CHAPTER 20 #4
A large solid table occupied the middle of the room.
Its top resembled gold oak with a darker wood inlay sealed in several coats of resin.
Reynald and I sat on one side of it in carved wooden chairs, facing a large window.
Outside, the Virka flowed to the Dokkon under the evening sky.
If I leaned all the way to the right, I could see our house on the other side.
The door was on our left. I thought Reynald would do that thing badasses usually did in movies and books when they either choose a chair facing the exit or dramatically move one to face it, but no. He sat with his back to the door and didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.
The bells had struck seven about fifteen minutes ago.
I slipped Everard’s den between my fingers.
“What is that?” Reynald asked.
“A man once gave me three coins. They saved my life. I kept the last one for luck.”
I put the coin away, picked up the small teapot from the ornate metal platter, and refilled our cups. The tea in Taryz was top-notch. This one tasted a little like chocolate and something else, something slightly tart. Rose hips?
The wooden door opened, and three men entered. All three were large, in their late twenties or early thirties, wearing dark gray tabards and dark cloaks secured with a metal clasp in the shape of a dargan’s head. Dargans resembled wolves, and these three did as well.
Same clothes. Same hair: very short on the back and the sides of the head, but long enough to pull back into a short ponytail on top.
Drugh understood the power of branding. Anyone familiar with the mercenaries of Rellas would see one of these guys and instantly recognize which company they belonged to.
The leader took our measure. He was slightly shorter than Reynald, with light brown hair and a harsh face. He’d asked for the Magnars and found us instead, but he didn’t seem at all surprised. Drugh Harra in the flesh.
Drugh headed for the table and sat across from me. One of his guys, the blond one, leaned against the wall by the door. The other man, with darker brown hair, moved to the window and stood behind Drugh.
Drugh fixed me with a heavy stare. “You are not Gort.”
“I am his employer.”
“I’m not here for you.”
Too bad. He wasn’t getting his hands on the Magnars. Drugh wasn’t a bad man, but he was dangerous, and no matter how much bad blood there was between him and Filderon, the broker had been his mentor. I needed this to go well, because if it didn’t someone would end up dead.
“Filderon was a greedy man in the truest sense of the word. Some people are greedy until they get comfortable and then they decide they have enough. For Filderon, enough didn’t exist. He was always looking for a way to grab more.”
No reaction.
“That’s why he lied to you that day in the cemetery, when you were holding your mother as she wept.
Your father never asked him to take care of you.
Your father knew what kind of man Filderon was, and he didn’t expect to die in that campaign.
Filderon recognized talent when he saw it.
He understood your worth and reasoned you would make him a lot of coin.
That’s why he convinced you to abandon knighthood.
What was it he said? ‘Knighthood is for people born into money. It keeps them from being bored. You have a mother to take care of.’”
Still no reaction.
“That’s why he took your wife under his wing.
He’d ignored his cousin for most of his life.
The only reason he showed up at his funeral was because he realized there was an inheritance.
He didn’t even know your wife’s name, he just knew there was a sixteen-year-old orphaned daughter, and she would be an easy target.
That’s why he didn’t want the two of you to marry.
Once you did, he’d lose the money. She came to the wedding with only a quarter of her dowry. ”
The commander of the Dargans was a tough nut to crack.
“When Indora Yolenta sent a sack of gold to him to lead eighty people to the slaughter, Filderon wavered. Not because it was wrong, or because he felt guilty about it. It was because he knew that there was no coming back from that. It would finish him as a broker so there would be no more money to be had. But the offer was just too tempting. So much money. He already had the estate picked out where he would retire. That’s why he tried to get all of the Magnars in.
He didn’t want Gort’s sons looking for him after their father died at Falcon Point and disrupting his sweet new life.
You’ve read the instructions pinned to his chest. Things like trust and loyalty didn’t matter to him at all. ”
That was the Dargans’ credo: trust and loyalty.
I had run out of things to say. The silence lay heavy.
Drugh opened his mouth. “Do you think you’ve told me something I didn’t know? There is a reason I stopped speaking to him.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because right or wrong, Filderon was there. He robbed me blind, but he gave me a way to support my mother. He taught me. He was shrewd and patient and he didn’t hold back.
I am where I am because he showed me the ropes.
Hedena knew her uncle was after her dowry, but he gave her a safe place to stay.
When she was scared and grieving, he put a roof over her head and food on her table.
She was not alone. She belonged somewhere, and when she was ready, he pulled in all his favors to apprentice her to the weaver of her choice.
He treated us as his own. He sat at our wedding for both of our fathers, and he left everything he owned to us.
He was family. That’s what the Magnars took away. ”
And I had just crashed and burned. Damn it.
“My wife is sad. She wants someone to be held accountable.” Drugh stared at me. “I’ll make it simple. Tell me where the Magnars are, and I will let you walk out of here.”
It was time for plan B. “No.”
Drugh stared at me.
“Filderon was your family. The Magnars are mine.”
Drugh sighed. “Not smart. You think being a noblewoman will protect you.”
No, I was sure it wouldn’t. “I accept responsibility for their actions. The person you’re looking for is right here.”
The mercenary commander raised his eyebrows.
“You have a choice, Drugh. Either you kill me here and now, or we come to some kind of arrangement. But I will not let you hunt down Gort and Shana and their sons. Filderon was going to send them to their deaths. He got what was coming to him. If you persist, I will expose every dirty secret he had. By the time I’m done, his name will be mud and everything you and your wife have built will be splattered with it. Decide what you’re going to do.”
Drugh looked at Reynald. “And what about you? Are you fine with dying here, too?”
“Hadn’t planned on it,” Reynald said.
“Too bad, because that’s what—”
Reynald pulled down his lancer’s coif.
Drugh went white. The man behind him froze, too. The guy by the door wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he caught the change in body posture and snapped to alert readiness.
Nobody spoke.
Drugh opened his mouth. “You . . .”
“Go home and console your wife,” Reynald said. “And I will forget you were ever here.”
Drugh stood up, nodded, and marched out of the room. His backup fell in behind him without a word. The door swung shut.
Wow. I knew Reynald had a reputation. I just hadn’t realized the full meaning of it.
I leaned forward and peered at Reynald’s face. His expression was calm and relaxed. He looked like himself.
“I’m so impressed,” I said. “How?”
“The Dargans did some business with the King’s Army,” Reynald said.
“We’ve met before.”
“Wow.”
Reynald refilled our cups. “This is tea is expensive. Might as well finish it.”
I drank my tea and exhaled. At least my fingers hadn’t shaken this time. Maybe I was getting better at handling the life-and-death pressure.
“This was your plan?” Reynald asked.
“Drugh was raised to be a Conqueror Knight. They’re all about loyalty to their own.
He respects that. Killing me would bring too much scrutiny, and he isn’t the kind of man who would murder a woman he just met in cold blood.
It would be different if I came at him with a sword, but I was armed with a teacup. ”
I took another sip.
“Also, Drugh knows Filderon would sell his own mother for a noma. They’ve been estranged, so he isn’t sure what his mentor has been up to, but he’s sure it wasn’t good.
I told Drugh a lot of personal things I wasn’t supposed to know.
He must wonder what other secrets I keep.
Dargan Company and Hedena’s weaver shop are thriving.
Like you said, Drugh knows what a dead mercenary is worth. ”
“Two boots and a sword,” Reynald said, his face thoughtful.
“And Filderon’s boots were shit.”
I drank my tea and looked outside the window. We’d handled Drugh.
If only the Butcher would be as easy to deal with.