The Book of Fire Read online

  Stoksie spat delicately. “Da priests run da markit deah, nah. Got dere fingahs in all da biz. Wanna keep an eye on us.”

  Blind Rachel refused to go inside. They’d had a child stolen away from them in Phoenix, never mind the depredations of the monster.

  “We be sittin’ ducks in deah!” Luther exclaimed. “Bildins all aroun’. Walls ’n gates. If dey cum fer us ta feed da monsta, ders no way out!”

  “Itsa standoff,” Stoksie agreed. “Bin li’ dis neer ten yeer nah. But we need da trade, bad dis time.”

  The baron asked Erde to relay a polite suggestion.

  “He asks why you do not take just one or two wagons loaded with goods, and leave the rest safely outside of town?”

  Luther shoved the mules on their way to forage for what little grass they could find. “Cooper Crew dit dat wonst, notta yeer since. Los’ two men anda hole waggin.”

  “The monster ate the wagon?”

  “Ate da men. Da townies stoll da waggin.” He began opening the many drop-down lids and sliding doors of his caravan. They were metal and had remarkable latches. Erde thought of the big yellow carriage as a sort of magic puzzle box.

  Köthen waggled a finger with as feral a grin as she’d ever seen on him. “But they didn’t have the Pilgrim and me protecting them.”

  The Pilgrim. Luther’s spontaneous salutation had flung itself on Sedou and stuck there like a burr, so that even the baron had picked up the use of it. Now that the Tinkers accepted Sedou as something more than a man, a mere man’s name for him no longer seemed adequate. Erde considered their choice more than appropriate. Were they not all four of them pilgrims, dragons and dragon guides alike, sworn to a holy quest?

  The Pilgrim himself joined the discussion, and a compromise was reached: while the other Tinkers made camp, Sedou, N’Doch, and Baron Köthen would accompany Luther and Brenda into town to look the situation over, and negotiate with the necessary officials to allow a trade delegation of just a few wagons.

  Erde clamored to go along. When Baron Köthen told her to stay behind, she reminded him in their native German that the dragon in the woods should also get a good look at this town.

  Luther said, “Yu gotta blade wichu?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, den.” But he did advise her, shyly, to resume her boy disguise. “Gud lookin’ yung wimmin go in der, dey’s shur ta go afta yu, cuz dat monsta, he luv da yung wimmin bes’.”

  Erde shuddered, but into town she went, bearing up under Baron Köthen’s scowl and the high heat of the afternoon. It’s only his precious sense of honor, she mourned, that compels this concern for my safety.

  The thick walls and the surly townsmen at the gates, armed with guns and clubs, reminded her (but for the guns) of the fortified mountain villages around Tor Alte where the very daylight seemed dimmed by clouds of hostility and suspicion. But Luther skillfully bought them entry with shares of the sweet spring water in their canteens, and his alluring descriptions of the food and goods to be had at the market if their negotiations were successful.

  The sentries growled that they’d have to see the priests about that. One of them insisted on escorting them down the main street as if they were prisoners, to what he called the Chapter House. He permitted no side excursions along the way. Brenda fumed, but the others went along calmly, their hands never far from their weapons. Even N’Doch was unusually quiet, his wary eyes soaking up every detail.

  Inside the walls, the angular grid of streets was sunk in a layer of pale red silt, as fine as a lady’s face powder. The dwellings were identical two-story stone boxes with slate roofs, raised up on what looked like the foundations of older, vanished structures. The same red dust drifted over walls and stoops and doorways, melding all the colors into one.

  “Reminds me of one of them government-built bush towns,” remarked N’Doch. “Or maybe it was an army base.”

  At first, the dark-skinned people hurrying to and fro, laden down with burdens, stepped quickly out of their way, as if to prevent any touch from a stranger. But as they followed the sentry farther into the center of the town, this scattering of populace thickened into a busy throng, and brushing shoulders became unavoidable.

  “Keep an eye on your blades,” N’Doch murmured. “This could be a slick-fingered crowd.”

  The Chapter House, which the sentries had spoken of with such reverence, was just another, larger, bland-faced box with a simple, double-doored entrance. The surly guard waited with them once they’d been announced, scuffing his feet in the dust and pointedly not making conversation, except for his crude attempts to muscle Brenda into handing over her canteen permanently. Brenda told him several things she would do to him, and the man backed off.

  Finally, not a priest but a red-robed woman appeared at the door. An abbess or mother superior, Erde concluded, for she seemed to be a person of some authority. She made them more welcome than the sentries had, though informing them at least three times of how busy she was, due to an illustrious visitor arriving the next evening. And she pointed out with little subtlety that several other Crews were on the road to trade in Phoenix. Luther countered this by politely insisting that he spoke for all the Crews. This seemed to concern her, for finally she invited them in and offered them water, and agreed that while Luther, Brenda, and Sedou remained to discuss matters of business, the rest of their party could have the liberty of the town.

  “Smooth move,” N’Doch said once they were out of earshot. “We’ll just wander around gawking like tourists, and meantime, we’ll have the joint cased in no time.”

  First, Baron Köthen said, they should determine whether the town stood apart from its wall, or if dwellings were built into the wall, as was often the case at home, providing possibilities for concealed exits and entrances. But a road ran around the entire perimeter between town and wall, wide and smooth and entirely clear of obstacles, except for some hastily erected pens housing a few scrawny pigs and goats.

  “A no-man’s-land,” N’Doch remarked. “All that’s missing are the land mines and razor wire.”

  “This is an ugly town,” Erde muttered. “I’m glad I don’t live here.” But she was glad to see the livestock: a potential meal for a hungry dragon.

  Satisfied, Köthen led them inward, toward the market square and the hubbub at the center of town. They had to shoulder their way through crowds for the last few blocks. The square was, in fact, a long rectangle, bounded on three sides by the low boxy houses and on the fourth by the back of the Chapter House, or actually, the ceremonial front, judging from its triple-arched portico. The surly guard had taken them to the rear, no doubt to the servants’ entrance.

  “Hey, girl. Look at that.” N’Doch nudged Erde and pointed.

  In the paving stones in the middle of the square, visible when the crowds milling across it momentarily cleared, was a giant image of a winged and rampant dragon, set in red tiles.

  “Oh!” A little chill ran through her, a finger down her spine. There on the ground was the twin to the little dragon carved on her brooch. “It’s the same! Exactly the same! Look!”

  N’Doch caught her hand as she reached to unpin the big jewel from inside her shirt. “Don’t be showing off anything that valuable around here.”

  “Or anything,” Baron Köthen added dryly, “that brings up the subject of dragons.”

  “But why is the monster’s image on my ancestral brooch?”

  Köthen studied the dragon on the paving. “No doubt we will find out soon enough.”

  In front of the Chapter House portico, townspeople were erecting a two-level platform: a small top tier set back from a wider bottom, itself raised several feet off the ground. Both look out over the square and the red-tiled image of the dragon. Several women veiled in red worked among them. The workers’ intent and breathless pace gave the impression that all this was being thrown together at the last minute, and in high excitement. At the far end of the square, amid loud clangs of metal on stone, long banks of se
ating were being raised.

  N’Doch stood back to let a pile of well-used timbers go by. “Some kind of big event going on here. Wish it was a rock show.”

  They found a shaded wall to lean against, removed from the bustle of workers. Erde sensed something oddly familiar in this last-minute building frenzy. At first, she could not place it. Then, when the memory came clear, it so stirred her that she broke her own rule: she gave voice without editing.

  “My lord of Köthen, does this remind you of anyplace?”

  “Not that I . . .”

  “Not the market square at Erfurt?”

  “No, Erfurt is a well-appointed town. I don’t . . . Ah.” He gave her a hard look, then folded his arms and contemplated the ground.

  N’Doch said, “What?”

  “Her ladyship is offering me a small lesson in perspective.”

  “Yeah? What happened at Erfurt?”

  “N’Doch, must you?”

  “You brought it up.” Köthen lifted his head, and his gaze did not soften. “Indeed, the similarity gives one faith in the symmetry of all Nature and events.”

  N’Doch looked interested. “So, tell.”

  “So, I will. Listen, Dochmann, and learn of the extremes to which ambition and vanity can drive an otherwise honorable man. Or so my lady Erde would have it.”

  “My lord baron, I did not . . .”

  Köthen held up both hands. “What? Would you deny me this rare opportunity, an expiation for my sins?”

  “You are satirical, my lord.”

  “When also, my lady, I am commonly the most in earnest. May I proceed?”

  Unable to read his intent, she could do nothing but let him. And as he laid out the scene that day in Erfurt, Erde saw him again as she had that time, the first time: a handsome and victorious lord, riding in through a cheering mob. She recalled how the clear blue and yellow of his tabard shone in the wintry light. How his mail glittered as brightly as the long sword sheathed at his hip. And how she fell in love with the proud lift of his chin.

  He’d taken off the tabard and mail, even the tunic underneath, on his first night at Blind Rachel. Erde had not understood the gesture then, or even that it was a gesture, any more than a convenience. But now, tunic, tabard, and mail were all carefully folded away in the bottom of N’Doch’s pack. Over his soft leggings and boots, Adolphus Michael Hoffman, Fourth Baron Köthen, wore only the simple garment favored by most of the Tinkers, what they called a T-shirt. Köthen’s was loose and black, and it bore the image of a stooping hawk in faded, once-lurid colors. It had been Luther’s gift, given freely, for Köthen possessed nothing he would willingly trade, and Luther was the only Tinker big enough to have anything that would fit him. N’Doch, too tall for even Luther’s clothing, was hugely jealous of this gift. He said he’d be glad to wear such a shirt if it covered only half his chest. Erde did not think this old and much-worn T-shirt to be a fitting garment for a nobleman, but Baron Köthen would not give it up. He said the hawk suited him well in his new life as a hired mercenary.

  But she wished he would don his tunic and tabard again, and help her heart look back, like turning over the hourglass, to a time when she loved him less. She had not been aware before how love can transform the beloved into an image of matchless perfection. Lately, her longing was such that she could not bear to look at him, to see no love returned in his gaze. Yet looking at him was her greatest pleasure. If anything, he was more beautiful than before.

  The constant sun had turned his skin nearly as brown as the Tinkers’, and bleached bright streaks of flax into his blond hair. He didn’t burn and redden as she did. His hair was shorter now, close-cropped to expose his ears in the Tinker fashion. Ysabel had gotten her clever hands on him, to help him blend, she said, as if this was not just desirable but the only wisdom. But Ysa had failed to convince him to forsake his beard, though all the Tinker men but old Marley went clean-shaven. Baron Köthen said he’d worn a beard since he’d first sprouted one, and wasn’t about to give it up now. He did allow Ysa to trim it, until it hugged the contour of his well-formed jaw, a feat of cutting made possible by her remarkable scissors of steel as fine as a sword blade.

  He’s so changed, mused Erde, watching him covertly while he coolly spun the tale of Margit’s rescue as if he had observed it merely from a distance. So changed, in so short a time. As if he was only awaiting the chance. Is this what I intended, when I brought him hither so impulsively? Did I even know what I intended, other than to save his life? Or is it Destiny speaking again, when I’d supposed the choice was mine?

  And have I changed as much?

  N’Doch, she decided, was exactly the same. Exactly as when she’d met him on the beach in 2013. Except now he had on more clothing. Even in the broiling sun, or perhaps because of it, like the Tinkers, who weren’t given to parading about in it half-naked.

  Meanwhile, Baron Köthen wiped his palms on his damp T-shirt and made diagrams in the air with his hands. “So I rode in that way, and her father from there, with our vassals and armies behind us, and for the sake of a kingdom, we were willing to pretend that we liked each other enough to ally with a madman.”

  “The hell-priest,” supplied N’Doch.

  “Ah. You’ve heard the story.”

  “Not like you tell it.”

  “From the wrong side, you mean.”

  N’Doch returned the most neutral of shrugs.

  Köthen tossed his head. “The hell-priest. The central misjudgment in a series of otherwise reasonable decisions. I thought he could . . . well, no matter. He didn’t, would never have. When I was introduced to Heinrich’s dragon . . . your pardon, my lady . . . to the dragon Earth in Rose’s barn, I thought, no, this is not my understanding of dragon. I have met that already, in the eyes of a mad priest who wields his holy cross as a battle ax!”

  “I pray you, speak of him no further!” Erde had that sense again that the priest was watching her, even through the veil of the centuries.

  “Only to the end of the tale, my lady. And so we made that devil’s bargain, Josef and I, and to seal it, we were preparing that day to . . .” Köthen’s hands floated free a moment as if unmoored, then sank to his sides. He turned to her and spread them again. “Rose understood the need, you must know.”

  “No! Rose would never have forgiven you!”

  “I did not say she would forgive me, nor would I have asked. I said she understood.”

  “Understood what?” asked N’Doch.

  “The need to burn an innocent woman at the stake.”

  “Unhh. Not good.”

  “No, nor am I. I promise you honor always, justice when I have the power to, and truth where I have knowledge of it. Goodness I lay no claim to.”

  “Hey, man. I hear you.”

  And then they both nodded, satisfied, when Erde thought they should be ashamed of themselves.

  “Besides, she wasn’t innocent. She was, is, and will be, a witch. Like all those women Heinrich’s got hidden away.”

  “It’s no excuse!” Erde blurted.

  “No, it isn’t,” Köthen agreed quietly. “And in the end, we didn’t burn her, for milady came to the rescue, with dragons and King’s Knights and mysterious champions, and a lot of other things uncounted on. And perhaps my soul was saved. But that was just a stroke of great good luck, for all too often, what is necessary is not what we’d prefer.”

  “It wasn’t luck, my lord. It was destiny.”

  “Destiny, is it? Again and always?” His eyes, when he finally fixed them on her, were dark and tired. Perhaps he’d put some memories to rest over the past week, and thanked her little for reviving them. “May I offer you a bit of advice, my lady, for the purposes of accomplishing your, ah . . . Quest?”

  “Of course, my lord baron.”

  “Stop blinding yourself with concern for what isn’t or what should be, or even what you’d like it to be. Concentrate on what is.”

  “Good idea,” muttered N’Doch.

 
; “Erfurt and all that is past, and we’ve a job to do in the present. Which is actually the future.” Köthen ran a hand through his newly-cropped hair and massaged the back of his neck. “Shall we move on? I feel as though I’ve spent the afternoon in the confessional!”

  He does not believe, Erde realized with a shock, that he will ever see home again.

  Köthen clapped a hand to N’Doch’s shoulder, turning him, urging him into motion. “Now, tell me, lad. How good are you with that knife of yours?”

  The two men moved on through the crowd side by side, instinctively dividing the surveillance between them, left and right, for comparison back at camp. Erde padded after them like their servant or a dog, her fist tight on the hilt of her dagger, hoping to go unnoticed. They stopped at the far end of the square to watch the assembly of the seating, battered lengths of wood and metal that fitted together to form tiers. N’Doch was attempting to explain what a “rock concert” was, when Köthen caught his elbow.

  “Dochmann! Over my left shoulder!”

  “Looking . . .”

  “It’s the young woman from the other night. The speaker at the fire.”

  “Miriam, her name was.”

  “But we’re two days’ hard travel from that village!” Erde protested.

  “Yup, I see her. Damn! It’s her all right!”

  “Stay with milady. I’m going after her.”

  N’Doch snatched him back. “No. Not this time. This is what I’m good at. I was brought up in towns like this. Catch you back at camp.”

  Before Köthen could stop him, he had eased off through the crowd and melted into it.

  Much later, he sprinted out of the darkness to throw himself down breathless at Luther’s cook fire.

  “Man, that last klick was a tough one!” He wiped his brow on his bare forearm. “These people got watch posted everywhere! There’s another Crew, y’know, pulled up down the road.”

  Luther rose to go back to packing his wagon. “Das Scroon, li’ we spected. An’ Oolyoot’s camped off adda base a da hill.”

  “So how’d you guys do?”