Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (48 page)

“I’m not a
hero,” he snapped, hoping his temper would scare her off. But it didn’t.

She giggled,
and gave him a long look. “Well … do let me know if you need anything, Master
Kael. Anything at all.”

“All right,
fine.”

When she finally
left, he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d stripped off his shirt and boots when
a knock came at the door. “Yes?” he said, and hoped to mercy it wasn’t that odd
maid again.

“It’s me. Why on
earth is your door locked? Are you expecting an attack?”

“Something like
that,” he muttered as he let Kyleigh in. She had her hands behind her back and
raised an eyebrow when she saw him. “Good lord
what
?”

“You’re testier
than usual,” she said with a frown. “I’ve only come to say I have something for
you.” She brought her hands out and showed him what she’d been hiding.

It was a bow,
though unlike any bow he’d ever seen. The wood was rough and gray with age.
Where the string attached, three short branches stuck out of it — like
the maker hadn’t even bothered to fully shape it. The grip was made of simple
leather and cracked from years of rough use. Strange, swirling patterns covered
the length of it. He imagined the previous owner had carved them in: perhaps a
soldier trying to steady his hands before battle, or a knight counting his
victories.

He held it, and
marveled at how light it was. He pulled back and nearly gasped when the string
went straight to his chin without a fuss. It may not have looked like a King’s
bow, but whoever made it certainly knew what he was doing.

“Where did you
find this?” he said, pulling the string back again.

She shrugged.
“In Wendelgrimm, of course. I knew you wouldn’t choose anything for yourself,
so I dug through the treasure and found something I thought you might like.”

She’d given him
a gift that he had no way of repaying. He’d just settled his debt with Lysander
and had no intention of gaining a new one. “I can’t accept this,” he said,
thrusting it back at her. But she wouldn’t take it.

“Don’t be
ridiculous — I can’t use it. Besides, Harbinger gets jealous if I keep
another weapon around,” she said with a grin. “Just keep it. Now, I’ve got to
get back down there and make sure Martin hasn’t nicked my cake —”

“Hold on a
moment.” Kael narrowed his eyes at her. “You won’t eat vegetables because
they’re
prey food
, and yet you’ll
have dessert?”

“Is that a
problem?”

“Not really. I
just wonder who we’re going to have to bury first — you, or Uncle
Martin.”

“Clever.” Though
her look was more amused than annoyed. “But I think I’ve got a few years on
him. Go back to your bath, whisperer.”

“How did you
know I was about to take a bath?”

She raised an
eyebrow again, and this time her gaze went to his chest. That’s when he
remembered how very horribly bare it was.

“Don’t cover
up,” she said with a laugh, prying his arms away. “It’s not like you’ve got
anything to be embarrassed about.”

“Yes I have!
I’ve got skin the color of paste, ribs poking out every which way, and what
else? Oh, yes,” with a heave, he pulled her forward, “a great bloody mark that
puts me at the very top of His Majesty’s execution list,” he hissed, though for
some reason it only made her laugh harder. “Let me go!”

She did, and he
stumbled backwards. “All right,
Master
Kael,”
she said with a curtsy. “And I want you to know that you don’t owe me anything
— I consider our score more than settled.”

“What? Why?”

She stopped in
the doorway, turned, and with an impish grin looked very pointedly at his
chest.

He hurled his
shirt at her, but she ducked and disappeared into the hallway. After a few
moments, he thought she was gone. Then he went to close the door and heard her
whistle loudly from somewhere in the shadows. “Get out of here! I had no idea
dragons were such pests!” He slammed the door on her giggling, locked it, and
climbed into the tub.

She could be
such a fool sometimes, and he didn’t understand it. Why did she get so much joy
out of embarrassing him? Why did she tease and otherwise torment him to no end?
Why …
why
?

As he scrubbed
the filth away, he twisted everything he felt into anger, because anger was
easier to deal with.

For one entire week, Kael could
wake when he wished and face the day however he chose. Most of his time he
spent exploring the mansion, looking through every strange quarter and
passageway.

He found a
training room the first morning, complete with several body-shaped targets, and
spent hours riddling them with arrows. It was amazing how well his new bow
responded, how easily it bent to his every command. He supposed it was because
the wood was so broken-in by its previous owner that he didn’t have any trouble
pulling it back. He would narrow his eyes at whatever point he chose: eye,
hand, even a single fiber of the burlap skin — and no sooner did he
imagine it than his arrow would strike its mark.

When the targets
were so badly maimed that their stuffing leaked out, he moved on to another
room.

The enormous
library was easily his favorite refuge. It was two levels tall — breached
by a grand staircase that spilled from the upper level and fanned out onto the
ornate rug beneath it. He’d spend hours in one of the many wide, cushioned
chairs, reading armfuls of whatever tomes struck his fancy. Though he was
interested in ancient civilizations, mining and the history of giants, he never
found anything on the topic he was most interested in: dragons.

Before they
arrived in Gravy Bay, he’d gone to gather up his belongings and noticed that
Tales of Scales
was missing. At first,
he thought Jonathan had hidden it as a joke. But when he adamantly denied it,
Kael had been forced to consider other options. Lysander swore he hadn’t
reclaimed it and even let him tear his cabin apart looking for it. Noah had no
interest at all in books. As far as anyone knew, the only things he ever read
were the fronts of cards.

“Just ask
Kyleigh,” Lysander had said as he watched Kael dig through the shelves for the
third time. “I’m sure she can tell you whatever you’d like to know.”

He’d already
thought of that, and he’d already tried. The problem was that Kyleigh wouldn’t
tell him anything.

“Just read about
it, if you’re so interested,” she’d snapped over dinner.

“I’ve lost my
book,” he’d said through gritted teeth. “If you could just answer one thing
—”

“No, because one
thing will lead to another, and soon I’ll have wasted my whole evening talking
about it,” she retorted. “Do you think you’re the first to ask to hear my
story? Great skies, there’s no end to the people who’ve asked!”

“Well, why don’t
you just tell them?”

She squared her
shoulders. “Because I don’t like their look, that’s why.”

“Their look?”

“Yes. They all
look at me like I’m some sort of creature behind the glass. And I don’t like
being treated like a … specimen.” Then she’d stood up and marched off, taking
her plate with her.

Oh, the whole
thing peeved him to no end.

But then he’d
discovered the mansion’s library, and renewed hope along with it. Surely,
somewhere among the countless thousands, there was a book about dragons.

He combed
through every shelf, climbing ladders to reach the tallest and crawling on his
hands and knees to scan the very bottom. It was a maddening task, but he
refused to give up. Sometimes he would reach a section and his heart would
begin to hammer. He would run his hands across the spines, reading their topics
in a frenzied rush.

Dice games,
dogma, dormice … druids.

And there, right
where
dragons
ought to have been
would be an empty space and a trail of dust — left behind from where
someone had snatched a book from its shelf. And he knew exactly who that
someone was, who it must have been:

Kyleigh.

But by trying to
stop him from learning, she only made the fires burn hotter. Now he was certain
she was hiding something. And whatever it was, he was determined to find out.
She couldn’t have possibly taken all the books. There must have been one she
missed and by mercy, he was going to find it.

He was high atop
a ladder, squinting to read some far off titles when Lysander wandered in. “I
thought I might find you here.”

He jumped, and
the ladder jerked sideways on its mechanism, nearly bucking him off. “You can’t
just bust out yelling at people!” he raged as he very shakily made his way
down.

“I’m terribly
sorry,” Lysander said, though the amused look on his face said quite the
opposite. “I’ll try to remember to scuff my shoes on the rug, next time. Do you
have a moment?”

“Sure,” Kael
grunted.

“Excellent.”
Lysander met him at the foot of the stairs and lowered his voice. “My
informants have arrived — remember the men I told you about?”

“The ones from
the Duke’s circle? Sure.”

“Well,” and he
lowered his voice even further, “we aren’t exactly friends, and I can’t say I
really trust them enough to tell them about your … gifts. So I think I’ll
introduce you as strategist. What do you think about that?”

Kael didn’t get
a chance to say what he thought before Lysander cut his fist across his chest
and declared:

“On to the
meeting room!”

*******

There were no
windows in the meeting room and hardly any decoration. The only light came from
the lanterns hung across the wall. They’d been set so crookedly that the flames
ate the candles at sharp inclines, leaving the wax to pool and drip out the
bottom. The only smells were burning wick and old parchment. A few high-backed
chairs ringed an ancient table — and they looked stern enough to be a
punishment.

It took Kael a
moment to adjust to the dimmer light, but after he blinked a couple of times,
he noticed a man standing next to the hearth. He was tall, with broad shoulders
and a neatly-trimmed beard. His face looked like a perfect match to those
chairs.

“This is
Chaucer, one of the Duke’s most prominent managers,” Lysander said. When Kael
shook his hand, he couldn’t tell if Chaucer was pleased or put off to meet him.
“And this is Geist.”

He turned in the
direction of Lysander’s nod and very nearly bumped into the man called Geist.
He was short and … well, Kael had a hard time trying to find anything unusual
to remember him by.

“Charmed,” Geist
said. Only he didn’t look charmed. He looked bored.

“Geist is a man
of many, ah, talents,” Lysander said lamely, as if he was grasping to find some
way to set him apart from the curtains. Then he introduced Kael as a strategist
— about which neither man seemed to have any opinion — and invited
them all to sit.

“I admit I was
surprised when you finally answered my letter,” Chaucer said as he pulled out a
seat. For such a big man, he moved very lightly. His chair didn’t even groan
when he sat.

“Yes, well, I’ve
been busy,” Lysander said offhandedly.

Chaucer smirked.
“I heard some interesting news the other day. Apparently, Copperdock is up and
running again. It seems the Witch of Wendelgrimm has finally been defeated
— and by a ragtag band of pirates, no less.”

Lysander
snorted. “I doubt they were ragtag — or pirates at all, for that matter.
Wherever did you hear such a wild tale?”

“I have my
sources,” Chaucer said. And he watched Lysander like a hawk eyeing its prey.

Their staring
match had the potential to drag on for hours, but Kael had no desire to spend
the rest of his day locked in a windowless room with the three of them. He
tried to get things moving. “I have a question: what’s in it for you? I know
what Lysander and I hope to gain, but why would a manager and a … whatever,
want to sack Duke Reginald?”

“I have
absolutely no interest in the matter,” Geist said dully, and Kael believed him.

“
Why
?” Chaucer made it sound like it was
easily the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “I’ll tell you why: because
there’s no sport in it anymore. I’m a merchant, bred from a long line of
merchants, and I’m not being allowed to trade. It was thrilling at first, the
idea of buying up all of the ships on the High Seas and driving prices skyward.
But now we’ve got all the gold and all the bread. What’s there left to do?” He
propped one elbow up on the table and kept his fist clenched at his head. “The
Duke calls us his managers because that’s what we are — we herd his ships
across the Seas,
delivering
whatever
cargo he tells us to. We aren’t merchants anymore — we’re couriers.
Overthrowing the Duke would allow us all to reclaim our dignity and our trade.
That’s
why
.”

Not once, not
even for a breath, did Chaucer mention how his conquest had enslaved the people
of the High Seas. He had all the gold in the region, and now he was simply
bored
. Kael wanted to reach across the
table and knock every last tooth out of his pompous mouth.

“Regardless of
the reason, we’re grateful for your support,” Lysander said, shooting a warning
look at Kael. “I trust the other managers have come around?”

Chaucer nodded,
ever so slightly. “Most feel the same way I do about it. There are a few who
don’t … but I’ll take care of them.”

“Right.”
Lysander turned quickly to Geist. “Do you have the map?”

He produced a
large roll of paper from somewhere in the folds of his coat and handed it over.

“He’s been
working on this for months,” Lysander said as he spread the parchment out on
the table.