Fool's Gold (23 page)

It had been the day before Will turned seven years old. He had been mucking out Bessie's sty, flicking glances at Firkin between shovel loads of straw and shit.

“You're being awful quiet there, Will,” Firkin said after ten silent minutes.

Will didn't say anything.

“I've been thinking,” Firkin went on, “about the problem with drugging the villagers with Fire Root in the morning when we only get the Snag Weed into Mattrax in the evening—”

“My da says your plans go to shit,” Will blurted. Suddenly he could keep it in no longer. The pressure of betrayal was too great. And it wasn't exactly how his da had said it, but it's how Firkin would have said it, and it was how Firkin would understand it, so why not just say it that way?

“Ah,” said Firkin. Then again. “Ah.” He nodded. He scooped up another shovel load and carted it to the wheelbarrow. “You told him then?”

Will just shrugged. That wasn't exactly it. But he didn't want to explain. He wanted Firkin to be the one explaining.

Firkin just went on shoveling. Will had thought he might feel better if he just said it, but now he didn't. The pressure just kept building and building inside him until he thought he was going to break apart with anger and disappointment. He could feel a scream, or a yell building inside him, and he was terrified he was going to cry. He didn't want Firkin to see him cry.

Then Firkin stopped, and leaned on his shovel. “I suppose they do,” he said nodding to himself. “I suppose they do.”

And then all the pressure was gone, and the sense of deflation and loss was even worse.

“So it was all…” Will tried to find a word for it. “Lies?” he finished, because he did not yet know the vocabulary of betrayal.

Firkin shook his head with vehemence. “No, Will. No. That's not it. And what your da said…”

“My da's no liar,” Will said, with a loyalty that surprised him.

Firkin let out a little laugh and reached for his hip flask. “No, Will. That is for sure, and I'd never say he was.” He took a deep draft from the flask. “Your da speaks the truth. I've made a lot of plans over the years, and an awful lot of them have gone to nothing but shit. And we are here in a valley ruled by arsehole dragons at least in part because I couldn't come up with a plan that worked well enough. That's true.”

“So it's all… all…” Will looked around for a word. His eyes landed on the wheelbarrow. “Straw and shit?”

Firkin laughed. But not his normal laugh. A sad laugh. “I don't know, Will,” he said in the end. “I don't know. Some of it probably is. Maybe all of it. I don't know. I've never known with a plan I've made. And, yes, a lot of it has gone to shit. But sometimes there have been successes. Maybe not often. Maybe not even enough to say rarely. But they've been there. And each one has been a beautiful treasure.” He took another deep swig. “And some… they've been beautiful failures, you understand, Will? While they've not done what I've planned, they've done other things. Things that I'm proud of. Does that make any sense?”

He looked desperate, there in the shadows of the pigsty. He didn't look like an adult at all. He looked like a worried child. He looked, to Will, like a reflection.

“Maybe,” Will said, some of his disappointment and anger fading. “Perhaps.” He wasn't sure if he did, but he wanted to. He didn't want Firkin to be a liar.

“Thank you,” Firkin said, and upended his flask. He smacked his lips and tucked it back into his belt.

“So we can rob Mattrax?” Will said just to be sure.

Firkin laughed again, loud in the small sty. “Maybe,” he said. “I don't know. But we can
try,
Will. That's the beautiful thing. We can try, and we plan for success, but in the end who knows? Beautiful chaos, Will. Anything could end up happening. Maybe we could even rob them all. I've learned about all of them, Will. Mattrax, and Dathrax, and Kithrax, and the whole cursed lot of them. I can tell you about them all. We can make plans for them all. You can make plans. And then…” He smiled, reached for his flask again. “Beautiful chaos.”

Lette found Will skulking about in a ditch. She watched him from a distance. He had his knees pulled up to his chest, feet firmly planted in the mud. He had plucked a long stalk of grass, was weaving it into a narrow thread.

She was sorry for him, she found. He might be a fool, but he was a good fool. At this very moment as many as forty people were watching him, waiting for the slightest command. But he was oblivious to them. Because he wasn't even looking for people to use. And even if he knew they were there, he wouldn't think to use them. Because that was—infuriatingly—who he was. A good fool. Gods, he could even be her fool if she wanted him to be.

Sometimes she thought she did want that.

But she also wanted to use him.

She shook herself. This should be simple. She should go, talk to him, make him see things her way, and get rich. That's what Balur would tell her to do. And he'd be right to tell her so. She was complicating something simple. Complicated would get her killed. The world was a cruel and harsh place. It demanded cruelty and harshness. And that was why it would kill Will.

It was just that she couldn't help but wish that the world was a place that would keep him safe.

She watched as Will glanced down at the elaborate knot of grass he had woven, placed it on the ground, and plucked another strand.

Lette realized that at some point she had knelt and pulled up a stalk of grass herself. It was a tangled knot in her hands. There was no pattern to its folds, just creases and crumples. She threw it away, stepped toward the farm boy.

“Will,” she said. He twitched at the sound of her voice, but didn't turn round. She came closer, placing each foot carefully, as if approaching a rabbit, fearful it would skitter away before she could make it her supper.

“They're going to do it,” she told him. “You realize that, don't you? With or without you. Balur has it in his head now. He's going to try to rob Dathrax.”

Will turned around at that finally. He looked her in the eyes.
More wounded-puppy bullshit,
she told herself.

“So you're putting this on me,” he said. “That's it, right? I have to help you now or it's on my head.” His smile was bitter.

She continued her slow approach until she was standing on the edge of the ditch beside him. She felt the urge to reach out to him. She resisted for a moment. Business and pleasure were already at significant risk of getting very confused. But then she let herself give in to it. She rested her hand upon his shoulder. She could feel a fine tremor beneath her palm, as if some current ran through him.

“Come on, Will,” she said. “This is a chance for you. Mattrax isn't the only dragon shitting on people's lives. They're all as bad as each other. We have the opportunity to hurt another one. You have the chance to help all the people trailing after us.”

“I thought you said they were all dead whatever we did.” It was not quite a snarl, but it was closer than he usually got.

She nodded, but did not take the hand off his shoulder. He was a source of warmth on this cold day. “Yes,” she acknowledged. “Maybe.” She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, but she knew that Will perceived it. “Who knows? If we did enough damage…”

Will laughed again, still cynical, but a little closer to the true feelings she knew lurked within him.

“You think we can take down the whole Dragon Consortium? Honestly?”

“Honestly?” She left a sliver of humor enter her voice. “No.” She let that sink in. “But I think we can hurt them. I think, with you, we can make them think twice.”

He didn't reply at once, only leaned back. That was a good sign.

“Come on, Will,” she said. “You know you can help us. You know you can make a difference. You know you want to.” She firmed her grip on his shoulder. “Don't give in to fear.”

This was not her first seduction. Far from that. But it was one of the uglier ones all the same. Her heart was not in it, not truly, despite the promised payday, despite Will's hard, flat muscles.

She wasn't sure what was happening to her. Was this what being a better person was like? This weakness?

Will still didn't say anything. She licked her lips. She could feel words lurking at the back of her throat, but none of them stepped up, presented themselves as the right ones. She tried to keep her face warmly neutral, while inside she cursed. She was losing him.

Will looked down at the knot of grass in his hands. It looked impossibly complicated to her. The beginning lost in the end. A continual complex loop.

He followed her gaze. A smile broke through the clouds on his face. “My mother showed me how to make these,” he said. “Eternity knots. She made one for my father when he asked her to marry him. He wore it around his neck on their wedding day.”

She couldn't tell where this thread was going. She decided to follow it on impulse. “That's sweet.” An encouraging smile.

“They rot in the end, though,” he said, tossing his away. “The name's bullshit.” He looked away from her, down into the brown muddy water of the ditch. “These people, the ones following me, they die whatever we do, don't they?”

The abrupt turn caught her off guard. She hesitated.

“Yeah,” Will said. “I thought so.”

She closed her eyes. Gods piss on it.

“We run; we're caught. We hide; we're caught. We fight them; we're caught.” His voice sank with the utterance of each sad little fact.

She tried to work out how she would explain this setback to Balur.

“So we steal from them.”

She looked up. Will was looking at her. His eyes weren't bright exactly, but there was the flicker of that fire in him. A little more heat than she'd seen in days.

“Because it hurts them,” he said. “Because maybe it achieves shit all in the long run, but for just a little while, we can piss them off something awful.”

“All right,” Will said, “this is how it's going to go down.”

Quirk didn't know how Lette did what she did, but clearly she was very good at it.

They were all back in the thaumatic cart, on the move again. Will's train of followers stretched off down the road after them, longer than ever now—another thirty souls had joined them while Will vacillated by the side of the road.

She would have to get back to them all soon. She owed them that much at least.

The widows.

The widowers.

The orphans…

She closed her eyes, pushed the creeping thoughts back down.

“First,” Will said, “Firkin and I never planned this. He supplied the facts about Dathrax, but we never got as far as an actual plan. So I'm pulling this together based on what he told me.”

That sounded like nothing but a recommendation to Quirk.

“Be telling us the plan already,” said Balur. “This is being enough with the foreplay.” He, at least, seemed to agree with her.

Will sighed, shook his head. “Dathrax,” he said, “lives in the center of Athril's Lake. Specifically on an island at its center. Alone. No guards. No castle.”

“So he is being a fucking idiot.” Balur clapped his hands together. Quirk felt the sound resonate deep in her gut.

“He doesn't have them,” Will said, “because he doesn't need them. Athril's Lake is home to the Leviathans.”

That got Quirk's attention. She pulled her gaze back from the road and the miniature geography of ruts and puddles. “The Leviathans?” she asked.

Will grinned. “I thought you might like them.” He glanced at Lette before he went on. “Monster fish. Nobody is quite sure where they came from. Most say they were regular fish once. Then cast-offs from Dathrax's meals began slipping down into the lake, and the fish grew fatter and fatter living off them. And as they grew bigger, they developed more and more of a taste for flesh.”

Quirk quirked an eyebrow. She'd heard enough old wives' tales in her time to recognize one when she heard it. There again, just because Will's etiology of the Leviathans was incorrect did not mean that they did not exist, nor that they held no interest for her. Perhaps she could discover their true origin. Perhaps she could observe the feeding rituals, how they mated and bred. Perhaps she could peel back the mystery of their existence scale by scale, muscle by muscle.

She flashed back to the moment in Mattrax's cave. Her hand outstretched. The scales barely a hair's breadth beyond the reach. Then falling away. Being denied.

The widows.

The widowers.

The orphans…

“Wait.” Balur interrupted her introspection. “So the lake is being full of these giant killer fish?”

Will nodded. “The Leviathans. Yes.”

“And there is being a fishing village there.”

Will nodded again. “Well, a town. But yes.”

Balur nodded back. “So, I am wondering, are they replacing the fishermen every day? Is it being where suicidal fishermen are going?”

Will rolled his eyes, though it struck Quirk as a reasonable enough question. “The Leviathans stick to deep water,” he explained. They're
big
. As long as the fishermen stick to the shallows, catch small things, everything's fine. It's just when you want to get to the island that you get in trouble.”

“So,” said Lette, “how do you get to the island?” She was looking up at Will, rapt. It was unlike her to be so unaware of herself, so unguarded.

“Well,” said Will, “that's the thing. Dathrax, like all the dragons, is a greedy bastard. He collects exorbitant taxes from everyone who lives around Athril's Lake. And he uses a garrison of troops to do it. But, because he's a dragon, he's also a lazy bastard. Doesn't want to be bothered with these little drabs of gold coming in now and again. Far too much work for a giant sack of scales and shit like him. No, he likes it coming to him all as one big lump sum. So all the gold sits in the garrison in the town of Athril right up until its yearly trek across the lake.”

“But what about the Leviathans?” Lette asked. She was leaning forward, chin propped on both hands. Quirk thought that if in that moment, Will had asked her to eat candied bonbons out of his hand, she would've agreed to do so. Was it love? Greed? Infatuation?

Romantic entanglements were not a thing Quirk knew much about, truth be told. Her childhood had not allowed for such things. Nothing soft, or warm, or good had been permitted.

And after that… Well, she had been too busy dealing with the aftermath of such a childhood to get romantically involved with anyone, no matter how many students and professors had been intrigued by the rabid young thing the deacon had dragged in.

And now? Well, now she was entrenched in her studies. Her studies gave her focus. Focus gave her control. And she could not afford to be distracted.

Widows.

Widowers.

Orphans…

“The garrison uses a heavily armored boat to take the taxes to Dathrax,” Will said, looking at Lette with no less intensity than she possessed when looking at him. “The Leviathans attack, but they can't chew through.”

It all sounded so simple, as Will laid it out. So easily put together. Quirk tried to take a step back. She had thought the same the last time she'd heard Will lay out a plan.

But that had not been without its casualties.

The widows…

The—

She shook herself, threw off the litany. She couldn't wallow in self-pity. Would this honestly help all the people following them? She had assumed Lette had promised Will that to get him here. And she believed Will when he said that he cared about the followers. He may not have asked for the responsibility of caring for them, but he seemed decent enough to accept the role. But how far astray would Lette and Balur be willing to lead him?

And what about herself? Did she truly see this as a chance to save these people? Or did she see it just as another chance to see a dragon?

Or, perhaps, instead of worrying about which of those it was, she should think about the risk of experiencing significant stress. Could she be sure that she would be safe to be around? Could she guarantee the safety of the people who followed them?

Yes,
was the knee-jerk response that flashed through her mind.
Of course
.

Except hadn't events and Mattrax's cave demonstrated that no matter how many times she repeated it, no matter how deep a groove it wore in her mind, her knee-jerk answer was not the whole truth?

Yet if that was not true, then who was she? Was she still that poor rabid girl who had been pulled from the scrub, dragged into civilization?

She shuddered, trying to shake off all the questions rising in her mind.

“Are you all right?”

Quirk became aware that Will was staring at her. She shook again, less violently this time. “I'm fine,” she said. “Just a chill, that's all.”

They were still all looking at her. Time to put their attention elsewhere.

“So,” she said, “a heavily armed garrison is easier to steal from than a dragon?” She supposed that was probably true, though it seemed like a matter of degrees to her.

“Oh no,” Will said, “the gold in the garrison is just the yearly stash. The real bulk of the wealth is with Dathrax out in the middle of the lake.”

“It is being past the Leviathans?” Balur asked.

“Past the Leviathans,” said Will.

“So your plan is involving us crossing a lake full of deadly giant fish?” Balur followed up.

“Yes,” Will agreed.

Balur chewed on this. “I know we are not getting into the specifics of this yet,” he said, “but so far I am thinking your plan is a bit shit.”

Now Quirk was prone to agree. But she would have said any plan that involved getting past a small private army, and a lake filled with monstrous fish, to get to an island populated solely by an enormous fire-breathing lizard was questionable at best.

“Hear the farm boy out,” Lette told them all.

But Quirk's mind was off again. She was thinking about the bags of gold. They promised freedom from the Consortium. But that was not all they promised.

Did she want to be rich? The thought had never really crossed her mind before. Money didn't really play a part in her life. The university gave her a stipend that she used for food, and for new clothes if her current ones developed more holes than society seemed willing to put up with. But she didn't have to pay for books. She hadn't needed to pay for the supplies for this trip. The university provided.

But knowledge—that was what she really wanted. And that did lie across the lake, and on that island.

Will was grinning. “Okay,” he said, “what one part of our plan with Mattrax actually worked?”

“We got the gold,” Lette said, patting a sack beside her.

“Yes,” Will said. “But it came with this whole ridiculous crowd problem.” He looked about them. Playing up the drama, Quirk supposed. He was far removed from the morose, cursing figure who had stormed off earlier now. “In my opinion,” he went on, “the one part of the plan that went off flawlessly was the actual Snag Weed potion. We got it into a cow, and we got the cow inside Mattrax, and he went down so hard, he slept through Balur murdering him.”

Balur shifted uncomfortably. “Still counts,” he grunted.

“Still completely counts,” said Will, with an indulgent nod.

“So we knock out Dathrax,” Lette said, as if checking something off on a mental checklist.

“Yes we do.” Will nodded some more. “And no need to murder him this time, so we limit the amount of additional heat we pull down from the Dragon Consortium.”

A little optimistic, Quirk thought… but it would be another unconscious dragon for her to study. A live one this time.

Despite herself, she started to get excited.

“But how do we get the potion in him?” she asked.

“Okay,” said Will. “Bear with me on this one. So, Dathrax, like Mattrax—”

“Wait,” Balur interrupted. “Mattrax and Dathrax? That is honestly being their names?”

Will shrugged. “I fantasized about robbing dragons. I couldn't tell you a thing about their naming conventions.”

Which was, Quirk thought, rather a shame.

“Right.” Will was anxious to get back to his main point. “So what I was going to say is that Dathrax likes to fly around, survey all that he rules over.”

“So,” said Balur, “we are going to the island while he is flying around and we are stealing the gold then?”

“No.” Will didn't even bat an eyelash as he shot the Analesian down. “The time frame doesn't work. Because now we know how long it takes to load a cart with a dragon's gold.”

Six hours, Quirk knew. She'd had six glorious hours to examine Mattrax. Could she have longer here? If Dathrax lived alone, how many days would he have to miss his daily flight before his guards came to check on him? If he ruled by fear, as Mattrax had done, it could be a long time. She could brew up enough potions for days…

“Still,” Will went on, interrupting her imaginings, “we can use that flight. When Dathrax goes out, he's looking for cows to eat. People to terrorize.”

Lette smiled. “He eats cows. So we drug a cow. That makes sense.”

“No.” Will was authoritative even with Lette. He was starting to enjoy the position of power, Quirk thought. She should be more troubled by that. But the thought of that island, of that uninterrupted time…

“We can't know which cow Dathrax might choose,” said Will. “And we can't drug every cow around the lake. It's just not possible. So what is the one thing dragons love more than cows, and power-mongering?”

He reminded Quirk of a professor, one who was really into the swing of a lecture, barreling along on a favorite research topic.

Balur opened his mouth.

“Gold.” Will cut Balur off before he could speak, just as Quirk had expected him to do. “They want gold. If he sees gold, he'll go after it like a shot.”

Silence met that. And to her surprise, Quirk found herself smiling into that silence, because there was actually some brilliance there. She could see it in Balur's look of horror, in Lette's moment of realization that she had let the reins out a little too loose, in Will's slowly spreading grin. It had cost him to get this far, but it would cost them too, and he knew it. He'd known this would be their reaction.

“We are giving him our gold?” Balur's voice actually sounded timid. Because they were all in on this. They had bet everything on Will.

“We are using our gold as bait.” Will was merciless in his calm.

“When a fish is eating the bait,” Balur pointed out, “you are not getting it back.”

Will was still grinning. “Where will he take the gold? Back to his island. And where are we going?”

Balur perked up. “I am knowing this one,” he said.

“But how are we getting there?” Quirk felt this point was still lacking clarity.

“Ah.” There was a glint in Will's eye as he looked at her. Then his gaze moved to Lette. “Well, guess who's hidden among all that treasure, armed with Snag Weed poison?”

Balur opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Even Quirk felt her eyebrows rising. “You plan to hide among the gold?” she asked. It wasn't a hard concept to grasp. Just the thought of actually doing it… It was like tying your tooth to a door handle and then slamming the door. Everyone had heard of the concept, but who had actually tried it themselves? “You plan to have Dathrax carry you to his island himself?”

Will had the decency to look a little sheepish at that point. “Well…” he hedged. “Lette and I, actually.”

Quirk managed to suppress the eye roll.

“What?” There was a growl in Balur's voice. The seeds of rage. “You are looking to steal another kill from me? You are looking to take my rightful glory?”