Dragon's Treasure (6 page)

"He taught me to measure. He taught me how to make pastes and tinctures. He taught me how to mix one element with another, and sometimes with wine, to make both more active. He taught me to label my work. He taught me to recognize and treat simple ailments."

"Could you treat a sword cut? A simple one."

"Yes."

"How?"

"I would wash it in water that had been boiled and allowed to cool, and powder it with comfrey. Were it deep, I might recommend that it be stitched."

"And could you do that?"

"Yes." In the six years she had lived with her grandfather's outlaws she had done it many times.

He lifted the cup, and studied her over its rim. "What happened to the man who taught you these things?"

The skin on her face and arms tightened. "He died."

"How?"

It had been a shameful death—a criminal's death. "My father had him strangled."

Her guest had demolished the bread. She brought the waterskin to the table and refilled his cup. As she reseated herself, her foot encountered something soft. One of Rianna's dolls lay prostrate and forlorn beneath the stool. She could not remember its name; something grand: Rinetta, Beatricia, Alisandre.... She dusted it off and set it in her lap.

Karadur Atani's wide mouth quirked. "Charming. Is this another of your skills?"

"It belongs to Rianna, Maura's daughter. She must have forgotten it the last time she visited." She held the little doll upright and made it bow. "Good day, my lord."

An expression she could not read crossed his face. He said meditatively, "When we were small, my brother and I had an Isojai warrior and a spearman with the dragon badge painted on his chest. We used to make them battle one another." He drained his cup, and rose. "I must leave you now. Thank you for your care, and for the meal."

"You are welcome."

"Forgive my shabby manners. A guest should bring a gift, but I have nothing to give you."

Was he mocking her? She could not be sure, but she did not think so. She matched his gravity. "I take no offense, my lord."

He held out a hand. She took it. His fingers closed lightly over hers. His hand was warm. The skipping rhyme that Uta had taught her scurried through her head.
Dragon sleeping, Dragon wakes, Dragon holds what Dragon takes, How many apples shall I see, growing wild on yonder tree, One, two, three, four....
For an instant, she saw in her mind that other thing he was, a being of glitter and flame.

Her hand trembled in his. He opened his fingers.

They left the cottage. The sky was a bright pale blue. The dragon-lord turned to climb the ridge. Morga, tail flying like a flag, frisked playfully ahead of him.

"Morga, no," he told her. "Stay with thy mistress." The black dog's tail drooped. She retreated, to stand at Maia's knee. He turned once, halfway up the slope, to look back. Then he reached the crest of the hill. Lightning flashed along the ridgetop.

The Golden Dragon rose from the hillside. His vast bright wings beat. A hot dry wind seared the pliant grasses. His shadow swept over her.

Then the shadow lifted, and he was gone.

* * *

In the province of Nakase, two weeks' ride from Dragon Keep, Treion Unamira watched a village burning.

Its name was Alletti. It was scarcely big enough to be called a village: it had a scant thirteen houses, along with a mill, a cobbler's shop, and a forge. The smith mended wheels, doctored sick horses, forged plowshares, and repaired the holes in kettles. It also had an inn, where travelers stayed while the smith repaired the wagons and the cobbler mended frayed tack. They drank the local liquor, which the miller brewed in a shed behind his house, and sometimes slept a night or two in the inn's lice-ridden rooms.

Treion had brought his men into town, as was his custom, at sunset. The town's constable looked at twenty armed, horsed men and at the confident face and ready sword of their leader, and offered no resistance.

But the grey-bearded innkeeper had loudly proclaimed what anyone could see was not true, that he had no money.

Treion hung him for the lie from the oak outside his own front door. When the innkeeper's wife foolishly refused to give up the strongbox, he had said, "Burn it down." The insect-ridden wood burned easily, fueled by the gouts of liquor his men had splattered. The fire had spread to the mill. The villagers had tried to save it; his men had killed three of them, including the miller, and now the rest stood glumly silent.

Treion stared into the fire. Fires were better at night. The sight and sound of flames burning into darkness brought a rush of pleasure to his blood.

He had always loved fire. As a child he had spent long hours gazing into the kitchen fires, speaking to them, certain that if he could only find the right words he could make the dancing flames obey his thought.

It had happened, once. Riding through the dry forest, as flames roared around him and a dragon soared overhead, he had spoken to the encircling fire, and it had let him and his followers pass through unharmed. He remembered the exhilaration and terror of that moment. Staring into the flames, he spoke to them again now, willing them to hear....
Awake! Arise!
But nothing happened.

He watched the red blaze fall in upon itself. Edric arrived at his elbow.

"We found the money." He brandished a leather pouch. "It was under the stairs. It's mostly silver. Stupid, to die for a sack of coins with Alf Ridenar's ugly mug on them. You want us to keep looking?"

They had been here too long already. "No."

* * *

They camped that night in one of their best hiding places: a huge cavern, easily large enough to hold them all.

A narrow, nearly invisible trail led to its entrance. Others had used it before them: they had found bits of metal and cloth and old glass fragments scattered about the place. An elaborate system of smoke holes—impossible to say whether they had been created by happenstance or design—sent smoke entirely in the opposite direction from the cave's mouth.

Treion sat in his usual place, cleaning his sword. Firelight glittered on the steel. It was a good sword, of Ippan steel, which was nearly as good as Chuyo steel. He had taken it from Evard diScala's armory the day he left Arriccio. Someday, maybe, he would have a Chuyo blade. In the depths of the cave, the men were buoyant with drink, and because they had something to entertain them: the miller's wife, who had turned out to be young and moderately pretty. Wiping the sword with oil, he sheathed it, and beckoned to Leo. "Tell Savarini I want to talk to him."

Leo slouched away. In a little while Niello strolled from the rear of the cave. "Chief. You called?"

"Sit," Treion said. Niello Savarini sat, gracefully. He did all things gracefully. He had come to them in February. Reo Unamira's intelligencer had been Nittri Parducci, known as Fat Nittri, or Nittri the Ear. Nittri had died in the burning. Nittri had been a gross man, foul-mouthed and filthy. Niello was entirely other. He was a handsome man, and a superb intelligencer. He could walk into a strange inn of an evening, and within an hour know whom the innkeeper's wife was bedding and what the weekly take was. He could be scholar or merchant or fishmonger. He had, he admitted, been expelled from Kalni Leminin's service for crimes that, the outlaws speculated, ranged from bestiality to cannibalism. His true name was not Savarini, but Ciccio. Only Treion knew that. He also knew the true nature of Niello Ciccio's crimes. He thought the man who had described them to him had been exaggerating, but could not be sure.

"Our take was poor tonight. We did much better at Embria." Embria was north of Alletti. Sensibly, the folk of that town had handed a sizable portion of the town's treasury to Treion three months ago.

"Embria's larger," Niello said. He reached for the wineskin.

Treion let him drink his fill before asking, "So—will diSorvino send troops to Alletti?"

"Of course," Niello said. "Just as he did to Embria. They're on their way; sent to find the miscreants who burned the inn and bring them to justice; thirty of his finest, under Captain Nortero's command."

Gilberto Nortero was a simpering sycophant whom Marion diSorvino had elevated to senior commander's rank. Treion snorted.

"Nortero's an idiot. He couldn't find stink in a midden." He took the wineskin back. It was empty. "Leo!" Treion threw him the empty skin. "Fill that. How's the rain?"

"Coming down harder."

"Send Oliver to check on the horses."

"Aye," said Leo. He walked to the rear of the cave and bellowed, "Oliver! Chief says go check on the horses!"

Oliver trudged glumly past the fire.

Niello said, "How did we do at Alletti?"

"Forty ridari."

"Not enough," Niello said.

It wasn't enough. The gold he'd stolen from his grandfather was almost gone, spent on food and beer and weapons and horses and winter quarters and bribes and information. It was possible that there was still gold hidden on Coll's Ridge. But he would not go back. Word had come from Ippa across the Nakase border: nothing on Coll's Ridge had survived the burning.

He did not mourn his grandfather; he had planned to kill the old man himself, sooner or later. But the news of his sister's death had come like a knife thrust into his heart. She should not have been there, in Ippa, living among drunks and bandits: she should have been in Sorvino, loved, honored, sheltered by her family's name and money. That, too, was part of the score he had to settle with diSorvino.

He allowed himself to imagine Marion diSorvino pinned beneath a beam in the burning wreckage of his manor, as the inexorable flames crawled closer.... That vision, or a version of it, had sustained him through his childhood. But his company, though murderous, was too small to assault Sorvino, and so he had to be content with harrying farmers and innkeepers.

Frustration roared through him like a hot wind. Terrorizing farmers, skulking in a cave waiting for Gilberto Nortero's trackers to find him—this,
this
was not what he wanted. How had he come to this place? When he escaped Sorvino, his principal ambition had been to make a name for himself, to be known as a warrior, to ride in some great lord's war band.... But the glory he'd sought had not come. He had traveled about Nakase for three years, taking employment here and there, first as a caravan guard, then as a bodyguard in Secca. He'd spent two years in Arriccio, in Evard diScala's guard troop. It was not a happy time. DiScala's men were lazy, and his officers corrupt, little better than the thugs they were paid to apprehend. When he left, with little to show for his training except a taste for merignac and a strong mistrust of the nobility, the stolen sword had seemed a scarcely adequate payment.

In the rear of the cave, voices began to sing.
"
Southern girls have yellow hair; Take her, Donny, take her....
" If they made too much noise, even Gilberto Nortero's trackers would be forced to hear them. He signaled Leo.

"Tell them to be quiet."

Leo cupped his hands to shout.

"Hoy," he yelled, "chief says to keep it down."

Suddenly a man roared in fury. A woman, half-naked, plunged from the rear of the cave. Head down, long hair flying, she raced blindly through the fire, and flung herself toward the entrance. She ran headfirst into Oliver. He wrapped his arms around her. She kicked furiously. Gund loped after her. He was a big man, notoriously brutal even among the outlaws. He wore a bloodied shirt, and no pants.

"Damn that woman. I'm going to kill her."

Niello said, "Why?"

"She cut me!" he said. "She took my knife, my own knife, and cut me! Look at it." He lifted his shirt. Blood welled from the shallow cut and trickled down his belly. He bent snarling over the woman. She snarled back at him. He hit her. The blow snapped her head back.

"Cunt. Bitch. I'm going to snap your neck." He wrapped both hands in the woman's long brown hair.

Maia's hair was—had been—long and brown. She was a girl, really, younger than his sister. Her small breasts were purple with marks from the men's fingers. There was blood and dirt on her thighs.

Treion said, "Stop." Gund did not seem to hear. Rising, Treion drew his sword. "Stop," he repeated.

The big man opened his hands. He took a step back. "Chief," he protested, "she cut me."

"Too bad," Treion said. He looked at the crouching woman. Her eyes glittered. He remembered a cat that his men had shut into a barrel with a fighting cock. Its eyes had glittered so. She wanted to live.

"Oliver. Give her your cloak." Oliver hesitated. "Do it!"

Sullenly, Oliver took off his rain-soaked cloak. The girl snatched it from his hands and wrapped it around her shoulders.

"Go," Treion told her. Oliver stood in the entrance. "Get out of her way."

"She'll bring the soldiers."

"No, she won't. They'll use her just as you have, or worse. She won't go near them. You won't, will you?" he said to the girl. She shook her head. Then she slipped past Oliver, and was gone.

Gund was red with fury.

"You should have let me kill her," he said to Treion.