The Dragon Round (39 page)

“What assurance do I have?” Another key flips.

“What assurance do your ledgers provide that you didn't steal the meat yourself?”

“Perfect assurance,” the seneschal says. “Ah, here it is.” He fits a key into the lock.

Herse reaches the door leading to
the unused portions of the tower. The lock's already been forced, then rigged to appear not so. It opens on darkness. He's pulling a candle from a sconce on the wall when a face appears below.

“You can't go up there,” the scullery says.

Herse can see down her ratty tunic. Her bony chest is covered with bruises. He says, “The cook beat you?”

“That's the seneschal's privilege. He said I was a thief.”

“Are you?”

“Does it matter?” the scullery says. “If you go up there he'll blame me. And for the lock.”

“Did you break it?”

“No,” she says. “I found it that way two days ago. He'll send me to a whorehouse to work off the damages.”

There will come a time very soon . . . how often has he thought that? He would ask her why a scullery was all the way up here, but her puffy eyes tell that story. In the meantime, he can do something to help her.

He takes the crossbow from the shadows and smashes the lock with the butt of the stock until something snaps inside and the door swings free. “There, I did it.”

The scullery smiles with her remaining teeth. She's never had a hero before.

Herse says, “Do you have a candle I could borrow?”

The scullery rummages through the pockets of her apron and comes up with a tallow stub. She lights it with a sconce and hands it, quivering, to him. He makes sure to touch her finger lightly as he takes it. Her hand shakes more.

“I'll return this soon,” Herse says. “Don't let anyone know I'm up here.”

The public stairs twist through ten
stories of musty spaces filled with forgotten storage and touched for years only by the yellow glow seeping through the canvas-covered windows and the rats peering out of every corner. These would make wonderful apartments if the councilors and shipowners would allow someone above them.

Near the top Ject realizes the rats are keeping to the lower floors. Ravis notices this too. “That's a good sign, I suppose.”

Ject says, “It's a bad day when finding a dragon is good.”

“A what?” the seneschal says. “So much to do. So much. You can find your own way.” He bobs down the stairs.

Indeed, how dramatic it would be to find the dragon here
, Ject thinks.
They'd call it the Dragon Tower ever after, and war would be forestalled
.

Of course he would have to do something about the dragon before it did something about them, and that would be dramatic enough to elevate him above Herse. How could a nimble hip compete with a dragon slayer? How could a liar compete with a new Hero of Hanosh? And Herse would have been so close to getting his war too. The wave rises, the wave falls.

“Load your weapons,” Ject says. The crossbows make an eerie straining in the echoing stairs.

The stairs open at last on a foyer outside the old council chamber. The bare windows are wider here because the walls are thinner than below, and, being higher, they're letting in more of the morning. The stained glass, red, gold, and blue, burnishes the room. Dark wooden benches blanketed in dust warm themselves in the sunlight. Between
the spiral staircases, a door leads to a widow's walk. Opposite it, the brass doors to the council chamber have bas reliefs that, like the mosaics in the tile floor, depict images of Hanosh at the founding of the League, the ruins of war rebuilt with the promise of prosperity for all.

“You don't see its like anymore,” Ject says, “that art. Too many flourishes. Too much light.” Too many smiles, Eles once said of the style. No market for it now. Art should be plain and prudent, properly flat. The doors and floor do feel aggressively showy to Ject, like a naïf made up to seem older.

Ravis unlocks the chamber doors, but the hinges are frozen. It takes four guards to pull the doors wide enough for Ject to look in. Canvas shrouds the banc and the pews and tables arrayed before it. They're covered with droppings and littered with dried rat guts and bones. Dust sparkles in the light coming through the stained glass.

Ject hears a tap from the center of the room, an area walled off by canvas. He holds his hand up. The guards form two lines behind him. The tap comes again. Ject points and stands aside. His men enter with crossbows drawn, one line curling left, the other right. At the head of the left line Ravis sights his crossbow over the pew nearest the sound, then waves Ject to him.

A body lies in a pool of blood, its legs bent along new joints, its face smashed. Nonetheless, Ject says, “That's Skite.” He carefully digs a house shield from the body's pocket to confirm this. “Why was he up here?”

“Up there,” Ravis says, pointing. “He must have fallen.”

Ject looks at the top of the dome and notes the dark stain outlining the trapdoor to the cupola. A drop of blood falls from it and taps the pool around Skite.

“I think I know where we'll find Chelson's other men,” Ject says.

Last night
, Ject thinks,
their only mission would have been finding Chelson's daughter
.
Could they have tracked her here? Was her abductor also the tower thief? Did he drive off the ravens? He couldn't have come through the main doors, though. They were locked and stiff
. He looks toward the servants' stairs and notices the door is slightly ajar. That's how he came
and went. Ject's heart sinks. Well, he thinks, if there's no dragon, at least he can catch the bad guy and maybe rescue the princess.

“Let's take a less direct route,” Ject says. “The widow's walk.” Ject looks from the door outside near the servants' stairs toward the one leading outside from the foyer, and that's when he sees the shadowy face staring at them through a window near the latter.

Peeking through the cracked door from
the servants' stairs, Herse watches Ject's men open the brass doors across the old council chamber. They check the body as he had been doing a moment ago before hearing them approach and hiding.

He was not surprised it's Skite. Herse heard about Tristaban's abduction last night from a friend in the guard. Chelson's men must have tracked the abductor here. He can't imagine why here, but why he fell is obvious. The stairs and catwalk are very defensible. And it would be easy to slip in the dark, especially if pushed from above.

Ject looks at the servants' stairs, Herse slides into the darkness, then Ject races with his men back to the foyer. Herse would have been leery of climbing to the trapdoor, but as the guards pour onto the widow's walk, their distraction makes that approach less complicated. He loads his crossbow and holds the dirk along the stock. If the girl is up there, he could save the day.

As he slips past the servants' stairs door, he notices that the bar for the door beside it, which leads to the widow's walk, is lying on the floor. Wanting to protect his rear, Herse replaces the bar.

3

Earlier, after Skite fell, Jeryon flew down the servants' stairs to hide Derc's body more thoroughly. By candlelight he stuffed him into the cesspit with a broom and replaced the seat.

He wiped up the blood in the hallway with a rag and water from the kitchen then cleaned up the broken jar and dried the floor. Having covered his tracks, he browsed the pantries for some breakfast. As famished as he was he knew he was really just killing time. He couldn't bring himself to return to the cupola. He only admitted this to himself when he heard footsteps on the stoop. He doused the candle and went up the kitchen stairs, but as he reached the door to the service hallway, the tower's backdoor was unlocked.

Jeryon peeked out. A scullery in a ratty tunic entered from the back stoop. She cradled a stub of candle to light her way. Jeryon drew his knife. He didn't want to kill her, but others would arrive soon, and she was between him and the servants' stairs. She was so scrawny he wouldn't need the broom to get her into the cesspit.

The scullery closed the back door and walked toward the kitchen stairs. Jeryon moved the knife to his left hand so he could take her without exposing himself. She stopped. He bent his legs and waited to spring. She hung her head and tears fell into her hands, so many they nearly put the candle out.

Is this how all her mornings began? What had she done? The men upstairs, he'd recognized them as Chelson's guards. He'd known what they were and what they would have done to him. Tuse and Solet, their crews, they were all soldiers in a war the Shield had started. The girl with the knife he'd dumped in the sea, he probably shouldn't have let her live. Who knows how she'd come back to haunt him. Foolish sympathy. But this scullery, she was no one. She might have welcomed his knife, but she hadn't earned it.

Jeryon tiptoed down the stairs and hid in a corner. Is this how all his mornings would begin? Hiding and waiting and making excuses the poth couldn't hear? He was so close to what he wanted, but it felt further away than her.

The girl came down a moment later, and as she kindled the stoves and ovens he tiptoed up and ran down the hallway to the servants' stairs. At the door to the empty stories he put his candle back in its sconce and rigged the door to make it appear locked.

In the old council chamber Jeryon stood over Skite until dawn illuminated the stained glass and the trapdoor above stopped thumping. Gray isn't gentle with her food, especially long pig, which she's favored since Tuse. She barely nibbled the meat he stole.

Jeryon hoped the girl stopped screaming because she'd been obedient.

When the thumping started again, Jeryon decided he needed some fresh air.

The door in the council chamber to the widow's walk was locked and barred, but he found a dusty key hidden atop its arch. He crawled outside so he wouldn't be seen from below, and closed the door behind him. He heard chanting and arguing in the plaza, so he looked through an iron balustrade painted cream to match the tower. He was astounded by its size and the fact that the guards weren't arresting anyone.

Jeryon considered how he could work the crowd into his plans. Being discovered by Chelson's men meant he would have to accelerate matters. Surely others knew where they went. If he were to expose Livion and the Shield for what they'd done, simply flying into the plaza might have made his case. Of course, he might have also caused a panic and caught a dozen crossbow bolts before he reached the ground.

He could make his case directly to Ject, but Jeryon can estimate his price: the dragon.

While he waited in the Round Square to see Livion yesterday, Prieve walked by, and Jeryon thought about making his case to him. The old man would have been sympathetic; their interactions had always been enjoyable, but unlike Ject Prieve couldn't have overlooked the guard and maid that Gray plucked off Quiet Tower.

The crowd roared, and Jeryon crawled to the north side of the tower for a better view. The people swirled and clashed. Soldiers entered the plaza, but few and in danger of being overrun. Jeryon doesn't know this city anymore.

And they didn't know him. He must have seen a dozen acquaintances in the square and none recognized him. He was glad at first, not wanting his plan disrupted, then increasingly sad. When his father
appeared and put a few poorly made pieces of scrimshaw on the cobbles, he stood up so his father could get a good look at him. Nothing. His eyes were blank.

The sun crowned on the horizon. The glare reminded him of how his father's eyes used to be and what drove him to the tower when he was a boy.

His father had been reduced to making penny bets to pay for his beer, bets he always lost for pennies he never had, which saw him paying off his debts with scars and bruises. People would bet him just to beat him after he lost. One day someone in the Salty Dog with rare pity slipped Jeryon some pennies. His father noticed and told him to turn them over. Jeryon refused. So his father went after him with a knife and glass. A man doesn't get in the way of another's business, plus the betting favored Jeryon, so no one stepped in. Jeryon couldn't do what had to be done. He flung the pennies at his father and fled to the tower. If he hadn't been lured by the sea he might have jumped.

The thumping in the cupola diminished. He decided to give Gray a few more minutes to digest before going up. In the meantime, he watched the crowd. He pillowed his head on his arms. He hadn't had a decent hour's sleep in weeks. His legs were full of sand. His head was too. The walk was cool. The breeze was soft. He'd deal with Skite later.

Jeryon's startled awake by a sound inside. So used to worrying about the blue crabs, he leaps up, draws his knife, peers through the stained glass beside another door, and finds several shadows peering back.

4

Ravis unbars and unlocks the door to the widow's walk from the foyer and Ject's detail surges through. Two run left around the northwest arc of the tower, and two run right. Ravis and Oftly turn and scan the dome, the short eave two feet above their heads. Both spy the man crawling toward the cupola. “Got him,” Ravis says. “You. Stop.”

Ject shouts so all his men can hear, “You. Stop. You're surrounded.” The man looks back through goggled eyes and a scraggly beard, but keeps climbing. “Wing him,” Ject says.

Ravis leans back over the balustrade, aims, and lets fly. The bolt hits the man on the side of his buttocks, but it skips off his odd black leather pants and clatters over the dome.

Oftly aims for the man's sandaled foot. The bolt hits him in the heel with a clank and bounces away.

Ject says, “What the—”

The man whistles. In the cupola, a sinuous silhouette rises over the chest-high walls stretching between its pillars. Ravis and Oftly reload, trying not to look.