The Dragon of Despair (58 page)

“I,” the ambassador said, “am not. Anything from Hawk Haven is big news now, because, you see, of Consolor Melina.”

“They like their new queen so much then?” Elise asked.

“Some may,” the ambassador said rather evasively.

“But most don’t!” Edlin blurted out. “I say! Elise may have been busy healing the sick and all, don’t you know, but I’ve been out on the streets—went to the apothecary a few times, once to the market with our guide. I don’t speak the lingo well, but I can read an expression with the best of them. Some of the folks don’t like us, not half.”

Elise stared at him.

“Edlin, why haven’t you said anything before?”

The young lord shrugged, almost embarrassed.

“No one much to talk with, what? You’ve been busy, so’s Doc. Firekeeper’s off wherever Firekeeper goes. Citrine’s hardly a confidant. Derian and Wendee, they’ve had things of their own to do.”

Elise felt suddenly sorry for Edlin. They had rather left him out of things since their arrival in Dragon’s Breath. After all, the young lord’s main reason for being along had been a combination of security on the road and offering the excuse that House Kestrel was interested in starting up trade with New Kelvin. Edlin’s good-naturedly playing at doorman or performing whatever odd jobs were needed had disguised what was evidently growing discontent and restlessness.

“Lord Kestrel is correct in his impressions,” the ambassador said, giving Edlin a more respectful look than she had accorded him thus far. “Many of my contacts within the current government do not like Consolor Melina. They resent her as a usurper of a place that should have gone to one of their own. Recent shifts in policy from the Dragon Speaker have not made things any better.”

“Shifts?” Elise asked.

“The Dragon Speaker has become markedly more aggressive in pursuing magical lore,” Violet Redbriar said, “despite the ‘disappointments’ of last winter. This has put a real crimp on one group—call them the Progressives, though their enemies call them the Defeatists—who have been trying for years to get New Kelvin to base its economy on something more tangible than magic and antiquities.”

“Surely that’s not enough reason for Edlin to be scowled at in the streets,” Elise protested. “After all, New Kelvin has always been devoted to old things almost to the exclusion of good sense.”

“Good sense was beginning to get the upper hand,” the ambassador said, “or at least what you and I would term good sense. Indeed, it is not telling tales out of turn to say that Hawk Haven rather hoped for a Progressive coup next election. This is unlikely now.”

Violet Redbriar gave Elise a meaningful look and Elise answered with a slight smile.

“I believe we’ve spoken with one of these Progressives. Least Prime Nstasius of the Sericulturalists visited us upon our arrival.”

“He has spoken with me as well,” Ambassador Redbriar said.

“Is Prime Nstasius your only source for these indications of unhappiness among the New Kelvinese?”

“No.” Violet toyed with the fringe on her sleeve as if considering how much to say. “I have heard from other than him about Melina’s politicking. It is widely agreed that she is in favor of granting trade concessions to Waterland in exchange for things—rumor is not consistent on what these are—that will benefit her. This has not made either the merchants or the lesser members of the sodalities very happy.”

Edlin nodded enthusiastically.

“I can see why not,” he said. “They set up their trade, then some overruler messes with the balance, what? I think anything like that would make Grandmother furious, don’t you know, and she likes King Tedric. Calls him Teddy when she forgets.”

There was a slightly stunned pause at this last inconsequential bit of information, then Ambassador Redbriar cleared her throat and went on.

“Perhaps the least popular of the Dragon Speaker’s recent decisions has been the appointment of a Dragon’s Fire to replace Grateful Peace, the former Dragon’s Eye.”

Elise chewed on her lower lip, realized this was undignified, and sipped from her cup of rather tepid and overly sweet tea.

“Dragon’s Fire,” she said after sorting through her memory for the various New Kelvinese titles, “that’s a war leader, right?”

“Absolutely,” Ambassador Redbriar replied approvingly. “The problem with a war leader is that there must be something to lead—an army to be precise. You young people may not realize this, but New Kelvin has not had a standing army for many years. Local militia companies deal with bandits.”

“I say!” Edlin commented. “They don’t deal with them too well, either. From what we’ve seen, I mean. Been attacked both this trip and last. Last time was understandable, but this time we were staying at an inn along a major public road, don’t you know. No excuse for such sloppiness.”

Violet Redbriar looked rather more thoughtful than Elise thought Edlin’s latest diversion merited, but she replied without directly addressing his point.

“This may be, but with the exception of the local militia, New Kelvin has no army. It has not had a standing army since the time of the First Healed One—that is, in the time of the Plague. There isn’t even a provision in the rather complex New Kelvinese legal code for an army to be raised.”

“Impossible!” Elise said, thinking of her own family’s contract with the throne of Hawk Haven to raise a certain number of soldiers in time of war.

“Not at all,” the ambassador said. “In the past, when New Kelvin has been forced to fight, an army has been raised by the simple expedient of requesting volunteers. If this does not garner sufficient warm bodies, then a nonvolunteer army is formed.”

“Nonvolunteer?” Elise queried, not believing her own ears. “Isn’t that dangerous? For the commanders I mean.”

“Sometimes,” Violet Redbriar agreed, “but there are penalties for resisting service—and not all of them are applied just to the rebel. Families, sometimes extended groups, pay the price.”

They all thought about this for a long moment. Elise made a mental note to ask Hasamemorri for more details.

“I say,” Edlin said, irrepressible as always. “I can see why the locals are unhappy, but why take it out on us?”

“Because they think that Consolor Melina is responsible for the creation of the Dragon’s Fire,” Elise offered slowly. “Is that the case, Ambassador?”

Violet Redbriar nodded. “And they may not be incorrect. My sources say that Consolor Melina has considerable influence over Apheros—that is the current Dragon Speaker—as well as over her husband, the Healed One.”

“Do you think Consolor Melina is really so influential?” Elise asked. “And, if I may be forward, have you reported your thoughts to our king?”

Ambassador Redbriar frowned. Clearly she
did
think Elise was being rather forward, but she was too polite to say so.

“I have told the king something of this,” she said, “but Consolor Melina is no longer his charge. He himself has declared her exiled.”

“Easy enough to do,” Elise said with a cynicism that she was surprised to find in herself, “when the woman is unlikely to return of her own accord and it is even more unlikely that she would be extradited—given her intimacy with the local government.”

“With the Healed One,” Violet Redbriar said. “Toriovico, the Healed One, is not all the government. Indeed, he is hardly concerned with its routine business.”

Elise let the comment with its undertone of schoolroom correction pass, though she didn’t much care to be spoken to in such a manner, especially after King Tedric himself had consulted her on the matter of international policy not so long ago.

“I understand,” Elise said. “You have given us much to think on. Certainly, we will take care with our ventures into the city.”

“You have a guide?” the ambassador asked.

Was her question a touch too casual? Elise couldn’t be certain.

“A crippled fellow we hired in Gateway,” Elise replied airily. “He and his young son are staying with us. In a pinch we can borrow one or more of our landlady’s maids. Hasamemorri is devoted to Doc—Sir Jared—or rather to what his healing arts do for her abused knees, and will gladly aid us.”

Elise was aware that her last sentence was less than eloquent, but talking about Grateful Peace was unsettling, and Sir Jared was hardly the distraction to still her soul. Violet Redbriar, however, seemed satisfied.

“Very good. I think it would be better for all concerned if we left our associations fairly general. This embassy has already attracted unwelcome attention from those who are certain Consolor Melina spies for her birth land. Let them think this a courtesy call and nothing else.”

Elise was pleased. She had been dreading an invitation to remain for dinner, especially now when she had news she wanted to get back to the others.

They parted soon after. So absorbed was Elise in her thoughts and in the ramifications of what the ambassador had told them that she didn’t even notice the sullen glares, like rapidly concealed ripples in a formerly still pond, that their passage generated in the crowd.

Beside her, Edlin did, and it might well have been his forester’s watchfulness—usually so out of place in the city—that kept them safe to the tidy door of Hasamemorri’s house.

EWEN BROOKS
lay on the soft earth, swallowing hate more bitter than the bile that surged from his unsettled gut. A long while seemed to pass before he could do more.

At first, he thought the pounding that made thinking or moving so difficult was all inside his throbbing head, but when he managed to open his aching eyes, he realized that the pounding had an external source as well—rather, several external sources.

Back and forth, back and forth, in their steadiness more like ants than people, the settlers were moving between the cabins and a line of rough but serviceable wagons that stretched across what had once been a village square. Ewen wondered where the wagons had come from. Then, looking from side to side—the space behind his eyes flashing ruddy-colored lights as he moved his head—he understood.

Lord Polr must have brought the wheels and axles with him, but the bodies of the wagons were being built from timber salvaged from the cabins. The outer structure of the cabins had been made from logs, but lofts and furniture had demanded planks. Garrik Carpenter had proven he deserved his place in the community by locating seasoned wood, then showing them how to split it into planks.

Ewen had been a miller’s son, so he was accustomed to sawing wood, not splitting it. Garrik’s transformation of downed trees—some of which they had speculated might even have been felled by Prince Barden’s settlers ten years earlier—into handy boards had seemed like magic. It also had given them a level of luxury Ewen had thought they must do without until they had a mill of their own.

Now, through open doors—indeed, through gaping door holes, for the doors themselves were gone—Ewen watched as lofts were torn up, their boards handed down to cheerful hands reaching from below.

The town square within the palisade of which Ewen had been so proud seemed emptier now. The tents that had been pitched in the intervals between the cabins, waiting their turn to be replaced by tidy log structures, had been dismantled. Even as he watched, a few of the remaining domestic fowl were carried by, their legs trussed, their necks craning at ridiculous angles as they sought to make sense of their predicament.

“We’ll pay for any beast or fowl you don’t wish to carry back,” said a firm voice that Ewen placed in a moment as that of Lord Polr. “Remember that!”

Lord Polr’s voice sounded different somehow, robbed of the tension that had echoed beneath its every word or statement, no matter how innocuous.

Ewen struggled to pull himself upright. He didn’t have much luck, but his motion brought a shadowy figure that had a tendency to split into multiples hunkering down beside him.

“Easy,” Lord Polr said. “You took a nasty wallop, then went down off the walkway. They tried to catch you, but…”

His shrug made his image fragment. Ewen squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them again, things seemed to have stabilized. Again he tried to struggle upright and he felt Polr’s firm hands assisting him to sit and lean back against something solid—the palisade, Ewen realized. They hadn’t moved him far from where he fell. They’d made him a thick pallet on which to rest, brought him a pillow. When he glanced up—a thing that hurt more than he could have imagined—he saw that a bit of canvas had been strung over him as a roof.

How long had he been out?

“Water?” Lord Polr asked.

Ewen tried to nod, then decided that was a bad idea. His “yes” came out more as a grunt, but Lord Polr apparently took it as assent.

A canteen was held to his lips, the well water within it still cool. Ewen swallowed greedily, making some infantile noise in protest when the water was pulled away from him.

“Sorry, but the company doctor says we have to be careful, can’t have you retching it all up again. See how that sits and we’ll try more in a bit.”

Ewen acceded. His stomach was turning from the few swallows and he didn’t want to humiliate himself further by puking.

Polr bent closer, studying Ewen with a clinical efficiency that spoke of training in the medical arts. He peeled back one of Ewen’s eyelids, nodding with satisfaction.