Chapter 7
Despite her reservations about accompanying a dragon into the night, Rylana pulled her hood up against the drizzle and walked beside Jildarin.
If she showed him some trust, he might be more inclined to trust her.
And when he pointed out a butcher shop two blocks from the diner, she believed he might genuinely have decided to show her where he got his supplies.
After guiding her past a grocery and through the open-air market where he picked out mundane herbs and spices, he led her along the waterfront. To visit a fishmonger?
Many docks stretched out from the shoreline into the miles-long Luminous Lake, hosting everything from private sailboats to public ferries to cargo vessels.
Some of the latter wore the sun-and-harpoon logo of her father’s shipping company.
Those vessels were being loaded and unloaded, laborers undeterred by the late hour.
The crew came and went, often with a drunken lurch to their steps as they departed noisy taverns facing the lake.
Even in the misty night with poor visibility, some of the glowing blue, green, and purple fish were visible flitting in the water.
A few pools of similarly luminescent plankton gathered between and beyond the docks, their colors never mingling, as if they represented different species that held grudges and didn’t visit each other.
“Is your fishmonger in this direction?” Rylana asked as Jildarin led her farther than she would have expected down the waterfront street, dark warehouses looming on the side opposite the lake. The docks grew less frequent, the pedestrians fewer.
“Yes.”
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“In the human world, is honesty customary among enemies?”
“For many people, yes. They try to treat even their adversaries with honor. But are we still enemies, Jildarin? The war is over.”
“You tried to kill me,” he said softly. “And you succeeded at killing other dragons with your bow.”
“Just as you killed humans. I’m sure you would have delighted in chomping me in half if you’d had the opportunity.
Many of my colleagues did die in exactly that manner.
With elves peppering us with arrows, our soldiers fell to dragons who flew down from above and bit us in half or burned us to death with their fire. ”
Rylana had only meant to point out that they’d both participated in the war, not bring painful memories to mind, but they came nonetheless.
For a moment, she saw the faces of the dead, many of the bodies so badly burned that they’d been unrecognizable in the aftermath.
More keenly than the deaths of the others, she felt the loss of Captain Maverick.
He’d fallen to an elven warrior with a sword, one who’d been targeting the leaders of the various military outfits.
It had been in the last weeks of the war, before the kingdoms had retreated from the mountains and diplomats had eked out an unsavory truce with few of the concessions that the human, dwarf, and orc rulers had wanted.
“Your kind invaded our mountains,” Jildarin said.
They’d passed the last of the buildings, and dark gardens and parks with trails stretched to the left, an area that nearly marked Tranquility’s southern border.
A pillar along the walkway ahead reminded Rylana that they were still within the peacekeepers’ protection, but the patrols were infrequent beyond the borders, and it would take longer for help to arrive if the alarms sounded.
“Several of the joint kingdoms also claimed those mountains,” Rylana said, debating what she would do if Jildarin tried to lead her past the last pillar. “For generations, the dragons and elves didn’t object to their presence or dispute the borders.”
“Our kind ignored the human, dwarf, and orc infestations. Until you brought magic- and steam-powered machines to excavate great mines and forever scar the wilderness and drive game away.”
Since Rylana had later in the war come to question whether humans had been right in fighting for those mountains, she didn’t argue further.
Jildarin stopped before two lampposts framing the entrance of a wide boardwalk that stretched for almost a half mile into the lake toward Lucky Island, a popular destination for weddings and other ceremonies.
There was also a scientific outpost for studying the unusual fish and plankton of the lake, as well as an observatory with a huge gnomish telescope that had been there in Rylana's youth.
Unable to imagine Jildarin's fishmonger having a shop out there, she raised her eyebrows.
He was looking at her. Waiting for a response to his last statement?
“I was just a soldier, a mercenary at that, and not from the kingdoms you were fighting, so I don’t honestly know what started everything and who was right or wrong.”
“Yet you fought to slay my kind.”
“It was my job. Like bookkeeping but with more clarity about what’s expected and when I’ll get paid.”
Jildarin squinted at her. Why did she feel like she was at an inquisition?
“Look, there are reasons why I left home when I did and got into that line of work. I loved being out in nature and loosing arrows at targets, and, back then, I hated math and accounting and everything related to what I’d been taught to do.
Archery was my only other skill, and I wanted adventure and to see the world.
And to escape…” Rylana caught herself. The last thing she wanted was to go into details with a surly dragon about her upbringing and being pressured into marriage.
“The job with the mercenaries suited my needs at the time. But years of war sanded away my desire to be a soldier. That’s why I ultimately came back here. ”
Jildarin looked out along the dock. “Walk this way with me.”
“You’re taking me to Lucky Island? For what?
Romance? It’s not a warm moonlit night, and you’re not.
..” Rylana trailed off when he looked at her again.
“My type,” she finished, though he was handsome.
If he hadn’t been a dragon who was possibly contemplating her death, and she hadn’t been mourning Mav’s loss, she might have been attracted to him.
Jildarin pointed at the silhouette of a rowboat out in the water, the illumination from pools of plankton making it visible on the otherwise dark night. When he strode onto the boardwalk, curiosity rather than wisdom prompted Rylana to follow him.
A few boats and ships dotted the lake to the north, some cargo vessels on their way in from the Troll Gulf River, and others belonging to fishermen who ventured out at night since it was easier to tell where the luminescent fish and eels were lurking after dark.
Many varieties of those were considered delicacies by the Tranquility residents.
To the south of the boardwalk was the marshy end of Lumi Lake where the waters were shallow, and it was easy for ships to become mired.
Once, a ferry had carried people out to Lucky Island, but the city had built the boardwalk to make access easier and also as a barrier to keep ships from venturing into the shallows.
“You are familiar with the name of that outcrop?” Jildarin asked over his shoulder halfway out to the island while pointing at a lump of rocks that rose from the lake between the boardwalk and the last of the docks in the city.
A magically glowing lamp stuck up from the center, making it visible from the distance.
“We call it the Dragonspit,” Rylana said.
“So I recently learned.”
“A lot of ships have wrecked on it over the centuries. That’s why the gnomes put that lamp out there.”
“Humans like to name things they do not like after dragons.”
“They name things that are deadly after dragons.”
They hadn’t reached Lucky Island, but Jildarin stopped and looked into the lake, his hands gripping the railing. Was that rowboat heading in their direction?
“Your kind,” Jildarin said, “see my kind as savage beasts, but we have a culture, a history, a heritage, and we are as educated as your people—often more educated since we live longer lives and have seen much.”
“Are you looking for sympathy? Dragons are incredibly powerful, deadly, and dangerous. You’re nothing like gnomes or goblins that have historically been targeted for slavery because they’re small and can’t as easily put up a fight.”
“I do not seek sympathy,” Jildarin said, a growl in his voice, and turned toward her, “but I do seek to change the opinions of humans, dwarves, and orcs toward dragons. Only the elves, perhaps because we’ve shared the same mountains and forests for eons, understand our kind.
But through my excellent cooking, I will show humans that dragons are a sophisticated species who can perform and appreciate the arts, including culinary arts. ”
Rylana had stopped a few steps back but had to fight the urge to back farther under his dark gaze.
Out here on the dock, they were far from any peacekeepers, and she was well aware of how strong dragons were, even in their shape-shifted forms. While she believed she could win a fight with Vormalt, Jildarin was another matter.
“That sounds like a worthwhile goal,” Rylana said.
Jildarin tilted his head. They’d moved far from the lampposts at the entrance to the boardwalk, and the glowing fish that flitted past below didn’t illuminate the air above the water, so she couldn’t see his face well. She did, however, sense that his expression was less hostile.
“Not many humans have said that. When I came to open the diner as a way to show off my art, a newspaper proclaimed that the food was doubtless poisoned, being distributed by a dragon bitter due to losses during the war.”
“You’d think Tranquility would be open to a dragon chef. The whole background of the city is that it’s the only place in the world where all the intelligent species can live and intermingle and have peaceful relationships with each other. Those who don’t want that… aren’t supposed to live here.”