The Dragon Round (40 page)

Who is this man who can command a dragon?
Ject thinks. How is that possible? He could try to capture them, but generals who overreach generally fall.

Bolts twang from around the walk. Two hit the cupola, one chips off some cream-colored marble, the other lodges in its tiny blue dome. Two others sail through the cupola, past the shadow, and disappear into the city. Ject doesn't want to know where they land.

A gray head emerges, flecked with golden light and gore. A long neck follows it then two little claws pull two wings over the wall.

“Tiny,” says Ravis, “as dragons go.”

“Big enough for me,” Oftly says.

“Is that a pack on its back,” Ject says, “or a saddle?”

The rest of the dragon pushes out of the cupola, and it picks its way toward the man, tail waving for balance, claws grating on the dome's tiles. Clay scree showers the guards. The man mounts the dragon and faces Ject.

Ject sees through the beard, the goggles, and time. “Impossible,” he says.

As the shadows of Ject's detail
dance across the stained glass windows, Herse mounts the iron stairs. Halfway up, he grabs the railing as
they're rattled by something heavy banging on the dome. Several different thoughts assemble into an unexpected whole.

Was that feet? The person who snatched Chelson's daughter must be hiding above. What creature that large could get on top of the tower? Someone riding a dragon destroyed Tuse's ship. Solet's wolf pack was destroyed by a dragon. Is there a dragon up there? Is the abductor its rider? Could he be responsible for all three attacks and the body here? If so, Herse doesn't care what the rider must have against the Heroes of Hanosh. He wants the dragon.

He crawls along the catwalk lest he be shaken off. He doesn't touch the severed hand resting there. He climbs the ladder, which smears his hands and clothes with blood, which can't all be Skite's. Holestar and Derc must be above. That would explain the stain around the trapdoor.

Footsteps move down the dome toward the widow's walk. Ject is standing tough, Herse will give him that.

He pushes the trapdoor. Blood rains down his arm and over his face. Something's blocking the door. He climbs higher and rams it open with his shoulder. A weight slides off it; he whips his crossbow up and points the bolt at the wide, icy eye of Tristaban.

Ravis steps in front of his
general and raises his crossbow, but he can't bring himself to fire. His face loses all color; his eyes, all focus; his heart, all warmth. He wishes the eave offered more cover. The dragon's teeth are so white.

Ject looks into the dragon's lacy eyes and sees the future: the creature biting off Ravis's face, grabbing Ject's head, tossing him over the balustrade. This is not the victory he imagined by discovering the dragon.

“Hold your fire!” he yells. He puts his hand on Ravis's shoulder, and the first guard dips his crossbow. Oftly does too. Then Ject says to the man, “I remember you. Before the beard.”

The man guides the dragon to the lip of the dome. It's ungainly on all fours, head bobbing, tail swishing, like a horse whose legs were cut off at the knees. Ject is terrified it will slip and fall and carry them to the plaza. The dragon sniffs Ject and Ravis. Its breath is a miasma of fish and fresh meat.

“I don't want to hurt you,” he says.

“I don't want to hurt you either,” Ject says. “I need your help. To save the city. Again.”

“You can help me too.”

“I'll do what I can. You can trust me, Jeryon.”

The cupola is disturbingly well organized.
On one side a canvas tarp, rolled and tied, sits beside crude woven baskets of food and black skins full of water or wine. On the other, a neatly collected pile of scat, bones, and the remains of a city guard, probably the missing man from Quiet. The floor glistens as if recently mopped. In the middle lies Tristaban, wrists bound behind her, mouth gagged, body bruised and bloody. Holestar's head sits nearby, as does his body, the belly torn open.

Herse smiles, lowers the crossbow, and puts a finger to his lips. Tristaban shivers a nod. He climbs all the way into the cupola, keeping his head below its low walls. He lifts her onto her knees, pulls her gag loose then plucks a ball of dirty cloth from her mouth. She coughs and spits. He shushes her soothingly, and she remembers how to act alive.

“Are you all right?” he says, pointing at several aloe leaves tied on like bandages with thread.

“It ate him,” she says. “I watched it eat him.”

“Listen.” Herse holds her cheek. “Who's he with?”

“What? A company?” Tristaban says. “None. It's Jeryon.”

“Who?”

“The captain of the
Comber
.”

So the rumors are true. Jeryon was given the captain's chance. Herse should have known. Chelson had to have seen something in Livion.

“He was going to trade me for their confessions,” Tristaban says. “Livion's. And my father's. He'd ruin us.” Her eyes dart to the crossbow. “You have to do something.”

“Of course,” he says. “We're partners.”

His hand is still on her cheek. She smiles. “I like the sound of that word when you say it.”

He pats her cheek and crouch-walks to the wall.

She twists to watch him. “Cut me loose,” she says.

He shushes her and peeks over.

“I have to ask,” Ject says.
“Did you take Chelson's daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Is she all right?”

“Yes.”

“Up there?”

Jeryon nods.

“Good.” Two fish, one hook. “Why don't you come down from there? My neck's getting a crick looking up like this.”

Jeryon stiffens. He says, “With your men waiting to take me?” He plies the reins. The dragon swings its head to watch Ravis and Oftly.

“I'll call them off. Stand down! To me!”

This breaks the spell cast over his first guard. Ravis reluctantly lowers his crossbow to his side.

Ject's guards edge around the tower, crossbows half-raised, confused. The general says, “At ease. We're all friends here.”

“Is that everyone?” Jeryon says. Ject nods. “Put the weapons down.”

“Let's go one better,” Ject says. “Ravis, lead the detail inside so the captain and I can talk.”

“They'll stay out here where I can see them.”

Ject shrugs and flutters his hand. His men lay their weapons on the walk.

Ravis turns away from the dragon to put his down, and with his eyes directs Oftly's to the eave. The first guard slashes a finger toward himself and to the dragon as he turns back. Oftly understands. They couldn't climb onto the dome before being attacked, and even if they could the rider is far enough from them that he could take off before they could attack. If Ravis struck at the dragon's neck, that might distract the rider enough for Oftly to get to him.

Keeping the detail in view, Jeryon backs the dragon up the dome and edges east and west to make sure no one is on the walk. A shadow shifts in the corner of his eye. He glances at the cupola. The girl isn't watching him. He's not surprised. He left her half-catatonic. She's probably seen enough in the dome to put her off meat for life. Satisfied, he returns to Ject.

“At least someone in this city isn't a liar,” Jeryon says. He gives a little downward tug on the dragon's halter, and it rests on its elbows, which causes the crossbow bolt whistling toward the back of his head to only graze his scalp.

5

As the city guards assemble in ranks on one side of the plaza and the tanner stirs up his cohorts on the other, some in the crowd sink back into the city, but the pressure pushes the rest near boiling.

In front of Rego the six-fingered man, the pig-tailed girl, the father and his son surround the man who would take three coins. Several come to his defense, while others offer themselves up for two. Jostling turns into shoving. The boy starts crying and his father tells him to shut up, which makes him cry louder and makes the girl tell the boy
to shut up. Now the father turns on the six-fingered man, who says he has no idea who the girl is. Meanwhile the girl picks both their pockets, and the bidding drops to thirty pennies.

In the middle of the plaza a woman in an old tunic and well-tended leather pants screams. The crowd parts, repelled by the realization that the man standing beside her has a crossbow bolt plunged through his eye and out the base of his skull. He blinks his good eye and collapses. The crowd turns on the guard while Rego traces the bolt's trajectory back to the dome and sees a man falling from the widow's walk, trailing fire.

Herse ducks behind the wall as
quickly as he looked over it to fire and pulls a new bolt from his quiver. Tristaban says, “Did you get him?”

He shakes his head.

“You have to,” she says, “but free me first.”

“You're safer tied up,” he says, and sits down so he can put his foot in the crossbow's stirrup.

“I can't stand this place.”

“Stay put,” he says. Herse leans back and cocks the crossbow. “No, sit on that trapdoor. Make sure no one gets up here.”

Herse loads a bolt, but he can't risk another shot yet.

Jeryon watches the bolt kill a
man in the crowd, glances back to find no one behind him, then glares at Ject and whistles three times. Ject throws up his hands, yelling, “Wait, wait!” The dragon lunges. Ravis's sword leaps from his baldric and arcs toward the dragon's reaching neck. Oftly grabs his sword, grabs the eave, jumps, and presses himself onto the dome. The other guards dive for their crossbows. Ravis's leaf-shaped blade sticks in a plate from which one of the dragon's spines grows as the dragon snaps a medal off the general's chest. Oftly charges Jeryon, who sweeps his knife at him and delays Oftly
just long enough for the dragon to whip its head around to face the guard. The sword falls off its neck and clatters to the walk. It spits the medal onto the dome at Oftly's feet. The guard screams. Jeryon says, “Comber.”

The flames envelop Oftly and chase him as he stumbles off the dome. Ravis throws himself and Ject aside, but the rest of the guards are caught. Oftly bounces off the balustrade and plummets to the terrace while the rest beat at their flaming bodies with flaming hands.

Jeryon yells at Ject, fire dancing in the lenses of his goggles, “Why did you do that? Why?”

“Whoever fired that bolt,” Ject says, “that wasn't my man.”

“This one is,” Jeryon says. The dragon turns on Ravis.

Ravis crawls to his sword. It was a mistake to strike the top of the neck. One good sweep to the throat and the dragon will be finished. He grabs the sword and starts to roll, and a massive weight lands on his back. The gnashing heat of the dragon's fire envelops him. The cries and commotion of the city dissolve into the simmer of waves receding. He feels weightless. Over the balustrade he floats and over the plaza, and when the dragon lets go he feels like he's rising away with it.

When the first body splashes on
the terrace, the plaza goes silent. Hundreds of faces look up and see the dragon. Differences are forgotten. A few say what many think, “There was a dragon. There will be no war.” When the dragon grabs a second man, dives, and flings him at the plaza, everyone thinks,
There is a dragon, and it's coming for me
.

The crowd tries to drain into the nearby streets, but they're blocked by the guard and the tanner's cohorts. In the center, many people stand like rocks amid the breakers, and that's where the trampling begins.

At the north end, people crash against the shields of Pashing's squad, which drives the soldiers against the wagon. The horse whickers
and dances, alarmed. As Birming tries to control her, Pashing says, “We have to get the money out of the plaza.”

Rego, standing on the seat, watches the woman in the old tunic crouch over the dead painter, protecting him from the dragon and the crowd.

“No,” he says. “We have to let these people out. Sergeant, your horn. Order the Guard to fall back and open up those streets.”

Husting puts his hand over the horn hanging from his belt and says, “No. The Guard doesn't retreat.”

As if in agreement, several guards fire, but in haste. The dragon kicks right and up, avoiding them. Rego sees the man on its back, but his brain rejects the notion, and after the dragon circles out of sight east around the tower all he remembers is gray hide, spikes, and teeth.

“Pashing,” Rego says, “take half your men and break up that clot on the east side. Focus on the tanner. He's the ringleader.”

“But they're for us,” Pashing says.

“And you'll expose us,” Husting says.

“This city has too many uses,” Rego says.

The dragon rises over the dome, a shimmering fleck of sun, and Husting realizes they're trapped by the masses flowing around them. He jumps onto the wagon so he can be seen and blows the command to pull back.

As Jeryon circles the cupola, apparently
aggravated at not finding what he figured he must, Ject wonders who fired the bolt. The girl? Jeryon wouldn't have left her armed. Or untied. From what little he knows of him, Jeryon would be too scrupulous for that.

Ject figures the tower guards must be on their way—a falling body's worth a dozen horns—but they can't have run up here so quickly. It would take five minutes at least. He'll have to do for himself or play for time.

Jeryon circles the walk, looking through the windows, remaining
frustrated, and the look he gives Ject says the general won't be passed by again.

Ject can't go back the way he came. The door to the foyer is on fire, so is the doorway, and both are blocked by the roasting remains of his detail. So he waits until the dragon disappears around the east side of the tower, grabs a fallen crossbow, and runs to the door to the council chamber. It had been unbarred. That must have been how Jeryon got out here. He presses the latch. The door is unlocked, as he had hoped.