20. The versatility of inscriptions
20
THE VERSATILITY OF INSCRIPTIONS
Anahrod would not, under threat of disembodiment by ravenous rock wyrms, admit that seeing her father had been good for her.
But it had.
As long as Ris never figured that out, it was fine.
For her part, Ris had apparently decided that their conversation regarding revenge, most especially the part about Gwydinion being a potential target, meant that Anahrod was “all in” and could therefore be treated as a full team member.
Ris wasn’t wrong, but the swiftness with which Anahrod found herself on the group’s “trusted” list still left her reeling.
The group spent the next several days preparing to return to the Deep. And also, at least in Anahrod’s cause, shopping for clothes, braiding her hair, buying a more accurate set of rings, and studiously ignoring Ris’s unsubtle flirtations.
Which she needed to do something about soon. Both Anahrod’s and Ris’s garden rings claimed their wearers were comfortable with casual sex, but Anahrod already knew that hers came with an unspoken caveat: except for Ris.
There would be nothing casual about intimacy with Ris.
Which could not be allowed because, as Anahrod was increasingly having trouble reminding herself, Ris was a dragonrider.
Anahrod tried her best to distract herself from walking off that cliff by working with Kaibren on what sorts of goods and commodities might entice Sicaryon to willingly part ways with Anahrod’s family sword.
It was, she admitted, a bit like keeping her hand out of an oven by putting it in a lit fireplace. Luckily, any temptations in that regard were made easier to bear by distance and Claw’s snarky comments. The young woman particularly enjoyed discussing the Scarsea king’s forty spouses and her suspicions that he was overcompensating for a lack of bedroom skills.
He wasn’t, but Anahrod didn’t feel inclined to defend the man’s honor.
They were still preparing by the end of the third day. The biggest holdup was that Kaibren could only make inscriptions so fast, and anyone they hired to help would almost certainly ask uncomfortable questions.
In moments of weakness, Anahrod found herself missing her second mother. Kaibren was an amazing inscriptionist in that he had an astonishing number of patterns memorized, but he wasn’t an inventor. He didn’t seem to have either interest or talent for innovation, whereas her second mother…
Well. It hadn’t exactly surprised Anahrod when Ris had mentioned that her birth mother had owned all the family patents, that their division hadn’t kicked her out along with the mayor. Her birth mother’s genius had allowed her to work her way out of a ring-house division and into the biggest banking division in all of Crystalspire. Anahrod had absolutely no doubt that the woman could’ve scribbled out an inscription that would’ve made Sicaryon drool all over himself.
Dinner was an informal affair at the guesthouse where they were staying. The kitchen served whatever the cook felt like making that evening, although a stew always simmered in the pot for people who didn’t want the main dish. That night it was roast fowl with dumplings.
Anahrod ate her own food, bought at the market. It’s not that she didn’t trust the cooks—
But yes, it was because she didn’t trust the cooks.
Fortunately, the guesthouse allowed such behavior. She wasn’t even the only one who made a habit of the practice. Ris ate her own food as well, likely prepared in advance by Kaibren.
They were both untrusting souls.
Anahrod noticed nothing wrong at first. Not until people fell around her like overly ripened fruit. A man sitting nearby gasped out, “Poison!” as he collapsed. He did not stand back up again.
Where was Ris? Anahrod didn’t know. She hadn’t seen Kaibren or Claw yet that evening, either.
Naeron…?
Naeron was at one of the other tables, slumped in his chair, eyes closed, unconscious.
“Damn it,” Anahrod cursed as darkness creeped in around the edges of her vision.
This wasn’t poison.
People who said such things watched too many theater shows and knew nothing about poison. No one around her was vomiting, convulsing, or bleeding. Very few poisons led a person gently into darkness, soft as velvet wrapped around a throat.
And there were no poisons, not a single one, that affected all and sundry at the exact same time, regardless of size or dosage.
She’d eaten her own food, drunk her own wine. Yet everyone was sliding down to the floor, at best unconscious. Even one of the servers had passed out, and he’d just been carrying the plates…
Anahrod turned her plate upside down, ignoring the tiny stab of guilt she felt at wasting food.
Someone had drawn a complicated inscription array on the bottom. No sooner had she seen the inscription, however, than the world around her darkened.
The last thing she heard was the clattering of the plate as it slipped from her fingers.
Anahrod woke, stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and idly wondered if Claw would be open to making a wager on how many days it would be before Anahrod was kidnapped next.
At least she was still in Duskcloud, judging from the architectural style.
She raised her head. This was a study rather than a bedchamber, although someone used the room for the occasional nap. She knew that much because she’d woken on a lounging chair, with a pillow under her head and a silvertuff blanket tucked around her shoulders.
Anahrod’s boots were missing, but she was neither bound nor gagged. She wondered what they’d done with her sword before she remembered that she’d left it in her room.
Her kidnappers continued to be considerate, at least.
“Hello, Anah,” a man said.
She hadn’t noticed him at first. He’d been sitting by a window, just outside the range of her peripheral vision.
He was certainly handsome, if a little pale, dressed in a style popular with Duskcloud students, all soft gathers and wide cuffs. His slim trousers were gray, tucked into darker gray leather boots. His shirt was a deep purple, which again made Anahrod wonder if Seven Crests had a new trading source. Last she knew, that color purple came from a shellfish found only in the same waters as tidefishers, and was thus astronomically expensive. A matching purple ribbon tied his ash-brown hair back.
Anahrod rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Then some deep, soft part of her shoved aside years of separation and linked that voice, coming from a stranger, with the same voice, coming from a friend.
Anahrod wouldn’t have recognized him if she’d passed him on the street. Not in this context.
She still knew his voice. She still knew his eyes, glittering and sharp, gray as the sword he’d once given her to seal their vows to each other.
“Sicaryon?”
Anahrod wondered if she might still be dreaming.
The moment she named him, his clothing became strangely indecent and provocative, even though logically this was more clothing than she’d ever seen him wear before.
What was even more concerning was how effortlessly Sicaryon wore the clothes. Like he was entirely used to such fashions, because naturally he lived in Duskcloud now. Didn’t everyone who mattered?
She eyed his dark hair. A wig, she would wager. It wasn’t the right texture, and Sicaryon was blond.
“Nothing to say?” Sicaryon crossed over to the desk and leaned against its edge. “Even for you, that’s surprising.”
At least he had an accent. Even so, his Haudan was excellent.
Of course it was, she thought bitterly, still in shock. He’d learned it from her.
“What are you doing here?” She looked around the room openly. No sign of weapons, or soldiers, or any sort of guard. No sign that Sicaryon wasn’t alone.
She didn’t trust it.
He raised an eyebrow. “Checking on my sword-sister.”
“No, what are you—” She ground her teeth. “What are you doing in Seven Crests?” She glared at the clothes, the hair. She noticed his mantle draped over a chair, also gray and purple. A silver pin peeked out from under the fold, enameled with the Scarsea wave.
She laughed, despite herself, at the pin. The brazen bastard openly wore the Scarsea crest. Why not? It’s not like any Skylander would recognize it. “Don’t claim you came here for me.”
His mouth quirked. “You might be surprised. Anyway, the plumbing.”
She drew short. “Excuse me?”
Sicaryon’s look was fond. “Remember your first year in the Deep? When you were still healing from all those broken bones?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Obviously.”
“You wouldn’t shut up about bathtubs,” Sicaryon said. “I decided to find out what all the fuss was about.”
Anahrod blinked at him. He calmly stared back.
She couldn’t tell whether he was joking.
“And?” she finally asked. “What’s your verdict?”
“Amazing,” Sicaryon admitted. “Wouldn’t want to soak in anything that hot while in the Deep, but up here? Magical. This whole sewer idea is fantastic. Already stealing that.”
Anahrod sucked on her teeth, tried to bottle the bubbling laughter threat ening to spill out. “That’s it? ‘Spent some time in the Skylands. Love the sewer system’?”
He shrugged. “Food’s better in the Deep. Just about everything else is better up here.” His voice lost a little of its joking edge. “Your people have no idea how good they have it, do they?”
“No,” Anahrod agreed softly. “Not a single clue.”
“Anyway, around a month ago—maybe a little longer—I heard the oddest rumor. That the dragon queen’s second-in-command had shown up in Crystalspire and demanded they hand over Anahrod Amnead. I found that concerning. So much so that I sent people to invite you to come back to the capital, where you’d be safer.” He gave her a wry look. “Apparently, that invitation was miscommunicated. Just slightly.”
He wasn’t holding a weapon. There was no sword slung across his back or resting on his hip. He wasn’t armed at all as far as Anahrod could see.
He didn’t want to scare her.
It was a little late for that. She felt the threat of him scrape along her skin, raising hairs as it passed.
“That was an accident,” she said. “A group of Skylanders thought your men were kidnapping me with ill intent: rape or murder or both. Their intentions were good, just rash.”
He huffed. “Hmm.”
She put her feet under her and searched around until she found her shoes. “And yet, they didn’t set a pride of rock wyrms on me. Or kidnap—” She bit her tongue. “All right, fine, they kidnapped me. Is it ‘Kidnap Anahrod’ season already?”
“Feels like it starts earlier every year.” His gray eyes sparkled.
“I should fine people for kidnapping me without a license…” She glared then, in case he’d come to the entirely erroneous conclusion that she wasn’t still furiously angry at him. “You’re claiming this was all just a misunderstanding? You expect me to believe that your people were trying to help me by provoking Overbite into a fight so they could steal my body while I was distracted? And the five-thousand-scale reward for my capture was also ‘trying to help’? What about lighting that targrove swamp on fire? How was that helpful? I’m dying to know.”
“Huh.” He chewed on a lip. “You know, when you say it like that, it doesn’t sound like I had any good intentions at all, does it?”
She stamped her feet into her boots. “No. Weirdly, it really doesn’t.” Anah rod raised her head, noted his expression, and knew—just knew—that he was about to say something witty. Something to make her laugh and diffuse the anger the way he always did.
“And now this? You drugged—” She waved a hand to fend off his correction. “Enchanted, inscribed, whatever—and how do you have people who can inscribe, anyway? Nobody in the Deep knows how to make inscriptions!”
“Nobody in the Deep knew how to make inscriptions,” Sicaryon gently corrected.
She stared at him. “What have you done?”
“No, no,” Sicaryon said. “What have you done. Which was, by the way, teaching a Deeper troll how to pass himself off as Skylander. The university program here isn’t that difficult if you’re motivated. I even graduated a year early. You would’ve loved the graduation ceremony. Very solemn.”
No, she was wrong. She had to be dreaming. This was a dream. Possibly a nightmare. “You, you—you what?”
Sicaryon shrugged. “You learned how to live in my world. Now it’s my turn.”
Anahrod could only stare and wonder if the feeling inside her was horror or respect. Maybe both. She pushed both feelings aside.
“That doesn’t—that changes nothing. Even if you were trying to help the first time—” She inhaled sharply. “No! You were passing around posters offering five thousand scales for my capture. That was the whole reason that Ris even knew I was still alive. Don’t play innocent.”
He grinned. “Pretty sure we haven’t been that since we were seventeen.”
“Sicaryon!”
He pushed himself away from the table in her direction. “Who’s Ris?”
“Not important.”
“Huh. In other words, very important.” She watched him mentally tuck away that information for later before returning to the immediate topic. “I may have mentioned that we might want to offer a reward for information on your whereabouts. Someone too eager to please interpreted that as a ‘bounty for your capture.’ By the time I found out, the posters were already out in the world.”
She studied him. She still knew him well enough to spot the evasion. Not a lie, but not the whole truth, either.
The story itself was plausible. She knew better than most the nonsense that happened under the excuse of “bureaucracy.” Sometimes that nonsense resulted from simple incompetence and sometimes it was the cloak drawn over malice and machinations.
She ran her tongue against the back side of her teeth, thought about normally sharp speech now gentled with “may have”s and “maybe”s.
Sicaryon wasn’t that upset about losing two of his men. He should’ve been. Sicaryon was loyal to his people—assuming they were loyal to him first.
“So, who was really trying to kidnap me?”
He looked surprised for a moment, then started laughing.
“Sicaryon—”
“I’m uncertain,” he finally said when he had control of himself again. “There are a lot of candidates.”
“You have been busy, haven’t you?”
He tipped his head in her direction. “Fair. Everything’s changing quickly. There will always be people who hate that they don’t have as much say in how that change happens as they think they deserve. At least they don’t want to hurt you.”
“That targrove fire suggests otherwise.”
Sicaryon’s smile faded.
She said: “Maybe they never planned for it to be a successful kidnapping—just something to make me mad enough to come after you.”
“Maybe,” Sicaryon allowed. He studied the wall, chewing on the edge of a thumbnail. “I’d lose no matter who won that fight.”
He didn’t seem to be aware he’d said that part out loud.
A gust of wind tossed rocks against the window, startling them both. A shadow fell over the area outside, a cloud rolling in front of the sun.
Except she knew something else was happening.
She’d had dinner in the evening. It was daylight now.
“How long was I out?”
He shrugged. “Since last night. It seemed like you needed the sleep.”
She grabbed Sicaryon’s mantle and threw it at him. “You need to leave. Right now.”
He gave her a hurt expression. “But I thought—?”
She shook her head. This was her fault: she’d spent too long talking. “No, you don’t understand. The dragons can track me.”
The building shook.
This wasn’t Crystalspire, whose buildings were designed to support a dragon landing on the roof. Duskcloud buildings were more fragile. If a dragon tried to land here, it would take the entire building down with it.
Tiendremos just wouldn’t care.
“Run,” Anahrod told Sicaryon.
He grabbed her hand. She immediately ripped it free.
“Damn it—”
“No! Run while you still can.” She pushed him toward the door. “You can’t rescue me, Sicaryon. Stop trying.”
He stared at her for a split second, dumbfounded. Perhaps he even considered the idea. Running.
It would’ve been too late, anyway.
The sound of snapping, tearing wood and shattering brick filled the air. Slate tiles and freed nails fell about them. One wall groaned, mortally wounded, as it twisted away from its siblings, taking a window with it.
The gold dragon, Peralon, peeled back the roof like he was skinning a piece of fruit.