He trusted Miri, who was always honest-brutally so. Their relationship had been complicated over the years. Once he had thought he was in love with her and once she had thought she was in love with him. If these periods had coincided, the relationship might have worked. As it was, there had been confusion, hurt feelings, tears, and recriminations. Then, one night, as they lay in bed talking, they came to the realization they were friends.
“So much more comfortable than being lovers, my dear,” Miri told him. That night, she ended the affair.
“I want you to meet my sister,” she said. “And I only invite friends to my home. Never my lovers.”
Home was the sisters’ houseboat, the Cloud Hopper.
Stephano might have smiled at this notion of Miri’s that only those she considered friends were allowed to visit, but when he met Gythe, he realized that Miri had honored him with a special trust, one he would forever cherish.
Gythe was twenty-one-fourteen years younger than her sister. But she seemed more like a child of fourteen. She was beautiful, with hazel eyes and hair the color of champagne. Where Miri’s eyes glinted with green flashes of laughter and merriment and her legendary temper, Gythe’s eyes were wandering, searching, shadowed. She never spoke a word. She was not mute, for though she would not talk, she could sing, accompanying herself on the harp.
“Gythe’s never been quite right since ‘Then,’ ” Miri would always say of her sister. Miri never told Stephano what happened “Then…” When he once hinted that he would like to know, Miri said brusquely, “No good will come of talking of it.” By the glint in her green eyes, he knew to let it drop.
Stephano guessed “Then” had something to do with the deaths of their parents and the fact that the two girls were on their own, but beyond that, nothing more.
He was thinking all this, remembering. Miri’s laughter brought him back to the kitchen.
“If we’re a family, we’re the bloodiest, messed-up family there ever was, my dear,” Miri told him.
“You’re right there,” said Stephano.
When the dishes were done and Miri had returned from dumping the water out of the wash bin, Dag placed his large hands on the table and levered himself slowly to his feet. The table, which was made out of a butcher’s block and was heavy and solid, groaned a bit beneath the big man’s weight. Dag Thorgrimson was six-foot-two, a Guundaran mercenary, and he was also part of the “bloodiest, messed-up” family. He and Stephano had met on opposing sides of a battle eight years ago-a battle Stephano had always considered both sides lost.
“We should be starting for home, girls,” said Dag in his deep, grave voice.
He was invariably grave, serious, and earnest; he rarely smiled. He dressed in plain black clothing. His hair was cut short in the military style, and he had the straight and upright bearing of the soldier he had been for many years. He would speak of his past only to say proudly that he had served in the army since he was eight years old, his sergeant father having made his son a drummer. Dag had fought in his first battle at the age of twelve.
Dag and Stephano would often talk of battles in which Stephano had fought. Dag would share his opinion on the strategy or the tactics involved, but he had only once spoken of his own experience, and that had been when Stephano had wanted to hire him to help with a small job.
Dag told Stephano his story, saying that it was only right “the captain” should know what had happened before Stephano put his trust in him. Dag told a horror tale of flame and blood, men dying all around him, men dying because he had ordered them to their deaths. Dag had been the sole survivor. Stephano had listened and, at the end of the recitation, which Dag had made in a low voice, never lifting his head, Stephano had taken the man’s hand and shaken it and said in a husky voice that he would be honored to serve with him.
Dag had looked up, perplexed. “Perhaps you didn’t understand me, Captain. I ordered those men to die!”
“I understand better than you do, seemingly,” Stephano had answered. “And don’t call me ‘captain.’ We’re neither of us in the service of any king. Neither of us will ever order any man into any king’s battle again. Let Their Majesties look after themselves.”
Miri took down her cloak from the hook on the wall. Gythe picked up the cat.
“If you will settle Doctor Ellington, child,” said Dag, turning his back to Gythe, who, with great care, placed the cat on Dag’s shoulder.
Doctor Ellington dug his claws into the quilted shoulder padding Dag had added to his coat and purred loudly. Wherever Dag went, the Doctor went with him, riding proudly on the man’s shoulder, boldly challenging the world with golden eyes, his striped tail waving like a flag.
“I’ll walk with you,” said Stephano, taking up his hat.
Miri was fussily wrapping a cloak around Gythe’s slender shoulders, Dag was putting on his hat, and Stephano was starting to open the door when Rodrigo, who had been out of the room, visiting the chamber pot, returned. He saw them preparing to leave and came to an abrupt stop.
“Where do you all think you are going?”
“Home,” said Miri, adding teasingly, “to revel in our riches.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” said Rodrigo severely. He pulled out a chair and pointed to it. “We are all of us going to stay here until we figure out how to solve our deplorable financial insolvency.”
The four looked at each other, sighed, and came trailing back. Stephano took off his hat and tossed it onto a marble bust of His Majesty, King Alaric, which graced a table. The marble bust had been a gift from a grateful nation to Lord Captain Stephano de Guichen of the Dragon Brigade for meritorious action. Rodrigo had once asked Stephano why he kept the bust. Stephano had replied that on days when he woke feeling a brotherhood with all the world, the sight of the king’s face reminded him that there was still one man on this world he hated.
Dag removed his own hat and sat with it in his lap. Miri and Gythe took off their cloaks and sat down at the table. They stared at each other blankly. The only sound was Doctor Ellington’s throaty purr. The cat perched on Dag’s shoulder, his eyes golden slits, kneading his claws into the padding.
“Come now,” said Rodrigo at last. “Someone must know somebody who is trying to smuggle jewels to his exiled family or wants to avoid paying the king’s tax on a shipment of brandy. You, Miri, have you talked to your Trundler uncle and myriad Trundler cousins? Do they have any jobs for us? Dag, what about your underworld connections?”
Dag’s face darkened. His brow came together. His hand, resting on his knee, clenched to a fist.
“Now, now, my friend,” said Rodrigo soothingly, “it’s no use pretending you did not once break legs for a living…”
Dag scowled. Stephano saw Rodrigo’s life flash before his eyes and he was about to intervene when the meeting was interrupted by the sound of wyvern wings and the clatter of a carriage coming to rest on the cobblestones outside the house. The wyverns’ raucous croaks were followed by the voice of the driver shouting at the beasts to settle.
Stephano and his friends all looked at one another. Judging by the sounds of the jingling harness, the scraping of claws on stone, and the wyverns hissing and snorting, the carriage had stopped right outside the front door. Someone arriving in a carriage-a large, airborne carriage-at this hour…
“I smell money,” said Rodrigo, his nose twitching.
There was a clatter and a scraping noise. The driver was lowering a step for the convenience of the carriage’s passenger. Then came the bang of the door knocker.
Stephano turned to Benoit, who was pretending to be asleep in his chair. The knock was repeated with a bit more force. Stephano cleared his throat.
Benoit blinked and opened his eyes, looked about blearily, and said, “Someone at the door, sir.”
“I know,” said Stephano.
He sat stubbornly in his chair.
Benoit sat in his. After a moment, the old man said wonderingly, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “Would you like me to answer that, sir?”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Stephano bitingly.
Groaning, Benoit rose to his feet and began to shuffle across the floor. “If I might suggest, sir, you and Master Rodrigo should remove yourselves to the sitting room. Unless you want your visitor to find you sitting in the kitchen. He might mistake you for the cook.”
“By God, he’s right,” said Rodrigo. “Stephano-sitting room! Run for it!”
The kitchen was on the ground floor at the rear of the two-story house. A back door opened out into a small patch of ground that was meant to be used as a kitchen garden, but which had been turned into an exercise yard.
