Dragon's Fire (10 page)

He heard voices.

“I thought I saw someone.”

Pellar froze.

“Shards, why don’t you shout it,” another voice growled in response. It was Tenim.

“Shh,” the first speaker hissed urgently.

Pellar held his breath, letting it out again as slowly and quietly as he could. The voices were too near for his comfort.

“There’s nothing out there,” Tenim pronounced after minutes of silence. “It’s just your guilty conscience getting you, Tarik.”

“When you said I’d get rich, you never said that I’d have to haul your coal for you,” Tarik grumbled in response. “What happened to all those brats of yours?”

“If you’re complaining, why don’t you bring your own brat along?” Tenim replied. “Not that he’d be able for more than a stone or two.”

“You leave Cristov out of it,” Tarik warned. “He knows nothing of this.”

Tenim laughed cruelly. “He wouldn’t think so much of you if he knew what his father was doing.”

“It’s for him I’m doing this,” Tarik replied. “The lad has a right to expect his father to do right by him. The way Natalon’s moaning, we’ll never earn enough at this mine.”

“Not enough for you,” Tenim agreed nastily.

“All I want is a place of my own and a chance to rest at the end of my days, not always slaving away for someone,” Tarik protested. “I’ve earned it. I would have had it, too, if it hadn’t been for you and the Shunned.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about them,” Tenim said. “And I said I’d take care of you.”

Pellar shuddered, wondering how Tenim planned to take care of Tarik.

“Come on,” Tenim said. Pellar heard groaning and the sound of something heavy being lifted. “Oh, stop groaning, this is the last load. We have to get you back while it’s still dark and snowing.”

“And you’ll want me again the next night it snows,” Tarik predicted with a grumble. His voice was farther away than it had been, they were moving.

“Exactly,” Tenim agreed viciously. “After all, you want to set something by for the end of your days.”

“Why are we hiding the coal way out here? How are you going to get it to market?” Tarik grumbled.

“Don’t you worry about that,” Tenim said. “When the time comes, this’ll fetch a pretty price from the right people.”

“How can the Shunned pay for anything?”

The last words Pellar heard was Tenim’s response: “Who said anything about the Shunned?”

“I’d thought that they would have to have help from someone at the camp,” Zist remarked when Pellar reported back days later. Pellar nodded. “Tarik was my first guess,” Zist added, “although I would have preferred being wrong.”

“What now?” Pellar wrote on his slate.

Zist didn’t look at the note immediately. He acknowledged it with a wave of his hand but sat back, staring off thoughtfully into the distance.

“The boy will have to make his choice,” he murmured finally. He glanced at Pellar’s note and then at Pellar.

“It would be nice to know what this Tenim plans to do with the coal,” Zist observed.

“I could follow him,” Pellar offered.

Zist wagged a finger at him. “Only when it’s dark and there’s snow on the ground. I don’t want you caught. In the between times, you’ll have to hide here, I’m afraid.”

Pellar frowned but Zist didn’t notice, once again lost in thought.

“No sign of the younger ones?” the harper asked after a moment. Pellar shook his head.

“A pity,” Zist said. “This Crom winter is vicious.”

It was awkward, having to hide in the cottage from Kindan, Natalon, Dalor, Nuella, and even Cristov, who was occasionally assigned evening lessons with Master Zist.

When Kindan tripped up Cristov one day, Zist assigned the youngster the job of discovering three of Cristov’s virtues. Pellar had found the whole situation amusing, from his position of greater age—two whole Turns—until Master Zist challenged him to do the same when they spoke about it two days later.

“I hardly know him,” Pellar wrote in protest.

“You’ve heard enough about him, haven’t you?” Zist asked, arching an eyebrow at him challengingly.

“Words aren’t truth,” Pellar wrote back.

“Too true!” Zist agreed. “Wiser heads than yours have yet to learn that, you know.”

“I listen,” Pellar wrote in modest reply.

“Then you should know all about Cristov,” Zist replied, returning to his challenge with a twinkle in his eyes.

Pellar was about to write a response when a knock on the side door—the one nearest Natalon’s stone house—interrupted him.

“That will be my lesson,” Zist said, motioning Pellar into hiding once more.

Swallowing his unhappiness, for he had hoped that Kindan’s absence would give him more time to spend with his adoptive father, Pellar retreated to his hiding place in Zist’s study. In moments the air was filled with the sound of someone practicing on the pipes. Pellar listened, imagining the fingering and scales while hearing Zist’s patient corrections and the young piper’s self-deprecating remarks.

Pellar mentally replayed his conversation with Zist and what he’d overheard about Cristov to see if he could rise to his Master’s challenge. What did he know about the boy?

He recalled Kindan complaining about how Cristov bragged about sleeping in Kindan’s old room and wondered if perhaps Kindan hadn’t mistaken Cristov’s intent; perhaps Tarik’s son was seeking a common ground, some mutual point of interest on which to build a friendship. Pellar knew from what little he’d heard that Cristov had felt very close to Kaylek before his untimely death; perhaps the boy had hoped in a similar way to kindle a friendship with Kaylek’s little brother.

It was clear that Cristov respected and honored his father—in fact, most fights Cristov had been involved in had begun over comments about his father. Pellar couldn’t blame the lad for being loyal.

Noise of a door opening and voices speaking interrupted Pellar’s musings; Zist’s lesson had left. Before Pellar came out of hiding, he heard quick steps approaching the front door and the noises of Kindan returning.

He heard Zist quiz Kindan on what he’d learned and was pleased to hear that Kindan listed loyalty as one of Cristov’s strengths. Pellar shook his head wryly when Zist demanded that Kindan recount the contents of the cottage—he could have guessed that Master Zist would have had more than one lesson for the lad to learn.

When Zist told Kindan that there’d be a Winter’s End celebration the next evening, Pellar fought down a feeling of betrayal, for he hadn’t heard of it before and knew that he couldn’t possibly attend.

When Kindan had gone to bed, Zist brought Pellar back out of his hiding place, holding a finger to his lips for silence. Pellar gave him a sardonic look and pointed to his lips, shaking his head to remind Zist that there was no fear of
him
talking too loud. Master Zist glared back at him and Pellar’s teasing look faded on his face. He knew full well what Zist wanted.

“What did you think?” Zist asked quietly.

“About the house?” Pellar wrote back, referring to Kindan’s enumeration of the contents of Tarik’s house. Zist nodded. “No surprises, no more than most.”

Zist nodded in agreement.

Pellar wiped his slate and quickly added, “A sack full of marks is not hard to hide.”

“If he had one,” Zist said. Pellar gave him a questioning look, so Zist added, “I don’t see why he’d be working here if he already had enough set aside.”

“Snow’s melting, traders will be here soon,” Pellar wrote in response.

“But with the mud and patches of snow on the ground, tracks will be easy to follow,” Zist said. “Some traders might wait until later.”

“Or Tenim might create a distraction,” Pellar suggested.

“
That,
” Zist replied, “is a disturbing notion.”

“I could keep watch,” Pellar wrote back.

Zist mulled the suggestion over for a long time before he nodded in agreement. “Just don’t get caught.”

Pellar responded with an indignant look.

“When will you leave?” Zist asked, ignoring the look.

In response, Pellar grabbed his pack.

“It’s late enough,” Zist said by way of agreement. “Just be careful.”

Pellar would have never found Tenim if the other hadn’t been with Tarik. It was Tarik’s clumsy, irritated motion that had alerted him. Tenim slid through the trees like a wisp of smoke. At the first sign of motion, Pellar froze and slowly pressed himself against the nearest cover.

“Traders will be here soon, and then what?” Tarik muttered angrily as they walked by. “If Natalon finds out that I’ve been mining the pillars, he’ll guess—”

A raised hand from Tenim halted Tarik’s tirade.

“What?” Tarik demanded after the barest moment’s silence.

Tenim ignored him, turning slowly in a circle where he stood, carefully examining every bit of the terrain.

Pellar desperately wondered if Tenim could sight his trail; he’d been careful to take an oblique approach.

“Nothing,” Tenim said after a moment, clearly still nervous. He motioned Tarik onward. “So you’re afraid of your nephew, are you?”

“He’s too much like his father,” Tarik said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Slow, methodical, never willing to cut corners, but he always gets there in the end.”

“What has this got to do with the Traders?”

“He’ll figure that someone’s been stealing coal, that’s what,” Tarik growled back.

“Only if he finds out you’ve been mining the pillars,” Tenim observed. “Otherwise he’ll think he’s only got the coal you and the other shift leaders have reported mining.”

“It was easier when it was my own mine I was stealing from,” Tarik muttered darkly.

“You still would have had it if it hadn’t been for the accident that collapsed the roof,” Tenim replied.

“Accidents happen,” Tarik said dismissively. “Masterminer Britell’s board of inquiry never accused me of anything.”

Tenim paused mid-stride and gave Tarik a very piercing look.

“What?” Tarik demanded, sounding just a bit frightened.

“Nothing,” Tenim answered with a shrug, gesturing for Tarik to precede him. “Just, as you said, accidents happen.”

Tarik looked nervously back over his shoulder. “I’ve been good for you.”

“Indeed you have,” Tenim agreed. “In fact, I think we’ve hauled enough for this evening. Why don’t you go back home before your wife and son begin to wonder where you are?”

Tarik glared at the young man. Tenim took the glare with no change of expression, merely leaning down to tie his boots tighter, his hand casually brushing the knife hidden at the boot top. Tarik’s anger cooled visibly when he caught sight of the knife hilt and he nodded. “Perhaps I’d better, at that.”

“Good,” Tenim answered with an unpleasant smile. “You said that there’d be Winter’s End festivities tonight? In Natalon’s big house?” He didn’t wait for Tarik’s answer. “I could do with some diversion. Maybe I’ll attend—”

“You’d be recognized!”

“—from a safe distance,” Tenim finished, his eyes flashing in amusement at the other’s blatant terror.

“Don’t get caught.”

“Have I ever?”

“I found you, didn’t I?” Tarik responded.

“Yes, you did,” Tenim agreed, lowering his eyes. Considering Tenim’s woodcraft, Pellar seriously doubted that Tarik had really found the youth; probably Tenim had
let
himself be found.