City of Dragons: Volume Three of the Rain Wilds Chronicles (14 page)

“Where is the promised merchandise? You will not get another chance simply to deliver it. Every day that it is delayed will cost you.”

Hest’s outrage at finding someone pawing through his desk abruptly shifted to fear as the man’s hand settled on the hilt of his weapon. Neither he nor Hest spoke for a long moment. When Hest found his voice, the words had no force behind them. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Get out of my house or I’ll summon the City Guard.”

The man looked at him, his gray eyes flat and considering. No fear, no anger. Only evaluation. It was chilling.

“Get out!”

The Chalcedean wheeled away from the desk and its disarrayed contents. As the man started past him, Hest pointed a disdainful hand at the door that still stood ajar. In one fluid and continuous motion, the man seized Hest’s wrist with his left hand as his right drew his blade and cut the captive hand, a long shallow slice from Hest’s palm to the tip of his index finger. Then the stranger released his wrist and sprang back.

Blood sheeted from the long gash and the pain was exquisite. Hest bent over his hand, roaring with pain as the Chalcedean walked over to the window and casually wiped his blade on the curtain. He spoke over his shoulder, unconcerned how Hest might be reacting. “A little reminder not to lie. The reminder not to be late on promised merchandise would be much more severe. More on the scale of the reminder that the Duke’s swordsman gave to me when I was forced to report that I had not received any recent word from either Begasti Cored or Sedric of Bingtown.”

Hest had a tight grip on his wrist, trying to throttle the searing pain that was shooting up into his arm. Blood was pouring from his hand, dribbling off his fingers onto the expensive carpets in the study. He took a breath. “Ched!” he shouted. “Ched! I need help! Ched!”

The door began to swing open, but with a catlike spring the Chalcedean was there, stopping the door before it could open fully. He wedged his body into the opening. “Tea and biscuits! How thoughtful. I’ll take them, and please see we are not disturbed. This is an extremely confidential matter that your master and I are discussing.”

“Sir?” Ched’s querulous tone infuriated Hest.

“Save me!” he shouted as the Chalcedean whirled, his hands full with a tea tray. Without spilling a drop, the man set the tray at his feet and then spun back to shut and bolt the door.

“Sir? Are you all right?” Ched’s confused voice barely reached through the heavy doors.

“No! He’s mad, get help!”

“Sir?”

Before Hest could draw breath, the Chalcedean was standing before him. This time the drawn knife was at his throat. The Chalcedean smiled, stretching his scars. Blood broke out on his lower lip, the injuries were so recent. He spoke in a soft, rational voice. “Tell your slave that you are fine, that we must have quiet and he is to go away. Tell him
now.
” The knife flicked and Hest’s collar was suddenly loose. The sting of sliced skin and flow of warm blood followed a heartbeat later.

Hest gasped and drew breath to scream. The man slapped him abruptly, an open-handed blow to his cheek.

The doorknob rattled uselessly. “Sir? Should I fetch help, sir?”

The Chalcedean was smiling, and the knife was back, weaving a pattern before Hest’s eyes. The man was damnably fast. “No!” Hest shouted as the knife dabbed at the end of his nose, and then, as it went back to the hollow of his throat, “NO, Ched, no! You misunderstood me! Leave us! No disturbance. Leave us!”

The door handle stopped its jiggling dance. “Sir? Are you certain, sir?”

“Leave us!” Hest bellowed as the knife blade traced a line up his throat. “Go away!”

“As you wish, sir.”

And then silence. But still the knife tip rested under Hest’s chin, lifting him up onto his toes, and still his hand burned and throbbed and the blood dripped from his fingers. An eternity passed in that motionless torment, before the Chalcedean abruptly swept his knife to one side. In two swift strides, he was at the door again and hope leaped in Hest that he was going to leave, his mad rampage over. Instead the man stooped and lifted the tea tray. He brought it to Hest’s desk, stepping over his satchel and carelessly sweeping papers from the desktop to set it down. He watched Hest with his cold gray eyes as he flicked up a clean white napkin and wiped his knife on it. It left a scarlet stripe on the linen. He snapped it toward Hest. “Bind your hand. And then it will be time for you to deliver the promised merchandise.”

Awkwardly, Hest wrapped his injured hand. It was agony to put the cloth against the cut. Blood blossomed through the napkin. He drew a ragged breath and swiped his sleeve across his face, feigning that he wiped sweat, not tears, from his eyes. He could not show weakness. The foreigner was mad and capable of anything. His sleeve came away bloody and Hest suddenly realized, “You cut my nose! You cut my face.”

“A tiny jab, the smallest prick of the knife’s tip. Pay no mind to it.” The Chalcedean poured steaming tea into a cup for himself, sniffed it thoughtfully, and then took a sip. “Boiled leaves. I do not understand it, but it does not taste so bad on a chilly day like this one. So. The merchandise. Now.”

Hest retreated on shaking legs. “Truly, sir, I’ve no idea what you are talking about.”

The Chalcedean followed him, teacup in one hand and knife in the other. He herded Hest away from the heavily draped windows and backed him into the corner. Hest’s heartbeat thundered in his ears. The man took a sip of tea and smiled.

“I will listen,” he said conversationally. “For the time it takes me to drink this cup. Then you and my blade will tread the dance of truth.”

“I cannot tell you anything. I don’t know anything.” Hest heard his own trembling voice and did not recognize it.

“Then let us summon your slave Sedric. He was the one, was he not, who struck this bargain with Begasti Cored?”

Hest’s mind raced. Begasti. A balding man with extremely bad breath. “I’ve had dealings with Begasti Cored, but those were in the past. And Sedric is not my slave, he’s my . . . assistant. And . . .” The connection between the names formed in his mind, and suddenly he knew what it was all about. He spoke quickly, his eyes on the hovering knife. “And he betrayed me and ran off with some very valuable scrolls. To the Rain Wilds. He may have struck a bargain of his own with Begasti Cored. The little traitor probably did. I suspect he did a lot of business behind my back and without my knowledge. Sedric is the man you should be speaking to about this . . . merchandise.” Dragon parts. That was what the man expected him to hand over. Dragon liver and dragon blood, bone and teeth and scales. Dragon parts to make medicines to cure the ancient, ailing, and quite probably mad Duke of Chalced. Impossible to obtain, highly illegal dragon parts. What had Sedric dragged him into?

The man drank the last of his tea. He held the empty cup for a moment, and then casually tossed it over his shoulder. It fell on the rug and rolled in a half circle without breaking. Hest’s ears rang, and the room seemed to grow dim. When the man gestured with the razor-sharp knife, Hest could not contain the small sound in his throat. The Chalcedean appeared not to notice. He cocked his head at Hest and smiled like a flirtatious snake. “You will sit now, there, at your desk, and we will tease out a bit more of the truth here. I see it hiding in your eyes.”

“I don’t know the truth. I have suspicions, nothing more.” But the suspicions were rapidly weaving themselves into a logical pattern. Alise and her obsessive study of the dragons. Sedric’s sudden support for her ridiculous Rain Wild expedition to see the creatures. He’d even mentioned Begasti’s name, hadn’t he, in the midst of their last quarrel? Or the one before? Some foolishness about a fortune to be made . . . Hest made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. For the past few years, Sedric had watched him maneuver his way through the trading world. He’d run Hest’s errands, fetched his tea, brushed his jackets, and, yes, warmed his bed. But obviously he’d thought himself better and more deserving than that. He’d thought he was clever enough to cut this little side trade on his own. If he’d only put himself and Alise at risk, Hest might have found it amusing. But as he crossed the room on rubbery legs and took a seat at his desk, blood dripping from his slashed face and his mutilated hand, all he could feel was fury at Sedric’s incompetence and betrayal.

The Chalcedean took a perch on the corner of the desk and sat looking down on Hest. He smiled. “I see a bit of anger there, now. You are thinking, ‘his blood should be soaking this napkin, not mine.’ I am right, am I not? So. Summon your slave and let us apply this pain where it belongs.”

Hest fought to keep his voice steady. “I told you. He ran off. He stole from me and he ran off. I have nothing to do with him now. Whatever bargain he struck with Begasti Cored, he negotiated on his own. It’s nothing to do with me.” Sudden outrage that Sedric could have precipitated this disaster gave him courage. He leaned forward in his chair and shouted, “You, sir, have made a serious mistake!”

The Chalcedean was unimpressed. He cocked his head and leaned closer, smiling a thin-lipped smile. But his amusement did not seem to reach his eyes. “Have I? But not as grave as yours. You are responsible and you will be held responsible. What a man’s slave does or does not do reflects on his master. You have let one of yours run off and make bargains and steal from you and done nothing to correct him. So you must pay, just as if your horse had run wild in a market or your dog bitten a child’s face. Do you not know the saying, ‘When a slave lies with your tongue, it is still your mouth it is cut from’? What your man did in your name, you must answer for. Perhaps with a finger, perhaps with your hand . . . perhaps with your life. It is not up to me to decide how heavily you must pay, but answer you will.”

“If he signed a contract with Begasti Cored, I have no knowledge of it. I am not legally bound by it.” Hest fought to keep his voice steady.

“In Chalced, we care very little for what is legal in Bingtown. Here is what we do care about. The Duke, a wise and august personage, suffers from ill health. We know that the proper ministration of medicines made from dragon parts would restore him to health. Begasti Cored is one of our foremost merchants in exotic wares, and he was one of those honored with the mission of obtaining the necessary parts. To see that his mind was free of all cares while he undertook this errand, the Duke took Cored’s entire family under his protection. It is, as you can imagine, a large honor as well as a responsibility to be entrusted with such an undertaking. Nonetheless, for some time, little progress was made, despite great encouragement from the Duke and his nobles. So it was with satisfaction that we received the news that Begasti Cored had finally recruited a Bingtown Trader who had such a solid reputation to aid him in obtaining the required merchandise.” The Chalcedean and his knife came even closer as he added, “It was not just this Sedric who was mentioned to us, but you: Trader Hest Finbok. You are well known to so many of our merchants. You are, they all said, a versatile and resourceful merchant, one who drives a shrewd bargain but is able to obtain the finest-quality merchandise. So. Where is our merchandise?”

I don’t know.
Hest bit down on the words before he could say them, suspecting the Chalcedean would react strongly to hearing them again. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to find a tactic that would extricate him from this situation. He fell back on an old Trader technique. Pretend to be able to meet the customer’s expectations. Later, one could make excuses. Or call the City Guard.

“This is what I do know,” he said carefully. He lifted his bandaged hand to dab at the blood at the end of his nose. A mistake. The clot came away on the napkin and it began to drip blood again. Firmly he set his hands on the desktop and tried to ignore it. “Sedric went to the Rain Wilds. He took with him a woman with great knowledge of dragons. I suspect he hopes to use her knowledge to win him close contact with the dragons. I had to leave on my own trading journey. When I returned, I found no messages from him. The news from the Rain Wilds is that he was part of a party that accompanied the dragons on an expedition up the Rain Wild River. No word has been received from the expedition. They and the dragons may have perished.”

“Pah! Old news is what you offer. When Begasti Cored sent him on his way, your Sedric was not our only emissary for this task. Our other spies have been more prompt in their reporting. We have bent ourselves to this task with every resource at our disposal. Your Sedric was but one of many possible connections we cultivated. So put aside your lies. We already know many things. Do you think you can tell me old news and I will be content with it? Do you think to distract me from my task? Do you think that I do not have concerns of my own bound up with this undertaking? You are a fool, then. And you will find there is a high cost for thinking us fools as well.”

“Truly, I know no more than what I have told you!” Desperation broke through in his voice. To so betray himself ran counter to every rule of wise bargaining, to all he had ever been taught about dealing with Chalcedeans. Show no fear, no doubt, and no weakness. But the burning pain from his hand, the smell of his own dripping blood, and the complete foreignness of the experience had him literally trembling.

“I believe you,” the Chalcedean said suddenly. He hopped off the corner of the desk and sauntered back to the window. He tested his blade on the drapery, shredding them in the process. He was staring out the window as he spoke. “I believe you because we have a similar problem. We are not certain where Begasti Cored is; we believe that he, too, has gone to the Rain Wilds. Perhaps that means he is close to obtaining the required merchandise.”