In the House of Five Dragons
2. Hatchling
“The veil between Terra and Alterra is more like skin than stone. If you hold your hand up to a bright lamp, you can quite clearly see the shape of the bones and even the blood that runs beneath. We know what lies beyond our world, Huron. We know that they can see our blood, too, even better than we can.”
— Liam Io, Carcaen historian
Ortho’s lungs were on fire. His eyes filled with tears. The smoke choked him and raised sour acid at the back of his throat. He coughed and spat, but burning smoke clung to his breath like a horribly inverted winter chill. Ortho wiped his nose and mouth on his sleeve, almost dropping the pipe.
Beside him, Jaesun chuckled and leaned back against the wall. The older VEIL knight was convinced that he could not handle the tobacco, but Ortho was determined to prove him wrong. Ortho braced himself and sucked down another mouthful of stinging, bitter smoke. How did anyone enjoy this stuff? He coughed and Jaesun laughed again.
“Ah, shut it,” Ortho rasped. At least the pipe gave his voice a properly rough, growling quality.
“Little boys need little toys,” Jaesun said with the world-weary air of a lecturn with his most troublesome students. “Give it here.”
“I’m not done yet!”
“You’ll be done breathing, boy, if you drool all over my pipe anymore.”
Ortho licked his burning lips. He didn’t dignify Jaesun with a response, but handed back the shiny hywood pipe. Jaesun smirked and wiped the stem on the black sleeve of his saela, then held it up as if to toast the younger knight’s failure. Jaesun put it in his mouth, puffed a few times and then blew a long stream of gray smoke into the clear blue sky. Ortho rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the city.
Mazrem Square was busy today. It was always busy, even on worship days. Most everyone in Dormaen passed through the plaza at some point during their week. Visitors came from all over the fifty provinces to pay their respects to the memory of the Carcaen Empire’s greatest hero. Outside the imperial palace and the wealthy Everstone district, Mazrem Square was the most important place in all of Dormaen. And here in the capital city of Carce and center of the largest empire in history, that was saying something.
Mazrem Square was not an actual square, but a circular agora where the four main roads of the city crossed one another. On the north face was the popular Vaestra Amphitheater, surrounded by green grass and golden-leaved aspen trees. A plaza stretched out beyond them, paved all in marble and dotted with sculptures and carved benches under the tall hedges.
Visitors rested, shared gossip and news in the fragrant company of jasmine and lilies. Across the wide white road that encircled the plaza, Mazrem Square kept good company: the best of Dormaen’s universities, high-rent and high-priced stores, laweries and even a few small, outrageously expensive homes.
Ortho surveyed the crowd that filled Mazrem Square. Like him, most were native to the old kingdom of Carce — tall and dusky-skinned, with dark eyes and straight black hair. But there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, from the rest of Carce’s fifty provinces: pale Lynceans, thick-limbed men from Erastrasus and slender, veiled women from Caspin, Nianese in their gray wool cloaks despite the heat, midnight-skinned Jumaari, even Suvestri decorated in flashing gold jewelry.
In the center of it all rose Ortho’s charge: a statue of the hero himself: Captain Rikard Mazrem. The monument was carved ten times life size in pristine alabaster and girded in titanic armor. Standing guard over his statue was one of VEIL’s least exciting duties, but Ortho never turned down the chance, even if it meant working with Jaesun for the day.
Captain Mazrem’s face always captivated Ortho. The dark jasper eyes were wise and kind the way no living man’s could ever be. The statue’s expression was properly grave, heavy with the worries of an infant empire and his dying army. But there always seemed to be a small, secretive smile playing about his stone lips, as if Captain Mazrem knew that his sacrifice would someday be immortalized in the very heart of the nation he died for. A fluted marble pedestal bore a simple, elegant bronze plaque:
In reverent memory of Lord-Captain Rikard Caelis Mazrem
May all of Carce prove worthy of his sacrifice
A short fence surrounded Mazrem’s statue, almost completely obscured by piles of offerings left over from festivals the week before in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Lord-Captain Mazrem’s astonishing victory and tragic death in Njorn Pass. There were flowers, wilting and drying in the late summer heat. Even now, the delicate blossoms clung to their color and gentle scents. There were effigies and incense, colorful stones and candles, ribbons and even several sealed jars containing secret, personal gifts to Captain Mazrem. Prayers written on scraps of paper stuck out from between the offerings like pale imploring hands, reaching up toward Rikard Mazrem.
After a few puffs, Jaesun offered his pipe to Ortho with another mocking warning. Ortho scowled and wiped the stem on his shirt until it was reasonably clean. The carved hywood was hard, slippery and seemed intent on escaping his mouth. The smooth golden cap on his finger made just holding the pipe tricky. How did Jaesun make smoking look so easy?
A girl separated herself from the crowd. At first, Ortho paid little attention to her and concentrated on the not inconsiderable task of smoking Jaesun’s pipe. But she was moving toward them, Ortho realized, not the statue or its collection of offerings. The girl was younger than Ortho, maybe in her late teenage years, though it was difficult to say for certain. Her skin was pulled drum-taut over her bones with no fat and little muscle to soften the sharp lines. Her angled eyes were the same shape as any Carcaen, but that white skin and tangled hair the color of fire… The girl had to be Fiori.
What did she want? Money, probably. Or food.
There were rumors of some kind of mold or blight in the grain fields of Erastrasus. The poor were almost as panicked as the wheat sellers and their investors. Maybe the girl was coming over to beg. She must have been very bold — or very desperate — to approach VEIL knights.
“There’s a Fiori coming this way,” Ortho said.
He elbowed Jaesun in the ribs and repeated the warning.
“Hae,” the girl hissed when she was close enough. She tugged on Ortho’s sleeve. Her shoulders were hunched into a tight, frightened bow. “Hae, sirs.”
“What do you want?” Ortho asked.
He slurred a little around the pipe still in his mouth. A gob of saliva gathered on the stalk and dribbled down onto his chest. Ortho flushed and tried to scrub it away, but Jaesun had already noticed.
“Looks like she’s got you drooling. I’ll just leave you two pigeons alone,” he said, then laughed and paced around the far side of Captain Mazrem’s statue.
Ortho blushed harder and quickly tucked Jaesun’s pipe into his belt. He wiped at the blotch on his saela again, but succeeded only in smearing the wetness around.
“Gods, girl, this had better be important,” he said. “What do you want, Fiori?”
“Not all Fiori! My father’s a fine Carceman, sir, just like you. Can’t help the rest of my blood, can I?”
“No… I suppose not.”
The defeat of the barbarian tribes was thirty years past, by the blood of Captain Mazrem himself. Now Fiore was just another province of the Carcaen Empire. The Fiori people paid the same taxes as anyone else. For a half-starved, dirty little foreigner, the girl was almost pretty. Pretty enough, at least. Ortho found himself smiling at her.
“What’s your name, girl?” he asked.
“Senna, sir.”
Ortho nodded and wiped his sleeve across his face. The day was hot, so he only wore the black saela of the Star Court, without the traditional steel-banded leather VEIL armor over it. Of all the people in Carce, only the knights of VEIL wore pants and buttoned-up saelae. Everyone else, men and women alike, wore wrapped tabbae pinned at one or both shoulders and belted around the waist. Senna’s tabba was so dirty and patched that its original color was only a memory.
After a furtive glance around the crowded plaza, Senna reached under a fold of the threadbare cloth and looked up at Ortho.
“I got something nice for a knight like you, sir,” she said. “Something special.”
“What is it?”
Ortho leaned in. He had a good guess what it was that Senna wanted. It was not the first time his uniform had won Ortho a girl’s attention, but was one of few enough occasions that he didn’t want to pass it up. Perhaps Jaesun would let him go off with the girl for a few minutes…
But Senna surprised him. From her dirty tabba, she withdrew something folded in a piece of canvas, something that sat heavily in her hand. When she unwrapped the cloth and held out the contents for his inspection, Ortho gaped.
It was a medal, a flat bronze disk etched in careful detail with the Carcaen lion-and-laurel crest. There was a date printed at the bottom: 1248, the same year marked at the base of Rikard Mazrem’s statue. The year of his legendary sacrifice.
“What the bloody hell is this?” Ortho hissed under his breath. “Where did you get it?”
“From… from a trader just out of Fiore. Said he came through Njorn Pass and found it when he pulled off to sleep for a night.”
“Njorn Pass? Are you sure?”
“Hae. That’s what he said. You know what it is, sir?”
“Yes,” said Ortho. “Do you?”
Senna squirmed under Ortho’s scrutiny and looked away, turning her eyes up to Rikard Mazrem’s benevolent face instead. Ortho followed her gaze.
“This medal is the Emperor’s Favor,” he told the Fiori girl. “It’s only given to the greatest heroes of Carce.”
Senna looked at Ortho again, her eyes wide. “The Emperor’s Favor? But who would throw away something like that?”
“No one. But maybe someone dropped it.”
“Sir?”
“Well, it’s marked the year of the conquest, but the army didn’t enter Fiore by Njorn Pass,” Ortho said with growing excitement. “The battle of Njorn Pass was at the end of the war, when Captain Mazrem began retreating back to Carce. By then, the generals of the Star and Moon Courts had all been killed by the Fiori. Don’t you see? Everyone of consequence was already dead by the time the army got there!”
With an effort, Ortho snapped his mouth shut. Senna shook her head in slow stupidity. She didn’t understand. Not yet.
The knight fumbled under his saela for his wallet and pulled out a few gold-rimmed coins, each stamped with a smaller version of the same lion and laurel tree on the medal. Senna’s eyes widened at the sight of the money, probably more than she had ever seen in her short, dirty little life. Ortho took the medal from her boneless fingers and replaced it with the coins.
“You shouldn’t have this, girl. Take these instead and walk on,” he told her.
“Four laurels for a piece of bronze? But that’s too much, even for the Emperor’s Favor! Why, sir?”
Ortho could no longer keep the grin from his face.
“This must have belonged to Captain Mazrem himself,” he said. “Rikard Mazrem was the only man important enough to carry an award like this into Njorn Pass. There were only a few thousand VEIL left and none of the common soldiers would have been given a medal like this. It must have been his.”
“Rikard Mazrem?”
Senna lunged for the bronze disk, but Ortho curled his thick fingers around it and backhanded the Fiori girl. She sprawled on the ground, clutching one hand to her jaw. A few heads turned and a murmur rippled through Mazrem Square.
“This is robbery!” she cried. Senna looked as though she might leap at Ortho again. “I could buy an entire district for what that medal’s worth!”
The crowd filling Mazrem Square looked on, frozen in fear. What if the girl stood up and hit the knight?
Gods, what if he bled?
Even in her fury, Senna would never risk it. Her face turned purple with rage and tears trembled in her coppery lashes, but she didn’t dare fight back. Ortho dropped a few smaller willow- and oak-stamped coins to the ground.
“This medal isn’t for the likes of you, Fiori,” he said. “It should be in the VEIL archouse, not in some dirty urchin’s pocket. Go on, get out of here.”
Ortho gave Senna a parting kick in the ribs and the girl scrambled away, fingers pressed to her bruising jaw. Jaesun was hurrying back toward Ortho with a curious tilt to his head and a smirk on his lips. If the Fiori brat wanted a good beating, Jaesun had no intention of missing out on the fun.
Ortho grinned at the older VEIL knight. Jaesun would never laugh at him again for how he smoked, not once he had shown off his new-won prize. Ortho would surely be promoted over him within a month for returning such a prize to VEIL… Let Jaesun put that in his pipe and smoke it.
Senna fled into Dormaen, already forgotten.
