The Lord Mythos kept talking, unaffected by the magic swirling around them. “In the time of the dragons, men had to form strange bonds. And when the dragons were finally bound, we were forced to stay near them to keep them ever held in our thrall. The Dragonblooded of the mountains – people like you with violet eyes, and often with pale blond hair – and the people of the plains and sea with their dark skin and curls. They made blood-oath together, formed the five cities and vowed to keep our promises together. For every year, to renew the bond and keep the dragons captive, the blood of a Dragonblooded must be spilled.”
Marielle clenched her jaw as he spoke. She didn’t believe the old legend about the dragons. Everyone knew the cultures had melded and that the five cities had been formed and everyone knew that someone died for tradition every year, but no one really believed those tales about dragons. They were just things people had made up a long time ago to justify how they did things. They were no more real than the stories of Queen Mer or Byron Bronzebow. Tales for children to teach them bigger things. Tales to delight or horrify. Tales to explain the inexplicable. But not truth. Never close to truth.
Probably, they’d executed a criminal the first time they “sacrificed” the “lady” or perhaps it had been some barbaric way to force one group under the heel of the other. It had been so long since the first time no one knew what really had happened, and no one had to be told that the official story was just that ... a story. Something interesting for the religions to talk about and paint on their walls or set in glass. Nothing of real value to anyone.
Nevertheless, he’d asked her if she was Dragonblooded when he met her. He mentioned it again now. That was worrying.
The staircase curved around something and then began to head downward again, skirting more large gears wreathed in shadow.
“I thought you already had your dragon sacrifice,” she said through gritted teeth.
“We do,” he said. “Sold of her family’s free choice. We are below the Sunset Tower right now. Below the spot where she awaits her service.”
Marielle felt a stab of pity mixed with horror. Above them, some poor girl waited, knowing that her family had sold her like an ox to be slaughtered. It could just as easily be her. That was what Lord Mythos was hinting. Did anyone mourn that girl? Was there anyone out there who wished it didn’t have to be this way? Anyone other than Marielle?
Even in her magic-drunk state she felt torn by the thought of the unknown girl. A tiny voice in the back of her head suggested that if she was so troubled, then why didn’t she offer to switch places with her? The rest of her mind received that advice with trembling fear, begging Marielle to ignore it.
“Then why have you brought me here?” Marielle asked and she was proud of herself that her voice did not shake with fear, though her chin trembled a little.
“There is magic missing.”
“Missing? Are you suggesting there has been a theft? Of magic?”
“I’m suggesting that somewhere in the city someone is performing magic and that what he or she is doing has drawn some from the supply I have built here. We siphon it off carefully and store it for the needs of the city, but magic is drawn to magic.” That explained the way his magic seemed amplified around this other magic. “And so, some has escaped its confines and gone to find that other magic. I think someone wants to steal more from my store. And that cannot be allowed to happen, or the next time that a tidal wave threatens the city I will not have the power to turn it aside. The next time a fire rages and homes and people burn, I will not have the magic to quell the fires. The theft of the grimoire in the Library – by someone in the Alchemist’s guild. Did I mention that they turned it in for their prize? And the attempt to break into the Seven Suns Palace – these things are all tied to what I am sure is a plot to steal the rest of the magic from this store.”
They had finally reached the end of the stairs – Marielle thought that perhaps they were just a little lower than ground level – and now the magic was so strong that the scent made Marielle reel and cling to the wall. She felt as though she might be sick.
“And now we reach the spine of the dragon. See his scales where your boots stand on the floor?” the Lord Mythos asked.
Oddly, the stone here did almost look like scales – if dragon scales were twice the size of Marielle curled in a ball. But rock often formed strange shapes and patterns and the room was small, much smaller than she would have imagined, though by the echoes the ceiling was very high. Dark stains splashed over the slick rock of the ‘scale’ puzzling Marielle for a half-a-heartbeat until the smell of old blood rose up from them.
“And this is where you slaughter your sacrifice,” she said coldly.
“One could say so. Follow me.”
He led her to the other side of the room where a railing was set up even though the wall was only an arm’s width away.
“Look down,” he said as they reached the rail and suddenly the reason for the rail seemed to make sense.
The floor fell away in an arch as if the rock were rounded and this wall didn’t quite meet the rounded arc of the rock. In the narrow drop between them, a bright light filled the space revealing a drop so far down that Marielle could not see the bottom.
Magic swirled heavy in the air – so heavy that Marielle was almost blinded by the scent, but underneath it was something else – something faint, something she couldn’t quite place.
“I know that Scenters can’t see colors,” the Lord Mythos said. “So trust me when I tell you that the light you see in that crevice is bright red. It’s the breach in the dragon’s scales and the way to tap his magic. It’s the wound that must be kept open by the added sacrifice.”
Marielle had heard of something else that might explain an open, roiling bright wound like that. Something else could explain the way it felt hot and the way that the rock around it was smooth and dark. She had heard tales of volcanic openings before. She was not such a fool as to think that they were wounds in the back of a dragon. Everyone knew they were made of lava bubbling and boiling from the belly of the earth.
“And I am showing you this,” the Lord Mythos said, “to help you in your investigation of the crimes in our city. Because if you fail to solve this crime – if for some reason the Lady Sacrifice is not sacrificed on Summernight, or if so much magic is drawn away that her sacrifice is not enough, then I want you to know that I care more about this city than anything else. Do you understand that, Marielle?”
The gleam in his eye was hypnotizing, like looking into the eye of a snake.
“Yes,” Marielle said, her head whirling from the scent of magic and her vision swimming with it.
“And I know exactly where I can find a backup sacrifice, Marielle.”
A wash of cold ran over Marielle as his meaning penetrated through the fog of her magic-drunk mind.
“And I’ve been told that Variena – that’s the name of your mother, isn’t it? – is open to negotiating a price for just about anything. I wonder what her price would be for your blood?”
Marielle did not know, but she was just as certain as Lord Mythos was that with Variena, anything could be negotiated for the right price. Something pulled at her like a string leading from her belly to the floor and it felt as if all her blood was rushing to her feet.
For the second time in the week of Summernight, Marielle’s consciousness fled, and she dropped heavily to the floor.
19: Byron Bronzebow
Tamerlan
By the blood of the dragon, move!
Byron was yelling in Tamerlan’s head – as if he had any control over his own body. Ha! He was nothing but a ghost haunting his own body.
Byron leapt from the gondola, grabbed the top of a pole held by the surprised gondolier beside them, swung in a full arc from the pole, his feet slicing through the air like a knife, and then rolled into a flip while airborne to land on a third gondola. His feet slapped on the wood of the boat as he ran from stern to nose, kicked up on the
bow and leapt to the peak of the ferro, balancing there for the barest sliver of a second before kicking off to summersault forward through the air to land on the deck of a houseboat pulled against the canal wall.
They were going the wrong direction! They needed to go to the palace! This was their only chance to get through those doors with an invitation in hand. No guards to stop them. Nothing to turn them around!
First, we right this wrong.
What wrong?
He was already scrambling up the sheer stone face of the canal wall, his fingers and toes finding cracks to climb that he hadn’t even known were there.
He reached the top of the wall, climbed onto the street rail and began to run down the narrow rail with the balance of an acrobat, sprinting into the darkness in the exact opposite direction he wanted to go. What could possibly be down here?
This.
Below him were two Watch Officers. One of them – a red-headed woman with short hair – seemed familiar. They both held axes in their hands, grim expressions on their faces.
In front of them, a Waverunner family boat filled with water while the family desperately tried to pull chickens and heirlooms and bedding from the boat as the water filled it. They hung from the sides of another house-boat, the people in the second boat all speaking in a loud jumble while someone wailed at the top of her lungs.
“It’s our home! Don’t you understand?”
The red-headed guard was speaking. “You are hereby in violation of City Law 214-a stating that all boats in the City of Jingen shall – ”
Tamerlan’s mind was flooded with a much louder voice.
SEE? Injustice! They take from these people their homes and livelihood. Those are The Forerunners of the Retribution!
We just called them Waverunners.
The sacred people of Queen Mer. They are relentlessly peaceful. Killing them or taking anything from them used to be a crime punishable by death!
They weren’t the only people who had been pulled up to the small jetty where the City Watch Officers stood. A small craft that looked like a gondola but was smaller, narrower, and sleeker was pulled to one side and the other guard held up a writhing boy who stood on the deck of the sleek craft a long oar in his hand.
Tamerlan leapt from the wall, landing between the guards.
“Unhand the boy!”
“On whose authority?” the red-headed woman asked, her eyebrow arching arrogantly.
“The authority of the Real Law,” he said. Where was Bronzebow getting this stuff? He sounded like a story.
“We’re the law around here,” the redhead said coolly. “There’s no room for the boy on that houseboat. Take him to the Watch House.”
“Please!” the boy begged. He was maybe fourteen or fifteen. “If I leave the water I can never return. Please!”
“You should have thought of that before you forgot to pay your watercraft tax,” the guard said, pulling at the boy.
Tamerlan’s jaw snapped shut and he gritted his teeth as his fist balled at his side.
No! This was a bad idea! Don’t do it!
And then his fist crashed into the guard’s jaw and the guard’s hand dropped the boy at the same moment that the houseboat suddenly sunk the last few inches into the canal with a loud glop.
The guard cursed, but he wasn’t fast enough. Tamerlan grabbed his truncheon from his belt with one hand, seizing his cloak with the other and pulling it over his head before whacking him hard on the skull with the truncheon.
There was a moan of pain and then Tamerlan spun just in time to duck under the swinging fist of the red-headed guard. She spat at him, drawing a wicked knife from her belt, but he shoved the other guard at her so hard that they both staggered over the edge of the jetty and into the murky canal water.
“Boy!” the boy was calling him, gesturing urgently. He was small and thin, his skin covered by nothing but a pair of baggy breeches tied around the waist with a bit of red rope. “Come on, boy, before they get you!”
“Be safe on your way, good citizen!” Tamerlan said, rolling his eyes internally. No one talked like that. No one.
I do.
But as Tamerlan straightened, chest thrust out, a look of satisfaction filling his face, the guards began to pull themselves back up onto the jetty.
“You’d better not be there when I get up on shore,” the red-head warned, ringing her watch bell above her head.
From the distance a second bell replied. Reinforcements were on the way.
“Come on!” the boy called. “They get you and you’ll be locked up till they send you sinking!”
And he was right. A favorite execution style was to tie a man to a rock and sink him into the river.
Tamerlan shivered.
He shivered. Not Byron Bronzebow.
The blood drained from his face and his head was suddenly light. He knew it was bad that he hadn’t managed to breathe a full lungful of the smoke.
The Legend had already fled his mind.
He looked around, frantic as the first guard climbed wetly up the side of the jetty, throwing murderous looks at Tamerlan. With a half-disguised yelp, he dashed to the boy’s boat and leapt aboard.
“Hurry!” he called.
“That’s what I’m, saying, boy!”
They darted into the night, the craft so fast that every stroke of the boy’s oar took them four times further than any other boat.
“Your names and faces will be on every Watch House notice board in Jingen!” the redhead called. “Justice will be served!”
They skimmed along the water, heading toward the river, dodging spills of colored lights along the way. With so much traffic, their boat was soon lost in the shoals of gondolas going to and from parties all over the city.
The boy clung to the shadows, even shooting the locks along the canal like rapids in a river, ignoring the shouts and raised fists of the lock workers. From the spine of the dragon where the Seven Suns Palace was to the river, it was all ‘downhill’ but even still it was a wild ride when they shot over a full lock into one already at the lowest point, the bottom of the boat slapping the water when it hit.
Tamerlan clung to the ferro at the front of the little boat, stretched out across it like a rug along the floor. The boy seemed to know where he was going. All Tamerlan could hope was that he really did.
Nothing had gone according to plan and now he had only two nights left to try to save Amaryllis before it would be too late.
20: Scent of a Name
Marielle
It had been gray the morning that Marielle’s mother had taken her to live in the Scenter Academy. Marielle’s emotions had been the spring green of anticipation, leaving a taste on her tongue like cilantro. Her mother’s had been the soft pink and orange blossom of infatuation.
“Why can’t I stay with you,” Marielle had asked.
“You’re a big girl now, honey frog. You’re big enough to learn and grow. Scenters have good lives. Useful careers. You have more options. You won’t have to live behind a red door.”
“But you aren’t going to live behind a red door for much longer, are you?” Marielle had said.
“Not if Hez’ng does what he promises,” her mother said with a smile, the melting pink of her scent, sweet as honey cakes, drifting through the air.
“Why do you love him so much?” Marielle asked. “Jazmeer’s mama says he is not a nice man.”
“Oh, honey frog, we can’t choose who we love. Someone who other people might think is bad could be just the right fit. Someone other people can’t see as precious might be just life and water to you. You just see the good in them, the human part no one else can see, and you just can’t live without it.”
“But you can’t bring me with you when you go live with him, can you?”
“The Scenters will be good for you, honey frog,” Varienna had said, kissing Marielle on the forehead. Her scent told Marielle that her mind was already back on Hez’ng and the future they would have together.<
br />
Marielle had gone to live with the Scenters, but the next time she saw Varienna that scent was gone, and the red door was back. And Varienna never spoke again of love – or at least not in connection to herself.
MARIELLE STRAIGHTENED her tunic for the third time as they waited at the door of The Copper Tincture. She still felt rumpled, hours after dressing and hitting the streets with Carnelian.
“Remind me again why I found you in bed still dressed like a partier?” Carnelian asked with a smirk.
Marielle blushed. She’d fallen asleep in the pretty dress when she’d stumbled home and cried herself to sleep. There was no hiding from fate in Jingen. She of all people knew that. There was nothing a Scenter couldn’t sniff out, nothing the Watch couldn’t unearth, no place that rumor did not touch or that prying eyes did not see. If, in just two days time, the chosen Lady Sacrifice was not killed and her blood sprinkled on those warm rocks Marielle had seen, then they would come for Marielle. And there would be no stopping them.
She had shivered all night from the cold and from that thought, tossing and turning, sweating with fear and horror. All these years, she’d known what they did to girls on Summernight. All these years, she’d tried not to think about it, but it was coming for her now – or it would if anything happened to stop the sacrifice of the girl they’d bought in the countryside.
Had she been sleeping like Marielle? Had she been tossing and turning in her bed as the hopes and dreams bled out of her long before the life did? Had she cried every tear until even tears abandoned her? Marielle had clung to the sweaty sheets, shaking like a leaf, knowing right down to her bones that there was no way she could hide from this and no way she could outrun it. If she failed to keep the Lady Sacrifice safe from whoever was stealing this magic, then she was going to die in just two days.
“Remind me again why we’re out during the daytime when we are on Night Watch?” Marielle replied. She was too tired to let Carnelian push her around. She hadn’t slept a wink last night.
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