Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (10 page)

She leant forward, elbow on the edge of the table, chin propped against the heel of her palm. She seemed dreadfully bored, and it was the lack of spite or annoyance, the lack of
anything
in her words, that really got under my skin.

“Go back? I'm not—” Not scared? Of course I was scared. I was scared of taking a wrong turn, scared of losing a coin, scared of bandits and dragons. Fear seemed to lose its meaning, encompassing so many things. “I can't go back. It'll be like before.”

I'd come a long way in two days. I'd seen more than most of the village ever had, experienced things I was certain my brother was making up, but I couldn't expect the villagers to change, for all that. I was still a necromancer to them.

Sir Ightham looked at me.

She kept her chin propped against her palm, but she tilted her head towards me, narrowed eyes flickering across my face, searching for
something
I became certain she was sure to find.

“What
was
it like?” she asked. “What did you do? You had them fooled for seven long years. It may not be admirable, but it is intriguing.”

I shouldn't have answered her questions. I should've sent them back towards her as she'd done to me – what do you
think
I did? – but it was the first time she'd looked at me properly. It was the first time
anyone
had looked at me like that in a long time, and she was the only one to want the details, beyond the deceit.

I took my time, drinking down a little more of the ale. My mouth was dry and I became glad of the shadowy corner, worried she'd see the colour rise in my face, otherwise.

“When I realised I was a—when I realised what I could do,” I said, terrified of anyone overhearing, terrified of saying the word
necromancer
so often that it was given more weight than Sir Ightham could tolerate, “I went to the village elders. I said... I said that I could help them, and they smiled, and said of course I could, I was already a big help at the farm, already doing my bit by chasing wolves away. So I insisted that no,
really
, I could heal, and I suppose they found it funny. I was only fifteen, and...

“And anyway, Thane – you met him, didn't you? – his son was ill at the time. Kept eating bitterwillow, being fine for a day, and then coming down with it again. So I went to his house while Thane was busy talking things over for Winter's End with my father, and fixed his son up. Word got around, and before I knew it, people couldn't be nice enough to me.

“Our apothecary’s was tiny, but they gave me half the shop to myself. They divided it into two rooms, set out a table for me to work on, and then everyone was coming to our village. All the way from Ironash. I used to hear that I only charged half the price that a healer twice as far away did, but since I was renting the space at the apothecary's, Thane used to say, since I was doing this as part of the community, I only ever saw a few valts a week. Most of that I gave to my brother Michael, so he could study outside of the village and buy books.”

Sir Ightham was still looking at me, but her expression hadn't changed. I wondered what it would take to interest her, to impress her; more than my life story, apparently.

“I won't
make
you go back there,” she said, and the corners of my mouth twitched both because of what she'd said and what she hadn't. “You are, of course, welcome to leave whenever you choose. Should you wish to stay here, I will make the necessary arrangements.”

“I don't want to stay here,” I blurted out, and it was true. Travelling with Sir Ightham meant heading towards dragons, but as impressed as I was with myself for having survived the city thus far, the thought of staying in it, of sinking deeper into the maze of streets, made my stomach twist. There were too many people, they were too close; they'd find out, sooner or later.

“Very well,” Sir Ightham said. It was of no consequence to her.

She sat back up straight, looking over to the tavern door.

Rán came lumbering in. A spike of fear rose in my gut at the sight of her, but I shook it off, determined to be better than all the people who'd forgotten what they were talking about in favour of gawking at her. There was no denying that it was a sight to see; she'd had to duck to get through the doorway, hands wrapped around her horns to stop them scraping across the frame, and made her way over with her knees bent, so as not to send sparks across the ceiling.

I greeted her with a smile and she returned it with more than twice the enthusiasm, swiping a candle from a nearby table and frowning down at the empty chair next to me. After a moment's deliberation, she pushed it to the side, and sat cross-legged on the floor. Like that, she was only a head or so taller than me.

Horns not included, naturally.

“Put all our things in one of the rooms—the woman behind the counter was kind enough to show me to mine,” Rán explained. “What about you, dragon-slayer? Get the things you need from your contact?”

“My name is Ightham,” she said, staring down at her empty stein. “And no, there have been complications. We'll need to head elsewhere.”

“That so?” Rán asked, rubbing her chin.

I was too grateful for Sir Ightham taking me along in the first place to be bitter than Rán was privy to information I wasn't, but it was disheartening when Sir Ightham recalled that I was there and said, “Go order dinner for us. Choose whatever you please and get me the same—Rán?”

Rán looked down at me, half sorry that I was being dismissed, but not about to turn down a free meal.

“Steak. The biggest they have, three or four of 'em, and make sure they're raw,” she said, and I supposed some of my preconceptions about the pane had to be right.

I took a few coins, more of a servant than a squire, and headed back towards the bar. I felt their eyes on me as I went, both of them waiting until I was out of earshot, and glanced back while the barkeeper was busy serving someone else. They were huddled over the table, talking in low whispers. It wasn't out of paranoia; half of the bar had left their own business and gossip behind in favour of staring at Rán without an ounce of subtlety, straining to hear what she was saying.

“Back already, miss?” the barkeeper asked, grinning.

“I'd like...” There was a chalkboard behind his shoulder, white words scrawled across it, smudged in the corners. A list of the meals on offer, I expected.

I must've looked like I was struggling, because the barkeeper came to my rescue, saying, “Lot to choose from, isn't there? Well, can't speak for your tastes, miss, but personally, I'd say you can't go wrong with potatoes and a nice side of bacon.”

“I'll take two,” I said quickly, then paused before saying, “This might be strange, but could we have a pile of steaks? Raw steaks. Three or four of them.”

The barkeeper let out a laugh, and said, “If you've got the coin, our cook would be happy to save himself a little work.”

I ordered a round of drinks and carried them back to the table. Sir Ightham and Rán had rushed to say all they needed to throughout the mere minutes I'd been gone, and a stiff silence wrapped around the table. We all attended to our drinks, Rán's stein looking like a thimble in her grasp, both of them mulling over whatever it was a Knight and pane had reason to discuss.

It was Sir Ightham who brought life back to the conversation.

“Perhaps your questions about the Bloodless Lands would better be directed at Rán,” she suggested, and though that had been my plan all along, I felt foolish for ever demonstrating how little I really knew.

But Rán's ears perked up, and she said, “Oh? What's all this then?”

The words weren't hard to find, in the face of genuine curiosity.

“I was just wondering about them, that's all. If you'd ever seen them, seeing as they're on the other side of the mountains.”

I shrugged. I'd never seen a mountain, but I imagined them to be rockier versions of hills, if not a little taller. Nothing that couldn't be conquered in a matter of minutes, especially with legs like Rán's.

“Reckon you'd be better served asking any other pane about that,” Rán said. She'd already gulped her drink down, and was using her long, forked tongue to steal the last few drops from the bottom of the stein. “Left all this behind when I was young and headed off to Canth, along with a friend of mine. Human, as it happens. Reis—good person. Been friends with 'em for as long as I care to remember.”

The Bloodless Lands were pushed out of my mind. Fruit from Canth was one thing, but meeting someone who'd actually
been
wasn't the sort of thing that happened. Canth was a strange land, semi-mythical for being as far across the Uncharted Sea as it was.

Michael had told me it'd take ten weeks on the Kingdom's finest ship to reach the sun-scorched land, and a dozen questions formed in my mind. Were there really as many pirates as they said? Was it true that phoenixes still lived there, that the people still worshipped Isjin and the other gods?

Rán saw my questions coming from a mile off. Her eyes shone brighter than gold coins in the candlelight, and over her drink she told me that yes, there were pirates, yes, they worshipped the gods still, but the only phoenixes she'd ever seen were made of gold and silver.

“Lived in a pirate town, in fact. Port Mahon! Most welcoming place on the continent, providing you're able to pull your own weight,” Rán said. Dinner was brought over by a man far more skittish that the barkeeper. He placed Rán's plate on the edge of the table while standing as far from it as he could; the plate almost tipped towards the ground, but Rán placed a palm under it, saving her steaks. She ate them at her leisure, neglecting to use the knife and fork provided, cutting the meat to shreds on her tusks. “Reis is in charge there. Now, they're not the
official
leader, Mahon's never been the sort of place for too much order, but they grew into the role. People listen to 'em.
I
listen to them, if you'd believe that.”

“Really?” I asked, spearing a stray chunk of potato with my fork. My hunger had been put aside in favour of conversation, but I'd managed to clear a good third of my plate without realising it. “You let a human boss you around?”

Rán put a hand to her heart – where I assumed her heart was – and said, “What? You think I'm stubborn and proud, is that it?”

A week ago, if I'd been told I was going to have dinner with a pane, I never would have believed it. If I'd been told I'd be making fun of them, I would've planned my own funeral.

“Just bossy,” I said, and Rán rolled her eyes, snatching up another steak.

Sir Ightham finished her meal faster than I thought possible. She'd eaten as though she was the pane, and once she was done with food and drink alike, she sat there, listening, gaze fixed on me. It was distracting. I'd be saying something to Rán, Rán who was only too happily to indulge each and every question I had, uncomfortably aware all the while that Sir Ightham was
staring
at me. I tried to shake it off, telling myself that her thoughts were elsewhere and she was merely staring
through
me.

“How about you, yrval?” I didn't know what the word meant and Sir Ightham arched her brow every time Rán said it, but there was a softness to it that I didn't dislike. “Is this your first time in Praxis?”

“It's my first time almost anywhere,” I told her, and though her features were generally more animated than most, that got the biggest reaction out of her yet. Her ears folded back and she waited for me to go on. “We went to Eaglestone yesterday, but before that, I'd always stayed in my village. I guess the elders didn't want me thinking there was much more to the world than our little marketplace.”

And yet I could've spent a lifetime exploring all the hidden corners of Praxis alone. Rán had been to Canth and back, had undoubtedly travelled further still than all that, and to her, it must've seemed as though I'd been freed from a cage. Sitting there, free to speak, surrounded by people who knew what I was, made me feel as though I
had
been in a prison of sorts, and I was on the verge of saying something saccharine when Sir Ightham straightened in her seat, pulling our attention towards her.

She immediately sank against the bench, hat casting a shadow over her face.

Rán saw what she had before I thought to look around. There was a soldier standing in the doorway; not a guard, like the ones at the entrances of Eaglestone and Praxis. I was able to make the distinction, even by candlelight. They wore the royal family's crest on the front of their golden armour, not the sigil of a town or city, and the barkeeper immediately headed over to speak to them.

Sir Ightham spoke to me without looking my way.

“Go to Rán's room, collect the things, and leave the building,” she said, and Rán pulled a key from her pocket, carefully sliding it across the table. Sir Ightham licked her finger and thumb, putting out the candles. “Room three on the first floor. Don't run.”

I took the key. My fingers were shaking, but I picked it up, not letting it clatter against the stone floor. I stood slowly – too slowly, perhaps – wanting to question Sir Ightham but knowing instinctively not to speak. I headed out of the tavern and into the inn, doing my best not to look at the soldier, telling myself that they couldn't hear my heart pounding.

Telling myself that much worse awaited me in the guise of a dragon.

The lobby was brightly lit, compared to the tavern, and it took me a moment to get my bearings. Numbers, at least, I could read. I slipped the key into the lock, unsteady fingers doing their best to betray me, and heard the bolt click open.

I pushed the door to slowly. I don't know what I'd been expecting to see, for the room was plain, housing only a bed that was too small for any pane to sleep in and a basin Rán's hands probably wouldn't fit in. The bags were placed at the foot of the bed, and I scooped them up, one over each shoulder, carrying what we'd brought from market in my arms.

I left the key in the lock, not wanting to have to stop in the lobby and explain why we were leaving before making use of the room, glancing back towards the tavern as I went. Sir Ightham was already gone, but Rán remained at the table. I supposed that leaving with a pane would've drawn too much attention to her, but it didn't make any sense to me.