Draka

Val had been wise to make me promise not to go anywhere.

“How many Eagles?” I asked, my voice thin. I found myself suddenly having some trouble breathing.

Val laughed. “It is best left to dragons to worry about bits, when silver is on the table. 66 Dragons, 4 Eagles, 12 Peacocks, and one bit, to give the exact number.”

66 Dragons. Nearly a pound of gold, actually several pounds of mixed gold, silver, and gems, and it was mine. I wasn’t sure, exactly, but I thought that might double my hoard, and I was itching, desperate to go, to bring it home where it belonged. There was no way that this wouldn’t get me another advancement, as well, and mighty as I was, every advantage was welcome. Especially now that I had, to some degree, outed myself to the people of the city. It would surely draw would-be thieves and slayers, some of whom might actually pose a real threat.

At the same time as I worried about that, there were two thoughts above all others, proud and reckless. ‘Let them come,’ I thought. ‘Let them try.”

A shameless rumble filled the room. Just looking at the treasure was a test of my honour and my resolve. Most of the value was in gold coins – a mix of Dragons and others – and small pouches of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires… all kinds of beautiful things. And then, of course there were several pounds of silver coins, to make up whatever value the buyer couldn’t come up with in more convenient currency. I wanted to take my share and leave. To be completely honest with myself, I wanted to take the entire box, but I was not going to stab my friends in the back, no matter how intoxicating the fortune before me was. I forced my avarice down. Besides, whatever went to the humans was practically mine, anyway. Mine by proxy, as it were.

There was some very real desire in that small room to find some all-night tavern and celebrate until the sun came up, but in the end it was the fact that I couldn’t join the humans that killed that idea. It was flattering, really. Instead they all separated to their individual rooms, although Tam insisted that Ardek take his cot and move into his and Val’s room. Herald rolled her eyes at that and Mak gave her brother a very unimpressed look at how insistent he was, but they didn’t argue. Ardek, apparently, snored.

So, in the small hours we finally got to sleep. The humans were all exhausted, and the sisters were asleep in moments, despite their excitement over their new riches. I’d had plenty of time for small naps but, curled around the red box full of treasure as I was, the heady scents of precious things lulled me to a deep and relaxing sleep, full of sweet dreams.

Late into the next morning we woke to knocking, and Lalia’s voice calling, “Hey? You girls in there?“

I got up, stretched, and, with some difficulty and great care, got the key off the hook it hung on by the door and worked the lock.

“Good morning, Lalia,” I said, making her jump as I opened the door. “Where were you last night?”

“Draka! Hells, what are you… you know what? Doesn’t matter. Double strength patrol with Garal, got stuck out, had to camp for the night. Just got back from reporting in.” She stuck her head in the room, actually getting within a foot of me without flinching. “Girls! I met Val outside, and he says you haven’t celebrated yet! Get decent and let’s go!”

“Hey, Lalia,” Herald called from her bed. She was still curled up under her blanket. “Just… gimme…”

Mak sat up, her blanket wrapped around her, and waved, then got up and started dragging a loudly protesting Herald out of bed.

Lalia turned to me. “You don’t mind, do you? I don’t really know any place we can go where we could bring you…”

“Market!” Herald exclaimed. “Let us just get some stuff from the market, good stuff, expensive stuff, and eat here!”

“It’s fine,” I lied. “I don’t mind if you want to go somewhere nice.”

Herald started to protest, but Mak spoke over her. “Draka, we wouldn’t have found the book without you. This is your celebration, as much as anyone’s.” She looked at Lalia. “Is Garal around? He knows what Draka likes.”

Lalia looked disappointed for just a fraction of a second. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s talking to the boys and the Terriallons. You all just get comfortable and wait here. We’ll take care of it.”

Mak scrutinised Lalia for a second, then grabbed her purse from beside her bed and threw it to Lalia, who caught it without looking.

“Thanks,” Mak said. “We appreciate it, but we’re paying.”

Lalia considered the purse, hefting it for a moment. They shared a look, and she said, “Alright, sure.”

It was pretty clear that there was a lot of pride and mutual understanding going on. I would have expected arguing from both sides, possibly followed by begrudging acceptance, but Mak and Lalia had known each other for years. They simply cut out the pointless back and forth and arrived at the same place.

An hour later we were gathered in the cousins’ room. Rooms, really. It was the only suite in the inn, with a separate bedroom and a sitting room, which was larger than the sisters’ room in itself and was where we were gathered. The table that the humans crowded around on borrowed chairs groaned under a truly decadent spread of breads and meats, jams and fruits and cheeses; the inn was in the most mercantile part of the city, and the cousins knew where to go if you wanted the good stuff and had silver to burn. They had, apparently, opted for fruit juice rather than wine or anything else. I wasn’t sure if Mak had sworn off the drink altogether, but not encouraging anyone to get day-drunk when they had a small fortune to take care of was a nice touch.

I sat at one short end of the table. The magic lockbox sat on the floor beside me, and I had my own breakfast arrangements. Garal had, very considerately, arranged a small crate with a variety of fish, as well as some kind of squid and small crabs. If the smell bothered anyone they didn’t mention it, and the things were delicious.

Knocking on the table, Garal silenced the conversation and the sounds of eating. He raised his mug. “Companions, old and new!” he said, looking around and nodding to Ardek. “A drink, if you would, to profitable journeys, safely ended, and to the good fortune of good friends!”

There were cheers all around.

Herald raised her own mug, looking at me. “To unlikely friends in unlikely places!”

“To open minds, and open hearts,” I said. A little sentimental, perhaps, but I meant it.

“Setting aside your differences in the face of danger,” Lalia added.

“To a shitload of gold and silver!” Rib exclaimed, raising her mug high. It was a little against the grain and on the nose, but the cheers she got were as loud as any before.

“To a good story!” Pot shouted. “Tell us the story!”

“Not much to tell, really,” Tam said. “Just a lot of long days at sea and on the road, waiting in rooms, negotiation, storms, betrayal, bandits, attempted murder, and pirates.”

“Also beautiful landscapes, beautiful art, and beautiful people,” Val added.

“Well, yes. Some – a lot, really – of the waiting was spent enjoying everything that Tavvanar has to offer. Within reason, of course. Although…” his grin faded, “having heard what you all went through while we were away I feel somewhat guilty. Compared to that, we were on vacation.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Mak said. “Besides, it wasn’t all bad, and it ended well. If anything, I’m glad that you didn’t have to go through it with us.”

Herald nodded vigorously. “And we would rather not think about all that now. This is a celebration! Tell us about your journey!”

“Right. Well, we set sail on the finest day in living memory…”

I wasn’t sure how much of Tamor’s tale was true, but at least Val didn’t contradict him at any point. No matter how much of it had been fabricated or exaggerated, it clearly hadn’t been smooth sailing, literally or figuratively.

The trip across the narrow sea to Tavvanar should have taken two days. Instead it had taken four, with every possible thing that could having gone wrong. The food had been bad, causing an outbreak of stomach illness onboard. While that went on, a surprise storm had not only stopped their progress halfway across but had torn sails and broken spars, forcing them to spend a day making repairs. While the recovering crew took care of that, one sailor had snuck away from his duties and attempted to burgle the boys’ cabin as they enjoyed the fresh air, only being caught thanks to Val happening to decide, just then, to go get his paper and charcoal. Tam had apparently looked particularly fetching at the time. A ‘scuffle’ had ensued, which Tam clarified to mean Val beating the sailor to within an inch of his life. Other members of the crew had objected, there had been a standoff, and the situation had only resolved peacefully when another passenger spotted a stolen scarf of hers peeking out of the sailor’s tunic.

The man had been thrown in the bilges for the rest of the trip. I wasn’t sure what bilges were, but from the reactions of the others it sounded like a fitting punishment.

The first days in Tavvanar had been considerably better. The boys had gone to the main temple of the Three, presenting their letter of introduction, and the Three-ers had been shockingly polite and accommodating once the letter had been read. They had been informed well ahead of time that the boys should be arriving, and some high-up had taken the time to find three – of course – possible buyers for the book. They even offered Tam and Val accommodations for their stay, but they’d declined. The cells had been quite spartan and, more importantly, separate.

Tavvanar was, from the way they told it, a warm, dry city built of grey stone and dressed in reds and blues. And not in the way that Karakan was mostly a city of green and yellow; other colours were rare in Tavvanar. They produced their own dyes, it seemed, and were famed for those two colours. The best in the world, everyone agreed. When I protested that the cousins never wore blue or red, I got the reply that sixteen years of nothing but was quite enough, thank you very much.

It was also a larger city than Karakan, sprawling along a flat coast and with at least twice the population, though it was hard to be sure just how many people lived in its territories. The kinds of people who might be interested in buying our book didn’t spend much time in the city, instead living on the vast estates that divided most of Tavvanar’s land between them. City lords, like Rallon, were the exception, concentrating their properties inside the city as opposed to the much more numerous Country lords. That, of course, meant that Tam and Val spent a lot of their time abroad travelling from one potential buyer to another. Tam populated that part of the story with monsters and bandits, mysterious strangers and crafty orphans – a common feature of Karakani stories, apparently. I wasn’t sure how much of that I believed, but the man told an entertaining story, and nobody seemed any more interested in calling him out than I was.

The story took a bit of a turn when one of the interested parties that the Three-ers had suggested attempted to murder them in his own home. After a failed attempt to drug them with wine, Tam and Val had barricaded themselves in their room with the guards breaking down the door. As they grimly prepared themselves for a last stand, fortune smiled upon them! A servant girl in the household, a secret spy for a different lord, had grown so enamoured with Tamor – Val did roll his eyes a little at that point – that she couldn’t bear to see them killed, and helped them escape out the window and away from the estate on horseback. The fact that it was her master who ended up buying the book, having heard of it from an acquaintance, surely had nothing to do with it.

At that point Tam mostly wrapped up. They met their rescuer’s master, one Lord Timerisemmon, got along famously, negotiated a price that was better than any offer so far, and even ended up travelling back to the city in his company. There they were wined and dined and entertained at his expense for several days until the time came to return to Karakan, and when surprise delays forced them to remain for several days longer it was seen as divine providence more than anything.

“If only the man had been forty years younger,” Tam sighed.

“A pity,” Val agreed with every sign of sincerity. “But there was some difficulty in keeping up with him, as it was.”

“Mercies, yes!” Tam laughed. “His Lordship really knows how to enjoy a night out! Did I tell you all that we got in a brawl? The man is over seventy!”

Rib and Pot had been laughing their hearts out ever since Timerisemmon was mentioned, and Pot finally recovered enough to say, “Timerisemmon! The man is notorious. He’s considered a disgrace to the city! Cousin Mordo’s father was close friends with the man, we have to tell him!”

“Semmon!” Rib giggled. “Can’t believe you found Semmon! The fucking luck of it!”

“Oh, he did mention that he doesn’t get along with most of the upper crust,” Tam said. “Military man, and all that. We have a standing invitation if we’re ever back. And, ah…” he turned to his sisters, scratching the back of his head. “He offered to marry either or both of you. Not sure how serious he was.”

“That’s… kind of him,” Mak said, trying to sound serious while fighting a losing battle not to laugh.

Herald didn’t hold back. “Tell him thank you, but I am spoken for at the moment!” she said, grinning hugely.

Tam grinned back. “Yeah, I told him that I’m not head of the family and that Mak would have to decide.”

“Wouldn’t worry,” Pot said between laughs. “He’s offered to marry half the women in Tavvanar by now. He’s used to rejection! But, Mercies, His Lordship Timerisemmon Arpon with two Tekeriteki wives? Can you imagine, Rib?”

Rib bent double and howled with laughter, so pure and bright that I found myself laughing even though I had no idea what the joke even was. “They’d die!” she choked out in a language similar enough to be a sister to Karakani. “They’d die!”

“Who?” I asked, and Rib didn’t even bat an eye at my use of what I’d guess to be Tavvanarian.

“The gossips!” she managed after a few seconds. “They’d die!”

Being becalmed for several days on the way back turned out to have been the least interesting part of the journey. Having learned from their first trip, one of them remained with their new fortune at all times. They barely left the cabin.

“Greatly relaxing,” Val commented, a peaceful look on his face. From the wicked grin that flashed across Tam’s face, though, I wondered how much relaxing they’d actually done.

“Then,” Tam said with an air of rounding off, “we convinced the captain to send us ashore in a boat, prepared to die fighting, were arrested by the guard, and here we are!”

“Ending needs work,” Ardek said, a little timidly.

“Don’t worry,” Tam said. “It’ll be better tomorrow!” Which got another round of laughter.

It was a pretty nice meal, all told. Of course someone had to go and end it early by knocking at the door.

Everyone looked at me. We came to a silent agreement, and everyone shuffled around so that I could sneak into the small, separate bedroom, with Herald closing the door on me.

There came another knock, more urgent, and an anxious voice called, “Your lordships? Are you available? There is someone to see you.”

I heard the door open, and Pot’s voice, sounding more refined than I’d even heard it. “Master Reben. Good day to you. And this is…?”

“Captain Vakkal, with the City Guard, your lordship,” said a vaguely familiar voice. Vakkal… right. The crooked captain who had stopped Herald, Mak and Ardek as we left the Blossom’s house in the high city.

There was no way that that was good.

“And what is your business with us, Captain?” Pot asked curtly.

“Myself and my men have been tasked with bringing one Miss Makanna and her family, as well as one Mister Valmik, before the council, your lordship,” Vakkal replied, his tone polite but firm.

“And what is this in regards to? I should point out that my friends were already harassed by the Guard last night, and that the Lady Justice Sampralia was not at all pleased.”

“It is she who has requested their presence, your lordship. And I am afraid that I must insist. The Lady Justice is waiting as we speak.”

There was a short silence after that.

“In that case, Captain,” Mak’s voice said, “we mustn’t waste the Lady Justice’s time. Give us a few minutes to get ready and we’ll join you downstairs.”

“Thank you, Miss Makanna,” Vakkal said, and the door closed.

The door to the bedroom opened almost immediately. “Please, Draka,” Mak said. “Stay here. Don’t follow us. Guard the treasure. Please.” Without waiting for my reply she turned around. “Rib, Pot, Garal, Lalia, can we count on you to come with us?”

“Try to keep us away,” Lalia said, and the others agreed with nods and mutters. “Isn’t that the same Captain who’s being paid off by the Blossom?”

“He’s of them,” Ardek said. “Or at least he didn’t have the guts to risk going against her. Might not be in her purse, but I wouldn’t chance it.”

“Right,” Mak said. “See, Draka? We’ll be as safe as we can be. Guard the treasure. That’s our future. Please!”

I looked from Mak, to the box, to Herald who nodded, once and sharply.

“Um, what about me, boss?” Ardek asked. “Do I…?”

“Go with them,” I told him. “I want someone who can run back here and let me know if I need to… you know. If I’m needed.”

He looked more than a little anxious about that, but nodded, like I’d know that he would.

I had been planning to follow them, of course, but what she said made sense. They’d have four skilled mercenaries with them, two of whom were actual, real-life aristocrats of some kind. And Ardek, though I wasn’t sure what good he’d be in a fight. And it was in the middle of the day, it wasn’t like the Captain could disappear them, and I’d know in which direction Mak was at all times. On the other hand, with all of us away there would be no way to know that the treasure was safe, and there was no time to stash it somewhere.

“Fine,” I said, to Mak’s obvious relief. “Rib, Pot, I don’t know if the inn has someone who cleans the rooms regularly, but make it clear that no one is to come in here. I’ll be in front of the door, and I will be very annoyed if they keep slamming it into me.”

“We’ll let Reben know,” Rib said.

“Reben? I thought you’d’ve killed him by now,” I said, genuinely confused for a moment, before my conscience caught up with me. “No. Of course you haven’t. Still, why are you trusting this man?”

“It is still his inn,” Herald said with a shrug. “And we like it here. So we talked about it. He knows that we will not easily trust him again, so we do not think that he will try to betray us. And… he did not have much of a choice. He deserves a second chance.”

Mak nodded her agreement and said, “Besides, a little forgiveness can go a long way. He’s very grateful. And,” she added, with a smile that slowly became predatory, “we’ve been talking to him about buying the place. Together, we can afford it. And owning this inn, no matter what we pay for it, would let us establish a House.”

“We could have a name,” Tam grinned. “But! If we annoy the Lady Justice that might be only a beautiful dream, so…”

“Right,” Mak said. “Get ready, quickly. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

I wanted very much to go with them. For all that they insisted that they were safe, I didn’t trust anyone I didn’t know. To be fully honest, I didn’t trust anyone I didn’t have some measure of control over. Love, respect, or fear, it made little difference.

The dragon in me hated it, but I let them go. If they were the few people that I trusted, then I needed to show that trust. I had to believe that they could keep themselves safe. For all that I sometimes wanted to, I couldn’t always be around. They were mine, but they didn’t always need me to protect them, and I had to learn to accept that.

I let them go. Then I curled up in front of the door. I rested my head on the red lacquered lockbox filled with my four dear friends’ fortunes, and I dreamed of a golden future.