Dragonlinks (8 page)

‘So D'loom is dying,' Daretor prompted vaguely.

A plump serving maid swirled past and crashed two full tankards onto the table. She plucked the coppers from Thull's open palm without so much as a glance at the man.

‘We arrived by the Icebreath Road, so people know that we rode across Dragonfrost without escort or a caravan.'

‘So?'

‘So that's bound to raise suspicion,' Thull warned. ‘Nobody takes a hard road, save those with something to hide. Thus it's necessary for us to drink and seem convivial. We can say we did it as a dare, and that we triumphed. Now we must celebrate our triumph, and appear besotted by night's end. Hang lax, Daretor, I want to see you weaving and carousing like a sailor on leave.'

Daretor grunted sullenly. His original question had not been answered, but somehow it did not seem to matter. ‘You know D'loom like the back of your hand,' he said for the lack of anything else to say.

‘I have friends here. I've walked these streets before.'

‘You said your friends include a blacksmith,' Daretor said slowly, articulating each word with care and aware that the drink was slowing him. ‘When will you contact him?'

Thull pursed his thin lips. ‘He knows of our presence,
and that is enough for now.' He grinned at his youthful companion, then cackled with laughter.

Daretor took the hint and joined in, all the while thinking how out-of-character any revelry seemed for the mage. Superb acting was apparently another of his talents.

As the evening aged, the pair became noticeably drunker. Finally Jabez Thull pulled a passing serving girl down onto his lap and ran a hand up her leg, not heeding whether her screams were delight or outrage.

The landlord, a beer-gutted, bearded man of immense size, drove through the crowd like a siege engine through a city's gates. He stopped to tower above Thull and Daretor.

‘I take it the two of ye'll be retiring now?' he said evenly, arms crossed, gnarled face glaring. He left no room for argument.

Thull let go of the girl, who slapped his face and flounced off. He tried to stand, but fell helplessly, his hands catching at the table to break his fall. Daretor reached out and seized him by the arm as he swung about to face the landlord.

‘Aye,' he slurred. ‘It's to sleep it off we be.'

It wasn't until they reached the stairs that the muted clamour of voices and singing returned to the taproom. Once upstairs Thull took a quick glance along the corridor before slamming the door of their room shut. He shook his head at Daretor's bloodshot eyes.

‘You were supposed to pretend drunkenness, lad, not play it for a fact!'

‘Mead affects my head worse than … beer, I think,' Daretor slurred, wishing the thumping between his temples would cease.

The room spun in lazy circles and he cautiously made his way to his bed. Thull pulled the hessian curtains across the single pane of waxpaper in the window. That was the last thing Daretor remembered as he plunged into sleep with a prayer for the room to stop spinning.

S
ix months after her fam ily had been murdered, Jelindel was well established as a scribe boy in the D'loom marketplace. She was Bebia's stall partner and Zimak's friend, had been admitted to the Guild of Scribes, and she had even organised a loose association of older scribes who could cover each other's failings and thus keep working. The fact that her boy persona was shy around girls and did not drink alcohol confirmed the rumours that she was a runaway novice from some Nerrissian monastery. She had allowed her heavy accent to fade somewhat, as if she was slowly becoming more familiar with Skeltian.

Jelindel also wore a parry-hilt knife at her waist, and her work with Zimak had taught her how to use it.

When a Nerrissian border passage scroll was left at the stall as part of a petition, Jelindel copied out the entire thing in the name of ‘Jaelin Halvet' and even drew
the red ink stamp with a fine mousedown brush.

In return for lessons in both knife and unarmed fighting from Zimak, she took every opportunity to teach him how to write and spell.

‘Spell “Hamaria”,' she said, gazing at a Hamarian grain ship in dry dock as they lounged on a stone breakwater beside the docks.

‘H-A-M-A-R-I-A,' he said, but his mind was elsewhere. ‘This morning a man had me deliver a message to a blacksmith, and another to a Skeltian merchant.'

‘Skeltian?'

He screwed up his face as he thought. ‘S-K-E-L-T-IA-N. The funny thing was the way that he wrote his words. It was in old script, you know, like those ancient Asniclian writings you once did for me.'

‘Asniclian?'

‘A-S-N-I-K-L-I-A-N.'

‘Wrong,' said Jelindel casually. She would never admit it to someone as pretentious as Zimak, but he was coming along famously. ‘
C
, not
K
.'

She blinked rapidly when Zimak seized her arm and shook it. ‘This is important!' he insisted.

‘So is your education!' Jelindel hissed, pulling her arm from him with a simple twist that he had shown her.

‘The man I took it to was a merchant-mage named Fa'red.'

Jelindel shrugged. ‘This is all very boring, Zimak,' she said, stifling a yawn.

‘He not only read the message, but he wrote a reply as well,' Zimak went on, unperturbed at Jelindel's sarcasm. ‘I read them both.'

Now he did have Jelindel's attention. ‘That is in
violation of the privacy oath that all scribes and messengers take,' she said.

‘Not quite, Jaelin. Only the scribes swear oaths about reading and copying without permission. Messengers aren't expected to be able to read, so we're only bound to “faithfully carry”.'

‘Try saying that to a magistrate and you would be bundled into the stocks faster than you can spell Z-I-M-A-K.'

‘The message said, “I have one of the six missing
lenxi
”, and the reply was “I have the whole Zerratin mailshirt. Sell me your
lenx
and go while I have the mood to spare you”.'

‘Zerratin?'

‘Z-E-R-R-A-T-I-N, I think,' Zimak pondered.

‘No, I mean zerratin is an archaic word for “enchanted” in the Dinjolese language. Was there a capital Z to begin the word?'

Zimak frowned. Jelindel certainly expected a lot of him. ‘I … can't recall. It was dark, and I was hurrying.'

‘Perfection is –'

‘– measured in tiny details,' Zimak said. He'd heard the quote from Jelindel's lips quite often.

‘If you must spy, do it properly,' Jelindel said huffily.

‘Speaking of doing things by halves,' Zimak said, ‘who bungled that meeting with Velia from the sugar date stall? After all my tutoring on what to say and do with her, too. Don't lecture
me
on doing things properly.'

Jelindel felt a blush warming her cheeks. ‘I know what can be done between boys and girls, Zimak, but just because I've deserted my monastery, it doesn't mean that I've abandoned my vows of chastity. Besides, her teeth are rotting away from too many sugar figs.'

‘Trust you to be worried about such a thing,' Zimak said and rolled his eyes.

‘Getting back to your messages,
lenx
is another old word. It means both link of chainmail and ring. A link that can be worn as a ring, in fact. In some countries warriors and their ladies exchange favours before a tournament or battle. The warrior gets a scarf to wear about his head, the lady gets a link of his chainmail to wear as a ring. Chainmail links are usually too small to wear, so armourers add a single link that is bigger than all the others. The
lenx
: the link that is also a ring.'

‘I'm having a hard enough time learning Nerrissian grammar, Jaelin. Must you confuse me with words that aren't even used anymore?'

Jelindel ignored the complaint. ‘I have occasionally seen
lenx
used in connection with mage, too. What did you notice about the man who employed you?'

‘He's staying at the Boar and Bottle. The vintner's maid said that he came across Dragonfrost with a young warrior called Daretor. She overheard Daretor calling him Thull or something.'

‘That's odd,' Jelindel mused. ‘Thull was a mage who died about a century ago. He led a civil war against the Movelii Emperor and would have won, had neighbouring monarchs and their Adepts not stepped in and shattered his armies. Perhaps they are related. I saw a sketch of him in a book once. He was truly evil looking, with fish eyes and a gaunt face. His hair was long and straggly, like that of a lost soul, but the artist had draped him in finely tailored robes.'

‘That could well be this man, except that he looks after his hair more carefully. I could take you to see him,' suggested Zimak.

‘Anything to get out of your spelling lessons,' Jelindel chided.

‘Well, do you want to see him or not?'

She looked out across the harbour, which was devoid of anything of real interest to look at.

‘Why not? I'll keep asking words as we walk.'

The Boar and Bottle was busy with the early afternoon trade when Zimak led Jelindel into the taproom and ordered ale and limewater.

The cooking fire was blazing with the hacked-up tarry timbers of some dead ship. A boiling cauldron of stew spilled aromatic scents into the room. Jelindel could see an embedded arrowhead glowing red hot against the blackened wood. The ship had probably died a violent death at the hands of the increasingly bold brigands that hid among the coastal islands. Wreckage such as this drove fear into seafaring merchants when it appeared amid the flotsam on the incoming tides. The King's fleet was now almost exhausted under the weight of continual small wars with neighbouring states and gave little protection.

Jelindel had a quick look about the tavern. Most of the patrons were out-of-work wharfjacks and the mood of the place was gloomy.

A recruiting officer of the Preceptor's civil militia was sitting at a rough-hewn table near a window, talking to a group of men. Jelindel noticed how affluent the man seemed to be, for he was buying trays of tankards. Occasionally he would smile and scribble someone's name or mark into a ledger.

‘I'll be like him one day,' Zimak said, misconstruing Jelindel's interest in the officer. ‘Look at that uniform. Tailored nut-brown tunic, black leather straps and brass
buckles. Another two years, maybe only one, and I'll look old enough to enlist.'

‘Indeed?' Jelindel said, eyebrows arched. She had nothing good, or even neutral, to say about the Preceptor, so she took a sip of limewater.

‘I'll be able to read and write like a merchant's son by then. I could even go straight in as an officer's squire, and in five years' time I'd have a uniform like that and wear the crest of my tragically murdered parents in gold thread on my collar.'

‘Oh, talk sense!' snapped Jelindel. ‘Your father fell off a bridge and drowned in the Blackwater River while coming home drunk after work. Your mother's one of the loudest, most foul-tempered fishwives in the market.'

Zimak frowned, but did not reply.

‘What is your family crest to be? A herring rampant on a beer barrel?'

‘I can be whatever I want people to believe,' Zimak replied. ‘Here on my finger is the last connection with my family, a fine ring of old rolled gold.'

He held out his hand for her to admire the cheap ring. It was made of lead and had a crude design carved into the surface.

‘Most of the gold seems to have rolled off. Look, I can scratch it with my fingernail – this is only lead –'

‘Get away!' he snapped, slapping at her hand. ‘Look at the mark you left in it.'

Zimak took out his knife and reached towards the fire. After a few prods the arrowhead came free of the charred wood, and he flicked it onto the stone hearth and picked it up on the blade of his knife.

‘I shall say that this arrowhead was shot into my
father's grainship by the brigands who sank it, and was embedded in the plank that I, the sole survivor, clung to as I drifted ashore. Although I was a mere boy, I wrenched it free as I knelt on the beach, then I held it aloft and swore to Mighty White Quell that I would one day be avenged on the men who had murdered my family.'

If only you knew, Jelindel thought to herself, but to Zimak she said, ‘Very touching,' feigning sympathy. ‘It's of Skelt design, which probably means that the brigands who fired it were supplied – and possibly financed – by the Preceptor. That may not be the sort of story to tell if you want to get ahead in the Preceptor's civil militia.'

Zimak flipped the arrowhead into a puddle of beer on the table, where it hissed angrily, then bubbled for a few moments.

‘Bah, everyone knows that arrowheads are re-used by whoever chances upon them.' He held up the arrowhead at arm's length, then took a length of thonging from his pocket and tied it to the base. ‘What about a Skelt arrowhead upon crossed thunderbolts for a crest?' he said as he slipped the cord about his neck.