Dragon Sacrifice (The First Realm Book 3) (4 page)

“Wimp,” Cruix said. He reached over, plucked a raisin, and popped it into his mouth.

“Haha!” Heronimo said. He swept his hand into the platter and came out with a handful. Dagonet reached over and took a couple. I took another. We all looked at Mina and burst out laughing.

“Very funny,” my dwarven friend said. “This is the worst game.”

“It isn’t hard,” I said. “You move faster after the first scorching.”

“I have this thing about fire…” Mina said, but then she plunged her hand in. “Aack!” She splattered burning rum all over the table.

“Whoah,” Heronimo said. He pushed his chair backward and started beating the flames. “We might have to pause the game.”

“Relax,” I said. “They’ve got sand buckets here.”

Mina tried again and managed to land a raisin on the table. “Yes! The first!”

“Good for you,” Meerwen said. Then she and everyone else got a raisin.

“I’m gonna get one straight to my mouth,” Mina said. “Ow!”

“I’m thinking baby steps,” I said.

Cruix snickered. “The secret is not to reach over and wait.”

“It smells like burned hair,” Heronimo said.

“Singed all the hair on my damn hand...” Mina said.

“Do it like this,” Meerwen said. Her hand blurred into the blue flames and pulled back. “See? That way they go straight to your mouth.”

“Fast hands,” Heronimo said.

I leered. “I know, right?”

Meerwen elbowed me.

“Lick your fingers, they’re on fire,” she told me. I’d been eating raisins absent-mindedly.

“Mina, maybe you should stop,” Heronimo said. “You won’t have any hand left if you keep this up.”

“It’s so hard to get the…” she said. “Fuck! Slippery bastards. And now I have a blister.”

“This is the greatest game I have ever played,” Cruix said.

“Gonna go for this one right here,” Meerwen said.

“Two at once!” I said. “Sweet.”

“I think I’ll get a spoon,” Mina said.

“And fling fire all over the place?” Cruix said.

“Why am I the only one getting hurt?” Mina demanded. “How do you all do it?”

We looked at each other. We put our hands into the burning rum and pulled them out, except for Heronimo, who kept his hand in the flames a little longer.

I held a fireball in my palm. Meerwen held up a burning fist. Dagonet showed a glistening hand. Cruix waved his unburned hand. And Heronimo flexed his fingers.

“Fire magic,” I said.

“Earth magic,” Meerwen said.

“Water magic,” Dagonet said.

“Fire resistance,” Cruix said.

“Healing factor,” Heronimo said.

We grinned.

“Ah, fuck you guys,” Mina said.

Chapter 4

The sourdough pizza and twice-fried chicken came in huge platters, while the deep-fried burgers and potato wedges came in individual plates. There was also beer. I’m more of a wine person, but this was the sort of meal that called for pitchers of it.

“We never had anything like this back home,” Mina said.

Sometimes I forget that Mina grew up underground and only among her own kind. The rest of us have more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Even Heronimo must have known halfling cuisine in the Northlands. It’s hard to imagine growing up not knowing the taste of a crunchy chicken leg, or the taste of a pizza hot from the oven, its crust deliciously sour from the yeast.

Mina smiled. “What is this flavour?”

“Apparently the cooking grease is thousands of years old.”

“What?!”

“They filter it and add new oil every day,” I said. “Halflings don’t like to waste things—remember their perpetual stew? This grease has a story.”

“What was it?”

“Something about Masha, the first halfling, and the time he invented doughnuts. He may or may not have been going through a divorce.”

“Sensing a pattern here,” Cruix said. “Next you’ll tell me that Masha himself made the pizza dough.”

“Actually, the starter is as old as the city,” I said. “Auntie Marilla donated it.”

“I thought it tasted familiar,” Heronimo said.

Sourdough is different from place to place. You can’t really transport it because starter quickly starts tasting like the local stuff.

“… So then Raenion came at me with a mace and I had no choice but to punch him in the face,” Meerwen said. “He got up, so I had to punch him in the face again.”

“Meerwen, I love your stories,” I said. “But you seem to solve every problem by punching it in the face.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think I should kick more often?”

“Dessert’s here,” Heronimo said.

A halfling woman wheeled over a cooking cart and brought out raisins and rum.

Mina groaned. “Another game of snapdragon?”

The halfling woman brought out milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla. She combined them in a large metal bowl and added the rum. Another server came out with a bowl of finely-crushed dry ice, which she added to the mix while the first woman stirred it with a spoon.

“Oooh,” Meerwen said.

Fog spilled over the rim of the bowl. The dry ice didn’t melt, it went straight from solid to gas, chilling the mix as it bubbled away. The ice cream started to freeze. The halfling woman kept stirring while her assistant added more cold. Occasionally the assistant’s hand would dart into the bowl, snatch a piece of dry ice, and crumble it between her fingers, ensuring that none would remain in the finished product. Now the other woman wasn’t stirring so much as folding the mix. Heronimo picked up a chunk of dry ice.

“This is really cold,” he said. “It’s burning my fingers!”

“Put it down, idiot!” Cruix said.

The dry ice in the big bowl had mostly evaporated. The ice cream was no longer clouded over. The assistant tipped in the bowl of plump, juicy raisins—they’d been soaked in rum. This was going to be a boozy treat.

The first halfling smiled. “We normally let this stand for five minutes, but as long as you’re an elf, Prince Angrod, could you...?”

“Certainly,” I said, and used my Sight to confirm that there was no more dry ice.

“Would that be bad?” Heronimo wondered.

Cruix sneered. “How does internal frostbite sound?”

“The ice cream is safe,” I said. “Wait till the vapour stops. Melt every bite on your tongue. Who gulps down ice cream anyway?”

“Only ignorant barbarians,” Cruix said.

The servers put the ice cream in cups and added toppings. There were hazelnuts, strawberries, chocolate chips. Mina had her first spoonful and said, “Oh my god.”

We ended up ordering coffee and extending our dinner.

“Why don’t they let Heronimo into any tournaments?” Mina asked. “He’s got to be one of the best swordsmen Brandish.”

“Aw, I’m not that good,” Heronimo said.

“If they allowed him on the tournament circuit, we’d know exactly where he stood,” Mina said.

Fencing contests were round-robin affairs, which meant everyone fought everyone else. It took several days, but afterward they could be ranked very precisely. Prizes were awarded according to various divisions (Best in Age Group, Best in Sabre, so on) but first prize always went to the competitor with the most victories.

This meant that most every swordsman in Brandish knew how they compared to all the others. If you were the 127th swordsman overall, you know you shouldn’t be picking fights with the 61st.

“Is it because Heronimo’s human?” Cruix asked.

Meerwen shook her head. “It’s not just racism. The tournament circuit is serious about its traditions. To participate, you have to be a member of the royal guard or city guard, which means you need to be a citizen. And only elves can become citizens.”

“They just said I couldn’t enter, and never would,” Heronimo said.

“That’s elves for you,” Meerwen said. “There’s more to the Nine Weapons than just swords, but do they let spear-wielders or staff-wielders compete? They don’t.”

“What about knife specialists?” Heronimo asked. “Then again, I don’t see how a knife could do any good against a sword.”

Dagonet stopped stirring her coffee and tapper her spoon against the rim. Her knife. She’s been stirring with a knife and we’d never seen her draw it.

Heronimo stared.

Dagonet flicked the knife closed and dropped it into her sleeve. She gave him one last look, then took a sip.

“You put your foot in your mouth again,” Cruix told Heronimo.

“I’m curious, Meerwen,” I said. “Did you ever want to join a tourney?”

She looked at her hands. The palms were solid and square, the knuckles oversized from years of training. “I’ll stick to unarmed combat, thanks very much.”

“I’ve always wondered why you handicap yourself, fighting unarmed,” Heronimo said. “You’re good. Surely you would be more effective with a weapon?”

“I chose this way because weapons wouldn’t make me more effective for my purposes.”

“Huh?” Heronimo said.

“Think of martial arts as coming in four flavours. There are air-type martial arts, fire-type martial arts, and so on. Air-type martial arts are all about killing, and I’d say that’s what you practised until you came to Brandish.”

“True,” Heronimo said. “I did not come here to spar with my parents’ murderer. I came to kill him.”

“Then there’s fire-type martial arts, which are all about the sporting aspect,” Meerwen said. “The tournament circuit is a good example. While the competition is intense, they’re not out to kill anybody.”

“Battles for dominance, not territory,” Cruix said.

“Yes, they have rules,” I said.

“Already you have two dissimilar kinds of martial arts, each with a distinct goal,” Meerwen said.

“Their techniques are going to be different, and confusing the two could be disastrous.”

I thought about my sparring session with Heronimo. It had been intense, but neither of us had been out for blood. I thought about the two of us fighting for real and shivered.

Meerwen smiled. “Off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen moves that look good with the judges but don’t work in a deadly fight. Something is lost when you start playing for points.”

Heronimo nodded.

“Then there’s earth-type and water-type martial arts,” Meerwen said. “The first is all about self-defence, while the second is all about disabling your attacker without injuring him.”

“Easier to kill than to cripple,” Cruix mused. “Easier to cripple than to temporarily disable.”

“What?” Heronimo leaned forward. “A fight where nobody gets hurt? Sounds like a lot of work.

Who needs water-type martial arts anyway?”

“City watchmen for one,” Meerwen said. “Also, bouncers. I spent some time training with Lamemheth security people. Hard men and women, but gentle, and always more willing to talk things over.”

“You see yourself not as a warrior, but as a peacekeeper,” I said. “So you fight in a way that gives you the most nonlethal options.”

“That’s right!” Meerwen said. “If I kill someone, I can’t take it back. I can’t bring them before a judge. I can’t see them learn from their mistakes. Death is too final.”

“What if someone needs to die?” Heronimo asked.

“Then I boost my strength and punch his head off.”

Earth-type martial arts focused on self-defence, which means they were mostly for civilians. They needed to be simple so they taught be taught quickly and used by ordinary people. Their students weren’t going to be particularly dedicated or athletic. On the other hand, they would probably be outnumbered and outclassed when they did fight. Career criminals don’t believe in fair fights.

Earth-type martial arts were stripped-down and brutally effective, or as brutally effective as they could be within the limits of the law. They had one thing in common with water-type martial arts, and that was lessons on how to avoid fights in the first place. Either by avoiding bad situations or talking your way out of them.

I’m a big believer in talking my way out of things.

“I hear your bid for the throne is gaining ground,” Meerwen said. “Most journalists have stopped calling you the
alleged
prince.”

“The more people believe it, the closer it becomes to being true,” I said. “I might start believing it myself.”

“The bad new is that my father has been seriously considering how to stop you.”

Uh-oh. Findecano Elanesse, Meerwen’s father, was one of the top wizards in Brandish. In terms of power levels he was the warehouse fire to my candle flame. I’m not kidding—the man had so many instant-death spells he could probably invade the Northlands by himself.