The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) (28 page)

We can no longer breed with humankind; instead, we are all gravid with the dragons' young, and the dragons will surely therefore want to protect us, while ordinary humans will surely want us dead, so that those young will never be added to the foes they confront. Our interests he with the dragons, in the long term. Our older members have often remarked on how we grow colder as we age, and more like dragons ourselves—of course we do. Whatever our outward appearance, we
are
half-dragon, half-human, and that means that we are free to choose the side we prefer—and I would choose the side that has a very good reason not to kill us."

"And would you choose the side that slaughtered your natural family?" Toribor asked angrily. "The side that took my eye and half your hand?"

"I would choose the side that gave us a thousand-year lifespan and freedom from disease," Pulzera retorted, "the side to which my only possible surviving offspring will turn when I die."

"The side that will
kill
you producing that offspring!"

"Belly, I am almost two hundred years old; if not for the dragons I would be long dead. The dragons have given me centuries I would never have seen; should I loathe them that their gift is finite?"

"Yes,
damn you!" Toribor shouted. "You should hate them with all your heart for polluting you thus!" Then he whirled back to face Arlian.
"You
did this!" he said.

"You have ruined everything! You have perverted this Society, divided it against itself, with your secrets and your murders!"

"I have merely revealed the truth, and removed a traitor and his allies from our midst," Arlian said calmly.

"You call Enziet a traitor?" Toribor demanded.

"Of course," Arlian said, genuinely startled. "He withheld crucial information and bargained with the dragons, in violation of the Society's oaths."

"He kept us from one another's throats by keeping his mouth shut!"

Arlian could not think of any sensible reply to that; he merely shrugged. Around them, he could hear other members arguing with one another—it appeared that while a majority of the Society still found the idea of siding with the dragons intolerable, Pulzera was by no

"Pulzera,

means alon "e Hardio

in her r said loudly

opinions.

. "Stop and think

what you're saying"

"I have," she replied. "The dragons will not harm us if we do not fight them ourselves; they want us to survive. If we take up those magic spears Obsidian has reportedly made, then perhaps they will kill us in self-defense—after all, they can make more dragonhearts. But if we say and do nothing to oppose them, they won't bother us!"

"They may slaughter thousands of innocents,"

Hardior said. "They may enslave us all, as they did our ancestors."

"For some of us,
we
were enslaved, not our ancestors," Shatter said. "We have been free for seven centuries; I have lived for eight. I still remember."

"We can bargain with them, as Enziet did," Pulzera said. "We need not be enslaved. We know their secrets."

"And so do others," Arlian said. "What can you offer the dragons? Enziet offered his silence, but isn't it too late for that?"

"Well, who does know about it?" Spider asked. "All of us here, but who else?"

"Marasa," Rime said.

"And the servants," Arlian added.

"We could kill them," Pulzera said. "They're just servants, after all. We could accuse them of poisoning poor Nail."

"And Wither," Ticker added.

"They stabbed poor Wither, didn't they?" Pulzera said. "This Marasa probably arranged it so that she could inherit the estate; we can have her tried and hanged."

"Wait a minute," Arlian said, holding up his hands.

"Wait. Are you seriously proposing to kill two entire households in order to keep the dragons' secrets from spreading further?"

"Yes," Pulzera said. "Why not?"

For a moment the room fell silent, and Arlian looked at the faces before him.

Ticker merely looked confused; Toribor was angry aad uncertain. Rime's face bore a wry smile, while Spider was deep in thought Shard was frowning, Shatter uneasy. To one side, flardior was clearly very unhappy indeed; to the other. Door appeared determined while Zaner was, like Arlian himself, looking at other faces to judge his companion's moods.

It was clear that while not everyone liked it, this proposal was meeting no more resistance, and perhaps much less, than Pulzera's initial suggestion of siding with the dragons in the anticipated war.

Arlian hid his own disgust

He should have known, he told himself. Most of these people were slave owners. Many had fought duels to die death. None of them had protested when Enact and his five partners had maimed slaves to prevent them from running away. None of them had objected when the Six Lords killed five women in closing down their brothel in Westguard. None had thought the Society had any reason to meddle when Enziet and Drisheen and others killed or tortured people. None of them had seriously objected, for that matter, when Arlian had, in turn, killed Horim and Drisheen and Enziet They attached no great value to human lives. The only lives they seemed to care about, and the only rules, were their own.

As Pulzera said, they were half-dragon—their hearts
were
cold. They were far more concerned with their own convenience than with anything like fair-ness, justice, or mercy. Arlian was appalled. He de-baled whether to point out that his own steward, Black, had been a witness to both deaths, or to mention that Shuffler might not be on Wither's staff at all, but decided that far from deterring anyone, he would merely be adding more names to the death list

He could keep at least one name off, he thought.

"Lady Opal wants to be a dragonheart," he said. "It might be better to arrange that than to kill her, if we start bargaining with the dragons—a little blood and venom and she would be happy to join you, leaving no need to risk upsetting her relatives or allowing a trial where she might say something unfortunate."

Even as he finished speaking, he realized he might have just made a serious mistake. Saving Lady Opal might be a generous gesture, but it would also mean empowering a woman who already hated him, and perhaps creating a new dragonheart.

Furthermore, it would set an unfortunate precedent.

If the Dragon Society began "rewarding" others with the elixir that spawned new dragons Manfort, far from being a refuge from the dragons, would become their breeding farm.

He silently thanked the dead gods that the Society had no ready source of venom. His own interests and intentions still included exterminating the dragons, not breeding more of them. Pulzera was probably a lost cause, but he still hoped to convince most of the Society's members to join him in that fight.

"Listen," he said, "if a war with the dragons begins, what makes you think the dragons will deal with you?

Might they not just destroy all of Manfort, and create new dragonheads to replace us all?"

"They won't want to do that," Pulzera said. "That would set them back centuries."

"Dragons are patient," Lord Spider said.

"But they can trust humans, when it suits them,"

Pulzera said. "They've done it before. Ask Lord Shatter—in the old days, before they retreated to their caverns, the dragons had their human servants who served them willingly and ruled over the rest of humanity.

Those servants lived like kings.
We
could be their new servants!"

"I would rather be a free man, and a lord in my own right," Spider said.

"But will we really be free if war comes? We will serve either the Duke or the dragons," Hardior said.

Several voices spoke at once in reply. Arlian realized as he looked around and listened to the deepening hum of conversation that the meeting was breaking apart into smaller discussions—or arguments.

He could not prevent that, but there were matters he felt needed to be addressed before anything got out of hand. He arose from his chair.

"Excuse me," he said loudly, raising his hands, "but I would like to warn you all that if you attempt to kill everyone on Nail's staff, or Wither's, I will take it very badly indeed. There are people there I think deserve better, and furthermore I think it likely that rumors have already spread from household to household, and that any such slaughter would simply draw attention and lend interest to these tales."

"He's right," Shard said, but before she could say more Arlian continued.

"I was summoned here for a hearing regarding secrets I had withheld from this Society. I have now revealed those secrets, and explained why I withheld them. Am I to take it that the charges against me have been answered?"

"Ah," Hardior said. He looked around the room."I am satisfied, and see no need to pursue this; I think you've given us all much more important concerns to think about."

"It's not for you to decide, Hardior," Toribor said.

"It's the
Society
that decides."

"Then should we vote?"

"The senior members usually speak," Ticker said.

"What senior members?" Toribor demanded, turning in his chair. "He's killed them all! Enziet, Wither, Nail, Drisheerv—all dead!"

"Who
is
senior, then?" Hardior asked. "I hadn't thought about that..."

Door cleared his throat, and Hardior turned.

"My lords," Door said, "the senior surviving member is now Lord Illis, known as Shatter."

"Me?" Shatter said, startled.

"Door's the archivist and herald," Rime said. "He should know."

"Yes, but... I suppose I am the senior now, but I hardly know what we should do about this! Young Obsidian has upset everything we thought we knew. He's telling us the dragons
wanted
us to survive, to bear their young—that our survival wasn't due to oversights and accidents. That's... well, it's different.

And we can't live forever, but only a thousand years?"

He snorted a quick laugh. "
Only
a thousand! But to end as mere eggshells for dragons—it's undignified."

"Undignified
? It's
horrific
!" Toribor said.

'Tes," Shatter agreed, "it is. But Pulzera here proposes that it's still a better fate than we would otherwise face, and that we should be grateful to the dragons, and serve them. Some of us remember the dragons' servants from before, the ones who ruled over us in the old times, that Pulzera spoke of, and I don't think we remember them fondly—-do we
want
to become their successors?"

"Do we have a choice?" Pulzera said.

"We
always
have choices," Rime said. "Wither made his choice."

"That's not one
I'd
take!" Pulzera retorted.

"Excuse me," Arlian said, "but I insist we return to the original subject—decide my fate, please, before you debate these far weightier and more complex matters I had sought to spare you."

"Let him go," Shard said. "He doesn't matter anymore."

"Kill him," Toribor said. "For the murder of Lord Drisheen, if nothing else."

"Exile him," Ticker said. "Make him leave Manfort."

"Take away all those stone weapons," Pulzera said.

"If they really
can
kill dragons, then aren't we better served if they're destroyed?"

"We might need them," Spider objected. "What if the dragons can't be trusted? What if they decide we'd be safer locked away in their caverns?"

"I don't see how we can justify killing him," Shatter said. "He killed Drisheen outside the walls, apparently in his own defense, and don't we owe him something for finally showing us the truth?"

"He broke his oath!" Toribor insisted.

"I have now revealed what I withheld," Arlian said.

"I don't recall that the oath specified how quickly I must share my knowledge with the Society. I seem to recall you, Belly, telling me that when Enziet withheld secrets from the Society that he had his reasons, and this somehow mitigated his treachery; well, I had those same reasons."

"Punishing Arlian would be foolish," Lord Voriam said from one side. "He's brought us vital information, and what does it matter if he dawdled a month or two?

All here possess the heart of the dragon, and a life expectancy measured in centuries; this delay is of no moment."

"I would tend to agree," Spider said.

"And I," Shatter added.

Hardior looked uncertain, but said nothing.

"Who present yet opposes a dismissal of the charge?" Door bellowed.

"I do!" Toribor shouted.

"I'm not sure," Ticker said. He looked around at the others.

No one else spoke; silence settled over the room like a cloud of dust.

At last Hardior reluctantly spoke. "It would seem the charges are dismissed."

"No!" Toribor bellowed, rising.

Arlian considered swiftly. He had tried to make peace with Toribor when they had spoken before, and Toribor had refused; indeed, he had had Arlian summoned before this hearing, clearly hoping to see Arlian destroyed. Now that that had failed, Toribor still would not accept it

He clearly didn't want peace. He didn't even want to be assured that he was safe from Arlian's revenge.

He wanted Arlian dead.

And after all, why would he not? Arlian was responsible for the deaths of five of his friends, and had wounded and arguably disgraced him in a previous duel. Toribor wanted revenge.

Arlian understood revenge.

"My lord," Arlian said quietly, "it is not for you to say whether the charges are dismissed. It is for die Society as a whole."

"I don't accept that!" Toribor said angrily.

"My lord, I think you are acting from personal motives now, not in defense of the Society's interests."

"I hardly think it is in the Society's interest to keep a liar, a traitor, and a murderer alive in our midst!"

Arlian would have preferred to make peace with Toribor, but if that was not possible, then he wanted to get the entire affair over with now, rather than later. He did not think the Dragon Society could ever be united while both he and Toribor lived—Toribor would not stand for it.