Dragon Weather (18 page)

Where were the other four women?

Why had the guards hesitated?

“Oh, gods,” Arlian said, suddenly panicking. “Don't let it be true!” He pushed forward desperately, trying to shove his way through the crowd.

He had seen a few great injustices in his life, and he had loathed them, suffered from them; he could not stand idly by as another was perpetrated. He could not quietly allow four women to be burned to death because
he
had been sheltered among them. There must be some way he could prevent it.

“Please, my lord!” Mistress shrieked, stepping toward the man in the coach, arms raised in supplication—even in his distress, a part of Arlian's mind marveled at the sight of the dreaded Mistress so terrified.

“Madam Ril,” the man in the coach roared back, “You were responsible for this. You failed in your trust.”

The sword flashed, and for a moment the world froze. Arlian could not believe what he was seeing.

Then time started again as Madam Ril crumpled to the ground, blood spurting from her throat; gasps and screams came from the crowd. The swordsman wiped his blade on a handkerchief and sheathed it just as the guards reemerged from the brothel door at a trot.

“Get in,” the swordsman told the brothel guard, as he himself bent and sank back into the coach, settling on one of the seats. Now, for the first time, Arlian could see the man's face.

The coach rocked as the guard climbed aboard and slammed the door, but Arlian saw that face clearly—that beardless face with the scarred right cheek, as if something had once gouged pieces away …

“Lord Dragon!” Arlian called, without meaning to—the cry had been startled out of him by the shock of recognition just as Lord Dragon rapped on the coach's ceiling and the driver shook out the reins.

No one had heard, so far as he could see.

Arlian struggled against the crowd—people were backing away in fear and confusion as Madam Ril lay motionless and bleeding on the street and wisps of smoke began to trickle from the brothel doorway.

The coach started moving, and Arlian stared, torn.

He had to stop the coach and get at Lord Dragon, he had to rescue Sweet and Dove, he had to avenge his family and all the other innocents, and even Madam Ril—monster though she was, how could Lord Dragon cut her down in broad daylight, before a hundred witnesses, and expect to get away with it?

But he had to get into the brothel, he had to find the other women.

By the time he fought free of the crowd's press the coach was fifty yards away and picking up speed, and smoke was bleeding from the brothel in a dozen places. The town guard who had helped start the fire was standing in the doorway, his short sword drawn.

Arlian hurried up to him and then stopped dead as the guardsman raised his ugly blade.

“Where do you think
you're
going, my lord?” he demanded.

“I … I thought there might be someone still inside,” he said. “I thought I heard voices.”

“You didn't hear voices, my lord, and we'll have no looting here. You
did
hear the owner ordered it burned.”

“But really, I thought … you're
sure
there's no one inside?”

“No one alive,” the guard replied. “There are four dead slaves, with their throats cut, just like this one.” He gestured at Madam Ril.

“Oh,” Arlian said, stepping back.

The coach was too far away to catch now—and if he had caught it, what would he do? He was alone and unarmed, and Lord Dragon and the guard had swords and clearly weren't afraid to use them. Sweet and Dove might help, but …

No, it was hopeless.

But there would come another time, he swore to himself—he and Lord Dragon would meet a third time, and Lord Dragon would pay for his crimes.

For now, though—could the guard be
sure
the other four women were dead?

“Excuse me,” Arlian said, pushing his way back out through the crowd.

A few minutes later he had slipped into the stableyard, just as he had months before.

This time, though, smoke was billowing from the eaves and the windows were blackened, showing occasional flickers of bright orange where the glass was not yet completely obscured. Arlian dropped his bundle, then found a cast-off horseshoe and heaved it at a window.

The glass shattered and flame puffed out.

Arlian broke another, and this time only a swirl of thin gray smoke emerged; he positioned the barrel beneath that one, ran, and jumped. A moment later he was inside, holding his blouse over his mouth as he struggled to see through the smoke.

The room he had entered had been partially stripped—bedcurtains gone, furniture overturned. Smoke was a thick haze, but no flames were visible.

The corridor beyond was like a glimpse into the crater—smoke rolling across the ceiling, flames licking the walls and spilling under the doors, horribly reminiscent of the scene in the pantry of his childhood home as the dragons burned Obsidian. Pushing the memories aside and crouching to stay below the smoke, Arlian hurried to check each bedroom.

He found the first corpse in the second room he checked—Silk, one of the oldest of the women. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear, and she lay in a dried circle of her own blackened blood.

The third room was empty, and he could go no farther down the passage; the rest of the second floor was awash in flame. He turned and made a quick dash up the stairs to the third, where he found one more body.

Rose lay across her bed, naked head flung back, hair dragging on the floor, blood still trickling down her chin.

And the smoke and flame were thickening rapidly; he fled down the stairs and escaped, climbing back out the window and dropping to the barrelhead. The other two were surely beyond hope, as well.

Coughing and weeping, he jumped to the ground, found his bundle and stumbled away, bound for the Blood of the Grape.

15

At the Caravansary

Arlian frowned as he looked down at himself. He had put on his fine silk-faced coat, as the day had turned chilly, and that looked as elegant as he might ask, but underneath the coat his blouse was soaked in sweat and streaked with smoke, and his breeches were no better. His new slippers were scuffed. The canvas wrapping on his bundle of possessions, which he had not taken into the burning building, was cleaner than most of his garments, despite having been smeared with mud when he first fled.

He needed to take better care of his clothes, obviously.

He also needed to get more of them. This whorehouse finery was all very well, but not really suited to an active life, and he seemed destined to lead an active life.

He really did need to find employment—or some other source of money. He wished that amethysts really
were
precious—months ago he had shown one of his larger ones to Sparkle, the brothel's resident self-taught expert on gemstones, who had declared it lovely but worthless.

At least in the Lands of Man; in distant, possibly mythical Arithei, who could say?

Lord Kuruvan's gold, on the other hand, would be good anywhere, and Arlian no longer had any compunctions about taking it. Lord Kuruvan had been one of the owners of the House of Carnal Society; that undoubtedly meant he had been in one those coaches, and had carried away two of the women …

But not Rose. He had left Rose lying there with her throat cut.

Perhaps he had had her killed
because
he had told her where his money was hidden; perhaps he had simply tired of her, or liked the other two better.

Or perhaps Rose had been killed because she had hidden Arlian in the attic above her room, and Kuruvan had had no say in it.

It didn't matter. Whatever the reason, Rose was dead, and Lord Kuruvan was an accomplice in her murder.

Arlian intended to collect a blood-price, if he could—if Lord Kuruvan had not thought better of his hiding place and moved the money elsewhere. Taking that money would be a
start
on avenging Rose.

And there were a dozen women to be rescued, as well—Sweet among them. Arlian was determined to find and free them all—someday. He had no idea where they had been taken; the coaches had left no trails he could see. They were still alive somewhere, though, most probably in Manfort, and in time he would find them and rescue them. The thought of Sweet in Lord Dragon's possession, forced to obey his every whim, haunted Arlian; somehow the idea of a single master abusing her was even worse than the casual mistreatment she had received from so many in Westguard.

Kuruvan's gold might be enough to buy the women free. If possible, Arlian promised himself, he would do that, and see them all safe, before he pursued his revenge.

He
would
have revenge, though.

The dragons that had destroyed Obsidian needed to be punished, but they had been acting within their own nature; looting the ruins was simple greed, and understandable, if reprehensible; but Lord Dragon, Lord Kuruvan, and the others had killed those five women and destroyed the House of Carnal Society on little more than a whim, so far as Arlian could see. Such callousness was beyond his comprehension, and he could not permit it to go unchallenged. The mere thought of it set him trembling. Anything he could do to avenge that crime,
anything,
he would do. Stealing Lord Kuruvan's gold, and perhaps using it to buy the women if he could find them, was all he could see a way to accomplish as yet, but he swore the day would come when he would do more, when he would see each of those six lords suffer for their evil.

If Lord Kuruvan's gold financed that revenge, so much the better. Arlian just wished he had some clearer notion of how that revenge might be brought about. As he neared Manfort he grew ever more aware of the size of the place, and the difficulties he might face in locating and destroying his enemies there; he seemed to see guardsmen everywhere as he drew closer to the city, and was uncomfortably aware that even in his deteriorating disguise as a lord he was still unarmed and untrained, with nothing to support him but his own wits and the guidance the women of the House of Carnal Society had given him.

That hardly seemed enough.

He looked up again as he rounded a bend in the road. Manfort was an immense presence ahead of him now—it was built on a hill, and he could see walls within walls rising up the slopes, a maze of buildings and fortifications, towers thrusting up here and there. A thousand plumes of smoke trailed up into the blue springtime sky, and he could make out, directly ahead of him but still a mile or two away, the tops of the great gray gates.

Closer at hand, though, was a square, a place where the road widened into a broad plaza paved with stone—and that plaza was crowded with a variety of wagons, men, women, and oxen. A babble of voices reached him.

He frowned. Who were all these people? What was this place?

Then between two of the taller wagons he caught sight of a sign at one side of the square—a board on which two crudely sketched green leaves, a black line for a stem, and a score of overlapping red circles represented a bunch of grapes, with red drops dripping from them.

The Blood of the Grape. This was the inn where Rose had said Lord Kuruvan hid his gold. The wagons and oxen were presumably owned by patrons of the inn.

Arlian tucked his bundle securely under one arm, raised his head, and marched forward.

The crowd seethed around him; surely it couldn't
always
be like this here! Something special must be going on. He tried to catch the words of those he passed.

A driver was telling a woman to make sure their daughter stayed clear of certain individuals; two men lifting boxes from one open wagon to another were complaining about the weight of their burdens.

Here was a man in a black leather tunic seated in the driver's place on one of the simplest of the closed-in wagons, talking to a guardsman who stood by the wheel; Arlian slowed his pace and strained to hear.

“… no, really! Do you want to spend the rest of your life rousting pickpockets and helping drunkards home and never get farther than Southwark or Westguard?”

“Well, if I spend my life that way it's likely to be a good bit
longer
than yours,” the guardsman retorted. “Sooner or later you'll get a bandit's arrow in the neck, or bad water in your gut, or some ghastly foreign disease in your heart, and I'll be safe at home by my own hearth while you cough out your life in some stinking desert.”

“Oh, I won't deny there are a few hazards on the road,” the man in the wagon said, “but how many of your comrades have gotten a knife in the back while breaking up a brawl? Life's a risk anywhere, man! Your own wife might go mad and slit your throat while you sleep.”

The guardsman snorted. “You'll have to find your men somewhere else,” he said. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“So I see,” the man on the wagon said. “Well, if you know anyone with a soul more adventurous than your own, send them to me—I'll feel better with a few more blades along.”

Arlian stopped dead and listened as the two men said farewells, and the guardsman ambled away.

This leather-clad person, whoever he was, was hiring men. Arlian might well need an income; he couldn't be sure Kuruvan's gold was still there. He hesitated, then turned and stepped up to the side of the wagon.

“Excuse me,” he said.

The man in black leather had been scanning the crowd, but now he turned around and looked Arlian in the eye. “Yes?” he said.

Arlian frowned, trying to phrase his question; the man in black leather mistook the reason for the frown and added, in a tone a real lord might have considered insolent, “My lord.”

Arlian heard the insolence, but he was hardly about to quarrel with it; he was no lord, not really, and this man was not someone he cared to antagonize. The eyes gazing at him were a cold gray-blue, set in a weathered, scarred face between hair pulled back in a tight knot and a beard trimmed unfashionably short. One of the man's hands rested on the hilt of a sword that lay on the seat beside him; the other gripped the hilt of a dagger sheathed on his belt. The fellow appeared ready for anything—but those cold eyes were somehow not hostile; he was looking at Arlian with fair consideration. The youth had the impression that this was a man who really saw what he looked at and listened to what he heard, rather than perceiving what he expected to see and hear.