Fool's Gold Page 9

  So here she was, helping thieves and rogues plan to rob a dragon. Here she was fully intending to participate in a crime. She had devoted herself to a life of learning and quiet worship of Knole.

  Oh to the Hallows with it! She would be getting to poke a dragon in its gods-hexed belly and seeing if it giggled in its sleep! Knole—goddess of wisdom, knowledge, insight, and academia that she was—would give her right tit for an opportunity like that.

  The surface of the lake, when she summoned it, was rippling with motion. She breathed slowly, walked out of the cave, let the heat of the sun sink into her aching body.

  Next was the fact that people’s lives would be put in danger by this undertaking. Not just hers but the lives of everyone she had said she would give Fire Root potion.

  Gods, she had said that. How much had she had to drink?

  But she could give it to them. She really could…

  Lette had promised to save the villagers’ lives. Well… sort of. But even that thin promise still left her conscience with the guards who served Mattrax. All of them. Balur had said he wanted to kill them. Of course he had. That was his people’s way. She had read about Analesians. A hard people growing up in an even harder land. Scrabbling for survival among the cliffs and sands of the Analesian desert. Creatures that fought for every moment that they drew breath, killing their food, killing each other, right up until the moment they were killed themselves.

  She could not be party to that sort of violence.

  Could she?

  The dragons’ soldiers were villains. The dragons were villains too. She could excuse the reptiles though. They were not human. You couldn’t apply human rules to them. They had their own rituals and needs that were not necessarily compatible with those of human life. That was simply how thaumatobiology worked. But the guards… The guards chose to steal and to kill. So didn’t they deserve…?

  Not by her hand. That she had sworn. That was inviolable.

  But by her will…?

  No. She couldn’t be responsible for that either.

  Poke! Poke! Poke!

  She clenched and unclenched her hands. Started to go through the ritual stretches, each one designed to bring body and mind into closer alignment. Each one stilling the surface of the lake inside. Each one canceling out a breath of wind that disturbed its silence. Each one making the calm more perfect.

  “What in the name of Lawl’s black eye is this thing?”

  Quirk was yanked from spiritual and physical alignment back to earth. Her psyche landed with a bump. Lette was standing a few yards away. She was pointing at Quirk’s cart.

  “That’s my cart,” Quirk said. Because it was.

  Lette appeared unsatisfied by this answer. “And how in the name of all the gods did it get here?”

  The surface of the lake was not smooth. Not at all.

  “I had it with me last night,” Quirk said. She could feel heat of the sun on the side of her face.

  “So where in the Hallows is your horse?” Lette asked. “Where’s the gods-hexed yoke for a horse? Where’s the bridle and tack? Where are the fucking reins?”

  The heat of the sun, and the heat of her dream. The heat of fire, balling, collecting in her palms, her fingertips.

  Quirk breathed slowly, clenched her fists. She hoped the mercenary didn’t notice the wisps of smoke escaping between her fingers.

  “It’s a thaumatic wagon,” she said, speaking slowly and carefully. “It runs on a thaumaturgic engine.”

  “That being,” Lette said, “the thing in the middle that looks like the offspring of an oven that got drunk and opened its doors to an alchemist’s toolkit?”

  “Yes.” Quirk kept her answers simple, her exterior calm. Imitate what you shall become.

  She could hear feet behind her, Lette’s… exuberance… attracting attention. From the slight wince she saw cross the mercenary’s face she assumed Firkin had refrained from adding clothes to his morning ensemble.

  Still Lette was not distracted. “What happened,” she hissed, “to the bit where you said you don’t practice magic anymore?”

  Another calming breath. It was easier to achieve this time. Quirk understood people’s distrust of magic. She distrusted magic and she was a practitioner of the art. Nobody liked being proven wrong, and that was doubly the case when you were dealing with the fundamental laws of the universe.

  “I don’t practice magic,” she said. “The person who created the engine does. I simply bought the engine from him, and now employ it.”

  “You employ magic?” Lette said. She did not sound impressed.

  “Like a small business owner,” Balur said from over Quirk’s shoulder, in a poor imitation of helpfulness.

  Quirk took the moment of Lette’s distraction to further cement her serenity. “I’m not entirely certain,” she said, “that I understand your concern.”

  That brought Lette’s attention back to her. “My concern?”

  Quirk was fairly sure that Lette’s laugh was not genuine.

  “My concern,” Lette said, “is that I spent the night sleeping a few handful of yards from a magical bomb you did nothing to warn us about.”

  “It’s not a bomb,” Quirk said as reasonably as she could manage. “It’s an engine.”

  “An engine is just a bomb that hasn’t happened yet.”

  Quirk opened and closed her mouth. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. And yet that phrase “a bomb that hasn’t happened yet” struck a little close to home.

  “Life experience is coloring the world a shade not everyone is seeing for Lette,” Balur supplied.

  “Shut up, Balur.” Lette’s anger was not ebbing away.

  Quirk thought she should tell Lette about the mantra, and inner calm, about the surface of the lake, and the absence of the wind. But she thought she should do it at a more opportune moment when she was less likely to be gutted for it.

  There again, this seemed like the approximate point in proceedings when Will—

  “Maybe we should all just take a moment,” Will said.

  Quirk smiled. He was a good man. Naïve, and likely to die soon, but good. And that counted for something.

  “It is quite safe,” Quirk said. “I assure you. And it has made transporting all of my equipment much easier. But it has traveled three hundred and fifty leagues without the slightest glitch. I am sure it will be fine now.”

  Lette curled her lip. “I do not like magic.” She said it quietly. Because it was close to what Quirk knew she really meant. She was scared of magic.

  “Me too,” Quirk replied.

  Balur laid a hand on Lette’s shoulder, rubbed it almost affectionately. “There is being no magic in Kondorra. The gods have all been buggering off and leaving it to the dragons.”

  Quirk cocked her head to one side. “Is that true?” she said to Will, unable to restrain her curiosity. “I hadn’t thought of that. Is there magic here?”

  Will’s look of conciliatory patience slipped several notches closer to frustration. “We haven’t been abandoned by the gods. Is that what people outside of Kondorra think? No, they didn’t come to our aid in the dragon wars, and no, admittedly none have manifested here in a long time, but the seasons still come as Lawl dictates them, the crops still come just as Cois and Toil command them, babies are still born healthy and whole just as Betra would have them, coin still flows as Klink desires, the skies don’t fall. Knole does whatever she does. All the god stuff takes care of itself. And we don’t get them coming down making demigods, and causing chaos and wars.”

  “But,” Quirk pressed, still not quite able to stop, “what about mages?”

  Will threw up his hands. “Fine. I don’t know about bloody mages.”

  Balur shrugged. “I was hearing that you were all worshipping the dragons instead of the gods, and that you were all having orgies with virgins, and that then you were sacrificing them.”

  Lette looked at Balur like he was something diseased. “Where in the Hall
ows did you hear that?”

  Balur shrugged uncomfortably. “Was being some guy in some bar.” He rubbed the scales on the back of his head. “Was being half the reason I was suggesting we were coming.”

  Lette shook her head. “I should have fucking known.”

  Will was looking at them all, slightly aghast. “Don’t you know anything about Kondorra?”

  Lette gave him a mildly pitying look. “This is the arse-end of Avarra. Who do you think is out there talking about it?”

  Will shook his head. Quirk doubted he had ever seen much outside of this tail end of the valley.

  Lette affected a sympathetic look. “Don’t feel bad about it. At least it means that there’s no one out there talking about what an oppressive shithole this place really is.”

  Will sighed heavily. “You know what?” he said. “It’s too early for this. Let’s just go eat, and try to work out if we really meant what we said last night.”

  They had really meant it. Quirk was surprised by how rapidly that became apparent over their makeshift breakfast. Even Will, though he put up some token resistance, quickly conceded to the gravity of events. A good man, a naïve man, but a man with a stomach full of rage too, no matter how well he hid it. He wanted to hurt the dragon.

  And then, with the plan settled, it was time to put it into action. And so she was sent out into the woods to look for herbs.

  “This is being a thing that is taking a long time,” Balur said from where he leaned against a nearby tree, quietly wringing the neck of grammar.

  Lette had assigned the lizard man to protect her as she looked for ingredients. The woods, Will had said—repeatedly in fact—were not safe. But Quirk had traveled more than three hundred leagues. She had crossed the wooded valleys of the Vale. She had kowtowed to war chiefs, hidden from spiders, drugged tribes of orcs, given gifts to elven kings, and…

  No, she was not thinking about that.

  —and had survived to tell the tale. Lette knew that about her. Or suspected enough of it to know it wasn’t likely that Quirk needed protection. No, Balur was not there to protect her. He was there to keep her there.

  Quirk bent, picked up the lower branches of a hawthorn bush, checked the scrub below, and tried to figure out how she felt about that. Was she thinking of running? Was she going to go through with all this?

  “Snag Weed is picky about where it chooses to grow,” she said. “It likes shade, but not too much, the damp, but not too much, clay soil, but not too much.” There was peace in the litany of facts, something to calm the questions quivering in her gut.

  She found what she was looking for, and threw the handful of Snag Weed into her thaumatic wagon, which trundled through the woods after her. They had a fair amount now, but not enough, she suspected, to knock out a dragon of the proportions described to her.

  “I am not knowing why we are needing this Snag Weed anyway,” Balur groused.

  “I think,” Quirk said, as carefully as possible, “that the group seems to think that not having to fend off an enraged dragon would be the safest way to address the proposed plan.”

  Balur snorted. “Red of tooth and claw. That is how adventures should be. The testing of oneself against the fury and the rage. The animal inside being let loose. To be living at the edge of oneself and one’s civilization. To be being honest with oneself about what one is being.”

  Quirk didn’t answer that. That was a dangerous conversational path for her to be wandering down. Instead she moved to the next hawthorn bush, lifted it up.

  “The plan is sounding good,” Balur said. “But plans are always being that way. They are always sounding like you will be waltzing into somewhere and will then be two-stepping out while one’s shit is smelling of roses. But what is actually happening is you are waltzing in and you are having your skull smacked, and then you are eviscerating your foes with your jaws, and you are staggering out with your shit smelling of your internal bleeding.” He hesitated. “To be using one specific example.”

  Still Quirk held her tongue. She tried to concentrate on the large Snag Weed plant before her. All she had to do was take it and leave.

  But there were ripples on the surface of the lake. Worries skittering through its waters like panicked fish.

  No killing. Lette had said that. Except for the guards. But she had been appeasing Balur. She hadn’t meant it. Had she?

  Something calm and simple. That was what she needed. That was what the plan promised. Right? No bodies. No worries. Everything simple. Everything calm. She gripped the Snag Weed at its base, close to the root.

  “You be trusting me,” Balur said. “We will be seeing that dragon, and soon the mountains will be running red. Weed or no weed.”

  Flame blazed in Quirk’s hand. Bright and sharp. The Snag Weed’s small purple flowers blackened and curled. In an instant all she was holding was a fistful of ash.

  She straightened, glanced at Balur. He hadn’t noticed. She fixed on a smile like a rictus. “Nothing here,” she said. “Let’s try looking somewhere else.”

  9

  Strange Brews

  The morning staggered into afternoon. The afternoon stumbled on and eventually evening fell. Balur’s narrow tongue licked the air. The smell of Quirk’s brewing painted the sky around the cave mouth, thick and heavy, coating the back of his throat like blood. He moved away, deeper into the woods. Lette would be being upset at him if he was ripping the drunkard’s head off.

  He found Lette alone, beyond a stand of trees that masked her from the cave. She didn’t turn to face him, but he could read the subtle tides of her body language as she relaxed minutely in his presence. They were tribe. Stronger together.

  It was ten years now. Ten years that they had been fighting, killing, and fucking side by side. Ten years cutting a bloody swath out of the Analesian desert, through Salera, Batarra, and Vinland before finally crossing the Kondorran peaks and descending into…

  What was this being?

  Opportunity? Futility? Complete and utter shit show?

  He was knowing half the answer. He was knowing what this was to him. Kondorra was having dragons. He had not been knowing much else about Kondorra, but he had been knowing that. So this was being his chance to bloody his hammer’s head on the skull of a dragon. This was being his chance to feel the breath of a beast roasting his skin. This was being his chance to show a dragon’s tooth to one of the skinny little human girls he liked so much, and to be seeing her eyes go wide. This was telling tales while ale was making his blood grow hot in his veins.

  But that was not what this was being to Lette. This was being something else to her. But he was not knowing what. And that was worrying him. Tribe was knowing tribe. That was how it was supposed to be being. That was how it had been being for ten years.

  She had found him in the desert. Ten years ago. She had come into the sands leading a pack of scholars. Tribe to each other but not to her. They had paid her coin, and pointed at the desert, and told her they wished to plunder its depths.

  They had thought of the desert like a virgin child, standing for her first night on the brothel balcony. Balur had grown up in the desert. He knew it for what it was. The cruelest of killers. She had many the faces, the desert, and, yes, many treasures, but she gave none of them up. She stole life, either quick and savage, or slow and with a smile.

  Lette’s employers—no matter that they called themselves scholars—were being a bunch of idiots.

  Not that any of that had been concerning Balur at the time. He had been too busy dealing with the fact that the desert was busy killing him.

  He had gone three days without water then. Fifteen without meat. The scales had hung loose on him. His tongue had been a stick of wood in his mouth. His eyes had burned. The skin between his scales cracked and ran with blood so thick it could scarcely flow. Thought was almost gone from him.

  He had taken shelter in the ruins, was hunkered between half a sandstone column and a broken-down stump of a wall. Some te
mple perhaps. Half lost in the dunes. Like him really. And he had given up. Even the need to survive not enough to drive him on anymore. He had curled up upon himself and waited for the end.

  And then he had heard them. Heard her. She was telling them to set up camp because a storm was blowing, she had told him later. And she was stifling laughter at their inability to do so.

  “Literally had to tell one of them to try not to club himself in the head so often while driving in a tent peg,” she had said. “Good thing I was too parched to piss myself.”

  While he had heard the words, none of the sense of them had made it into his skull. Scholars. Idiots. Whatever they were, Balur had seen them as one thing.

  Food.

  He had sunk into the sand—so only his spine, nostrils, and eyes showed—and slithered forward. Slow. So slow. It was easy to be slow when he was more than half-dead already.

  He had taken one scholar before they knew he was there. Hands reaching up and unseaming the man’s belly before they understood what was going on. Burying his face in the man’s guts and feasting on blood. Feeling slick viscera slide down his dry throat. His empty stomach clenching in response.

  The scholars had stepped back, shocked, aghast. And he had smiled. There was no time to be shocked in the desert.

  And then, just before his claws had closed around the second one’s throat, Lette had been there.

  She was small. That had been his only thought. And then, as he went to crush her, small and sharp. Her blades sliced at his scales, at his weak, cracking skin. He tried to swat her. She had darted away. Small, sharp, and fast. And then a thought to sum all those up. Annoying.