The Child Prince (The Artifactor) (38 page)

That knocked the jocularity right out of the air. Both men straightened up and regarded Sevana with open alarm. “This close to migration season?” Vashti objected.

“We can’t wait for them to get back from the north. Besides, they’re always in a testy mood, as far as I can tell.” Sevana tossed a hand, indicating it didn’t worry her either way. “But we’d like to stay here tonight and borrow a boat in the morning.”

Vashbaen nodded uncertainly. “You are welcome at my house, as always. I will take you there myself tomorrow. You, ah, did bring gold?”

“Enough to sink me to the bottom of an ocean,” Bellomi assured the man, touched by the open concern both were displaying on Sevana’s behalf. So, these were true friends and not just old clients. It warmed his heart to see it. “Do not worry so. We are taking every precaution.”

“That is wise,” Vashbaen returned with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Then come, Bel, and be welcome at my house.”

Sevana hadn’t been kidding about the inside of the house being more artistic and splendid than the outside. Most people hung art on their walls to decorate—the people of Vash apparently believed that walls
were
the canvas. The ceilings didn’t escape their attention, either. Bel took a whole step inside of Vashti’s house and stopped in awestruck wonder. No matter which way he looked at it, he had not stepped into a house but clearly into a forest. The floors were grass and ferns, the walls trees and soft afternoon light, the chairs and long settee either covered in fabric made to look like logs or rocks. He’d seen forests that seemed less real to him!  

“Vashera, wife!” Vashti boomed out as he strode through the main room.

“Here!” a feminine voice called down the stairs. Shoes quickly appeared from the second story, thumping down the wooden stairs faster than Bellomi thought wise. In short order, a woman appeared, puffing slightly for breath. She had white hair like her husband, dark skin, and a plump figure that made her seem grandmotherly. Actually, at her age, she probably did have grandchildren. Her dark eyes sparkled as she hustled over to Sevana and threw her arms around the shorter woman. “Sevana! We have missed you.”

Sevana rolled her eyes, for all the world looking put upon, but Bellomi noticed she readily hugged back. “Vashera, it is good to see you well.”

Still with that beaming smile, she pulled back and patted Sevana’s shoulders. “You’re still too thin. Don’t you eat, child?”

“She does,” Bellomi assured her, amused at this motherly scene. “She even cooks. I can attest to that.”

As if noticing him for the first time, Vashera turned and regarded him. “Oh my! A handsome young man.”

“
Not
my lover,” Sevana inputted firmly, brows furrowing in a scowl.

From the disappointed look on Vashera’s face, she really had jumped to that conclusion.

Bellomi, fighting back a smile (what was it with this village wanting to marry Sevana off?), gave his hostess a polite bow. “My name is Bel. I come without warning, Mistress Vashera.”

“Oh, you are more than welcome,” Vashera assured him, bouncing quickly back to her original smile. “Come, come, I have rooms upstairs for you.”

Bellomi followed her up the stairs, slowing here and there as a particularly detailed plant or tree on the wall caught his attention. The stairs under his feet creaked like regular wood did, but stained in such a way that it looked like he climbed up the branch of a tree. It felt…odd. In an enchanted way. “You have a beautiful home, Mistress Vashera,” he said in complete honesty. “I’ve never seen the like of it.”

“You give beautiful compliments,” Vashera responded, flashing him a smile over her shoulder. “Why is such a nice man with you, Sevana?”

“A client,” she responded with the air of shortly evaporating patience. “He’s under a curse and we came here to borrow the power we need to break it.” To Bellomi, she grumbled, “I never should have made you that bed. No one would be giving me grief over this if you still looked eight years old.”

“Eight years old?” Vashera stopped dead on the stairs and whirled about to regard them both in confusion. “What is this?”

Shooing the matron back in motion, Sevana started to explain the situation in more detail. Bellomi lent half an ear to it, but most of his attention was taken up by the second story. Far from continuing the theme from the first story of a woodland, the second level resembled a rocky mountaintop. The level of detail in depicting the stones and natural ferns that a mountain clearing boggled his mind. Just how much time had these people spent on this home?

Sevana took a room at the very end of the hallway, entering it with the air of someone who had stayed there many times before. So she had a regular room here? Vashera brought him into a different room right next door, ushering him in. “Bel, this is your room as long as you wish to have it.”

“Thank you very much.” He stepped in, eyes darting frantically about to see everything. Again, the theme changed and this time he stepped onto a rocky ledge with a starlit night surrounding him. He actually recognized some of the constellations depicted. His attention was so taken up by the walls and the ceiling that it almost escaped his attention that a bed and dresser were right in front of him.

“Settle in and come down when you’re ready,” Vashera invited, already retreating back into the hallway. “Dinner will be on the table soon.”

“Thank you.” He flashed her a quick smile before she closed the door. Not wasting time, he put his bag down and took a minute to wash up in the stand near the door. Feeling slightly refreshed, he headed back down the stairs, pausing now and again as something on the walls or ceiling caught his eye.

“Bel!” Sevana called from the main floor. “
Before
the end of the year, if you please!”

Bossy creature…he let out a sigh and quickly descended the rest of the stairs, heading straight for the room on his right. The smell of richly baked food and spices came from that direction, so he assumed the food could be found over here somewhere.

He stepped into an open room that looked like the clearing next to a lush waterfall paradise. In fact, the spiraling water that poured down the wall looked so real that he could almost swear he smelled running water. But of course, he couldn’t from just a picture of mosaic tiles. The table looked like a boulder that rose up and mushroomed out on top, with smaller boulders around it for people to sit. Bel sat next to Vashera at her urging, telling his hostess as he sat, “It smells wonderful.” Not that he recognized a single dish on the table.

She beamed at the compliment and started heaping food onto his plate. Sevana refused to let Vashera do the same for her and for good reason. Only a growing boy (such as himself) could manage to eat the huge portions.

The food proved to be just as hot and spicy as it smelled, but equally delicious. He happily plowed through the plate and even snitched a little bit more, which delighted the cook.

As he ate, Vashera and Vashti asked detailed questions about Bellomi’s condition and reason for being here, all of which Sevana answered. When this topic was more or less exhausted (and Bellomi had sufficiently stuffed himself) he asked, “How did you meet Sevana?”

“Ah, that.” Vashti’s eyes crinkled up in laughter. “We sent word out, asking for help about three years ago. An epidemic had hit the village, something nasty that regular medicine couldn’t do anything to cure. We needed either an expert physician or someone with the same level of medical knowledge, but the only person that dared to come this close to dragon territory was Sevana.” He shook his head in fond remembrance. “We weren’t sure what to think of her, at first. She was so young, barely fifteen, and sassy. But she came without complaint and stayed until every one of us were on our feet again. Worked out a fair payment, too. Ever since, when we need help, we just send a message to her.”

“Works well in my favor too,” Sevana put in, polishing off the last bit of bread. “I get an unending supply of dragon scales this way.”

Yes, but wouldn’t she have to take a special trip down here just to collect any kind of payment? Bellomi studied her from the corner of his eye. She sounded detached, as if she weren’t doing these people any favors, but he could see that wasn’t the case at all. These two absolutely adored her. They wouldn’t be so welcoming of someone who they only did business with.
Really.
He carefully hid a smile.
Why can’t she just be honest with herself and say she likes these people?

“Well.” Vashti pushed back from the table. “You’ll need an early start in the morning, if you mean to catch the dragons during broad daylight. That’s the best time to approach ‘em. Best turn in now.”

Bellomi tried to help cleaning up the kitchen, only to be shooed out by Vashera, so he gave up and retired to his room. He’d only ever slept in four beds in his entire life, including the two different beds in Big. So sleeping in this foreign country, in a room that looked like an open sky, on a bed he wasn’t familiar with felt…more than odd. It set him strangely on edge so that he found it hard to settle. No, to be fair, what really prevented him from sleeping was the thought of what he would face the next morning.

That night, lying in bed and staring at the painted stars, he sent a prayer toward the heavens that the gods would watch over him on the morrow.

~ ~ ~

Vashti, good to his word, rose with them at dawn’s first light and guided them to his boat. Sevana half prodded, half led a sleepy Bel toward the dock. Judging from the bleary look on the kid’s face, he did not get a good rest the night before. She hadn’t either.

At least they sat in a good sized boat. More than a dinghy, smaller than a regular fishing boat, it could easily be sailed by just one person. Vashti steered them into the water with the ease of vast experience, apparently immune to the damp fog gliding on top of the water and the slight chill in the air. Sevana huddled down into her jacket and stared straight ahead, looking sightlessly at the swirling grey in front of her.

As close as Sevana had come to dragon territory, she’d never actually ventured
into
dragon territory. The experience would no doubt be educational, in a terrifying, gut-churning sort of way.
I think I’d rather stay ignorant, thanks.

It didn’t help that once they were away from shore, Vashti spent the next two hours telling them
in detail
every story he’d ever heard of humans that had made bad deals with dragons. If not for the fact that he would always end the story with, “Which shows you what never to do with a dragon,” she would have snarled at him and shut him up. But the stories taught her what dangers to avoid, so she kept her mouth shut.

Finally, a patch of shore became visible. The fog burned off under the strong rays of the sun and the air gradually warmed so that she didn’t feel half-frozen. She looked up, almost pointlessly, to see the dragons. A few were in the air, lazily circling about, but most were stretched out on the island’s rocky surface. The Artifactor in her categorized them. Water dragons, most females with a few males, signified by the darker hue of blue in their scales. None of them younger than a year (no doubt from last year’s hatching), some old enough to have long white beards and scales hardened like marble over their backs.

Vashti came in and smoothly docked at the single wooden platform that stuck out from the beach. He quickly tied off, anxiously looking back over his shoulder at his passengers. Sevana avoided his eyes and focused on draping Bel with every piece of jewelry that they had stolen from the Lockbright Palace.

Finally, everything could be done had been done. Taking a deep breath, she turned on her heel and gestured for Bel to follow her.

“Be careful, and don’t panic, no matter what happens,” Vashti advised softly. He stayed at the railing, carefully keeping both hands on the wood in plain sight.

She spared him a nod as she put her behind on the railing and swung her legs over. Sevana stepped off the boat, looking up into the cavernous regions ahead of her, with almost every flat ledge filled with the form of a water dragon. None of them moved, but every dragon had at least one eye fixed on the newcomers and while not hostile, they were clearly not welcoming.
Oh, yes. Water wheels would have been a very bad idea.
Her gigantic wheels that rode along the water, carrying a passenger in the center, were faster than any other water-traveling method she had, but they were very attention-grabbing. It would have been a disastrously bad choice to use them for this venture.

“Stay close,” she ordered Bel in a low voice. “And for the love of the gods, keep that jewelry very visible.”

“No problem.” His voice sounded unnaturally calm, as if he were shaking on some level but refused to fall prey to his own fear.

She understood the feeling all too well. With a deep breath, she put one foot in front of the other. With no natural path on the rocky beach, she weaved her way from one rock to the next, sometimes having to lightly leap over the larger cracks. The sea splashed water here and there, spraying them lightly and making the air taste of salt. The air felt heavy as well, although she couldn’t tell if that were from the storm rumbling in or from the weight of so many eyes watching her every move.