17

  Elsewhere, earlier:

  Another airship received word that caused it to heel sharply around, just short of Rich Port. It cut the gale like a blade, sleek, fierce and fast. The vessel’s name-plate had been altered, and it flew no pennants or colors. Like its monstrous crew, ‘Loose Ends’ owed allegiance to no one and answered no summons but profit.

  Perhaps it detected a surge of draconic activity out on the mainland, but if so, that only spurred the ship’s creaking and snapping hard turn. A price like the one now offered would have bought kingdoms, and nothing else mattered at all.

  XXXXXXXXXXX

  Aboard Falcon, briefly:

  Val sent Miri off to see to the horses, for Patches and Smoke had got to be fed and watered, with enough laid by to supply the stalled nags for three days. Filimar and Hallan stood ready on deck, watching the plume of brown water below that marked Long River’s turbulent outflow. The mainland was a darker smudge on the eastern horizon, spiky and low.

  Amidships, Valerian saw to his spell work (or tried to). He was interrupted as he stood at the rail by three of Falcon’s non-comms. Half-elves, the lot of them; a greying female, a glowering male and a grizzled former marine.

  They bowed as Val snapped out of his (he’d long since lost count) recycle, and then turned to face them.

  “Mage, Sir,” said the half-elven woman, inclining her head respectfully. She was Laurel Greenbow, he recalled. The others were Not-Jonn No-name-given and Sarrit Conn.

  “Aerriors,” he acknowledged, politely returning the nod. “What is your message?”

  He’d thought that the trio was dispatched by their captain, but he was wrong. They had gathered to see him, themselves.

  “No message, Sir,” replied the marine-turned-freebooter. “We come on our own.”

  Laurel took over, holding out a small, heavy purse.

  “We’re engagin’ yer services, Mage,” she told him, lowering her voice. Laurel’s expression was tense and searching, there in the glow of Falcon’s dim lamp. “We’re askin’ ya ter look after…”

  “Cookie. I know,” he grimaced. “Trust me, that I shall defend Miri as I would my own life, aerriors. Better… for she is more valued.”

  “Naw,” snorted Not-Jonn, speaking up for the first time. Coming closer, the engineer’s mate explained, saying, “It’s the boy, our Hal, we wants ya ter watch over, particular-like.”

  “He’s grown up here amongst us and… well, he’s at that age when a lad has more stones than common sense, if ya ken my meanin’, Sir,” put in Conn, who wore a sergeant-major’s bars and drake on his collar.

  Laurel pushed that purse of money at Valerian with both hands, making a formal bow.

  “We knows that y’re not gettin’ paid fer y’re work aboard ship, Mage…. That y’re workin’ yer passage. This here’s hire fer guardin’ our Hal. Tis pay fer yer time and yer manna, Sir.”

  She was terribly serious and very concerned. They all were, he sensed. Hallan was as much their kid brother as he was Captain Gelfrin’s. Valerian hesitated.

  “I require no payment, good folk,” he protested.. “I would have watched over Hallan anyhow… but I shall use your funds to buy a proper drink for your welcome back celebration, once he’s returned to you, safe and whole.”

  The answer seemed to please and relieve them. All three non-comms smiled at him, nodding.

  “Aye that, Sir!” enthused Laurel, their natural leader. “Us ’n Speedy ‘ll set up a right hoorah. We’ll rock this tub like we done at Hal’s name day.”

  The patter of running small feet broke up their conference. Laurel, Not-Jonn and Conn left the money with Val and then withdrew. Moments later, Miri came panting up, as if worried that her master would leave while her back was turned. Val caught the hurrying girl, who was wind-blown and wide-eyed.

  “All sorted?” he asked, mussing the girl’s curly brown hair.

  “Aye, Milord! Patches an’ Smoke gots enough forage fer a whole week, an’ I topped off both of their water barrels with that expanding sigil you showed me!”

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  Her teeth were no longer chipped or loose, and she smiled at him proudly, adding,

  “There’s three days of meals in the galley, too: breakfast, plus spicy noodles, steak-n-ale pie, an’ roast wyvern with hot sauce.”

  Valerian nodded.

  “Now, I wish I were staying behind to feast with the captain instead of haring off after my friend… but vows are binding, and we must be off.”

  Miri nodded, glancing back at the warm yellow glow from Varric’s porthole. Their red-haired captain was still hard at work, and he would be for most of the night.

  “He’ll have plenty to eat, an’ then we’ll hurry right back, won’t we, Milord?”

  “Until Rich Port, at least,” replied Val, turning to make his way forward. “My family are out on the mainland for some reason, and I need to find out what’s happened. They’re away from Karellon, at least. That’s a relief.”

  Miri looked stricken, but the young elf-lord was too distracted to notice, summoning manna from ocean and wind and Falcon, itself. Manna enough to port four people across a drekt continent. To the victory cup that Nalderick wouldn’t have parted with, ever.

  He and Miri joined Hallan and Filimar up at the airship’s prow, and then it was time to go; leaping off into whatever came next.

  XXXXXXXXXXX

  Just outside Longshore, on a wild and firelit night:

  Nalderick crouched in a cramped, narrow back alley, close to the town’s crumbling wall. Freedom and honor lay ahead of him. Nothing but failure and shame, at his back. Four grubby friends had set the town’s warehouse ablaze to provide him with a distraction, allowing Derrick to plunder the guard station for weapons and armor.

  The structure’s roaring collapse meant the complete destruction of Longshore’s winter food supply. Worse, there could be no doubt at all who was guilty, as the morons had stayed to dance around in the light of their handiwork. The heat was tremendous, turning Nalderick’s bristly cheeks red, even out here. The noise was a constant, crackling roar, pocked with shouting, curses and screams.

  He’d been judged by the gods. Turned into an ugly, ill-favored mortal, crippled by plague and bad luck. A cut on his scalp seeped blood down his head and into his collar. Not from any courageous battle. Because he’d struck at a courtyard practice dummy, then been smacked by the flat of its wooden sword. (Couldn’t even get wounded right…)

  Nalderick inched slightly forward. Kia squirmed about inside his tunic, hungry again. His eagle, his responsibility.

  “They’re idiots,” he excused himself fiercely. “And if they didn’t die for setting a fire, they’d have frozen to death or been killed for stealing food. Not my problem,” insisted the former prince.

  Bert, Trixie, Curtis and Wenchie could look after themselves. They’d have to, if Derrick meant to slay that blight-spewing dragon and end his curse.

  Only… somehow, he couldn’t take that next forward step. He couldn’t just desert the four vagrants who’d saved his life. They trusted him. If Derrick left, they would not be simply arrested. They’d be dead; beaten and hanged while their ‘friend’ crept away.

  It was stupid and not very noble at all, turning his back on a fight, but Nalderick slewed around in the alley, anyhow. He stomped on a scurrying mouse as he skirted the guard station’s wall. Rodents had flooded out of the burning warehouse, squeaking and chittering. All at once there were hundreds of them, barring his path, mounding up into another hulking monstrosity, starred with tiny red eyes.

  “You cannot escape!” screeched the king-rat. “Our home is burned and our kittlings are dying! You will perish in shreds, food for a thousand bellies!!”

  Derrick wasn’t having it, though. Scooping the stomped mouse up and dropping it into his tunic for Kia, the cursed prince drew his stolen blade and charged at that furry composite monster, shouting all the vile curses he knew.

  Though it could bite and scratch all over its seething body, Derrick was powered by rage, shame and bleak disappointment. He swung his sword in a lurching arc, striking that pestilent thing at its seething waist, earning dozens of bites in the process.

  “Get out of my way!” he raged, killing mice and rats because that’s all he was good for. Because at heart, he was too weak to face a worthy and powerful enemy. “Just die and leave me the drek alone!”

  Two clumsy chops of that big steel sword quartered and scattered the rat-king, sending its parts screeching off into gratings and crates. Moments later, Derrick stood panting in a back alley, fanned by the hot, sparking wind. Kia crunched and slurped happily inside his tunic, dribbling sticky ooze. She was doomed, too, because he could not leave the eaglet behind to starve or be devoured by rats.

  “You deserved a prince, Wind-rider,” he whispered, limping through trash and snow to the alley’s red-glowing mouth. “Instead, you got me.”

  Outside, the weeping townsfolk had given up trying to save their warehouse. They’d withdrawn to a safe distance, watching their hope for survival burn down. There was nothing that buckets of frigid lake-water could do against that, except to keep it from spreading.

  Derrick eased his way forward, scratching at one half of an itchy brown beard. Squinting, he saw that the town guard had surrounded Trixie, Curtis, Wenchie and Bert. The furious watchmen were kicking and beating the fallen vagrants, spotting the half-melted snow with dark blood.

  “Wait!” shouted Nalderick, bursting into a shambling run.

  The guards had lifted their spitting and cursing captives, ready to fling them onto the blazing warehouse.

  “Stop! It was me! I set the fire, then ran off to loot your guard station! They only watched! Arrest me! Let them go!”

  He was still waving a stolen sword, with the station’s rucksack bumping against his back at each lurching step. The townsfolk turned to stare, two of them recognizing him at once.

  “That’s the blighter what got me shut outta me inn!” roared a burly, blond man. “Rotter ’ad the sickness, ‘ee did!”

  Another stumped forward, snarling,

  “I chased that drekking bum outta town last night! Stole clothes off a line, n’ Goodwife May’s pie, ‘ee did!”

  The mob surged and struck like a snake, needing no further proof. Derrick was swarmed, disarmed and then beaten down into bloody, thudding and cursing darkness, curled up, still trying to shelter Kia.