Blood of Dragons - Страница 20

‘And I will convey to my gaoler that you are to have the privilege of visiting both my prisoners, when and as you wish. It seems only right to reward you with some privilege. Access to what will eventually be yours, so to speak … Does that seem fair to you, Chancellor?’

Ellik met the Duke’s gaze and very slowly, understanding dawned in his eyes. ‘It is beyond fair, Excellency. I will fetch him immediately.’ He tugged at his prize’s chain, but the Duke shook his head. ‘Leave the dragon-man here while you fetch the gaoler. I have my guards and I think I have little to fear from such a rack of bones.’

An expression of uneasiness flickered over the Chancellor’s face, but he bowed deeply and then backed slowly from the room. When he was gone, the Duke sat regarding his prize. The Elderling did not look as if he had been severely abused. Starved a bit, perhaps, and his fading bruises spoke of a beating. But there were no signs of infected injuries. Perhaps he just needed to be fed up. ‘What do you eat, creature?’ he demanded.

The Elderling met his gaze. ‘I am a man, despite my appearance. I eat what you would eat. Bread, meat, fruit, vegetables. Hot tea. Good wine. Clean food of any kind would be welcome to me.’

The Duke could hear some relief in the creature’s voice. He had understood that he was to be treated well and given time to heal. There was no need to put any other thought in his mind.

‘If you will but give me ink and paper,’ the creature said, ‘I will compose a letter to my family. They will ransom me.’

‘And your dragon? Did not you say you sang for a dragon? What might he give for your safe return?’

The Elderling smiled but there was a wry twist to his mouth. ‘It is hard for me to say. Nothing at all, perhaps. Tintaglia does not act by predictable human standards. At any moment of any hour, her fancy toward me might change. But I think you would win her goodwill if I were returned safely to where she could eventually find me again.’

‘Then you do not know where she is?’ The possibility of holding this Selden hostage and luring his dragon in to where it could be slain and butchered faded a bit. If he was telling the truth at all. Dragons were notorious liars.

‘Held in captivity as I was, I was carried far from where I might expect to see her. Possibly she believes I have abandoned her. In any case, it has been years since I have seen her.’

Not the most encouraging news. ‘But you come from the Rain Wilds? And there they have many dragons, do they not?’

The creature drew breath to speak, seemed to waver in his resolve and then said, ‘The rumour of the dragons hatching went far and wide when it happened. I have not been home for a long time. I cannot say with certainty how the dragons that hatched there have fared.’

Did the creature sense that there was a bargain to be struck? Let him think on it, then, but best not to let him know the Duke’s life depended on it. He heard the footfalls of the gaoler and Ellik as they approached the doorway and nodded gravely to the creature.

‘Farewell for now, Elderling. Eat well, rest and grow strong. Later, perhaps, we will speak again.’ He looked away from the creature. ‘Guards. Bear me to the sheltered garden. And mulled wine is to await me there when I arrive.’

In late morning, Tintaglia smelled wood-smoke on the wind. The breeze had carried it a long way; nonetheless, it lifted her heart. Trehaug was not far now and the day was still young. The thought that soon she would see her Elderlings again cheered her. Pumping her wings more strongly, she braced herself against the pain. It was endurable now that an end was in sight. She would summon Malta and Reyn and they would attend to her injury. It would not be pleasant, but with their clever little hands, they could search the wound and pull out the offensive arrowhead. Then, a soothing poultice and perhaps some grooming by them. She made a small sound of longing in her throat. Selden had always been the best at grooming her. Her small singer had been devoted to her. She wondered if he were still alive somewhere and how much he would have aged. It was hard to understand how quickly humans aged. A few seasons passed and suddenly they were old. A few more and they were dead. Would Malta and Reyn have aged much?

Useless to wonder. She would see them soon. If they were too old to help her, she would use her dragon glamour to win others to her service.

As the afternoon sun began to slant across the river, the smells of humanity grew stronger. There was more smoke on the wind and the other stenches of human habitation. Their sounds reached her sensitive ears as well. Their chittering calls to one another vied with the sound of their endless remaking of the world. Axes bit wood into pieces and hammers nailed it back together. Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.

On the river, bobbing boats battled the current. As her shadow swept across them, men looked up, yelling and pointing. She ignored them. Ahead of her were the floating docks that served the treetop city. She swept over them, displeased at how small they seemed. She had landed on them before, when she was not long out of her cocoon. True, planks had split and broken free under her impact, and the boats tethered to them had taken some damage and some had floated away down the river, still attached to a broken piece of dock. But that was scarcely her fault; humans should build more sturdily if they wanted dragons to come calling.

She grunted in pain as she banked her wings and circled. This was going to hurt no matter whether she landed in the water or on the dock. The dock, then. She opened her wings and beat them, letting her clawed feet reach toward the dock. On the long wooden structure, humans were yelling and running in all directions.

‘OUT OF MY WAY!’ she warned them, trumpeting the thought as well as impressing it on their tiny brains. ‘Malta! Reyn! Attend me!’ Then her outstretched front legs struck the planking. The floating dock sank under her; tethered boats leaned in wildly and shattered pieces of wood went flying. Grey river water surged up to drench her, and as she roared in outrage at its cold and acid touch, the buoyancy of the dock suddenly asserted itself. The structure rose under her until the water barely covered her feet. She lashed her tail in disgust and felt wood give beneath the impact. She looked over her shoulder at a boat that was now listing and taking on water. ‘A foolish place to tie that,’ she observed, and moved down the dock that swayed and sank beneath her every tread until she emerged onto the muddy, trodden shore. As she left the dock, most of it bobbed back up to the surface. Only one boat broke free and floated away.

On the solid if muddy earth, she halted. For a time, all she did was breathe. Waves of heat swept through her, flushing her hide with the colours of anger and pain. She bowed her head to her agony and kept very still, willing it to pass. When finally it eased and her mind cleared, she lifted her head and looked around.

The humans who had fled shrieking at her approach were now beginning to gather at a safe distance. They ringed her like carrion birds, chattering like a disturbed flock of rooks. The shrillness was as annoying as her inability to separate any one stream of thought from any of them. Panic, panic, panic! That was all they were conveying to one another.

‘Silence!’ she roared at them, and for a wonder, they stilled. The pain of her injury was beginning to assert itself. She had no time for these chittering monkeys. ‘Reyn Khuprus! Malta! Selden!’ She threw that last name out hopefully.

One of the men, a burly fellow in a stained tunic, found the courage to address her. ‘None of them here! Selden’s been gone a long time, and Reyn and Malta went to Cassarick and haven’t been seen since! Nor Reyn’s sister Tillamon. All vanished!’

‘What?’ Outrage swept through her. She lashed her tail and then bellowed again at the pain it cost her. ‘All gone? Not a Khuprus to attend me? What insult is this?’

‘Not every Khuprus is gone.’ The woman who shouted the words was old. Her facial scaling proclaimed her a Rain Wilder. The hair swept up and pinned to her head was greying, but she strode swiftly down the wide path from the city toward the dragon. The other humans parted to let her through. She walked fearlessly, though with one hand she motioned for her daughter, trotting uncertainly behind her, to stay well back.

Tintaglia lifted her head to look down on the old woman. She could not quite close her wing over her injury, so she let both her wings hang loose as if she did it intentionally. She waited until the woman was quite close; then she said, ‘I remember you. You are Jani Khuprus, mother of Reyn Khuprus.’

‘I am.’

‘Where is he? I wish for him and Malta to attend me at once.’ She would not tell this woman she was injured. Beneath the humans’ fog of fear she sensed a simmering anger. And she was still hearing shouts and curses from the area of the flimsy dock she had landed on. She hoped they’d repair it sufficiently for her to safely launch from it.

‘Reyn and Malta are gone. I have not seen or heard from them in days.’

Tintaglia stared at the woman. There was something … ‘You are lying to me.’

She felt a moment of assent but the words that came from the woman’s lips denied it. ‘I have not seen them. I am not sure where they are.’

But you suspect you know. Tintaglia spun the silver of her eyes slowly while she fixed her thought on the upright old woman. She reached for strength and then exuded glamour at Jani. The woman cocked her head and a half-smile formed on her face. Then she drew herself up very straight and fixed her own stern gaze on the dragon. Without speaking, she conveyed to Tintaglia that attempting to charm her had made her more wary and less cooperative.