In the House of Five Dragons
8. Midnight
“By the time scouts spotted the Fiori horde, the slaughter had already begun. Njorn Pass ran with Carcaen blood and rang with the Fiori victory cries. It was then, in the midst of the slaughter, that Captain Mazrem cast a circle of blood in the snow. He called across the veil to the Alterra and begged them to save his dying men. In return, he would give them anything. They could take from him any price that they wished. Such an open pact had been discussed since the scholarly days of VEIL, but never attempted.”
— From Accounts of Njorn Pass, by Alexander Ferro
Irritation fanned into fury did nothing to rekindle the failing sun. Pinpricks of light filled the sky, but they shed only a little light on the road beneath his feet. There were iron hooks in the walls that, after a moment’s concentration, he remembered should have been hung with cages of fire.
The dark streets were close and cramped. They stank of fear and decay. He didn’t remember this part of the city. He should have been on the banks of the Mazren River. Was this place new…? No, it couldn’t be. Everything here was run down, tottering on the verge of collapse. Many of the shadows that he passed weren’t true buildings at all, but the spaces between broken walls hastily boarded up to make cheap shelters.
Scabs over a wound. One misstep and they’ll tear open again, filling the city with blood.
Thainna heard the footsteps long before she saw the man. The sounds of his footsteps were heavy and rang like iron bells in the midnight silence. A lifetime of thief’s instincts stopped Thainna dead in her tracks and she slipped silently back into the deeper shadows.
That was the sound of armored boots, something with metal. Not the leather shoes of soldiers or guards. That meant a VEIL knight. Out here in the Rows? There was no way his business was good for anyone else. Women? Drink? Thainna doubted it. There were much better brothels and taphouses in other parts of the city, ones that offered huge discounts and better fare to the knights of VEIL.
What if the knight out there was hunting down the House of Five Dragons? The Crest was overreaching, Dorros said, trying to control Gaius Mazrem. If VEIL ever found out, they would never let that pass, would they? There were spies among the knights, of course, but who they were was a closely guarded secret even within the House.
Even if VEIL had embarked on a crusade against the House of Five Dragons, surely they would send more than a single man. Was it really only one set of footsteps? Maybe there were more. Thainna strained to listen. It was hard to hear anything over the pounding of her own heart.
She leaned out just enough to see past the wall, out into the street. It was a man — and only one, Thainna noted with relief — but something about him looked… wrong.
Thainna squinted. Details were difficult to make out in the colorless moonlight, but he looked somehow familiar. The man wore a full suit of armor, banded steel riveted to molded leather and emblazoned with the Carcaen laurel tree and lion. But something about it looked strange. The design was different, with wider steel strips and leather that looked a shade lighter. It was plain brown, not dyed black, blue or red like modern armor.
Modern armor?
Thainna knew that style of armor. The statue towering over Mazrem Square wore the same kind. Thainna leaned out a little further as the man neared. He limped slowly in a crooked, staggering path. The old-fashioned armor was dented, the leather torn and cut. It was streaked with something unpleasantly thick and dark. Mud, maybe? But Thainna doubted it.
He walked like a corpse might if the gods wrenched him up from his grave and set him restlessly wandering. The man’s steel-shod boots scraped across the paving stones, one after another in a raw cacophony that made Thainna’s skin crawl. His head hung forward, chin resting in the gorget of his armor.
Was he even looking where he was going? He moved as though sleepwalking. The man’s long, dark hair had been pulled back into a tail at some point past, but most of it had fallen free and now hung in front of his face in a dirty curtain.
Was he drunk? Mad?
Thainna was so caught up in her curiosity that she failed to notice how close the knight had come. His head snapped up and he saw her watching. He lunged, closing the last yards between them as fast as a diving hawk.
Thainna startled and leapt back, but not nearly quickly enough. He snarled and grabbed her by the throat, lifting her until her feet kicked at empty air. Thainna clawed at the strange man’s hand and writhed, turning her body this way and that to wriggle free, but his grip was like stone. Something between her eyes seared with pain. Thainna screamed in agony.
“Fiori!” the man howled, tightening steel fingers around her neck. “Will you animals never die? Let us go!”
Face to face with him, Thainna’s eyes widened. Even through the hazy red starbursts of pain, she recognized him. It wasn’t just his strange old armor.
Thainna knew that face. Everyone in Carce did.
That’s Rikard Mazrem.
The little barbarian squirmed in his grasp, as slippery as a writhing snake. Rikard tightened his gauntleted fist around her throat with cruel slowness, delighting in the wet grating of bones under his fingers.
Fiori in Dormaen? Never, never! Monsters, animals…!
The girl’s face darkened as she choked. His hate and fury bored into her, making her eyes widen and roll in their sockets with agony. The pain was terrible, he knew all too well.
“Half!” she gasped. “Only half… Fiori…! I’m Carcaen!”
Rikard jerked in surprise, minutely relaxing his deadly grip. He yanked the girl closer until their faces almost touched. She was right. She had the slender build, the sharp foxy face and fiery red hair of a Fiori, but the huge, frightened eyes that stared back at him were the wrong shape and color. The mountain tribe all had round, ice-blue eyes. This girl’s were the same angled shape as his own and a Carcaen dark green.
Mixed Carcaen and Fiori blood? What horror of war had bred such a creature? Rikard’s shocked inspection dulled the edge of his rage, replacing agony with a hot discomfort. The girl quieted a bit, but she was still watching him intently, gasping for breath and dark purple in the face.
“Please, let me go, Lord Mazrem,” she wheezed.
Rikard instinctively tensed himself. He tightened his fingers around her neck again. “You won’t take my name!”
Whatever response the half-Fiori girl expected, this wasn’t it. Her all-too-Carcaen eyes were still huge with terror and she gasped. Her mind squirmed under Rikard’s touch, curling and twitching like a hook-skewered worm, but his hold was too strong.
Gods! It’s Rikard Mazrem… But he’s dead! Oh, gods, he’s a ghost and he’s come to kill me for the fake medals… It can’t be Rikard. He looks just like the statue, but… but it’s been thirty years! Surma and Saerus, what’s going on?
But there was no deception in the girl’s thoughts. Only her fear, searingly painful to the touch. Rikard hissed and retreated from her mind.
“Thirty years?” he repeated.
It couldn’t have been thirty years. Rikard searched for confirmation, but the half-Fiori whelp would not be still, in body or mind.
“Please! Please, let me go,” she gasped.
Rikard wasn’t listening. Thirty years? Three decades? But there was sense to it. The changes in the city, the smoky tang to the air that never used to be there, the worn and cracked road. All of it.
He dropped the girl to the ground and stared at his hands. They were scarred and roughened by years of rigorous VEIL training, but were firm and unlined. The hands of a young man.
Thirty years since they took me. Thirty years I’ve been gone from the world, from my wife and my son. Thirty years! The world has changed, but I haven’t…
Rikard Mazrem wrenched his gaze up from his hands and back to the dark, dirty street. He would get answers from the Fiori girl and then he would have her heart out!
But she was gone.
Thainna ran until her feet bled, leaving spots of red on the broken cobbles behind her. Her lungs pressed too hard inside her ribs. She did not even feel the pain that she knew should be there. Everything except her hammering heart was numb and seemed strangely light, as though she floated on the swirling midnight air instead of running for her life.
When she had put half a mile between her and the wild war-hero, Thainna finally slowed and stopped. She slumped against a crumbling wall, wheezing and feeling suddenly drained. The blind shock of her strange meeting pulled back like a curtain.
Rikard Mazrem.
But how can Rikard Mazrem be alive? He gave his life to kill the Fiori in Njorn Pass!
She had just met Lord-Captain Rikard Caelis Mazrem, the most famous hero in the worlds. It sounded mad. It felt mad just to think about, but who else could it be? How certain was anyone that Captain Mazrem had actually died in Njorn Pass?
The question seemed profane, even in the jumbled turmoil of her own mind. Rikard Mazrem was a great man, a near-mythical hero whose renown rivaled even Emperor Tychon. All of that fame, all of that reverence was for a martyr, for Captain Mazrem’s historic sacrifice. If he hadn’t actually died, what did that mean? Anything? Everything?
The man she had just escaped certainly didn’t seem like much of a hero. He was dirty and bloody and tried to choke the life out of her for being even part Fiori. All of that snarling and screaming… Was that really the hero of Carce? But his armor, his face! It had to be Rikard Mazrem. There was simply no other answer.
Not for me, at least. But then, I’m not clever like Thain.
Thainna’s toes hurt now, almost unbearably. She cursed and sat down on the edge of the road. One at a time, she pulled her feet as close to her face as she could manage. But by moonlight, blood and dirt looked too much alike. It was impossible to tell the extent of the damage. Her feet smelled awful, but that was nothing new.
Thainna gritted her teeth and stretched her legs out in front of her. Some rest first, then… then what? Go home? It seemed like she should tell someone what happened. But who? No one would ever believe her.
I’ll bang on the gates of the imperial palace. How about that? You’ve been wrong all along! Rikard Mazrem’s still alive! And he’s in a bad mood! They’ll just throw me back out into the street and shake their heads at the crazy girl. If they don’t whip me.
It really wasn’t very funny, but Thainna laughed anyway. The sound had a sharp, hysterical edge. What if someone found out that she had not said anything? Wasn’t that just as likely to get her punished? What about VEIL? Shouldn’t they be told that Captain Mazrem was still alive? But the guards that always stood outside the Verita et Illumina Lansinos archouses were no more likely to listen to Thainna than those of the imperial palace.
What about the House of Five Dragons? A shiver turned quickly into a full-body shudder that made Thainna’s teeth rattle. No. If they thought she was making up stories for attention or some kind of profit, the Crest would probably have Thainna beaten to death and then dropped behind someone’s house in a puddle of her own blood.
But what if she didn’t say anything and then the Crest found out anyway? What if he knew that Thainna was keeping such valuable secrets? She couldn’t begin to guess.
Thainna hugged her arms around herself and wondered what to do.
