Dragon's Treasure (7 page)

"Another time," Treion said. Gund stared at him, eyes burning. Treion held his eyes a moment. Go ahead, his stare said to the infuriated outlaw. Charge me.

Gund turned, and lumbered in the direction of the liquor. The rest of the men followed him. Sheathing his sword, Treion returned to the fire.

Niello said, "You take chances. You shouldn't."

"You mean the girl? She won't look for the soldiers. She'll go home, to her village." What was left of it.

"I mean the men. Gund won't forgive you. You shamed him."

"The girl shamed him."

"He'll make trouble."

"If he does, I'll kill him." He knew he could do it. He was strong, and faster than any of them with a blade.
They
knew he could do it.

He did not think Gund would make trouble for him with the others. It was not that they were loyal—except, perhaps, for Edric—but they had grown used to following his orders. Without him, most of them would by now be dead, or in some lord's prison.

Besides, they thought he was lucky. He had heard Edric boast of it. He was Treion the Bastard, who had faced the Dragon of Chingura, and walked away with his skin.

Still, he had to have gold. Lucky or not, they would leave if he did not pay them. A ghost of an idea flitted through his mind.

He said, "I know where we can find some gold."

Niello raised an eyebrow.

"Castella."

The intelligencer said, "You're mad. It's under Kalni Leminin's protection. You know that."

"So what? We'll be there and gone before he hears about it."

"It's walled."

"Walls can be climbed." Walls could be climbed, doors forced, strongboxes opened....

"The Lemininkai has a garrison there."

"How big? Under whose command?"

"I don't know," Niello said.

"Can you find out?"

"Surely." He frowned. "You're serious about this, aren't you?"

"Maybe." If fate desired him to be an outlaw, Treion thought, perhaps it was time for him to embrace it. He would be Treion the Bastard, the man who sacked Castella.... "Maybe not. Don't say anything. It's just an idea. Have you your pieces on you?"

Smiling, Niello withdrew a keph box from within his cloak. The delicate carved pieces, half the size of those in a conventional set, glittered in the firelight.

Treion fished a ridari from his pocket. "Heads or tails."

"Heads."

The coin spun, and dropped into the dust, face side up. Treion turned the board, giving Niello the Summer pieces. Aloof in her carved elegance, the Summer Princess faced the Winter Warrior; the Wizard faced the Vampyre; the Eagle faced the Raven. The two Kings confronted each other gravely: mirror images, except that the Winter King was blind.

Niello nudged a pikeman forward. Treion lifted the Winter Warrior's pikeman in his fingertips and advanced it one square.

"Your move."

4

Four days after the unexpected visit from her overlord, a heavy knock sounded on Maia diSorvino's front door.

Morga, sleeping on her rug beneath the window, lifted her head. Her tail thumped. Maia was kneading bread dough. "A moment." She scooped the dough into its bowl and covered it. Wiping her fingers on a cloth, she opened the door, expecting to see Angus.

Karadur Atani stood before the small doorway. Tail thrashing, Morga frisked to him and stuck her head under his hand.

He scratched her chin. "Well, beast. Hast kept thy mistress safe, I see." Behind him, a big black gelding bent its head to snatch at the new grass.

He held out a wooden case. "This is for you. It's from my library."

She opened it. Nestled within the smooth wood lay a book. The Properties of Herbs, the printing on the cover read, Prepared by Nennius Guerin, Being an Account of my Observation of the Properties of some Medicinal Plants, with Illustrations. She
opened it to the first page.
Aloe,
the text read. A
plaster of aloe leaf cures burns and soothes eruptions of the skin from the bites of insects and evil beasts.
She turned the page.
Anise. The seeds of this delicate plant will relieve cough, sweeten breath, and quicken a mother's milk.

Master Eccio had had a copy of
The Properties of Herbs.
When she was small, he had kept her amused by allowing her to look at the pictures. As her interest in his work quickened, he had used it as a syllabus. After his death, her father had burned all his books.

She closed the wooden cover, and held it out. "My lord, this is a treasure. You should not give it away."

"It is mine, therefore I may give it if I wish. Do you want it?"

He was Dragon; she could not lie to him. She nodded. He smiled. She caught her breath, because of the way it changed his face. "Good. It's yours.

He closed the door before she could speak to thank him.

* * *

Later that week she had a second visitor. Miri Halleck's farm was adjacent to Angus and Maura's. She had heard about Maia from Maura, and had walked across the fields to meet her. She had brought a guest-gift: a lace-trimmed pillow, stuffed with lambswool.

"Here. Invite me in, girl."

She looked at the cottage with approval. "So, you're Iva Unamira's daughter. I knew your grandfather, thieving sheep-stealing scoundrel that he was. He was a handsome man, though. I always liked him."

Miri was past seventy, and thrice, she proclaimed proudly, a widow. She had five daughters and two sons. "Seventeen grandchildren. Twenty great-grandchildren, and two more due next month." She had lost her first husband to fever, and her second to an Isojai raid. "He rode with the Black Dragon into Ippa, the old fool.
Stay home,
I told him.
War is for young men.
But farming never suited him. He was happiest on horseback."

They spent the afternoon talking, or rather, Miri talked, while Maia listened. Miri knew everyone in the domain. She had known Wina Omara, Maia's grandmother, who had borne Reo Unamira a daughter, and died in the Fever Year. "She was a sweet woman." She spoke of Hana Diamori, the dragon-lord's mother—"She was a child, that Hana. She should have married some young man of her own country. But the children of the highborn do not make their own choices"—and of Atalaya Atani, Kojiro Atani's mother, who had ruled the domain for forty years, and vanished in the midst of a thunderstorm.

"Ah, she was a beauty. White, white skin, and hair the color of flame. She was wild. She never wed. She refused to even name her son's father. She said he was the North Wind.

"But it did not matter who Kojiro Atani's sire was. From the moment he was born, everyone could see that he was Dragon."

Mama, what's a bastard?

A child who does not know its father. Why?

Father called Treion a bastard. But Treion is my brother. How can he be a bastard?

Treion is your half brother. He is mine, but not your father's.

But, Mama—don't you know who Treion's father is?

Oh yes,
Iva Unamira diSorvino said,
I know.

Maia said, "What was he like?"

"The Black Dragon? He was a wild boy, and a fearsome man. His temper could kindle in an instant, and when it did, there was no escaping it. But those who served him faithfully he rewarded. Loyalty and courage mean everything to the dragon-kindred."

Maia said, "Did you know my mother?"

"I knew her. We were not close. You look like her, a little."

"Surely not," Maia said. "I am tall. She was small and delicate, and beautiful."

"It's so. She was beautiful, and shameless with it. Men fell about her like trees in a windstorm. Alf, my eldest, wanted desperately to wed her. She laughed at him, of course. I was glad. They would never have suited. I remember when she left, to go to Sorvino. I was surprised to hear of her return. Why did she leave Sorvino?"

Maia was growing accustomed to the question.

"She left because my father did not want her, and because she was sick."

When Miri left, she took with her a wreath of chamomile leaves and a bag of poplar-bark powder for her hands, which were swollen and painful, especially in the morning. As she crossed the threshold, she turned back.

"Do you make a remedy for headache? My daughter Arafel has fierce headaches."

"I know several remedies for headache," Maia said.

"I will send her to you," Miri said.

* * *

She kept her word. In the weeks to follow, a steady stream of folk made their way to Maia's door, Arafel among them. Most had minor ailments. Maia did what she could for them. She made teas for headache, stomachache, and flatulence. She made tisanes for fevers and anxious nerves. She made syrups for a cough, and poultices for bruises and sprains.

Sinnea Ohair, who had been in service at Dragon Keep before she married Murgain the Archer, took away a salve to cure a sty. Rain, the midwife of Sleeth, came to the house, not for a potion, but to ask Maia to keep an eye out for the herbs she needed in her work.

"I keep basil and dill in my garden. Thistle and pennyroyal are easy to find. But raspberry, bearberry, slippery elm; often I cannot get to them. I am less spry than I used to be. My greatest need is for purple fennel." She looked at Maia somewhat dubiously. "Do you know—?"

"I know."
This is fennel
, Uta had said.
There are two kinds. We can eat the stalks of both, but the kind with the purple flowers has another use. I will explain when you are older.
She hadn't, but Master Eccio had. He had taught Maia how to crush the seeds to make tea, and told her, in his driest professional tone, that drinking fennel tea every day would keep a man's seed from quickening in a woman's womb. He showed her the relevant page in Guerin's
Properties. Purple fennel, although it prefers sun and warmth, is hardier than its yellow-blossomed cousin. In cold climates yellow fennel will wither, but purple fennel can survive all but the coldest climes....

"Do you have much need for pennyroyal?"

Rain said, "It has its uses. Some women do not want children. And some women should not have them; their bodies are too weak to bear a child. Men do not think of such things. It's not their concern."

Maia nodded. Women gave birth. The making, and sometimes the unmaking, of children was their business.

She prowled the woods looking for herbs. The trees were thick with new leaves; miniature flames, trembling at the ends of the red-limned branches. She cleared space for a garden behind the cottage. She filled the cottage with cuttings. When she tired of her own company, she visited Maura and Angus. The spring corn was up; she joined Angus in the fields, and learned to use a weed hook. When rain drove her inside, she sewed. Nini Daluino, the draper from Castria, had traded her a bolt of cloth for simples. Maura helped her cut it. She was an indifferent seamstress, but a dogged one, and she needed clothes. She made trousers, and a shirt.

She was not lonely. She missed her mother, though, and she missed Fenris. And she missed comfort: soft clothes, a hot bath, food she did not have to find or cook herself. But such desires were childish. Her mother had lived with a man she had not loved to protect her child, and left him for the same reason. She had endured his spite, and her father's drunken fits. She had lived in pain, and died without complaint.
She
was Iva Unamira's daughter. She could bathe in cold water, and eat root vegetables for days at a time, if that was what was necessary. Comfort could be forgone.

Often, during that spring, she would look up from her harvesting to see in the cloudless sky the great glittering form of the Golden Dragon. In Castria, where she went occasionally to trade her potions for the goods she could not fashion, she listened to the tales people told of the dragon- kindred. Some, like the story of Lyr, were ones she knew. Others, like the story of Iyadur Atani, the Silver Dragon, were new to her. Maura told her of the war Karadur Atani had fought against his brother Tenjiro.

"They were womb-brothers. But Tenjiro was always angry, jealous of his brother. He left the Keep to study sorcery. When he came back, he stole Dragon's magic, and vanished. No one knew where he was. Then Azil Aumson returned to the Keep."

"Who is he?"

"He is a singer, son to Aum Nialsdatter, steward of Atani Castle. He is Dragon's dearest friend. Tenjiro took Azil north with him and kept him there, a prisoner. Everyone thought he was dead. But he escaped, and came back, across the ice. That winter, last year it was, Tenjiro sent wargs into the domain. They killed twenty people. It was a bad time."

Maia said, "I remember it." The outlaws had kept close to home all winter.

"In spring, Dragon took the army north. He fought Tenjiro and took his magic back. They say a wizard helped him, a woman."

* * *