The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(80)

A quarter hour later he knocks on the wicket in Asper’s gates in the Crest. A house guard hands him off to a footman, who leads him into a treelined and torchlit courtyard. Livion’s entire house would fit into it. The courtyard surrounds a black-bottomed pool that reflects the house. The footman installs him in a corner with granite benches where he can watch a school of bronze orfe dart through second-story windows.

It would be a pleasant retreat but for the figures of emperor snakes worked discreetly into the tiles and torch holders surrounding the pool.

Asper flows in and greets him warmly. She says, “I spoke sharply to you this morning. I hope you understand: I had a long night.”

“I’m looking for Trist.”

“I haven’t seen her all day,” Asper says. “Maybe she’s at her father’s.”

“I was going to check there next,” he says and stands, a little wobbly. “If she were here, it’d mean she hadn’t left me. If she’s there—”

“Here. Sit,” Asper says. “This can’t have been an easy day for either of you.” She sits on the bench.

Livion doesn’t know what to make of this. He sits anyway. She gestures for her footman to leave.

“You’re not alone,” she says. “I believe you about the dragon. It makes sense. And we’re not alone. Other owners, in the Shield and out, they believe too.” She laughs. “I heard it from their wives. They’d like to say publicly that war is bad for business, but they don’t want to look soft, which is also bad for business.” She touches his arm. “Will there be war? Chelson won’t tell me anything. I need to know.”

Livion thinks of Herse’s hand on his shoulder. Maybe she and these silent owners could protect him if he helped them find their voice. “Yes,” he says.

She compresses her mouth. “I thought so,” she says. “Tabs is special to me. I hope we can be friends too.”

Livion says, “Me too.”

“Go,” she says. “And when you find her send me word so I know she’s all right.”

Outside Livion watches the people on the street ignore him: Asper’s neighbors, servants, peddlers. It’s a ghost night, the Dawn Landers would call it. When you feel lost in sight of all.

Once Asper hears the wicket close behind Livion, she goes through the main hall to the stairs. In a guest room Tristaban is lying on a couch, soft and half-asleep. “You should have been home hours ago, Tabs,” Asper says. “At least in the dark no one will see you leave.”

Chelson lives on a higher street than Asper and in the tonier West Crest. His lane is more a promenade: gated, tree lined, and far wider than most because the tenants on the uphill side bought and razed the homes across from them to increase their views. Led there by a footman, Herse finds the lane indulgent in such a crowded and, for the most part, impoverished city.

His first home was a one-room shack his father built on scavenged beams over an alley in the Harbor. Loosely moored, it rocked like a galley until shacks were built around it and, in time, above it. He and his siblings had endless hours of fun dashing across rooftops. The summer he was six, he never touched the street, doing his piecework on high, playing hip ball on a slant, and drenching the unsuspecting with their communal bucket from increasingly clever blinds. Eventually the Council declared the shacks a blight and tore them down. His family moved to Hanoshi Town, but his father returned to the site every day for a year to build a warehouse complex. “Job’s a job,” he told his furious son, “system’s the system.” From the start his father called the complex the Castle.

Herse and Rego are admitted into Chelson’s courtyard by one of his personal guards. The fineness of the man’s uniform can’t hide the brutality advertised by his half-red eye and hatchet.

The courtyard’s no less brutal: shadowy, seatless, faced with unfinished gray stone, and decorated with six pedestals displaying nothing. Passed to a footman, Herse and Rego are installed in a small room with a stone bench and an iron brazier that offers little heat.

“Try out the bench,” Herse says. “I want to see something.”

Rego sits, back upright, head held high. He shrugs and is about to say, “I don’t understand,” when his butt shifts. He shifts it back, and it shifts again. Herse smiles. Rego says, “I can’t quite get comfortable.”

“The little trick of little men,” Herse says. “You can’t tell in this light, but the seat is deformed. And there’s only one, which Chelson will insist we take, so he can loom over us.”

Chelson slides through the doorway followed by Red Eye. He says, “My footman should have invited you to sit. If you will.” He holds out his arm.

Herse says, “We’re fine.” Rego can feel the tension in Herse’s chin as Chelson looks up at it. Herse says, “I think we can solve our mutual problem. Rego.”

Rego describes the cinnamon deal. “Omer probably dealt with Livion.”

Herse says, “Do you know anything about this?”

“No,” Chelson says, “but such deals aren’t uncommon. The rider would get a finder’s fee.”

“What if Livion planned to cut you out of the deal?” Herse says.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Chelson says.

“You said something similar before Council,” Herse says. “And this deal was nothing for the Shield, but it might mean twenty purses to Livion, a nice sum for a junior with a new home and a partner with aspirations.”