The Dragon Lord Read online

  “Aldric!” Goth’s voice was sharp and urgent, well aware of what might happen next. “Aldric, it’s all right. This is a friend.” Tense seconds passed before the younger man relaxed enough to move from his attack-ready posture, and even then it was only to retreat on stiff, poised legs beyond the reach of this potential opponent.

  “If he’s a friend, make him show his face.”

  The masked head shook from side to side, just once, unspeaking but clear. No.

  “He won’t do that at your request, Aldric-an,” the general said. “Or mine. This is Bruda. Prokrator Bruda, the other man your king commanded you to meet. En Hauthanalth Kagh’ Ernvakh. Call him Commander of the Guardians of Honour.” Everyone noticed Aldric’s gaze as it flicked from Bruda’s gleaming mask to the gleaming blade of his own tsepan. “Or call him Lord of the Honourable Guard. He’s Chief of our Secret Police.”

  “Secret Police.” There was a world of unvoiced insult in the way Aldric sneered the words. He returned the tsepan a finger’s length to its scabbard and hesitated, glancing again from the black dirk to Bruda’s cold steel face, then shrugged and slid the weapon home. “Now I understand.”

  “Perhaps you do.” Bruda seemed unruffled by the open hostility. “And perhaps you only think so.” Snapping his fingers, he pointed in a single sweeping gesture to the officers who sat at each side of the table, and ended it with an over-shoulder jerk of his palm towards the door. “By my command,” he said, “out.”

  To Aldric’s surprise they did so at once, without question or a word of protest at the Prokrator’s high-handed manner. That told him a thing or two more than he expected about the Secret Police. As he turned his head to watch them go, he caught his first glimpse of three men standing in the lee of the doorway, who by their appearance had nothing to do with the military conference and everything to do with Bruda. He recognised Garet, the officer-cadet who had been his gaoler aboard Teynaur, but had never seen the others until now. He would have remembered them both.

  One had a face that might have been crudely whittled from an oak stump with a hatchet, all harsh planes and angles. He was in armour, flashed with tau-kortagor’s rank bars like Garet’s and, alongside them, silver thunderbolts matching those which Bruda wore across the shoulders of his robe. The other stranger was strangest of all for he was a replica of the Prokrator himself, face hidden by a red-enamelled mask etched with patterns that seemed to mean more than simple decoration, and a scarlet overrobe stiffened by silver-worked embroidery. Aldric’s first impression was of some reptilian creature which only incidentally resembled a man, and it was an impression which refused to go away.

  “My chief lieutenant, Hautheisart Voord,” said Bruda in that resonant metallic voice of his, and Voord bowed with a courtier’s grace. “I think you know part of his action squad already. Tau-kortagor’n Tagen and Garet.”

  “We’ve met, yes, but not socially. And without formal introduction.” Aldric studied the officer-cadets, guessing their ostensible low rank was far from low at all, and a wintery smile crossed Goth’s hard features.

  “We’ll be talking a while yet, so refreshments would be in order. See about it, and bring Lord Aldric’s gear and equipment.”

  “All of it?” Despite the hollow echoes of the mask Voord’s voice was youthful. It was also petulant, the sound of any young man given instructions he didn’t care for.

  “All. Do it. Now.”

  Aldric suppressed a smile. Even with that unreadable metal face he had sensed from the start that Voord didn’t like him much. Whatever the reason, it wouldn’t cause any sleepless nights. As Goth’s guest he enjoyed a privileged position, and it was one he was fully prepared to use. Then his hearing plucked a familiar name from the background mutter of conversation, and without thinking he echoed it aloud.

  “Kathur?” Heads turned, and though he could see only one face of the three that mattered, all were probably alike in their quizzical expression. “Then I was right.”

  “Right about what?” Voord was the first to voice everyone’s question.

  “About the woman Kathur, in Tuenafen. So it wasn’t a coincidence when she and I…” He stopped, embarrassed, with his meaning clear enough.

  “Kagh’ Ernvakh regard coincidence as useful,” said Bruda, “but only when we create and control it. At all other times I dislike it intensely. Though it seems the woman in question—”

  “Went beyond her instructions,” finished Voord. “Well beyond. She was ordered to make contact with the Alban and keep him confined.” If his face had been visible it would have worn an unpleasant grin. “That she liked him enough to do a great deal more is amusing. At least it made me laugh.”

  “Kathur wouldn’t talk about any of what—” Aldric burst out, and was silenced by a wave of Voord’s hand. There was something wrong with that hand, something horribly wrong.

  “Kathur would,” the hautheisart said. “And did, in detail.”

  “Voord!” Goth had no need for the added emphasis of a flat-handed slap against the table; an Imperial Lord General raising his voice was emphatic enough. “I’ve had cause to warn Eldheisart Hasolt about insulting talk. Stop it.”

  “Yes, sir. At once, sir.” Voord came to languid attention, secure in his own power and what he represented, and paused long enough for insolence before he made his salute. “But these are facts related by one of my own agents. Sir.”

  “Whether they’re an agent’s facts or your own opinions, I advise you to suppress them. Three gold diamonds outrank one in silver, Hautheisart, so I can break you, and I will if you annoy me.” Goth stared in silence for a few seconds that seemed much longer. “Do we understand each other?”

  “Sir, yes sir!” There was nothing languid about the way Voord stood now, and he was likely sweating inside his mask. “But I must point out, sir, that this agent, this woman, thought enough of the prisoner—”

  “Guest, Voord, not prisoner. Guest.”

  “Thought enough of him to threaten me with a weapon later proved to be loaded and lethal.”

  “And were you disturbed by this threat, Voord? Did it frighten you?” Goth’s voice was silky.

  “Frighten? Not for a moment, sir!”

  “Then you were a fool. If you spoke to her as you’ve spoken to me, I’m surprised she didn’t mark you. Just to teach you manners.”

  “Lucky for her that she didn’t.”

  “But luckier for you.” Goth stroked his beard a moment and stared at Voord again without troubling to hide his dislike. It was perhaps as well that the chamber doors opened to admit several retainers. Most carried trays of food and drink, but others bore items Aldric thought he would never see again. They were his armour, left behind in Tuenafen, and his saddlebags and saddle with their suggestion that Lyard at least had been brought here as well. Best of all were Isileth Widowmaker and his taipan shortsword – his right hand flexed at sight of them – with his weapon-belt wrapped around their scabbards.

  Then he saw what was tucked like an afterthought through his helmet’s chinstraps: a cylinder of papers bound with tape and sealed with the crest, visible even at this distance, of the Imperial Fleet. Those papers had the look of a report, the sort a warship commander might make about irregular occurrences during his voyage.

  Voord – Voord, Voord, where else had he heard that name? – plucked the message-roll from its resting-place and snapped the seal away with his left hand. Aldric got his first good look at its crooked, maimed fingers and shivered. Something unpleasant had happened to the hautheisart, a mutilation that made his own scars insignificant. After only a moment scanning the sheets as they uncoiled from their tight roll Voord nodded as if they contained what he expected, glanced with his expressionless masked face towards Aldric, then laid them with a flourish on the table.

  “Will you take wine?” Aldric jumped a little; Bruda was at his shoulder again, moving with uncanny silence for such a large man. The sight and sound of this sinister figure playing the role of courteou
s host, and playing it well, chilled him with a recollection of where he was.

  “I… I’d, I would prefer something with more strength, I thank you,” he replied, cursing his jumpiness, cursing his shock-born stammer and taking refuge in formality. When he was offered smoke-scented Elthanek grainfire he didn’t pause for a second to wonder how it had passed through the various blockades between its source and his hand. Instead he put the glass to his mouth, feeling its rim clink against his teeth, and let the scorching liquid run down his throat to light a small, comforting furnace in the pit of his stomach.

  He took another swallow, and a third. With that a small metallic click matched the clink of the glass as Bruda removed his mask before helping himself to food. Voord did likewise, and there was a third and more final click from the door as Garet and his companion Tagen locked it to keep unauthorised eyes from the faces of the Empire’s Secret Police.

  Aldric’s eyes were just as unauthorised, but special dispensation had left him on this side of the door so he stared his fill. First at Voord, being closest and also most likely to resent the scrutiny. The hautheisart’s face was young enough to be remarkable above the insignia of his high rank, no more than a few years older than Aldric but thin, stretched and gaunt in a way that didn’t match his frame. It was hard to be certain, for the armour beneath his overrobe gave his body a bulk it might lack in the flesh.

  Voord’s hair was a washed-out blond so light as to be almost colourless, brushed straight back from a high, intelligent forehead. Hooded light-blue eyes returned Aldric’s gaze with a disdainful, well-played lack of interest. His whole attitude was one of studied indifference, and only his mouth was wrong. It should have been decadently full-lipped, but instead it was a thin, compressed slash between nose and chin that looked more like a flaw in an alabaster carving.

  Bruda, for all his seniority in rank, seemed more approachable, more likely to bridge the gap between acquaintance and friendship. The Prokrator was a man in his early forties though he moved like one fifteen years younger, and Aldric was disappointed at first. He had expected another angular jaw, high blades of cheekbones, icy grey eyes, something, anything, to make this man look like what he was.

  And then he realised Bruda was perfect for what he was.

  His height and build were average, and there was nothing else about him for a memory to hook on. His features were regular and symmetrical, no scar or blemish or any other distinguishing mark marred his skin, and even his sweeping moustache meant nothing; clean-shaven faces could wear false beards and real facial hair could be shaved. Eyes, nose and mouth were neither large nor small nor irregular. Bruda had no face of his own.

  Aldric took another mouthful of spirit, aware as he raised the glass that this and the ration red he had downed earlier were the only things in his stomach. There was nothing now that would better his situation, and only an armed assault on the three Drusalan officers could make it worse. All this courtesy and hospitality didn’t fool him for a moment. He could recognise the honeyed bait of a potential trap before he tasted it, so he might as well enjoy its flavour.

  The food smelled wonderful, but there wasn’t a single spoon or fork, never mind a knife, anywhere on the several trays, and not a single dish whose presentation needed them. Everything was for eating with the fingers. It was like his meals on Teynaur all over again, and despite the brief satisfaction when it put Eldheisart Hasolt in his place, Aldric’s notoriety was back to being a mere nuisance.

  There were pies, pasties and tarts full of meat, cheese, fish, onion and various imaginative combinations, all small enough to consume in one or two mouthfuls. There were neat pieces of lamb and beef, pork and chicken, mushrooms and onions, all with the browned edges and central hole that came of being grilled or roasted on a skewer, but never a length of sharp metal in sight. Instead, garnished with dried spiced fruit, sauces and fresh green herbs, they were arranged in neat heaps or artistic designs alongside stacks of delicate quills, ideal for transferring bite-sized morsels but no use as weapons.

  Aldric smiled as he considered how the Drusalans constantly overrated him, though the smile grew cold as he turned a quill over in his fingers. Whittled in a different way it could become a pen. Pointed as it was now and in the right hands – hands like his – this dainty, supposed-harmless utensil could pierce through an eye to the brain behind, or punch a neck artery open enough to drain a man dry so fast it was shocking. Perhaps he wasn’t being overrated after all, but he decided against mentioning that to Goth or Bruda. They had already returned his tsepan and, if he behaved well enough, the rest of his Three Blades might soon keep it company. But not if he spoiled their appetite or temper with needless information…

  He studied the discarded masks, metal screens that were the public visage of Kagh’ Ernvakh, then lifted the nearest – Bruda’s – for closer inspection and looked up from his own reflected face to meet the Prokrator’s curious gaze.

  “Why?” Aldric asked.

  “The masks? Status and a mark of rank. Secrecy and somewhere to hide.” Even Bruda’s voice, and he was speaking Alban now, had no accent. Not the underlying throatiness and sibilance of one whose first tongue was Drusalan, not the nasal purr of the Jouvaine, not even any of the Albans’ own regional colourations. The words emerged with perfect clarity but their source remained untraceable. Aldric set down the mask and saw how even the lamplight seemed to shudder from its polished curves and angles. Or maybe that was just the slight movement created by his touch.

  “Yes. I see. All too well.”

  “Bruda?” General Goth spoke from the head of the table, where he held a sheet of paper at arm’s length as if wishing he could hold it further still. “Bruda, read this if you would. The rest of you – Voord, Tagen, Garet – be seated. We should begin the business which brought us here.”

  “Myself included, Goth-eir?” asked Aldric after another thoughtful stare at the steel mirror of the mask.

  “Especially yourself. This concerns you, both as a man and as an agent of your king.”

  “Of course.” If there was a faint edge to his voice, it wasn’t directed at the general. “Have I a choice of whether to accept or refuse?” Even as he asked, Aldric heard Bruda’s soft, inhaled oath as the Prokrator read what a certain Imperial ship-commander had to say about a certain passenger aboard his vessel, and that inhalation told him what the answer would be. Had to be. And he was right. Out of the three who might have given a reply, it was Goth who voiced it.

  “I regret not, Aldric-an.” There seemed to be little regret in the man’s tone.

  “Then I’d as soon not hear your plan.”

  “You misunderstand, hlensyarl,” said Voord unpleasantly. “What the Lord General means is that you have no choice in anything.”

  “We’ll see. Afterwards. But for now,” he turned his back on the hautheisart to give the senior officers a courteous little bow, “sirs, whenever you’re ready to begin, I’m ready to listen.”

  “Our Emperor,” said Goth, “had a sister, Princess Marhala, who has spent the past six weeks under lock and key in the Red Tower.”

  “A princess,” echoed Aldric in an odd, small voice, “imprisoned in a tower. You did say ‘tower’?”

  “I did. The Red Tower at Egisburg.” Goth was watching Aldric, so missed Bruda tilting back in his chair with his mouth shaded by one hand. Aldric guessed their thoughts were running in parallel. His response tickled Bruda hugely, but was something the sober, serious general might not like.

  “It was her misfortune,” Prokrator Bruda explained, once his twitching mouth was under control, “to be on the wrong side of what’s really a truce line – though nobody calls it that –

  when yet another damned interminable debate broke down. They’re peace talks, but nobody calls them that either. Anyway. Another of those wrangles fell apart, the borders closed, Marhala and her people were taken into custody on their way to the frontier, and they’ve been in the Red Tower ever since.” Bruda pushed pa
pers to and fro on the table, then flicked a glance at Aldric from under his lowered brows. “I don’t know how Etzel’s cavalry patrol came to be where they were at so opportune a moment. But I do know the breakdown of the conference was engineered. I was there, I saw it happen. Someone, somewhere, is playing a double game and when I learn who…”

  “That does little to help the princess just now,” Goth said. “Her continued wellbeing is the Emperor’s responsibility. And ours.”

  “What was the threat?” Aldric asked. There had to be a threat, there was always a threat.

  “This.” Goth set a small box on the table, fine-meshed gold filigree lined with crimson satin where a lady might store her choicest gems. “It contained the letter informing us of Princess Marhala’s abduction.”

  “And how many other boxes has Grand Warlord Etzel reserved for the princess if his letter goes unheeded?”

  “Enough,” said Bruda, all his humour quite evaporated. “And he isn’t bluffing. In all the years of the Sherban dynasty, no Grand Warlord has made an idle threat.”

  “I can imagine,” said Aldric. There was no point in making ferocious noises if the violence they promised wasn’t carried out.

  “For the sake of political balance a rescue is vital,” Goth was ticking points off on his fingers, “and equally vital that Imperial forces should have no connection with anything so irregular.”

  Aldric looked at the general and muted a humourless chuckle. Neither side wanted armed conflict, but if it came each hoped the other would oblige by starting it. It was odd that outright war was preferable to subterfuge, but then subterfuge had brought him here to represent Alban support in a way no words ever could, and he hadn’t enjoyed that very much. There was less ambiguity about weapons.

  “So then, my lord Aldric-arluth Talvalin,” Goth gave him his title for the first time, in the same way that flattery precedes wheedling, “what do you think of our predicament?” There was silence up and down the table as heads turned to stare at Aldric, waiting expectantly for his reply. He did as Prokrator Bruda had expected he might, and laughed.