Throne of Dragons

“Because of the threat we found?” Erin asked.

Commander Harr shook his head. His expression turned serious. “It’s more grave than that. We’ve had news from Royalsport. I have the men readying to march.”

Erin frowned at that. What had happened back home? She caught herself, stopping short at the thought of the palace as home. She waited, too many thoughts running through her mind of all the things that might have gone wrong there. Was her father all right? Was her mother?

“It’s Princess Lenore,” Commander Harr said. “She has been captured by King Ravin’s forces and taken south.”

Shock flooded through Erin at that. Of all her family, Lenore had seemed like the one who was least likely to be in danger. Rodry might charge into a fight, or Vars might be cruel to the wrong person. Nerra spent all her time in the woods unprotected, and obviously Erin herself sought out danger, but Lenore? It made no sense.

“We have to get her back,” Erin said. In that moment, the minor pain of her wound, or her tiredness from having ridden here from the village meant nothing. All that mattered was making sure that Lenore was all right.

“King Godwin has ordered our knights to join him in marching to secure a bridge for long enough to recover her,” Commander Harr said. “You—”

“I’m going with you,” Erin said, before he could command her to stay there, insist that she remain behind where it was safe.

Commander Harr nodded. “I had no plan to stop you. You’re one of us, Erin. I was going to order you to hurry to be ready. You’ll fight beside us, and together, we’ll secure the kingdom.”

“And get Lenore back,” Erin said. That was the part that mattered to her, more than the rest of it.

The commander nodded again. “You have to remember that it will have taken time for the messengers to get here. I’m sure that Sir Twell and Sir Ursus rode as fast as they could, but by now, your sister could be deep into the Southern Kingdom.”

“Then I’ll go into it and get her back,” Erin promised. “I’ll tear out King Ravin’s heart to do it, if I have to.”

She had heard the stories growing up, of brave knights questing to recover fair maidens, saving princesses from dangers beyond reckoning. At the time, Erin had always thought that those were stupid stories. She hadn’t understood why the princesses didn’t just save themselves, kill the monsters, and go home to people cheering their name. She certainly never planned to go around waiting for a knight to come.

Now though, she was the knight, in all but name. She was the one who would be riding to the rescue.

“Come with me,” Commander Harr said. He led the way to where armor and weapons were laid out, the knights moving among them as they selected what they needed. “I was going to leave this until you had finished proving yourself, but if it is to be war, I will not have it said that you were ill defended.”

He took pieces from the stacks, passing them to Erin. Although it looked as though he was grabbing things at random, each piece seemed perfectly sized to fit Erin, chosen with the precision of long practice. He passed her a breastplate, greaves, bracers… an outer skin of plate that fit over Erin’s chainmail like a glove, each piece shining and silvered.

The end result wasn’t quite the full plate armor the commander wore, but instead something more mobile, with patches of chain in between the plates designed to ward off the worst of blows. He passed Erin a buckler, which she slid onto her left forearm, the shield small enough that she could still manipulate her short spear easily. Last came a half-helm to protect her head, the design of a dragon chased atop it in gold. It was the most beautiful thing Erin had seen.

“How… how is all of this here to fit me?” she asked.

Commander Harr shrugged. “You think a commander wouldn’t seek out suitable protection for his troops?”

Erin didn’t know what to say. “Thank you. It’s… perfect.”

“If you want to thank me, stay safe in the battles to come. Now, young recruit, you need to tend to your horse. We’ve a lot of riding to do to reach the south.”

Erin nodded, running for her horse. She wouldn’t let the commander down. More than that, she wouldn’t let her sister down. She would help to save Lenore and beat back the Southern Kingdom’s attack, whatever it took, even if it cost her life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The worst thing about being in chains in Lord Carrick’s dungeon… well, it was hard for Renard to pin it down to just one, really, although he’d had plenty of time to choose since they’d caught him trying to steal the gold Lord Carrick had taken from a wrecked ship bound for King Ravin. There was the strange abandonment of it, which meant that Renard probably looked even wilder than usual, red hair flying everywhere, beard crusted with mud and worse.

There were the occasional beatings, which had added a patina of bruises to his face, probably rendering his rugged good looks more rugged, but on average less… good.

“Yselle will not be happy with you!” he called out into the dark. “None of the women will be!”

Not that it made any difference. There was no answer.

The dark and the silence were definitely on the list. If he’d had his lute, Renard would have broken the silence with song, but he hadn’t, and in any case, his wrists were chained, chafing and restricting his movement. That was on the list of worst things as well. Then there was the part where he’d been sober for longer at a stretch than ever before in his life, the occasional presence of rats, the cold…

Oh, and the part where Lord Carrick would probably have him executed at some point. As worst parts went, that one had a certain… finality to it, although given the slow ways a man could be executed, there was no guarantee that a man couldn’t find worse things still before the end.

Oh well. It had to happen sometime.

That was the problem with Renard’s chosen profession: very few thieves got to retire comfortably at the end of it all. Those who didn’t end up swinging on nooses tended to be killed by whatever protections rich folk had set around their goods. It was almost, almost enough to make Renard wonder why he’d chosen to be a thief at all.

Idly, he started to go back over the choices that had led to this, but the trouble was that so few of them had really counted as choices at all. They’d just been… things he’d done, things that had seemed obvious at the time, or that he hadn’t been able to keep from doing because his fingers had been too itchy not to take a purse, or pick a lock, or climb a wall. Trying to make any of that sound like he’d actually made a decision about it would be far too much.

Even when it had come to trying to steal from Lord Carrick, it hadn’t been so much a decision as simply a need. Now, it seemed that he was going to die for it. At some point, when Renard had languished in his dungeon long enough, his lordship would take Renard out, try him, and decide on a suitably horrible way to kill him. All because Renard hadn’t been able to walk away from the thought of coin for the taking.

Renard checked his chains for what had to be the hundredth time, just in case they had developed a flaw that he could use. Annoyingly, they were still perfect, and even if he got them off, there was still a thick door, a dungeon full of guards, and the castle’s walls between him and freedom. How was a man meant to go about escaping in circumstances like that?

Renard was just settling into a nice solid round of despair when he heard the click of the lock. He braced himself, imagining that the guards had probably decided to give him another beating, but he still flinched when light streamed into the cell, harsh enough to make his eyes water after the darkness. It meant that the three figures who walked in were blurry at first.

Renard quickly found himself wishing that they had stayed that way. Instead, he was staring at three figures in dark, hooded robes, faces covered by elaborate masks that seemed to be the only individual things about their wearers. One wore a mask of interlocking greenery, another a mask with features so twisted that they seemed to hurt his eyes just looking at it. The third wore a blank white mask that gave no hint of emotion.

That was the one who spoke.

“Do you know who we are, Renard the thief?”

“Well, the masks and the robes are kind of a clue,” Renard said, keeping his tone light. This was a trick, it had to be.

“And now you think that this is false,” the man said. “Tell me, would even Lord Carrick impersonate us?”

Now Renard froze. He forced a smile even though inside, his heart was racing. It was true, no one would pretend to be this. These were the Hidden. It was said that they sought power in places most other men and women dared not even think about; that the earliest of them had been thrown out of the House of Scholars for research that should never have been attempted.

“You’re trying to hide your fear,” the one with the green mask said. By the voice, this one was a woman. “You think, if you’re flippant enough, the bad things of the world will skate by you.”

“Well, it’s worked out all right so far,” Renard said, jangling his chains for emphasis.

“It has left you waiting to die,” the one in the twisted mask said, his voice harsh, even guttural. His mask turned toward the one who wore the blank one. “Why seek a thief who has been caught?”

The blank faced one did not reply, but turned back to Renard. “Would you like to be free?”

Free. The word caught Renard’s attention, mostly because of the alternatives.

“And you could set me free?” he asked.

“We are here, aren’t we?” the blank-faced one said. “We walked in, and we could walk out again, with you. For a price.”

Of course there would be a price. People like this didn’t do anything for free. From what Renard had heard, they had all paid their own prices, to things beyond the twisting and turning of reality. What would they demand? Renard decided that another question was safer.

“What do you need stolen?”