Avarice of the Empire (The Drake Chronicles #6)

Chapter 1

On the Road

Aquitainia

“Oh, her eyes were blue, and her smile was red,

“She always baked the softest bread…

Oliver gritted his teeth, and belatedly realized that he’d tightened his hands on the reins when his horse tossed his head. “Sorry, boy,” he murmured, loosening his fingers and stroking the gelding’s neck.

Some half-hour ago – though it felt like more – they’d emerged from the cover of forest into a sea of wavering grassland: pastures gone unthreshed after the loss of life during the war, its farmers and their sons having marched to the capital, and been killed or captured.

Out in the open, with the drakes circling lazily overhead of the Phalanx, Magnus had started singing, a few others had picked it up, and no one had told them to hush or risk drawing the attention of enemies hiding in the brush.

Ordinarily, Oliver found the Northern songs – which always started rather benign, and grew bawdier and bawdier as they went – charming, and, at worst, amusing.

Today, though, it was an effort to unclench his jaw.

He turned toward Erik, riding beside him, and whispered just loud enough to be heard over the plodding of horse hooves and jangling of bit chains, “Do you really think it’s wise for them to be alerting the whole countryside to our whereabouts like that? ”

Erik smiled, though absently, his gaze fixed on the road between his mount’s ears. “There’s little chance of being ambushed here now, and it keeps their spirits up.”

Oliver failed to withhold a sigh. “Yes, but it makes me want to stab my eardrums out with my cloak pin.” He realized halfway through the sentence that it was a terribly fussy, overdramatic thing to say, and though that was the brand of humor he wielded most often, in these instances, he sounded waspish and overtired, rather than slyly humorous.

Erik’s half-turned head and cocked eyebrow echoed said realization.

“Er,” Oliver said, clumsily, and thought the smile he offered must be pathetic. “Perhaps with some voice lessons…” He trailed off, face warm with embarrassment.

And from the weather, as well. As he faced forward between his horse’s ears once more, he realized there was sweat trickling down his back, plastering his undershirt to his chest. They’d all left off their heavier furs, stowing them in the trunks onboard the sleds they’d converted to wagons one night, but their clothes were still Northern clothes, and they were most definitely in the midst of a Southern spring at the moment.

A shadow passed over them, blotting out the sun, spanning the road twice over.

Oliver tipped his head back to watch Percy pass overhead, hair stirring in the breeze of his wings as he flapped them and began to climb again.

It would be cooler up there, on his back.

Tessa and Náli were both currently aboard their drakes.

Tessa had looked at him curiously when he’d said he would ride in the caravan on horseback, alongside Erik.

Náli hadn’t looked at him at all, narrow shoulders rigid.

The simple truth was: Oliver felt guilty.

So guilty, in fact, that when he woke this morning, and the coin-set amethyst in his pocket that the Emperor Unchallenged, Romanus Tyrsbane, had gifted him on the night of the campsite attack shifted in his pocket, he’d nearly blurted out the whole sordid truth to Erik.

The dreamwalking, the secret meetings in the dreamscape Aquitainian solarium, Romanus, all of it.

But at this point, the secret had become so tremendous, and so thorned, that Oliver didn’t know how to reveal it in a way that wouldn’t get everyone in its radius seriously hurt, Erik most of all.

Leaving aside the fact that Romanus was currently occupying his nation’s capital, had killed half the men of Aquitainia, and had launched an assault that had razed half the palace of Aeretoll—and, gods, weren’t those reasons enough for a kingly explosion of temper?

—Erik was a loyal man. A loyal man who prized loyalty in all of his people, and in his family.

In his lover – in the lover who he’d draped in jewels, and furs, and acknowledged as his official consort in front of his lords, his heirs, and his gods.

Oliver was consorting with the enemy. There was no other word for it.

And, perhaps worse, he felt almost certain, now, that Romanus had carnal designs on him.

Oliver of course didn’t feel the same, and would never allow things to go so far…

but he’d learned, in the past weeks, that he wasn’t above exploiting the emperor’s interest. As a means of gathering intelligence, of course. Nothing else. Nothing personal.

But Erik would never understand. He was a man who met threats head-on, sword in-hand, and he would view Oliver’s actions as a betrayal: royal, political, and romantically personal.

Oliver was fucked.

“…ler?”

Oh. Erik was speaking to him.

Oliver blinked, found that he’d receded so deep into his worry that he hadn’t blinked in some time, and that his eyes had gone dry and gritty with road dust.

“Sorry.” He turned to Erik, and found him frowning, concern writ heavy in the lines on his brow. “What were you saying?”

Erik had been dour the moment Oliver met him…

and then he’d melted, slowly, the harsh lines of worry shifting instead toward grooves of laughter and affection.

Then the war had come to Aeres. Oliver didn’t know if travel and battle had carved fresh marks between Erik’s brows, and twined fresh white streaks at his temples, or if Oliver himself was to blame.

Erik gazed upon him now with the kind of concern that could do permanent damage to one’s face.

“I wondered,” Erik began, and then a horn sounded.

Percy tugged at Oliver’s mind, a sharp pricking of blue.

It jolted him upright in the saddle, and he stood in his stirrups with a gasp, Percy’s surge of adrenaline pulsing through him.

Wings clapped hard together overhead, loud as bursts of thunder, as the three drakes raced ahead and then fell into a tripart circle, low over the grass. Percy offered Oliver a glimpse, even as the outriders streamed down the line toward them, words snatched back by the wind.

“A Selesee encampment,” Oliver said, vision split dizzyingly between his own view and Percy’s, an overlap of ghostly images. “Abandoned, apparently.”

“Your Majesty!” the first outrider puffed as he drew rein beside them, horse’s chest lathered in the heat. The man—boy, really—was red-faced and panting beneath his helm. “The drakes have spotted a campsite.”

“Anyone there?” Erik asked.

I just told you, Oliver thought, sourly, and then reprimanded himself.

“There’s no smoke, and no noise,” the outrider said. “Do you want us to launch a search?”

Erik turned to Oliver. “No,” he told the boy. “We’ll land the drakes and have them look.” His brows lifted expectantly.

Oh, now you want my input? Again, Oliver banished the nasty thought, and instead leaned into his bond with Percy.

His immediate surroundings faded out completely, and he saw only through Percy’s eyes.

From above, the encampment looked like a scene set up by a child, without the dolls.

Crushed grass in overlapping paths, black, rock-ringed circles that marked fires, spits made of trimmed sticks and branches still in place.

There were signs of horses—many of them—but no horses themselves, and no picket lines.

Tracks—from wheels and from horses and from foot soldiers—beat west in long, unending lines that disappeared at the far-distant tree line.

All signs present pointed to a retreat toward the capital.

But the tents were an oddity.

There were dozens of them, thick cream canvas anchored with wooden stakes, arranged in tidy squares around the snuffed cookfires. At the center of camp, the commander’s tent held pride of place, bedecked with purple banners and gold tassel fringe.

Percy saw movement—but it was only the wind ruffling the canvas.

Closer, Oliver thought, and Percy landed.

The force of his wings, the final great flap as he settled, blew over at least four tents; the canvas snapped free and went sailing and tumbling like so many handkerchiefs caught in a gust of wind.

In their wake, Oliver could see only empty, sun-starved patches of grass between a framework of wooden tent poles.

No chests, no collapsible camp chairs, no rugs, and no bedrolls.

No Sels, either.

At Oliver’s silent urging, Percy folded his wings and prowled through the camp, sniffing at dead fires and shoving his snout into tent flaps.

The place was utterly deserted. Even more reassuring: the scents of men, and steel, and horses were old.

It had been several days since anything larger than a field mouse had crossed this patch of land.

Oliver sent Percy a wave of gratitude, and then retreated to his own mind, a far smaller, and less sensory place, the adjustment to which left him listing in the saddle.

A strong hand gripped his shoulder—Erik’s—and righted him.

Oliver blinked, and took a deep breath, and straightened his spine. “The camp’s abandoned. By several days, at least. No sign of them in the distance.”

Erik nodded, but his gaze lingered on Oliver a long moment, concern etched with—something else.

Something Oliver didn’t want to examine too closely.

Doubt of Percy? No. Oliver didn’t think so; Erik had stopped resisting the advantage the drakes gave him.

In fact, he seemed to have embraced it, quick to suggest dragon intervention or assistance, especially since the Sel raid in the forest.

He’s doubting me, Oliver thought.

Erik turned to the outrider and said, “Tell the head of the column to proceed. We’ll search it for anything of value.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The boy wheeled his mount and cantered back the way he’d come.

~*~