Draka

I padded around the hidden tent carefully, not wanting to wake whoever was inside. I sniffed around, hoping to find a familiar scent, but what I found was inconclusive. There was something vaguely familiar there, but it was hidden under the smells of soap and rosemary and, when I reached one corner of the tent, silver. Whoever was in the tent had a decent chunk of change with them.

I heard someone stir inside, and froze. Damn it, I was being ridiculous! There was no way I was going to figure out who was in the tent. I would have to gamble.

I focused and shifted into the shadows, moving soundlessly around to the front. I used the few seconds it took to shift back to build up my nerve, and then whispered.

"Herald?"

I heard a sharp breath and immediately began to shift back, then drifted back into the bushes, remaining in shadow and waiting to see what would happen.

There was a rapid shuffling. The cloth of the flaps bulged out.

"Draka!?" Even distorted as it was by my being in shadow, I was relieved to recognise Herald's familiar contralto as she fumbled hurriedly along the length of the flaps. She finally pushed them open, rushing out on her hands and knees.

"Draka?" she said again as she looked around in the darkness, and her voice had an edge of almost painful disappointment.

When I focused as hard as I could it took a little under three seconds for me to shift back, and seeing her face when she didn't find me outside made those seconds torture. I stepped forward the instant I could.

"I'm he–"

I barely saw her move. She nearly knocked down as she took a crouching leap and threw her long arms around me. One went under my wing and the other down my back, and I was still reeling as she crushed me in a fierce hug. Those reflexes of hers were something else!

"Hello to you, too," I said once I got over my surprise.

"I feared that you were gone," she mumbled.

"Yeah, sorry about that. Not showing up, I mean. I kind of got hurt.”

Herald released me and sat back on her feet, her face uncomfortably close to mine. I realised that it was too dark for her to really see me.

"Are you alright? Please tell me that you are alright!"

I leant back, wondering why she was so damn intense. "Uh, nah, yeah. Yeah! I'm fine now. I hit my wing pretty bad on the coast and had to walk home."

"Oh, okay." She breathed out a sigh of relief, so close to me that I felt the warmth of her breath. "Good! That is good. I feared–"

"Hey," I interrupted her, drawing my head back a little. "Do you have a lamp, or something? A lantern? So you can see me?"

"Oh, yes!" She turned and crawled back into the tent, coming back out with a lantern made of perforated brass. She opened a small door on the side and did something inside, and the smell of some chemical hit me faintly. Something like kerosene, perhaps. She struck some sparks with a small firesteel and the lantern lit, filling the space between us with a warm, speckled light.

Of course, now I could barely see. The world in my shadowsight filled with invisible patches, until I blinked my eyes back to good old, regular, non-magical vision.

Herald blinked as her eyes adjusted, then looked at me with a wan smile. She looked like she had a million things to say, starting and stopping several times before settling simply on, "I missed you."

“I missed you too, kid.”

“I am not–” she protested weakly, but I cut her off.

“I know. I know. It’s a term of endearment where I’m from, yeah?”

“That is acceptable, I suppose.” She sat up a little straighter, then reached out and stroked the left side of my head, rubbing my scar with her thumb.

“You have a small bump here. Perhaps your horn is growing back?”

“Really?” I bent my neck and reached up to feel for myself. Sure enough, there was a little bump under the rough patch of scales there. “Huh, maybe.” I wasn’t particularly attached to the things, but they probably filled some kind of purpose.

“So, what happened? After I left.”

“Well,” she began. “We brought the villagers home.”

They hadn’t been able to leave anyone in the village. It was deserted and ransacked, and the villagers they had with them were still basically sleepwalking. They’d continued to the main road and then to the city.

“Making camp was surprisingly easy. It was only lucky that it did not rain, because we did not have tents for everyone. But they ate when we fed them and drank when we told them to, and then we had them all sleep in a big huddle on the ground, to keep the elders warm. A few of them showed signs of coming to by the time we reached the city, but beyond that…”

Entering the city had been a circus. They had tried to get the guards at the gate to help them, but had no luck. Instead they marched them up to the harbour district, where the Adventurers’ Guild was, and left them in the care of the staff there. All the way, crowds had gathered to gawk and get in the way, and the foursome had a hell of a time keeping people away, whether they looked only curious or less well-intentioned.

“And then, of course, the Guild got the authorities involved. I suppose they had no choice.”

“What’s going to happen to the villagers?”

She frowned. “I do not know. There were announcements, I know that much, asking for relatives to come forward to take them into their care. For the others, I can only hope that one temple or another might help. The Silent Mercy might.”

“And what about the slavers? Have you heard anything that might help?”

“Mak says that she has had to answer many questions about that. We told them as much as you told us, though we left you out, of course. That there was a man with some guards, talking about how his superior had arranged the abductions, but we could not see his face. The questions Mak has had to answer seem to point to many more people disappearing in and around the city than usual, which is worrying. The council sent the Cranes up to clear the place out, though I do not know how that went. Lalia was pretty mad about it, that they did not send the Wolves instead. Anyway, Mak has been called to speak with people from different offices almost every day for weeks now.”

“Wait,” I interrupted her, “why only Makanna?”

Herald’s voice turned a little bitter. “Well, she brought me along a few times, just to keep me in the city. Not like you can say no if you’ve been called by a Speaker for an office. But of course it is Mak who has been called, since she is the head of the family.”

“Head of the family?”

“Well, yes? Since our parents died she is the eldest. We may not have a name like the proper Families–”

“Wait. So she’s, like, your legal guardian?”

“That is an odd way of putting it, but perhaps? Mine and Tam’s. She is responsible for us, if we commit a crime or such, and we need her permission for many things. Is that the same as a ‘legal guardian’?”

“But you’re both adults.”

“Yes?”

“And you said before that you can get married and everything without anyone’s permission.”

“Well… I can marry into a family, if their head agrees. And I could marry someone and begin a new family, with one of us as head. No one could stop us from doing that. But if I wanted to marry someone and bring them into my family, I would need Mak’s permission. And if I wanted to buy a property, of course, or take a loan. A legal loan, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Who would make an agreement like that with just one person, without the security of their family behind it?” Herald asked back, now slightly flustered. “What if they do not pay? I know that you are not from here but is it really so different from what you are used to?”

“I mean… yes! I don’t get it! Why was Tamor the one in prison?”

“What?”

“If Makanna’s responsible for you committing crimes, why was Tamor in prison and not her?”

“Oh! Because he would not let her. She tried!”

When I didn’t say anything she started over. “It is like this. We needed a lot of money for Tamor’s fine, which we did not have. Thus we needed an indenture as security, while we tried to raise the money.”

“Indenture? Like slavery?”

“Almost, yes. Mak tried to use herself, of course, but Tam would not let her.”

“But she is the head of the family,” I said, trying to get everything straight.

“She is.”

“So she makes the decisions.”

“She does. So Tam and Val threatened to get married if she would not relent.”

“They what?”

“Threatened to get married,” she said matter-of-factly. “Then Tam could have been the head of his own house and it would have been his responsibility. Or Val’s, which would have been a whole other fight.”

“But… why not Makanna?”

“Draka,” Herald said slowly, “Tam is a man. His contract would have been bought by some company that needed him for labour. Maybe as a guard. It would have been a few hard years, but indentured servants are not allowed to be used for anything truly dangerous. Mak… she is pretty, and she can dance. She might have been fine, but it would not have been easy for her. You understand? And if they found that she can heal, we might never have seen her again. They would ship her off somewhere, to some estate far away.”

“That’s legal?”

“No. But who would speak for her? How would we prosecute the holders of her indenture? We will never have the money to go against a rich House. No, Tam and Val refused to take that risk. They would not even let me finish speaking when I offered to take his place. Of course, they said that it was because it was Tam’s fault in the first place, and that is certainly true. But Val told me the real reason later.”

“That’s fucked up! There’s no way to get justice if you’re not rich?”

“Can anyone prosecute anyone where you are from?”

“I mean, anyone can report a crime…”

“And if the perpetrator is powerful, and the victim is weak, will they be punished?”

I wished that I could honestly say yes.

“So you know how it is,” Herald said sadly at my silence. “That is not to say that wealth and power protects you from breaking the law openly, but as long as they are careful…”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I’ve heard that one before.”

It took a little while to get back to talking after that, but we managed. They had gotten paid the hefty sum of 300 Eagles, a small fortune, and so they were fairly flush with cash. They had also gone and cleared out some monstrous gophers or badgers or something, though Herald seemed to think that was just so that Makanna could keep an eye on her.

That led naturally to Herald asking me to wait a moment, then going back into the tent. She rooted around in her pack for a while, and then came out with a familiar bag. It was the one I had left with her when we went to rescue her people, and it had grown!

“It is all in there,” Herald said, almost coyly. “Including your share of the reward for rescuing the villagers.”

The bag bulged. She held it out, and when I took it in my hand it jingled, clinked and tinkled as I hefted it. The thing was, what, a kilo? Two pounds? Relaxed as I was, the smell was nearly intoxicating, even through the leather of the bag.

“How–” I started, then had to swallow. “How much is in here?”

Herald smiled with amusement at my reaction. “75 Eagles, or so. And a handful of Peacocks.”

“That’s nice…” I told her, my words breaking up as an involuntary rumble began in my chest.

Herald laughed, almost a girlish giggle, as she took the bag from my hand and hung it by its cord around my neck. “I thought you might like that. The firesteel is in there as well.”

“Mmm, thank you” I rumbled, continuing to heft and fondle the bag around my neck.

Then I heard the dragon. “See?” it asked. “This one is loyal. This one adores us. She will not go against us. She is the first.”

I froze at the words, though my rumbling purr continued. The dragon had been silent for days, and this was what brought it back? Luckily, Herald didn’t seem to see anything wrong. “I think I will go back to sleep,” she said. “In the morning I hope that you will tell me everything that happened to you while we were apart.”

“Yeah…” I said, distracted by what the dragon had said. “I will.”

“Then… do you want to come in?” She sounded a little nervous.

“Ah… I wouldn’t want to crowd you.”

“I shared this tent with Val. He sprawls. You cannot take that much more space than him.”

“Maybe I should–” I looked up into the trees, but Herald interrupted me.

“Please?” she said, and the hope in her eyes was too much for me to resist.

“Yeah. Sure.”

I padded into the tent, my bag jingling with every step.