The Dragon Round (34 page)

Ophardt shrinks, hoping he will at least be kept on as a soil boy.

The sergeant touches the blood on the wall, slides outside, and closes the door to prevent gawking. He questions the footman, who tells him when he came, why, and what he saw. The sergeant asks if he saw anyone else on the lane; the blood is fresh so the killer might have been nearby. The footman scans the neighbors. They shrink back. Doors and windows close. Ophardt says he didn't see anyone suspicious.

Chelson is about to say that he fears his son-in-law was involved when the sergeant bends and holds the lantern near the footman's waist. It reveals a thin red smudge across his uniform. “Oh,” Ophardt says, “there was the barrowman.”

2

Near midnight Ject bars the door to his office and steps to a darkwood counter mounted on the wall. He dons a crisp white sleeveless tunic,
lights several beeswax candles on the counter with a straw from his grate, and unrolls a red woven mat between them. Onto it he sets a white ceramic pot filled with clean water and covered with a white cloth. Next to this he arrays several objects removed from a finely carved box: an unhoned snow-white blade of deer bone, a tin with yellow paste, another with black, two more white cloths, rolled, and a horsehair brush with a black oak handle. He stretches and looks out the window above the counter, but the candles have snuffed his view of the lamplit Upper City. He pulls off his boots, stands one on the mat, dips a cloth in the water, and cleans it while considering what he knows.

There have been at least three murders in two days. The trade rider, stabbed in the East Harbor. A maid, horribly mutilated, found atop a warehouse in the West Harbor. Another maid, with her throat slit or torn open, found in Servants. Plus Chelson's daughter, badly injured at least, taken from Lesser Silk.

She may be alive. Why would the killer take the body? Chelson, though, took the more pessimistic view, and, not wanting to involve Ject, said that his men would investigate. A second citywide search, which an owner's daughter would merit, would indeed be very embarrassing, but Ject won't miss an opportunity to indebt Chelson to him, so he's ordered his men to make inquiries too.

Ject scrapes off some persistent splatter with the blade then washes off its residue. He shakes out a rolled rag, wraps it around two fingers, and digs out some yellow paste, a traditional dubbin of wax, soda ash, and tallow. This is one of his better batches, but the secret is in his black polish. He rubs it into the leather.

Ject considers the city guard from Quiet who is also missing. No one has seen him since he went on watch two nights ago—or no one's said so out of fear of dismissal. He was in the same area as the two maids. If he were murdered, how would he fit with the rest?

And now he's gotten a report of a man who assaulted a woman in Servants. He fled after she fought him off, leaving behind a substantial
knife. He wore a long-sleeve black tunic and pants, and, from what little the witnesses saw of her, she resembled Chelson's daughter. Why would she have been there? Did the same person catch her at home?

Could he have also been this barrowman? Black is the color mandated for night workers, though.

Ject owes that footman for calling the guards. He wouldn't have heard about the barrowman otherwise. He'll find a place for him if Chelson finishes or diminishes him.

Ject works the yellow paste methodically up the shaft of his boot as he matches victims to the most likely suspects. Tristaban—Barrowman. Tristaban's girl—the unidentified assailant or Livion. The rider—Livion. Livion doesn't strike him as violent, but he can't deny Livion had the opportunity to kill the girl and he could imagine a motive, nor can he deny Livion had the chance and a possible motive for killing the rider.

They died so differently, though. The girl was probably killed from behind then her body was left in plain sight. The rider was stabbed or slashed many times in the abdomen, as if the killer were enraged or more than one were involved, then his body was hidden. Ject's seen meek men like Livion go wild and kill, and he's seen the meek kill methodically, but the same man wouldn't kill both ways alternately. And the wild don't hide a body, while the meek don't leave them out in the open. If Livion killed one, he didn't kill the other. He'll put Livion down for the rider.

Perhaps the person who killed the maid was interrupted when killing the girl, the way he was interrupted tonight. That seems a reach. No one's so bold twice.

Ject trades his cloth for the clean one and scoops up some black, a mixture of bone black and wool grease that will restore his boot's color and give it an unusual shine. As he starts at the toe again, he realizes the guard, Bern, and the maid have something in common. She was left on a rooftop inaccessible without a ladder. He was stationed atop Quiet, also inaccessible except by the tower stairs. If he didn't
sneak away, what if he were taken while on Quiet? All a person would have to do is fly.

Could he have actually been right about the dragon story?

Too bad the story's in ruins. Livion's compromised. He's compromised. Herse's story, the only one still standing, however improbable, must command the truth, and Herse will again make the case for war at a special session of Council at seven hours tomorrow. Ject checks his clock. It's almost midnight.

If the Council submits to his story, half the city could be burned the way it was in the last war. Hundreds, probably thousands, will die before starvation and disease set in. And worst of all Ject, as is traditional and necessary in time of war, will be put under Herse's command along with Prieve, then likely relieved.

That can't happen. All he needs to do is produce a dragon.

Or a dragon of sentiment—a roaring fear, a monstrous rage—one that could sway or at least delay the vote.

He twists some black into the tips of his mustache as he decides what to do, curls them while he shapes his plan, and, feeling as revitalized as his mustache, pulls a bell cord to summon Ravis. He unbars the door and gets to work on his other boot. This will be a long night, but by dusk tomorrow Herse may feel like Ject's boots have been driven deep into his throat.

From atop the city's exterior gate,
Herse and Rego look down Gate Street, one of the few roads winding through Hanoshi Town that's cobbled and lamplit.

Rego faces Thuban, the pole star, and tilts his head straight up. The star Tarf is nearly overhead. “It's almost midnight,” he says.

A soldier on the gate tower to their left blows a curling brass horn: the gates will close in ten minutes. They won't be opened until six hours. In a tavern just outside the gate, someone says, “Last call!”

Rego looks concerned.

“He'll be here,” Herse says.

Three men, two carters and a stevedore just off shift, hurry out the gate and head for the tavern. They nearly run into a woman stumbling from an adjacent alley. She curses them and smoothes her clothes, which weren't smooth to start. As the carters go inside, the stevedore asks her something. She shakes her head. He shakes his purse. She looks at the gate then shows him ten spread fingers. He asks something else. Ten fingers again. She's stunned when he accepts and grudgingly follows her into the alley.

“Ten pennies for ten minutes?” Rego says. “Good work if you can get it.”

Herse says, “If Ject could get half a coin for the women he jails, he'd be on the Council himself. Ah, there we are.”

Three large wagons crawl up the street. The canvas covering their cargo mounds reveals fragments of the Shield's logo on blond crates of various sizes. The soldiers at the gate normally stop wagons and ask about their cargo. These they wave through.

The horn sounds twice. People leave the tavern, many furious. A carpenter heads for the gate.

The lead driver appears on top of the tower.

Rego says, “Any trouble, Sergeant?”

“No,” he says. “We brought all the weapons. Had to leave behind some shields. We didn't have another wagon.”

“We'll manage,” Herse says.

Rego says, “From what I saw when spreading the word, most supporters are already armed in a makeshift way.”

Now the carpenter appears.

“Corporal,” Rego says.

“The two men who just entered the tavern, they said if there's a war, wages will be docked eight pennies for every whole coin to pay for it. People are outraged.”

“That can't be true,” Rego says. “It'd be two at most.”

“One to start,” Herse says.

The horn sounds three times. Patrons are pushed out of the tavern, which has to close. They continue arguing in the street.

Herse says, “Fortunately, we have a more encouraging message. Birming, you brought the blue chest?”

“First thing loaded, as you requested,” the sergeant says.

“Then we have the only weapon we really need.”

The gates creak closed. The bars slide into place. The woman bounds from the alley. The stevedore laughs as she pounds on the gate, trying to get inside the city. She looks up at Herse pleadingly.

He shakes his head and turns away. She curses him with an athlete's creativity.

“Someday soon,” Herse says to Rego. “Very soon.”

Chelson pushes between two soft pink
drapes into his daughter's inner room. The walls are lined with wardrobes, mirrors, and scores of shelves on which sit hundreds of tiny dolls. Each has been carefully ranked by Tristaban since she was a child, and she still moves them around occasionally as great or terrible things happen in their complex lives. Their heads swivel as one and look at him, it seems.

“My men will find the barrowman,” he tells them, “and whoever hired him.” Was it Eles or Blue Island? Thick as thieves, those two. No interest in war, only in rents and fees and regular routes. They did not claim. They collected. Would they really go so far to sway him and his allies on the Council to not call for war? If so, they miscalculated. War must have its sacrifices. And he must cut his losses.

The doll Chelson had made to resemble his daughter is not on top. It never is. He admires that. She's a striver. She wouldn't lose her will to climb like so many of the dolls on the middle shelves. The doll's currently third after two others. He can't remember their names.

He picks up the top doll. He ordered it for her from the Dawn Lands. Its face is red porcelain with a tiny black smile. Its dress is silk,
the colors obeying no Hanoshi code. He smashes it on the tile floor between two rugs.

Whoever took Tristaban will pay
, he thinks. No one steals from him.

The new number one is made of fine gray wool wrapped around cotton wadding and wood. The eyes are coming loose.
She used to sleep with this one
, he thinks. He rips off an eye, worms a finger into the torn wool beneath, and tears the fabric open. He strips off the wool like a glove from a finger, plucks away the cotton, and drops the remains. The bones clatter on the tiles.

The barrowman will be lucky to get off as easy as this doll after Holestar finds him.

Chelson picks up the Tristaban doll. She was seven when it was made. An engineer came, measured her features with calipers, and sketched her from every angle. She loves the doll, but hated standing naked and cold for so long. He shakes the doll's head. Something rattles inside. He reaches under its dress to grab its skinny thighs and whacks the head against a wardrobe. The articulated body sways, its arms flail, until the head shatters. A penny falls out.

By the time he's finished with all the dolls, the clocks are chiming four. Servants have come and gone from Tristaban's outer room, they've come and gone again, and now they're hiding in petty tasks, waiting to be told to retire.

Chelson leaves the room. He closes the drapes and presses their ends together.
Sometimes ventures fail
, he thinks.
You just have to start again
. So he'll make a new one. He's making a war. He's making an army. But why do all that to make a fortune if no one will maintain it after he's gone?

He remembers something. Back in her inner room, down on his knees, Chelson claws through broken bodies and scrapes away tattered clothes until he finds it. The penny. He pockets it.

An hour before dawn, Livion hears
footsteps outside his hell. He flattens himself against the thick wooden door. A shadow blocks the
knife-edge of light slipping between the wicket's hinges. He bangs on the door. “Just tell me if she's safe.”

The shadow passes.

Deep beneath the Upper City, he doesn't hear a screeching come across the sky. It envelops the city and skitters the horses, but no one can pinpoint its origin.

3

By the third hour, Chelson's personal guards have questioned the foremen of the three companies that handle most of Hanosh's night soil, starting with the one owned by the Shield. None had serviced Brimurray yet. It's too far down Lesser Silk to have received such early service.

They then returned to Brimurray to question Tristaban's neighbors, who didn't appreciate being woken up, especially after their earlier inconveniences. Although most didn't like Tristaban or her partner, they helped because they feared Chelson more. Only one had something promising to report.

A junior assistant from Blue Island and his partner, both drunk, said that after Livion had come and gone, they had gone downhill a few blocks for a glass. As they left the lane, they saw a barrowman loitering in the boulevard. They didn't like the looks of him and told him so. His beard was trimmed with a carving knife, the woman said, and he wore a black shift her girl wouldn't have used to wipe a floor. His pants were the strangest leather, the man said. And he smelled, his partner said, like nothing she'd ever smelled before.

The barrowman said his looks were his own, as was his business, and the boulevard belonged to everyone. He spoke more directly than they would have imagined, and he spoke well too, almost like a junior, which only made his impudence more aggravating. They reported
him to a guard outside the Quick Nip, who said he would look out for the man.