Fool's Gold (25 page)

“Sorry,” said Will for what Lette was pretty sure was the four hundredth time.

“Look,” she said, “I understand your desire to play the gentlemanly card as much as possible, it's a good look for you, but if you're going to apologize every time your foot brushes the glassware, I think it could get tired pretty fast.”

Could. Ha.

“Erm…” said Will. “Sorry?”

“Oh shut up.” Lette was glad it was dark inside the chest. She couldn't quite help the irresponsible smile that crept up onto her lips.

“You're smiling,” Will told her.

Bastard.

“Only at the thought of the noises you'll make as I feed you your fingers.”

If eyebrows made a noise when they were raised, Lette imagined she would hear that now. But all there was was silence. Silence, darkness, and heat. And the increasing awareness of Will's body close by.

“I've got to say,” Will said then, “the angry and violent look is pretty good on you.”

She let that lie there. Almost ignored it, because she didn't trust herself to respond to it. He was bold in the dark, was Will. She shifted her weight, brushed a foot against something.

“Sorry,” she blurted.

Will laughed. Too late she realized that she had grazed the glassware.

“Shut up,” she told him again, but couldn't quite muster her usual bite. She cursed again, more to herself than to him. He just kept on laughing, a low, steady chuckle.

It wasn't helping that it was so gods-cursedly hot in this chest. She shouldn't have put on her mail. Though the thought of lying in wait for Dathrax completely unprotected lacked any appeal whatsoever.

She shifted her weight again, felt her foot brush against something else, managed to hold her tongue.

“Actually,” said Will, “that
was
me.”

“Well, actually,” said Lette, “I'm not sorry.”

“I think I'd be sorry if you were.”

Cois's hex on his balls, he was flirting with her. She was waiting to be plucked from the earth by a fire-breathing, death-dealing lizard, and he picked now as the appropriate time to finally find his confidence and start flirting with her.

She wasn't sure if it was guile, luck, or some innate savant tactical genius that allowed him to pick the perfect moment when her defenses were down. She closed her eyes. It made no difference. She was sitting in the bloody dark. She opened them again.

This was ridiculous. She was a mercenary, for crying out loud. She was the veteran of a hundred battles. She had killed far more than a thousand men. She had left a bloody trail through three countries on her way to this gods-hexed valley. Stories were told in hushed whispers of the destruction she had wreaked. If she wanted something, she took it.

Will made a sound, the beginning of some verbalization. He never got to finish it.

She uncoiled out of her cramped, cross-legged pose, unfolded past the glassware, to him, on top of him. Her lips pressed against his. They were soft, and his skin was rough, his stubble pricking her cheeks. She pressed up against him harder, swallowing his gasp.

Then, for a moment, her heart sank, as he lay there, momentarily stunned beneath. She was not worried that he wouldn't respond, simply that this was as breath-stealing as his response would be.

Then he rallied with force, his large, rough hands finding purchase on the back of her neck, in the small of her back. Her tongue snaked between his lips.

She had gotten his shirt unbuttoned—feeling the rough tautness of his chest, the hard nubs of his nipples—when something heavy slammed into the chest. The whole world rocked. Glassware shuddered. Gravity clutched loosely at her, and her gut flipped.

Will sucked in a breath.

“If you make a single comment,” she said, “about the earth moving then this is all over.”

He was silent as the chest rocked rhythmically. Could she hear wings flapping?

“I wasn't going to say that,” Will said, sounding disappointingly nervous. “Though,” and suddenly there was some life in his voice again, “I was going to introduce you to my dragon.”

Lette decided she was going to enjoy this more if she shut him up with a kiss.

It was being, Balur thought, a good day to die. It was being an even better day, though, for other people to do it.

He strode easily down the road, feeling the weight of his war hammer bounce against his back. The autumn sun was high above him, the fresh smell of Athril's Lake was in the air, and the promise of violence was before him.

The only grit in the oyster of his life was the crowd of three hundred peasants marching at his back. They kicked up dust. They muttered to themselves. And they detracted considerably from the clean smell blowing off the lake.

He looked over at Quirk. “I am knowing that Will is the mastermind, and all,” he said, “but are you thinking that we could be doing all of this without this lot?” He jerked his head back in the direction of the followers.

Quirk didn't exactly grimace, but she didn't exactly smile either. “I'm not sure,” she said, “that we get a say.”

Balur grunted. He did not like that answer. “Will has been gaining power,” he said, “very quickly, and without experience. Perhaps we should not be respecting his opinion.” It was perhaps more than he should share with Quirk. Not that he had many others to share the insight with. And Quirk struck him as the practical sort, especially after what she had done in Mattrax's cave.

“I'm honestly not sure,” she said, “that Will gets much of a say either. You know as well as I that he'd rather be rid of the crowd.”

Not for the first time in his life, Balur wished he had an eyebrow to arch. What Quirk said was true. It was just not a very comforting fact.

Quirk seemed to get the idea anyway. “If they listen to anyone,” she said, “they seem to listen to Firkin.”

Balur chewed on that. “But Will is going to Firkin,” he said, “and is telling him what to do. And then Firkin is being doing what Will asked him to do.” Command, whether direct or by proxy, was command as far as Balur was concerned.

“Just because what Will wants and what Firkin wants are the same thing,” said Quirk, “doesn't mean that Firkin is doing it
because
it's what Will wants.” She let that sink in before adding the kicker. “The question is, what
does
Firkin want?”

Balur was liking that even less. Quirk was making it sound like a problem that could not be solved simply through the application of a flat metal surface to a curved bone one. Though perhaps if the curved bone surface happened to be beneath the skin of Firkin's forehead…

On the other hand, that would mess with Will's plan, and messing with Will's plan had not been entirely beneficial the last time around. In fact, Firkin not following Will's plan was largely what had led them to the point of having followers to be concerned about. So perhaps a little creative thinking on his part was not what the situation required at this moment.

In the end, Balur decided, he didn't really like any of the options before him, and so he reconsidered his attitude. Perhaps, after all, this was not a good day to die. It was just a very, very good one for killing people.

Athril was a large and bustling town. The lake stood at the confluence of several rivers, and if one skirted its edge, and avoided the territory of the Leviathans, then it was an entirely navigable stretch of water. Certainly the taxes imposed by Dathrax were obscenely high, but the taxes everywhere were obscenely high. And compared to Will's louse-ridden armpit of a village, Athril appeared positively metropolis-like.

The walls of the buildings were painted as often as they were whitewashed. People bustled through the streets too busy to pay attention to each other. Store owners called from the doors of shops—solid and with glass in their windows—rather than from rag-covered stalls. The occasional crowd of guards walked down the street, eyes watchful for all the mischief a cowed populace could summon.

Fishing vessels clustered on the shoreline, enjoying the safety of the shallows. Their owners sat in small groups mending nets and exchanging exaggerated stories. A crowded market square filled the air with a thrumming noise that was audible from the town center to the stockade wall, where at that moment three rather nonplussed guards were regarding Firkin, Balur, Quirk, and several hundred of their closest friends.

“You want to come in?” said one of the guards, as if he had never heard of such a thing, and as if his proximity to a gate were something entirely coincidental. He looked to his colleagues.

“I don't know,” said one. “Dathrax never said nothing about no big crowds.”

“He said not to let in no one suspicious,” said the first. “I'm finding a crowd like this somewhat suspicious.”

“You can't be generalizing just like that,” piped up the third guard. “For example,” he said, “that bloke over there is looking dead suspicious. But those two are just kids. I don't think no kids are suspicious.”

“What if they're dwarves?” said the second. “I'm reckoning dwarves are suspicious.”

“Now that's just open racism that is,” said the third. “You can't just go saying that all dwarves are suspicious. Very diverse people. Lot of different outlooks on the world. Some are arseholes to be sure, but some are lovely.”

“He's into that short one over at the brothel,” said the second.

“So what if I am?” said the third. “I have diverse tastes, I have. I'm a man of the world. Should try yourself a short arse, and see what you're missing.”

Beside him, Balur noted, Quirk was clamping her lips together with considerable force.

“The problem is,” said the second, “no one ever said what the definition of
suspicious
was. Open to too much subjectivity.”

“No it's fucking not,” said the first guard. “Subjectivity is the whole fucking point. You're a guard. A professional. You are paid to have a discerning eye in this arena. If you don't, you're not a guard, you're a fucking bystander.”

“Now hang on, Joel,” said the third guard. “That's a bit strong”

“I'm not sure it's strong enough,” said Joel.

The second guard looked miserable. He fell back against the stockade wall, kicking at the dirt.

Balur opened his mouth to make a suggestion. That was as far as he got.

“So you're suggesting,” said Joel to the third, “that we divide them up into two groups, one suspicious and one not suspicious?”

“I think we have to judge them as individuals,” said the third. “It's the only fair way.”

“That's just not practical, Frederick,” said Joel.

Balur opened his mouth to contribute but once more they ignored him.

“In this case,” said Joel, “I think you have to judge the crowd as a single unit. It's the only practical way.”

“I,” said Frederick, puffing out his chest, “am a man of principle. And that principle supersedes practicality.”

“Well,” said Frederick, “I think we know then why I'm a captain and you're not.”

“It's a corrupt system,” opined Frederick.

“Not corrupt,” said Joel, shaking his head. “Just an imperfect system in an imperfect world.”

It was at this point that Balur punched all three guards in the head. One, two, three. They slumped to the ground one after the other, stacking up like logs for the fire. Balur leaned forward and pushed the gates to Athril open. He then stepped aside and let Firkin lead the crowd into the town.

Quirk looked at him. “Very gentlemanly,” she said.

“Don't have to be being civilized to be civil,” replied Balur, still looking down at the guards. Quirk's smile pleased him.

A lot of people, Dathrax knew, envied dragons for their ability to fly. It had never made much sense to him.

Breathing fire? Yes, of course. There was majesty to that destruction. The long, savage claws? The sharp, inescapable teeth? Of course Dathrax could see the appeal of being able to rend one's foes limb from limb, and of fearing very little in return. Also, the long, sinuous body. That seemed an appealing trait. To not be bound down by the bulk of other large animals. The dragon's natural grace? Surely that was to be envied?

But flight? Dragging his majestic arse across the sky, slow painful wing beat by slow painful wing beat? All the running to take off, all the planning to land, the painful stretch of the muscles between his shoulder blades? No, Dathrax had never truly seen the appeal of that.

There was the gold, of course. People envied dragons for that as well. And Dathrax could see the appeal of that. Gold was beautiful. Gold glistened. Gold soothed the soul. Gold held him tight as he slept at night. It wrapped its caring arms around him and fed his soul as he faced all the trials and tribulations this life brought him.

If only gold wasn't so cursedly heavy.

Dathrax flew, and Dathrax was carrying a chest full of the gold he loved, but he increasingly wished that he wasn't.

All of which went to explain why Dathrax—when only halfway to his island, but above his garrison of troops—let go of the large chest of gold and jewels he had been dragging home. It would, he decided, come to him along with the rest of his taxes at the month's end. He had enough to tide him over until then.

And so he flew on unencumbered, the chest plummeting down in his uncaring wake.

Lette momentarily broke from Will's lips when she felt a lurch in her stomach. Was it, she wondered, her conscience finally kicking in? Her rational mind? She stared around, but of course saw nothing but blackness.

Will snaked his hand back behind her head, his fingers tangling with her hair. “Come back,” he said.

“I'm fairly sure we're plummeting toward the ground,” she said. She thought she should probably be panicking.

“A dragon's holding us,” Will pointed out. “He's not going to crash. He'll just pull up.” He attempted to distract her by sliding his hands down onto her arse. To be fair, it was rather distracting.

It was at that moment that the chest crashed down into the Athril's Lake garrison. Will and Lette survived thanks to the thick cloth padding that Will had painstakingly stitched to the inside of the chest. Quirk's vials of Snag Weed potion, however, did not.

Almost instantly, the chest was filled with glass, fluid, and fumes. Lette had only the opportunity to say, “Oh shit,” before the fog filled her lungs, and she knew no more.