The Dragon of Despair (74 page)

“Doc wants to know,” Derian said, deliberately making his Pellish more colloquial than he usually would, “what’s wrong with your mother. So he can pack the right things, you see.”

Their caller didn’t hesitate.

“It is her heart,” he said. “She is not young and the summer has been difficult for her.”

Derian nodded. “We’ll be just a moment.”

He returned to Doc.

“The man says heart,” he reported. “And he understands Pellish like a native, and I think I’ve seen him somewhere before. I’m going with you.”

“He could have worked on the river near Gateway or Zodara,” Doc protested mildly, taking some items out of his bag and replacing them with others. “But come along if you’d like.”

Derian darted back into the kitchen to tell Wendee that he was escorting Doc on a call. On his way out the door, he snatched up his weighted walking stick from the stand, then hurried after Doc. Their caller was hurrying Sir Jared toward Aswatano. Again Derian frowned. That wasn’t a residential section at all—and even if Doc had done so, Derian hadn’t forgotten Ambassador Redbriar’s warnings about unrest or the attacks on the embassy.

Yet even though Derian was certain something was distinctly wrong, he didn’t vocalize his thoughts. As long as there was a patient who might need his help, Doc would only find some excuse to continue. Now more than ever, Derian didn’t want their unnamed caller to be aware of his concerns.

As the two Hawk Havenese entered the marketplace, Derian was acutely aware of the angry looks and ugly gestures directed their way. Even Doc noticed them and gripped his bag more firmly. Indeed, the only person who didn’t appear to notice was their guide.

Instead, the guide slowed and turned toward the market, gesturing at the stalls. As he spoke, he began talking rather loudly—and this time he spoke New Kelvinese.

“Slaves?” he said, as if responding to a question Doc had asked. “This is not the market for slaves.”

Doc, of course, understood only a fraction of what had been said, and the key term “slave” had not been among the basic vocabulary Peace had thought necessary for his charges to learn.

Doc’s response didn’t make matters any better.

“What about your mother?” he said, in Pellish, only knowing that his guide had slowed and was waving his arm.

Derian doubted that anyone understood what Jared had said—and even if they had, his words were certain to be misunderstood. What the market-goers would have seen was the foreigner urgently questioning the man who had just told him this wasn’t a slave market.

Recalling the rumors that had reached New Kelvin about Melina’s practices—say the one about feeding spiders on human blood—Derian wondered for the first time what stories might be being told about the Consolor among her new subjects. The New Kelvinese might be magic crazy, but he’d never heard of them being particularly cruel. The same stories should be equally repulsive to them.

“I tell you,” their “guide” said in New Kelvinese, “I know nothing about where you can get these people.”

Doc turned away in disgust, obviously seeking Derian and finding instead an angry man holding a cleaver. He might even have been the same butcher with whom Derian and Wendee had tangled on an earlier visit to the market.

“So you want slaves, Hawkus,” the butcher said in New Kelvinese. “It is true then that your people are hypocrites who long to break your own rules.”

He might have said more, but Doc, understanding only the bastardized “Hawkus,” interrupted eagerly:

“Yes, I’m from Hawk Haven. This man told me his mother was ill and asked me to treat her. I’m a doctor.”

At this juncture an anonymous voice called out in New Kelvinese, “Don’t believe him. He wants slaves to drain for his barbaric rituals. He’s the man who claims he can heal with a touch.”

Some of the increasingly restive crowd looked at Doc with surprised respect, but the majority looked even more infuriated. Derian had learned enough of New Kelvinese theories of magic during their last venture to realize that Doc’s talent would seem impossibly easy to these people. Their magic was vested in elaborate rituals—not in a simple internal gift.

“Doc!” Derian called out. “It’s a setup of some sort. Get back to the house.”

At almost the same moment their guide, perhaps trusting that Doc would not have understood what he had said in New Kelvinese, cried out in Pellish:

“Sir Jared, this way! That butcher means you harm.”

“Doc, no!” Derian began, but quickly realized he had problems of his own. Perhaps his height and distinctively bright hair color had caused him to blend into the motley throng more easily than the obviously foreign Jared. Perhaps his silence had protected him, but now many of those nearest to him were raising threatening fists or fumbling for makeshift weapons.

Various shouts of “Murderers!” or “Baby stealers” inflamed the crowd further. Rational thought had clearly gone by the wayside.

Derian started backing, hoping to get a wall or something else solid behind him. He was glad that he had seized up his walking stick on the way out the door, very sorry that Firekeeper and Blind Seer were not with them. In the press he could no longer see Doc and he had to hope that the other man’s soldier’s training was coming to his aid.

The world had become a muddle of brightly colored faces. The air reeked of sweat and grease and overwhelmingly of spices.

Derian glanced quickly behind him. He had backed against a stall selling a variety of dried herbs, certainly the same one where he and Wendee had shopped. He wasn’t carrying the powder Wendee had bought for them both that other day, but he thought he recognized it among the neat open bags set on display.

Wildly, he grabbed a handful of the powder, feeling it burn against his skin on contact with his sweat. He flung the spice into the faces of those nearest to him, his own eyes burning as some blew back at him.

The spice vendor was shrieking insults at those who threatened to overturn her livelihood, so violent in her imprecations that they stepped back as if her curses had real force.

Derian took advantage of the distraction to duck around the edge of the spice vendor’s booth and into some more open space. As he ran he glanced around for Doc, but the other man was nowhere to be seen.

Knowing it was futile, Derian shouted, “Firekeeper! Elise! Doc! Wendee!”

No welcome howl—or even human shout—answered his cry, only voices raised in New Kelvinese shouting things like: “There he goes!” “He was seeking a baby to butcher!” “He’s a foreigner, just like the bride!”

Melina sure has made herself popular,
Derian thought wildly.

A fist caught him in the ribs, missing his kidneys by a finger’s width. Derian swung without aiming and felt his stick hit solidly. His flash of satisfaction ebbed as quickly as it had risen, for the man’s yelp of pain seemed to signal the others to close in. The only good thing was that they were getting in each other’s way and so Derian was able to jam himself into the angle between two walls. These kept him from getting trampled, but also imprisoned him. Derian was big enough to make a pretty good target and blow after blow found its mark.

The beating might not be systematic enough to do a lot of damage, but it hurt. Derian found himself concentrating on nothing more than hitting back and shielding himself from the worst of the blows. Escape no longer seemed an option. He only wondered if they’d be content to knock him unconscious or if they’d only be satisfied with killing him. A vague certainty that the latter was likely kept him from feigning unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness was precariously close when Derian became aware of a brassy trumpet call followed by someone shouting commands from what seemed like a vast distance. Moments later, he realized that there were fewer people hitting him—and fewer close enough for him to hit. He sagged against the wall, stick held defensively, grateful that his parents had insisted he have arms training.

There was blood on the cobbled ground and Derian felt pretty certain it wasn’t all his own. His head throbbed when he turned to look for the source of the now dominant commands.

A contingent of the city guard was quelling the riot, for once the brawl had begun several of the stall holders had entered the fray, seeking to protect their property. Derian recognized the spice vendor speaking in rapid fury to someone who—if the number of feathers in his helmet was any indication—was probably in charge.

I hope I don’t go to prison for shoplifting
, Derian thought, and in the sudden exhaustion that flooded him the idea seemed very funny.

Laughter tortured his battered ribs so that he collapsed to his knees, still gasping and wheezing. A pair of strong hands raised him up.

“Are you in need of a doctor?” a woman’s voice asked.

Derian looked into a painted face beneath an unplumed helmet and for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime thought of Doc.

“Doc!” he gasped. “Sir Jared. My companion. We were lured here. A man said he needed a doctor for his mother.”

Seeing the woman’s expression flow from genuine concern to complete confusion, Derian stopped, realizing he’d been speaking an incomprehensible mixture of New Kelvinese and Pellish. He started again:

“My companion, Sir Jared, is he all right? We came this way together, following a man who said his mother needed a doctor.”

The guard shouted to her nearest companion.

“This one’s alive. He says he had a companion—a foreigner like himself. See if you can find him.”

As he hauled himself back onto his feet, Derian realized for the first time the extent of the damage. Numerous people lay unconscious or nursing a variety of wounds. No wonder the guard was uncertain about Jared.

Derian allowed her to escort him to a stone bench near the very fountain Wendee had thought so disquieting. Beneath the battling wizards and their amorphous foe, Derian repeated his story, then repeated it again when the many-plumed commander came over. Their experience at the Mushroom Stanza Inn with Captain Brotius had not prepared Derian to expect to be given the benefit of the doubt by New Kelvinese law, but this was a different situation.

“Several of the vendors confirm much of your account,” the commander said. “They did not understand your foreign babble, but they confirm that you and your companion did nothing to incite the riot.”

Derian asked hesitantly, “And my companion?”

“Sir Jared has an odd tale to tell,” the commander said. “I have had him speaking to one of my company who speaks some of your language. Perhaps you could serve as translator in case we have missed something?”

In his deep relief, Derian didn’t waste energy resenting that he hadn’t been told sooner that Doc was well enough to talk, nor did he miss that the commander had taken care to get both of their accounts before letting them speak to each other.

“I would be pleased to assist, sir,” Derian replied, trying to remember the appropriate formal gestures. “Could I beg the favor of a message being taken to our residence? News of this riot may have reached there and our friends may worry.”

“This has already been done,” the watch commander said with a slight smile, “at the request of Sir Jared, as soon as he was certain you were alive.”

Doc looked far better than Derian did, and would have immediately begun on the redhead’s injuries if the commander hadn’t made quite clear that anything short of life-threatening damage would wait until he had his report. Doc’s tale matched Derian’s right up to where the riot began. Then it took an odd turn.

“I didn’t know which way to go,” he said, addressing the commander, though speaking through Derian, “and as I couldn’t reach Derian, I went toward the man who had brought us here. I didn’t really trust him, but I thought he could explain what was going on.

“As soon as I was within arm’s reach, he drew me into a alley between two of the buildings bordering the market—bakeries. I remember the scent of fresh bread distinctly. I thought something strange was going on and pushed away. It seemed like he wanted me to go into one of the shops.”

“Perhaps he meant to keep you safe,” the commander suggested.

“Perhaps,” Doc agreed, “and I would have believed that myself if at that moment I hadn’t realized I recognized him. Derian had tried to warn me there was something odd about him—odder even than his being our only patient today—but I hadn’t listened. I guess I’d been too glad to have work. Now that we were close and I had no patient to worry about, I gave him a good look and that’s when I realized that I did know him.

“Well,” Doc paused to qualify, “not really know him, but that I’d seen him before. I’m absolutely certain that he was one of the men who attacked Firekeeper and Blind Seer at the Mushroom Stanza Inn.”

Derian interrupted Doc long enough to explain. The watch commander frowned thoughtfully.

“I believe I read a report on that incident,” he said. “Continue.”

“There isn’t much more to say,” Doc shrugged. “Once I realized that this was likely some sort of plot—maybe revenge for our being part of him and his buddies being sent to Urnacia—I decided that the riot might be safer after all. When I reemerged into the market, you and your guards were already breaking things up. I started helping the nearest injured and looking for Derian.”

“Very interesting,” the commander said. “If I permit you to return to your residence, will I find you there if I have further questions?”

Derian answered for them both.

“Yes, sir, and if Hasamemorri throws us out, we’ll make certain you know where to find us.”

“I will take your word on that,” the commander said. “Can you, Counselor Derian,” he asked, surprising Derian by his awareness of his title, “walk or do you need a litter? In either case, I will delegate a few of my people to escort you safely to your door.”

Derian wasn’t at all sure he could walk the distance, but he’d rather collapse trying than admit it.

“I’ll be fine, Commander,” he said, “and thank you.”

“Thank rather,” the watch commander said with one of his quicksilver grins, “the keeper of the spice booth. Not only does she not wish to press charges for your theft of her goods, she has spoken most loudly about how you were attacked.”