The Dragon of Despair (47 page)

Firekeeper had been trying to prepare herself for this moment—surrender was, after all, considered a viable option between wolves—but Brotius’s arrogance made her unwilling to back down without question.

“I still not know why I do this thing,” she said, her hand moving to the knife she had borrowed the night before. She had hidden her Fang—after some consideration of the limitations of her usual costume for hiding much of anything—strapped close to Blind Seer’s belly where his thick fur hid both sheathed blade and the light thong that bound it to him.

Brotius replied, “Because you kill a man and your dog arm bit another.”

“I could have killed all,” the wolf-woman reminded Brotius, locking her gaze with his, “but only took life to keep my own. You should give me thanks for having taken away such ugly ones.”

Off to one side Firekeeper heard Derian swear softly. She knew she had departed from the script they had worked out the night before, but she couldn’t help herself. Surrender was a serious matter among wolves.

Brotius looked angrier than ever.

“I the guard, not you,” he said stiffly. “I deal with ‘ugly ones.’”

From somewhere on the fringes of a gathering crowd, Grateful Peace glided smoothly forward.

“If my services as a translator may be of help,” he offered. He spoke first in Pellish, then said something in New Kelvinese that Firekeeper figured must be about the same thing.

Brotius grunted, then spoke at such a rapid spate that his native language’s liquid sounds flowed in an uninterrupted torrent.

Grateful Peace translated blandly, “He wants to know why you came back if you didn’t plan to surrender.”

“I come back,” Firekeeper said, “so he let my friends and you go. I do nothing wrong. The men I kill were bandits.”

Peace translated. Brotius snarled something, a fairly long speech this time, which Peace must have shortened in translation.

“Captain Brotius wishes to know if you think that your being a noblewoman in your own land makes you immune to New Kelvinese law.”

Firekeeper shook her head, addressing Brotius while trusting Peace to give her words sense.

“No. I think that because I try to keep my life hot in me that is the first law.”

“The men didn’t want your life,” Peace translated for Brotius. “They wanted to have their dogs fight your dog.”

“Blind Seer is my life,” Firekeeper said simply, “and the bandits not just want fight. They say they make carpet or cloak of him. They follow us here from other place to fight.”

Peace finished speaking, listened while Brotius spoke, then waved for Elise, who had pushed her way through the throng.

“Lady Archer,” Peace said, addressing her with a formal note to his words that had not been present when he translated for Brotius, “you speak our tongue best of your group. Captain Brotius wishes to know whether you think that Lady Blysse could have mistaken bluster for an actual threat.”

“I do,” Elise said, crossing the stable yard at such a pace that Firekeeper knew she had been longing to do so ever since the conflict began.

Once she was close enough that her words could be kept private, Elise spoke earnestly to Captain Brotius in his own language. He replied with what Firekeeper thought was at least a little courtesy. The wolf-woman was getting tired of being discussed as though she were a piece of furniture, but given the alternative she thought she could bear it.

Idly, she reached and rubbed behind Blind Seer’s ears.

“You are as impulsive as a pup with a butterfly. See what trouble it causes?”
the wolf said affectionately. He shifted his huge head under her hand,
“A little to the side there.”

Eventually, Brotius and Elise stopped speaking. Elise’s expression was tight around the mouth and eyes, and Firekeeper braced herself for bad news.

“Brotius wants Blind Seer caged,” Elise said shortly.

“No.”

“He says Blind Seer is a dangerous animal.”

“He is,” Firekeeper said proudly. “I will not make Blind Seer like dead meat to make Brotius feel he can pee farther than anyone else.”

Elise pressed her lips together, whether to swallow a giggle or a snort of disapproval Firekeeper couldn’t guess. Before Elise could speak further, Firekeeper offered:

“I put Blind Seer on leash and collar.”

Elise translated the offer. Brotius shook his head. Firekeeper had another idea.

“Ask why he want this. I have come. Now we can go.”

Elise replied woodenly, “Captain Brotius says he is not the one who can judge whether or not what you have done was murder. Therefore, he is not qualified to let you free.”

Firekeeper snorted.

“Easy, dear heart,”
Blind Seer cautioned.

Firekeeper held her temper with difficulty.

“Who is this qualified?”

“Brotius has sent for a judge. The judge should be here within a few days.”

“Then we go?”

“If the judge says that you are not guilty of murder.”

For the first time Firekeeper considered that someone might be stupid enough not to see things her way.

“And what happen then?”

“At the best they would send you home.”

“And at worst?”

“They would kill you.”

“They not do that to Earl Kestrel’s daughter,” Firekeeper stated confidently.

Elise bit her lip.

“No, I don’t think they would, but Firekeeper…”

“Yes?”

“They might kill Blind Seer.”

“
WHERE’S CONSOLOR MELINA
?” Toriovico asked Tipi.

Melina’s maid gave him a saucy look.

Tipi was a slave, probably—judging from her upward tilting slanting dark eyes, but light brown hair and pale skin—originally from Stonehold, where children from mixed-race matings were still considered shameful in some social circles.

The slave had been purchased as a novelty when she was a girl of fifteen some thirty years before, but her novelty had vanished along with whatever peculiar beauty she had possessed. The thoughtful administration of Thendulla Lypella had seen her retrained as a domestic. Until recently, Tipi had been considered so inefficient that she had been assigned to the service of foreign visitors—among them the visiting Melina Shield.

Now Tipi’s fortunes had risen along with her new mistress’s and she treated everyone—even the Healed One—as if she herself was a greatly privileged person.

“I couldn’t say,” Tipi replied. Then offering a modicum of helpfulness, she gestured back into the roomy suite that was her mistress’s private domain. “She’s not here.”

Toriovico leaned against the doorframe. He had come to his wife’s suite from his own half of the complex. All afternoon he had been sweating over a new routine for this year’s harvest festival. He had been hoping to get Melina’s opinion on a particularly difficult segment—one over which he and his Choreographer had been in fairly heated disagreement.

The Cloud Touching Spire had been arranged with the understanding that sometimes married couples got along better if each member had his or her own space. Melina shared a bed with Toriovico, but otherwise occupied her own elaborate suite. The arrangement had worked well, thus far. However, for the last several days Toriovico had not been finding Melina in when he sought her. More and more often Tipi didn’t seem to know where to direct him.

Toriovico felt a surge of anger, the first he had ever felt toward his wife. Immediately, he felt guilty. Mingled guilt and anger roughened his words.

“Tipi,” he said, stalking a few steps into the room, “I am not pleased with your attitude. Do you remember who I am?”

The woman immediately looked frightened.

“You are the Healed One.”

“That’s right. You, on the other hand, are a crossbreed slave, a discarded sex toy, and—if the condition of your mistress’s footwear lately is any indication—a less than attentive domestic.”

Tipi fell to her knees and bent over, exposing her back while veiling her face in the cascade of her grey-streaked hair.

“Don’t beat me, Master!”

For a confusing moment, Toriovico felt certain that Tipi
wanted
him to beat her. Why? Because she could then complain to Melina? Because she was genuinely contrite? Or—he struggled to hold on to the thought—because she wanted to distract him?

What had he last said? Footwear. He’d commented on the condition of Melina’s footwear.

As always, when Toriovico thought of his sweet and lovely wife, he found it difficult not to become distracted by a catalogue of Melina’s many charms. This time an image of some of the astonishingly wonderful things she had insisted on doing to him last night in the privacy of their bedchamber threatened to lull him, but his anger, fading ember that it was, burned through.

Toriovico pushed pleasure away and found the memory he sought.

He had come to find Melina. She had been in her bath. On his way to her (he fought down images of her reclining in the scented water, of how she had opened her arms to him) Toriovico had passed a heap of discarded robes. Next to them had been shoes. Serviceable leather shoes, not the curly-toed slippers Melina usually wore. Even though the shoes had been cursorily scraped, he could see mud clinging to the instep and along the edges.

The robes hadn’t been Melina’s usual attire either. With summer Melina had discovered the joy of embroidered silks. Her coloring was such that she could wear anything but the most brilliant shades. Neither pastels nor jewel tones were barred to her and she had greedily accepted lavish gifts of robes, cloaks, and stockings.

No, the robes Toriovico had seen piled for the cleaners had been of utilitarian cotton dyed the same neutral tone that was worn by the Alchemists when they puttered about with some noxious blend that would ruin better fabrics. He knew Melina possessed a few sets of such robes—relics of the aborted investigation of the artifacts last winter—but why would she be wearing them now?

Toriovico stared down at Tipi’s bent back, almost certain now that the maid wanted him to beat her, wanted to infuriate him so that he would forget his queries after her mistress. He was astonished that she would think it would be so easy. Then, uneasily, he wondered if she might have had reason. He had been rather scatterbrained lately, but he’d put it down to adjusting to marriage.

He didn’t want to think about that either. Instead he looked at the still-crouching Tipi. Resisting an urge to boot her in her spreading fundament, he strode past her into Melina’s dressing room.

He had no idea just how many robes Melina possessed. Such were considered gifts in good taste, even to a woman of her unique status. What he was looking for were those cotton work robes and what he found quickly confirmed his vague conclusions.

There was only one such robe hanging in her wardrobe. Another, quite possibly the very one he had seen last night, was crumpled in the wicker laundry basket. Melina could well be wearing a third.

He heard a sound behind him and wheeled. Tipi had risen from her abasement and stood timidly in the doorway to the dressing room.

“Where is your mistress?” Toriovico demanded and his tone brooked no evasion.

“I don’t know!” Tipi wailed. “The revered Consolor does not tell me, her most humble slave, where she goes. All I know is that for several days she has dressed herself in those ugly robes and ugly shoes, covered this with a light outer robe, and gone from here commanding me to await her and keep ready warm water so that she might bathe upon her return.”

“That is all?”

“Yes, gracious Healed One.”

Toriovico wasn’t certain. There was a knowing glint in Tipi’s eye, but he didn’t care to beat her. He might learn some small detail more, but not enough to merit having to explain to Melina that he had beaten her slave because she didn’t keep close enough tabs on her mistress. That wouldn’t do at all.

From the first, Melina had demanded a certain degree of autonomy, explaining that she had been accustomed to such for many years now and was reluctant to change. Toriovico had been content to give her what she wished. Not only did he wish time for himself—time he would not have if a wife clung to him at every step—but he was not brother to six sisters for nothing. An unhappy woman could make a man consider the most horrible torments ever devised a welcome relief.

Instead of questioning Tipi further, Torio took the dirty robe from the laundry hamper. Mud clung to its hem, carrying with it a slight sewer stench.

The Healed One pursed his lips thoughtfully and wished that Grateful Peace, the Dragon’s Eye, had not turned traitor. Although his post was within the administration of the Dragon Speaker, he had always been a good servant to both aspects of the government. He would know where this mud came from—or if he didn’t, he would have a fair idea where to inquire.

But Grateful Peace was far away and his post had not been filled. Instead, Apheros had appointed Siyago of the Artificers into his Three, naming him the Dragon’s Fire. For the first time, Toriovico wondered at this. The Dragon’s Fire was usually a war leader and New Kelvin was at peace with all her neighbors. Did Apheros think it might soon be otherwise? Perhaps such concerns were wise when one so trusted as Grateful Peace defected to another kingdom.