the state for treason, murder, and insubordination. Surrender now and return with us to Dragon’s Table.”
I swallowed hard, fighting against my natural instinct to rebel. “The other dragons say that we were spotted by the lookout,” Lessie said. “They are sorry to have to do this, but they cannot go against their masters.”
“I know.” I patted the side of her neck gently as I met Falkieth’s gaze. “We’ll come quietly,” I said.
The four dragons escorted us back to Dragon’s Table in silence. I tried to catch Major Falkieth’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me. What did she think of me? Did she believe the charges? The idea that she thought I was disgraced struck me with a sudden sense of shame, and it took everything I had to stare straight ahead rather than duck my head. Major Falkieth had been one of my favorite instructors at the academy—as the dragon rider instructor she’d been no-nonsense but friendly, and a lot more practical than some of the other professors. The idea that she thought I was a traitor was almost more than I could bear.
The dragon riders brought us to the stables, where Lessie was immediately herded into a closed compartment. A pair of city guards were waiting, and for a moment, I expected them to drag me off to whatever passed for a jail in the upper city. Instead, they brought me to an underground room on campus that was not unlike my old dormitory room, except it was windowless with heavy bars on the outside of the door.
“You’ll be kept here until your hearing,” Major Falkieth said as I was ushered inside. Her weathered face was set in grim lines, her steely eyes unreadable. “The guards will escort you to the toilet when needed, but otherwise you are not to leave this room under any circumstances.”
“Not even to see Lessie?” I asked, hating the note of desperation in my voice.
“Your dragon will be well cared for,” was all she said.
“Please, Major Falkieth,” I said, and started to explain, but she stepped back, and the guards shut the door. “Come back!” I shouted, pounding on the heavy wood until my hands ached. “I’m not a traitor! Let me out! I haven’t done any of the things they’ve accused me of!”
But no one listened, and the tears that threatened finally spilled, carving hot, salty tracks into my cheeks. Sniffling, I swiped at them, then sat heavily on the edge of my bed. I’d been imprisoned before, back at the Traggaran jail, but even then, when I had been inches away from ending up on the gallows, I hadn’t felt so low. But then again, it had only been my life on the line. Now it was my future, my honor and reputation. I’d done everything I could to help Tavarian, to stop Salcombe, to protect my country, and the idea of being remembered as nothing but a traitor and deserter was too painful to consider.
“Zara,” Lessie said softly. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” I latched onto her voice like a lifeline—my only link outside these walls, though she was trapped too. “Are you?”
“Well enough,” she said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. But annoyance was much better than pain or fear, and I relaxed a little. “They’ve fed me, and I’ve managed not to rip any heads off thus far.”
I laughed a little. “Please don’t,” I said. “They’re just following orders.” The academy staff didn’t deserve Lessie’s wrath.
“The other dragons are asking me questions about your upcoming court-martial,” Lessie said. “They are a bit skeptical, but I might be able to co
nvince them of your innocence.”
“That’s great, but they’re not the ones court-martialing me.”
“Still, if their riders can be persuaded to your side, that may work in your favor.”
I paused, remembering Odorath, Major Falkieth’s dragon. While she wasn’t in charge, having her in my corner might be helpful. “Fine,” I said, flopping onto my mattress as exhaustion washed over me. “Let me know if you make any headway, or if they tell you anything useful.”
Knowing there was no point in torturing myself, I pulled the covers over my head and burrowed deeply. Maybe I could lose myself enough in dreams that when I woke up, I would find that this was all a terrible nightmare.
17
If this was a terrible nightmare, it was a long, boring one. For three days I was kept in the underground chamber, let out only to relieve myself, my meals served to me with dull wooden utensils on wooden trays that were removed the moment I was finished with them. My belongings had been stripped from me once more, so there was no chance of either fighting or breaking my way out.
But if I was honest with myself, I was done fighting. I was done running. It was time to face the consequences of my actions, even if those consequences were unfair and unjust. I’d done everything I could to avoid this, and yet it was coming to pass anyway. I’d just have to present my case and hope for the best.
Though I’d—mostly—come to peace with my own ordeal, I was still anxious for news about the impending attack. Were the Zallabarians close yet? Was the western army racing back to defend the city? I’d pestered Lessie several times, hoping for answers, but she had little to say, and the guard who brought me my food refused to answer any questions.
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