Dragon Discovered (Dragon Rider Academy)

Chapter 1

Seven years before the war between Harlston and the rest of Nevermere

Kael

“You sure Peggy’s is where we want to go?” Lorien asked, eyeing the tavern door.

When my all too reckless brother was questioning the plan, I knew it was risky. Before I could reply, Dain shouldered his way forward.

“Need food.” With a shrug, he nodded at the patrons walking up the street, some very finely dressed. “The toffs drink here sometimes. Got the heaviest coin pouches.”

Which is why I’d decided we’d hit this place first tonight. Dain was right. Food was scarce and that hollow ache in my belly had gotten too pronounced to ignore.

“We go in,” I said, trying to keep my voice even to convey confidence. “We see if Phoebe is working tonight. If all our plans go to hell, she’s a soft touch. She’d probably find us a heel of bread or some stale cheese or something.”

“Bread,” Lorien moaned, rubbing his stomach and then groaning. “Cheese…”

“You’ll get neither if you don’t shut up.”

Dain scowled at Lorien.

“None of us will get anything if we don’t stick to the plan,” I said. “Go in—”

“Find a drunk mark and relieve him of his coin .”

Lorien grinned wolfishly, his dark eyes gleaming in the night. Dain crossed his arms with a frown.

“Create a distraction, so he doesn’t notice you,” he finished.

“Well, since we all seem to know what we’re doing…”

Before I could lead my brothers inside, a clatter of hooves on the cobblestones alerted us to the fact we weren’t the only ones considering visiting Peggy’s for the night.

Who we saw were the kinds of people the old hag wanted in her tavern, not three urchin boys seeking to fleece the pockets of her patrons.

They might’ve been dressed in dull, brown homespun cloaks and black tunics and pants, but no one would believe this lot were anything other than lordlings.

Especially when they rode up on horses that could keep the three of us in food and firewood for a year. No, two.

“Boy!” One of them, with hair the colour of newly minted gold, turned and then flicked a coin our way. It spun through the air and I knew it was good silver, even before I snatched it out of the air. “See to these horses.”

Definitely toffs.

Everyone else at Peggy’s knew they needed to look after their own damn steeds.

Better yet, don’t come here with anything precious, lest it get stolen from you.

I glanced at Lorien and Dain and we nodded before stepping forward and taking the reins of all the lordlings’ horses.

Caps pulled down low so as to evade inspection, it was an unneeded attempt at protecting our anonymity.

The lords barely shot us a sidelong glance.

The lure of a warm fire, cool ale, and high-stakes gambling had them pushing past us and into Peggy’s.

So we let go of the horses’ reins.

“Horses like that…” Lorien watched after them with a mournful look. “We could get good honest gold from Ol’ Nick.”

“Is it honest gold, when you get it for selling stolen horses?” Dain’s brows wrinkled. “Ol’ Nick would never take fancy nags like those.”

But others would. With a smack on the horses’ rumps, we sent them trotting off down the road for others who were less risk averse to find.

Peggy’s was busy tonight. Another group of men, half gone to wine, sang loudly as they approached the door.

We slunk in behind them, using their far larger bodies to get us inside the tavern.

Peggy knew us well, knew what we did, and didn’t want us picking the pockets of her posh patrons, not when she was already there, trying to empty them of gold.

Get inside, find a table tucked away, and then lay in wait for the right mark before getting out.

“We all know the plan?” I said, looking at my brothers.

With a nod, we stepped over the threshold.

Inside, I felt the blessed heat of the fire on my skin. It didn’t even matter that the place stank of smoky tobacco, sour ale, and piss. Being warm was such a blessed relief.

“Beginning to think my balls would freeze off,” Lorien said, his teeth chattering as he sat down at a table tucked away in an alcove.

“Haven’t even dropped yet.”

Dain was always a sour bastard, but never more than in winter. The long white hair of his, those dark brows, they jerked down as he placed his arms on the table.

“Never gonna at this rate.”

Lorien picked through the leftovers on the table, sorting the edible from the inedible and then divvied them up between us. A crunch of stale bread, a bit of gristly meat washed down with a mouthful of flat ale, and I was starting to feel more like myself again.

“Can I take your plates, gentle…?”

We looked up when a barmaid approached, a tub propped on one hip. Rosie was stuck clearing the tables tonight, and she blinked when she saw us.

“If it’s not our Rosie.”

Lorien grinned rakishly, fluttering those too-long eyelashes, but Rosie wasn’t one to be swayed by smiles. She was from Coalbottom, just like the rest of us, the dankest, darkest part of Blackreach. The city might be the capital of the duchy of Harlston, but our part of it may as well be in Hell.

“Don’t you ‘our Rosie’ me, Lorien Lightfingers,” she hissed, then glanced around the tavern. “Don’t you remember what Madam Margaret said the last time you came sniffing around here?”

“Margaret…” Dain sniffed, shaking his head.

She might be prancing around Lackluck Row now as Madam Margaret, but everyone in Coalbottom knew her as Peggy when she was running one of the cesspits down at the docks. Named for the wooden leg she stumped around on, she wasn’t above giving cheeky patrons a boot in the arse in response.

“Don’t come back here ever again,” I said, repeating the woman’s directions back, word perfect. It was a curse of mine, able to remember some details all too vividly. “On pain of death.”

“Don’t think that was an empty threat.” Rosie stared at each of us, wide eyed. “I’ve seen the Executioner in her office often enough.”

Any other threat and we’d have waved Rosie off. She was growing soft, living outside of Coalbottom, but one mention of his name… We all stiffened, then looked at each other. None of us were bound together by blood. We called each other brother because we were all the family we had.

But we had others.

Men that rutted with our mothers, then left her to deal with the consequences.

Rich men, powerful men, who used and abused Coalbottom women as if they were nothing more than the rats they described us as.

But there was a rat catcher. The Executioner came behind the Duke of Harlston and all the other toffs, offering women herbs to get rid of their babes in the womb.

Or worse, if he didn’t arrive soon enough.

My fingers flexed around the butter knife on the table, for want of a real weapon, and my eyes flicked around the tavern, as if that would summon him. That craggy face, that sombre grimace, I knew it well, because his face haunted my nightmares.

He was the man who killed my mother.

A glance at my brothers and I saw their equally sour expressions. Each one of us bore a grudge against the Executioner, but we had to make it to manhood to get revenge.

“We’ll be out of here before Peggy even notices,” I told Rosie.

“Don’t call her that!”

She looked over her shoulder, as if someone was eavesdropping.

“We need food, Rosie.” Dain used words like a miser did coins, begrudgingly. He leaned forward, and that had her focussing back on us. “Times are tough.” She went to protest, but he continued, “You know we’d never step foot in here unless we had to.”

When we were smaller, Lorien used to beg professionally.

Those big brown eyes, that expressive face, he could wring the toffs’ hearts like the best of them.

It was a long time since we were forced to beg on street corners, but Lorien still knew how to win over women.

A mournful look from him and she was shaking her head in frustration.

“I’ll get you a bowl of stew from the kitchens,” she said.

“Each?”

Lorien’s eyes widened, fairly shining in the candlelight.

“Each,” she snapped, putting the dirty dishes on our table into the tub with undue vehemence.

“And some bread?”

Gods, Lorien was pushing it, I could see that in the way her brows were drawing down.

“And some bloody bread, but after that, you need to get the hell out here.”

We’d follow her plan to the letter, except for one small thing.

I eyed the idiots who had thrown their horses’ reins at us, seeing the way they laughed uproariously, pouring ale down their throats, but it was the bulging coin purses on their waists.

A full belly, some bread for later, and a bag full of gold?

I’d gladly exit Peggy’s tavern once I had all three things.