Fortress Draconis (44 page)

Alyx glanced at Crow and the quizzical way in which he was looking at her. “What is it?”

“Nothing, really. I’ve just thought, for years, that doing things in the same old way would lead to nothing changing.” He shrugged. “Perhaps, with you here, and Will, there is a possibility of doing things a different way.”

“That’s what I will have to hope, then.” Alyx sipped the wine. Where she had been expecting sweet, she got tart with an acid bite. “What? This isn’t what I expected.”

“No, it’s not.” Crow’s eyes became dark slits. “An object lesson, Princess. We’re not in the field, so none of it will be what you expect. Remember that and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be sent into the field where new ideas might make for big changes.”

T

In just a week, Will had gone from being the pretender to the throne of the Dimandowns to being celebrated in the Hightown. Over the last ten days—the first full week of the month of Leaffall—Will had met more people from more nations than he’d seen before in his entire life. Just the demands on him to shake hands and sit down to a nibble or sip all but overwhelmed him.

He actually looked back with favorable whimsy to the days on the road with Resolute and Crow.

Things had started easily enough after he’d been rescued and they’d gone after MyralPmara. The next morning King Augustus’ tailor arrived at the Vilwanese tower to measure him in more ways and places than Will would have thought possible. By that evening Will had a suit of clothes on him that fit properly, and that took getting used to. Being all new and of the right size, it felt confining. Worse, anything he stole aside from a glance would be clearly visible.

With subsequent outfits, the tailor did make some minor allowances for Will to grow into things, which made the thief feel a little better. His new status brought him access to the local nobility. He got invited to estates he could only have dreamed about breaking into. While on his visits he started to catalog all the ways he could enter and escape unnoticed, but he often found himself lost in the opulent splendor. Not only did the people have fantastic works of art, and treasures from distant lands or antiquity in their houses, but they kept pet dogs and cats who ate better, dressed better, and were housed better than the richest man in the Dimandowns.

Native resentment against the rich made him look forward to stealing from them, since it served them right for being so wealthy. Will’s thinking ran along the lines that if they were looking to him to bethe Norrington who would save their lives and their fortunes from Chytrine, they owed it to him to share some of that wealth. Since they’d end up with nothing if it weren’t for him, it wasjust that they survived with a little less.

While he’d had that rationalization all worked out, he never needed to employ it. Gifts started pouring in. He’d get an invitation to a ball, and a suit of clothes cut to his measurements would arrive with it. Little boxes of tea, bottles of wine, rare incense, and exotic foods all came for him. Some people gave him rings with the Norrington crest worked onto them, while others sent items they claimed they’d gotten from his father or grandfather or some other family member. The ones Will liked best just sent money as a token of their esteem.

He’d not much liked the competition from the Jeranese general. His arrival five days into Will’s ascension cut into the gift trade, though the invitations to parties and meals did not slacken. While Will did like all the attention, the silver lining in the cloud of Adrogans’ arrival was that the most boring and pompous of the folks at the parties spent their time talking to him, not Will. For that reason alone Will didn’t slip the emerald ring off Adrogans’ hand whenever they were once again introduced to each other— though Will knew he could have it off the man in the blink of an eye, with the general being none the wiser.

All of those invitations, however, paled in comparison to the one that had brought him to the estate housing King Scrainwood and the delegation from Oriosa. As estates went, it wasn’t the biggest or best he’d been invited to, but it did have some odd architectural elements appropriate for people who wore masks. The servants did not use masks, being lowborn and mostly from Yslin. Between the public areas of the house and the more private chambers, curtains and screens limited how much a visitor could see. The door for each of the private chambers had been set back from the corridor to allow for the placement of screens or drapes, and even the lighting in the corridors tended to be less bright than on other estates. The resulting shadows could mask the residents even when they were unaware they were being watched.

Will had seen enough folk from the masked nations to view them as unusual instead of exotic. In the Dim they were known as Hides—both because of the leather covering their faces, and the fact that their faces were hidden. It struck the citizens of the Dim as odd that these folks wore masks in honest commerce, while the Dimkin put them on to cover themselves during illegal activity.

Of course, Will knew the tradition of wearing masks had arisen in the past, when the nobles were plotting to secede from the Estine Empire. Despite their masks having been donned for the same reason as they were worn in the Dim, no spirit of kinship existed between thieves and the Oriosans. Every so often a bright thief put on an Oriosan mask to cover his robberies. They mostly just vanished, or so the stories in the Dim went, but a few were found after having had their faces carved off and the fraudulent mask fixed to their skulls with six-inch nails.

Will shivered and looked around the long, narrow room he’d been placed into to wait. Shelves ran floor to ceiling all around it save at the narrow ends where tall double doors ate into the storage space. Everything had been made of dark wood that gave the room a cavernish feeling. Half the shelves had been slotted for scrolls, with the rest fitted out to hold books. Every nook and cranny had been jammed with volumes, even to the point where some leather-bound volumes lay over the top of others.

The thief shook his head. Unless something good had been hidden behind the phalanx of books, there was nothing of any value in the room. Clearly the house’s owner thought books were worth collecting, but Will knew folks in the Dim who had amassed a fortune in pretty rocks. Neither were worth stealing, since their weight-to-value ratio ran so high. The room’s furnishings, while very nice, had the sort of stout, sturdy construction that would have dwarfed Dranae and likely made them too heavy for the large man to move.

The doors in the opposite end of the room opened with a click. Will spun, then jumped back as a brassy fanfare blared. Resolute couldn’t suppress a smile as he opened the doors, but it died quickly enough. The Vorquelf had put on a courtesy mask of sheer black material. Will would have described it as lacy, but he knew Resolute would at best allow that it was gauzy. It wasn’t a discussion for the moment, however, so Will kept his tongue still.

Resolute had not wanted to attend the evening’s ceremony. He’d not said anything, but he’d steadfastly avoided accepting any other invitations. Crow had always gone, but remained in the background. Will didn’t know what had passed between the two of them, but Crow had simply informed Will that Resolute would accompany him to the Oriosan king’s gathering.

The Vorquelf gave Will a quick nod, then moved out of the way. The room beyond the doors crossed the small library and possessed in depth what the library had in length. The larger room extended off to the right and left for quite a way—perhaps running the length of the house,

but Will was not certain. The high ceiling’s arches had been covered with colorful murals taken from Oriosan history. A small band of musicians sat in an elevated gallery at the far right end.

A carpet of emerald-green stretched from the doorway to a dais five paces away. Worked into the weave was a border of red featuring the entwined and sinuous forms of dragons. The vast majority of people crowding the dais and lining the carpet’s edge likewise wore green with red trim, but only one had the royal dragon rampant in red on his breast.

King Scrainwood wore a green mask that arced down from a shock of white hair to the tip of his nose, then extended wings down to his jawline. The wingtips left his chin unhidden, though the corners of his broad smile did vanish beneath them. He clapped his hands once, then rubbed them warmly, letting light flash from the sapphire ring on his right hand. Keeping his smile inviting, he spread his hands, then nodded and beckoned Will forward.

“Wilburforce Norrington, come to me. Come to your nation.”

Will, who had been sent a dark green velvet jacket and trousers, with red cuffs on the jacket and a red strip down the legs, started forward. Everyone stared at him through a mask. Most wore the guest masks akin to the one on Resolute’s face—and few had eyes quite as close-set as in Scrainwood’s mask—but a number were genuine Oriosans. He spotted Colonel Hawkins from Fortress Draconis, but recognized him more because of the uniform and silver mail on his face than anything else. A few other individuals looked familiar, but he assumed he’d seen them at other parties.

The irony of his being the only person in the room without a mask struck Will, but he was not certain what to make of it. Oriosans went to so much trouble to avoid being seen without a mask, and went to great lengths to keep the tradition of their wearing masks unsullied. Yet, here,everyone had a mask on save him.

As he drew nearer the dais, he got the sinking feeling that Scrainwood had orchestrated everything for his own benefit.It’s not so much that he wants to claim me for his country, but he wants part of my fame. Will would have turned and run from the place just to thwart him, but doing that would have meant no more invitations.And I’d be alone with sullancirihunting for me.

The young thief stopped in front of the dais and King Scrainwood smiled down on him for a moment. The smile had been the same warm one he’d been using since the doors opened, but, up close, the man’s hazel eyes glittered icily. The king’s gaze flicked up and he studied the crowd.

“We are pleased that all of you were able to attend this momentous event. Those of you who are guests here may not be familiar with the rituals through which we invest our citizens with their masks. Rarely is anyone outside the family present at such an event. And again, usually this event takes place close to Mid-Summer’s Day, when the recipient is in his eighteenth year. Wilburforce, as nearly as we know, has not reached that milestone in his life, but there is no one here who can say he has not shouldered an adult’s burden despite his tender years.”

Scrainwood reached out with his left hand and settled it on Will’s head with enough pressure that he could do nothing but stare straight ahead at the king’s belly. “You all know of the Norringtons, and many of you can only think of them as monsters, but this was not always so. A quarter century ago they were here, father and son, leading the force that slew all of Chytrine’s Dark Lancers. They broke the back of her army at Fortress Draconis. Had they not served the world valiantly and well, the only warmth any of us would know would be in the belly of a temeryx.

“I knew Wilburforce’s father well. When a youth receives his first mask, it is white. It is called a moonmask, and for the period of the full moon he is free to explore the world and decide what he wishes to be as an adult. Bosleigh Norrington decided he would be a hero, and a hero he was, many times over, before he was granted his life mask.”

Scrainwood’s voice grew slightly distant. A tremor ran through his hand, sending a sympathetic shiver down Will’s spine. The thief wanted to bolt at that moment, and would have, save he glanced to the side and caught the eye of a man standing behind and to the side of the king. He and Scrainwood looked enough alike—and he was wearing a simple coronet—that Will took him to be one of Scrainwood’s sons.

What stopped Will from running was the dead flatness of the man’s eyes. They ran more to brown than the hazel of his father’s, but even the reflected hints of light could not enliven them. The slight stoop of his shoulders and creeping paunch marked the man as having been spirit-broken, and Will instantly imagined that Scrainwood would do the same to him to get what he wanted.

Let him try.Will’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t ball his fists or give any other outward sign of his growing anger. He even suppressed a shudder just so he wouldn’t give the king the pleasure of mistaking revulsion for fear.

“With my very own hands, I gave Bosleigh Norrington his first adult mask—his harvest mask. At the same time, Lord Kenwick Norrington gave the traitor his mask, and we all know the tragic culmination of that chain of events. I like to think, perhaps, that Bosleigh… Well, after Chytrine’ssullanciri leader, the man who had been Bosleigh’s father, slew my mother, Bosleigh came to me to ask my blessing on his mission to avenge our nation. I begged him to wait, but so full of righteous fire was he that he headed out. He had faith in the prophecy that said a Norrington would destroy Chytrine.”

The young thief shivered. Songs had told the tale of his father’s illfated quest. When hearing them, Will had always thought of Leigh Norrington as a total fool, and even now that he knew they were related, his opinion didn’t shift.He was a fool to go after Chytrine. Will swallowed hard.And ducklings don’t stray far from their mothers.

“We all have faith in that prophecy. And here, now, we have the Norrington who will accomplish the job. He stands here bare-faced, as he has been throughout his life in Yslin. We knew him not for what he was, but now we know him for his true nature.”

Scrainwood released Will’s head, then turned and beckoned quickly for the prince to approach. The prince handed his father a slender green strip of leather with two eyeholes cut into it. One had a V-shaped notch excised from it, pointing down from the corner of the eye closest to the nose. In that way it matched the prince’s mask. The king’s had one of those wedges chopped from each eye.

Scrainwood held the mask up high for all to see. “This is his first adult mask. We decorate them to mark our passages in life. This cut here, on the right eye, means his mother has died. The mask is green, for that is our color. And, now, I shall mark it with my seal, marking him a loyal Oriosan king’s man.”