Dragon Hunters Read online

  “Remind me.” In truth, the politics of the Sabian League always made Karmel’s eyes glaze over.

  Caval’s smile was knowing. “Since coming to power, Imerle has been steadily increasing the Sabian cities’ tribute—this year alone she raised it by two hundred and fifty imperial talents—and Piput has finally had the temerity to object. With the Dragon Gate barring the dragons from the Sabian Sea, and the storms from the Broken Lands having abated of late, the Storm Council’s only function, as Piput sees it, is to protect Sabian shipping from piracy.” He spread his hands. “And since piracy is on the increase, Piput has been left wondering whether Imerle is really earning her keep.”

  The sun was bright in Karmel’s eyes through the transparent wall, yet she could not feel its heat, nor detect the touch of the wind that rustled the branches of the ketar trees a short distance away. “So?”

  “So he has been finding support among the leaders of the other Sabian cities. Muted support, it must be said, for while those leaders are keen to reduce their tribute, they are more anxious still not to draw the emira’s eye.”

  Karmel could see where this was heading. “Imerle wants Piput taken down a peg or two.”

  Caval nodded. “She believes—rightly, I suspect—that if Dian’s governor were to lose face with his allies, his cause would flounder.”

  The priestess was silent, considering. Then it came to her. “Dragon Day,” she said.

  “Very good. On Dragon Day the heads of every city in the Sabian League will converge on Dian and Natilly for the Dragon Hunt. If the Dragon Gate should fail to rise, thus depriving those leaders of their day of sport…”

  Karmel’s voice betrayed her doubt. “Fail to rise? You are the historian, I know, but as I recall, the gate hasn’t failed to rise in more than three hundred years.”

  “Three hundred and eighty-six, to be precise. Oh, there have been plenty who wanted to stop it in that time. The Rubyholters tried to smuggle some men into the citadel a few years back. But tricking your way past the guards is going to be harder than just putting on a hat and claiming your name has been missed off the guest list.”

  “And that’s where I come in?”

  “Correct.” Caval looked down at the floor mosaic of the Dragon Gate. “For the gate to rise, the hoisting mechanisms in both Dian and Natilly must be operated simultaneously. Which means it just takes one of those mechanisms to malfunction and Dragon Day will be over before it has started.”

  “As easy as that?”

  “Ah, I never said it would be easy. In two days’ time the citadel will be crawling with soldiers, and even if you make it past the outer wall you still have to get to the fortress’s control room where the hoisting mechanism is located. Then there is the small matter of escaping afterward through a citadel up in arms. Of course, if you think I should find someone else…”

  Karmel ran a hand through her short-cropped hair. Her brother was trying to play on her pride, but he needn’t have bothered. For months she’d been waiting for a chance such as this to prove herself, and she would have accepted the mission whatever the dangers. What was the point of all her training, after all, if she did nothing with it? It felt sometimes as if Caval was trying to protect her, but at other times it felt like he was holding her back. A voice inside her urged caution, though. Caval had never before trusted her with an assignment of note, yet now he would trust her with this? Breaking into the Dianese citadel? On Dragon Day? She shifted in her seat. Even for a Chameleon it sounded … ambitious. “What happens if I get caught?”

  “I wouldn’t advise that.”

  “I mean, aren’t you taking a risk in sending your sister? If I should be seen, the finger of suspicion will point at you.”

  “Whether it’s you or another Chameleon, the suspicion will be the same.”

  “Then why did you choose me?” Karmel said, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it from him.

  The high priest did not respond.

  Karmel gave him an impish look. “It’s all right, Caval—you can say it. I’m good. I may even be better than you. Of course we’ll never know for sure if you keep refusing to spar with me.”

  Her brother’s voice was bitter. “And that’s the height of your ambition? To outdo me?”

  Not that it mattered, obviously. However many times she challenged Caval, he would always find an excuse not to face her. It wouldn’t do, after all, for a high priest to be beaten by one of his juniors. More to the point, it wouldn’t do for a brother to be beaten by his little sister. “What about the emira? What’s in it for her?”

  “I’ve already told you. Piput gets the wind taken out of his sails—”

  “Oh, come on, you can do better than that. Imerle’s time as emira is up at the end of this year, meaning Piput will soon become her successor’s problem. Why should she care about what tribute Dian pays when she won’t be there to receive it?”

  “Won’t she?”

  At first Karmel thought Caval was mocking her, but when his gaze held steady on hers, she realized she’d read him wrong. She leaned back in her chair. So Imerle was planning a coup, was she? For weeks the city had been alive with rumors of a plot. But then there were always rumors when an emir or emira’s tenure came to an end, and none of those rumors had ever come to anything before. With good reason, too: however powerful the head of the Storm Council might be, there were five other Storm Lords to oppose them. The fact Imerle intended to risk those odds was surprising enough … but more surprising still was the fact she had apparently confided her plans in Caval. It was less than a year, after all, since her brother had first approached the woman to offer his services.

  Caval made to rise, but Karmel remained seated. “Dragon Day is, what, three days away? If I’m supposed to infiltrate the Dianese citadel in that time, we’re cutting things a little fine.”

  “Ah, that’s why you’re leaving tonight.”

  “Who else is coming?”

  The high priest stared at her.

  Karmel grinned. “I may be good, Caval, but even I need someone to carry my bags.”

  “His name is Veran.”

  “A Chameleon?”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself. You’ll be meeting him soon enough.” The high priest’s gap-toothed smile was back, but there was no more humor in it this time than there had been the last. “I’m sure he’ll be only too happy to answer your questions.”

  CHAPTER 2

  SEPTIA KEMPIS Parr knew he was in trouble the moment he saw the quina’s clerk, Pompit, smile at him.

  Only one person in the world smiled like that. Pompit’s top lip curled back as if he were offering his upper teeth for inspection, giving his face an expression of such smugness the septia wanted to slap it with a closed first. Right now, though, he had more important things on his mind, like what in the Nine Hells he was doing here. Quina Hilaire Desa’s messenger had said she wanted to see him, but not why.

  Kempis was damned if he was going to ask Pompit. Instead he crossed to a chair beside the left-hand wall and sat down. To Pompit’s right was the door to Hilaire’s office, and from behind it Kempis heard voices—a woman’s and a man’s. The quina’s was simple enough to identify, but the man’s was not one the septia recognized. Then Hilaire’s laughter rang out, and Kempis’s face fell. The only jokes the quina laughed at were those of her superiors. A coincidence that Kempis had been summoned when Hilaire’s mysterious visitor was here? Not if Pompit’s smile was anything to go by.

  The septia thought back over the things he’d done recently that might have caught the eye of someone in high places. There was that business this morning with the merchant who’d tried to clear a path through the crowds in Hare Lane with his riding whip, but even if the man had identified Kempis as the one who’d unfastened his saddle’s girth-strap, there was no way he could have tracked him down so swiftly. Then there was the matter of the debts Kempis had racked up while inves
tigating the bloodbath at Lappin’s gambling den. The septia was already down a month’s wages, but surely he had too much dirt on Lappin for the den’s owner to risk tattling on him.

  There was another possibility, of course. Maybe someone had finally tracked down Corrick’s killer and was here to share the good news. It was more than six months since Kempis’s partner had taken a crossbow bolt through the neck and spent his last heartbeats coughing blood onto the septia’s boots. New boots they’d been, as well. The two Watchmen had been patrolling Olaire’s Wharf District when they’d seen three hooded men creeping along Ravens Alley. One of the strangers was plainly a blueblood, because he wore so much gold on his fingers Kempis was surprised his knuckles didn’t drag on the ground. The other figures must have been the man’s bodyguards—Storm Guards, no less, judging by the fish-scale armor they’d been wearing. Corrick had insisted on following them, and Kempis had reluctantly tagged along. They’d trailed the strangers to the flooded streets of the Shallows where the blueblood and his minders had boarded a boat.

  Kempis hadn’t seen the crossbowmen who’d fired at Corrick and at him. He should have known the bastards were there, though, for how many bluebloods went strolling through the Wharf District with just two bodyguards for company? Kempis had been hit in the shoulder. He’d escaped by taking refuge in one of the partly submerged houses on Flask Street. When he didn’t reappear with the rising tide, the crossbowmen must have thought he’d drowned inside. The septia had certainly felt on the threshold of Shroud’s Gate next morning when he crawled bloody and shivering from the water.

  It was several weeks before Kempis had recovered from his ordeal. The wound to his side had healed quickly enough, but the same could not be said of the mental scars left by his first dip in the sea since a kris shark had nibbled on his thigh twenty years ago. Because the blueblood’s minder had been a Storm Guard, the emira had insisted on her personal soldiers investigating the incident. Needless to say they’d never caught Corrick’s killer, and by the time Kempis was on his feet again the trail had gone cold. Not that the septia was in any hurry to avenge his partner. The fool had got what was coming to him for sticking his nose where it wasn’t wanted. Nothing good ever came of mixing with the bluebloods.

  Which made the presence next door of one of their kind all the more troubling.

  Another peal of Hilaire’s laughter sounded. It crossed Kempis’s mind to listen at the door in case he could hear what was being said, but one glance at Pompit put an end to the idea. The clerk was still grinning. Evidently he’d been warned a blueblood would be visiting, because his uniform looked as pristine as if it had been sewn this morning. He sat behind a desk made from a wood as dark as Kempis’s skin. He must have been sitting on a cushion, for his feet dangled half a handspan above the floor.

  Kempis pushed himself to his feet.

  Pompit said, “A bit restless, are we, Septia?”

  “Just stretching my legs.”

  On the clerk’s desk were piles of papers arranged with geometric precision, all written in an orderly hand any scribe would be proud of. The piece of parchment on top of the nearest pile was a requisition order for swords, helmets, and breastplates. The paper next to it concerned the sighting of a ship flying no flag off the western shore of the island. When Kempis lifted the parchment for a closer look, Pompit snatched it from him, then began rubbing at a smudged thumbprint the septia had left in one corner. In a vase to the clerk’s right stood a bunch of dewflowers, their scent doubtless intended to mask the stink of excrement coming from the open window to Kempis’s left. The whole city reeked like a blocked latrine today. On the septia’s walk through the Wharf District the stench had been strong enough to conceal even the smell of fish from the market in Crofters Lane.

  Through the window Kempis heard a clash of wooden swords in the Watchstation’s exercise yard. Then above that …

  Footfalls from the quina’s office.

  Kempis spun round just as the door opened. A cloud of perfume engulfed him. Through watering eyes he saw Hilaire standing in the doorway. She had found a medal from somewhere and pinned it to her breast. Her long brown hair was held up by jeweled pins. On her face was a smile left over from her discussion with her guest—a smile that faded as she took in Kempis’s unkempt hair and crumpled uniform. Her mouth opened and closed, and he thought that she would slam the door in his face. Instead she gestured him into her office with a look that warned him to be a good boy.

  Kempis glanced past her.

  And inwardly groaned.

  Standing in front of Hilaire’s desk was a middle-aged man with gray eyes, a gray mustache, and a few strands of gray hair carefully arranged across his skull in an effort to conceal his baldness. Dutia Elemy Meddes. The head of the Storm Lords’ forces in Olaire stood rigidly at attention as if Kempis were his superior come to inspect him. Kempis’s hackles rose. True, Gray-Face had a reputation for fairness, but after that business with Corrick in the Shallows the septia couldn’t look at a Storm Guard without wondering if he owed him a crossbow bolt in the shoulder.

  Hilaire closed the door behind Kempis and strode to her desk. The windows along the wall behind were closed against the city’s stink, and the air in the room was as stuffy as the dutia.

  “Sir,” Hilaire said to Elemy, her voice unrecognizable from the harsh Olairian drawl Kempis was used to. “Allow me to introduce Septia Kempis Parr. Kempis, this is Dutia Elemy Meddes.”

  Kempis hesitated. Was he supposed to bow or salute or just shake the man’s gray hand? In the end he gave him a nod. “Good of you to deliver the news yourself, sir.”

  Gray-Face cast a critical eye over the septia. “News?”

  “About Corrick. It’s been months since he died, right? Emira’s personal guard can’t have drawn a complete blank in that time.”

  Hilaire came to Elemy’s rescue. “Corrick was Kempis’s former partner, sir. The one I was telling you about.”

  Gray-Face said, “Ah, yes, an unfortunate business. Alas, it seems the emira’s soldiers have made no progress. The case has been closed.”

  Was it possible to close something that had never been opened? Kempis was about to ask when Hilaire hurriedly said, “Kempis has a new partner now, isn’t that so, Septia?”

  Kempis nodded. “Sniffer, we call her,” he said to Elemy.

  “Why, may I ask?”

  “’Cause that’s her name.”

  Hilaire leapt into the breach once more. “One of the Untarians, sir. Even for her kind she has a remarkable ability to follow a trail through water. If a fugitive so much as steps in a puddle, Sniffer can track his footsteps across the length and breadth of the city.”

  Kempis’s eyes narrowed. The only reason Hilaire had to talk up his team was because there was work in the offing. He was starting to feel like he was being interviewed for a job he didn’t want. “Of course, ain’t no guarantee Sniffer will be around much longer,” he said. “Just a few days now and her sentence ends.”

  Elemy raised an eyebrow. “Sentence?”

  “Sniffer’s one of our probationers. Didn’t the quina tell you? It were either serve her time behind bars or in the Watch. If you ask me, she made the wrong choice.”

  Gray-Face looked at Hilaire. “What did she do?”

  “She, ah … accosted the son of one of the magisters.”

  “Grand Magister Dewar, weren’t it?” Kempis said. His gaze shifted to Elemy’s poorly concealed bald pate. “Not wanting to split hairs, or anything.”

  Hilaire bailed manfully. “A little youthful exuberance—”

  “Tell that to the cutter who stitched the poor sod up afterward. Handy with her knives, is Sniffer. Sliced the lad so bad that when the cutter were finished with him he looked like one of them Alosian patchwork dolls.” An exaggeration, obviously. As Sniffer had explained it to Kempis, the boy’s only injury had been self-inflicted when he attempted to draw his sword. The septia’s gaze returned to Elemy’s scalp. “Escaped with his life by a h
airbreadth, you might say.”

  The dutia looked across at Hilaire, but for once she had no inspiration to offer. “Well,” he began, then ran out of things to say. “Yes, well,” he tried again. “At least this Sniffer should be well-acquainted with the workings of the criminal mind, eh, Quina?”

  Hilaire’s burst of laughter had a note of desperation in it.

  Elemy sank into one of the chairs in front of the quina’s desk, and Hilaire also sat. When Kempis made to do likewise, she shot him a look that froze him solid.

  Gray-Face appeared not to notice. “What of yourself, Septia? I understand you have something of a talent too for hunting down lawbreakers.”

  It was Hilaire who answered. “Indeed so, sir. Kempis is able to sniff out a mage anywhere in the city.”

  “Not mages, magic,” Kempis said. Then, to Elemy, “Sorcery leaves ripples I can sense if I get to the source of the power quick enough.”

  “Quickly? How quickly?”

  “Depends on how strong the magic is.”

  A needlefly landed on the dutia’s gleaming skull, and he waved a hand at it. “And if you detect a mage’s signature, you will recognize it if you encounter it again?”

  “I know shit when I smell it,” Kempis said, then as an afterthought added, “Sir.”

  “You are not a magician yourself, though. Is that correct?”

  “Hells, no. Ain’t no one ever taught me this stuff. When I sense sorcery, it’s instinctive. A feeling like”—Kempis pretended to consider, his eyes flickering once more to Elemy’s bald pate—“like hairs standing up on the back of my neck.”

  Gray-Face’s furrowed brow suggested the penny had finally dropped.

  Hilaire cleared her throat. “You are familiar with Bedel, sir? The madman who terrorized the city last year?”

  “I know the name,” Elemy said, tearing his gaze from Kempis.

  “Bedel was a lowborn trader in sun pearls who had an ax to grind with guild master Thetharo. Thetharo refused to pay Bedel for a shipment of pearls he claimed never to have received. Bedel’s efforts to extract money from Thetharo in the courts proved unsuccessful—”