In the House of Five Dragons
32. Of Blood and Sacrifice
“Alterra is literally a world of Terran dreams, and we fear that world. What does that say about our dreams?”
— Avilla Sallusi
Rikard couldn’t keep himself from prodding the gash across his palm. It itched like madness. He rubbed at the bandage until Saul made a disgusted noise.
“Rik, if you don’t stop poking that thing, you’re going to get an infection. And then that little Fiori foster is going to take off my head for not stopping you. Now, what did you want to talk about?”
“I need to know what’s going on in the city,” Rikard said. “In the empire. I already know the history, what happened while I was gone. Tell me what’s happening now.”
Saul rubbed his eyes. “You’re relentless, Rik. Hae, then. What do you want to know? Why?”
“We need to do something, Saul. Remember what you told me about Dormaen? The people of Carce are afraid of VEIL, and VEIL is afraid of the Alterra. We must fix that. We have to repair these fraying bonds between us and the people, between us and the Alterra.”
“Look, you’ve already convinced me, Rik. What do you plan to do about it?” asked Saul.
“Make a… gesture. No, that’s the wrong word. It rings hollow. We need to do something for the people of Carce and for the Alterra. We must remind them — and ourselves — that VEIL exists to serve the worlds.”
“A demonstration, you mean. Like what?”
“VEIL was born of the scholars who first found a way to speak to the Alterra, Saul. We can’t forget where we came from. We can do more than fight! We can hold back floods, bring rain to a desert or build a house in a day.”
“Don’t you think we might want to wait on anything like that? You’ve already thrown everything into chaos. Nikas Hern is starting to chew on his own feet. You’re going to burst the man’s heart, you know.”
“We can’t wait,” Rikard said. “We must fix this!”
“Hae, Rik. If you say so, then it is,” Saul answered. He drummed his fingers on his desk and gave a small, self-mocking laugh. “I can’t keep track of the whole world. Most of the time, running the Star Court is more than I can really manage, especially these days! I can send for some of the templars who know some more. I think most of them are out taking stock in the storehouses, but I’m sure they can spare one.”
“The storehouses?”
“Hae. They’re checking the new headcount against the supplies. Since that blight out in Erastrasus, everyone is watching their numbers pretty close.”
Saul called for his adjutant and relayed the request. When he was done, he smirked at Rikard.
“So where’s that Fiori foster today?” he asked. “She’s a pretty little thing. I was looking forward to seeing her again.”
“You have a wife, Saul!” Rikard admonished his friend.
“And I love her, Rik. But a man never stops admiring beauty.”
“Thainna will be back this evening. She said she had some business in the city today.”
“You let her go off on her own? After that attack…?”
Rikard picked up a quill from Saul’s desk and spun it against the slick metal of his bloodcap. “I didn’t want to, but she felt it was important.”
Karl offered once again to accompany Thainna into Dormaen, but she turned him down. Not that the Lyncean guard wasn’t pleasant company. Karl seemed inspired by Rikard’s heroics and redoubled his efforts to become a proper gentleman soldier. He flushed when Thainna suggested that with his employer now in control of VEIL, this might be the time to reconsider knighthood. She took advantage of Karl’s flustered stammering to slip out of the gate and into the city.
Her satchel was heavy and Thainna’s tabba was stained with sweat by the time she left the Everstones, heading into the closest district of shops. She almost regretted not asking Bastil for use of one of the Mazrem’s horses. Surely evading a few questions was less work than her burdened hike.
It took most of the morning to sell the trinkets she had stolen from Rikard’s house: the pretty glass lamp, the filigreed emberbox, a small opal-eyed statue of Merra, a pair of delicate finger-cymbals, a set of combs set with rubies and a dozen long-tined silver forks. Thainna was a practiced thief — she took nothing that bore any recognizable marks that might make selling them more difficult. Her second task would be trouble enough.
When she was finished with the shops, Thainna made the long journey into the Rows, the old shores of the Mazren River, the one Rikard’s family took their name from. Rikard was an old name, too, from the ancient Carcaen tongue. It was as if no part of him really belonged in the modern age, Thainna thought. But it was the age he had created.
None of this is fair to Rikard. He gave his life in Njorn Pass, then got hooked into an Alterran civil war. Then they turn him out into Terra and now he has to fix VEIL. Rikard doesn’t get much rest, does he?
Neither did Thainna. It certainly was not good to be home… The streets of the Rows were no less broken, smelly or crowded than she remembered. Every building was falling down and the people looked little better. The streets ran dark and fetid with muck — sick blood carrying poison through a dying body.
And I’m here to peddle more poison.
If she couldn’t use the drams Narissa had given her, she certainly would not let them go to waste. Not with the Auction approaching. Rikard wanted to fix VEIL… Maybe he would have approved of Thainna’s plan to promote Thain and mend the House of Five Dragons. The attack yesterday had shaken her, but served even more as a stern reminder of the importance of taking control of the House of Five Dragons, of winning the Auction and delivering the House into Thain’s capable hands.
It wasn’t hard to find people who wanted to buy the contents of Narissa’s jars, but it took most of the afternoon to find those with the money to do so. After Thainna traded away the last of the jession for a handful of shaved willows, she found herself at the stained, splintered shop door and could put off her final task no longer. She pushed it open.
“Time to wake up and work, Pata,” she announced.
Aelos Vahn sat inside the House front-shop, but he wasn’t asleep or even lounging under the murky window. He hunched over the splintering table, staring at the open ledger. When Aelos saw Thainna, he jumped to his feet with a look of horror on his lined, dirty face.
“Thainna! What are you doing here?”
“Hae, Pata,” Thainna said sourly. “I missed you, too.”
Her father scowled. “Of course I missed you, but what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Rikard Mazrem!”
“You heard about my job, then. You weren’t worried when I vanished?”
“You’ve always been hard to keep track of, Thainna. I figured you were off working,” Aelos said. He would not meet her eye. “Eventually, I heard about your bloodmark. And your job.”
Was he proud of her? The job should have gone to someone with far more rank or experience. Surely even Pata was impressed… Thainna searched her father’s face, but found only surprise and displeasure there. She sighed and tossed a wallet onto the table. It clanked heavily.
“I need to make a deposit.”
Slowly, Aelos sat again and reached for the wallet. He untied the cord and gasped at the coins inside. “Where did you get all of this?”
“I stole a few things from the Mazrem house. I sold off the supplies I didn’t use on Rikard and–”
“Thainna! You sold them? You can’t do that!”
“Why not? I don’t have the time to work for myself while I’m on this job, Pata. The House gave me those drams to use. Narissa isn’t expecting them back.”
“That’s House property!”
“And I’m stealing it? The House probably stole it before I did. If it bothers you that much, I’ll just ask Thain for a pardon or something when he’s Crest.”
Now Thainna’s father did catch her eye, but dropped his gaze a moment later. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Don’t start.”
“Thain’s sick! You don’t even know if he’ll be well enough to run the House. It’s cruel, really. He’s a sick boy, Thainna.”
“Don’t be bitter.” The desire to fight her father was suddenly gone. “Please, Pata. Just count the money and then I’ll go, hae?”
Aelos poured Thainna’s money onto the tabletop and separated it into piles. Nervous and excited, she watched the stacks grow, coin by coin, like crooked little towers being built. Still, Thainna felt more than a little guilty stealing from Rikard.
It’s not really stealing from him, Thainna told herself. Laurael probably bought all of this. If he weren’t married, Rikard would probably still live in an archouse bunk.
The idea made her feel only a bit better. Aelos finished counting and swept the money into a covered bowl. He set it on a nearby shelf and then wrote the new total down in the open ledger.
“How much have I got?” Thainna asked breathlessly.
“Almost two hundred laurels today. That brings you up to about nine hundred.”
“Nine hundred! I’ll have more than a thousand by winter, Pata. That’s got to be enough!”
“That’s not much money, really.”
“It’s more than you’ve ever earned! You keep telling me to run off with it and live better.”
“Thainna, it took fifty thousand to win the last Auction.”
She felt like her father had just punched her in the stomach. Fifty thousand laurels? Thainna couldn’t imagine having that much, much less spending it on the Auction. Surely anyone that rich could simply leave the House of Five Dragons.
“How much money is in the House vault?” Thainna asked.
“You know I couldn’t tell you, even if I knew. The Crest would have me thrown in the river!”
Thainna grabbed for the ledger, but Aelos snatched it back out of her grasp. She curled her lip at the useless old man. “It doesn’t matter, anyway! I just need more than the other bidders. How much have they got?”
“You’re contending with Eyes and Flames,” Aelos reminded her. “You’re a thief, Thainna. That’s all. Unless you plan to steal Rikard Mazrem’s entire house and holdings, you can’t compete with them. Even if you could, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Because of the Crest we’ve got now? Because he won’t give up the Jade Throne? I’m so tired of hearing everyone say that! Things will change!”
“Everything is changing,” Aelos said. He looked at Thainna with drooping eyes and managed an awkward smile. “Even you. Look at you! Dressed up fancy, like a proper lady.”
“Like a priestess, you mean.”
“You look beautiful. Probably got that Mazrem fellow wrapped around your finger by now,” Aelos suggested hopefully. “You said you didn’t need the drams.”
“Rikard’s not like that. I tried to give him bluering once and he didn’t even notice.”
“What about the jession?”
“I didn’t try–” Thainna began, but then frowned as a thought occurred to her. “How did you know what Narissa gave me?”
“I said I asked around after you.”
“Hae,” said Thainna suspiciously.
Her father’s information seemed a little too detailed. Suddenly, Thainna wished for Rikard’s strange Alterran ability to reach into his mind. What sort of secrets might she find in the dusty, unused corners of her father’s mind? Thainna scowled at Aelos. After so long apart, she was already sick of the old man.
“I have to meet Rikard at the archouse,” Thainna said. Without further farewell, she stomped angrily out of the store.
On his mother’s advice, Gaius drove back to the Star Court, but the sun was soon sinking into the hills surrounding the Kaelos Valley. Ranks of knights worked in the courtyard, practicing some of the older sword techniques — the left-handed pact forms. At Gaius’ approach, the oldest called a stop and saluted.
“Good evening, Captain Mazrem,” he panted.
“Where’s my father?” asked Gaius shortly.
“The legens rode out an hour or so ago, sir. He’s ordered the three courts to convene here tomorrow, though.”
Gaius grunted wordlessly and climbed back into his chariot. Rikard could never stay where he was supposed to, could he? Gaius shook his reins and guided the kajja back out onto the road. He bridled at the pointlessness of it all.
Evening traffic ran as slow and thick as chilled honey, leaving Gaius time enough to brood. I’m Rikard Mazrem’s son! I was supposed to inherit this whole world, he thought angrily. The world may not have been the one Rikard thought that it should be, but it would have belonged to Gaius.
He looked up from the bouncing jewel-hued back of the kajja running before his chariot. The market and central districts that lay between the Star archouse and the Everstones were some of the most affluent of Dormaen. Over the angular city skyline, the pristine dome of the Lyceum was clearly visible, as smoothly white as the egg of a celestial bird-god. Smooth glass shined in every shop and house window, some even in ruby red and deep emerald greens. The people who lined the walkways that ran beside the road wore expensively patterned tabbae and beaded sandals. Many recognized Gaius and waved as he drove past.
Even here, though, money couldn’t cover all signs of the deep rot that ran through every inch of Dormaen. Gaius caught sight of a few girls for rent, all garishly dressed and marked by the red bracelets around their wrists. A fat man stood in the door of his bakery, boasting his low prices — still five times what they should have been. Around the next corner, a pair of men in dark clothes waited with daggers hidden poorly under short capes.
What does Father think he can do against all this? He really is mad. Another thought followed on the heels of the first. And this is the world that Alterrans — the ones of the Uprising, at least — want to keep close? They’re as mad as my father.
When Gaius reached the broad, gentle rise of the Everstones, he wound the reins around one hand and took the wallet from his belt. From a fold of thick paper inside, he tapped a bit of fine brown powder into his mouth. The ophellion bit acidly on his tongue, but dissolved quickly. Gaius shuddered with pleasure as the dram ran through his body, as smooth and cold and deep as icy waters. It was a bad idea to show up to dinner bristling with anger at Rikard, to give him any excuse to go searching through his son’s thoughts.
Back at the house, Gaius found Rikard was already in the triclinium, lying across one of the couches. Thainna lay beside him — not sitting apart or at his feet, as was proper for a servant — listening to him with a furrowed brow. On Rikard’s other flank, Laurael fought to keep her smile steady.
“Do you think it’s a good idea?” Rikard asked both women.
“Why are you asking me about it? I’m not a knight or a templar,” Thainna said.
Before Rikard could respond, Gaius stepped through the door. The foster dropped her gaze, her lips twitching. Was that a smile or a scowl? Either way, she hid it even as Rikard’s face lit up. Gaius had no doubt that his pleasure was sincere.
There’s nothing subtle about my father, Gaius thought with a mix of irritation and reluctant admiration. Rikard Mazrem was a simple man. He never lied. Gaius wasn’t even sure if he knew how.
“Come and eat,” Rikard said brightly, gesturing to his son. “I missed you at the archouse today.”
Gaius draped himself over the opposite couch and plucked a handful of fat purple plums from a nearby bowl. They were cold and sweet, bursting with flavor. An unfamiliar serving girl — one of those that Bastil had brought in to deal with the rise in visitors — darted a furtive, mousy look at Gaius. He winked and she blushed. When she had delivered her tureen of steaming soup, the girl fled the room, her cheeks still bright red. Gaius promised himself that he would find her later.
“So what do you want, Father?” he asked.
The pleasantly cool weight of the ophellion blunted the worst accusation from the question. It would get him through dinner, and then he would go home for a dose of sweet-hot bluering…
“I need you to do something,” Rikard told him.
So simple and straightforward. Had the man always been like that? When Gaius was a boy, Laurael had rarely spoken about his father except to remind him to conduct himself appropriately. Was it something Rikard had picked up in Alterra? Did Alterrans lie? Could they?
“The great hero needs me to do something? What’s that, hae? Sweep up the rose petals they shower wherever you go?”
Rikard flinched and Gaius almost regretted his words.
“Would… will you come with me to the Star Court tomorrow?” Rikard asked.
“Well, the hours you keep are a little early for me. What time?”
“Noon.”
“I guess so,” Gaius said. “What do you need me for, Father? Are you lonely?”
Laurael frowned at him, but Gaius ignored her.
“No, I…” Rikard started. He made a strange little gesture with his right hand and tried again. “I want you to join in an Alterran pact with me.”
Gaius had just raised a cup of wine to his lips. Even ophellion couldn’t blunt that blow. Gaius choked, spluttering and pounded his fist against his chest until he stopped coughing.
“A pact? Me?” he asked. “For what? What have you been drinking? Gods only know what those dream-eater monsters will take in return!”
“Please consider it, Gaius?”
Thainna watched the exchange with an absurdly disapproving little frown on her pretty lips. Gaius scowled at her. He didn’t see the foster spilling her blood to the Alterra.
Gaius took another handful of round plums and set them spinning on the tabletop, wobbling like drunkards. A blood pact…? It was too dangerous to even think about… wasn’t it?
Thainna had departed after dinner to visit the baths and wash away the sweat and dirt of the day. But Rikard found her later in the wavering azure light of the shrine. Thainna wore a white sleeping wrap knotted under her arms and knelt before the smooth alabaster altar of Surma. She stood up when Rikard entered, a little surprised but not startled. Had Thainna heard him, or felt him coming?
“Do you need me to leave?” she asked. “Bastil said no one comes here much and I was free to make my prayers.”
“No. Please stay.”
Rikard nodded at Thainna and she sank back to the floor. He sat back on his heels beside her. The foster touched her fingers to the altar, leaving bright smears of blood on the white stone. A small kitchen knife lay on the fitted stone floor beside the shrine.
“You’re bleeding,” Rikard said. “What are you doing?”
Thainna held up her hand. There was a small, bloody cut on her third finger.
“Just a little nick. I thought about the things you’ve been saying. About blood, about fear. No one bleeds for the gods or the Alterra anymore.”
“But you understand sacrifice. Are you praying for him? For your brother?”
“Are you in my thoughts again?” Thainna asked with a small smile. She waved off the question before Rikard could answer. “No, I don’t feel you there. Hae, for Thain. He’s… Things are worse now. It’s complicated. I miss him so much.”
“Why don’t you bring him here?” Rikard suggested, surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. Thainna’s separation from her twin wounded the foster deeply. “There’s plenty of room and food. You could take care of him more easily if he was nearby.”
Thainna’s eyes widened. “You would let me bring him here?”
“He could live here, if he wanted,” said Rikard. He felt as though he had eaten butterflies for dinner, flittering things that only now realized their new home and had gone exploring. “You can, too. I’d like you to stay here with us. If the temple would allow it, I mean. Laura’s done very well for herself, for my family. Two more mouths to feed wouldn’t be a burden.”
“You would let us both stay?”
Thainna stared up at Rikard with such impossible hope that it made his heart clench. The alleyway that she called home, the one he had seen in her memories, was… horrible.
No one should live like that. Especially you.
It’s all I’ve ever known, Rikard. I’m used to it.
Are you saying no?
Thainna laughed. She wiped her eyes and grinned at Rikard.
“No! I mean, hae. I’m not saying no. I want to. I would like to bring Thain here,” Thainna said. She gestured around her, then at the wide door that led out into the rest of the rolling estate. “He’s never even visited a place so lovely.”
“Would it be allowed?” asked Rikard hopefully. “Would Narissa object?”
Thainna bit her lower lip. After a moment, she shook her head.
“Not exactly. But Thain…” The heat of her tears was back, this time in sadness, and Thainna turned her face away.
What’s wrong? Rikard wondered.
It’s complicated. Dangerous.
…You can’t do it.
If Thainna couldn’t bring her beloved twin, she would never stay here. Thainna would run home to him, even if it meant going back to her filthy alley. The idea was a horrid one. It hurt like a kick to the stomach. Thainna deserved better than that, but she sacrificed out of love. She would give up anything and everything for her brother.
Rikard brushed his fingers over Thainna’s pale cheek and took her blood-streaked hand in his. This girl from the mud and trash of the Rows understood devotion and sacrifice better than any VEIL knight. Rikard was so proud of Thainna that he wondered if his heart could actually burst.
Tears shone in Thainna’s coppery lashes. Maybe in time, after…
The thought that followed was close and private, tangled in sticky worries like one of Rikard’s butterflies caught and coiled in a spider’s web. She didn’t take her hand from Rikard’s and a hot tear fell from her chin onto the cuff of his saela. It sparkled star-bright against the black for a moment before vanishing, absorbed into the cloth.
Rikard stroked his thumb across the back of Thainna’s hand. It felt so delicate, but strong. Something of steel and stone carved skillfully into a small, fine shape. Rikard wondered what she was thinking and was tempted to reach for an answer, but the wingy fluttering in his stomach was more fun than knowing. He liked the mystery, Rikard decided.
Thainna had asked him something. She looked at him with a quizzical arc to her red eyebrows. Rikard shook himself from his reverie.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear. What?”
“What did you come to pray for?”
“Gaius.” Rikard reluctantly took his hands back and thumbed open his cannula. He daubed a line of blood onto the snowy white Surmaen altar, beside Thainna’s mark. The butterflies turned to lead in his gut.
“I don’t know if he will help us,” Rikard said. “He hates me. Gods’ blood, Thainna. My own son hates me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Thainna gently. “But I told you there’s something sour in him. I wish I were surprised. And with his mother–”
Rikard’s head came up. “No. Thainna, please don’t. I love her.”
“Hae, then.”
Thainna turned away with a frown that made Rikard regret his sharpness. He dropped his gaze to the smears of Thainna’s blood on Surma’s altar.
“It’s not going to… do anything, is it?” she asked after a moment. “Those marks don’t mean anything to the Alterra, right?”
Thainna didn’t sound afraid, Rikard thought, but disappointed. Did she want the Alterra to hear her?
“No, not like this.” Rikard trailed his finger through her blood, drawing a curving line on the stone. “But if you draw it here. And like this, here… Cross it here.”
Thainna tilted her head. “It looks like shortscribe.”
“Can you read it?”
“I think so. Good morning, burning and scales, all piled on top of each other.”
Rikard grinned. “Well read. The third one says dragon, not scales. It’s the sign meant to get the Alterran’s attention. A greeting, of sorts, more formal than the circle. The scholars worked it out in the old days.”
Thainna looked at her blood. “Why dragon?”
“I don’t know, precisely. Dragons are just a legend. Their name became one for anything powerful and majestic… but now it just seems to mean something dangerous or evil.”
“That certainly sums up your relationship with the Alterra. The powerful and the dangerous. Maybe you too, hero of Carce.”
“Hero.” Rikard sighed. “Saul called me that.”
“It couldn’t have been the first time. You’re the greatest legend in all Carce.”
Rikard was not so easily deterred. “I don’t feel heroic, Thainna.”
“You saved most of VEIL and won a war. You wiped out the entire Fiori army.”
“Do you ever hate me for that? I hated you. I hurt you,” Rikard said. “In the pass, I would have given everything — and did — just to end it. I destroyed thousands of Fiori.”
“I’ve never even seen Fiore. Pata always said that Therra — that’s my mother — didn’t miss the mountains. Rikard… it was a war.”
“Emperor Tychon began that war.”
“And you ended it. It’s over and none of that is a reason to doubt your heroism. I don’t hate you and I doubt any of the other Fiori do, either. Hae, I know you don’t care much for the emperor, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely worthless. There are forty-nine other nations besides Carce that warred with each other. Now they fight it all out in the Lyceum. It’s bloodless and it’s boring. Sometimes I think that Emperor Tychon only created the Lyceum to give the provinces a civil battlefield.”
Rikard found himself smiling a little. “That’s not a bad idea. But you only made my point for me, Thainna. They are doings of the emperor, good or ill, not me. I’m only a soldier.”
“That sounds like the defense of a man who doesn’t have any better argument.”
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t feel right. I did only what any other commander would have done.”
“But they didn’t,” Thainna said. “There was a lecturn once who said something about Njorn Pass. He wasn’t very popular for it, but I think you might like it better than most.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that circumstances make heroes, not deeds. I guess he meant that you were in the right place at the right time to do the right thing.”
“It was in the hands of the gods, then?” Rikard asked. It made him feel better. Less aggrandized, a little less a fraud.
“Maybe. But I don’t agree. Any other VEIL commander could have made the same choice that you did, hae? At any time during the campaign? But they didn’t — you did. You were the only one willing to make the trade.”
Rikard could think of no argument. Thainna had a point, but one that was hard for him to dwell on. Rikard stood and crossed the shrine to the Alterran door. Opening his cannula, he drew the same mark he had just shown Thainna. It shone black like ink in the blue light of the shrine.
When they had each finished their solitary prayers, they made their way from the shrine. Outside, Rikard caught Thainna’s eye.
“You’ll come tomorrow, hae?”
“I won’t be much help, I think, but I’ll be there if you want.”
“I do.”
Thainna smiled shyly and struck out across the hilly estate. Rikard watched her go and wondered. A hero… Surely a hero could make a small request of the temple, Rikard reasoned. A hero could ask that Thainna be allowed to stay. When she freed Thain from whatever it was that frightened her, he would give Thainna and her twin the life they deserved. Together.
