Dragonoak: The Complete History of Kastelir (9 page)

I mumbled an agreement and managed a fairly accomplished nod. Rán led me to the promised fruits, and I saw that her assessment of
pretty good
had been woefully understated. I didn't recognise half of the selection spread out on the stall, all of them so relentlessly vibrant that the colours themselves may as well have been new to me.

I wanted to get back to Sir Ightham – or rather, away from the pane – as quickly as I could, and so played it safe. I grabbed an assortment of fruit I could name, and didn't protest when Rán took those bags from me as well.

The young couple running the stall weren't as wary of Rán as the rest of Praxis seemed to be. If anything, they were pleased to see her – genuinely pleased, with bright smiles to back up their cheer – and spoke a handful of words to Rán in what must've been her mother tongue. The cut of her grin showed that she was impressed, and she bowed deeply, leaving me to tip the merchants.

If the fruit really was from Canth, all the way across the Uncharted Sea, who knew where else the couple had been. They could've gone to the furthest corners of Bosma, could've seen giants that could knock a pane into the ground with a swing of their fists, landscapes that would make the Bloodless Lands pale in comparison.

“Catch!” Rán said with a flick of her wrist. My reflexes were sharper than my mind and I managed to grab the blur that sprung from her hand, albeit after stepping to the side and clipping my shoulder against a passer-by. He'd been walking with his head down, meaning to charge through the crowd like a bull, and turned to shoot me either a glare or harsh words. Upon seeing the company I was keeping, he resolved to quicken his pace.

I stared down at the orange in my hand as though it was one of the spiked fruits I'd already forgotten the name of and squinted at it as if I didn't know what I was expected to do with it.

I glanced up at Rán and she grinned, saying, “You're welcome.”

I kept the orange in my hand as we dealt with the matter of meat, a field Rán claimed expertise in. She took a leg of lamb between her fingers, held it up for inspection, making it look like it would barely be a bite to her, let alone an entire meal. The merchants at that stall weren't as amiable as the fruit sellers had been, and though Rán asked how much two legs would set us back, one of them looked at me and said, “It's four relds for the two of them—make that three. Can't sell 'em on now that they've been handled,” with a sneer that nobody missed.

Rán's pride was far from wounded, for she must've suffered far worse; had suffered far worse in the depths of my mind that very day. Even then, the way the man refused to speak to her, slighting her all the while, didn't sit well with me. I took the meat at a discounted price without saying thank you, deciding that profit out of the merchant's pocket did something to alleviate his rudeness. Once Rán had the wrapped meat slung under her arm, I pierced the orange's peel with my thumbnail.

“Are people always that rude?” I asked as we ventured over towards a promising looking rack of pans. It was the most coherent thing I'd managed to get out since meeting her. “He wasn't just ignoring you. He was making a
point
of letting you know he was ignoring you. And you're—well, you're kind of...”

“Conspicuous?”

I flushed. I'd wanted to say
huge
, but had erred on the side of hesitation long enough for her to offer up a suggestion of her own.

“Exactly. Why do that? You weren't causing any problems—you were a paying customer!”

Rán's face had been animated up until that point. She'd only taken breaks from smiling in order to grin, fangs flashing under the midday sun, but her features evened out as she considered my question. I believe she took it more seriously than she otherwise would've because it was the first time I'd managed to speak freely around her, unprompted at that, and my bravery only belatedly occurred to me. I was letting my guard down, treating her like a
person
.

“Pane don't go responding to words with anything other than quick wit. They're not gonna stir us to violence—not with threats, not with insults. Some of you humans, you just...” Rán paused, tapping her chin with a claw. “You're fond of making outsiders of anyone a little different. And once you get someone who's a
lot
different, well. Here we are. Let the lad waste his breath. I've been accused of worse than contaminating a little meat.”

“People scare too easily,” I said, working a segment of the orange free. The number of pane I'd met who hadn't tried to make a meal of me outweighed the number who had by a considerable amount, and I decided it was only decent to treat her as warmly as she was treating me.

I knew better than most how it felt to have people jump to conclusions about you, and berated myself for having followed in the villagers' example just as soon as I wasn't the one being shunned. I popped the entire piece of fruit into my mouth, pierced it with my teeth to make my smile orange, then tugged on Rán's cloak, getting her attention.

The juice bled from the segment and dripped from the corners of my mouth, and Rán let out a laugh so deep that I thought she might knock the cooking pots from the table they were precariously placed upon.

Heartily patting my back with more care than I braced myself for, Rán said, “Don't reckon you're anything like that dragon-slayer. How'd you end up with the likes of her? Never known a squire to go around without at least a little armour on. Certainly never seen one who'd left their sword behind.”

I chewed slowly on another orange segment as I debated telling Rán the truth. A fellow human wouldn't have taken kindly to it, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, and the remaining one would've feigned disgust to fit in, but I had no idea how pane felt about
anything
. Beyond how they liked their steak, that was.

Shrugging, I said, “I had a falling out with my village and needed to get away,” deciding that the truth would come out, but only if Rán pried it from me.

“You had a falling out with an entire village?” Rán asked, mildly impressed. “Now, tell me. Exactly how does a friendly young woman like yourself go about achieving a feat of the sorts?”

With the prompting of a second question, I found that I was
eager
to tell her the truth. In the past, people had either caught me in the act of necromancy or fallen prey to vicious rumours. I'd never been given the chance to actually
tell
somebody before. And why not Rán, this mountain of a woman?

In a way, I wanted to give her as much of a fright as she'd given me.

I glanced around, knowing that people were sure to be listening in on a pane's conversation in order to have something to discuss over their dinner tables that night, and pushed myself up onto tiptoes. It didn't get me far. Seeing that I had something of a secret to share with her, Rán leant forward, letting me murmur into her pointed ear.

“Necromancy,” I whispered.

The word came out easily, leaving my nerves rawer for it. Rán didn't flinch or shrink away from me, which did something to stop my heart from hammering in my chest, but unlike Sir Ightham, she had no problem with displaying what she was feeling. She furrowed her brow, bemused, and licked her upper lip with a long, thin tongue as she searched for the appropriate response.

It wasn't until the word was out there, irretrievable, that I had the clarity to recall the pane's role in the Necromancy Wars. Rán had assured me that not even a threat or insult could provoke her to violence, but her eyes could become icy whenever she looked at me; to a necromancer, that would leave just as much of a bruise.

However, she settled on clapping a hand on my shoulder and said, “Heh—you humans sure are a peculiar lot.”

Disappointment came rushing in along with relief. I'd hoped it would take her more than a moment to decide it didn't matter. But the pane weren't necromancers, weren't healers; she probably didn't understand what it truly meant.

“See that building with a red coat of paint? That's the inn we're meeting the dragon-slayer at,” Rán said, once we'd finished shopping. “Go ahead—and don't be worrying. I won't be running off with the bags. Just saving your back the strain, that's all.”

I was sorry to see her go. I watched her horns rise above the crowd as she went on her way, not waiting for me to say goodbye; strange that I felt more comfortable with a pane than without one. The city became larger without Rán to tower over me, the crowds drew in closer, and I hurried to the inn, to Sir Ightham.

The
Rambler's Rest
was a wooden building placed between two stone ones, with more floors than could possibly be necessary. The planks were painted red over the door, across the width of the building, and a sign hung in the centre – a man at a table, lit only by a single candle – with words beneath it.

There was a tavern built into the ground floor. I headed there when I found the lobby empty, save for a woman working behind a counter who didn't look up from her book. The tavern smelled more of roasting meat than it did of alcohol, and was better lit than the sign had led me to believe. Still, I didn't spot Sir Ightham straight away, and began to worry that the man idly cleaning glasses for something to do was going to tell me to clear out.

I'd never spent much time in my village's tavern, outside of festivals.
Not got work to attend to, Rowan—?
the patrons would ask cheerfully, and later, they'd tell Thane they were concerned that the drink and atmosphere might dampen my powers.

But nobody said anything. The barkeeper only nodded at me, moving onto the next glass.

Sir Ightham was sat in a corner the candles didn't quite reach, one foot up on an empty chair. She clasped a half-empty stein of ale between her hands, staring into the middle distance, gaze fixed firmly on her thoughts. I was hesitant to interrupt her, but had nowhere else to go, and slowly stepped into her field of vision, so as not to make her lose track of what she was mulling over.

She looked at me, bringing her drink to her lips instead of saying anything.

“You left me with a pane,” was the first thing I thought to say.

It wasn't an accusation. Once my fear subsided, I let go of irrationality and wasn't angry about it. Sir Ightham took another sip of her ale, removed her boot from the chair and gestured to it.

“If we are to travel with her, then you need to understand that your fears are baseless,” she said as I sat opposite her. “I thought you of all people would know better than to be taken in by rumours. I suppose all is well between you now?”

“No one's been that nice to me in forever,” I admitted, already ashamed of who I'd been a few hours ago. “She'll be here soon—she had some things of her own to attend to.”

Sir Ightham nodded, and I emptied the change from my pocket onto the table. She raked the money towards herself, setting down her stein so that she could put it back in her pouch. One coin was left between us, and she simply inclined her head towards the bar. Suggesting that I get a drink for myself, I supposed, considering that she still had plenty left.

I hurried over to the bar, greeted the barkeeper with too much of a smile, then didn't know what to ask for. He laughed under his breath, and said he'd get me what my friend was drinking. My cheer had its downside: the stein was full to the brim, ale threatening to slosh over the sides with every step I took.

By the time I returned to our table, Sir Ightham was back in her own world. I put my stein down and she came back to the moment, back into the tavern, eyes fixed on the drink, not me.

“You know a lot about the pane. More than anyone I've ever met—well, you know more things that are probably
true
,” I said, trying to reclaim her attention. “Have you met many? Are there are a lot in Thule?”

From my understanding of Thule, there wasn't much that couldn't be found within the city.

“Some. It's close to the mountains, after all,” Sir Ightham said, not at all interested in what she was saying. “I lived with them, for a time. Years and years ago.”

“You lived with the pane? In the mountains?” I asked, forgetting that I was trying to keep my drink still, ale dripping onto my knuckles.

“Mm,” she hummed distantly, drumming her fingers against the edge of the table.

She was far from caught up reminiscing, clearly disinterested in a past she'd lived through, but I seized the opportunity while I could.

“Did you ever see the Bloodless Lands?” I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper.

“Did I see the Bloodless Lands?” Sir Ightham repeated, raising an eyebrow. “Do you think I'd be sat here if I had?”

The mountain range and the walls built between sloping peaks were the only thing protecting us from the Bloodless Lands, and I wasn't certain how Sir Ightham could've avoided setting eyes on a scar half a continent large.

But it was as she said. She wouldn't be sat in front of me if she'd glanced into the Bloodless Lands for even a moment. Still, my curiosity was far from sated, and I made a note to ask Rán later. Rán, who couldn't be from anywhere but the mountains and would do more than answer my questions with yet more questions.

“Did you hear from your contact?” I asked, surprised that I hadn't found Sir Ightham poring over yet more letters. She didn't reply, nor did she use the distraction of her drink to hide behind, and so I kept speaking to stop the silence from closing in around us. “Everything's alright, isn't it? We'll be at the, um...”

“The dragon?” she asked, tilting her head towards me.

I tensed at the word and lifted my glass, gulping down so much that my chest ached. I'd worried about towns and found my way through, worried about bandits and seen Sir Ightham dispatch those; I'd worried about pane, and Rán had proven that there was no basis to my prejudice. In spite of the pattern that had formed, I'd no doubt I'd be proven right about dragons.

“Right. The... dragon.”

“It'll be dangerous,” Sir Ightham said, answering the question I'd yet to ask. It was probably written into my expression, screamed out in the way I leant forward, shoulders hunched. “Go back to your village, if you wish.”