Page 9 of A Matter of Dragons

I bit the inside of my lip and stomped harder across the cobblestones. Damn it all, everything about that stupid antiquities store had been a disappointment. It had seemed like the perfect place to collect gossip and rumors while pretending to browse useless curios and listen to unlikely remedies for treating my scar. I’d expected the store to be run by a half-doddering old man bent over stacks of paper, exactly the kind of person who’d be delighted to gossip about any unnatural disturbances over the past fifty years.

Not so much. Even now, after I’d turned the encounter over and over in my head, remembering the man who had opened that door made my skin flush and my head swim as if I’d just had too much wine. He was not at all a doddering old shopkeeper. With his tall, athletic figure, broad shoulders, and tousled dark curls, the man standing in the doorway of Geredan’s Antiquities would have been at home in His Majesty’s Royal Army back in Valgros. But he’d had none of a soldier’s confidence, or arrogance, despite his disturbingly handsome face. Even Eadberh was loath to admit his ignorance, but the man at the antiquities shop had cheerfully told me that he wasn’t a healer and then, just as cheerfully, referred me to someone else.

Strange. Just like the silver dipper in the Spirit Wood, the one that wouldn’t last a heartbeat on any street corner in Valgros. Were people here that different? Or was it just the man in the shop who was different, the man with dark eyes and broad shoulders who’d asked so gently if he could see the hideous arm that was supposed to be my excuse to prod him for information.

I shook my head. None of that mattered, damn it. I was here for a reason, and that reason had nothing to do with attractive men running oddball stores. Now that I’d exhausted my one excuse for exploring the antiquities shop, I’d just have to start accepting useless cures from all the other healers in this strange town. While politely asking harmless questions. About dragons.

Almost against my will, I turned and stared out over the dusky red-tile rooftops of Cairncliff to the looming wall of mountains. The Knife’s Edge, the locals called that range. It separated Cairncliff’s farms and fields from the rest of the continent, an impenetrable barrier save for a handful of narrow, dangerous passes. The jagged peaks were black beneath the dusky sky, an ebony so intense they seemed to have sucked the light from the world. I shivered, although the night was warm. No wonder the locals here had taken to sailing.

I touched my forehead and then my lips, the sign of the king’s blessing, and turned my attention back to the streets. I knew nothing about dragons, aside from the stories the king’s secretive advisor Ensyvir had allowed me to read from his forbidden books, but those mountains certainly looked like they held a dragon. A chill danced down the back of my neck and settled over my shoulders. They felt like they held a dragon.

A dragon we would kill.

I swallowed hard against the unwelcome knot of fear in my gut. Of course, I wanted to spread the glory of Blessed King Donovan. He’d taken me in, after all, when I’d been an abandoned orphan covered with scars from the fire that had killed my family. He’d given me a home, and a purpose. He’d made me into a warrior in order to spread his glorious name, and he’d entrusted me with this secret, impossible mission: Kill the dragon in Cairncliff. Show the rest of the world a reason to fear the might of the islands of Valgros.

And the blessed king had taken me into his bed as well. The knot of fear in my gut shifted, diffusing through my body like mist over the mountains. I knew how fortunate I was to have been chosen as the King’s companion, not only once but a dozen times. Chosen despite my obvious deformities.

“You know,” the king had said, trailing his fingers across my scars as my stomach curdled in disgust, “if it weren’t for this, you’d make a fine whore.”

We'd been lying together on the red silk of his bed when he’d made this declaration. He’d had a fair amount of wine that evening, and the act itself had been rather short and disappointing.

“We all serve as best as we can, my Lord,” I’d answered.

He’d laughed in a slow, sardonic way and then rolled over onto his side. A moment later, he was snoring, leaving me to stare at the thick velvet curtains above the royal mattress as disappointment wormed its way through my insides. I’d had more satisfying tumbles standing up in the armory, stealing a few moments of pleasure with a soldier or a footman, and the king’s final words had left me cold. As if I weren’t the most capable fighter in his entire castle, even if my damned gender rendered me unfit to serve in His Majesty’s Royal Army. As if, for all my years of grueling training, I was just another whore.

But he was the king, I’d reminded myself. I couldn’t apply my lowly plebeian standards to His Highness.

Still. When I’d gotten his summons that morning, my imagination had run wild. Just this once, I’d thought. Just one mission with the Royal Army. One chance to prove that even a deformed, orphan woman could serve alongside soldiers.

I spat on the cobblestones, cursing my former self for her foolishness. I should be proud to have this secret mission with Eadberh. Killing a dragon and spreading the glory of Valgros was a noble quest. It was just a secret quest. Like my secret summons late at night to the king’s bed-chamber.

I heaved a sigh as I turned the corner and spotted our inn. Light poured from the windows of the Master and Mistress, reminding me how dark the city had grown as I’d stomped my way home from the antiquities shop. The shop owner’s disarmingly attractive smile flashed through my mind again, bringing a surge of heat that dispelled the chill I’d gotten from looking at the Knife’s Edge mountains and remembering my last evening with His Royal Highness. What was a man that disturbingly handsome doing running a dusty antiquities shop? And why hadn’t it been mobbed by eligible ladies?

Shaking my head, I pushed open the door of the inn. Laughter and conversation flowed around me, enveloping me, and then drifted past me into the cool night air. I cast a quick look around the room, assessing threats as I searched for Eadberh. There was a well-dressed older couple at a table near the back of the room, heads bent in intimate conversation. Married, I’d guess, but not to each other. A few heavy-set older men leaned against the bar, embroiled in some conversation that would turn louder the more they drank. Three women stood together at a tall table near the fireplace, laughing about something. I’d seen groups of women like that ever since we’d left Valgros, women out of their homes, unaccompanied by men, or even women walking alone through the city at night. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it.

What I did not see was Eadberh. He was a bear of a man, almost a full head taller than me with shoulders as wide as a doorframe. He couldn’t have hidden in this room if his life depended on it.

So, my partner and friend was probably still out drinking his way across Cairncliff, picking up whatever dragon-related gossip he could find. I could sit down at the bar and wait for him, maybe listen in on the conversations fluttering around the elegant common room like so many buzzing insects.

But I felt strangely unsettled. The memory of the man at the antiquities shop - Doshir, he’d called himself - flittered uneasily through my mind, and I had the feeling that memory would not sit well with a glass or two of wine. No, better to go up to our room, peel off this unfamiliar costume, and relax with my blade and a polishing cloth.

I climbed the stairs delicately, like a lady, then turned down the hallway to the room Eadberh and I shared. The door was locked, of course; I rummaged in my silk purse for the small iron key, then stuck it in the lock. The hinges squealed as I pushed the door open. It smacked into something solid almost immediately.

My hand dropped to my waist, feeling for the hilt of the sword I’d worn almost every day for the past twenty years. Was it a body? Was this—

“Shit,” someone muttered softly.

“Rayne? That you?” a familiar voice called from inside the room.

I shoved the door again. It smacked into something heavy with a resistant thud. I looked down and saw the rough-hewn edge of the dresser. Eadberh had pushed the dresser in front of the door. The muffled rustle of heavy fabric and hushed voices drifted through the open door. I rolled my eyes.

A moment later, Eadberh’s flushed face appeared through the open door. “Hey, Rayne,” he said, only somewhat apologetically.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I replied.

I slammed my hips into the door. The dresser squealed horribly as it yielded a bit more space between the door and the frame.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Eadberh put his hands on either side of the door. His bare chest gleamed in the light of the hallway’s oil lamps. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but... you know...”