Eastward Dragons (7 page)

Neasa leaned against the railing of the balcony level, watching over the stage side tables that had been hired for the servants and guards who would be accompanying the expedition. There were fifteen of them in all and, despite being stripped of their weapons at the door, it was easy to pick out the nine guards from the servants by their sun darkened skin and weathered, practical clothing. Sunil Diventru was especially easy to spot, sitting up with his back perfectly straight at the head of a table full of lounging guards. Neasa wondered if the stodgy old soldier was even enjoying himself, or if he viewed this evening of entertainment as just another watch of his endless duty.
 

“Taking in some culture before you set out into the wilderness?” Rajin asked, coming up beside Neasa. He indicated the stage, where a troupe of actors was performing
The Silkie’s Lament
.

“I have never been a connoisseur of the theater,” Neasa replied, glancing up at the stage where three performers, naked from the waist up but clad in intricate one-piece leggings that flowed and glittered in the stage lights, were suspended from wires at about the level of the balcony. They thrashed their legs, waved their arms, and sang a chorus about the freedom of swimming in the sea.

“Commonwealth dramas do leave something to be desired in their subtlety, I will give you that, but not even the elves put so much effort into their staging and costumes.”

“You have seen many elven plays, heretic?”

“I have.”

“What sort of stories might they tell? Thrilling dramas about trees growing? The tragic tale of a blade of grass cut down in its prime?”

Rajin gave Neasa a sad smile and shook his head. “There is a particularly moving tragedy of a guardian tree which sacrifices itself to protect a village, but most of their plays are comedies of error. A young elf man falls in love with an older elf woman and believes himself to be courting her, only to discover that she is merely testing him to see if he will be a good match for her granddaughter.”

Neasa grunted. It did sound like an amusing premise for a story, but she still saw little value in paying people to gallivant around a stage singing songs, reciting speeches, and flashing their skin to titillate the audience. There was real work to be done protecting the world from gythrals, or researching the ancient runes to rediscover their powers.

“When did you see those elven plays?” she asked.

“I went into exile nearly twenty years ago to escape a death sentence. I spent much of that time living among the elves.”

“They accepted you, a heretic and murderer?”

“You are a strong and talented woman, Neasa Veatro, of that I have no doubt, but you are young and have little experience with life beyond the constraints of the Trader Commonwealth. Some of what you would call heresy is little more than an alternative interpretation of the Wanderer’s tales in elven lands.”

“And murder?”
 

“Have you ever killed a man?” Rajin said, turning his back on the spectacle of the stage and studying Neasa’s face.

“I have.”

“Among the deep dwarves you would be counted as a murderer. Though they have the least space in which to exile, and are under the most pressure to maintain their ancient traditions, one of their most sacred tenants is that no man may take the life of another, for any purpose.”

Neasa nodded, considering that. She must not allow Rajin into her head, but there was a sting of truth to his words.
 

She looked back to the stage, where the actors playing the role of silkies had been lowered on wires until they hung eye to eye with those who stood upon the stage. The crowd roared with laughter as one of the silkie characters questioned a human about the proper means of fertilizing a brood of eggs on land.

Further along the balcony, the lady Zlata had regained her seat and was daintily enjoying her third course. Though her hands felt as though they were encased in thick mittens and she had to move slowly lest she stab herself with a forkful of potatoes, Zlata held her fork and knife in the proper fingers, cut her meat and vegetables into small portions, and delivered each portion to her lips without spilling a crumb on the table or her elegant green velvet gown.
 

“You have some skill as a linguist, my lady,” Havil A’Mar said, nodding to her over the rim of his water glass. “It’s not often I have seen a translator of Oppen’s mettle bested in a test of language.”

“Leaves me wondering why we’re bringing the man along!” shouted Tracha Runsen. He banged his glass on the table and a harried serving woman appeared from behind a nearby pillar to refilled it with thick brown ale. “Seems to me that you could do the translating and give us some more room for cargo.”

Oppen raised his hand in objection, then his head dropped and lolled about on his shoulders. His hand dropped as well and, after a moment, began to crawl across the tabletop in search of a glass.

“I thank you for your compliments,” Zlata said, dabbing at her lips with a white napkin. She took a sip from her own glass, which was now filled with watered wine, and continued, “but I am not a linguist. Some measure of linguistic skill is a necessary social grace, you see, so I have acquainted myself with greetings, necessities, and insults from a dozen languages, but I am fluent in none of them.”

“And thath why you sthil neeths mer…” Oppen slurred. He pulled his wineglass closer and managed to hold his head upright, though his eyes refused to remain open.
 

“Indeed, master translator. Gentlemen, I only won that little game of wits because I can hold my liquor better than our polyglot comrade.”

Around the table, the other ambassadors all laughed.

Havil leaned to one side to get a better view of the stage at the center of the tavern. At that moment, one of the actors portraying a silkie was again swimming upwards, pulled by thin wires that ran into pulleys affixed to the ceiling, pursued by an amorous human male who vaulted from platform to platform as he ascended the scaffold that rose above the stage. It was difficult to hear the actors over the sound of cheering from and catcalls from the crowd on the ground floor.
 

“I had my reservations at first, but you certainly do know how to choose a good tavern,” Havil said.

“Thank you. I thought that this establishment would be an appropriate final dose of culture for our party before we set off into the unknown. Though I am surprised that you drink only mineral water, master Havil.”

Havil gave her a small shrug and sipped from his glass. “I appreciate the bubbles and flavor of it. Additionally, I prefer to keep my head clear for negotiations.”

“Or for watching actors debauch themselves on stage!” Tracha roared. He clapped Havil on the back and took a long draw from his mug. The thick beer left a rime of foam on his upper lip when he finally thunked the mug back to the tabletop.

“I assure you, Tracha…”

“Ah, no need to be ashamed of it, Havil. Personally, I’m considering lightening my purse to go up the the third floor. They say that the girls up there will…”

“We are in the presence of a lady, Tracha. Restrain yourself,” Havil chided.

“What? You think she would have brought us here if she didn’t want us to experience everything that the Commonwealth has to offer?”

The audience below roared in appreciation and for a moment the conversation at the table was placed on hiatus as the ambassadors listened to, and guffawed at, a rapid succession of rhymed jokes questioning the physical compatibility of silkies and humans. Even the dour Rajin, who had been leaning against the railing with his back to the stage as he spoke to Neasa, laughed at some of the proposed methods of union. After the characters finally settled upon a mutually agreeable, if laughably unlikely, means of sharing one another’s company for the night, the stage lights dimmed and curtains fell around the circular scaffold as stagehands hurried to perform a scene change.

“You bring up an interesting point, master Havil,” Zlata said. She waved her left hand expansively, obviously intending to encompass the table, the stage, the mysterious third floor, and the entirety of the Leaning Timber, if not the Commonwealth itself, as she said, “All of this is what we call our culture. It is my speciality to understand, appreciate, and teach the accepted norms of our society to young nobles and visiting dignitaries alike, but even at this table we cannot all agree on the values of Commonwealth culture. I bring you to a place that offers good food, strong drinks, titillating entertainment, and the possibility of indulging your base natures, and yet you fear that I will be offended by mention of those very pleasures.”

“But is it proper, my lady, for men to speak of their lusts in front of a woman of good reputation?” Havil responded, leaning forward on his elbows.
 

Tracha scoffed and pushed himself away from the table, tottered to his feet, and said, “Speaking of indulging one’s lusts…” He walked unsteadily towards the serving woman who had been refilling his mug, leaned against the pillar that she had been standing behind, and began whispering to her. Coins from Tracha’s purse were exchanged for a wooden chit, and Tracha turned away from the woman to stumble towards a door set in a shadowy corner of the balcony.

“Heth going thoo gerth…” Oppen said. He shook his head and forced his body upright in the chair, raising his hand for the server to refill his glass. She hurried up and stooped to listen as he slurred an order into her ear.

“She is right, Havil,” Jarom said, speaking for the first time in a long while. The rotund dwarf pushed a plate of picked bones away from himself and leaned back in his chair as he wiped his fingers on a stained napkin. “We are preparing to travel to a culture that we have not encountered for a hundred years. Think of that for a moment. One hundred years ago the Dreaming had only just begun to fall upon our lands. Women held political office and commanded some of the guilds, but were prohibited from serving in the army. My people were openly disparaged as opportunistic vultures who were tolerated only because we controlled trade with the other dwarven races.”

“One need not even look to history. Slavery is still practiced in some of the island nation that care little for our trade embargoes, and in the Tensi Desert the Djinn are as common as silkies are in the Commonwealth. I have heard it said that in some of the kingdoms surrounding Coldwater Lake people may be executed for being unfaithful in marriage which, by the way, is practiced in an entirely different manner from our own contractual bindings.”

“Your point being?” Havil asked. He was well aware of the differences in social mores from one land to another, having been born on the western edge of the Commonwealth and labored under the suspicion of possessing Djinn blood his entire life. Additionally, he made his living trading in spices, herbs, and liquors, some of which were commonplace in the Commonwealth but the possession of which carried a death sentence in the slaver islands or lake lands.
 

“Only that we must be cautious whenever we encounter another culture in the course of our expedition. If we at this table cannot agree whether the performance on the stage is mere harmless amusement or a vile debauchery, or whether our friend Tracha is currently availing himself of a service that I knew would be on offer or offending my delicate noblewoman sensibilities, how are we to know when we are committing a vile offense in the court of the Dragon Lords.”

“What solution can you offer for this problem?” Havil asked.

“None, but to be cautious in our dealings and never presume that our counterparts in those foreign lands will hold to the same morals and taboos as we do.”

 
“So we risk offense, perhaps even violation of a deadly taboo, each time we open our mouths. It had not struck me that we should be in such danger from the persons at our destination. Beasts, bandits, and foul weather along the trail, of course, but respect for ambassadors and trading partners has been a central aspect of every nation and principality that I have visited in my long career.”

Rajin, having grown bored with watching the set change on the stage, returned to the table then and settled into his seat. He leaned forward to the center of the table and pulled one of the remaining legs of chicken from the serving tray, then settled back in his chair to chew at the meat.

Jarom shifted in his seat, grumbled, then said, “Guide Rajin, can you shed any light upon the morals of the Dragon Lands? You returned to the Commonwealth after spending some years among them, did you not?”

“I spent a mere season in the Dragon Kingdoms, and much of that in prison.”

“What were you imprisoned for, if I may be so bold? Lady Zlata has just recently reminded us all that there may be significant differences in culture between the Dragon Kingdoms and the Commonwealth, perhaps even more than those between the Burnt Dwarves and our Deep brethren.”

Rajin chewed thoughtfully at a mouthful of chicken, then picked at the bone for a moment. Something in the glowering set of his face informed the others that he was not ignoring Jarom’s question, but contemplating it, deciding how best to answer. Finally he tossed the cleaned bone to the plate, leaned back in his chair, and said, “I was imprisoned there for the much the same reason that I was sentenced to death here. Nobody died, and I was eventually released, but it turns out that one thing the Commonwealth and the Dragon Kingdoms absolutely have in common is a distaste for those who can work anima without the aid of runes.”

Havil and Jarom paled and immediately glanced away. Oppen remained slumped down in his chair, a wineglass leaning against his chest, its contents half spilled. Zlata, however, leaned forward and said, “How did they come to learn of your… unique talent?”

“I would rather not discuss that at the moment, my lady. If you remain curious, perhaps we could reopen this conversation when we have passed beyond the borders of the nation that once sentenced me to death for exercising my talents.”
 

“I will take that as a promise,” Zlata said.