Dragon Weather (49 page)

“It certainly wouldn't distress me,” Black said.

“Well, then,” Arlian said, “let it be so.”

41

Challenges Made

Arlian was seated comfortably in a corner of the Dragon Society's main hall, in a velvet-upholstered chair with each arm carved into a dragon's head, his feet under a round oaken table. Diagonally across from him sat Lady Rime, and the two of them chatted amiably.

“Are any of the members married?” Arlian asked. “I haven't heard anyone but Lord Wither mention spouses.”

“Lord Spider and Lady Shard are married,” Rime replied, leaning back in her chair, “though I don't know how much longer it will last. They've been together more than a hundred years, and few marriages survive beyond that.”

Arlian had met Lady Shard, but had heard no previous mention of Lord Spider. He had met most of the members now—his own initiation had taken place some four days ago, and he had come here every evening, when Black declared the fading light inadequate for further swordplay.

He still had not encountered Lord Horim, Lord Drisheen, or Lord Enziet, however, save for one brief meeting with Lord Drisheen, a chance encounter on the Street of the Black Spire just outside the Society's door as Drisheen left and Arlian arrived. Arlian had recognized Drisheen's perfume first, and then his face, but by then Drisheen was around the corner, and Arlian had thought better of pursuit.

“Lord Spider's true name isn't Horim, is it? Or Enziet, or Drisheen?” Arlian asked. He did not like the idea of killing a married man.

Rime shook her head. “No, no. Horim calls himself Lord Iron, and Enziet and Drisheen we simply call Enziet and Drisheen. Enziet has used a dozen other names over the years and we can't be bothered to remember them, while Drisheen has never used any name but his own. Our Lord Spider's true name is Dvios, and Lady Shard's is Alahi.”

“Is Lord Iron married, then?”

“No. Nor is Enziet. Nor Drisheen, nor Nail, nor Belly. You needn't worry about leaving any grieving widows.”

“That's just as well,” Arlian said. Then he noticed the curious half smile on Rime's face, and the way she was watching him as she toyed with the bone she always carried. “Do I amuse you?” he asked.

“In fact, you do, dear Obsidian,” Rime said. “You can't seem to make up your mind whether you're a warmhearted fool or a cold-blooded killer.”

“I would prefer to be neither a fool nor cold-blooded,” Arlian said.

“A warmhearted killer is something of an oddity, though, wouldn't you say?”

“And are we not all oddities here?” Arlian asked, taking in the entirety of the hall with a sweep of his hand. “For example, you say that none of the men I'm sworn to kill are married—surely, that's rather odd, that
none
of a group of five men would have a wife?”

“For ordinary men it might be odd,” Rime agreed, “but you're speaking of five dragonhearts, and furthermore, five who once owned a brothel. Would a man with a wife at home invest in such an enterprise?”

“Why not?” Arlian asked. “Do you think it would offend a wife's sensibilities?”

“It very well might.”

“Did it offend yours?”

“In fact, it did.”

“Yet you did nothing to stop it.”

“What could I do? They broke no laws, defied no ducal edict.”

“Yet you thought it wrong?”

Rime sighed. “No. I thought it, at worst, inappropriate. It was none of my business, and unlike yourself, I do not generally choose to meddle dangerously in matters that do not concern me.”

Arlian frowned and leaned back, unsatisfied; for a moment the two sat silently, Arlian motionless, Rime holding her bone in one hand and running the fingers of the other along its polished length.

“You call them dragonhearts?” Arlian asked after a moment.

“It's a useful term,” Rime said. “And I call us all dragonhearts, my lord—you and myself as well as the rest.”

Arlian nodded. “Of course,” he said. “And are Spider and Shard the only married dragonhearts, then?”

“Oh, I believe three or four have mortal partners,” Rime said. “I couldn't say which; I don't keep track.”

“Because they die,” Arlian said. He didn't need to make it a question.

“Yes, because they die. I have lived four hundred years, Obsidian; I can't be bothered to remember details that may not last a score of years.”

“And have you never married?”

Rime's fingers stopped their stroking, and the smooth white bone dropped to her lap.

“I was married,” she said. “I had a husband and four children when the miners from our village disturbed a dragon's rest. I fell into our well, bleeding and aflame, as I fled from its anger, and the water put out the fire and hid me. My husband was not as clumsy as I.”

“I'm sorry,” Arlian said, ashamed that his question had caused her pain.

“The well was poisoned after that,” she said. “Venom, or the dragon's foul breath, had tainted the water. I tasted it, and knew it was unfit to drink, so when I grew thirsty I sucked the blood from a gash on my hand.” She held out her left hand, and Arlian saw a faint white scar across the palm. “I'd cut myself on the stone as I fell in, you see, and venom must have gotten into it somehow, though I didn't know that for certain until years after.”

“And your leg—was that from the bad water?”

“That?” She glanced down at the wooden peg below her left knee, then lifted the bone in her hand and studied it for a second. Arlian, who had heretofore considered the bone merely a minor eccentricity, like Black's insistence on wearing black, suddenly realized that what she held was a human shinbone.

And he had little doubt as to whose.

“No, no,” she said, lowering the bone. “That happened years later, when I was snowbound in the Sawtooth Mountains. I was more or less intact when I climbed from the well and found what was left of my family.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Arlian said.

Rime shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“And you've never remarried?”

“Why bother?” she asked bitterly. “I can't have any more children; what do I need with a husband? I've built a fortune simply by living long enough to save and invest, so I don't need a man's money. Companionship?” She snorted. “Look around; do you see any of these men who would make a decent husband, knowing that we'll both live for centuries? Oh, an affair or two, certainly, but a marriage? And as for anyone
other
than our fellow dragonhearts, I don't have any interest in growing to love a man, and then watching him age and die while I can do nothing to prevent it.”

“Oh,” Arlian said.

“And that's why so few of us are married, Obsidian, because the dragons have made us cold-hearted, self-obsessed, and sterile.”

“But are you all? You still speak with passion,” he protested. “Wither seems devoted to his Marasa, and Nail seems eager to befriend others.”

“They're struggling against the inevitable,” Rime said. “As I am. The longer we live, the colder we become—like Enziet, who is, I believe, oldest of us all. Wither and Nail are old, too, but it may be that they've lasted as long as they have because of their passions—and Nail, at least, seems to me to be acting more from wistful memory than genuine warmth.”

“But why? Is it just from weariness, from seeing so much suffering and death over the years?”

She shook her head. “I don't believe it's long life alone that's responsible,” she said. “Remember, though, how we became as we are. We have all tasted blood and drunk venom, and whether it pleases us to admit it or not—and most often, it does not—each of us has a bit of dragon in her heart. The human part of us cannot live forever; while our bodies survive, our hearts, with time, grow more like dragons, cold and hard and ruthless, taking as much pleasure from others' pain as from any more natural delights.”

Arlian frowned. “Do you think, then, that the venom has such an effect?”

Rime laughed at that. “My dear foolish boy,
look
at us! We cannot bear children—or sire them, in your case. We age at only the tiniest fraction of the normal rate. Our very blood is poisonous—surely Wither told you that? Now, does that sound more like men and women, or like dragons?”

“Like…” Arlian began, but before he could speak a second word he was interrupted by a bellow.

“You!” a deep voice shouted, a horribly familiar voice. “Arlian! Get up!”

Startled, Arlian turned to see three men standing by the door, all still wearing hats and cloaks—and all with their cloaks flung back and their hands on the hilts of their swords. On the left was a short, stocky man he didn't recognize, clad in brown, with a curious brass sheath on one arm; on the right was Lord Toribor, clad in green and silver—even his eye patch was green; and in the center was Lord Dragon, resplendent in black and gold. His feather-trimmed hat appeared to be the same one Arlian had seen him wear atop the Smoking Mountain, so long ago, and his thin, scarred face was likewise unchanged.

Arlian pushed away from the table and rose. He felt himself starting to tremble at finding himself thus facing his elusive adversary, and fought it down. He looked at that grim face and remembered the smoking ruins of Obsidian, the bright blood spilling from Madam Ril's throat, Rose's dead eyes as she lay across her bed amid the flames.

“Lord Enziet,” he said, his voice steady. “We meet again.”

“Indeed,” Enziet replied. “And I am not pleased about it. Why are you here?”

“I am a member in good standing of this society,” Arlian replied.

“Why are you in
Manfort?
” Enziet demanded.

“Why would I not be? My business is here; my friends are here; and my sworn enemies are here.”

“I advised you to leave,” Lord Dragon said. “I am not accustomed to having my advice ignored.”

“I am not the Duke, nor any other of the fools you bully,” Arlian retorted. “I do as I see fit.”

“You are an annoyance,” Enziet replied, “and I do not intend to tolerate your presence here.”

“You are sworn to do me no mortal harm, I believe,” Arlian said. “How, then, do you intend to remove me?”

“You spoke of your friends and your business,” Enziet said. “I am not sworn to leave
them
alive. I believe I have lives in my own possession you would prefer not to see snuffed out.”

Arlian had managed to keep himself under control up to this point, but now his veneer of control cracked. “You would make these base threats against innocents?”

“There
are
no innocents,” Enziet said. “We are all creatures of filth and disgrace, foul and stinking, festering in our cramped little lives and pretending we have some value. I am not deceived, though you may be; we are no more than beasts, and those who have not drunk the blood and venom are even less. Removing a few short-lived nuisances a decade or two before their inevitable demise would occur in any case does not trouble my conscience in the least, and if it will rid me of
you,
then yes, I will do it.”

Sincerely shocked, Arlian asked, “Have you no honor?”

“I abide by my vows,” Enziet replied. “I recognize no other obligations.”

“And if I heed these threats, what are you asking of me?”

“That you leave this city forthwith. You may take your time in removing your household, but I want
you
outside the walls by sunset.”

“And if I refuse?”

“One of your precious ‘innocents' will die for each night you linger.”

“You would not balk at such murders? You fear no retribution?”

“You forget who I am, Arlian.”

“No,” Arlian replied, “I will never forget that. You are a monster in human form, an aberration that must be removed from the face of the earth.”

“I am chief adviser to the Duke of Manfort, and the eldest of the Dragon Society. I do as I please, and none dares defy me.”

“
I
dare,” Arlian retorted. “And if you harm those I care for, I will return the favor—starting with the Duke himself.”

He heard audible gasps at that, and even Lord Dragon seemed taken aback.

He had answered without really thinking, simply making the first counter-threat he that occurred to him. Having said it he could hardly back down, but he had to struggle to hide his own doubts. The Duke was a harmless old fool; killing him would be wrong. His greatest evil probably lay simply in listening to Enziet, and that was mere weakness, hardly inexcusable in a mortal confronted with the dragon's heart.

And the Duke would certainly have guards on all sides—but there were ways.

If his threat was to do any good at all, Enziet had to believe it.

“I have magic at my command,” Arlian continued. “Not your fine northern sorcery, but wild southern magic from Arithei and the Dreaming Mountains. I have other weapons as well. Be assured, I can destroy the Duke if I choose. And while you might well ingratiate yourself with his heir, do you really want the inconvenience of doing so? And how would you explain that you cannot order my execution for the crime?”

“You would kill both the Duke and myself in your pursuit of this chimerical justice of yours?” Enziet asked.

“I would,” Arlian replied instantly.

“You would throw all the Lands of Man into confusion simply to satisfy your own lust for vengeance?”

“I would,” Arlian repeated.

Lord Dragon smiled bitterly. “So you care no more for order and authority than I do for innocence and honor.”

“Precisely.”

“There's a legend that if the Duke's line dies out, the dragons will return,” Enziet remarked.

“There are many legends,” Arlian said. “I hope that one is untrue, but true or not, it doesn't matter.”