Dragon-Ridden (31 page)

“Let’s walk around a little,” Tate
suggested.

They strolled along the streets
looking at the houses they passed. Tate didn’t know what she was looking for,
but she hoped something would stand out if they kept moving.

“Don’t look, but I think we’re
being followed,” Dewdrop said in a low voice.

“Can you tell who it is?”

He pulled her over to one side and
pointed at a particularly interesting lawn statue, she nodded as if they were
having a conversation and laughed gaily.

They began walking again, slowly,
not hurrying as if they sightseeing.

“I think it’s a patrol.”

She sighed inwardly. Not good then.
Time was up. They didn’t need to draw attention to themselves more than they
already had. Without making it too obvious, they circled the block and headed
back down to the Lower City.

Tate listened with half a mind as
Dewdrop kept up an animated conversation about building structures and gardens.
She nodded and made appropriate comments at the right times but inwardly she
was monitoring their shadows.

Strain was starting to show in
Dewdrop’s face and eyes as they made it into the Lower City. The Marshal’s men
followed them still. She really had hoped that once they left the wealthy
neighborhoods their shadows would fall back to continue with their patrol. No
such luck. It seemed as if she and Dewdrop had sufficiently aroused their
suspicions. She frowned. That hadn’t been her intention, but this wasn’t
entirely unexpected either. Although the clothes Tate and Dewdrop wore weren’t
shabby, they were also not of the same quality as the resident’s in the Upper.
They had stuck out like a sore thumb.

“What should we do?”

“Just keep moving and let’s see how
this plays out.” She stopped to look in a store window and monitored their
followers out of the corner of her eye.

“Tate?”

She was slow to respond to her name
until Dewdrop began tugging frantically at her sleeve.

“What?” she finally asked turning
to him.

“We have other problems.”

He nodded in the opposite direction
of the Marshal’s men. Tate looked and almost sat down right then and there in
defeat.

Blade and his scummy friend were
walking down the street looking right at Tate and Dewdrop. Judging by the
satisfied smile on his friend’s face, she was willing to bet they didn’t want
to just trade greetings.

Great. Great. Great.

The law on one side and criminals
on the other. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“What should we do?” Dewdrop
whispered next to her shoulder. He put his back to hers keeping one eye on
Blade and the other on the Marshal’s men. “Should we run?”

They could, but that would only
lead to a chase. Blade, at least, was fast, and Tate was still feeling a little
weak after her time with the Red Lady. She didn’t have the confidence that she
would get very far, and she didn’t know how fast Dewdrop could move either.
Having five men chasing her throughout the city wasn’t something she wanted to
experience either.

She looked back and forth between
the two groups. No hope for it, she was going to have to be creative.

“Follow my lead,” she told Dewdrop.
With a high scream, she pointed at Blade. He stopped in surprise. “That’s him.
Those are the men who attacked me and stole all my money.”

Dewdrop didn’t miss a beat. “What?
Those thieves! Somebody call the Provost and have these men arrested.”

Tate darted to the Provost’s men
letting her voice thin in agitation. “Sir. Sir. Arrest them. They stole all my
money yesterday and now they’ve come back.” Dewdrop wrung his hands behind her.
“I demand protection.”

She grabbed the arm of the man
nearest to her and dragged him in front of her. The other two looked confused
by the sudden turn of events.

“Those men.” She pointed. “Those
men right there. I don’t know what they’ll do if they get ahold of me.”

Dewdrop added his input. “Please,
sir. My sister and I arrived in the city only yesterday, and we’ve already been
robbed. We’re begging you.”

Blade’s accomplice sputtered
indignantly. “Now see ‘ere. We done nothin’ o’ the sort.”

Tate almost chortled in glee at the
sound of his accent, which placed him as being from one of the poorest sections
of the city. The guards, hearing it, fanned out. One pulled a cudgel out of his
belt. Even Blade seemed a bit worried when they started herding the two
together.

Tate drew Dewdrop away and quietly
fled, turning a street corner before anybody could notice. They were well on
their way to disappearing before the cry was raised.

They were both panting for breath
when they finally stopped running.

“I’ve run more in the last two days
then in all my time on ship,” Tate gasped.

“Aurelia will do that to you.”
Dewdrop bent over and put his hands on his knees.

“No kidding.”

Dewdrop straightened and said
hesitantly, “I think I know where Ryu went when he disappeared.”

Tate looked at him in surprise.
Despite her best hopes she hadn’t noticed anything and had just assumed he
hadn’t either. A little buzz of excitement went through her. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” he said with excitement. “I
wasn’t sure at first which is why I didn’t say anything earlier, but now I’m
positive. I think the Kairi’s block of mansions was a few streets away from us.
I’m pretty sure that’s why the Provost’s men were patrolling, and why they
followed us even when we left.”

Tate chewed on her lip, deep in
thought. Everything seemed to revolve around the Kairi. Oriade’s key as well as
the fulcrum everybody was searching so desperately for, not to mention Ryu’s
clandestine meeting with them. She just couldn’t figure out why he was so
interested. If he was in it for the money, he’d just turn the key over to the
highest bidder and not meet with its owners in secret.

There was also the little issue of
Jost’s first mate. The more she reviewed that night in her head, the more she
was sure it was him she’d seen right before the caning. Jost had already set
sail by then. She’d watched. She also couldn’t imagine any of the crew just
leaving her there in that type of situation either. She felt a twinge of guilt.
Things may have changed after her desertion.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she said
aloud. “I don’t understand Ryu’s interest in this matter.”

“Perhaps he’s working with your old
crew,” Dewdrop suggested.

She shook her head. She’d already
considered that. “I saw them sail off.” She folded her arms. “I mean I thought
I saw one in the Red Lady’s den, but I was in a lot of pain at the time.” She
raised one hand when he opened his mouth. “I could have just imagined it. Saw
what I most wanted to see at that moment.”

Dewdrop was silent. After a moment,
he said, “Perhaps they left to quell suspicions of their involvement but
dropped anchor somewhere else. Aurelia’s on a point. Though the other side is
filled with rocks and tricky tides, a talented navigator could find a place to
drop anchor while some of the crew made their way back to the city.”

“Still, I would think they’d tell
me.” At his hard glance she elaborated, “I mean before I left.”

“Why would they? You probably
weren’t told because you’re not part of the planning. That’s how we did it in
my crew,” Dewdrop pointed out. “Lessons the chances of someone turning the
group over to the Emperor’s Justice.”

He had a point, and it was one Tate
couldn’t argue with. They wouldn’t have necessarily included her in their plans
when she was just a junior member.

“What should we do now?” Dewdrop
asked.

Still reeling from the realization
that she really was on her own, Tate was slow to respond. “We can’t go back to
the room. We don’t know Ryu’s plans.”

“He seemed extremely interested in
the key.”

Tate’s face was thoughtful when she
spoke. “You noticed that too? I thought so as well.”

“There’s also the fact that he
never tried to search you,” Dewdrop added.

Tate paused. Since nobody had
commented, she had thought that possibility had only occurred to her.

“Lucius had Ricky and me magically
scanned to make sure the magic hadn’t attached to us. It’s extremely difficult
but not entirely impossible for the magic to attach to humans,” he said,
watching her carefully. “You’re the only one in this whole mess who hasn’t been
searched.”

Tate lightly placed a hand on her
hip, right next to the concealed knife. Dewdrop’s eyes flicked to her hand and
back up to her face.

“You’ve never told me why you were
in the Red Lady’s keep,” she said.

He very carefully kept his hands in
full view and said, “No, I didn’t, did I?”

“Perhaps now would be a good time?”

“I was hoping to gain information
that would get me in good with Lucius.”

She squinted at him, knowing it was
a plausible explanation. He and his friend had failed in their job so to make
up for it he sought to get leverage on Lucius’ rival. She’d seen similar
instances work in the past. But now he had even better information, if he was
right about her. Still, if he, like her, had put all the clues about the key
together why had he helped her against Blade?

It also seemed important that he
chose the Red Lady’s den to infiltrate. Furthermore, he’d known an awful lot
about the prison and the way she ran business.

“Night told me you’re like him,”
Dewdrop said. Tate’s eyebrows came together as she tried to figure out what he
meant. “You’re one of the sleepers and don’t remember anything from before you
woke up in the tunnels.”

Tate was suspicious of the sudden
change in topic. “Yeah. Why do you care?”

Dewdrop’s smile made him seem like
the 14-year-old boy he was instead of the street tough urchin. “I’ve heard of
such things before.”

Tate gestured for him to continue.

“The Uppers like to pretend that
the only races are the humans, Silva, and Kairi but most of the Lowers know
that’s not entirely true,” he said sliding down the wall until he rested on his
butt. “There have been… people… with strange abilities crawling up out of the
tunnels to merge with the normal’s for years. All with the same story. They
woke from a long sleep with no memories of a time before they slept. All of
them had strange abilities.”

“You seem to be very well informed
for a street urchin,” Tate said, not entirely believing his story.

A wistful expression crossed his
face. “I wasn’t always a thief.”

Tate had a feeling she’d picked at
an old wound and wasn’t sure how to respond.

He recovered from his melancholy
quickly, though, and continued. “The people I come from are travelers. Always
moving from one city to another in great caravans. Many of them with abilities
like mine.” He smiled sadly. “When I was a kid, I can remember my mother
telling me bedtime stories about the first travelers and their beginnings. I’d
always wanted to meet someone like them.”

He looked uncomfortable about what
he’d revealed. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask how he ended up here,
scrounging for scraps, but sensed it was a painful tale, one he wasn’t ready to
share with her.

“Is that why you decided to save
me?” she finally asked.

He shrugged and ducked his head,
not meeting her eyes. “I was curious. You’re not like anybody else I’ve met.”

She’d heard that one before.

She still wasn’t sure if he was
trustworthy or not. “And now? You just helped me escape Lucius’ men again. I
doubt they’ll let you come back.”

He was quiet. Tate was about to
give up on getting answers when he spoke, “You’re strong. I’m a good thief, but
it’s easy for others to take what I steal because I’m so small. That’s why I
wanted to hook up with Lucius. No one dares mess with his men.”

“And you were hoping, what? That
I’d be your protector, there to beat off would-be rivals.”

He shook his head, flustered. “No.
I’m not explaining this very well.” He sighed. “You’re small like me, but even
Thane treats you with caution and respect.”

Thane? Tate mouthed silently.

“The guy you keep calling Blade,”
Dewdrop said.

Oh, that’s right. So his name was
Thane, huh? She liked her name for him much better.

“I was hoping you could teach me
some of your tricks,” Dewdrop said lifting a shoulder.

Tate arched an eyebrow. “Look, its
not that I’m not flattered, but I don’t think that’d be a good idea.”

She didn’t want to be responsible
for another person. Not with all the problems she had. Nor was she convinced
she had anything worth teaching.

“Look,” he said standing. “You
wouldn’t have to do much, just let me tag along. I can be of use to you.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s
going to be dangerous for a little while.”

He opened his hands and held them
up to her. “I don’t care. I can handle it.

“You’re a child.”

He shook his head at her. “I
haven’t been a child since I was sold to the Red Lady.” He stepped closer and
pleaded earnestly. “Please! I can help. For instance, you don’t know your way
around the city. I can help you with that. I know where every cutpurse, hired
sword and enforcer in the city likes to go. I know whose allegiances are held by
whom and all of the players.” 

His face was mulish as he glared up
at her, and she could feel herself softening. She stiffened and gave him a cold
look, not ready to concede the battle quite yet.

“What about that scream trick you
do?” she asked. “Doesn’t that work to incapacitate bullies?”

He shook his head. “It works at
first. If a lot come or they get close enough to shut my mouth, there’s not
much I can do.”

Tate folded her arms and leaned
against the wall. She resisted the urge to bang her head against it. Having
someone watch her for pointers wasn’t on her list of things to do before she
died, but he’d been pretty helpful up until now. If she thought about it, he’d
saved her twice now, once in the tunnels and now from whatever Ryu had planned.