Centaur of the Crime: Book One of 'Fantasy and Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 1) (18 page)

“Since we travel together, yes. There are several Fayleene princelings, of which only one is chosen as heir. I shall not be chosen, due to my lack…of a certain quality.”

I stretched a kink out of one leg and let out a wry laugh.

“Well then, Liam, welcome to Team Outcast. What quality do your Fayleene brethren say you lack?”

Liam looked down and pawed the forest floor.

“Of all the Fayleene race, I’m the only one…who is unlucky.”

Galen’s jaw dropped. I didn’t say anything at first, but inwardly, I groaned.

Just my rotten luck.

The sole damned reason that Thea had sent us out here in the first place was to get someone to change that luck around. We’d lost an entire night and change. We’d been chased and attacked by dragons, survived by the skin of our teeth, and it’d all been for nothing.

That thought stopped me in my tracks.

All for nothing? So sure, are we? Maybe not.

“You know, Liam, I’m not sure I agree with what the other Fayleene say.”

“It is true,” he admitted. The princeling tilted his head, with its grossly asymmetrical antlers, in my direction. “We Fayleene do not shed our antlers. I baited a freshly hatched dragon when I was a fawn.”

“Princeling, dragonets are nothing to fool with,” Galen intoned.

“I know that now. The young dragon gave chase. My horn got tangled in the underbrush. Then broken as I made my escape.”

“But you did get away,” I pointed out. “And last night, you helped me escape, too. That was very brave.”

He sighed. “From your lips, to a doe’s soft ears.”

“You may have given us another break, as well,” I added. “Galen, can we go take a look at the two dragon’s bodies?”

“Of course,” he replied. Galen led the way downslope, through a portion of the forest that hadn’t caught fire. “I must caution you, your usual methods of ‘investigation’ are out of the question here. We have no gloves that will spare you the burn of a dragon’s blood.”

“Don’t worry, I wasn’t exactly planning on performing an autopsy.”

We came up to the first dragon’s corpse. It stank, but in a completely different way from the typical stages of decomposition I’d been used to. It smelled organic, but sulfurous. Like a pack of struck matches mixed with a handful of charcoal dust.

My sword still protruded from the animal’s shattered eye. Careful not to get any more ichor on my hands, I grasped the handle and pulled the weapon free with a liquid
squirp
. To my astonishment, the blade looked pitted and scarred, as if someone had dunked the metal in a strong acid.

“Now you see why I advised against an autopsy,” Galen said, as I tossed the ruined sword away. “But I grasp the thread of your thought. As a matter of fact, I had anticipated it.”

He rummaged around in his saddle bag, and then pulled out a pair of large bronze circlets. Though pitted with acid and etched by fire, I recognized each circle as the dragon’s bracelets. Liam came over and sniffed at the bronze pieces curiously as I turned them in my hands. They were identical.

On one side, a series of runes had been drawn in such a way as to form a shield-shaped pattern. Next to it were a series of words, written in text that even I could read.

Property of the Royal Stables of King Benedict.

“These were Andeluvian dragons,” I breathed. “What Duke Kajari called weapons of last resort.”

“Yes,” Galen said sadly, “it explained why they were so single-minded in their attempts to destroy us. They’ve been trained to do this.”

“I don’t understand this at all,” complained Liam. “I thought you were trying to find out who murdered the king of Andeluvia!”

“Apparently, someone doesn’t like that. And if they can kill us, or keep us out of action for two more days, they’ll win this thing yet,” I noted. I rotated one of the circlets to look at the shield shape again, and then tossed it back to Galen. “I don’t suppose you can read that rune pattern?”

“As a matter of fact, I can.” Galen said. “It’s the identity of the person who owned both of these dragons.”

“Who?”

My expression darkened as I heard the name.

Chapter Twenty

Riding a centaur isn’t as fun as you might think.

I clung tightly to Galen’s shoulders with both hands, trying my best not to get thrown as he galloped along at full speed. Once we left the tangled, half-torched remains of the Fayleene woods behind, the centaur pushed himself to his limit to get us to the palace as quickly as possible. The wind squeezed my eyes shut, so I just hung on and lost track of the time. Luckily, the Fayleene princeling was able to keep pace with very little effort.

Under Galen’s jacket, I could feel the deep throb of his heart. The centaur’s scent had elements of sweaty human, sweaty equine. An underlying tinge of exotic spice wafted from the many small pockets that dotted his outfit. My wrists had begun to throb in time with the bone-jarring cadence of Galen’s gait when he came to a stop in a clatter of hooves on cobblestone.

“We have returned, Dayna.” Galen said, in a tired voice.

I raised my head and felt the creak of stiff muscles in my neck. We’d arrived back on the emerald-green expanse of the palace’s inner courtyard. A small crowd of courtiers had already gathered, pointing and gesturing at us. Well, perhaps not at ‘us’ so much as at Prince Liam. The little Fayleene stood calmly, nobly ignoring the excited murmurs of the people around us.

I got down from Galen’s broad back with the grace of a small child scrambling down the side of a haystack. I stood cautiously. My legs felt like twin stockings stuffed with cottage cheese.

“So, outworlder, you have come back to us!”

I winced at the loud, self-righteous voice of the Master Seer. I did my best to ignore him as I removed a leather-wrapped bundle from one of Galen’s saddlebags. Once I had it tucked under my arm, I faced the old man as he crossed the courtyard to stand before me.

“Yes, I’m back,” I said. “Despite your prophecy of doom, too. Maybe you ought to get your crystal ball polished, Master Zenos. It doesn’t seem to be seeing all that clearly.”

Galen said nothing, but he added a snort of contempt to accent my words.

“Really?” The seer’s ratty blue robe rustled as he jabbed his staff towards us. “So why do you both look singed around the edges?”

“Our scorched aspect comes from defeating a pair of dragons in combat, and sending them back to the pit that spawned them,” Galen said tartly.

“Precisely,” Zenos said, crossing his arms smugly. “I predicted that gruesome death awaited you once you left Benedict’s walls. That’s just what happened, is it not? I am never wrong!”

“Yeah, I’m sure that little jingle plays well around the palace,” I said, waving him off.

“Ignore me at your peril, woman. I see more pain and strife in your future. I see races in the dark. Treachery. Treason. Blades, beaks, and talons. And at the end of all your struggles? I see the bars of the palace dungeon.”

“Enough with your caterwauling, old man!” Galen snapped.

“You cannot deny your fate, future ruler and deposed king of the centaurs!”

Galen’s face went beet red. He spluttered something under his breath as his fists clenched into miniature boulders of white-knuckled rock. He took a single step towards Zenos before I moved between the two.

“That’s enough!” I said, directing most of my ire at the Seer. “You know, Zenos, in my world, you’d be the guy wandering the streets, wearing a sandwich board that says ‘The end of the world is nigh’.”

“I do not fear you,” he said primly, brandishing his staff in one liver-spotted hand. “I am no wizard, but with a word of command, my staff of stunning would grant you oblivion for the rest of the day!”

“You don’t need a staff to do that,” I said. “You just keep droning on with your talk of doom. That should do the trick.”

With that parting shot, we turned away from the Master Seer and walked towards the palace entrance. I heard a chuckle from Liam as we left Zenos behind, still prophesying dark things for each of us.

“Charming fellow,” remarked the Fayleene prince.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “If by ‘charming’, you mean ‘annoying’.”

This time, a pair of Royal Guardsmen opened the doors into the palace’s meeting hall. With Liam and Galen flanking me, I stepped into the narrow room. The long wooden table that ran the length of the room had a full complement of nattily attired lords and ladies, each engaged in debate. Duke Kajari sat at the end of the table, looking like a bored referee.

The conversations cut off as if someone had flipped a kill switch. People glanced contemptuously at me and the centaur, and then stared in surprised wonder at the Fayleene. Kajari stepped into the gap of silence, filling the room with his rich, throaty voice.

“You have fulfilled your mission given to you by the Head of Parliament,” he intoned. “Fortune smiles upon you indeed.”

“The mission given to me by Albess Thea was fulfilled,” I said, raising my voice to make sure it carried down the hall. “Prince Liam of the Fayleene joins us in the hunt for Benedict’s murderer.”

Liam stepped forward and gave that same damnably cute bow of his. I waited a moment for that statement to ripple through the crowd. I spotted Captain Vazura’s goateed sneer, which hovered right above the gleam of his uniform’s chain mail vest.

His patron, Lord Behnaz, didn’t seem to be present. But the rotund lord’s hawk-nose wife was. She sat across the table from the Captain, clad in a flowing black gown of some velvet fabric. The sharp glances she threw my way could’ve chipped ice.

“Benedict’s murderer has not been idle,” I said. “On the way to the land of the Fayleene, the wizard and I were attacked by a pair of dragons. We had no choice but to slay them, or we would have ended our journey right then and there.”

Boy, if I thought I had the crowd’s attention before, I really had them now. Hushed murmurs ran like lightning along the people at the table. Kajari waited a moment for the voices to die down, and then spoke.

“This is a serious matter. It has been a score of years since wild dragons dared to attack anyone within the borders of Andeluvia.”

“Wild?” I undid the package I carried with one hand. “This wasn’t some random encounter. The two dragons came from someone’s private stable.”

And with that, I tossed the pair of thick bronze circlets out on the table. They made a piercing
clink
as they landed, almost as if the metal had cried out in pain. A collective gasp came from the nobles closest to the circlets. They could read the runes as easily as the court wizard.

“These dragons had been trained for combat from birth. They damn near did their job before Galen and I put them down. And I’d like to know why they carry the markings of Captain Vazura’s wing of the Air Cavalry.”

A massive rumble of chatter.

“Treachery!”

“Could it be? She’s an outworlder!”

“They tried to kill her and the wizard, too.”

Kajari had to raise a hand to restore silence. His eyes glinted like slabs of blue slate as he stared at Vazura. For his part, the Captain looked resigned.

“Captain Vazura, explain yourself!” Kajari demanded. “How is it that a pair of combat trained dragons left your stable? How is it that they happened to attack the woman we summoned, specifically to shed light on the Good King’s killer?”