Chapter 8
Even late at night, the streets of Tranquility were safe, but as Rylana walked back along the waterfront with Jildarin, she kept her ears perked and her eyes open, peeking into alleys and behind wagons and carriages parked in front of warehouses and taverns.
She’d spent most of her adult life in much more dangerous parts of the world, so it was habit to be wary, and Jildarin pointing out that he had chosen not to interrogate her on the boardwalk didn’t leave her certain that he would help out if someone attacked her.
That should have been unlikely here, if only because of the late hour and the drizzle that had driven pedestrians inside, but her instincts itched.
A few times, she thought she saw movement in the shadows of an alley or deep doorway.
Vernest Vormalt’s face floated through her mind, but, unless he’d changed a lot over the years, she doubted he had the inclination—or skill—to tail a target through a dark city without being noticed.
“You will handle the ordering of my supplies going forward?” Jildarin asked, his mind clearly elsewhere.
“Yes. Just tell me how much of what you use for the diner in a week, and I’ll take care of the ordering and recording costs. Since you’re a regular customer, maybe I can also barter for discounts.”
“Sometimes, I require special ingredients for a single-use purpose.”
“Like dragon spices?” Even after he’d pointed out his various ingredient supplies, Rylana remained vague on what those were and where they came from. He hadn’t once mentioned them that evening. Did they come from a furtive merchant in the Forbidden Market?
“Only a dragon may acquire dragon spices.”
“They’re not sold in the city, I’m guessing.”
“One must fly deep into the southern climes and up to high mountain caves in the sides of steep, rocky cliffs that are guarded by magic—and the scaled inhabitants within.” Jildarin touched his chest. “The various luminescent mosses, lichens, and fungi that, when dried and pulverized, we call spices grow on rock formations that hum with dangerous power. They are attuned to the magic of the dragons that live nearby and exist only where we live.”
“So, you can’t get the spices delivered, then?” Rylana envisioned a goblin on a winged bicycle attempting to reach one of the caves to collect the ingredients.
“You cannot.”
“Resupplying seems like it would be a pain in an ogre’s bukok even for you.”
“Collection does demand a journey since there are not dragon caves in this area. My kind prefer the warmer southern reaches.”
“I remember. Can you grow them in your storeroom with your own bodily emanations?”
“I…” Jildarin paused to look thoughtfully toward the lake.
They were only a few blocks from the turn up to Acorn Street and the diner, and nobody had attacked Rylana yet, so she tried to loosen her tense shoulders.
Even if someone was following her for some reason, walking beside a dragon, even one distracted by a discussion of spices and emanations, ought to be a suitable deterrent.
“I hadn’t considered whether that would be possible,” Jildarin said.
“This climate is temperate, not warm, but the heat from the kitchen does drift back to the storeroom in cool weather. The growth of the mosses and fungi has not spontaneously happened, but perhaps I will ask one of our scientists if it might be possible if one inoculated the area.”
“Dragons have scientists?”
Jildarin looked balefully at her. “As I informed you, our kind are more educated and sophisticated than your kind believe.”
“Sorry. It’s hard to look at someone with fangs longer than swords and think of sophistication. Or science.”
“You judge us by our appearance.”
“No, I judge you by the fact that dragons ate my comrades during the war.”
“Human meat is unpalatable. I assure you they weren’t eaten.”
“Fine, but they were eviscerated or burned beyond all recognition and left for dead.”
“Dragons are fearsome predators when their ire is raised, which your kind are sufficiently talented at doing.” Jildarin touched the scar near his eye.
“I received a lot of injuries too, you know. The war was rough on both sides.” Rylana almost untucked her tunic to show him a scar along her side that had almost eviscerated her, though it had been delivered by an elven sword rather than dragon fangs, but the streetlamps didn’t provide that much illumination.
Besides, if someone was following them, she didn’t want to provide material for a peep show.
“Yes. Cooking is more relaxing than battle. The special ingredients of which I spoke can be acquired in the city. They are not components in my regular recipes, but I am practicing with them for the Golden Whisk. You know the details of it?”
“I don’t know anything about it. My brother, cousins, and I didn’t jump to attend cooking contests when I was growing up.”
“It is strange that you think dragons lack sophistication.”
Rylana wanted to reply with a witty retort, but a yawn derailed her. All she managed was, “Oh, I’m sure,” and to think longingly of a comfortable bed.
Jildarin, perhaps contemplating growing fungi, turned to walk toward Acorn Street. Rylana rubbed her gritty eyes and debated asking what she’d considered and dismissed earlier. The worst he could say was no, right?
“I’ve already passed the first step of having my meals chosen during a blind taste test,” Jildarin said, “so I am officially one of only a dozen contestants in the Golden Whisk, but I must now practice developing recipes and executing dishes made from myriad different ingredients, some unusual. At the least, the combinations of ingredients required to be used in the dishes are atypical. For the contest, we may bring our own knives and our own spices, but everything else will be supplied at the venue, and we will not know in advance which ingredients we will have to showcase in meals for the judges. From what I’ve researched about past years’ competitions, it is usually a mixture of mundane and exotic ingredients. ” Jildarin held up his bundle of eels.
“Just make a list—or recite a list for me—and I’ll check the prices at various merchants to get what you need.”
“Check the prices?”
“Yes, to ensure you get the best deal.”
“Quality and trustworthiness are more important than price when selecting a supplier.”
Rylana was about to say that he was in debt to his landlord and not turning a profit, so he couldn’t be picky about quality, especially for practice dishes, but he spoke again.
“One disreputable half-orc with a grudge toward dragons poisoned the ingredients I ordered from him. He mixed in wolfsbane, a substance as deadly to my kind as yours. The peacekeepers have no way to detect a weapon such as that. If not for my superior olfactory senses, I might have consumed it and also served it to others.”
“Er, did you report it to the peacekeepers?”
“I did, even taking the ingredient with his label on it, to them. They accepted it and claimed they would investigate, but the half-orc has not been arrested and continues to run his store. The gnomish authorities here are quick to suspect dragons of improper behavior but do little to defend them against the same.”
Rylana doubted the gnomes wanted dragons in their peaceful city and wasn’t that surprised.
When the founders of Tranquility had built it, writing on the main entrance pillars that all species were welcome within its borders, they probably hadn’t expected their kind to be drawn to visit.
If the poison incident had been recent, it was no wonder Jildarin was on edge and suspicious of her.
“Tell me the name of that store so I don’t order from it,” Rylana said. “Though I doubt the owner would poison me.”
If the half-orc proprietor was still in business, he presumably didn’t poison most of his clients.
“I’m friendly and charming and hardly ever roar at people,” she added.
“Instead, you shoot them with your bow.”
“Yeah, but I can’t do that here.”
“You will avoid the establishment, regardless. The word will soon get out that you are shopping for a heinous dragon.”
“So far, I haven’t heard anyone call you that.” Rylana didn’t mention that no fewer than three people had referred to him as grumpy.
“Once I have won the Golden Whisk and satisfied the tastebuds of many in this city, they will be eager to visit my diner and won’t call me anything. Except perhaps talented.”
“And sophisticated?”
Jildarin squinted at her, perhaps trying to decide if she was teasing him—maybe a little—but said only, “Yes.”
“Since you’ve decided you’re not going to kill me tonight,” Rylana said as they reached the intersection near the diner, a fountain in the center gurgling next to a pillar, “I’m going to ask if I can spend the night.”
“Spend the night?” Jildarin stopped and stared at her.
“In your diner. It’s raining, cold, and I don’t have lodgings.
Also, I’m short on funds. You haven’t suggested that you’ll pay me anytime soon, and there aren’t many vacancies in the city anyway.
My friend and I checked several hostels earlier.
” Rylana wondered where Sylin had found shelter for the night and also hoped she hadn’t run into any trouble.
What if the elf who’d seen her in the coffee shop earlier had reported her presence to the other elves in the city, and they’d objected to her visiting?
Like Jildarin, they might also know of gaps where the peacekeepers’ magical coverage was incomplete.
“Why would you want to sleep in the lair of a dragon?” Jildarin's tone had shifted from thoughtful to suspicious.
“Like I said. Rain, cold, and nowhere else to go. It also seems fair that you would give me something for the time I’ve put in working for you, at least until you’ve got enough funds to start paying me a salary.”
“You’ve put in one day.”
“It was a long day.”
Jildarin looked past her shoulder and toward the diner and didn’t answer.
Someone tall and wearing dark clothing with a hood pulled up against the rain—or against being seen?
—was peering in the window by the door. Whoever it was turned enough to see them, then scurried off down the street in the opposite direction.
Again thinking of Vormalt, Rylana grimaced. “Should we chase that person down?”
“To what end?” Jildarin walked toward the diner but didn’t look like he had chasing in mind. The person disappeared into the same alley that Rylana had fled into that morning.
“To learn why they were peering through your windows?”
“People sometimes show up in the depths of the night, hoping to acquire leftover soup. Your kind are overly preoccupied with sexual acts.” Jildarin looked at her with condemnation.
“Some people enjoy them. Do dragons not…” Rylana didn’t know how to finish the question.
She knew dragons mated, especially after the discussion she’d overheard between Jildarin and his brother, but, in all her years as a mercenary, she couldn’t remember anyone talking with authority on the subject or whether, when they shifted into human form, they experienced human…
urges. She didn’t think dragons discussed such things with outsiders, and the soldiers had always been a lot more concerned about dragons using their human forms to spy rather than for liaisons.
“Engage in sexual acts? For mating purposes when a female is in heat, yes, but not all the time like humans and orcs, and do not even bring up goblins. They are like rabbits. I cannot imagine being so preoccupied by coitus.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I have the unwise urge to ask you on a date.”
“Do so.” Jildarin stopped at the door to the diner and looked at her. “You are still here. The employment will not start again until the morning.”
“Does that mean you’re denying my request to sleep here?”
“Yes.”
“The storeroom would be fine. I left my things there anyway.”
“The storeroom is my lair.”
“What if I slept in the diner? Or the kitchen?”
“You are an assassin.”
“No, I’m an archer, and I can’t use my bow while there’s a tranquility ribbon on it.
I don’t have any mithril arrowheads anyway.
My normal ones wouldn’t pierce a dragon’s scales.
” Rylana could hardly believe he viewed her as a real threat.
Even if the half-orc had tried to poison him recently, what could she do to such a powerful being without an army beside her?
“You sleep in your dragon form, don’t you? ”
“I am usually compelled to spend hours regenerating in my natural state, yes.”
“Then you’ll be impervious to my weapons, right?
I’d have to stab you in a vulnerable spot like your eye, and I assume that’s closed when you sleep.
” The rain had picked up, droplets falling from the edge of Rylana's hood, and her cloak was already soaked through. She longed for dryness. “What’s the problem?”
“I do not share my lair with others, even those incapable of menacing me.”
“I’ll sleep under a table. Or in a little corner behind an oven. Anywhere dry would be fine.” She shook the water droplets from her hood.
“My enemy,” Jildarin said slowly, as if she were dim, “I do not trust you.”
“I’m the one who’s going to be vulnerable sleeping next to a dragon in his native form. You could chomp me in half at any point during the night.”
“When I am in my native form, I can’t fit through the hallway to the tables.”
“Then we’ll both be safe from each other.”
Jildarin made an exasperated noise and opened the door, chopping an ambiguous wave that could have been an invitation to follow or a promise that he would hit her in the head with a mallet.
“You will sleep in the storeroom in a corner where I can keep an eye on you, and you will not leave at any time during the night, lest I suspect you of inimical intent.”
Rylana stepped inside, willing to agree to anything to get out of the rain. As if the matter were settled, he was already heading for the hallway.
She didn’t want to argue but couldn’t help but ask, “What if I have to pee?”
“You will not leave your corner.”
“That sounds messy.”
“It had better not be,” he said darkly over his shoulder.