Dragon Thief (14 page)

“But not—I didn't want to hurt you.”

She shook her head. “Don't lie to me, Frank.”

I sighed and turned away. “It's one of the few things I do well,” I whispered. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, I added, “I am really sorry this happened. I'm sorry I left and let that bastard take my place. And I'm sorry I said those things to you.”

She sighed. “You have more than enough to be guilty for. Don't be guilty for yelling at me.”

I turned around. “But—”

“But what? That, at least, I deserved after pushing you into this stupid royal play-acting. I couldn't stand the role Father put me in, the pretty little thing decorating the court while the serious men did their serious business. If you saved me from anything, you saved me from
that
. And I thanked you by letting Father put you in the same position.”

“Yeah, I probably still could have handled it better.”

“Me too,” she said. “I was so wrapped up in suddenly being a functional part of my own kingdom that I completely forgot about you. That was shabby of me, and completely worthy of your horrid opinion of nobility.”

“No, Lucille, you were never
that
bad.”

She covered her face and shook her head. After a moment I realized she was laughing.

“What?”

“No,” she said. “You aren't an idiot, but sometimes you act like one. Everything you said about so-called ‘noble blood' is
right
. You're right, you screwed up, but you know what it is you did?”

“I think so?” I said tentatively.

“At first I thought we'd pushed you so far into the royal role that you made up your mind to embrace the part—with all the backstabbing, betrayal, and lust for power that entails. Now I find out that people are dead, not because
you
decided to play royal, but because you were inadvertently replaced by someone with actual noble blood in their veins—”

She looked at me, then at her own hands. “Metaphorical blood, anyway. Someone who believes his ancestry alone legitimizes any atrocity he commits.”

I wasn't able to respond to that.

“But you said you didn't know what the jewel would do before you wore it.”

“I just wanted to be a man again.”

“So that,
thing
, chose Prince Bartholomew.”

“As far as I know.”

She sighed and looked at the ground.

“Lucille—”

“Why come back?”

“What?”

“I drove you away. This was never your kingdom. What do you care what happens here now? Why come back at all?”

“I do care.”
I care what happened to you.

She started crying again and when I reached for her this time she didn't push me away. She sobbed into my chest.

“I'm still angry at you,” she whispered.

“I know.”

So here I was, with the woman I cared most about in the world in my arms pressing against me. As an added bonus, we were alone in the woods, and for the first time since we'd been declared husband and wife, our bodies reflected the common understanding of the institution.

I know exactly where the story is supposed to go from this point. I've heard enough heroic ballads.

Have I mentioned that I'm not a hero?

I have a long history of less than reputable pursuits, resulting in the allegedly more reputable pursuing me. I've always moved around a lot, and the few women who've had the bad sense to get close to me did so as a prelude to having their heart broken.

I stared into her eyes as she searched for me in Snake Bartholomew's face, and all I could see was her inevitable disappointment. After all of this, it was remarkable that I didn't see it already.

Our faces were inches apart, and I felt her breath on my cheek.

I felt the panic build, and did what I always do when I see an angry troll lumbering down an alley at me.

I dodged.

“I think I have an idea how to fix this.” I took her wrists and started back toward the others by the burned camp.

“What?”

 • • • 

The others had been busy salvaging things from the wreckage. The girls seemed to have perfected the knack of adapting savaged armor to smaller sizes. By the time I'd returned with Lucille, they looked a lot more like they had when I had first run into them, except for the jewelry and hairstyles, which made an unnerving contrast with the sooty armor of debatable origin.

Even Sir Forsythe had managed to find his own armor. Apparently he had worn something a bit more subdued into Grünwald.

Everyone converged on us as I reached the top of the rise.

“We need to go to Fell Green,” I said.

“What's Fell Green?” Grace asked.

“A wizard town,” Sir Forsythe said. “A vile congregation of all manner of dark artisans and unsavory cultists.”

“Hey,” Laya said, “aren't you an acolyte of the Dark Lord What's-His-Name?”

“Hardly representative,” Sir Forsythe muttered.

“We need someone who knows what they're doing to solve this whole evil cursed artifact thing,” I said. “Without an actual wizard, we're just guessing.”

I heard Lucille mutter behind me, “So
now
you think of asking a wizard about this thing?”

I couldn't argue with her there.

“Brock has heard of this place,” Brock said, “and Brock doesn't like what Brock's heard.”

“Fell Green has another advantage, besides being a place where a blind drunk goblin could trip over a wizard before leaving the tavern.”

“And that is what?” Grace asked.

“No one claims jurisdiction over it. Dermonica is after us—”

“After Snake,” Mary added.

“—Grünwald is after us—”

“Snake again,” Mary reiterated.

“—and now that Prince Bartholomew has taken over, Lendowyn is going to be after us as well. Fell Green is the only place reasonably close by that avoids all of them.”

“We'll need the toll,” Lucille said.

“Toll?” Grace asked.

“You can't get in without a toll,” I said.

“So you can't sneak us in, mister master thief?” Mary asked.

“No,” I said. “You
can't
get in without paying.”

“Like I said—” Mary started.

Lucille sighed and said, “He means, if you don't pay the toll, the city isn't there.”

“What do you mean, ‘isn't there'?”

“It isn't fully in this world,” I said. “It's a wizard town. What do you expect?”

 • • • 

Of course this all led to a bunch of questions about how I knew about the place. Fortunately, Lucille volunteered to relate our adventures this time. Even if I came across as more of an ass in her version, I was all storied out. That, and the girls were fascinated about her life as a dragon.

I shut it out because I was guilty enough about what had happened. So she regaled the girls as I led the way to Fell Green. We trudged along a slushy road that followed the perimeter of the Lendowyn border. Traveling by foot, we were probably two or three days away from the bridge on the Fell River that led to our destination—and that was only if the rumors that the town actually moved around were hyperbole.

That was probably a good thing, since I needed to figure out how we were going to pay the toll. There were ten of us now, and nine-tenths of us were recent escapees who were lucky to have boots, much less a purse. Of us all, only Brock had any money, and since he worked for the Lendowyn court now, he only had two gold crowns and an assortment of copper that might be enough for three of us to enter.

Not to mention that, despite salvaging bits of armor, the girls were not dressed for the weather, and were starting to show it. Also, we had all been moving since nightfall the prior day, and the pause by Sir Forsythe's burned camp was barely enough for the girls to catch a second wind. We needed to find rest and shelter soon.

It was clear that I was going to have to indulge in some old professional skills if we were going to have a chance of just getting to Fell Green.

We could hijack some merchant caravan, if we were lucky enough to come across one. The problem was, unless we were a little more bloodthirsty than I was comfortable with, it would probably draw the wrong kind of attention. Merchants, if left alive, would likely report such a theft to the nearest city guard, and the makeup of our party was strange enough that news would probably reach as far as the royal court and Prince Bartholomew . . .

If we were really lucky, we'd run across a merchant dealing in contraband, like Lucille and I had accidentally stumbled upon before our prior trip to the wizard town. Someone already on the wrong side of the law was probably not going to go running to the nearest city watch.

And that gave me an idea.

“Sir Forsythe?”

“Yes, My Liege?”

“Does this area look at all familiar to you?”

“Perhaps, but I have traveled widely in your kingdom.”

“Her kingdom.” I gestured at Lucille, who had just gotten to the part of the story where the elves showed up. “But when you first met me in her body, you were just coming across from Grünwald, weren't you?”

“Yes?”

“So this road?”

“There are several, but yes, I think this road might be it.”

“Good. That means that the inn is just a few miles farther down.”

“Inn?” Grace heard me. Her breath came out in a fog and I had the sense that she was forcefully resisting the impulse to hug herself for warmth.

“The Headless Earl,” I said.

“I thought we didn't even have the money for the damned toll. How're we going to afford an inn?”

“I wasn't planning on buying anything.”

“You weren't . . . oh.” I saw a light begin to shine in her eyes. Slowly, she smiled.
“Oh.”

Lucille stopped her storytelling. “What are you planning?”

 • • • 

I've said before that my specialty when it came to liberating objects outside my possession has always been stealth and the liberal use of nimble fingers, and if need be, nimble tongue. However, the last five months of my life had taught me nothing if it hadn't taught me to be adaptable. There was a time for stealth, and then there was a time for cracking skulls.

The Headless Earl was an instance of the latter. It was a literal den of thieves, and one that—after my last stay here—I felt I owed no particular professional courtesy. Everyone there, innkeep on down, was an outlaw of some stripe—mostly of the bash you on the head and steal your boots variety. We came up on the place in the early afternoon, and I had everyone hang back in the woods as we watched people enter and leave. We heard the voices and the sounds of the midday meal in full swing.

“Frank?” Lucille crouched next to me, about thirty yards from the rear of the inn by the stables, peering through the underbrush at my target. “There have to be thirty people in there, maybe more.”

I nodded.

“This is insane.”

I nodded again.

“You have some sort of plan?”

This time I didn't nod.

“Frank?”

“You know me,” I said.

“Improvising?”

I nodded.

“Damn it!”

I shrugged.

“You do realize you don't have a dragon backing you up this time?”

“I've got Sir Forsythe.”

“He's not a dragon.”

“Lucille, I want to rob the place, not burn it to the ground.”

“All by yourself?”

“Hey, you said yourself that I'm not an idiot.”

“Are you trying to prove me wrong?”

“Shh.” I turned and waved Grace over.

She crouched down on the side of me opposite Lucille. “You going to tell us how we get in there?”

“First things first, we pare down the opposition.” I pointed at the inn. “See that door, back by the stables? That's to the kitchen.”

“Yeah, and the two guys sharing a bottle next to it.”

“Well, little miss outlaw, you think you and yours can remove those guys quietly without unnecessary bloodshed?”

“What about necessary bloodshed?”

“If it's quiet.”

“I thought you'd never ask.” Grace slipped away.

Lucille grabbed my arm and yanked, glaring at me. “You're sending a bunch of children in there?”

“They know what they're doing.”

“But—”

“If you're going to worry, worry about those two guys.”

She gaped at me.

If I had any sense left, I probably would have shared her concern. After all, my assessment of the girls' aptitude with the wrong skills was based mostly on circumstantial evidence.

Behind me, the six girls slipped silently into the woods. After a tense five or ten minutes, I caught sight of Rabbit slipping out from the tree line to sneak into the stables on the far side from the two men. The horses barely made a sound to acknowledge her presence.

I saw a small bit of snow dust the ground from above, and glanced up to see Laya flatten herself against the stable roof. After another minute or so, Grace stepped out from the woods. She had stripped off her salvaged armor and weapons, and stood now in the robes of a virgin acolyte of Lysea. She stood there for nearly a minute before the guys with the bottle noticed her.

“What is she doing?”

I held up my finger. “Shh.”

There was the predictable banter and shoving when they noticed her. None loud enough for me to make out at this distance. The two men started heading toward Grace, all drunken swagger and ill intent. The larger one said something, and Grace responded with a come-hither smile and a hooked finger as she slipped back into the woods.

The big one broke into a loping run, reaching for his belt, while his smaller companion said something that sounded like it might have been, “Wait up!” By the time the second man was just reaching the end of the stables, the larger man was just about at the woods, and paying no attention to his companion.

That was why he didn't see Laya rise up, twirling an improvised sling to send a rock sailing down on the top of his companion's head. His companion's response was to fall down face first into the slush, at which point Rabbit jumped out from between the last two horses to land on his back to restrain him with what appeared to be three repurposed bridles.

I turned to watch the first guy just in time to see him slip into the woods, and three shadows drop from the trees on top of him. I saw nothing of the impact but some shaking foliage, but after a brief moment Mary and Krys ran out of the woods to where Rabbit had finished tying up the second guy. They reached him as Laya dropped down from the roof, and the four of them each grabbed an arm or a leg and ran off to the woods, carrying the man between them.

I turned to Lucille and I reached up and lifted her chin, just so a bug wouldn't fly in her mouth.