The Dragon Lord (35 page)

“Lady, my thanks for the offered hospitality at such brief acquaintance, but…” He was trying, and failing, to keep a back-note of apprehension from his voice. “But this is urgent!”

“Indeed?” She glanced at him, looking hard and deep, and her eyes narrowed as once more she looked beyond the apparent to what truth might lie behind it. Not merely his words this time, but the whole man himself. And she saw. Now all the badges and the marks of lofty rank could not conceal the fact that this Cavalry
hanalth
was in all probability no older than her own second son—and most likely younger, at that. But there was an air about him, not merely an expression in the eyes and face but the whole set of his body, that spoke of… Not fright exactly; Aiyyan corrected her own thoughts even as they formed. More of unease. He looked—and now her storyteller’s mind inserted coloration that was all too apt—like a scholar who had found logic in something unbelievable. As if he had just found a way to prove that twice two equals five. Or three! “We really must set aside the time for a lengthy talk, Commander Dirac,” she began to say. And then stopped saying anything, since it was plain that he was no longer listening.

Instead the commander was staring off and away over her shoulder, not quite into the distance, for big though it was Tower Square could scarcely boast a view that would qualify as distant, but certainly
at
something, with an intensity that was disturbing. Aiyyan broke eye-contact just long enough to shoot a glance over her own shoulder, then turned back with the beginnings of a new respect and wariness in her own face. She had thought that this young man was interested in legends which his peers considered either peasants’ fare or slightly distasteful— hence his nervous secrecy—but she had not for a moment thought that there might be something more. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Already the young
hanalth
was backing away, his mind quite plainly on his own affairs once more. The focus of his gaze flicked back to her for just an instant, and in that instant he saluted her, grinning as she might have done herself on a would-be witty exit line. Except that his grin, his tight-lipped baring of white teeth, lacked the essential quality of humor. “Lady, about what I said: this is more urgent still!”

And then he was accelerating away.

“Ker’Trahan steading, commander,” she yelled after him with all the power of a voice that had been trained for song and public speaking. “Beyond the Great and Lesser Mountains and through the valley . . .” Aiyyan ker’Trahan closed her mouth around the unfinished sentence, knowing that to continue was a waste of breath. She looked from side to side and felt the slightest tremor of embarrassment as she met the interested—if somewhat bewildered—stares of the new audience who had begun to take their seats around her. A scarcely-formed notion of following the
hanalth
—just to see what happened; all right, call it nosiness!—took no further shape as she sat down and composed herself with a toss of her silvery head and a sweet storyteller’s smile. One after another they named favourite tales: classics, rarities, her own work.

Aiyyan pushed the strange young officer and his most un
hanalth
like interests right to the back of her mind. But not out of it entirely; he was far too interesting a potential story-character for that. Then she drew breath, nodded at her audience, and began:

“Lessa woke, cold…”

What Aldric had seen, and what Aiyyan the storymaker had seen, was a man on a horse. But no ordinary man, and no ordinary horse—that, of course, was the problem. He was an exhausted man on a lathered horse and— though neither of them knew it—he had ridden through Egisburg’s North Gate at a hard-gallop less than five minutes before. His long yellow overmantle—splattered now with the parti-colored mud of two provinces and an independent holding—bore embroidered crests at chest and cuffs and in the center of the back: stylised blue gerfalcons, with gold-feathered wings. They were the unquestioned markings of an Imperial despatch-rider, one who might at a moment’s notice be commanded to ride at a pace that involved two hundred miles between one dawn and dusk along the roads of graded dirt that were forbidden to all but those who wore the Falcon badge.

This horseman had the look of one reaching the end of such a mission: a messenger with seventy leagues and a score of weary mounts in his wake across the Empire. Both his sweat-stained appearance and the jingling crossbelt hung with warning bells attracted curious glances— mostly from those who would have done better to mind their own business, but in at least one case from one who was determined to profit from the chance which had let him see this new arrival in the city.

The Falcon courier was a source of murmured speculation; and several of those who murmured then cast would-be knowing looks towards the black silhouette where the Red Tower reared into the night sky. There could be, they ventured, only one reason for a Falcon to arrive in Egisburg in such a state and at such an hour. And that reason was the Princess in the Tower: Marya Marevna an-Sherban.

Without exception, they were both wrong and right at once.

Such a suspicion had flickered across Aldric’s mind when he first saw the rider walk his stiff-legged mount around the swarming mass of people in the square. But then he had seen him halt, reining in the horse with the gentleness of skill and consideration. And that was when the second possibility took shape. His own presence in the city—indeed the presence and the purpose of the whole small group—could be another and equally viable reason for a Falcon to ride tonight into this of all the many cities of the Empire. There was no chance of getting through the crowds fast enough to intercept the man, even had he been prepared to try. Instead Aldric made his impolite and over-hasty goodbyes to Aiyyan the talemaker—privately determining to hold her to her offer of hospitality sometime in the future—and began the process of returning to the inn where Bruda and Tagen and Voord awaited his return, and the striking of the Hour of the Cat. Damned if that rider didn’t look as if he was waiting for someone! Or something.

A clock chimed somewhere at the perimeter of the square, and Aldric’s head twisted on his neck to see it and to read what hour showed on its face. Then he relaxed a little; the half-mark of the Hour of the Dog, and seven o’ clock as Albans reckoned time. But he didn’t relax completely because that still left an hour for the courier to set everything wrong before a “deputation of officers” arrived at the Red Tower’s gate. When a convenient space presented itself at his elbow, Aldric shouldered himself clear of the people in Tower Square and, throwing the assumed dignity of his assumed rank to the Nine Cold Winds of Heil, he began to run.

And because of that precipitate departure, he quite missed the courier’s contented glance at the selfsame still-striking clock, and the leisurely way in which he shook his tired horse to a walk.

Another clock was striking for the same hour as Aldric approached the inn. Wondering vaguely and with no real interest why the Empire failed to regulate its public timepieces more correctly, he slackened his pace. Somewhat out of breath—a breath that fumed white in front of him as he gasped it in and out—and stickily warm despite the freezing night, he tugged with both hands at his rumpled clothing. Right now, Bruda’s sarcasm he did
not
need—not when at the same time something fatally unpleasant might be brewing in the Red Tower.

Ahead of him a door opened; snapped hurriedly open to release a fan of yellow lamplight sliced by a fast-moving shadow, and then as hastily jerked shut. For some reason that was no reason at all, Aldric swivelled sideways and faded into the darkness between two buildings. It wasn’t exactly suspicion, and it wasn’t quite wariness. But it was enough to put him where he couldn’t be seen, without a pause to think about it.

Softly set-down footsteps approached and passed; and Lord-Commander Voord’s distinctive profile passed him by, back-lit by the tavern’s courtyard lamp. No matter that he was already near-enough invisible, Aldric flattened himself against the wall at his back and wrapped anticipatory fingers round Widowmaker’s hilt. Nothing came of it and Voord strode on, but to Aldric’s senses, heightened by perception or deepened by suspicion as they were, he strode too quietly for so early in the eve-ning. Later, perhaps, and it might have been no more than an innocent wish not to disturb, but now—to Aldric at least—each step seemed furtive, stealthy… And worth further investigation.

Closing the black-and-silver rank-robe right up to his throat and flipping its deep hood over his head, Aldric waited for a count of ten before venturing back onto the street. By then Voord was a good thirty yards away, and hard to see except when he was silhouetted by a paler background. Aldric took note of it and was careful not to make the same mistake himself.

Voord’s progress made him smile thinly at the
hauthei-sart’s
arrogance; the man had taken not the slightest precaution against detection or pursuit, and stalked through the streets of Egisburg as if he owned them. And a jolt of sobering thought suggested that he just might. Aldric, by contrast, slipped quietly from shadow to shadow without being overly obvious about it. At least he was wearing his own moccasin boots rather than the heavy military issue; even the quality-controlled officer’s pattern made tracking by ear a simple undertaking. Had Voord done the same, then in all likelihood he would have been lost before the end of the first narrow street.

Eventually the Vlechan halted. Then—and only then— he swept the street with a glare that had been signalled whole seconds in advance. Without even trying to glimpse his quarry’s doings, Aldric was already hidden snugly and quite out of sight around a corner—holding his breath, and listening with the good ears that God had given him.

He heard first a soft, staccato tapping and then the slither of a heavy wooden door sliding in well-waxed channels. Aldric was sufficiently quick-witted to memorise the pattern of the tapping; and sufficiently cautious not to risk a rapid glance around the corner until the slithering sound was repeated and, more importantly, punctuated with the solid thump of a closing door.

There was nobody to see. As he had guessed, Voord was inside whatever door had just opened and shut.
But which one
? Aldric silently debated for a few seconds whether to move closer or not. Then had the choice made for him.

Don’t!

Voord came out again, very fast, and Aldric wrenched himself back out of sight with equal speed. The Vlechan had been inside for only a matter of minutes—and what sort of time was that to spend on a secret which involved use of the Falcon couriers? Other than asking, Voord himself, there seemed just one way to learn the answer.

No. There were two. Either he could go back, confront Voord and hope that Bruda could pry more than well-turned lies from his subordinate; or he could learn it himself, in the same way that Voord had done. Whether the
hautheisart’s
source would be amenable to repeating himself was something Aldric might well learn within the next few minutes.
You’re an idiot
, he told himself. Silently he agreed. There was really nothing else to do.

By the time he reached the door Aldric had his course of action planned—more or less. It wasn’t sorcery, and in a way he wished that it was; there would be fewer variables that way. It was just a virtuoso display of daring and impudent nerve. Holding in a deep breath to calm himself—
calm? now there was a joke
!—he reached out with one gloved and slightly meat-spiced hand to firmly rap the door.

“
Keü’ach da
?” The voice might have been muffled by thick timber, but its tone was plain enough: suspicion, pure and undiluted. Voord had come and Voord had gone, but no other visitors were expected.

Aldric paused, counted ten and then rapped again more loudly. More irritably. More in the fashion of a man kept waiting five seconds of which four were a compound insult. He sifted through his mind for what he intended to say—which was obvious enough to that same mind—and the form in which he meant to say it, which was proving somewhat more elusive. Whoever was on the far side of that as-yet-unopened door would have to be impressed by and convinced of his authenticity within two sentences and without credentials, or he would never be convinced at all. And then it would be killing time.

And still the high-mode diphthongs eluded him… Aldric had of necessity used Drusalan as a first language for almost a month now, except for those rare occasions when he could employ Jouvaine or—luxury!—Alban. And therein lay the problem. For during that almost-month, apart from one or two anger-fuelled lapses he had been careful to avoid just such phrasing and construction as he was now pulling from his memory; because spoken by inferior to superior, the High Speech was a blood insult. And in all the Empire, there was nothing more inferior than a rankless Alban.

“Is it thy intention that I stand here until the dawn?” he snarled at last, pitching his voice low and loading it with all the arrogance that he could summon. Not that High Drusalan in its augmented mode required much in the way of tone to make it arrogant. Aldric breathed deeply once more, with a studied, calming count between inhalation and speech, then spoke again. “I grow impatient with thee, man!” A good octave below its normal level, his voice sounded fierce, gritty—and strained, observed part of his mind. Aldric mentally commanded that part to keep quiet. “I command: open, or there will be blood spilt!”
You’re committed now, so say it all
! “Voord commands! And I warn: I have finished speaking!”

He hadn’t known quite what would follow that— whether the door would inch back or jerk open all at once. In the event it did neither, but slid smoothly to one side without any apparent haste. Playing this game by instinct, and ignorant of whatever rules might govern it, Aldric knew he didn’t dare risk losing the initiative. Which was why, instead of stepping forward and inside directly there was room to do so, he stayed right where he was and let the lamplight come to him.