Dragon's Treasure (22 page)

Half a ridari was a lot of money. But a good pair of boots would last years. She nodded. "All right. How long will it take?"

"Come back in a week."

When she reached her house, she found Karadur Atani sitting on her steps.

Morga frisked to him, tail wagging furiously. He bent to stroke the wolfhound's ears.

"My lord," she said. "What brings you to my house?"

"Your brother. I told you I would bring him."

She went past him, into the house. Her brother was sitting at the table. The right sleeve of his shirt was cropped. His face was thinner than she remembered.

Morga growled from the doorstep.

"Hush," she said to the dog. "It's Treion. You remember Treion." Neck hair raised, Morga sniffed suspiciously at his boots. "Go lie down." She looked at Karadur. "Thank you, my lord."

"Finle will come for you at sundown," he said to Treion.

"I'll be here," Treion said.

The cottage was still hot. They went into the garden. Treion put his left arm around her shoulders. She laid her palm against his chest, feeling his heart beat hard against her palm. "Tell me how you are."

He made a wry face. "I'm alive."

She gestured at his right shoulder. "Does it hurt?"

"It did. Sometimes it still does," he said. "You look well. Are you?"

"I am," she said. "How do they treat you at the Keep?"

He shrugged. "I work in the kitchen."

"In the kitchen?" She stared at him. "Can you cook?"

He grinned like a ghost. "No. I wash, and clean tables, and carry pots. Sometimes Boris lets me stir the soup."

"Where do you sleep? Where do you eat?"

"I sleep in the kitchen, with the scullions. I eat there, too."

"Do they mistreat you?"

"No." His eyes searched her face. "The traders told me you had died in the fire. How did you escape it?"

"I went into the river."

"Fenris...? " She shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"How did
you
escape the fire?"

His mouth tightened. He looked away from her. "Firefly outran it."

"Where did you go?"

"East," he said. "I wasn't alone. Edric came with me. You remember Edric? We went into the hills, to the border country between Ippa and Nakase. And then we went south. We stayed there for a while."

She said, "I know where you were." She took a breath. "I know about Castella."

"No," he said bleakly, "you don't." There was shame in his expression, and something deeper, something he had witnessed, or done, some horror. They spoke of other things. She told him about her friends, about Maura and Angus, and the child Rianna, and about the Hallecks. She described a recent visit to Castria. The tale of Jansi's goose made him smile.

"I have a new name," he told her. "Taran." He described his bargain with the dragon-lord. "I promised him a year of service, in exchange for freedom at the end of that year. He agreed."

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said bleakly. "I still don't understand why he didn't kill me."

Just before sundown, Finle Haraldsen knocked on the cottage door.

"I have to go," her brother said.

"The gods keep you safe."

He kissed her cheek, and did not answer.

* * *

It rained that night, a hard flat downpour. In the morning the fields were wet and glittering. Rain the midwife came by early for a basket of purple fennel. Then two of Miri Halleck's great-grandchildren arrived, to ask her to take the prickles out of their arms and hands. As payment, they had brought a basket filled with ripe, succulent raspberries. The children sat stoically as she teased the thorns out.

At midday she went down to the river to check her fish traps. One held a large flat eel. She killed it with a stone, filled a crock with water and salt, and put the eel in it to soak. Then, basket of berries on her arm, she walked to the Halland farmhouse. The house was a sea of scraps. Dolls perched everywhere. They lolled on the hearth rug. They sprawled on beds. Maura and Rianna called welcome to her across the chaos.

"What's happened?" Maia asked.

"A merchant from Ujo saw two of the dolls in Nini Daluino's stall in Castria Market and said he would buy the dolls from me and sell them in the south. He asked how many I could make. I told him twenty. He agreed to pay half a ridari for each doll I make. He bought four of the finished dolls to show to people, and he gave me four ridari, so that I could buy the cloth I need. He will return for them in October. What do you think of this one?"

She held up a nearly finished girl-doll. It was exquisite, slender and sleek, clothed in silk and lace. "She's beautiful," Maia said.

Rianna said, "She's a Kameni princess. Papa carved a crown for her. It has rubies in it. See?" She displayed the tiny circlet. It was painted gold, and studded with red beads. "I glued them on. Her name's Angelina. She has a prince. His name is Alessandro." The prince was dark-haired and handsome, wearing a sky-blue cape. He looked rather wistful. "He's handsome, don't you think? Where's Morga? Didn't she come with you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"She's off hunting. She does that sometimes."

"What did you bring us?"

"Raspberries."

"Yum." Maia handed her the basket. Rianna had grown an astonishing amount over the summer: she was brown, long-limbed, and limber.

"Where's your father?" she asked. She had not seen him in the fields.

"Taking honey from the bees." The Hallands had three beehives at the western edge of their fields. Maia had gone with Angus once to tend them. The smell and sound of the bees had made her nervous, but Angus moved about them easily, touching them with his bare hands, clearly unafraid. He burned puffballs to make the bees sleep.

"Come sit with me," she said to Maura. They walked outside and sat on the step. The ginger cat appeared and weaved around her ankles.

Maura said, "It's good to see you. You look happy."

"I am happy," Maia said. "I saw my brother yesterday."

"Ah. How is it with him?"

"He's alive. His arm is healed."

"And?"

"The lord made a pact with him. He promised to serve and be obedient for one year. If he can do that, the lord will free him."

"Will he do it?"

"I hope so." Savage Treion. Stubborn Treion. Karadur would kill him, else. She trailed a piece of straw for the ginger cat. It rolled on its back, batting the air.

Maura said, "Are you ever sad—sad that you came here, I mean? It is not easy, this life, and little of it was of your making. Do you ever wish to go home again?"

Home... Where was home? Reo Unamira's house was gone. Sorvino had ceased to be her home the day she left it, perched on the wagon at her mother's side.

Shall we ever come back here, Mama?
she had asked her mother.

Iva Unamira had answered,
No. We never shall.

She gazed across the fields toward her house. The smell of the rich soil rose from the earth like a blessing.

"No," she said. "I am home."

* * *

It was all, Marion diSorvino decided, completely and absolutely the Bastard's fault.

It had not been a good month. His favorite hunting horse was lame; left forefoot swollen all the way up to the knee. The grooms were poulticing it, but the horse could not be ridden. He had nearly sent the beast to the knackers. Only the assurances of his chief groom that the horse would eventually recover had kept him from doing so.

A letter—the third—had arrived from his banker, warning him that certain of his expenditures—in particular, the repairs he had ordered on the hunting lodge—were straining his domain's budget. DiSorvino despised budgets. He despised his banker. The man was a fool, with no understanding of how a man of his stature should live.

It was
entirely
the Bastard's fault. The harvest had been good. The olive trees had, according to his factors, yielded exceptionally well. The farmers, after making the usual complaints, had paid their taxes. But diSorvino had had to partially remit the taxes from Alletti, Bruna, Embria, and a half dozen other towns. He had had to replace the mill at Alletti, and the bridge at Maranessa. That was the Bastard's fault, no question. So were the extra payments he had to make to his troops, who would not have needed to be paid more than usual were it not for the months they had spent hunting the Bastard across every hill and ravine in western Nakase, to no avail. DiSorvino's banker had not been happy about that expense, either. He had not been happy about the very fine set of blown-glass goblets that had been diSorvino's wedding gift to Kalni Leminin's daughter. He had been positively scathing about the two cases of merignac diSorvino had purchased in Ujo. It did not help that in the rush to leave Ujo, the merignac—which he, himself, had bought, paid for, and personally arranged to have delivered to the hotel in a specially padded wagon—had been left on a street corner. Sitting at his desk, staring at the monthly accounts that Colm, his household steward, had left for him to review, Marion diSorvino wondered for the hundredth time what had happened to that wine. It had to have gone somewhere.

He wadded up the meticulously prepared account and tossed it away. The hell with it. Colm would sort it out. That was his job, after all. It
was
entirely the Bastard's fault. Damn his arrogant soul to hell. He was dead now, which was good. DiSorvino's only regret was that he had not been there to watch Treion Unamira die. He hoped it had taken a long time.

Tevio knocked on the door.

"My lord," the boy said. "Captain Nortero is here."

"Excellent! Send him in," said Marion diSorvino. "And bring me a bottle of brandy. This one's empty." He liked Nortero. Unlike his damned banker, Nortero was respectful, liberal-handed, and always ready with a joke. DiSorvino swept the papers off his desk and closed his hand around his glass, preparing to be entertained.

"Gilberto. Sit, sit. It's good to see you. Have some brandy." He pushed a glass Nortero's way.

"Thank you, my lord." Nortero filled the goblet. He was a big man, big in the shoulders and bigger in the belly. "Your health." He raised the glass.

"And yours." He waited until Nortero's ruddy nose had disappeared into the throat of the goblet before remarking, "Gilberto, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you're pregnant."

The soldier sputtered. "My lord, I weigh no more than when you last saw me. It's the jacket. It's cut wrong. I was just complaining to my tailor." He peered with mock anxiety down the slope of his massive chest.

"Ah. And how's Madelina?" Madelina Nortero was a pretty, pious ninny. Gilberto had married her for her money, with the promise that if she would not interfere with him, he would let her do anything she wanted. Since she wanted nothing better than to fill the house with astrologers and canting priestesses, it was a bargain that pleased them both. "Has she converted you to the path of virtue yet?"

Nortero's bluff face grew solemn. "My wife is very well. My wife, my lord," he intoned, "is a good woman." He raised his glass. "Praise be to the gods, that they did not make too many of 'em!"

"I'll drink to that," diSorvino said. He had given up on wives. Both of his had been difficult, deceitful women, and both—might they be damned through all the seven hells—had left him. Susanna had run off to Firense with that spindly-legged mummer of an apothecary. Iva had gone back to her bandit father. Whores were simpler to deal with. As long as you paid them, the bitches could not complain at what you did.

Nortero said, "My lord, Franco Genovese asked me to send you his greetings."

"Huh. I doubt that. Why were you in Secca?"

"Genovese's grandfather died. You remember. Lorca, the one who went mad. I went to the funeral. You asked me to go, my lord."

He remembered then. There had been some trouble on the eastern border, some small dispute about a boundary line. He had asked the Lemininkai to adjudicate it. The Lemininkai had ruled against him there, too. It wasn't fair. He should have won. "How was the funeral?"

"It wasn't," Nortero said.

"What?"

"We were ready to bury him, priestess there, grave dug, family standing about, looking solemn. But they couldn't find the body. Someone had taken it from the house, winding sheet and all. The servants whose task it was to prepare the body for burial all swore they didn't know what happened to it; the guards swore no one had come into the house.... Franco was spitting nails."

"He'd already paid the priestess?"

"Of course. But that didn't matter, or not so much. It was the theft of the bones that troubled him."

"Why?"

"Some people believe that you can do mischief to someone if you use the bones of their blood kin to make the spell."

"Hedge-witchery." DiSorvino made a face. "Gilberto, I thought better of you. How can you believe that slop?"