The Dragon Society (Obsidian Chronicles Book 2) (29 page)

"I think that is for the Society to decide," he said. "If you will not accept the decision of this body, and insist that matters between us be settled by blood, I am ready to meet you outside the gate, with swords, at a time of your choosing, to end this once and for all."

"That would resolve everything nicely," Spider said, sitting back in his chair. "If Belly kills Obsidian we'll be rid of someone given to making trouble, and if Obsidian kills Belly he'll have completed his vaunted vengeance and can behave like a civilized man thereafter."

Arlian did not say anything further, but he knew that killing Toribor would hardly complete his quest for revenge. The dragons were far more important. Disposing of the last of the Six Lords would merely end the overture, and allow him to raise the curtain on the main action.

Toribor stared at Arlian for a moment, and for a few seconds Arlian thought he was going to refuse—but that hardly seemed possible. A simple refusal would brand Toribor a coward and make a mockery of his accusations; only an apology and a genuine attempt at reconciliation could avoid both duel and disgrace, and Arlian did not think Toribor would do that.

For a few seconds, though, he
hoped
Toribor would make peace.

But then Toribor threw up his hands.

"Fine!" he said. "Fine. I think it's mad, but the whole
world
has turned mad since you first appeared, Obsidian. You should be hanged, but if I can't arrange that, then I will kill you myself. Tomorrow at midday, Obsidian, I'll gut you before a hundred witnesses."

"Tomorrow at midday, then," Arlian agreed, "in the plaza beyond the gates."

"Then I must ask one of you gentlemen to leave this hall," Door said. "It is not appropriate for you to debate by any means other than cold steel prior to your arranged meeting."

"I left last time," Toribor said. "It's your turn. Besides, you challenged me, not I you, and that makes the responsibility yours."

That caught Arlian by surprise, and he hesitated. He had not thought about that before offering to fight, but Toribor was quite correct, according to the customs of dueling—the burden of any inconvenience was on the challenger, not the challenged.

But Arlian wanted to hear what the Society's members had to say! He wanted to take part in the debates...

"My lord Obsidian?" Door said.

Arlian looked around, and saw three dozen people watching him intently—three dozen people he hoped to convince to join him in his crusade against the dragons. He would not convince them of anything if he ignored the proprieties and customs of Manfort's nobility.

"As you wish," he said, picking his hat up from the table. "Tomorrow at midday, Belly, we will see who is the better swordsman." He turned and headed for the door, donning his hat on the way.

As he stepped through the littie vestibule he grimaced. He was fairly sure who was the better swordsman, actually. They had fought before, and while they were closely matched, Arlian thought he knew who was the superior fencer.

Toribor.

When they had fought before Arlian had won, but he had relied on trickery and darkness, and Toribor had been distracted and unprepared, not fighting his best.

Tomorrow Arlian would not have those advantages.

He would therefore have to find others.

He had fought swordsmen better than himself before—Toribor, and Enziet, and Horim had all been more practiced with a blade. He had won all three bouts, through cleverness and good fortune rather than swordsmanship.

He hoped that cleverness and good fortune would be enough once again, tomorrow at midday.

"You really are mad," Black said, as he handed Arlian the wooden practice blade. "You haven't used a sword seriously in months, not since Enziet's death! An hour's practice isn't going to make up for that"

"I doubt Belly has had any more practice than I,"

Arlian replied, hefting the mock weapon—but even as he spoke, a memory tickled at the back of his mind.

Hadn't Lord Hardior said that Toribor spent all his time practicing swordplay?

"I wouldn't be any too sure of that," Black said.

"How do you know he hasn't been planning this ever since he got back to Manfort?"

"Black, I challenged
him,"
Arlian said. "He could have issued his own challenge and met me outside the Eve

gates n at as an hye spoke

time, if , though

he so , Arlia

chose. H ne wondere

did not." d if per-

haps Toribor had deliberately goaded him into issuing a challenge, to avoid alienating other members of the Society. It did not seem in character for him, but Toribor was a dragonheart, centuries older than Arlian—it could well be that he had depths Arlian had not per-ceived.

"And what if he thought you'd been practicing day and night, preparing for exactly such a meeting as this?" Black asked. "Wouldn't he have tried to stay in form against the day when he found it necessary to leave the city?"

Lord Hardior
had
said that Toribor had been practicing, Arlian was sure of it now—but there was little he could do about it. "Then he's more prepared than I,"

Arlian said with a shrug. "I'll just need to find some way to handle him. I'm younger and lighter than he is, and not
that
much less skilled; I have no intention of dying today."

"What we intend and what we accomplish often don't match," Black said, raising his own wooden sword. Then, without warning, he lunged.

Arlian parried clumsily, and the practice bout was on. At the end of the one-hour limit Arlian had set both men were tired and sweating, and Arlian was worried.

"You're not as rusty as I feared," Black remarked as he placed the swords back on their rack.

"I'm worse than I thought," Arlian said. "You would have killed me in seconds had these blades been steel."

"But I'm a better swordsman than Lord Toribor,"

Black said. "It's my job."

"No, your job is overseeing my household," Arlian said. "You haven't worked as a guard in over a year."

"I'm still better with a blade than he is."

"Well, that's true," Arlian admitted—and he did not add aloud, but thought, "though not by much." He had fought Black in practice, and he had fought Toribor in earnest, so he knew both men's abilities; Black had no such direct knowledge, and Arlian thought Black was underestimating Toribor.

Either that, or Black was trying to be encouraging, to keep Arlian's fighting spirit up.

"And you were doing better toward the end," Black added.

Black was being encouraging. Arlian made a noise but did not reply in words. For his own part, though, while he knew he had indeed done better toward the end, he was fairly sure that his recovery was due more to Black's tiring than his own improvement—dragonhearts tended to have somewhat more stamina than ordinary men. That was not an advantage he would have against Toribor.

Furthermore, he now doubted he would last long enough for stamina to matter. He would need to find a stratagem of some sort; in a straight and fair duel, he could expect Toribor to defeat him in fairly short order.

Of course, he shouldn't have been a match for Horim, and he had won that fight. Fate had often seemed to be on his side.

Relying too much on Fate would be foolish, though.

Fate might have had a purpose for him—but if that purpose was accomplishing Enziet's death, or killing Nail's dragon, or revealing secrets to the Dragon Society, then it had now been fulfilled and Fate was done with him. It was entirely possible he was about to go to his death.

He had lived with the possibility of sudden death much of the time since he was a boy of eleven, but just now, when the Dragon Society was debating its alle-giances and dragons might be about to attack, did not seem a very convenient time to die.

When he had issued his challenge he had not been very concerned with the possibility of dying, but now he had reconsidered, and was beginning to regret his decision to fight Toribor. It had seemed an obvious way to dispose of the last of the Six Lords he had sworn to kill, to remove his greatest opponent in the Dragon Society, to reduce the number of gestating dragons, and generally to settle several old matters so that he could devote his entire attention to the likelihood of open war with the dragons, but all those purposes assumed he survived the encounter.

And right now, that seemed unlikely.

Everything seemed to be going wrong for him of late. He had had an extraordinary run of good fortune for a time, from the moment he saved Bloody Hand's life until the moment he slew the dragon that Enziet had become; he had risen from being a slave to being one of the wealthiest men in the world, and had found and defeated most of his foes. He had learned secrets that had been kept for centuries. Oh, there had certainly been setbacks and tragedies along the way, but in general, all had gone well for him. He had known what he wanted, and had worked steadily toward achieving it.

Since his return to Manfort, though, events had slid out of his control. He had not expected Drisheen's assassin, had not anticipated Nail's death, had misjudged Wither's intentions, and now it appeared he had perhaps condemned himself to death by issuing a challenge he was unprepared to back up.

If Fate had indeed abandoned him, and he was about to die, there were matters he did not want to leave unattended.

"Listen," he said as he toweled the sweat from his neck, "you know I've named you my heir. I trust you to handle everything properly and see that the women are all treated well if I die today. However, I'd also like to be sure you will make at least some attempt to carry on my work, and make sure that the dragons' secrets do not remain secret, and that any attempt to restore their rule is resisted. I have told the Dragon Society what I know, but I am not convinced any of them have the stomach to carry on in my place. If the dragons come, I want the Duke's men to have obsidian weapons available. I do not want the Dragon Society to make some costly peace for the sake of their own lives. I do not want more dragons to be born and survive. I think you can trust Rime, and perhaps Shatter and Hardior and Door, but Lady Pulzera would rather see you dead and the dragons triumphant than give up any of her own privileges."

"Are you asking me to take over your madness?"

Arlian smiled crookedly.

"I know better than that," he said. "You're far too sensible to waste your life in such a fashion. I'm merely asking you to stay alert, and to always know which side you're on—the side of humanity. The dragons may make promises, they may even fulfill some of them, but they remain a blot upon the face of the world, a blot that should be expunged."

"I'm hardly likely to forget
that,"
Black replied.

"Of course," Arlian said. "But you may forget that appearances notwithstanding, the members of the Dragon Society, and anyone else with the heart of the dragon, are not truly human. They're part dragon, and they cannot be trusted in any conflict between human and dragon. Remember that. Don't be swayed by their words."

"I'll remember," Black said quietly, with a sideways glance at Arlian.

They ate a light luncheon, then separated. Arlian dressed quickly, choosing a blouse with loose shoulders that would not impede his arms, and wrapping a silk scarf around his throat despite the day's warmth, in hopes it might turn a thrust.

When he arrived at the gate, sword and sword belt in hand, he found Black waiting beside the coach—and Brook and Kitten waiting inside. When he saw the women he glanced at Black.

"Stammer is already walking down to the gate,"

Black said, "and I believe a few of the other servants, as well. Hasty chose to stay behind with Vanniari—a baby has no business at such an affair. Lily wanted to come, but Musk couldn't bear the thought of possibly seeing you die and begged Lily to stay behind with her. Cricket couldn't make up her mind, and finally I told her there wouldn't be room in the coach."

"Oh," Arlian said.

He had not thought about how any of this might affect the others in his household; he had been far too concerned with himself and his own plans. Naturally, though, the women would take an interest in a threat to their host's life.

Arlian looked at the two faces peering out the coach window at him, Kitten openly worried and Brook's expression unreadable. Riding down to the gate with those two sitting across from him was not an appealing prospect, but he had little choice; they could hardly be expected to walk, and he had no intention of tiring himself by walking, and to order them back into the Old Palace would be unkind.

He sighed, climbed into the coach, and settled onto the bench with his sword across his lap. Black closed the door, and climbed up to the driver's seat.

"Are you going to kill him this time?" Kitten asked, as the coach began to move.

"I certainly hope so," Arlian said. "The alternative would be for him to kill me, and I can scarcely consider that a desirable outcome."

"You can't just leave one another wounded?"

"I don't think so," Arlian said. "I doubt Belly would stand for it I think it's time to settle the matter."