eggs will stay viable until something destroys them, or triggers their hatching.”
“What triggers them?”
“No one knows.”
“But you believe they’re there.”
“I know they are, Mr. LaCrosse.”
I pulled my bottle from my desk, took out the cork with my teeth and drank a long swallow. It tasted better than any drink I’d ever taken. I did not offer any to Lesperitt. “And just how,” I asked wearily, “do you know? Have you seen them?”
“Yes,” he answered simply. “Laura found them long ago, still beside the skeleton of their mother, Lumina, during a religious pilgrimage. We were waiting for the right time to bring them into the open again, so that they might be tended and worshipped. But when that ass Tempcott showed up, waving his skull and making outrageous claims, Laura believed his lies, believed he was sent by Solarian. But she was smart enough not to give away our secret. Then Marantz got involved, and… my girl died.”
I looked at the bottle, but still didn’t offer it to him. I was a hard-ass, after all.
“When Laura realized what she’d gotten into, it was too late. I discovered Marantz sent her to Neceda ahead of Tempcott, so I came here as well. She escaped from the men trying to force her to reveal the location, and came to me. I was all she had.”
He paused, and his eyes grew shiny. “She was such a pretty little thing, and to see what those awful men had done to her…”
Well, my ass wasn’t that hard. I passed him the bottle.
He continued, “We went to the cave, found the eggs and hid them somewhere else. That’s how this happened.” He held up the gloves. “The eggs were still hot enough to scald, which we didn’t know until it was too late. Do you know dragon burns never heal?”
He took one glove off to show me his hand. It looked like he’d stuck his palm flat against a cooking stove sometime within the last day. Laura’s hands had looked the same. Worse, the faint odor of rotted, overcooked meat filled the room and threatened to gag me. “You can’t imagine how much this hurts. These gloves are the only way I can even function, but they do nothing for the pain. But the eggs were too important to risk falling into Tempcott’s hands. After we moved them, we split up and planned to meet back here in Neceda. But she never arrived until…” He looked down and sighed with the weight of the truly lost.
There was no denying the reality of his injuries, and his story held together and explained a lot. Well, except for the part about real dragon eggs. “Okay, so why tell me all this now?”
He wiped his eyes on the backs of the mittens and looked up at me. “Because, Mr. LaCrosse, I had this same conversation with Liz, and she went to find the eggs for herself. And she hasn’t come back.”
TWENTY-THREE
I dragged the little gnome across town to the inn where Argoset and his pet Gargantua kept their rooms. I was probably too rough about it, and at least one person on the street roused himself from his post-hanging merriment to complain that I shouldn’t treat an old man that way. I didn’t care.
Before this, in my office, Lesperitt provided the rest of his story. When Liz failed to return by yesterday evening, he’d gone to Gary Bunson first thing this morning to report her missing. Gary had brushed him off before he could mention Liz’s name, he was so wrapped up in the upcoming hanging. That rang true, all right; anything that required Gary to actually do his job, especially amid the chaos of a public execution, would’ve sent him skittering under the nearest table like the cockroach he was. Then Lesperitt approached Argoset, who listened politely and promised to look into it. Since Argoset had not mentioned this to me at all in Gary’s office, either he forgot or he knew more than I first thought he did. He didn’t strike me as the forgetful type, so it was time to pile everyone in one place and start kicking until someone talked.
Just before we left my office I asked Lesperitt one last question, the one I really needed answered. “Why? Why would Liz even care about made-up dragons, after all this time?”
He looked at me with an almost infinite weariness. The back-lighting through the window gave him an infuriatingly serene, holy demeanor, and he spoke with the patience of a priest addressing an acolyte. “Have you ever believed in anything, Mr. LaCrosse? Especially when you were young, not yet aware of how ugly the world can be? We do anything to hold on to that spark that says the world is a magical place where gods can be found and touched. Even as old, cynical adults, that hope never fully goes away. That’s why she went. For the chance, however small, to touch a god she had once believed in.”
I did know a thing or two about belief, and about gods that could be touched. But I’d never shared that story with anyone, even Liz. I tried not to dwell on the fact that now I might never have the chance. Instead I said, “Even if dragons once existed, even if they existed now, they’d just be animals. Big lizards or snakes or something. Not gods.”
He smiled at me in what he probably meant to be a compassionate and sad way. It came out patronizing, and restoked the fury he’d momentarily doused with his feel-good mumbo jumbo. I grabbed him by the back of his collar, shoved him ahead of me toward the door and growled, “Yeah, well, keep your gods to yourself, pal. You better hope nothing happens to Liz, or you might be seeing your daughter sooner than you think.” It was a cruel thing to say, but I was in a cruel mood.
A short walk later we went through the lobby of the Saraden’s Sword, the only inn ritzy enough for an envoy from Sevlow. Its small tavern was usually reserved for guests only, but a hanging was a special occasion, and the revelers would have simply broken in had they not been freely welcomed.
Slats Pickering, the inn’s owner, was halfheartedly trying to keep the drunks under control. He looked up, smiled and said, “Hey, Eddie, what are you-” But something in my face made him abruptly fall silent.
“What room is that guy from the capital in?” I demanded. I must’ve radiated bad humor, because the patrons gave me plenty of room.
“Seven. The suite. Top of the stairs to the right. He’s in there right now.”
“And that big guy with him?”
“Eight, right next door.”
“The rooms connect?”
“No.”
“Seen the big guy today?”
“No. He left this morning and hasn’t come back.”
I nodded curtly. Some days it was good to be intimidating. I slapped a coin on the counter. “Send someone to get Gary Bunson, and when he gets here send him up to that room.”
Pickering nodded. I pushed Lesperitt up the stairs to the indicated door. It was the only room in the place that had a separate sitting room and bedroom, the closest thing to classy accommodations to be found in Neceda. I put my ear to the wood and heard nothing over the noise from downstairs. I started to knock, but decided I’d been polite enough under the circumstances. I drew back and, despite the protest in my hip, kicked the door open.
Argoset, shirtless, looked up sharply from the basin where he was washing his hands. The sudden movement splashed water onto the girl seated in one of the padded chairs. She gasped, “Hey!” and covered her undergarments, all she currently wore, with her hands. Through the bedroom door behind them, the rumpled sheets confirmed what their state of undress implied.
“Is there a reason for this intrusion?” Argoset said, in a voice that could probably reduce cadets and stable pages to tears.
It was less successful on me. I slammed the door behind me and shoved Lesperitt toward one of the other chairs. “Sit down,” I said, and he obeyed. I stepped challengingly close to Argoset. “This guy told you my girlfriend disappeared. You did nothing about it, and you didn’t mention it to me when I saw you this morning. I’m going to find out why.”
I turned to the girl in the chair. I’d recognized her at once. “For a girl so worried about her cherry, you gave it up quick enough, didn’t you, Nicky? Or do you prefer ‘Your Highness’?”
Nicky’s mouth opened to protest, but she thought better of it. Instead she nodded and said calmly, “A worldly
