The Dragon's Son (20 page)

Bellona fixed her attention on the woman, who was seated on a man’s lap, one
arm draped over his shoulder, sharing a mug of ale.

“Can you tell me where I can find this Ramone?”

“Keep out of this, Bets,” warned the man. “It’s no concern of yours.”

The woman lurched drunkenly to her feet. Stumbling, she sagged against the
table, peered at Bellona.

“What’ll you pay me for what I know?” she leered.

“I have no money,” said Bellona. “That’s why I am seeking this man. He
robbed me and my son. If I find him, however,” she added, seeing the woman
start to turn away, “I’ll give you a reward.”

“You’ll never see it, Bets.” The man grabbed hold of her forearm, gave it a
twist. “Sit back down and behave yourself.”

“It don’t matter,” said the woman sullenly. “That daughter of his thinks she’s
so high and mighty, looks down her nose at me. I owe him one and her another.”
She jerked her arm away, turned back to Bellona.

“Ramone lives in an inn overlooking an alley off the south end of Church
Street. Follow Church Street ‘til it dead-ends at a wall. If you end up in the
church,” she added with an ugly, beer-soaked laugh, “you’ve missed him.”

“There, now, Bets, you’ve done your good deed,” said the man, pulling her
back down on his lap. “Now do a bad one.”

He began to kiss her neck and fondle her. She took another pull at the ale
and went back to business.

At the word “daughter,” Bellona’s heart sank. She guessed immediately what
had become of Ven. Knowing she would get nothing more out of the woman and
thankful she’d found out this much, Bellona left the tavern and set off in
pursuit of Church Street, using the same means to locate it that she’d used to
locate the tavern.

She found the street and the alley and the wall. The term “inn” implied more
than what it was—a ramshackle structure of wood and plaster, held up on either
side by adjacent buildings. Bellona knocked and beat upon the door and kicked
at it with her boot, but there was no answer. She backed up a pace, craned her
neck to look up at the windows.

“Ramone!” she shouted.

Heads poked out of windows. Angry voices told her to go away or they would
summon the guard. Bellona persisted in yelling for Ramone and at last a shutter
on the ground-level opened a crack. A fox-faced man glared out at her from
beneath his nightcap.

“You’re wasting your breath,” he said. “He’s gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone,’ “ Bellona asked.

“Gone!” repeated the man irritably. He waved his hand. “How many other
meanings does the word have? He’s gone and his whore of a daughter with him.
Packed up and sneaked out before sunrise. If you find him, let me know. The
filthy pig owes me four months back rent.”

The man slammed the shutters. The heads in the windows withdrew, went back
to their pillows. The echoes of Bellona’s voice, that had rattled among the
tall buildings, faded away.

She stood in the silent street. She had come literally to a dead end. There
were a thousand holes into which these rats might run, a thousand things they
could do to Ven, and all of them terrible.

She could waste days, weeks, months searching for him, and all the while he
might be dead, his body buried in some shallow grave or thrown into the river.

Bellona had no idea where Ven was or what had
befallen him. But she knew the person who might. She set out that night, walked
until dawn, and then kept walking.

GLIMMERSHANKS HAD NOT BEEN BORN WITH SUCH AN outlandish name. He had
bestowed it on himself, after overhearing one noble lady remark that he was so
graceful a dancer that his legs seemed to “glimmer.” That same noble lady had
been his patron, for a time. Her patronage meant that his troupe of traveling
players could wear her livery and paint her coat of arms on their wagons and
exhibit her writ of authorization when they arrived at castle or manor house or
faire. Her name gained them entry when they would have otherwise been turned
away.

Sadly, word of thefts occurring at castles and manor houses and faires
honored by the presence of Glimmershanks’s troupe eventually reached the ears
of the noble lady, causing her to withdraw her patronage in high dudgeon. Nothing
daunted, Glim-mershanks conceived that this was a mistake on her part and
continued to bandy about her name and wear her livery until her soldiers
descended upon the troupe, ripped the livery from their backs, and set fire to
the wagons. Glimmershanks was still rebuilding following that disaster.

His father and mother had been gypsies, traveling the continent with a
dancing bear and a son. His parents thought far more highly of the bear than
they did the boy, for the bear brought them money and the boy did little but
eat. Glimmershanks was taught to dance in order to perform with the bear. He
was better than the bear, but few in the crowd noticed. He ran away at fifteen
to join a troupe of traveling players, perfected his skill at dancing, added rope
walking and juggling to his routine, and became head of the troupe when its
founder died of eating bad eels.

Glimmershanks lost several members of the troupe during the encounter with
Milady’s guards, including his stilt walker and his ventriloquist. Lacking
patronage, he was no longer welcomed into the noble houses; cities and faires
relegated him to the fringes. Always an opportunist, he was able to capitalize
on his banishment by putting it about that he could exhibit what other, more
respectable troupes did not dare to. He replaced the ventriloquist with two
brothers who had been born joined at the hip and the stilt walker with a
full-grown man who was only two feet tall. As he came across other “freaks” he
took them into his show, including a man whose body was covered with thick
hair. He became the “bear man” and he wrestled all comers and ate raw meat, to
the delight of the crowds. Then there was the girl who could bend her body into
knots and kiss herself in places nature never intended.

Glimmershanks no longer danced. He was too busy being the troupe’s business
manager and promoter. He kept himself fit, however, for had a fondness for the
ladies, and his shapely legs and gypsy eyes and languid grace rarely failed to
win him a fair partner to share his bed. He was doing well for himself these
days. His tawdry troupe, with its freaks and contortionists and dancing girls,
was a popular diversion for gawking peasants and gullible middle-class
burghers. The addition of a bona fide monster was certain to outdraw even the
two-headed midget.

When Ven had been clubbed into unconsciousness, Glim-mershanks bound him
hand and clawed foot.

“The boys are waiting with the cart on the highway,” Glim-mershanks stated.
He looked at the monster; then he looked at Ramone. “You’ll have to help me
carry him.”

“He nearly smashed my windpipe,” Ramone whimpered, massaging his scrawny
neck.

“He didn’t hurt your back or break your arms,” Glimmer-shanks retorted. “You
take his shoulders—”

“That’s the heavy part,” Ramone pointed out sullenly. “Besides, where’s my
money?”

“You’ll get paid,” said Glimmershanks. “Now,” said Ramone.

“Do you think I carry that much on me? You take the feet then.”

“I’ll help carry him,” offered Evelina. She started to approach Ven, then
stopped, eyed him warily. “If you’re sure he’s not going to wake up.”

“If he does, I’ll give him another clip with the club. You handled yourself
well there, Mistress.” Glimmershanks favored Evelina with an admiring gaze. “Your
father tells me you’ve a mind to join the troupe. I’m thinking we could use
someone with your talent.”

“I’m going to be a dancer,” said Evelina. “And so you shall,” Glimmershanks
promised. “On my terms,” Evelina stated.

Glimmershanks stroked his mustache and quirked an eyebrow, intrigued. “What
would those be?”

“I’m not going to dance on the stage by day and in some man’s bed by night.
I mean to do courtly dances. I’m to be dressed in fine clothes with ribbons in
my hair. For, you see, sir, I plan for a wealthy gentleman to see me and fall
in love with me. . . .”

She glanced at Glimmershanks from beneath her long, dark lashes. He recalled
what he had just seen of her body, bare in the moonlight; her yearning,
yielding abandon.

“Perhaps some wealthy gentleman has already seen you ‘dance,’“ he said. “Perhaps
he’d like to see more.”

Evelina favored him with a smile, then bent down to lift up the monster’s
feet. Ramone sighed, relieved. His daughter might do worse than become
Glimmershanks’s mistress and he was certain to get his money now that Evelina held
the hand that held the purse strings.

“Grab his other foot, Papa,” Evelina ordered irritably. “I’m not going to
carry him by myself!”

“Devil take me!” Glimmershanks grumbled, lifting up Ven by the shoulders. “I
didn’t know monsters were this heavy.”

“You’re getting your money’s worth, you see,” Ramone grunted.

The three stumbled through the brush, half dragging and half carrying the
unconscious Ven to where two men waited on the road with a horse and cart,
ready to load up the monster and haul him back to the troupe. As they
manhandled Ven into the cart, Glimmershanks eyed the blue-scaled legs and the
clawed feet, and he came near salivating as he thought of the loot this would
bring. His one regret was that the monster didn’t have a tail.

“I could charge double for a tail,” he said accusingly to Ramone, as though
it were his fault the monster came up lacking.

Still, tail or not, he was a beautiful monster, as Ramone said. And he had
just acquired a lovely young bedmate, who would fetch a good price when he
tired of her.

Not a bad night’s work, Glimmershanks reflected in
satisfaction.

Jolted by a sense of danger jabbing at him from the darkness, Ven worked
hard to regain consciousness.

The sun was shining brightly, which was odd, for he remembered it being
nighttime. His head throbbed with pain and when he tried to open his eyes, the
light made the pain so much worse that he gagged and shut his eyes against the
knife-sharp brilliance. He tried to remember what had happened, but he was
stretched out on some sort of unsteady bed that rocked and shook beneath him,
bumping and jouncing him so that he found it difficult to think. If he could
just be still a minute, memory would come to him. The jolting continued,
however, making him sick to his stomach and jumbling his thoughts. He sank back
into unconsciousness.

When next he woke, he was in the same place and he forced himself to open
his eyes, despite the pain caused by the bright sunlight. His vision was
blurred, at first. He had an impression of iron bars, and his pain-muddled mind
told him that he must be standing outside a prison. As his head cleared, he
realized, with a thrill of horror, that the iron bars surrounded him. He was
inside, not outside. He was the one imprisoned.

The shock dulled the pain and sharpened his senses. He could see now that he
was locked inside a cage on wheels rolling down the highway, rattling and
jouncing over bumps in the road. He looked out from behind the iron bars to see
the countryside sliding past him. Glimmershanks’s bullyboys, armed with stout
clubs, walked on either side of the cage. The floor of the cage was covered in
straw, as if it housed some wild beast. When he struggled to sit up, some of
the men grinned and laughed and pointed at him.

Looking down, Ven saw that he was naked. The blue scales of his dragon legs
gleamed in the sunlight. Manacles were locked around his wrists and ankles.
Chains ran from the manacles to a bolt in the center of the rumbling wagon. The
chains permitted him to move only a step or two in any direction. Understanding
struck Ven a more terrible blow than any he’d yet received.

The cage did house a beast—him.

Rage and fear and shame stripped off Ven’s humanity, as Glimmershanks had
stripped off his clothes. Ven’s one thought was to free himself. He seized hold
of the chains and, in a burst of strength, ripped them from the bolt. The heavy
iron chains dangling from his wrists, he lunged at the bars, hitting them with
such force that the cage swayed and seemed likely to tip over. The men who had been
grinning stopped grinning and fell back, raising their clubs. The draft horses
pulling the cage flinched and swiveled their heads around and the drover
shouted that unless the monster stopped his gyrations, they were all going to
end up in the ditch.

Ven gripped the bars and gave a heave. The iron began to bend in his strong
hands.

“Sweet Mother, do you see that?” one of the men gargled, backing up still
further.

“Glimmershanks, your monster’s escaping!” several bellowed.

Ven pulled with all his might at the bars and they gave way several more few
inches. Another heave and he would have a hole big enough for him to force his
body through. He was ready to give one more try, when one of the wheels rolled
over a stone in the roadway, causing the wagon to lurch.

The drover shouted an urgent command and dragged the horses to a halt. Five
men rushed the cage and wrenched open the iron-barred door. Two of the men,
wielding clubs, jumped inside, while three remained on guard outside.

Ven took hold of the chain that was still attached to his wrists and lashed
out. The heavy iron chain caught one of the men across the jaw. His face
exploded in blood and he toppled backward out of the wagon. The other man was
on Ven before he could shift his attack. The man struck Ven a savage blow that
drove him to his knees. Blood dribbled into his eyes. He feared he was going to
pass out again and he fought against the darkness.

He could not remain in this cage, on exhibit, for all the world to see, to
gawk over and leer. He surged to his feet.

The man, standing over Ven, clubbed him again, opening last night’s wounds
and causing new ones.