Dragon Thief (7 page)

“We should stop at the next town.”

“What?” Grace's eyes narrowed in suspicion. “We're avoiding towns.”

“Because you don't exactly blend in.” I gestured at the girls surrounding the campfire, all busily eating pieces of some small game animal Laya had skewered with her crossbow. Between the mishmash armor and the grisly trophies they looked like a troop of slightly stunted goblins. “If we don't get you some more mundane clothing, there's no way we'll get close to Lendowyn Castle without attracting the wrong kind of attention.”

The girl with the close-cropped hair objected. “You not getting me in no dress.” After a moment I remembered her name.

“Krys—” I started.

“No! I'm not!”

“Listen to the man,” Grace said. She gave me a sidelong glance, “He seems to have some clue what he's talking about.”

“He's a man,” Krys said. “Since when do we take orders from some man?”

“No one's giving any orders but me,” Grace snapped.

“Don't look like it,” Krys said. “What's the point of all this, if some guy comes in to make us all pretty little girls.”

“This guy is taking us to a hoard that will mean we—”

Krys stood up. “Ogre crap!”

Grace stood up. “What?”

I noticed that Krys had her hand on the pommel of a dagger in her belt. I saw, across the campfire, Laya reaching for her crossbow.

“I said Snake isn't leading you anywhere he don't want to go.”

“We're going where
I
want us to go.”

I stood up myself and said, “Why don't we all calm down?”

Grace spun to glare at me with a look that was comprised entirely of the thought, “You're not helping.”

Krys pulled her dagger and Mary scrambled to interpose herself between the two girls. But Mary had misjudged where Krys was headed. Krys moved around her and Grace to face me. “To the hells with you, master thief. I lost what I lost, suffered what I suffered, and all I won was a chance to be who I am. You ain't taking that. One of us dies first.”

Grace yelled at her, “Put that down! We have rules!”

Krys kept moving toward me, and I took a couple of steps back to remove myself from the others. Krys was one of the taller girls, around Grace and Mary in age. If I had still been the princess we might have been more evenly matched. As it was, I had the advantage in weight and reach that meant she wasn't going to win a fight unless the other girls dove in after her.

Something in her eyes told me she didn't care.

I held up my hands and said, “All I was talking about is dressing in a way that won't draw attention, from the guilds or the militia, or the wat—”

“You want to make me into a little girl again!”

I opened my mouth. I was about to snap something about how it was just some clothes . . . But, to Krys, it wasn't. She said it was who she was.

Who she was.

I shook my head. “I don't want to change who you are.”

“You said you want me to dress like a girl.”

I crouched so I wasn't hovering over her anymore. “No, I just want you guys to stand out less.”

She lowered the dagger and bit her lip. Her eyes were shiny, reflecting the campfire.

“All I want,” I told her, “is for anyone seeing us to see what they expect to see. That could be a frilly little girl, or a farm boy.”

“Y-you . . . you don't care if I dress like a boy?”

“No. Just look the part.” I shrugged. “I was never too fond of wearing dresses myself.”

“I . . .” Krys ran at me. I had a brief moment to see everyone tense before she tackled me. Then she had her arms around my neck and was sobbing into my shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” I patted her on the back. “Maybe you can let go of the knife now?”

“What?”

I winced. “You're stabbing me.”

She sprang back from me, the dagger sailing off to my right, causing Mary and Grace to dodge aside. “Oh gods, I'm sorry. Are you all right?”

I rubbed my shoulder where the point of her dagger had jabbed me. “It's fine.”

Mary picked up the wayward dagger and Grace stepped forward. She may have been about the same height as Krys, but she seemed to tower over the girl. “What were you thinking?”

“I—”

“This isn't just you!”

“S-sorry—”

“Of all the stupid things to get angry about—”

“Grace,” I said.

She spun around to face me. “What?”

“Go easy on her.”

She leveled a finger at me. “You're not in charge here!”

“No, but I know what it's like.”

“Stay out of this!” Grace snapped. She marched across, grabbed Krys' arm, and marched her away from everyone else. Krys went meekly, letting Grace berate her until they were out of earshot.

I stood and rubbed my shoulder again. I could feel some warm wetness smearing my skin under my shirt.

Great.

Mary walked up to me, twirling Krys's discarded dagger in her right hand. “You handled that well.”

“Then why am I bleeding?”

“What you mean, Mr. Snake?”

“What did I mean?”

“You ‘know what it's like.'” The dagger stopped twirling, hilt toward me. “What what's like?”

“I just know what she's going through.”

“You do?”

I didn't answer her. I just watched the shadows of Grace and Krys across the clearing from the campfire. I couldn't really go into why I empathized with Krys right now. How it was that the legendary thief Snake, cold heartless bastard that he was, could be moved by the fact that a young girl felt as if she was trapped in the wrong body.

 • • • 

My logic won out and we headed for the last Grünwald town before the border with Lendowyn. As we packed up and departed, the looks I got from half the girls suggested that Snake's façade was beginning to crumble. Only in Krys's case did this seem a good thing. She smiled at me, and it seemed genuine, but Laya wouldn't even meet my gaze. Grace was obviously angry, and Mary stared at me in a way that gave the impression that she knew exactly how out of character my reaction to Krys had been.

As I drove the single horse, the mute girl, Rabbit, sat next to me. She was one of the youngest girls aside from curly-haired Thea, and almost as small, a tiny bundle of bone and wiry muscle topped by a cap of straight jet-black hair. She scrambled effortlessly into the bench next to me and shrugged as if to apologize for being a lousy conversationalist.

After we were on the road for about half an hour, she curled up next to me like a cat and fell asleep.

I appreciated the lack of drama.

It gave me time to think, which may not have been the best idea. The closer I got to Lendowyn, the closer I was coming to an inevitable decision. I was going to have to tell these girls the truth, or I was going to have to abandon them somewhere. I was leaning toward the truth, since it didn't seem fair to take them all this way just to ditch them. At this point the only reason I hesitated was because that would also mean admitting there was no treasure to share, and I suspected the news would be taken badly.

Slipping away felt wrong, but I'd seen enough evidence to tell me that these girls were quite able to take care of themselves, and I'd at least be leaving them in a climate a bit warmer than where I'd found them.

As usual, I couldn't come to a firm conclusion.

“Yeah,” I whispered, “I'll think of something when the time comes.”
Because improvisation has worked so well for me so far.

Rabbit surprised me by suddenly grabbing my knee and squeezing a lot harder than someone her size should have been able to do.

I winced. She was now wide awake and staring down the road ahead of us. Her nostrils flared and she shook her head.

“What?”

She made a grunt and started waving her hand, palm flat toward my chest. I stared, not understanding, and her gestures got more forceful until her palm struck my chest. She held her hand there and shook her head violently.

I drew the horse to a stop, rolling the carriage to the edge of the road. She exhaled and nodded, removing both her hands.

“What's the matter?” I asked. She had already scrambled to the ground before the entire question was out of my mouth. I hung up the reins and climbed down myself.

She walked about ten yards ahead, and stood in the middle of the road, looking upward and slowly turning around.

Grace stuck her head out of the carriage. “Why are we stopping?”

“I don't know,” I told her.

I walked up next to Rabbit and saw her nostrils flare as she froze and looked up at the sky. I followed her gaze and didn't see anything. I started to ask again, “What—”

Then I smelled it.

Smoke.

Not just the smell of something burning. There was a familiar character to what I smelled. “No, it can't be what I think . . .”

Rabbit turned to look at me with a furrowed brow.

“No,” I repeated.

“‘No' what?” Grace asked as she jumped out of the carriage. Mary and Krys followed her out.

“Nothing. I'm imagining things.”

She asked Rabbit, “What's going on?” Behind her, the rest of the girls had dismounted and were looking around. Mary and Laya were giving me a few suspicious glances.

Rabbit pointed at her nose then swept her hand toward the road in front of us.

“Something's burning ahead of us,” I said. “We should probably check it out before we go on.”

“Rabbit?”

Rabbit nodded, agreeing with me I suppose.

“Fine.” Grace sounded irritated. She turned around and said, “Mary, go with them and check out what's going on. The rest of you get back in, in case we have to leave in a hurry. Laya, you keep watch with me.” She climbed up next to the reins and Laya followed with her crossbow.

Mary walked up next to us and told Rabbit, “You lead.”

 • • • 

We weren't going to get the girls a change of clothes at the next town.

Mary and I followed Rabbit through the woods, along game trails that were barely visible under a fresh snow cover. As we went on, the woods became deathly quiet. Even the wind fell silent, leaving only the sound of our own breathing and our footsteps crunching through the snow.

The smell got worse, almost choking in intensity. Our footsteps grew silent as the snow melted away to soft forest loam under our feet.

We were upon the scene before I was prepared for it—even though I had half expected it ever since I caught the first whiff of what had happened here.

Mary gasped as we emerged from the tree line about a hundred strides downhill from the town we'd been approaching.

The remains of the town.

It had burned so badly that no snow remained on the hillside or the trees surrounding it. There had been a wall, but all that remained were a few random logs pointing black fingers at the sky. The remains steamed in the cold air.

“What happened here?” Mary asked.

I started walking toward the ruin. There was no ignoring the familiar scent of sulfur and brimstone. I felt my chest tighten as I whispered, “Dragon fire.”

“Dragon?” Mary ran up next to me. “You say ‘dragon'?”

I kept walking up toward the smoldering corpse of the town. No recognizable building remained standing, and I began to smell ugly things underneath the dragon fire, other things that had burned. “No. No. No! Damn it, Lucille! What did you do?
What did you do?!
”

Mary grabbed my arm, and I realized that I'd been shouting. “Dragon?
What dragon?
” she yelled at me. “We have to get out of here!”

I shook my head. I couldn't bring myself to move. I couldn't force the idea that Lucille might have done this into what I knew of the world. Not
my
Lucille.

But I'd seen her in combat. I saw what she could do when she was angry. What would she be capable of if she wasn't near death from dozens of arrow wounds and facing a guy with a magic sword? Even before that, when we'd suffered the enchantment that swapped us around in the first place, in the first few minutes in her new draconic body she set another town on fire. That might have been an accident, but . . .

“Move,” Mary screamed at me, tugging at my arm. She turned toward Rabbit and yelled, “Run! Get back to the others!”

Rabbit didn't move. She faced back the way we'd come.

Mary let go of me and ran toward her. “What are you doing? We need to . . .” Her voice trailed off with a weak strangled sound that turned into something that sounded like an obscenity that would have been harsh and inappropriate coming from an old goblin sailor, much less a teenage girl. I turned away from the ruined town and saw Mary and Rabbit staring back toward the woods. I followed their gaze and repeated Mary's curse.