Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps

by Shannon McGee

I squelched back to my room, ignoring the laughs and ribbing I received from those that shared my floor. Normally I’d have given as good as I got, but at the moment my teeth were chattering too badly to form a single retort.

  Belinda stuck her head out her door at the noise. Seeing me, she grinned wryly. “All right, Taryn? Need me to nip that cold in the bud?”

  I liked Belinda well enough, as far as mages went. She wasn’t pushy when it came to magic, and she was younger than many of the others in the company, which made her easier to talk to. Still, I waved her off, stuttering, “N-n-no. I’m f-f-fine. I just n-need to change.”

  Inside my room, I stoked the fire up high, shed my wet outer layer, and dove straight under my blankets. My skin was clammy, and I was practically convulsing with shivers. Aella hadn’t been around for several hours, or I’d have begged her to fetch me a tea. As it was, I had no plans of moving until midday.

  Those plans were diverted by a knock at my closed door. For the commander, knocking was more a formality than anything else, and after a brisk rap, Aedith pushed inside. She took in my wet head, which I had poked curiously out from beneath my coverlet, and the roaring fire.

  The grim set of her face lightened as her lips crooked in something almost like a smile. “Morning practice, Scrap?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I stuttered. “I’ve only just come in from the training yards.”

  She grunted. “Well, get dressed. We’re off to see the guild leaders.”

  “Ma’am?”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “We leave soon. I imagine you’ll not want all your paperwork left until the last minute.”

  I noticed then that behind the commander stood Kaleb and Dai. Kaleb was beaming at me encouragingly over her shoulder. Dai nodded once, his hooded eyes crinkling with a smile, though his lips remained a straight line.

  As the realization of what was happening hit me, a grin broke out over my face, so wide it almost hurt. “Let me get dressed!”

  Aedith nodded curtly and shut the door. Leaping from bed the instant it had closed, I nearly tripped as my foot caught in the mass of blankets behind me. Hardly knowing what I did, I slammed through my drawers, trying to find my best, cleanest outfit. My hair was a soggy mess, barely worth thinking about. Except—

  With shaking fingers, I pulled my shepherd’s harness out of the back of one drawer. The curling flower and vine designs on the leather were as familiar to me as my own hands. This harness had been a gift from my father. It would have matched my shepherd’s crook. However, the crook that I had carved was gone, probably growing moss back in the forests of the Carpathian Mountains.

  The harness held little. Mostly some whittling supplies, though nothing of much use for a real project. All I’d brought with me was some wax and a tool for fine details. I’d been almost finished with my last piece, and I never lugged around more tools in my harness than was necessary back home.

  The harness also held a small vial of sunflower oil. I took a few drops of that now and smoothed it through my wet hair, breathing deeply. The oil had belonged to my mother, and she had given it to me before I left. Wearing it now was like having her standing over my shoulder. My heartbeat slowed. When I opened the door again, I was at least a little more suitably calm and composed.

  “Are you ready?” Aedith asked.

  I nodded. “Lead the way.”

  As she strolled toward the stairwell, Kaleb squeezed one of my shoulders briefly, causing me to pause before I passed him and Dai by.

  “Breathe,” he whispered to me.

  Realizing I hadn’t been, I sucked in a lungful of air and nodded, blushing. “Thanks,” I muttered. His eyes danced, and his white teeth flashed in sharp contrast to his skin as he grinned and nodded back.

  Dai clapped his hands on both of my shoulders then, pressing me into movement once more. “Don’t forget to read the contract in its entirety. It is simple, but it’s a good habit to start now, rather than later,” he said.

  The guild hall leaders were among those who never left Forklahke. They had sleeping quarters over the mess hall, but Aedith took us past those to a thick oak door at the end of the hallway. Firmly, she knocked twice, then rocked back on her heels, and crossed her hands in front of her.

  There was a long pause. I shifted from foot to foot. Dai coughed quietly into a fist. Finally, a severe voice sounded from behind the wood.

  “Come in.”

  Aedith led us into an office. My first thought was that it was too warm. I’d already been sweating from nervousness. Once inside I feared I’d begin to show it under my arms. My next thought was that it was musky. A quick look around the room showed why. The office’s walls were covered in books, more than I had ever seen in one place. Michael would have been in raptures. I blinked and turned my focus away from the shelves.

  A long oak table sat across the room, by a window that faced the back wall of the fort. I knew from stories Aella had told me that this was where the leaders of the guild sat all together to make judgments on matters of great importance. Today, one woman sat there facing us. She looked wrinkled, weathered, and stern. She was also inspecting me.

  “It’s Taryn, isn’t it?” This had been the voice we had heard out in the hallway. She glared through crescent spectacles perched on the end of her thin nose.

  I nodded before I realized that she expected me to answer. I cleared my throat. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She seemed to take note of every inch of me, from my wet head to my muddy boots. She sniffed, her nose twitching.

  “My name is Vidalia. I’ll be the notary for the contract you sign today. Don’t hover in the doorway, you’re letting a draft in. Come forward.” She said the last part sharply. After a quick glance backward at Dai and Kaleb, I did as I was told, stepping up to the table.

  With gnarled, sunspotted hands, she spread a thin stack of papers across the table for me to look through. The contract was simple, as Dai had said it would be.

  First and foremost, it renounced my citizenship in Somerlarth, the land in which I had been born and raised. In signing, I gave up my right to petition the king or any noble, including my former liege-lord, as a citizen might. If I wished to officially become a citizen again, with all the rights which that entailed, I would need to go to the capital and make a formal request.

  Second, it bound me to the mercenary guild for a minimum of one year. At the end of the year, I paid my dues to the guild for insurance and winter lodging.

  If I was charged with a crime and the guild viewed me as innocent, they would pay minor fines and bail. If I did anything to dishonor the guild—raped, pillaged, or cheated an employer—and they could prove it, the guild would be obligated to take me to the capital for punishment.

  My mouth twitched in a smile as I read over the part about magic use. It didn’t really apply, since I had none, but I skimmed it anyway. If I had magic and I used magic to commit harm, I fully submitted to being taken before the mage counsel in the capital to take whatever punishment they chose to dole out.

  Vidalia allowed me to peruse the papers for a few moments, and then she rapped the table with her knuckles. “You understand?”

  I jerked my eyes away from the papers to look at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sign.” She thrust a quill at me and shoved an ink pot forward.

  As I scrawled my name across the document between us, disappointment wisped through me. This was the moment I had been waiting for—I was a mercenary at last. I was a part of Twelfth Company, not just as a tagalong, but in writing. I had sort of expected to feel… changed. Most of what I felt, however, was relief. Signing this meant I could stay with Aella and the rest of Twelfth Company. I didn’t have to worry about making my way on my own.

  Embarrassment also tinged the occasion. I was not good at writing with a quill. Back home we had mostly used charcoal or chalk on slate. As such, I ended up making a bit of a mess of the signature. It was blotted and flecked with ink, and not at all as impressive as I had pictured it bei
ng.

  “Aedith.” Vidalia gestured for Aedith to sign under me, to indicate she accepted me into her ranks.

  Vidalia looked over the paperwork when Aedith had signed—her name was a barely legible set of squat lines. Vidalia sniffed. The delicate chains on the arms of her spectacles swayed. “Don’t let me hear of any trouble from you. We don’t need it.”

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  She sniffed again. “I’ve things to do. Aedith, I’ll see you again before you leave.” She had ceased to look at us. She was shuffling my documents in with some of the others on the table and returning the ink pot and quill to their rightful places.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Aedith said, seemingly unperturbed by this sort of dismissal. She performed the smallest of bows at her waist. Dai and Kaleb did as well. I belatedly followed suit.

  When we had closed the door behind us, Kaleb bent down to speak quietly in my ear, “You did great.”

  “It was so simple,” I said. My own voice felt too loud in the hushed hallway.

  Aedith looked back at me then. “What, did you expect to sign in blood?”

  I flushed. “No. I just thought… I don’t know, with the way I came here there might be more to it.”

  “Everyone has a past. We vouched for you. That’s enough for the guild leaders.”

  Thinking of Dai’s previous distrust, I wondered if they all had truly vouched for me, but a glance his way as we walked down the hallway revealed nothing. His back was to me, and not even a tilt of his head betrayed that he was paying the conversation any mind. I supposed if he hadn’t changed his mind, I wouldn’t have been signed, right?

  I looked at Aedith’s face then, and she smiled at me. It was a real, full smile, with no edge—no sarcasm. One of those was a rare sight from her for anyone but her seconds, or her daughter.

  I smiled back uncertainly. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “You know, in Nophgrin you called me Aedith. I wouldn’t be opposed to you doing that again. Out on the job, formalities are fine, but not when it’s just us.” She cleared her throat and looked away. Her hands were propped on her hips. It was moments like this that she looked very much like her daughter.

  She was right, I realized. Some time on the journey to Forklahke, when I’d been afraid she would chuck me out on my ear, I had slipped into the habit.

  I nodded amiably. “All right. Aedith.”

  Seemingly satisfied, she clapped me on the shoulder. “All right, Taryn. Let’s get downstairs. They ought to be serving midday by now.”

  The mess hall had started to fill while we were upstairs. As we reentered the hubbub of the ground floor and noise washed over us, the tension that had filled me in Vidalia’s office began to fade. After a last word of congratulations from each of them, Dai, Kaleb, and Aedith left, in pursuit of food and their own peers.

  Intending to follow them, I unwittingly stepped between Conner and Lucas. They had been waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. With both linking arms with me, they steered me bodily toward a table, not far from the stairs.

  “We saw you go up,” Conner said.

  “What’d you have to go up there for?” Lucas asked.

  “You haven’t gotten into trouble, have you?” That was Conner again.

  “Sign-on contract,” I managed to reply. They were taller than me, and they didn’t stoop down to my level as they walked me across the mess hall. As such, I had to quick step on tip-toes to keep up with them. “No, I’m not in trouble.”

  We had reached the table. Lucas was looking at me with his eyebrows raised high. “You’ve just signed on to stay with us? I’d have thought you’d have done that months ago. Have we been living a lie, you and I, Taryn?” He slapped a hand against his own chest as though he felt pain there.

  I rolled my eyes. “It was a big decision for me. I wanted to be sure.”

  “Yeah, Luke, you dandelion head.” Conner whapped his friend on the shoulder. “Taryn here had options. Don’t you remember? Aella said she has family somewhere toward the capital. You’ve been thinking you might go live with them, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not quite looking him in the face. Better they should think I had been dithering, rather than that Dai had me on a sort of probation. “But I decided I’d be better suited here. Have either of you seen Aella?”

  Both young men shook their heads. Lucas said, “I haven’t seen her since yesterday at supper. You?”

  “I saw her this morning. She was headed for town. She said she had some errands to run.”

  I was a little hurt that she hadn’t invited me along. Unlike some of the mercenaries, we didn’t take many trips in to town. Aella understood that it was still too strange for me to know they saw a mercenary when they looked at me—not a “normal” person like the rest of them. Still, I’d come to look forward to those rare jaunts. We could have gotten lunch at one of the eateries together.

  I shook off the feeling impatiently. We didn’t have to do everything together, and if I had gone along with her, then Aedith wouldn’t have been able to find me. Even so, it would have been nice to share my sign-on with her immediately. She alone knew what a triumph it was for me.

  I tried not to dwell on it. My nose was still drippy, and that wouldn’t have been fun in town, and besides, the boy’s excitement was nice. Even if they didn’t know how much officially joining the guild meant to me. When they offered to fetch my meal, “as a special treat,” I accepted with a laugh.

  While they were in the line, I mulled over what had just happened. My heart strings were still pulling in an anxious sort of way, but I didn’t feel scared. I supposed I was excited for what was to come. Signing on had opened up the door to the rest of the world. The future yawned in front of me, a great wide unknown. Anything was possible now.

  With a few dazed blinks, I realized that someone was standing across the table from me. It was Aella, and she was holding a parcel wrapped in stiff brown paper. Looking uncharacteristically shy, she offered it out to me.

  “Ma said you were to sign on today. I thought this might be nice, once we get on the road.”

  Wordlessly I accepted the gift. It was a little over two hand lengths across and cylindrical. I unwrapped it carefully and let out a small gasp of pleasure at what I found inside.

  “Aella…”

  “I know you had to leave a lot of your whittling supplies behind when you left Nophgrin. Is it all right? I asked Cassandra, because she does this stuff too, and she said these would be good.”

  She had bought me most of the things I had left behind. Neatly contained in a thick piece of canvas that rolled up were a few gouges of different shapes, chisels, and a tiny mallet too. A little pocket held a whetstone for sharpening the blades of the tools. There were even two small blocks, one made of balsa and one of oak.

  My fingers itched to begin shaping them. The last thing I had carved, months ago now, was a miniature lesser gryphon. That had been a gift for my mother, for a birthing day that I had not been present for.

  “I’m sorry. I thought this would be a nice surprise. A sign-on gift. Did I get the wrong stuff?” She broke off, clearly taken aback as I teared up.

  “No,” I whispered. “It’s perfect.” Over her shoulder I noted Conner and Lucas were heading back. Quickly I wiped my eyes. “Really, this is so considerate. Thank you. I love it.”

  “I—”

  “Oh ho! So here you are.” Conner slung an arm over Aella’s shoulder, catching her off guard. In his free hand, he held a steaming tray of some meat-like item and potatoes. “Do you have any idea what you missed while you were out gallivanting in town, wooing the local ladies?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.” She said it mildly, but she didn’t shrug off his arm, so she couldn’t have been truly irritated by her friend.

  “Our Taryn is now a full-blown mercenary.” He set down his tray with a clatter for emphasis.

  “My lady.” Lucas bowed gracefully as he set down his tray at his spot and then my ow
n in front of me.

  I chuckled. “Stop that. As you said, I’m a mercenary now. I’ll have to fight you.”

  “Well now, where did this come from?” Conner plucked my gift from my hands. “You didn’t have this when, we left did you?”

  “No.” I frowned with mock severity, unable to keep my lips from twitching in a small smile. “Give it back.”

  He had unrolled it and whistled, impressed. Lucas moved to look over his shoulder at it and nodded. “This is really nice. If I’d known you had this, I would have asked to borrow it.”

  “I just got it.”

  “I gave it to her,” Aella said.

  She and Conner locked eyes for a moment. He looked thoughtful; she looked more than a little defiant. She lifted her chin and one eyebrow at him—a devastating combination, in my opinion. His smile broadened as he rolled his eyes and looked away.

  “Well, it’s nice. Once you’ve had a chance to break it in I’d love to get a chance to try out some of these before you all head out.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Not really understanding what it was I had just witnessed between my two friends. I grabbed my fork and began to eat. Focusing on my midday rather than dissecting a few looks was probably a better use of my time, anyhow. Anthony was clearly the one cooking today, and I was going to have to pick carefully through the meat portion. My first bite of what I had thought was a piece of potato had turned out to be a full, uncooked shallot.

  Sunlight beat on the crown of my head, pressing down like an iron. They shouldn’t call it light. I thought. There’s nothing light about it. It’s heavy. It should be called sun-dense. Or sun-solid. Sweat tickled as it dripped down my back under my tunic, interrupting that light-headed train of introspection. The Great Road South in spring was as hot as Nophgrin had ever been in the heart of summer.

  We had left Forklahke not long after I had signed my name to the guild, a few weeks into the growing season, though I doubted anyone local to these lands thought of it in such a way. In the weeks that we had spent on the road since leaving Forklahke, the landscape had shifted. Trees thinned, mountains became rolling hill country. The river we had followed to start withered away to a creek and then vanished beneath the earth. Before I knew it, we were amidst great oceans of sand. The only reprieve we found from the blazing sun was in the harsh winds that sent granules whipping across my cheeks.