The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 (12 page)

Tia shook her head. Ecera sighed.

“I really don’t want to do this, but if it’ll keep you out of trouble, I’ll show you, just this once.” She slipped a finger between her neck and the collar. “See this space? Just about a fingertip. Yours is the same way, right?”

Tia nodded, not at all sure where this was going and feeling more than just a little apprehensive. Ecera sighed, taking a short knife from her belt. Tia started in alarm, but the girl just smiled sadly.

“It’ll be okay. Just do please pay attention; I don’t want to do this more than once.”

With that, she struck her collar with the cap of the knife. There was a dull metallic thunk and to Tia’s amazement, the collar shrunk until it bit into Ecera’s throat. She gasped for breath, falling back on the bed, her fingers instinctively clawing at the metal band. After a moment, the collar returned to his previous diameter, and Ecera took several deep breaths.

“So,” she said panting. “Now you know. That was just a quick rap with my blade. Hit it with a hammer, or a sword and it might kill you. I saw it happen.”

“I really am a slave forever, then,” Tia said. Her voice was cold and had a bitter edge that sounded strange, even to herself.

“Yes,” Ecera replied sadly. “And no. You’ll always have the collar. It doesn’t mean you’ll always be a slave. It just means that you were once.”

“I’m not sure there’s much difference.”

Ecera shrugged. “I’d rather have a collar and my life than the other way around.”

She stood, smoothing her coarse skirt down over her legs as she did so. “Anyway, I need to get back downstairs. If you go exploring, do be back before your Master returns. I don’t want him, or father, angry with me.”

She bobbed a curtsy and slipped out the door, closing it behind her with a snap. Tia stared at the door long after Ecera had retreated back down the stairs. If you go exploring, she had said. The Captain had told her to stay in the inn, but he had also asked the innkeeper's daughter to bring her the scarf to hide her collar. Surely that was a form of tacit permission. Besides, she wouldn’t go far. She just wanted to get out and stretch her legs a little. After the disappointment of the afternoon, learning that she would never be free of her collar, it seemed like a pe
rfectly reasonable thing to do.

~~~~

The last time Royce had been to the palace, it had been the day he retired from the Grand Army of the Imperium. That memory was bittersweet. He had given the best years of his life in service to
King and country, but if he had known then that they would be a prelude to his final years, he might have done things a little differently. Still, what was done was done. No sense in being drawn down about it now.

It was good to walk through the streets of Dragonfell again. Being in the city reminded him of being young and running errands for the knights in the Grand Army. He had grown up at his father’s knee, learning strategy and tactics and becoming the fighter that his father had always planned for him to become. How had he never had a son to pass on that legacy to? No matter, he was making up for it with the girl. The girl who shared his unique talents, but not his blood.

Royce had never put much stock in fate or destiny. The thought of some invisible hand guiding him to this choice or that was unsettling at best and downright disturbing the more he thought about it. However, there was no other good explanation for how he had come to stand on that execution platform on the day the girl had been brought before the ax man. Even if he had been a betting man, he wouldn’t have taken those long odds. His arrival at the palace proper snapped him out of his reverie.

Torus was leaning against the portcullis wall, cleaning his fingernails with the point of his belt dagger. It was a nervous habit that Royce recognized from the lieutenant’s training. To all outward appearances, he seemed to have not a care in the world. Royce knew better. He sighed. Why was nothing ever easy?

“Is it really that bad?” he asked at he closed the distance between them.

“It's that obvious?”

“To others? Probably not.” Royce nodded at the blade. “To me? Yeah. It’s pretty obvious.”

Shoving the blade into its sheath, Torus jerked his head toward the granite stairs just beyond the portcullis. “Guess we should go find out exactly how bad it is,” the lieutenant said with some resignation. “But I doubt it’s going to be a social visit.”

“I suspect you’re probably right. So let’s get it over with, shall we?”

The two men climbed the stairs in silence. The guards outside the palace door waved them through into the opulence of the main hall. Either they were well enough known, or expected, or both. Royce doubted he had been away from the city so long that all of his legends had died out. The thought brought a smile to his lips and Torus looked at him skeptically.

“You actually like this, you old mercenary. The Imperium might be under attack and you’re reliving days of past glories.”

“Not exactly.”

“But close enough,” Torus groused.

“Yes,” Royce agreed tolerantly. “Close enough.”

The rest of their walk down the great hall was peppered with nods and waves. There were foreign dignitaries, members of court, and artisans milling about. If the King was concerned about the attack, Royce thought, at least he wasn’t letting it cause a panic either inside these walls or outside in the city.

They reached the great mahogany doors that led into the throne room and a young man in deep purple robes held up a thin-boned hand.

“Just a moment, please, Sirs. I will announce you.”

Royce cocked an eyebrow at Torus, who snorted and said nothing. The boy opened the door just far enough to squeeze through, and then disappeared from view. A moment later, the door was opened wide from the inside and he bowed low, his robes flowing out around him.

“His Majesty, the One True King, is expecting you.”

“I’d hope so,” Torus muttered under his breath. “The old fool is the one who sent for us in the first place.”

“This old fool,” came a booming voice from atop the dais, “still has better hearing than men half his age, young Torus.”

Heron Greymalkin, the One True King, was well into his eighth decade. His back was bent and the little hair he had left stood out over his ears like dandelions gone to seed. He slowly made his way down the wide steps from the throne, leaning on his cane for support. He wore breeches and a vest of fine purple velvet, with a thick medallion of gold, the King’s Medal, draped around his neck. The necklace was so grand that Royce had a sudden picture of the frail
King being crushed under its weight.

Torus went to one knee at the
King’s approach, and Royce began to follow suit before Greymalkin waved them off impatiently.

“Bowing and scraping isn’t my style, boys.” The
King chuckled, a raspy sound that reminded Royce of sandpaper on a plank. “I have enough sycophants around without adding you fools to the mix.”

“Yes,
Your Majesty,” Torus got back to his feet, looking no more at ease than he had when they first walked in. The King regarded him for a moment and then turned to Royce.

“Good to see you again, Captain. You’re well?”

“As well as can be expected, Your Grace.”

“Hmpfh. So what’s this all about, Torus? Have those mangy dog men really returned?”

“It seems so, Majesty.”

The
King leaned heavily on his cane, one hand folded over the other. He looked first at Torus, then to Royce, and back again.

“Very well,” he sighed. “I suppose we should take this in the council room.”

* * *

The enticing call of the city proved to be too much for Tiadaria to withstand. She saw Ecera smile at her as Tia slipped out the side door of the common room and into the alleyway. The sun had just set, painting the western sky with light blues, purples, and pinks. The smell of burning oil was pervasive but not unpleasant. Every hundred feet or so, a lantern hung from a high pole. She marveled a moment, wondering how they managed to light as many lanterns as must be spread all over the city.

The thought was abruptly cut off by a sound she recognized very well. The tinkling of a tambourine somewhere nearby. A beat was struck and a high, pretty female voice carried down the alleyway, bouncing off the fronts of shops and homes that were closing up and darkening for the night.

The alley brought her to the main thoroughfare. To her right, it snaked away out of sight toward the giant maw in the mountainside. The palace lie there and the Captain was no doubt meeting with the
King this very moment. To the left, the road led toward the market square they had passed through on their way in. Tiadaria decided, for no reason other than simple ignorance that the music must have been coming from the market square. She turned left.

There was nowhere for her to be and she expected that the Captain wouldn’t be back to the room until late, if at all. She probably had at least a couple of hours to explore. By then she would be tired and ready to sleep in the first real bed she’d had in a number of weeks.

“Oy! You!” The shout from behind her made her jump. Her hand reflexively went to her throat, ensuring that the scarf was still knotted there. She turned just as a youngster, a loaf of bread in each hand, sprinted past her, nearly knocking her off balance with his shoulder, as he passed.

His pursuer, the fat man who had shouted, doubled over a short distance from Tia. He was bright red and gasping for breath, beads of sweat popping up over his forehead like droplets on a cold mug of ale. The crimson in his face stood out in stark contrast to the white linen coat he wore. He was dusted head to toe with fine white powder. It was on his breeches, all over his coat, even sprinkled lightly through his hair. Gulping down one last huge breath, he looked up a Tia, who still stood rooted in the spot, staring at him.

“Little bugger got the drop on me,” he said. “Well, he probably needed it more than I did. Good evening to you, my Lady.”

With a half wave, he turned and walked back toward his shop where a young man with a broom was standing in the doorway. They exchanged words that she couldn’t hear and then they disappeared inside. The closing of the door signified the end of the work day. Not only for the bakery, but for everything else on this street, it seemed. There was no one else on the road and Tia suddenly felt very alone.

The girl’s voice reached out to her again from the distance, reassurance that she wasn’t the only living thing in this city of antiquity. Her first few steps toward the market square were tentative. She still wasn’t sure where she was going, but she was relatively certain that she would be able to find her way back to the inn. She began counting the number of buildings and how many turns she made, so that if she got turned around, she would at least be able to get back to her room before the Captain missed her.

Market square was a study in organized chaos. As she neared the cacophony, she found an empty doorway and slipped into it, watching in rapt amazement. The number of people in the square was staggering. The closest she had ever been to a gathering of this size was the few times a year that the clans came together for trading and even then, there were more people crammed into this cleared area of cobblestones than made up all of the clans put together.

The wagons had been shuttered for the night and a large platform at the front of the square had been cleared of boxes, crates, and drums. The girl who was singing looked as if she might have been Tia’s age, or a little younger. She was lost, her eyes closed, her head thrown back. Lost in the rapture of the beautiful song that burst from her lips with such intensity that it felt as if Tia might be deafened by the sound as it rolled out across the crowd.

A lanky man sat on the corner of the platform, a large drum between his legs. No slave ship quartermaster had ever kept a beat so relentlessly. To the singer’s left, a woman with hair so dark it looked as if the night had wrapped itself around her hea
d; was playing a strange stringed instrument that Tia had never seen. She sat behind its curved back, wrapping her arms around it in an intimate embrace as she plucked at the strings.

Music, like most other things, was utilitarian in the clans. There were saga-songs, stories told to the beat of a drum, but Tiadaria had never heard anything like this. This was music created from passion, not from purpose. It was music that reached deep inside her and clenched at her heart, threatening to wring tears from her eyes. Whatever she had expected to come from her explorations, this hadn’t been it. She was a world away from the only home she had ever known. Not only in distan
ce but in custom and attitude as well.

There was a moment of silence and then the crowd erupted in a roaring that Tia could feel through the soles of her boots. Panic flooded through her until she realized that the song had come to an end and these people were showering the performers with their thundering approval. Emboldened by the crowd, Tiadaria lent her voice to the crescendo, pounding her hands together in the most sincere applause she had ever given.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

The voice in her ear startled her. Not only because of the proximity, but because she hadn’t noticed the man’s approach. He was leaning over her shoulder, his head covered with a half-helm. Tia nodded, turning to get a better look at him.

He was clad in heavy armor, a black dragon emblazoned on the breastplate. It was a knight’s armor and belatedly, Tia realized that the man who had been standing behind her for who knew how long was a city guard, or at the very least, a part of the Grand Army of the Imperium. Tia recognized the sigil. The Captain kept armor in his war chest that bore the same crest. Even his fighting armor, the thin white silk with the fine ringlets of silver, had a black dragon embroidered on the inside breast. A man may leave the army, Tia suspected, but she doubted that the army ever left the man.

Why was he staring at her so? He had been standing just over her shoulder; certainly he had seen through the gauzy material of the scarf and seen that she was a slave. Her collar would have betrayed her and he would lower his pike and march her off through the crowd, and object of their scorn and ridicule. Tia had heard stories of what happened to convicts who were paraded through the streets of whatever town or holding they had committed their crimes in. Those stories didn’t oft end well.

The knight’s scrutiny seemed to increase. He cocked his head at her and then pointed to his ear.

“I said,” he nearly shouted over the din, “Beautiful isn’t it?”

Foolish, stupid girl. Tia berated herself as she smiled at the man, whose face settled into more relaxed lines.

“Yes,” she replied, equally loudly, for the girl had started a new song, this one much faster than the last. “Quite!”

The man smiled, patted her on the shoulder, and worked his way through the crowd. He nodded to this person and that one, stopping to converse with others only briefly as he made his rounds. It wasn’t long before he was completely long from view.

Tia’s chest ached and she let out a rush of breath that made her head swim. She hadn’t even realized she had been holding it. She rubbed the area under her rib cage, trying to massage the soreness of the extended effort away. Pairs were breaking off in the square now, and the crowd pushed back from the center to allow those who wished to dance the space to do so
, unimpeded.

The outward expansion of the gathering invaded Tia’s secluded doorway. Where she had been alone a moment before, she was now pressed among a mass of bodies that ebbed and flowed like the tide. She was assaulted by a number of smells, some of the
m pleasant, others less so. Her heart began to race and she knew that she needed to get back to the inn, back to relative safety and comfort.