Fool's Gold (27 page)

The sound of arrows smacking into wood. The scent of burning flesh on the wind. The screams of women and children. Quirk closed her eyes and tried not to think of her childhood.

She had been seven when they came for her. Men on horses. Thick-limbed and savage. Their blond hair tied back in plaited ropes.

Those had been years of war, she had learned later. Hers was not an uncommon story. Many villages had been slaughtered. Many war bands vied for control of Tamathia's outer reaches as civil war ripped through the capital.

None of that knowledge made any of what happened to her any better.

They had killed her parents. Killed her friends. They had been about to kill her. She hadn't known telling them about her magic would save her. It was her habit not to tell people. Only her brother Andatte had known of it. Andatte—sweet, kind, beautiful Andatte. Two years older than she, so determined to protect her, to keep her safe from all the world. And it was he who had saved her from the horsemen's blades. It was he who had told them about the magic.

She still thought it would've been better if he had just let them kill her then.

She and Andatte had been cowering back against the wall of the hut in which their mother and father had been killed. She could still remember the feel of the hot blood on her cheek. The coppery taste of it on her lips. She could still remember the way the stench of the horse's sweat had cut through the smell of the slaughter. The man leering down at them. Andatte throwing himself down upon his knees.

“She's been touched!” he had screamed. “The gods have touched her!”

The blade has hesitated in the air above him for a moment. The man's leer had switched from Andatte to her.

There had not been belief in his eyes.

“Show him.” Andatte had turned to her, begging. “Show him or he'll kill us.”

She had been scared of the magic even then. She had not understood it. What did it mean to be touched by a god? Why her? She had not wanted to show the man. She had never shown anyone. Had kept it hidden away. Her secret, her shame. Andatte only knew because he had spied. But she had not blamed him, because he spied only because he cared. And he cared now.

And so she had shown the horseman.

His shrieks had quickly drawn the others. They had found him, a living pyre atop a screaming horse. Quirk's palms had still smoked. The horsemen had drawn their swords, but approached more slowly, more hesitantly. When Andatte had pled her case to them, they had believed him then.

They were dragged to meet Hethren, the monster in charge of this slaughter. He was eight feet tall, covered in muscles and scars. A corona of divine power blazed around his head. A demigod. Some half-divine brat come to tantrum through her world. And there covered in gore, and mud, and the ash of the first man she killed, they were introduced. Scared as she was, she had lashed out with her fire. He had laughed as it washed over his skin, leaving blisters that burst and disappeared. He had clapped his hands at her, and put a knife to Andatte's neck, and made her kill another of his men. That was the beginning of the pattern.

Hethren had taken them both from that place, and he had broken them. When she killed his men, when she tried to break free, he rewarded her, and he punished Andatte. He had broken their will, broken their moral code, broken their humanity—torn it free from their guts.

She had trouble now remembering Andatte, as he had been. When he was kind and beautiful. Always the rabid horror of what he had become tore up through her memories. How Hethren had loved him. And he had loved to put the blade to Andatte's neck, so he could tell her to burn the world. But long before some farmer had driven a pitchfork through Andatte's stomach and torn the life and guts from him, she had not needed that encouragement.

She made Hethren strong. She had stopped trying to burn him, burn his people. She had made his whole tribe strong. She made them grow. She made the people cower in fear. She made them burn instead.

And then eventually, because of her, Hethren had burned too bright. It had been ten years. The civil war was long since over. Order was being returned to Tamathia. And Hethren had grown too large to be ignored.

He was hard to kill. A demigod of the grassy waste. A creature who healed faster than anyone could hurt him. But Tamathia did not send just one. They sent a troop of five hundred, and he could not pick the arrows out of himself fast enough. They had found him, a twitching mass surrounded by dying men, and they had hacked off his half-divine head. There was no healing that.

All told, the whole thing was a slaughter. She was supposed to have been killed along with the rest. But a mage, even a rabid, mindless mage such as her, had been too precious to waste. Instead they had bound her hands in smother rags, kept her in a barrel of water, and flung her in the back of a cart to drag back to the capital.

Six years it had been before they had taken the smother rags off her. Before they were sure she wouldn't try to burn them all alive. She remembered learning to use her hands again. The weakness in her fingers. Trying to grip her food. They still wouldn't give her a knife. It was another two years before they gave her that.

Eight years. Eight years to find her way back to herself. Eight years of quiet cajoling, of unwarranted kindness, of endless patience. Eight years of putting up with her violence, her tantrums, her rage, her unquenchable fear. It had taken eight years, but she had found herself. She had made her way back. And at the age of twenty-five she had been admitted to the Tamathian University.

Quirk blinked and was back in the present.
It would be so easy,
she thought,
to watch everything burn. To reach out and touch fire, the way the gods had reached out and touched her. These people were weak, and she was strong. In all rights she should burn them. That was what the world demanded, in the end. The sacrifice of the weak to the strong. That was what these dragons understood, creatures of fire that they were. They oppressed, because that was what the world demanded of them. And it demanded no less of her.

That was what Hethren would say.

She thought she had silenced him, drowned him in the years and the academia. But she heard him now, his voice low and throaty, hovering somewhere between seduction and threat.

And he was right. It would be so easy. She could feel the flame tickling the backs of her palms, begging to be let loose. The flame spoke with Hethren's voice.

Which is why she took such pleasure in denying it. She would be better than that voice. Better than she had been. She was a professor at the Tamathian University. She was an ambassador of knowledge, and culture. And she would not retaliate. She would not escalate this madness. Instead she would indulge in her gods-given right to freak the fuck out.

“Shiiiiit!” she shrieked as she hurtled between the covering wall and a barracks ten yards away. Arrows thrummed through the air around her. She could hear them clicking off Balur's scales.

He crashed against the wooden wall beside her. Planks cracked and splintered. She spared him a glance. Not all the arrows had skittered off. Arrows peppered his shoulders and one protruded from his chest.

Her glance registered with him. He shrugged. The shafts of the arrows rippled. “Not deep,” was all he said.

All of this. All of this so she could see a dragon.

And yet even as she tried to question her motives, a thrill of excitement ran through her. He would be out there now, the dragon, the beast. The fumes of her Snag Weed potion would have conquered his flames, laid him out. He would be lying there, waiting for her. Like a virgin on his wedding night.

This was her fire now. This was what she would bring to the world. Intellects would ignite, not bodies.

And what if the world burns so you can get that knowledge?
Hethren whispered in her ear.
Better to cauterize the wound now. Staunch the flow.

That had been one of his favorite games. He would slice Andatte's neck—not deeply, but just deep enough—and have her cauterize the wound.

“That's all you are doing,” he would tell her just before he sent her stumbling into the heart of a village. “Just cauterizing a wound; stemming the flood of chaos. We are control, you and I. We are saviors.”

But she never just cauterized. It was always a lie.

“Go!” Balur bellowed beside her. “Move!”

His arm sent her flying forward, catapulted down a muddy track between low buildings. She tried to hunker down, but there was not enough cover in all the world. She could hear Balur grunting as the arrows struck him.

“We are still not sneaking!” she screamed.

Then he was shoving her sideways, back into cover.

“We are getting to that,” he said, panting and bleeding.

She reached out, tentatively. “You can't keep on like this.” She wanted to do something. To bind those wounds.

Like she had bound the wounds of the people she had then marched to this death trap.

Something was wrong with her. Very, very wrong. Something was still wrong.

“Am being okay,” Balur grunted.

She tried to grin. “Just a flesh wound?”

He shook his head. “Being muscle mostly. Being painful, but not be doing much actual damage in the long term.”

She opened her mouth, processed that. Just painful. He had to have at least twenty arrows protruding from him. “Oh,” she said at last.

“Pain is being the thing that gets in the way of what we are needing to do. Pain is being up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “What we are needing to do is being out here.” He swept his arm at the shit storm of a garrison. “This is not being a time for being in one's own head. Now is a time for being out in the world. The time for being in one's own head will be coming later.”

It was the most she thought she had heard him ever speak at once. Considering what was going on, it seemed an odd moment for him to choose.

He shrugged. “That is being all warrior code and bullshit. Analesians who cannot be killing enough people are talking too much. I am thinking it will be helping you now. Personally, though, I am not being bothered with the being in my head bit at all, and I am doing fine.”

Quirk blinked twice. There was actually good advice in there. Perhaps now—with shouts pursuing them and arrows falling about their heads—was not the best time to plumb the shadows of her soul. Perhaps now was a better time to haul arse and try to stay alive long enough to contemplate her navel later.

“All right,” she said nodding. Then, “Does this mean we can sneak now?”

“Yes,” said Balur gruffly. “We are beginning to be sneaky now.”

Firkin sat back and took a moment to enjoy a job well done. The bleeding town guard he happened to be sitting back on groaned slightly. Firkin cracked a looted wine bottle on the back of the man's skull and he lay still. Firkin held the leaking bottle over his face, and let the wine trickle over his mouth and chin. It tasted good.

He was satisfied. “Go and preach my name in Athril,” Will had told him, and preached he had.

“The prophet!” people screamed. In every street. In every town square. “In the name of the prophet!” The cry was borne forth from every corner of the town, carried on the billows of smoke from a hundred fires.

And the people shouting it even seemed to be winning. He hadn't really put much faith in the town rabble at the beginning of the fight. Not nearly as much as they had put in him. But over the course of the past few hours they had slowly made a believer out of him.

He knew the people were angry. He had heard every iteration of their story. Stolen livelihoods. Stolen lives. He had heard every nuance of their rage. But he had not seen how that could overcome actual training and sharp steel.

In the end, though, it was simple. The Dragon Consortium had ensured the subjugation of these people by making sure they had nothing to live for. But now, with the idea of the prophet burning bright in their minds, they had something to die for.

They hurled themselves at the guards. They blunted blades with their bodies. They swarmed and overwhelmed. They attacked with a ferocity that not even Dathrax with all his wealth could afford to buy.

Firkin had watched a tavern cook throttle a guard with her own braid, even as he hacked at her arms with a short sword. He had seen six men kick a heavily armored guard to death, and only one had been able to walk away. He had watched men set themselves on fire and charge into guard towers never to emerge.

For the prophet.

Not for Will. No. No one screamed Will's name. It was for the prophet.

He felt the shift in the city, the change in the power balance. The guards felt it too.

“Retreat!” shouted their commanders. “Fall back! To the garrison!”

And suddenly the town's citizens were standing in empty streets. Were pushing forward with no resistance.

For a moment, he felt them stumble, and he felt them hesitate.

He stood up, started running, started shrieking.

“Forward!” he screamed. “The prophet commands it! He commands you to take this town! He compels you to strike down your enemy!”

And they did it. Not for Will. But because it was the word of the prophet. Because the voice of the prophet told them so.

And, running through the streets, potbelly swaying with the weight of the wine in it, Firkin smiled.

Everything was chaos. Everything was confusion. Guards were running every which way that they could, shouting, desperately calling out for information. Smoke was everywhere. Those who had ventured into the town seemed to be retreating, but no one inside the garrison knew from what.

This sort of thing totally gave Balur a hard-on.

He stroked at the frills of his neck self-consciously, and hoped Quirk was too focused on avoiding imminent death to notice.

They crouched in the shadow of the armored tax boat. A guard ran past, did a double take, opened his mouth, and died as Balur jammed the claw of his thumb through the man's Adam's apple.

“Almost there,” he whispered.

Quirk nodded. She seemed to have pulled herself together a bit since he had given her his little pep talk. Motivational speaker—Lette had never suggested that career path for him. That was showing a lack of foresight on her part. Still, if she had, he might not have been ending up here, about to line his pockets with the gold of two dragons.

He wondered what she was doing now. Hauling sacks of gold down to the island's coast, he hoped. Not getting too preoccupied with the bulge in Will's britches.

Though perhaps a good tumble in the grass next to an unconscious dragon would get her head straight again. Off all this “better life” crap, and back on track with the good thing they had going. Get back to being each other's tribe.

He took that anger and put it into launching himself onto the armored boat with a roar. He caught the rail, heaved himself up one-handed, feet clearing the boat's sides with ease. They smashed down on the wooden deck with the crack of splinters.

A ballista was mounted upon the deck's boards next to the spot where Balur had landed. A lone guard stood there, pointing it off over the surrounding garrison. He started, squeaked, then began to haul the massive siege crossbow around to face Balur.

“Do you really think that's going to work?” Quirk asked the guard, as she bodily heaved herself up behind Balur. “I mean really?” She pivoted herself over the edge of the boat, half-tumbled to the floor. She looked at the guard from where she sat. “He's got to walk about two paces before he drives you down to the harbor floor with his hammer. Just jump overboard and try to survive till the morning.”

Balur turned round and furrowed his brow at her. She was spoiling his fun.

Fortunately the guard—a skinny redheaded fellow, whose face was spattered with freckles like bloodstains—seemed to take this as an invitation to haul once more on the ballista.

Balur took three steps—not two—and backhanded the guard into oblivion. His limp rag of a body sailed over the ship's rail and landed with a wet crack.

Quirk grunted. “Well, at least I tried to save one.”

Balur nodded. “I am thinking we can call your conscience spotless.”

Quirk stared at him for a moment. “I can never tell if you're being sarcastic,” she said.

Balur didn't bother to let her know; instead he turned and set off to find the mooring ropes.

He was happily experiencing great success in this task when Quirk took it upon herself to interrupt him with a shout of “Knole's tits!”

Considering that the goddess of knowledge was generally considered an asexual creature and that nobody was currently trying to kill them, this exclamation gave Balur pause. First he double-checked his assumptions. No—Knole had not descended from the heavens to earth and proceeded to get busy with anyone. Neither had any of the guards appeared to have noticed their presence yet. Instead the garrison's defenders were still largely preoccupied by the mass of deranged rioters trying to claw their hearts from their bodies.

These eventualities accounted for, Balur went to investigate. It did not take long and concluded with him barely managing to breathe out the words, “Knole's sweet apple arse.”

Next to the pilot's cabin was a set of stairs down into the hold. And at the base of those steps was Gold. Not just gold, but
Gold
. Sacks upon sacks of it. Sacks stuffed so full that they ripped and coins burst eagerly forth. Coins so deep a man could wade through them. Coins that filled the full length of the boat's not inconsiderable hold.

“The hoard?” he breathed. “Here?”

Quirk shook her head. “No. It can't be. If the hoard was here, then Dathrax would be here. Dragons sleep with their hoard.”

That exhausted the depth of Balur's guesses. “So…?” He tried to turn to her, but had trouble taking his eyes off the gold.

“It's the taxes,” Quirk said. “This is just one year's taxes. Dathrax lets it collect here all year before the guards take it to his island.”

Balur felt his eyes growing wider. Wider. “This is being just one year's worth?”

Quirk nodded.

“And the Dragon Consortium are being in power for how long?”

“Thirty years at least.”

Balur let his tongue taste the air. Let the flavor of all that gold wash through him. He felt his neck frills extend almost painfully. He did not care.

“Oh,” said Quirk, looking at his neck. “I didn't know you could do that. They're pretty.” Which, all in all, did not help. Balur buried his face in the one sack, inhaled deeply.

Something caught at the back of his throat. Something familiar. He cocked his head to one side, sniffed the sack again, scenting deeply.

“Quirk?” he said finally.

“Yes?” She had wandered deeper into the hold.

“Why is this sack of gold smelling of Lette?”

Quirk's finger had been tracing the latticework of a large chest half-buried in the center of the room. “Because…” she started, then trailed off. “Are you sure?”

“Lette is being my tribe,” he said with impatience. “I am thinking that I would be recognizing her scent.”

“Are…” Quirk started, then stopped. “Couldn't…” She looked around them, as if expecting to see Lette leap out from one of the chests and shout, “Surprise!” She scratched at her short brown hair. “Might one of us have brought the smell in? We hang around with her.”

Balur shook his head. He could smell the way Lette's scent mixed with his own, with Quirk's. This was not that. This was distinctly and definitively Lette.

He looked around, trying to figure it out. But she was not here.

“Oh fuck.” Quirk said.

“What?”

“It's our gold,” Quirk said. “It smells of Lette because it's
our
gold.” She sat down heavily on the large chest whose scrollwork she had been tracing. “Because Dathrax didn't bring it to his island. He was too lazy a bastard, and he brought it here to his garrison so they could bring it over for him. That's why the boat's so full. Because it's full of Mattrax's gold. Not just his year's taxes. Oh shit. Oh god fuck.”

Balur looked around, all his happiness hemorrhaging away, and bleeding out around his feet.

“Then…” he said, trying to put it all together. “What about Lette and Will? How were they getting to the island to knock out Dathrax?”

“Ohhh…” Quirk dragged out the word, adding horror in increasing waves to the sound. “Ohhhhhhh…”

She stood up, stared in horror at the chest she was sitting on.

“What?” Balur asked. The tension was killing him.

“The chest,” she said. “Inside the chest.”

Still it eluded him. “What?” he asked. “What's in the chest?”