Dragon Thief (18 page)

Oliver nodded and took a step back from me. He studied me for a moment and said, “There's something
I
should tell
you
.”

“What?”

“When the Pirates of Darkblood Reef descended on Fellhaven, the lord mayor was in the first line of defenders. He fell in the first moments of the battle. But his wife, she was in the second line. And the third . . . And the last. She led the defense street by street, as the militia and the town were destroyed around her. Her final stand was with old women and men too wounded to retreat. She's the only reason that most of the people of Fellhaven made it to safety inland.”

“She sounds like a good—” My sentence was abruptly punctuated by Oliver's boot burying itself in my gut.

“Her name was Madeline,” he said. He kicked me again; hard enough that my vision went dark and I didn't remember my collapse to the ground. I could barely hear him now through the blood rushing in my ears.

“She was my daughter.”

Yeah,
I thought.
Not well at all.

They disarmed me, tied my arms and legs, and threw me into the cage on the wagon.

I tried to talk to Prince Oliver again, but he wasn't having any of it. Every attempt led to the butt end of a spear coming through the bars to collide with some yet-unbruised part of my anatomy. I decided to cut my losses while there were still parts of my body that didn't hurt. I doubted that I could convince Oliver of anything, not without some measure of proof.

About the only bright spot was, despite being motivated by revenge, Oliver was intent on bringing me back before the Dermonica court to face justice. That would at least give me another opportunity to tell the truth, though I suspected things would probably go as well with his father the duke as it had with Oliver.

It did mean two things. One was they weren't going to kill me right now. The second was that they probably weren't going to sacrifice me in some ritual to their dark gods.

I had to take the good where I found it.

 • • • 

They camped the night through an ice storm. Someone threw a sheet of canvas over my cage, but as I froze through the night I revised my theory about Oliver not wanting to kill me. Sure he would bring me to justice, but if I accidentally died of exposure along the way I doubt Oliver would fret much over it.

I didn't sleep much, and once I did, it felt as if it was only for a few minutes before they started breaking camp and the noise and movement around me made sleep impossible. Shortly after, we all started moving down the road. My cart riding in the midst of a score of paid assassins.

At least I had
thought
it was around twenty armed and mounted men. When I peeked around at what I could see around my cage, the contingent seemed lighter than I remembered from the previous evening. My wagon was still flanked by riders, but when I looked behind, a trio of riders seemed to be falling behind.

Deliberately
falling behind.

It took me much longer than it should have to piece together what was about to happen. I plead lack of sleep.

But it is sort of obvious when you think about it. There's one major problem in hiring mercenaries and assassins and such; whatever the alleged principles of the group involved, they've established—by definition—a price on their services. So there's always the threat of someone coming along and offering a better deal.

The risk doesn't even have to come from someone with a deeper purse. When you hire a band of assassins, you have to pay all of them. Someone wanting to sabotage your efforts only needs to pay a few of them—for the sake of argument say three of them—better than you are paid.

And given the number of people after Snake Bartholomew's hide, it was pretty clear that at least one party was willing to make that kind of investment.

The rider to the left of my wagon noticed the stragglers a bit too late. He pulled his horse up and began turning it around as a crossbow bolt suddenly sprouted from his neck. He dropped the reins and his horse stopped in the middle of the road as the wagon kept pulling away. He fell forward and tumbled off the saddle into the road.

I can't give a truly honest account of the massacre, since I did the sane thing and flattened myself in the corner of my iron cage to present as small a target as possible. I heard the cries of men and horses, and the wagon accelerated as the team drawing it broke into a predictably short-lived gallop. When it stopped, it was sudden and accompanied by the sound of screaming horses and splintering wood as the wagon tumbled onto its side. I rolled into the bars on one side of the cage and didn't move. The canvas was frozen to the bars in places, and remained draped over two-thirds of the cage, blocking whatever view I would have had.

Around me I heard curses, shouts, the sound of stamping horses, and the clash of metal against metal.

You could cut the déjà vu with a knife.

I struggled with my bonds, but honestly, if I could have managed freeing myself from them I would have done so long before now. The sound of battle died around me, ending with the sound of a horse or two galloping off somewhere fading into silence; silence that was broken by the sound of footsteps crunching in the snow.

Even though I had braced for it, I still winced when the canvas was ripped from the cage with the sound of tearing fabric. One look at the clothing of the men told me who had won the conflict. They weighed their look much more toward highwayman than assassin.

They also appeared vaguely familiar, in the way that most muscular goons tend to look alike if you've run into enough of them. They opened the cage and dragged me out, and my sense of familiarity ran deeper.

“Now,” one of them said as he lifted me by the arms. “I hate interruptions.”

“Me too,” said one of his companions as he cut free the ropes on my legs. He gave me a grin that had too few teeth of too varying colors. “Now where were we?”

 • • • 

I'd say it's never what I expect, but by all rights I should have seen this one coming from miles away.

A pair of too-familiar goons marched me through the aftermath of a battle that had ended rather poorly for Prince Oliver's assassins, and only slightly less poorly for the prince—as he still breathed. They had bound the prince's arms and had set him kneeling in the muddy slush. My goons forced me down to my knees next to him, and the prince gave me a glare that would have given the Dark Lord Nâtlac pause.

“Of course
you
survived.”

“A surprising number of people want Mr. Bartholomew alive,” I said.

“I hold you responsible for this!”

I shook my head. “Are you kidding? You can lay a lot at the feet of this guy, but you
knew
how many other people are after him. You're the one who had the ill judgment to employ a bunch of contract assassins instead of Dermonica military—” Something occurred to me. “The duke doesn't know what you're doing, does he?”

Given the intensity of his glare, I found it somewhat surprising that one of us didn't spontaneously burst into flame.

“And now you're a hostage. I don't think he's going to like that.”

“I will—” He didn't get to finish the statement because a familiar voice called out,
“Snake!”

I turned my head to look up at the face that had first greeted me upon my arrival in Snake's body. Weasel was grinning.

“You know,” I said, “I never got your name.”

Weasel kept grinning and said, “Like that matters. I take back what I had said about you putting up a fight. Setting up rivals after your head just so they can beat each other silly and you escape in the chaos. It would be genius if it wasn't completely bloody insane.”

I figured I had a second chance. It was worth a try at least. “I'm not the Snake you think I am.”

“Not this fairy tale again,” Oliver grumbled.

“Let me hear this,” Weasel said, the grin never wavering. “Go on.”

“Snake, Prince Bartholomew, is in the Lendowyn court right now.”

“Indeed? But you look so much like him.”

“Yes, this is his body, but my name's Frank Blackthorne . . .” I was able to relate the broad strokes of my story without interruption. Unlike Oliver, Weasel didn't seem to have any emotional investment in beating me into a pulp.

I finished my latest iteration of my tale and Weasel gave me a slow clap. “Bravo. Bravo, Frank. Bravo.”

I sighed. I really had no reasonable expectation that I'd be able to convince— “You called me Frank?”

Weasel stopped his applause. “That's your name, isn't it?”

“You don't actually believe this lying bastard?” Oliver choked out.

“Oh, I don't trust him a bit. I'm sure that he's regaled us with his share of lies and half-truths. But . . .” Weasel leaned conspiratorially toward Prince Oliver. “This guy isn't Snake.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because if this guy is the legendary Snake, the lost Grünwald heir, why are there so many rumors of Grünwald agents slipping into various cities in various domains—places with a history with our outlaw prince—and slipping back out more heavily laden than when they arrived? Why are these agents, so obviously of Grünwald origin, going in the direction of Lendowyn rather than their own homeland? Hmm?” Weasel bent to stage-whisper in Oliver's ear. “And you've been preoccupied, but I suspect your father has noticed that poor, weak little Lendowyn has been raising quite an army.”

It suddenly fell into place, the final nagging question of why Snake had been massing wealth far beyond what any one person might ever need. Snake's string of more and more spectacular thefts had a larger goal in mind. It always had.

“He was always working to finance an attack on Grünwald,” I said quietly. “He wants to take the throne.”

“No,” Oliver said. “That doesn't make sense. We have him right here!”

Weasel clucked his tongue as he straightened up. “And that's the problem with aristocrats right there. Can't admit they're wrong.” He waved one of his goons over. “Now, Mr. Frank Blackthorne, I have a proposal for you.”

“What?”

“I'm an independent businessman. At the moment I am at a decision point. Now, we may agree about who you are, and who Snake is at the moment—but the prince here demonstrates exactly how convincing your tale is to those with an emotional tie to the fate of the Bastard Prince Bartholomew. So I could, with a minimal risk to my humble self, return to the White Rock Thieves' Guild with you and receive significant compensation.”

“But you know I'm not who they want.”

Weasel shrugged. “It matters little to me that they'll be unable to extract the information they want from you. They'll slake their thirst for vengeance at least, and I'll be able to justify the expense of tracking you down in the first place.”

Prince Oliver muttered something about there being some justice in the world. If my hands weren't tied, I would have been tempted to punch him.

“But there's another possibility,” Weasel said.

“What?”

“I'm a businessman. I have no particular tie to the White Rock Thieves' Guild, they simply offer the highest bounty for your particular skin. Could the Dermonica scion here offer me more, I would gladly hand you back to him.”

Oliver brightened. “I can offer you—”

“No, you can't,” Weasel snapped. “I know what you were paying.”

“If I petition my father, I know I can—”

“Pipe down, sonny.”

Oliver started to say something, and one of Weasel's goons grabbed him and placed a dagger against his throat. The prince satisfied himself with glaring at Weasel.

“Where were we?” Weasel said. “Yes. You see, I have a more risky option, but potentially a far more lucrative one. And let's just say that if I was averse to all risk, we wouldn't be talking here.”

“What is it?”

“It has been pointed out to me that if our friend Snake is within the Lendowyn court, and if he is indeed massing all his ill-gotten gains to finance an attack on Grünwald, then it logically follows that the spoils from several of the most notorious thefts of the past century are now being collected in one location. The wealth of several nations, unimaginable in scope, hoarded in the only place that our bastard prince would trust.”

“Where?” Oliver croaked out involuntarily, wincing at the point of the knife.

“Snake has become the Dragon Prince of Lendowyn. Those he knew would be disloyal to him, he sent on a mission to save the missing princess, only to be immolated in an attack that has almost certainly been laid at the feet of Grünwald. Those he knew would be more loyal to the king, and the king himself, have traveled to the other side of Fell Green to ‘save' the actual princess. Left in the halls of Lendowyn Castle are guards loyal to the Dragon Prince, the lost prince of Grünwald—numbers that are unquestionably swelling as his agents return with his wealth. Where else would he store that wealth but within the treasury of a fortress filled with his loyal troops, guarded by a great and terrible dragon?”

Okay, that makes sense . . .
“You were talking about a more risky option . . . You don't mean . . .”

Weasel laughed. “Of course I do. The people who pointed most of this out to me also pointed out to me how Frank Blackthorne is actually more valuable than the absent Snake. I have here before me someone who knows that fortress, and knows it with the access of a royal and the mind of a thief.”

“You mentioned it yourself,” I said. “There's a dragon.”

“A dragon you have your own reason to confront. How else will you make him don the accursed jewel?”

“Damn it!” I snapped. “That's enough. How can you possibly know all this?”

From behind me I heard a familiar voice say, “We told him.”

I turned around and saw Grace and the rest of the girls standing in among Weasel's goons.