Squire Derel Read online

  By contrast, Fitzwilliam’s home was all elegance. Three stories high, with ample gabled roofs and a modest but colorful and decorative garden, it spoke to the lifestyle of the landed gentry in a way the Callaghan estate never could.

  The interior only enhanced the imagery. Dark wood and light marble, tall windows and fanciful paintings, abounded. I’d seen Fitzwilliam’s place often enough, so I took all of this in only in passing as we entered.

  She was waiting behind the desk in her office, in the same suit she’d worn earlier. But she had a briefcase at the ready, and she grabbed it as soon as we entered. “Thank the gods: you’re here, finally. I told Emmerson to hurry.”

  “Believe me, Madam Mayor: he took your orders very seriously,” Lidek offered.

  “There’s been an attack. A dragon attack.”

  “Where?”

  “Along the border, about twenty kilometers from here or so. A knight was killed.”

  “A wild dragon?”

  “No.” She shook her head, a troubled expression in her eyes. “I wish it was, but no. This was orchestrated by a wyvern rider.”

  “Do we know who?”

  “No knight of the North, we know that.”

  Lidek’s expression darkened. “Agalyn: he’s finally grown a pair, then.”

  I blinked. Agalyn was king of the South. He was, by all accounts, a bit of a blowhard. But his relationship with Queen Ilaria was cordial. Hell, rumor had it that it was more cordial than cousins ought to be, at least from the king’s side of things. “Agalyn? We haven’t been at war with the South since his grandfather’s time.”

  “I know. I was there,” he reminded me.

  “Why send a wyvern to attack the border, though? And why just one?”

  “Who knows. But I knew we couldn’t trust him forever. That whole Ignis family – it’s bad blood.”

  “Agalyn is Queen Ilaria’s cousin,” Fitzwilliam observed.

  “Second cousin,” the old man pointed out. “Once removed.”

  “Regardless, they’re family.”

  “A point in our queen’s favor,” Lidek persisted, “that she is so noble, the blood of those barbarians cannot corrupt her.”

  I cleared my throat. The Commander was, in most things, a reasonable man. But when it came to the battles of his youth, the enemies he’d grown up fighting, he was less so. “Be that as it may, we don’t know who the rider is yet. We have no idea if they’re from the South.”

  “Where else?”

  “He could be a bandit. It’s not unheard of.”

  Lidek scoffed. “Not unheard of, no. But neither are pots of gold at the end of rainbows. And when’s the last time you’ve found one of those, Callaghan? I’d wager as recently as you’ve seen a bandit get his hands on a wyvern.”

  “My point is, it is possible.”

  “Aye, and it’s possible it’s a fairy with gold coin. But possible and likely are two separate things.”

  “That’s why I called you two here. We’re going to examine the bodies.”

  “Bodies? I thought you said only one of our people died?”

  “Yes. But the rider and dragon are dead too.”

  I loosed a whistle. “So he killed them both? Who was it?” Whoever it was had taken down both man and beast, and I felt we must have lost a hell of a warrior.

  “Knight Protector Ilyen. He killed the rider. But one of his squires killed the wyvern.”

  This was even more surprising. I didn’t know Ilyen personally, but I’d seen him once or twice at Cragspoint. But the idea that a dragon had been felled not by a KP, but by a squire?

  “Ilyen?” Lidek said. “Dammit. He was a good knight.”

  “Which squire? He had two or three, didn’t he?”

  “Derel and Aaronsen,” the commander answered. “Are they gone too?”

  “No. They both survived. The boy, I’m told, is burned pretty badly. It was Derel who took down the dragon.”

  I recognized the name, but I couldn’t place the squire. It was an old name in the North, one of many with a long, vibrant military tradition behind it. My who’s-who of Northern nobility was a little rusty, but if memory served, the Derels were a storied military family, with deep ties to the capital.

  I was duly conflicted. My time in the academy and the capital, where my own military roots were all but unheard of, had convinced me that most of the central military families were pretentious stuffed shirts. They traded on the deeds of people who came long before them rather than their own merits, and they put far too much stock in inherited glory than actual accomplishment. Then again, a squire managing to down a dragon was a rare feat. Perhaps this boy would earn some of the honor heaped upon his family after all.

  “I’m sorry about your knight, Commander,” Mayor Fitzwilliam was saying.

  “Me too, Mayor. But not as sorry as whoever’s behind this will be. Come. Let’s go look at those bodies.”

  She nodded. “Right.”

  Chapter Six – Callaghan

  Lidek was quiet and thoughtful on the way. We bypassed Fort Terrence, where the two squires had been taken. The sheriff was waiting for us with the corpses. He’d sent on a message that he wouldn’t disturb the KP in order to allow us to see the bodies as they were found, but we didn’t want to leave Ilyen out any longer than necessary.

  For that matter, we wanted to get to the wyvern rider as soon as possible, too. He’d been dead some hours, and the day was unseasonably warm. The longer he stayed out, the more unpleasant and less useful examining the body for clues to his identity would prove. The squires would wait.

  The drive took longer than the distance would have indicated. Ilyen had set up camp along the border road, some ways from Terrence’s Fork. Our route was necessarily circuitous, as the forest was more wilderness than anything else, and the roads sparse.

  Still, young Emmerson did his damndest to cut our time. Eventually, it got to the point that even Mayor Fitzwilliam, clutching her seat, called, “Maybe we can take it a little slower, Squire.”

  “Copy that, ma’am.”

  Still, he went fast enough that we could tell when we were nearing the scene just by the skimmer’s speed. It was a clear bit of road, and he started slowing. All three of us craned our necks at that, trying to see the campsite.

  At first, I could see little beyond the trees outside my immediate vicinity – and they were whipping past. Then, though, I saw the glimmer of sunlight reflecting off something. The something was large, and in a moment, I placed it as a dragon.

  And I felt my heart sink a little: it was a silver dragon. It wasn’t concrete proof, of course, but silver wyverns weren’t a native subspecies to the North. It had been awhile since I’d studied dragon taxonomy, but not that long ago. Lidek wasn’t wrong when he said that, once upon a time, I’d aspired to be a dragon rider. And I hadn’t been exactly honest when I implied it was the folly of childhood.

  It had been folly, perhaps, but a folly I entertained well into adulthood. As such, I was pretty well versed in all things wyvern. And as for silver dragons? Well, they hailed from the Argenti Isles, south of the equatorial line. That was in the heart of King Agelyn’s territory.

  Which meant that this dragon almost certainly came from south of the border. I glanced at the Commander. So far, at least, our limited evidence seemed to bear out his theory.

  I hoped like hell whatever we found next did not. We didn’t need a war with the South. The last one ended after almost a decade of slaughter, with a royal marriage: a blood bond to end bloodshed. It had happened well before Agelyn’s time, but surely, a few generations wasn’t enough to forget the lessons learned.

  Lidek, though, was focused on the scene. If he caught the significance of the dragon, he didn’t let on. I wasn’t sure he would; it was a bit of obscure trivia. So for the moment, I kept it to myself. I didn’t need to add weight to his preconceived notions. Not before we looked over the scene. I wanted him to approach this with as open a mind as possible.


  I took in what I could of the scene as we approached. I saw the wreckage of a few tents, and the blackened, charred bodies of dead horses in the glade.

  The skimmer pulled to a halt a little way from the bodies, kicking up a great cloud of dust as it did. Sheriff O’Brien waved dirt away as it washed over him, frowning at the vehicle as we stepped out.

  “Sheriff,” Fitzwilliam greeted, “any trouble?”

  “No ma’am. Not a soul’s been this way since Karina took the skimmer back.” He glanced at us all individually, his eyes settling on Lidek. “Sorry about your knight, Kyle.”

  “Where is he?”

  “This way.” O’Brien gestured for us to follow him, and he led us to a body. I grimaced at the sight. Ilyen had been a youngish man, not much older than myself. The shell that remained was crusted in dried blood, and already discolored.

  “Oh hell,” Fitzwilliam grimaced. “What happened?”

  “He took a shot, was bleeding pretty bad. Derel patched him up before she left for Terrence’s Fort. Aaronsen said he was trying to figure something out for his burns – the kid is burned pretty badly – when the patch busted. He tried putting another one on, but it didn’t hold. Looks like he died of blood loss.” With another glance at the commander, he repeated, “I’m sorry.”

  Lidek crouched down, examining the dead man’s wound. He said nothing, until he stood. “And the other body?”

  “He’s over here. By the dragon. Ugly sons-of-bitches, these dragons.”

  I couldn’t concur with that. Wyverns were fearsome, with tremendous size and fierce claws. They were capable of dealing out death and destruction on a significant scale.

  But ugly? No. On the contrary, they were remarkable creatures. Even now, this one managed a kind of regality. Its great body was slumped, its wings hung loose, its tail lay limp: but there was a majesty, a terrible and awesome power, to it even in death. I couldn’t define why or how, but standing there, I felt it. It sent a shiver up my back, and I was sorry – sorry for the knight, who lay dead behind us, for the beast who lay dead before us.

  I wondered at the man for whom we were headed. These two deaths lay at his feet, whoever he was. It was his attack that cost Ilyen his life. It was his attack that had cost his own wyvern’s life. Why?

  We found no answers forthcoming, though. He was dressed in dark attire, with no identifying features. He might have been a brigand or a lord – there was no mark on his person to differentiate either way, either in his style of dress or among any of his belongings.

  None of us recognized his face, either. It was an ordinary face, with pleasant if forgettable features. They looked very still and composed now, in death, save for the streak of red that ran down his forehead.

  Ilyen was a good shot, a better shot than this mystery killer. Ilyen had put a bolt of energy through his skull. He would have died instantly from a hit like that. If you had to kill someone, that was the way to do it. There’d be no slow bleed out, no prolonged death.

  Lidek took the lead here too, and I didn’t interfere. He’d known Ilyen, but it was more than that. The commander took a personal interest in his knights. Hell, he took a personal interest in me, and I wasn’t even attached to Cragspoint. But for better or worse, and though half the time I would have preferred he didn’t, he still fussed over me. And I lived a few kilometers away, outside of his command.

  If he’d had a family at some point, they were either gone or estranged. His command was the closest thing Kyle Lidek had to a family. And he’d just lost a member of that family, for no apparent reason. This would be personal to him, and I was going to stay out of his way until he was satisfied.

  It took a few minutes, and I spent the time examining the downed wyvern. Here was a shot that impressed even more than Ilyen’s. To kill a dragon was no little thing. Their scales were impenetrable to standard projectiles. They repelled energy bolts and withstood standard steel. Only wyvern steel – that strange alchemy of metal and magic – could pierce the hide of a dragon. And that, only with an effort.

  But Derel had not let that get in his way. He’d gone for the one spot on the beast that could not be armored: its eyes.

  That was clever – clever, and risky. It was a hard shot, and he wouldn’t have had time to take a second. If he missed, Derel would have ended up as dead as the horses on the far side of camp. But he hadn’t missed.

  So he was either a lucky fool, or a damned good shot. And quite possibly both. I circled the wyvern until I reached the saddle.

  Glancing back at Lidek, I saw that he was still preoccupied with the stranger’s corpse. I took hold of the saddle and pulled myself up. It had been pretty well picked over. The saddlebags were gone, and the straps that tied down a bedroll unbuckled. Either the stranger or our people had cleared the dragon of anything useful.

  I was about to dismount when my eye caught the glint of something silver, tucked under a leather flap in the saddle. It was about an arm’s reach, I guessed, from the seated rider.

  I flipped the leather back and found myself staring at the pummel of a steel sword, which was strapped down to the side of the saddle. Wyvern steel.

  I drew the blade, examining the ornamentation of the hilt and pummel. Fuck. This was a knight’s blade – a Knight of the South.

  I checked and double checked. But there was no mistaking the double crested wyrm depicted there, its body snaking up the sheath, its head forming the ornate pummel. It was a symbol of House Ignis. The Ignis family coat of arms bore its likeness. The Southern military incorporated it into its own designs.

  There was no mistaking the band around this particular dragon’s molded neck, either: it was a symbol of bondage. This rider was kaladorn, a king’s slave. An elite slave, to ascend to dragon rider. But a slave all the same, picked by the priests for military service. The band signified his status.

  Kaladorn was a concept that didn’t find traction in these parts. It ended in No Man’s Land and had no foothold north of the border. But it was long-standing practice in the South.

  And as much as I wanted to explain all of these signs away, I felt in the pit of my stomach that Lidek was right. This rider, with his dragon from the Argenti Isles, with the crest of the South on the wyvern steel he carried, and with the bonds of his homeland, was from the South.

  I subjected the saddle to a more thorough second examination but found nothing to either disprove or further confirm the suspicion. So I unbuckled the sheath, tucked the blade under my arm, and dismounted.

  The commander was just wrapping up when I descended, and he glanced up at my approach. “What’s that?”

  “A blade, concealed in the saddle.”

  He extended a hand, and I surrendered the sword. His face grew grim as he examined the markings. “You still doubt that he’s Agalyn’s man, Callaghan?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Fitzwilliam, meanwhile, craned her neck to see whatever it was that had convinced us. “What makes you say so?”

  “The dragon: it’s the wyvern from the South’s crest.”

  She peered closer, then nodded. “Dammit. So it is.”

  “And,” I added, “the band by the hilt, on the dragon’s neck?”

  Lidek nodded too. “So this rider was kaladorn.”

  “A slave?” The Mayor’s eyes widened.

  “But there’s something else,” I said. “The wyvern: his subspecies hails from the Argenti Isles.”

  Lidek threw me a curious half smile. “I wondered if you noticed that. So, you haven’t forgotten everything you learned, I guess.”

  Despite myself, I smiled at the old man, and shook my head. Here I’d thought I was concealing something from him, and he, apparently, thought he was hiding it from me. Well, well. Should have known better than to think I could get one over on him.

  Fitzwilliam and O’Brien were a bit more focused, though. “Kaladorn, you say?” the sheriff wondered. “Then he’s from the South.”

  “So is his wyvern,” I confirme
d.

  “Then…he’s one of Agalyn’s riders? Here, in the North?”

  “Killing our people?” Fitzwilliam bristled at the idea. “They weren’t even in the neutral zone. They were on our side of the border.”

  “It’s an act of war,” O’Brien agreed.

  “Not if the politicians have their say,” Lidek declared grimly. “It’ll have been a tragic misstep. A mistake. If they admit it at all, that is. There’ll be no justice for Ilyen. No justice for Derel and Aaronsen, either.”

  “Still better than a war,” I said. “How many more Ilyens would we lose, to avenge one man?”

  The commander shot me a sour look and shook his head. “It’s never one man, Callaghan. It may be one at a time, for a while. But sooner or later, war comes. And you’ve lost so many Ilyens along the way, you’ve trained your men to accept being slaughtered. To face it meekly, like sheep marching into the slaughterhouse.”

  Chapter Seven – Derel

  “I’m sorry, Ana,” Phillip said. The words were muffled under the bandages stretching over his face. The doctor had salved the burns in honey, and then wrapped them in linen, until the priests could arrive. It was supposed to reduce the pain and swelling and prevent infection.

  I supposed it did. They’d done the same to my back, for the same reasons. But when you hurt as much as I hurt, it was hard to notice a difference. I could only imagine how much pain Aaronsen was in. “For what? You didn’t do anything wrong, kid.”

  “I got him killed.”

  I frowned. I’d barely had a chance to speak with Phillip since we found Ilyen dead. At first, I think I was in shock. I didn’t remember half the conversations I’d had in those first minutes. All I remembered was feeling numb.

  Then, the doctor had to tend to Aaronsen’s wounds, and redress mine. We hadn’t had a chance to compare notes. “What are you talking about? You didn’t do anything.”