The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(82)
Tristaban waves the man over and says, “I need your help. Will you bring out for me . . .” She points to the barrow.
“Of course,” the man in the black shift says.
She rummages in her bag for her key, unlocks the door, and steps back. They stand together a moment before Tristaban nods at the latch. The man says, “Yes,” and opens the door for her. As he does, she looks at the barrow. It seems empty. It barely reeks.
“First stop of the night?” she says, feeling magnanimous. She enters and lights a wall sconce. “It must smell terrible by the last.”
“It’s not too bad,” he says, stepping inside. “With that canvas covering the barrow, I can imagine I’m carrying anything. Honestly, so does everyone I pass.” He presses the door closed.
CHAPTER NINE
The Generals
1
* * *
Once Livion is grabbed, bagged, and dragged away to Gate, Chelson sends the footman to bring his daughter to him as soon as she arrives home.
As he hurries downhill, Ophardt dreams of up-partnering. Livion will lose his home and place, given what he overheard his master and the general discussing. It would be a difficult match, but he wouldn’t be the first footman to leap a few rungs to an owner’s daughter. And Tristaban does flirt with him whenever he escorts her. She even uses his name now.
Ophardt turns the corner into Brimurray and bounces off a heavy barrow. He brushes at his stiff uniform in case any filth clung to it. Tristaban despises dirt. He tells the barrowman, “Watch where you’re going.” The barrowman swiftly replaces the cover dragged off a corner of the cart then bows his head in apology, eyes wide with concern. Good, Ophardt thinks. He should know when he’s offended someone from a Crest house. He should be afraid.
The footman knocks at Tris’s door. As he expected, there’s no answer and no light inside. The door is locked. He leans against the door to wait. He likes finding her at home, especially when she pokes through the curtain of flowers on her sundeck to gaze down at him. A minute passes. He bucks himself up and knocks harder. No answer. He looks through the small window beside the door, and what he sees in the glow from the streetlights sends him loping uphill.
Chelson, followed by his three personal guards, storms into Brimurray. The one with the crooked nose pounds on the door. He reaches for the latch. Chelson jabs at the door. Crooked Nose breaks it open on the third slam.
The foyer is disarrayed. A small bench lies on its side. The decorative tray for Livion’s boots has been overturned and kicked halfway into the hall. Oddments from shelves are scattered, the wall sconce is shattered, and blood splotches one wall.
Holestar yanks out his hatchet, the two others their dirks, and he leads Crooked Nose through the house while the third guard stays outside with Chelson.
He’s stolen my daughter’s life, Chelson thinks.
No, Chelson counters himself. He couldn’t have. He was definitely worried when he came to Chelson’s house. A trader’s first skill is reading minds. Livion’s too stupidly open to fool him. Had he just killed Tristaban, Chelson would have known.
Besides, Livion’s incapable of murder. Personally, Chelson likes the boy. He’s perfect for his daughter, happy to be imposed upon, and willing to watch her drama instead of staging a competing show. If Livion didn’t drain away her craziness, he’d have to deal with it.
Despite all that’s happened, he has to admit he was lucky his daughter had accepted Livion. The junior wasn’t his first choice. He’d planned to partner Tristaban with his old captain Jeryon, another person dependably meek and meekly dependable, before he got himself killed and Livion showed his quality. Sometimes the best man does win, he thinks.
Whoever did do this will find that out himself, and what it’s like to lose to Chelson.
The guards emerge. Holestar shakes his head. “Nobody,” he says, “and no body.”
Ophardt runs down Brimurray with a squad of city guards carrying lanterns. Chelson greets them solemnly and points the sergeant to the foyer.
As the sergeant holds up a lantern to examine the debris and the city guards fan out to keep the gathering neighbors back, Chelson gives the footman a ferocious look. “Why did you bring the guards?” he whispers. “We handle house matters in-house. You should know that by now.”
Ophardt shrinks, hoping he will at least be kept on as a soil boy.
The sergeant touches the blood on the wall, slides outside, and closes the door to prevent gawking. He questions the footman, who tells him when he came, why, and what he saw. The sergeant asks if he saw anyone else on the lane; the blood is fresh so the killer might have been nearby. The footman scans the neighbors. They shrink back. Doors and windows close. Ophardt says he didn’t see anyone suspicious.
Chelson is about to say that he fears his son-in-law was involved when the sergeant bends and holds the lantern near the footman’s waist. It reveals a thin red smudge across his uniform. “Oh,” Ophardt says, “there was the barrowman.”
2
* * *
Near midnight Ject bars the door to his office and steps to a darkwood counter mounted on the wall. He dons a crisp white sleeveless tunic, lights several beeswax candles on the counter with a straw from his grate, and unrolls a red woven mat between them. Onto it he sets a white ceramic pot filled with clean water and covered with a white cloth. Next to this he arrays several objects removed from a finely carved box: an unhoned snow-white blade of deer bone, a tin with yellow paste, another with black, two more white cloths, rolled, and a horsehair brush with a black oak handle. He stretches and looks out the window above the counter, but the candles have snuffed his view of the lamplit Upper City. He pulls off his boots, stands one on the mat, dips a cloth in the water, and cleans it while considering what he knows.