Dragon Unleashed Page 3

  Hamod’s scowl melted away. “You learned all that just from holding it?” At her nod, a triumphant smile danced across his lips. “Then it’s definitely magical and should fetch a decent price.”

  “Maybe,” she hedged. Her gaze settled on the two mercenaries waiting nearby. “But look at those men. You heard what they said. It’s coveted. Even if I didn’t sense anything from this piece, I’d wager it isn’t just coveted, it’s hunted, and they no longer want any part of that chase. Theirs is a desperate honesty. They’ve tried to sell it before and had no takers. Something about it is warning people away.” Hamod’s gleeful expression clouded with doubt, then cleared, and he shrugged.

  “If it’s fake, I’ll bid low and grind the bone into powder. We’ll sell it as a cure for baldness, or you can make a cream. We’ll tout it to the crones trying to recapture their youth.” He chuckled at her disapproving glare. “Stop looking like a shriveled apple. You know as well as I that we’ve fed our group more than once on the backs of other people’s vanity.”

  Halani hated it when he used practicality to justify some of his ethically questionable actions. “What if it is valuable? Bone from a truly rare creature?” The hum along her skin assured her that the bone was anything but ordinary.

  Hamod’s eyes gleamed. “Then we count this our lucky day, and if someone else wants this pretty back, they can buy it or fight for it.” As free traders, their caravan was heavily armed, wary of strangers on the road, and its members unhesitating in defending themselves. But in this Hamod was wrong.

  “We may not have the numbers to keep it from whoever is searching for it.”

  Again, that maddening, unconcerned shrug. “Then we’ll deal with them if that day comes. I doubt it will, and I know more than a few people in Domora who’d be happy to part with a full purse to possess such an artifact to show off to their wealthy friends.” He held out a hand, crooking his fingers. “Now, hand it over so I can get to bargaining, and you can get back to the stall and help Gilene.”

  As if uttering the woman’s name summoned it, a female voice bellowed above the noise of the crowd, bringing the market to a halt. “Azarion!” Halani turned toward the commotion, startled to see Gilene’s absent husband, Valdan, stride through the crowd toward the trader tables where Gilene manned their booth.

  No longer the ragged, injured dye merchant Hamod’s caravan had come across on a dusty road at the edge of the forest, Valdan wore the trappings of a leader. Bearded and dressed in the garb of a Savatar horse nomad, he was still the handsome man Halani remembered. His piercing green gaze rested solely on Gilene, who stared back, eyes wide and bright with tears. Hamod used the distraction to snatch the bone fragment out of Halani’s hand and returned to the two skittish traders.

  Torn between curiosity over the drama playing out between Gilene and her husband and wanting to harangue her uncle more, Halani paused amid the crowd. She pressed her palms together, striving to recapture a remnant of the magic hanging over the bone like an invisible mist.

  A ghost of ancient earth swirled between her fingers, a memory of pain and regret, of desperation, and of hope. But most of all a silent but plaintive call to be found and united. With what? With whom?

  The sudden, more physical tug on her elbow brought her out of her ruminations. Her mother stood next to her, weathered features creased by a wide grin. She pointed to Valdan as he approached the table Gilene stood behind. “Look, Hali! Valdan isn’t dead,” she said in her high, childish voice. “Come with me. I want to tell him hello!”

  A cluster of Savatar lined up behind him like a human redoubt. They were an intimidating group of men and women dressed in light armor and carrying a myriad of weapons. None looked as if they’d welcome a gleeful Asil skipping through their ranks to offer greetings. Nevertheless, Halani rarely refused her mother’s wishes and followed her back toward their stall.

  A flicker of movement close to the table caught her attention, and she spotted a pack of cutpurses as young as six, but no older than twelve, easing closer to the pile of goods stacked toward the back of the stall as well as the unguarded items on the table itself. “Bollocks!” she snapped. With Gilene and Valdan seeing only each other and the Savatar watching only them, the stall was easy pickings for small, fast thieves. They’d be cleaned out in moments.

  Asil’s eyes widened. “What?

  Halani pointed in the cutpurses’ direction as she raced toward them. Asil shot past her, far fleeter and more nimble than her aged appearance suggested. She reached the table just as one of the older, bigger juveniles snatched a tooled leather pouch from the table’s corner and bolted into the thick of the crowd.

  He didn’t get far. One of the Savatar women abruptly straightened her arm from her side, clotheslining the runner. He struck the unexpected barrier so hard, he ricocheted off her vambraced forearm, feet flying out from under him before he landed on his back. The bag he held tumbled through the air and was snagged by Asil. The thief’s compatriots scattered in all directions. Halani suspected they’d managed to make off with a fan and one of the hideous hats Dennefel loved to make and Hamod insisted they try to sell. It could have been much worse. Winded but not incapacitated, the downed thief sprang to his feet and fled, kicking up his heels even higher when the Savatar woman lunged toward him as if to give chase.

  Halani reached her mother’s side in time to overhear her praise the woman.

  Asil’s cheeks were red, and her eyes danced, as if preventing an impromptu raid on their stall had been great fun. “You’re very strong,” she said, admiration in her voice.

  The Savatar inclined her head and returned a similar compliment in heavily accented Common tongue. “And you’re very fast.”

  Halani skirted around the Savatar barricade to straighten the table and move some of the items most in danger of being snatched to a more inaccessible spot.

  “Oh, Halani, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Gilene no longer stared into her husband’s face as if seeing a vision. She tried to help Halani move the trade items to a safer spot. Halani shooed her away.

  “Stop fretting.” She nodded toward Valdan. “I think you have a good excuse for the distraction. Besides, I left you here to man the stall alone. Cutpurses always look for lone sellers in the markets.”

  “I’m to blame,” Valdan said behind her. “I’ll pay for the loss of anything taken, Halani.”

  She offered him a smile. “We’re very glad to see you alive and well. Gilene isn’t one to wear her feelings for all to see, but I know she pined for you and worried.”

  Even at second glance, his appearance still startled her. He had introduced himself to their caravan more than a year ago as a dye merchant attacked by raiders who had nearly killed him, injured his wife Gilene, and stolen their supplies and horse. When Hamod told Valdan he had the look of a steppe-man about him, Valdan said he was the child of a Kraelian woman and an Empire soldier of Nunari blood. At the time, his stories and explanations seemed believable, and neither he nor Gilene had given Hamod reason to think otherwise during their stay with the caravan.

  Looking at him now, thinner, haggard but still handsome, and garbed in the raiment of high rank among an entourage of Savatar who showed him obvious deference and Gilene surprising reverence, Halani was certain this man was no simple dye merchant.

  Asil jumped between them before he could reply. “Valdan, you’re not dead!” she crowed, so obviously delighted by the fact that Valdan and the rest of his companions laughed.

  He reached for one of her hands, giving it a squeeze. “No, Asil. I’m not dead, and as before, I owe you and your daughter a life debt.” His gaze traveled to Gilene, standing behind Asil, the look in his eyes so scorching, Halani sighed inwardly. No man had ever stared at her in such a way—as if everything and anything of value to him resided within her. His next words to Asil only confirmed her thoughts. “You’ve given back to me that which I treasure
above all else in the world.”

  The Savatar woman who’d thwarted the cutpurse spoke, this time in a language Halani didn’t understand, though she recognized a few Nunari words in the rapid speech and was sure she again heard the word “Azarion.”

  He replied in kind, heavy green gaze still on Gilene. He switched to Common tongue then. “You’ll come with me? With us? We’ve taken the grounds just west of the garrison ruins for our camp.”

  Gilene nodded, expression radiant. She turned to Halani. “Do you mind? I can stay until the market closes. I don’t wish to abandon you.”

  Halani laughed. “First, you don’t need my permission. I’m not your keeper. Second, if I were you and my exceptionally handsome husband, who I feared might be dead but who turned up alive and well, asked me to go with him to his camp, all you’d get from me is a wave and an assurance that you might, might see me the next morning.”

  “I knew there was a reason why I liked you the moment I met you, trader woman.” Valdan touched his forehead in a gesture of respect. “Is your uncle here?” Halani nodded. “Tell him he and all his kin are invited to sup with us tomorrow just after sunset. I have gifts to offer and an explanation to give. Look for the round black tents with flags at their peaks. That will be our encampment.”

  The invitation extended, he wasted no time in scooping Gilene into his arms and hugging her close before walking away from the stall. The Savatar reformed their redoubt into a pathway, each one bowing as he passed, some murmuring the words “ataman” and “agacin,” while others reached out tentative hands to touch Gilene as if they were supplicants in the presence of something sacred.

  Valdan halted and turned when Halani called to him. “Your name isn’t Valdan, is it?”

  Asil’s confused “It isn’t?” tail-ended her question. It had been Gilene who’d put the question in her mind. Gilene, whom Halani overheard also calling Valdan “Azarion,” and she doubted the word meant “husband” in Savatar.

  His answering smirk confirmed her suspicion even before he replied. “Tell Hamod he’s a guest of Azarion Ataman of Clan Kestrel.” He turned away with Gilene, who gave a short wave before they both disappeared ahead of the line of Savatar who fell in behind them.

  Halani didn’t have the luxury of watching them leave. Doing so would put her right back in the unfortunate position of fending off a new pack of cutpurses. She left the task to Asil, who stared at the retreating Savatars, a puzzled frown knitting her brow.

  “So his name is Valdan Azarion or Azarion Valdan?”

  Her daughter shrugged. “I don’t know, Mama. It sounds like we’ll know more tomorrow. Here, come help me redo the table. The gods only know how many customers we lost with all the commotion that just happened here. We’ll never hear the end of it from Uncle.”

  The two women spent the remainder of the afternoon putting the table and stall to rights and hawking their goods. Halani patiently answered Asil’s repeated questions regarding Gilene and Azarion.

  Talen, another of the free trader women from Hamod’s caravan, appeared at the stall just as the masses were beginning to thin and business had slowed to a trickle. Her puzzled gaze swept over the pair. “Where’s Gilene?”

  Halani blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes and arched her back to relieve the ache there. “Now, that’s a story to tell.” She removed her apron and passed it to Talen. “Can you man the stall with Mama until the market closes? I need to find Uncle and deliver a message, and I promised to drop off a bottle of that perfume made in Askartown to a rug merchant two lanes over.”

  Talen tied the apron to her waist, disgust pinching her features. “They know that stuff is nothing but mule piss boiled with rose petals, right?”

  “I told them. Twice. The merchant’s wife doesn’t care. He said she’d bathe in the stuff if she could afford enough of it.”

  “I swear, people will buy anything if you pour it in a fancy bottle and give it a fancy name.”

  “And I thank the gods for them,” Halani replied. “We eat another day.” She hugged Asil, who kissed her cheek in return. “Help Talen, Mama, and don’t wander off. I’ll see you back at camp.” She tucked the bottle of rose-scented mule urine into a small velvet bag she looped onto her wrist and set out for the rug merchant’s stall and then to find Hamod.

  She dreaded what other mischief he’d gotten up to since she left him with the strange claw. Her worry didn’t stem from a fear he’d been gulled into buying something worthless or counterfeit. That ivory was authentic, whatever it was. Possessed of a power with all the markers of earth magic, it both fascinated and troubled Halani.

  Navigating the numerous lanes created by the hundreds of stalls and tables presented less of a challenge once the crowds had thinned as the day wore down. Halani delivered the perfume to the delighted rug merchant’s wife and paused at a fruit seller’s stand to buy a bag of stone fruit, as richly purple as the cloth that covered the sorcerous ivory. She intended it for the caravan’s cook, Marata, who would work his own magic and turn the plums into a delectable tart or pudding.

  She paused at one more stall to admire a stack of leather-bound books, carefully turning the blank parchment sewn into the binding, imagining what mysterious things a scribe might write on the pristine surface. Halani set the journal down. Such goods weren’t for the likes of her. She could neither read nor write. Purchasing a journal made no sense.

  As the sun dipped below the horizon, merchants began closing down their stalls. Halani walked a few more of the market paths, noting which sold goods the caravan needed to resupply their stores, which goods could be resold at more distant markets for profit, and which held those small indulgences she and the other caravan women might want to purchase for themselves or their children.

  Except for the stalls selling ale and spirits, most of the market had closed by the time she abandoned her browsing and headed back to Hamod’s camp. A few people wished her a good evening as they passed. Others hurried by, pretending not to see her. Those wearing the official badges of Guild traders raked her with disdainful gazes. She was a free trader, not subject to Guild regulations and, thanks to the Savatar and Goban people, no longer barred from trading on the profitable Golden Serpent.

  Halani returned their contempt with a sunny smile, nimbly dodging the stream of saliva one Guild trader spat at her. She expected nothing different and didn’t dwell on it until a voice behind her made her freeze midstep.

  “Do you wish for him to apologize for his rudeness?” She pivoted to face the speaker, discovering a man taller than average height leading a sleepy-eyed horse by its reins. He tilted his head toward the trader striding away from them. “I can make him do so.”

  Her defender was handsome, though not in the way some might think of male beauty, like Gilene’s husband with his refined features. This man’s face was sharper, harsher, with a beakish nose and a thin-lipped mouth creased on either side by unforgiving lines. His eyes reminded her of the ink Galedrin scribes made from oak and walnut galls—a brown so rich and dark, it looked black in certain lights, with streamers of sunlight swirling in its depths. His attractiveness was more memorable than traditional. His clothing and accented Common reminded her of the two mercenary-traders Hamod had dealt with earlier in the day, though he dressed far better than they.

  The similarities alarmed her. Halani wasn’t a believer in coincidence, and while this market had drawn people from all parts of the Empire and territories outside its reach, she hadn’t seen many dressed like him or the trader pair. She had warned Hamod the engraved claw was sorcerous, and she didn’t think it too far-fetched that this man’s appearance in the Goban market wasn’t a matter of chance.

  He waited for her answer, unconcerned that the Guild trader had put a fair distance between them by now. To Halani’s mind, he wasn’t worth the trouble of chasing down just to extract an empty apology. Such a thing offered momentary satis
faction followed by days of petty retributions. She wanted no trouble from the Guild.

  She bowed briefly. “I thank you, but no. He means nothing to me; therefore, his opinion means nothing. Besides, an apology only has value when it’s sincerely given.”

  And she didn’t want to be in a stranger’s debt. He might mean well, a noble gesture toward someone he considered unjustly wronged. Or his offer might come with expectation of repayment, something Halani had no intention of giving.

  “A wise way to look at it,” he said and returned her bow. “Then I wish you well, madam, and bid you good evening.”

  He led the horse past her, and Halani stiffened, hearing in her spirit a hum of earth magic, purling like a wave toward the shoreline with a tune she’d never heard until now. As if he heard the same from her, he paused, turned, and stared at her for several moments, saying nothing.

  The nearby shout of a drunkard demanding a refill from one of the pub stalls snapped Halani out of her stupor. She retreated without returning the farewell, seeking a different way to the caravan camp, hoping the stranger wouldn’t follow her. He didn’t, though she felt the heavy weight of his gaze on her back long after the market stalls hid her from his view.

  Hamod. She had to warn Hamod, of what she couldn’t say. A man with a horse and the feel of sorcery about him? Garbed like the traders who so wanted to get rid of the engraved claw? Her uncle might scoff at her suspicions, but he might not. He didn’t always listen to her advice, but he trusted her instincts enough to take them into account. Halani picked up her pace until she jogged along the paths, urged to greater speed by the certainty that if Hamod had purchased the ivory, he’d brought trouble to their camp.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Spider of Empire perched on her throne, swathed in gauzy silks that did more to enhance her nudity than to cover it. Most of the colorful fabric spilled in a waterfall over her right shoulder, hiding the fact that she no longer possessed her right arm.