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“There’s sand on the floor of the wagon. Not much. A pinch or two. But it smells like the riverbank. It wasn’t there before. I know the smell of every crack in this cage by now.”
Dwarves began to gather, sensing something wrong. Sekyw came up, looking as bulky as ever.
“I wish we had weighed him before and after he rode with the money,” Djer muttered to Auron.
“Sir,” Sekyw said, rolling his eyes at the other dwarves, “I’m a dwarf of years of experience. I hold a position of trust with the Company. Am I to understand you think I took a few handfuls of coin? To what gain, at such risk? My pension is worth more. The dragon must have eaten it.”
“Only two have been alone with the money, you and the young skyking. I just wanted to have both of you present while I thought this through,” Djer said.
“Are you sure there is no error in the count?”
“None,” the accountant said.
Sekyw walked over to Auron, pointing with his stick. “Then it must be the dragon, as I was searched when I left the cart—”
Auron snorted.
“Quiet, please. I can’t think when you’re talking,” Djer said. “Shut up or I’ll cram that stick in your mouth. . . . Umta, did you check the stick?”
“Solid orewood,” the accountant dwarf said. “I felt it myself—it was no heavier when he left as when he went in.”
“There’s gold in it,” Auron said. “I can smell it.”
“Umta!” Djer said. “The stick!”
The dwarf called Umta swore and snatched the stick from Sekyw’s hand. He worked first the handle, then the tip, trying to open it.
“This is outrageous. That stick was a present from my master when I was just an apprentice. To my knowledge, it’s nothing but solid orewood.”
Djer went over to Umta and took up the stick. He cracked it across his leg, breaking it in two. Dirt flew in all directions.
“So it was hollow, and weighted with dirt. That proves nothing,” Sekyw said, but his face had grown pale.
Auron sniffed at the stick. “Empty the ground-end, Djer. On something clean.”
Djer poured the end of the stick out on the accountant’s tally sheet. A trickle of sand, golden against the other dirt, poured out.
“Who would weight it with dirt, and a little sand? Where’s the gold, Sekyw?”
Sekyw looked down at the evidence and wheezed. Dwarves watching murmured to each other as they worked it out, or had others explain it to them.
“As you value your life, where’s the gold?”
Sekew tore at his beard. “The stick was magic, it opened only at the right word. I buried the gold. I buried it so the dragon would take the blame. It’s unfair. I’ve sweated for this Company for as long as you’re old, and just because you happen upon a friendly dragon—”
“There will have to be a trial. Though your confession will be to your credit,” Djer said. “Jealousy drove you to something this stupid?”
“Never Envy other dragons their wealth, power, or home,” Auron translated, as best he could.
“What’s that?” Djer asked.
“A song that we might do well to translate into Dwarvish.”
Chapter 14
The sight of the markets in the East would have been worth the winter’s trip to Auron, even without his task of guarding the dwarves’ treasure.
There were colorful tents and dun huts, run-down stalls and gold-flaked wagons, warehouses and barges loaded with goods under a late-winter sky. The steppe country ended at the feet of a sickle-curve of mountains from the north, hummock-shaped, snow-dusted slopes harboring only a few patches of desert fir. They were in a land the commodore identified as Wa’ah.
