Dragon Soul (18 page)

“Thank you,” Thom said, looking like a chipmunk with his cheeks full of grapes and cheese and bastion only knew what else. Guess you couldn’t breed some things out, even with good education and a stubborn-ass will.

“You’re quite welcome,” said Geoffrey Fucking Bless, like he’d been doing nothing but playing perfect host out in the desert and just waiting for someone to come by and compliment him on it. He sat on one of those impossible fucking couches without tripping over his own feet—well, he’d had all the time in the world to practice—and set the tray to one side.

“Listen,” I said, patience stretched about as thin as it was gonna go, grapes or no grapes. It was pretty fucking evident—to me, if no one else—that this asshole wanted to talk to Thom and not to me, but my brother’d gone and crammed his windpipe with delectables so it was up to me to pick up the fucking slack. “We’re real grateful for the fruit platter and all, but we’re here on business.”

“Ah, of course!” said Geoffrey Bless, taking a drink of something
red and sticky in a tall glass. I didn’t know what pomegranate juice was, but I hoped it still tasted like shit even to his refined palate. He turned toward Thom. “Where
are
my manners? I suppose I owe you something of an explanation.”

“Mmph,” said Thom, helpful as fucking always. He’d moved over to where the tray’d been set down, grapes in one hand and water in the other, eyeing the cheese like a naughty cat.

“You do,” I translated, not like it was my place or nothing, but I wanted things to be moving on as quickly as possible and
not
like a ’Versity-paced lecture.

“Well,” began Geoffrey Bless, scratching his enormous fucking head, “I suppose when I last spoke with you, Thomas, it was when I’d just begun to grasp the difficulty of the task I’d set myself to. Not to mention the relatively
small
stipend one receives from the ’Versity when researching abroad. As much as I hate to admit it, I was beginning to reach the end of my rope very early into my studies here.”

I was pretty sure that a son-of-a like Geoffrey Bless had no fucking idea what the end of the rope looked like. I was just as sure that I’d be willing to show him, after he’d gone and helped us all polite-like.

“Go on,” I told him.

He glanced at me and sighed. “I never imagined you would come to visit me, here of all places! I never imagined anyone would come, for that matter. As it happens, I might be able to offer you more aid
now
than if I’d remained in my former position, but the fact of the matter
is…
I currently spend the majority of my time sweating it out in the dunes. I dig up artifacts and sell them for money.”

Thom’s eyes bugged out, and he actually paused in trying to cram an eighth stuffed grape leaf into his mouth. “You’re a grave robber?” he demanded.

“Oh, no,” Geoffrey said, grimacing. “Please. I prefer…raider. It’s not as though I’m disturbing the bodies. No money in bones, you see. But it’s made me very familiar with the surrounding areas.”

“You dig up dead people and sell their shit?” I didn’t know whether it made me respect him more or less. At least he wasn’t like most of the ’Versity kids, who respected and trusted dead things more than they paid attention to the present.

Geoffrey Bless pulled a face. “In the most common of terms,” he began, sniffing, like I was the one who stank.

“You dig up dead people and sell their shit,” Thom repeated, obviously not thinking about what he was saying.

I took a long drink of water. I was hell-bent on enjoying myself with some of this.

“Thomas, really,” Geoffrey Bless said, but he looked a little less round and a little more dangerous. “There’s theory and there’s practicable action. The desert is quite unforgiving. It’s why I wanted to warn you. Depending on where your search takes you, I’d warn you against traveling out into the dunes at all.”

I was about to say something when Thom gulped down the last of his stuffed fig leaf and raised himself up to his full height—which wasn’t too impressive, because he was short anyway, and sitting on that damn couch wasn’t helping, either.

“I’ll choose what I’m capable or incapable of,” he said.

“Your preposition’s dangling,” Bless replied.

“Yours is gonna be dangling, too,” I told him, “if you don’t fucking get down to business.”

Geoffrey Bless straightened up and tugged at his collar—he was getting hot, finally, even with all his practice in the desert. Good. “All right,” he said. “If that’s the way you intend to play. Thom wrote that you were looking for information on magicians banished to the nearby surroundings, are you not?”

“Not just any magicians,” I said.

“Yes, I know that,” Bless said, looking a little keener. “Well, I know these deserts as well as any native by now, even if it’s not possible to have combed them over completely by myself. It just so happens, there
are
rumors.”

“And?” I prompted.

“As you know—well, as you
might
know—the Khevir dunes are a vastly unexplored wasteland,” Bless continued, clearing his throat as I leaned closer to him. Nothing like putting the pinch on a ’Versity boy, grave robber or not, to make him get to the point a little faster than he wanted to. “Not even the local nomadic peoples spend much time passing through there. It leads to nowhere; it’s in the middle of nowhere. It
is
nowhere, essentially, and not many wish to test their luck against a place like that. There’s almost no way to get out to it, either. The desert’s too cruel for that.”

“So that’s the rumor?” I asked flatly. “There’s a desert? How fucking unexpected.”

Geoffrey Bless gave me a dark look, like I was ruining all his fun and he didn’t realize that was my plan in the first place. “If your initial clue was that someone—like this magician you’re seeking—lives all the way out there, I can’t say that there’s any corroborating evidence,” he explained. “The rumor to which I was referring is actually one of legend, involving a mythical oasis from which ancient life in the desert is purported to have sprung. Fascinating stuff. But more to the point, whether or not there really
is
an oasis is all conjecture. I couldn’t count on the fingers of one hand people who’ve seen it for themselves because, to my knowledge, no one
has.”

“So what the fuck has this load of bedtime stories got to do with us?” I asked.

Geoffrey Bless had the fucking gall to roll his eyes at that one. “Because if someone was actually living in the Khevir dunes…well, then, they’d be living
there,”
he said.

Thom’s eyes were narrow, his tone thoughtful. “How common is the tale of this oasis?” he asked. “I mean…I’ve studied the desert to a minor extent, but outside of nomad mythology…Does anyone else speak of this?”

“Not particularly,” Geoffrey admitted. “I was actually going to write my thesis on it…back when I was going to write my thesis. Unwritten mythologies and all that. But it’s so difficult to sit down with these nomads—ha-ha, a bit of desert humor, hope you forgive me.”

“Someone lied to us,” Thom concluded, looking at me. It was like Geoffrey Fucking Bless wasn’t even in the room with us, and I took the expression for a gesture of friendliness. I grinned at him, showing some teeth.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll take care of that.”

“Ahem,” Bless said.

We both turned to him at once, like it was fucking choreographed or something, and gave him a look like—as he might’ve said—
Do please go on
. He shifted uncomfortably on his uncomfortable couch, tugging again at his collar before he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the back of his neck with it.

“Well, there is something more,” Bless said, “and it’s really quite fortuitous.
You see…” He paused for a moment, then looked hopeful. “There
is
a mutually beneficial way we can
both
put this legend to rest. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t want to be mutually beneficial with anyone.

“Rook,” said Thom.

So much for thinking we were in this together.

“Go ahead,” I said, not even looking at my brother. “Just make it quick.”

“There
has
been some rumor of profit to be made in that area,” Bless went on, excited now. “Yet it is difficult to gather the appropriate—ah—manpower necessary to conduct an excavation. But if we were to kill two birds with one stone—that is, set out in the direction of the Khevir dunes, with me as your guide, I could translate for you the nomads’ information—see if there
was
anyone to be found relating to your quest—while in the meantime…”

“…you dig up dead people,” I finished for him, because
somebody
had to spit it out.

“Hm,” Geoffrey Bless said, but he didn’t exactly deny it.

“Fortuitous. Exactly,” Thom said. “Is there anywhere we might be able to stay for the night?”

“You can, of course, stay in my humble abode,” Bless began.

“No thank you,” Thom said. “I think we’d rather be alone.”

“Suit yourself,” Bless said, exhibiting a rare moment of darkness that let me know
exactly
what kind of a man he was. “I’ll go see to your lodgings.”

“Most fucking kind,” I said.

Geoffrey Bless stood up, smoothing out his authentic clothing or whatever weird hodgepodge he was wearing, just long enough to let us know we hadn’t rumpled him at all. I grinned at him a little cross-eyed to let
him
know that there was still plenty of time left for me to rumple him good. Then he left to go find us someplace to stay, all three of us in the room knowing who’d won that battle. As he left, I looked over at Thom, who was looking over at me. And for the first time in a long time I actually felt like I had a real, live, recognizable brother.

It didn’t feel good and it didn’t feel bad, and I couldn’t look at it too long before we both looked elsewhere, just waiting for Bless to come back while we inspected the curtains.

Bearing in mind the Provost’s connections and his considerable success in cleaning up the three maiden districts since coming to the job, one might have expected his office to be slightly more ornate than, say, a common jail cell.

It wasn’t.

“Really, Dmitri,” I was saying, merely as one acquaintance concerned for another, without any intention of prying or involving myself in affairs that did not concern me. “A large painting, a nice thick rug…Even a desk can have personality if you choose the right one.”

“Why would I want my desk to have a personality?” Dmitri asked, neither baffled nor intrigued, having missed the point entirely. He got his logical brain from his father, poor man. It was a pity his mother’s imagination had fallen by the wayside. I let the topic lie for the moment, folding my hands in my lap with a sigh.

“You are the very definition of impossible,” I added for good measure, just so that I could be sure he knew how deeply he’d disappointed me.

More than anything—though he was not aware of this himself—Provost Dmitri had difficulty dealing with disappointed women. It was
a terrible flaw, one that was bound to get the better of him eventually. I’d point it out to him one day.

“Oh come now, Malahide,” he said, tugging at his forelock in a gesture that was frustrated instead of subservient. “I’ve only just recovered from the shock of hearing you speak. Can’t a man be given reprieve once in a while?”

“I am never given reprieve,” I reminded him, straightening my hat. I’d come here in my Molly-guise, since Molly was where I’d been spending the vast majority of my time. It wasn’t so bad, once you got used to the odor—which happened surprisingly quickly, which I supposed explained why anyone at all could live there without going completely mad—and Nor had taken quite a shine to me on top of that, as though I were the son he’d never had. One of the most important tasks in my line of work was building up esteem among the members of every group with which I came into contact. One could never tell who they were going to have to depend on in the future, and so it made sense to keep every line of communication open—just in case of trouble later on.

It took some extra work, but that was what made me so good at my job. Of course, it also led to some minor inconveniences, like the wolves outside mistaking me for common gutter trash and manhandling me most severely before the little matter was cleared up, but that was a hazard of the trade. Fortunately for everyone, I’d run into Dmitri straight after that, and he’d taken me upstairs to his office, behaving like
quite
the hero. The one flaw in all my many disguises was that the Provost could always see through them. He took after his dear father in that regard.

“I’m aware.” He sighed. He was looking very tired these days, too pale and slightly saggy about the eyes, in a way I didn’t like. I expected it was because he had no wife to take care of him at the end of a long day. Alone, a man could exhaust himself quite easily coming up against the unforgiving odds of Molly, without any respite. He was too stubborn for his own good, our young Provost, and far too determined to prove himself capable. I could have told him that he was wasting his efforts. Thremedon only cherished her heroes when the threat was foreign, and the hero wasn’t carting off someone’s husband for stealing or murder. He would never have listened, though.