The Death of Dulgath Read online

  Melengar’s Galilin Province was a tranquil, agrarian region not prone to the threat of thievery, and the estate of Lord Hemley suffered from woefully ineffective security. While Royce had spotted as many as six guards on various scouting missions, that night there had only been three: a sentry at the gate, Ralph, and the dog.

  “Ralph!” someone shouted again. The voice was distant, but it carried across the open lawn.

  Behind them in the darkness, five lanterns bobbed. They moved in the haphazard pattern of a bewildered search party or a host of drunken fireflies.

  “Aaron, wake everyone up!”

  “Let Mister Hipple loose,” a woman’s voice shouted in a vindictive tone. “He’ll find them.”

  Above it all, the incessant yipping of the rodent-dog continued—Mister Hipple, no doubt.

  The front gate was unmanned. The guard stationed there must have run for help after Ralph’s shout. As they passed through unopposed, Royce marveled at Hadrian’s luck; the man was a walking rabbit’s foot. Three years in Royce’s School of Pragmatism had barely scratched his partner’s idealistic enamel. If Mister Hipple had been a larger, more aggressive animal, they might not have escaped so easily. And while Hadrian was more than capable of killing any dog, Royce wondered if he would have.

  It has puppies, Royce! Three of ’em!

  The two reached the safety of the dense thicket where they’d left their horses. Hadrian’s was called Dancer, but Royce never saw any point in naming his. While stowing the diary in a saddlebag, Royce asked, “How many years were you a soldier?”

  “In Avryn or Calis?”

  “All of it.”

  “Five, but the last two years were…well, less formal.”

  “Five years? You fought in the military for five years? Saw battles, right?”

  “Oh yeah—brutal ones.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re mad I didn’t kill Ralph, aren’t you?”

  Royce paused a moment to listen. No sound of pursuit, no lights in the trees, not even the yips of a manic rodent-dog chasing them. He swung a leg over the saddle and slid his foot into the stirrup on the other side. “You think?”

  “Look, I just wanted to do one lousy job where nobody got killed.” Hadrian stripped off the uniform’s waistcoat and replaced it with his wool shirt and leather tunic from his saddlebag.

  “Why?”

  Hadrian shook his head. “Never mind.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. We’ve done plenty of jobs where we didn’t kill anyone. Anyway, it’s fine.” Royce grabbed his reins, which he kept knotted together.

  “It’s what? What did you say?”

  “Fine. It’s fine.”

  “Fine?” Hadrian raised a brow.

  Royce nodded. “Are you going deaf?”

  “I just…” Hadrian stared up at him, puzzled. Then a scowl took over. “You’re coming back later, aren’t you?”

  The thief didn’t reply.

  “Why?”

  Royce turned his horse. “Just being thorough.”

  Hadrian climbed into his own saddle. “You’re being an ass. There’s no reason to. Ralph will never pose any threat.”

  Royce shrugged. “You can’t know that. Do you understand the meaning of the word thorough?”

  Hadrian frowned. “Do you understand the meaning of the word ass? You don’t need to kill Ralph.”

  There it was again—need.

  “Let’s argue later. I’m not killing him tonight.”

  “Fine.” Hadrian huffed, and together they trotted out of the brush and back onto the path that led to the road.

  The two rode side by side on the open lane. Rain began falling before they reached the King’s Road. The sun was up by then, although it was difficult to tell with the heavy clouds leaving the world a charcoal smear. Blissfully, Hadrian remained silent. In any given tavern, whether he knew someone or not, Royce’s partner would strike up a conversation. The man would talk to strangers with the ease of reunited friends. He’d clap them on the back, buy a round of drinks, and listen to riveting tales such as the one about the goat who had repeatedly gotten into a neighbor’s garden.

  When just the two of them were out on the road, Hadrian commented on trees, cows, hillsides, clouds, how hot or cold the weather was, and the status of everything from his boots—which needed new soles—to his short sword—which could use a better wrap for the handle. Nothing was too insignificant to warrant remark. The abundance of bumblebees or the lack of the same would launch him into a twenty-minute discourse. Royce never spoke during any of it—didn’t want to encourage his partner—but Hadrian carried on about his bees, the flowers, and the mud, another favorite topic of self-discussion.

  Despite his indefatigable insistence on blabbering to himself, Hadrian was always silenced by rain. Perhaps it put him in a bad mood or the pattering made it difficult to hear himself. Whatever the reason, Hadrian Blackwater was quiet in the rain, so Royce loved stormy days. Luck remained with him nearly the whole way home. Melengar was experiencing one of its wettest springs in recent memory.

  Royce looked over from time to time as they rode. Hadrian kept his head down, his hood crushed and sagging with the weight of water.

  “Why don’t you ever talk when it rains?” Royce finally asked.

  Hadrian hooked a thumb under the front of his hood, lifting it to peer out. “What do you mean?”

  “You talk all the time, but not when it rains—why?”

  Hadrian shrugged. “Didn’t know it bothered you.”

  “It doesn’t. What bothers me is when you blather nonstop.”

  Hadrian peered over, and a little smile grew in the shadow of his sopping hood. “You like my talking, don’t you?”

  “I just got done saying—”

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t have said anything if you really liked the silence.”

  “Trust me,” Royce said. “I really like the silence.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s uh-huh supposed to mean?”

  Hadrian’s smile widened into a grin. “For months we’ve ridden together while I’ve held whole conversations by myself. You’ve never joined in, and some of them were really good, too. You haven’t said a word, but now that I’ve stopped—look at you…yapping away.”

  “A single question isn’t yapping away.”

  “But you expressed an interest. That’s huge!”

  Royce shook his head. “I just thought there might be something wrong with you—obviously I was right.”

  Hadrian continued to grin with an overly friendly look of self-satisfaction, as if he’d scored a point in some imaginary contest. Royce pulled his own hood down, shutting Hadrian out.

  The horses plodded along through mud and occasionally gravel, shaking the water from their heads and jangling their bridles.

  “Sure is coming down, isn’t it?” Hadrian said.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Farmer’s wife back in Olmsted said it’s the wettest spring in a decade.”

  “I’ll slit your throat as you sleep. I really will.”

  “She served soup in cups because her husband and Jacob—that’s her sleep-all-day-drink-all-night brother-in-law—broke her good ceramic bowls.”

  Royce kicked his horse and trotted away.

  Royce and Hadrian were back on Wayward Street in the Lower Quarter of Medford. Spring was nearly over; in other parts of the world, flowering trees were busily trading pink petals for green leaves, and warm breezes blew earthy scents while farmers rushed to finish their planting. On Wayward, it meant four days of steady rain had once again made a murky pond in the low spot at the end of the street. And as usual, the water level reached the open sewer that ran behind the buildings. Euphemistically known as the Bridges, the sewer bled into the growing lake, spreading the reek of human and animal waste.

  The rain was still coming down as Royce, Gwen, and Hadrian stood on the planked porch of Medford House, staring across the muddy pond at the new si
gn over the door of the tavern. A fine lacquered board hung from a wrought-iron elbow brace, displaying the crisp image of a vibrant scarlet bloom and a curling stem that sported a single sharp thorn. Surrounding the flower were the elegantly scripted words: THE ROSE AND THE THORN

  The sign looked oddly out of place in front of the dingy tavern with its saddle-backed roof of mismatched shingles and weathered timbers. For all its dilapidation, the alehouse and eatery had substantially improved. Only a year before, what had been known as The Hideous Head needed no illustration to explain itself to its illiterate patrons. Grime-covered windows and muck-splattered walls told everyone what they needed to know. Since gaining control of the tavern, Gwen had cleaned up the dirt and the muck, but the real improvements had been inside. The new sign was the first enhancement to the exterior.

  “Beautiful,” Hadrian said.

  “It will look better in sunlight.” Gwen folded her arms in judgment. “The blossom turned out perfect. Emma did the drawing and Dixon helped with the painting. Rose would have liked it, I think.” Gwen looked up at the dark clouds. “I hope she somehow sees—sees her rose hanging above Grue’s old door.”

  “I’m sure she can,” Royce told her.

  Hadrian stared at him.

  “What?” Royce shot back.

  “Since when do you believe in an afterlife?” Hadrian asked.

  “I don’t.”

  “Then why did you say—”

  Royce slapped his hand on the porch rail, which had just enough rain on it to splatter. “You see?” he appealed to Gwen. “This is what I have to deal with. He admonishes me about my behavior. Why can’t you smile, he says. Why didn’t you wave back to the kid? Would it have killed you to be polite to the old woman? Why can’t you ever say a kind word? And now, when I try to be a little considerate, what do I get?” Royce held out both of his palms, as if presenting Hadrian to her for the first time.

  Hadrian continued to stare at him, but now with pursed lips, as if to say, Really? Instead, he replied, “You’re only being nice because she’s here.”

  “Me?” Gwen asked. Standing between them, she swiveled her head to look from one to the other, as innocent as a dewdrop. “What do I have to do with this?”

  Hadrian rolled his eyes, threw his head back, and laughed. “You are a pair. Whenever the two of you are together, it’s like I’m with strangers—no, not strangers—opposites. He becomes a gentleman and you feign ignorance of men.”

  Royce and Gwen maintained their defensively blank looks.

  Hadrian chuckled. “Fine. Let today henceforth be known as Opposites Day. And as such I’m going across the Perfume Sea to have a drink at the Palace of Fine Food and Clean Linens.”

  “Hey!” Gwen snapped, bringing her hands to her hips in a huff of indignation.

  “Yeah!” Royce said. “Who’s the rude one now?”

  “Stop it. You’re scaring me.” Hadrian walked off, leaving them alone.

  “I missed you,” Gwen told him after Hadrian had gone inside, her eyes on the rain as it boiled the giant puddle.

  “Was only a few days,” Royce replied.

  “I know. Still missed you. I always do. I get scared sometimes—worried something bad will happen.”

  “Worried?”

  She shrugged. “You might get killed, be captured, or maybe meet a beautiful woman and never come back.”

  “How can you worry? You know the future, right?” he joked. “Hadrian said you read his palm once.”

  Gwen didn’t laugh. Instead, she said, “I’ve read many palms.” She looked up at the sign with the single blooming rose, and sadness crossed her face.

  Royce felt like stabbing himself. “Sorry, I…I didn’t mean…”

  “It’s all right.”

  It didn’t feel all right. Royce’s muscles tightened. Both hands became fists, and he was glad she wasn’t looking at him. Gwen had a way of seeing through his defenses. To everyone else he was a solid wall fifty feet high with razor-sharp spikes on top and a moat at its base; to Gwen he was a curtainless window with a broken latch.

  “But I do worry,” she said. “It’s not like you’re a cobbler or bricklayer.”

  “You shouldn’t. These days I don’t do anything worth worrying about. Hadrian won’t let us. I’m stuck with fetching lost possessions, stopping feuds—did you know we helped a farmer plow his field?”

  “Albert got you a job plowing?”

  “No, Hadrian did. Farmer took sick, and his wife was desperate. They owe money.”

  “And you plowed a field?”

  Royce smirked at her.

  “So Hadrian plowed and you watched.”

  “I tell you, the things he does.” Royce sighed. “Just doesn’t make sense sometimes.”

  Gwen smiled at him. She was likely siding with Hadrian; most people did. Everyone thought good deeds were great—publicly at least—and her expression was one of patient understanding, as if she were too polite to say so. It didn’t matter. She was smiling at him, and for that brief moment it wasn’t raining. For that instant the sun shone, and he had never been an assassin and she had never been a prostitute.

  He reached out, wanted desperately to touch her and hold that moment in his arms, to kiss that smile and make it more than a fleeting brilliance he would otherwise only recall as a dying spark. Then he stopped.

  Gwen looked down at his faltering hands, then up at his face. “What is it?”

  Is that disappointment in her voice?

  “We’re not alone,” he said, nodding across the street to where three wretched figures moved in the shadows near the kitchen door. “You need to talk to your bartender. Dixon is dumping scraps outside the door, and you’re drawing flies.”

  Gwen looked over. “Flies?”

  “Elves. They’re pawing through your garbage.”

  Gwen squinted. “Oh, I didn’t even see them.” She waved a hand. “It’s fine. I told Dixon to give them any leftover food. I hope he’s not just throwing it in the mud. I’ll need to get a barrel or set out a table.”

  Royce grimaced while watching the miserable creatures. The rags clinging to their bodies were little more than torn scraps pretending to be clothes. Soaked with the rain, the elves looked like skin-wrapped skeletons. Feeding them was an example of cruelty by kindness. Gwen gave them false hope. Better to let them die. Better for them, better for everyone.

  He looked at her. “You realize they’ll just come back. You’ll never get rid of them.”

  Gwen nudged him and pointed up Wayward Street. “Albert’s here.”

  On foot and veiled behind the hazy curtain of solid rain, Albert Winslow approached the dreaded pond with disgust. Soaked through and through, the viscount’s new brimless hat lay flat against his head, sliding down one side of his face. His cloak was plastered to his body. He looked at the murky lake and then across at them with a frown. “If it’s always going to be like this,” he called across, “can’t you put in a bridge for your moat, Gwen?”

  “I don’t have a charter governing the street,” she called back. “Or the Bridges, for that matter. You’ll need to take that up with the king, or at the very least the Lower Quarter Merchants’ Guild.”

  Albert looked down at the churning pond and grimaced as he waded in. “I want a horse!” he shouted at the clouds as the water reached the middle of his calves. “I’m a viscount, for Maribor’s sake! I shouldn’t have to wade through a sewer just to report in.”

  “Can’t afford three,” Royce replied. “Can barely afford feed for the two.”

  “Can now.” Albert pulled back his cloak to reveal a purse. He shook it. “We got paid.”

  Six shiny gold coins stamped with the Melengar Falcon and twenty silver bearing the same image lay on the table in the Dark Room. The only room without a single window, it once was used for all manner of kitchen storage. Gwen had transformed the space to serve as the headquarters for Riyria, his and Hadrian’s rogues-for-hire operation. She’d added a fireplace for warm
th and light, and the table where Albert had emptied his purse.

  Royce brought over a candle. Every kingdom and city-state produced their own coins, but the tenent was international and supposed to be of consistent weight—equal to a typical robin’s egg. A silver tenent weighed the same as a gold tenent, but it was larger and thicker to make up for the lighter metal. That was the intention, and, for the most part, it held true. These felt to be honest coins.

  “You got away clean, by the way.” Albert stood by the fire and pulled off his sodden hat. “Lady Martel either doesn’t know her diary was taken or is too embarrassed to report it. I’m guessing the latter.”

  Albert began to wring his hat out onto the floor.

  “No, no, no!” Gwen shouted at him. “Here—give me that. Oh, and just get out of the rest of your things. They have to be washed. Dixon, can you please get a blanket?”

  Albert raised his brows at Gwen as she stood with hands out, waiting. He glanced at Royce and Hadrian with questions in his eyes. Neither said a word. Both responded with grins.

  “Albert, do you really think you have anything I haven’t seen before?” Gwen asked.

  Albert frowned, wiped the wet hair from his face, and began to unhook his doublet. “Anyway, as I was saying, Lord Hemley hasn’t called for so much as a search. According to our employer, Lady Constantine, Lady Martel only reported a nasty scare in the middle of the night that turned out to be nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Royce asked.

  “I’m not sure Ralph and Mister Hipple would agree,” Hadrian said.

  “What kind of scare did she say they had?” Royce inquired.

  Albert shrugged off the dripping brocade, which Gwen took. The big bartender returned with a blanket, and they traded material. “Can you please give this to Emma and ask her to do what she can?”

  “Tell her to be careful,” Albert said. “That’s expensive.”

  “We know,” Royce reminded him.