Dragon Thief (6 page)

Sounds simple, right?

Strangely enough, these people didn't leave their horses tacked and harnessed to their wagons overnight while they camped. I guess they wanted their animals to rest and graze for some reason. That meant I had to quietly fetch a team and hitch them up to one of the wagons without alerting the camp.

Yeah. Simple.

It was already pretty clear what I had to take. There were a couple of large wagons that seemed capable of carrying most of the men and gear, but either one would have taken a four-horse team to move. Trying to hitch up four horses quietly in the dark pushed way past the bounds of sanity. So I just took my dagger and started cutting reins, bridles, and straps. It wouldn't permanently immobilize them, but after the damage I did it would probably be a good hour or two before they'd be able to hitch a team to either one again.

My target was a smaller, but much more opulent, vehicle. The carriage was all gilding and elaborate scrollwork, and bore a coat of arms that I couldn't make out in the dark. The girls might be cramped inside, but it only needed a two-horse team, and could probably get by with one.

Once I sabotaged the main wagons, I crept to the carriage and made sure all the tack was in place, unbuckled and ready for a team.

Okay, now the hard part.

I crept over to the clearing where the horses were tied. I had a moment of panic when I realized that I'd have to guess which ones were riding horses and which ones were trained as a team. Fortunately for me, it was clear after a moment which horses went with the carriage. There were two gray horses a hand or two smaller than the other shaggy draft animals, and both had their mane and tail tightly braided.

Just to complicate any pursuit, I untied the other animals and removed their halters, cutting a few critical straps with my dagger. If I was lucky, they'd also wander off.

After that, I took the first gray and coaxed him back toward the carriage. Lucky me, the horse was well trained and fairly docile. I managed to get him hitched up to the carriage without an incident or any undue noise.

I stepped back and briefly considered pushing my luck and fetching the other gray horse.

I wasn't nearly as lucky as I thought I was.

“Hey!” Across the campsite from me stood a gentleman with his arm in a sling. I guessed he was the same man who had taken a quarrel in the shoulder while bequeathing me my current dagger. At least from the bridge of the nose upward it could have been him. He spent a split second staring at me in open-mouthed surprise.

I ran.

The man started yelling to raise the camp.

Men began emerging from tents across the campsite, and I aimed my sprint toward the largest and most luxuriously appointed of the tents, intent on my secondary escape plan. I was halfway there when my escape plan emerged from the tent complaining about the ungodly racket. He wore a nightcap and long robe trimmed with ermine. He had a pale, pudgy, slightly annoyed look of someone who found physical activity distasteful and had either the money or power to avoid it as much as possible.

I grabbed him before he'd had a chance to turn his attention from the man raising the alarm. I swung him between me and everyone else and held a dagger up to his throat as I backed him away from the big tent.

“I suggest everyone stay calm,” I yelled toward my acquaintance with the sling, “or our friend here gets a very brief lesson in how to breathe through a hole in his neck.”

“Cur,” Ermine boy said, “Do you know who I am?”

For an answer, I increased the pressure on the dagger and whispered at him, “Do you know who I am?” It was a lot easier to get an intimidating tone from my voice now that I wasn't a princess. He was about to say something, but he glanced back in my direction and—surprisingly for the type—shut up.

And I had to struggle to not lose my grip on the dagger because I
did
know who he was.

Prince Oliver?

I had just taken the prince of Dermonica hostage.

I had headed for the opulent tent intending to take a hostage. Given that assassins were generally working stiffs, someone was probably paying them to be out here. The presence of a too-luxurious carriage and tent were obvious signs that their employer was along for the ride. And really, the best way to stop an assassin from doing anything is to threaten the source of his pay.

The fact that a dozen men had emerged from the tents around the campsite and none made a move toward me was a pretty good sign that my theory was sound.

I'd just never given consideration to exactly
who
might have been paying these guys. I backed my hostage up toward the carriage, keeping him in front of me. I whispered into his ear, “Now, good prince, if we're all calm and businesslike, we can all avoid a lot of pain. Understand?”

“Y-Yes.”

“You hold the purse strings, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then you're going to order all these men back into their tents to wait quietly for your return.”

“They will come after me,” he said, an almost admirable note of royal steel returning to his voice.

“That's the point of a hostage, isn't it? If they do, their paymaster ends with a slit throat. That wouldn't be in their best interest, would it? Unless you hauled their gold with you all the way from Dermonica, and you don't appear to be that stupid.”

“You won't get away with this.”

“And you want to survive to see justice done, don't you?”

I felt him tense under my grip and I prodded him with the dagger.

“Do it. Things are messy enough.”

For a moment I thought he was angry enough to risk his life just so his assassins would have a chance to take me out. But he shouted, “Everyone, back in your tents! Await my return. Do not interfere!”

They did as they were told, though they stared at me unnervingly as they did so. Each one of them was looking for some sort of opening. No way was I going to get that second horse. I kept from showing my back until everyone was back in their tents. Then I pushed Prince Oliver up into the carriage and followed him into the driver's seat.

“Pick up the reins.”

He stared at me.

“Pick them up!” I prodded with the dagger.

He reached down and grabbed the reins for the one horse and held them up between us.

“Now drive us out of here!”

“How?”

We stared at each other. For a moment I was speechless.

After that moment I said, “You're kidding, right?”

He wasn't.

Of course the bloody prince has no idea how to drive a horse-drawn carriage.

Amazing how quickly a hostage can go from indispensable to completely useless. I reached up to his collar and yanked the robe down to his elbows, restraining his arms. Then I grabbed his nightcap and pulled it tightly over his eyes.

“Hey.”

“Shut up and don't move.” I grabbed the reins from him and did my best to drive our lone steed out on the road without putting the dagger away.

 • • • 

The question arises at this point, why didn't I just run?

I had safely disengaged myself from the group of feral teens, Weasel's crew, and a score of Dermonica-employed assassins. My first priority was getting back to Lendowyn to sort out the mess caused by my drunken decision to use the Dark Lord Nâtlac's jewel. I didn't owe anything to Fearless Leader and crew.

Well, I owed them for the clothes, but I figured that was outweighed by them pointing a crossbow in my direction.

Really, any thief worth his fingers would have been long gone by now.

But I was never a particularly good thief.

I stopped the carriage on the road over the hill from the assassins' campsite, and the girls emerged from the forest. Grace directed the other six silently to board the carriage and climbed up next to me. As the weight shifted below us, Fearless Leader paid me her first compliment, “That was impressive.”

“Who's there?” Prince Oliver said.

“You don't want to know, Your Highness,” I said.

I got the horse moving, but he strained against the weight.

“Your Highness?” Grace asked.

“Yes.” I bent down to talk into the carriage. “We're overloaded, toss anything down there that isn't nailed down.”

“Who is he?” Grace asked.

“Crown Prince Oliver of Dermonica.”

“Prince? What is
he
doing here?”

“Other than weighing us down? Good question.”

Below us the carriage doors opened and tapestries, cushions, and open chests sailed out into the road.

“What
are
you doing here?” she asked the prince.

“You know very well,” he whispered.

“Bringing yourself and a score of hired assassins across the border,” I said. “It looks like an act of war to me.”

“Harboring
you
is an act of war.”

The way Prince Oliver said that gave me a chill unrelated to the winter air. I knew I had a couple of thieves' guilds after me, but the prince implied something a slight bit more significant than conning a group of provincial outlaws out of their own ill-gotten gains.

“What did he do to you?” Grace asked.

“Ask your friend.”

Way to put me on the spot, Your Highness.

I summoned up Snake's most intimidating tone and said, “She was asking
you
.”

“Fine,” he muttered with something like resignation. “I can think of worse uses for my last words than to condemn this villain for his crimes.”

Grace snorted. “Don't preach to me the evils of thievery. I know the way the world works. You men in pretty robes are as much the thief as us, no less so because you do so at the point of a sword and some king's ‘law.'”

Prince Oliver laughed, and there was so little humor in it that it began to terrify me what he might say next. I didn't want to hear.

I didn't want Grace to hear.

“This man is no simple thief, and his crimes extend far beyond the simple taking of property. Dermonica is peaceful, our people were prosperous from trade, trade that came through Fellhaven, our one navigable ocean port. For decades we had an agreement with the pirates of Darkblood Reef.”

I knew where this was going, the use of the past tense was a big clue—as was the sudden diplomatic interest in trade routes through Lendowyn.

“Tribute,” I whispered.

“You are aptly named,” Prince Oliver said.

“What happened?” Grace asked.

“The legendary Snake won't elaborate for you?” The prince waited me to fill the silence. When I didn't, he continued. “For the safety of Fellhaven we paid the pirates a third of the gold from trade in a year. In return, we had safe passage, and our enemies did not. But this prior year, our diplomats left on a ship bearing gold, and arrived on a ship bearing lead.”

“A whole ship full of gold?” I heard a tone of awe in Grace's voice. Enough so that I knew that she hadn't yet thought through the consequences of such an act.

“Five days later, our ship returned to Fellhaven Bay. They had tied the crew to the masts, and once it reached the inner harbor, they set it aflame. As that ship crashed aground on the docks, the pirates came.”

“What did they—”

“Fellhaven was sacked, burned to the ground. Thousands dead.”

“You had no defenders?” I snapped.

“After five decades of peace, and no sign of the pirates breaking it? There was only the city watch, who massed to battle the fire on the docks. Every death there is on your hands.” He turned toward me, nightcap still pulled over his eyes. “Do the courtesy of at least having the courage to look me in the eyes when you kill me.”

“Yeah, about that?” I said. “Not going to happen.”

I pushed him, and he tumbled off the bench into a snowdrift by the side of the road. We rode off to the sounds of him cursing Snake's name.

Grace stared at me with wide eyes, “Why did you do that?”

“He was weighing us down,” I said. “And I can't kill him. Against the rules, right?”

We rode the carriage into the dawn. Fearless Leader spent the time in uncharacteristic silence. While that wasn't unwelcome, she seemed to be spending her time digesting the confirmation of my identity by a credible witness.

I had some idea how she might have felt.

The more I heard about this Snake character, the less I liked him. It wasn't the thievery, I'm no hypocrite. Not about that at least. I held about the same opinion of the state of the world as Grace had elaborated to the prince. If the lords were entitled to tax the people, I felt entitled to tax particular lords back. And, at one point in my outlaw career, I would have literally given my right arm to have been able to pull off something of the brazen magnitude of what this Snake guy had managed. Maybe I still would.

But . . .

There was a deep ugliness about it. I'd always said, as I had to Fearless Leader, that there were two types of thieves. Thug and pickpocket, brawn or stealth.

Snake was something else. Yes, he seemed to slip in and out unseen, rather than beating people upside the head to swipe their purse. But when he left, chaos swirled in his wake. There was nothing subtle or low profile about his thefts, and they had deadly repercussions.

Beyond the skill, beyond the riches, Snake had a talent for leaving behind something more than a rich dullard with a lighter purse or some arrogant priest short one golden icon. The thieves' guilds he had conned had been left in a state just short of open war, and I couldn't help but think that Prince Oliver's thirst for blood, and his fear, were justified.

I know that if I had contemplated some of the jobs Snake had done, the potential consequences would have given me pause.

Even the snippets of other stories I heard about him from the feral girls' club had a similar unpleasant feel to them. His callousness was worthy of some of the most arrogant nobles I'd heard of.

It also raised the same question that Fearless Leader had raised to me when we had met: Snake had stolen a kingdom's worth of treasure a few times over.

Where was it?

Why did he continue to leave wreckage in his wake? This wasn't a line of work that encouraged longevity. If someone kept up the outlaw life after the kind of heists Snake had pulled, they'd have to be a special kind of insane.

Or the proceeds were going somewhere else.

I took a fork in the road and Grace quietly said, “Lendowyn is due south of here.”

“I know, but so is Dermonica.”

My dialogue with Prince Oliver had helped to determine the direction we needed to go. We were north and inland, while Lendowyn was south and on the coast. However, a straight-line course due south would cut right through the Kingdom of Dermonica, which didn't seem the greatest idea if I was ostensibly responsible for an act of war against them.

“So where are you going?”

The next worst option.
“The other kingdom between us and Lendowyn.”

Grünwald.

It was the last place I personally wanted to go, but I couldn't really explain my history with Grünwald without revealing the fact I wasn't quite the infamous Snake they thought I was. It didn't seem politic to dissuade Grace and company from the impression Prince Oliver had made. Besides, while the current King Dudley of Grünwald might have a grudge against the Princess Frank Blackthorne—since I was directly responsible for the death of his mother the Evil Queen Fiona—as far as I knew he had nothing against Snake and no way to connect Snake with Frank. It was probably more concerning that it was a hotbed for worship of the Dark Lord Nâtlac, but we were probably okay if we avoided running into the royal family.

So unless we wanted to go hundreds of miles out of the way, weaving our way to the coast, Grünwald it was.

Like most other consequential mistakes in my life, it made sense at the time.

 • • • 

We stripped the Dermonica coat of arms from the carriage and kept to the wilderness, avoiding towns, sleeping under the stars. I would have preferred an inn. But even if Snake wasn't a wanted man in Grünwald—and I had the sense not to just assume that—my traveling companions stood out for their salvaged armor and choice of jewelry, if nothing else. I was hoping to make it back within the borders of Lendowyn before I had to explain them to anyone.

Of course, I had no idea what to do about them once we crossed into Lendowyn. I barely had a coherent idea of what I was going to do about myself. I had no idea how to reverse what had happened, or even if it could be reversed. And while I was still feeling oddly disassociated with the body I wore, a feeling that got worse the more I learned about the prior occupant, what bothered me more was the idea of Snake running around in the princess's body.

It was wrong in a fundamental way that gave me a sour feeling in a stomach that didn't really belong to me.

That was my real mistake, unleashing this guy on the Lendowyn court. I had to do something to correct it, even if I didn't know right now what that was.

Fortunately, after the episode with Prince Oliver, the girls were a lot less aggressive about questioning me. I was able to sit down at the edge of the campsite and allow my mind to spin around in nonproductive circles without any interruption.

If anything, it made my mood worse.

The second night the girls had caught something and were cooking it over the campfire. Sometime after the sun went down, Mary, the tall redhead, came over to me and said, “You should eat something.”

I grunted. I'd been begrudging the signals from Snake's body. Hunger, pain, fatigue—it wasn't really me that was feeling these things. It was some other guy. Someone I didn't particularly like.

Mary looked at me for a few moments, then sighed and turned around. There is something deeply unfair about someone twelve years your junior making you feel stupid.

“You're right,” I said.

She turned around and said, “So you still talk. Thought you been struck mute.”

“I've been preoccupied.”

“With what?”

With the fact that I'm lying to you and there's nothing in Lendowyn other than a bunch more awkward questions . . .

“What are you cooking?” I asked.

“Half a rabbit.”

I involuntarily glanced at the mute girl.

Mary laughed. “Not Rabbit,
rabbit.
”

“Glad you find that funny.”

She walked up until she was uncomfortably close to me. She placed a hand on my arm and studied my face, and I remembered what Grace had said, “sold to the White Rock Thieves' Guild when she was twelve.” That generally meant only one thing, and that knowledge made her proximity even worse.

Seeing this kid here, and knowing her history, made me start regretting the time I'd spent with a working girl back in Westmark. That regret meant that my time as “Snake” was a complete failure in every measure I could think of.

“Why you here?” she whispered.

“What?”

She leaned forward until her lips were nearly brushing my cheek. I froze out of fear that any movement might bring us into more inappropriate contact. “I asked, ‘Why you here?'”

I stared past her, into the campfire. “Your Fearless Leader is holding me hostage, remember?”

She raised a hand to my cheek and turned my face toward her. “No.”

“What do you—”

She placed her finger on my lips and continued. “You pretend she is. She pretends she is. She's acting because she doesn't know what else to do.
You're
acting because . . .”

“I'm not acting.”

She cradled my chin and shook her own head. “I'm not stupid.”

Something about her proximity and body language became threatening for a whole host of other reasons.

“I don't know what game you're playing. But I know a man who let a whole city burn for the sake of some gold ain't going to help us wayward girls out of the goodness of his heart. What I hear, you don't have one.”

“Maybe the stories are a bit overblown.”

“And maybe there's some other reasons you have us along.” She let go of my chin. “You were right, what you told Grace. Two types of people. When White Rock held me, I got to know both. The brutes, they were rough, violent—but they had no secrets, and you knew if you gave what they wanted you only hurt a little. But the smooth-talking ones, the ones with secrets, those were dangerous. I think you have too many secrets.”

She made me wonder if Grace was the real one in charge here.

“You're overthinking this.” I tried to sound disarming. “I just want to get to Lendowyn in one piece.”

“I owe Grace my life.”

“I gathered that.”

“We all do.”

“Yes?”

“And we—our group—is her life. All she has, her only family.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and leaned forward to whisper in my ear.
“You do anything to take that away from her I will rip off your man-tackle with my bare hands and fry it up in a skillet with butter and onions.”

She stepped away from me.

“What about the rules?”

“I say anything about killing you?” She smiled and her voice resumed a normal tone. “So you want any of that rabbit?”

I shook my head. “I don't think I'm that hungry.”

She walked back to the campfire.

At least the short confrontation managed to snap me out of the diminishing spiral of obsessive self-pity before I disappeared up my own backside. Ever since I'd thrown the prince of Dermonica into the roadside slush, I'd been half ignoring the girls. Now that I started paying attention again, I could see that any hero worship had evaporated. Even the youngest, Thea, seemed to peer from under her tightly wrapped curls with suspicion.

And I couldn't really blame them.

I considered telling them the truth, but I couldn't quite decide if that would make things worse or not.

 • • • 

We rode into Grünwald, avoiding towns and any concentrations of people. I sat above, and the girls took turns sharing a seat with me as I drove our horse over the ill-used back roads. The first day passed with Grace, then Mary, neither saying much to me. The second day, Laya sat next to me, crossbow riding across her knees.

For close to an hour, she said nothing, watching the road ahead. Unlike her elder companions the prior day, she didn't seem to be avoiding conversation. The silence didn't weigh so heavily.

“It is true, isn't it?”

“What?” I snapped upright. I had relaxed to the point that, when she finally spoke, it startled the hell out of me.

“What the man said about you?”

“Prince Oliver?”

“Yes.”

To be honest, I didn't have a clue. “I'm not going to take issue with it.”

“I see.”

What I said earlier about the silence not being oppressive with Laya ceased to be applicable at this point.

“All those people . . . How?” she asked.

“How what?”

“How do you stop feeling that?”

I glanced at her, and she wasn't even facing my direction. Her eyes were unfocused as she stared ahead at something other than the road. I didn't think I wanted to know what she saw right then.

“You don't want to know that.”

“Why not?” She sucked in a breath and I could hear her trying not to sob. “Why not?” she whispered again.

“Because it costs too much.”

“It costs too much to feel. I want to be like you. I don't want to care any—”

“Stop it!”
I snapped.

She faced me, cowering, eyes wide and shiny.

“You want to stop feeling for anyone but yourself, is that what you want? You want to be able to murder a man and sleep at night? You want to dispose of the few shreds of humanity you've been able to hold on to? Is that what you want? To become a heartless, merciless bastard like the legendary Snake?”

Her lower lip quivered, but she couldn't help but nod.

I leaned over and quietly said, “And if a man holds up a bag of gold and says, ‘give me Thea,' you want to be able to say yes?”

“What? No—”

“And when the wolves are chasing you down, you want to be able to trip the mute girl to distract them while you escape?”

“Rabbit? That's not—”

“And if I held a knife to your throat and said, ‘you or Grace,' you want to be able to say—”

“Stop it!” She was crying now and making no effort to hide it.
“Stop!”

I sat upright and faced the road again. Laya quietly sobbed next to me. After making the poor abused kid cry, I felt as close to Snake as I was likely to get. “Being a heartless bastard is not as fun as it looks.”