Page 19 of A Matter of Dragons

I had a sudden vision of the Cairncliff guards flashing torches into the alleyway and demanding to know what we were doing, followed by a second vision of Eadberh bailing me out of the local jail in the morning. I ground my teeth together. This whole thing suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.

“As promised,” Doshir said, waving his hand at the little wooden door so proudly he looked like he’d just conjured it from thin air. “A back gate.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow, even though he probably couldn’t see my expression in the dark. “And you’re sure whoever owns this place is away?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Doshir answered. “I know the guy who owns it, actually. Bit of a prick.”

I fingered the cold stone wall absently. “Great. A prick owner. That’s very reassuring.”

Doshir bent over the wooden door. It rattled. The sound seemed very loud in the narrow alley.

“Locked,” I said, feeling slightly relieved. “What a surprise.”

Doshir laughed quietly. “Oh, all doors will open. They want to open. You just have to find the right key.”

He gave me a smile that did strange things to my insides, then bent down and ran his hands along the wall beside me. He got just close enough that I half wondered if he was going to run a hand along my boot, or perhaps up the inside of my leg.

“Ah,” he gasped.

There was a scrape of stone against stone. I looked down and saw he’d pulled a small gray rock out of the wall. A silver key glimmered between his fingertips.

“How in the King’s name did you know about that?” I muttered.

“Careful observation,” he replied, turning back to the door. There was a soft click, and the door swung inward with a rusty sigh. “Which is mostly a matter of looking for what doesn’t belong.”

He spun to face me, then bent low and set the key back in the wall. With another scrape of stone, he covered it with the little gray rock.

“That stone is significantly smaller than all the others in the wall,” he said, brushing his hands together. “So, it stands to reason it serves some other purpose.”

I brought my hand to my face to cover my smile.

“Very impressive,” I replied.

By the King, he sounded just like my old tutor Alva, gods rest his soul. The thought of my old tutor brought back some of the frost wine’s warmth. Alva would like Doshir, I was sure of it. And Alva wouldn’t entirely disapprove of sneaking into a darkened garden with a man of dubious standing. Not if there was important information to be had.

Doshir stepped through the open door, vanishing into the darkness beyond. I glanced up at the stars dancing above the stone walls and then turned toward where the Knife’s Edge mountains loomed above the ramparts of the noble estates. If this garden gave a view of Cairncliff, it would also reveal the Knife’s Edge mountains. And if Doshir knew so much about dragons, he must know something about the dragon who had reputedly just settled in the mountains outside of his village.

I pulled in a deep breath and followed him through the door. My feet crunched over gravel. Trees whispered softly above me. For a moment, I felt like I’d been transported back to the Spirit Woods. Doshir stepped around me and pulled the gate closed. I heard it latch with a metallic clack of finality, and then we were alone in the garden.

A night bird sang from somewhere high overhead. The air seemed thicker somehow on this side of the wall, as though we’d entered another realm, one filled with the perfume of hidden flowers and the soft music of falling water.

“Wow,” I whispered.

“I know,” Doshir said from beside me. “It always takes my breath away.”

I turned to see if he was mocking me; in Valgros, a comment like that would be taken as an open invitation for merciless taunting. But Doshir wasn’t even looking at me. His eyes were drifting through the garden, following the gentle arc of the gravel paths and tracing the interlacing branches above us. There was an openness about his expression, his parted lips and wide eyes, that made me feel safe despite the fact that we were blatantly trespassing on private property and openly breaking probably a dozen of Cairncliff’s law.

“Well,” Doshir said, seeming to come back to himself. “Shall we?”

He offered me his arm, as though he were escorting me to the noble’s mansion instead of helping me sneak into the back door. I wrapped my arm around his and felt the warmth of his body sink into mine. The scent of frost wine lingered in the space between us, caught up in another wilder and deeper aroma. It was him, I realized with a thrill that set my heart thrumming. Doshir’s rich, male scent, mingled with the aroma of the hidden night flowers and the wine we’d shared and the thick fragrance of the garden.

Oh, damn, it was delightful. Doshir stepped forward, following the winding, circuitous gravel path; I followed, my body pressed to his, without a glance backward. The shifting uncertainty I’d felt in the alleyway evaporated as we climbed upward, tracing a garden path that had been built to hug the curves of the natural slope so closely it felt as though it had been carved by rain and wind.

“We’ll see the house around this next curve,” Doshir whispered. “Stick right.”

We came through the trees, and there it was. The house, as Doshir had called it, was not at all what I’d expected. After the wall and the garden, I’d thought we must be closing in on one of the most obnoxious mansions in all of Cairncliff. But the discreet building that lay across an open expanse of grass was delicate and light, built into the forest instead of trying to dominate it. It seemed to be made entirely of curves and rounded stones. And—

“There’s a light in the window,” I hissed.