Part 11 (1/2)
The fellow tugged his mustache. ”Can't say I've seen 'im, but I've just come on duty. He might be downstairs.”
I hoped not, but I'd deal with that if I had to. ”Who's on duty downstairs? John?” John was a good, common name.
His eyes widened a bit. ”John Saddlehorn, yes. And Mikey the Fish.”
I nodded as if I knew them both. ”Well, I don't mind asking them myself. If Captain Kiggs shows up, would you please let him know I'm already below?”
”Hold on,” he said. ”What's this about? Who are you?”
I gave him a lightly flabbergasted look. ”Seraphina Dombegh, daughter of the eminent lawyer Claude Dombegh, the Crown's expert on Comonot's Treaty. Captain Kiggs wanted my insight in questioning the knights. Am I in the wrong place? I had understood they were being held here.”
The guard scratched under his helmet, looking conflicted. I suspected he didn't have specific orders against letting anyone down, but he still didn't think he should.
”Come with me, if you like,” I offered. ”I have a few questions about the dragon they saw. I hope we can identify it.”
He hesitated, but agreed to accompany me downstairs. Two guards sat outside a stout wooden door, playing kingfish on an upturned barrel; they lowered their cards confusedly at the sight of us. My guard jerked his thumb toward the stairs. ”Mikey, take the top. When the captain arrives, tell him Maid Dombegh is already here.”
”What's this, then?” said the one called John as my guard unlocked the door.
”She's to question the prisoners. I'll go in with her; you stay here.”
I didn't want him there but saw no immediate way to prevent it. ”You're coming in for my protection? Are they very dangerous?”
He laughed. ”Maidy, they're old men. You're going to have to speak loudly.”
The two knights sat up on their straw pallets, blinking at the light. I gave them half courtesy, keeping close by the door. They weren't as decrepit as reported. They were gray-haired and bony, but had a certain wiry toughness; if the brightness of their eyes was any indication, they were playing ”helpless old men” for everything they could.
”What have you brought us, lad?” asked the stouter one, who was bald and mustachioed. ”Do you supply your prisoners with women now, or is this some newfangled way of making us talk?”
He was impugning my virtue. I ought to have been offended, but for some reason the idea tickled me. That could be my next career: instrument of torture! Seducing prisoners, and then revealing my scales! They would confess out of sheer horror.
The guard turned red. ”Have some respect!” he bl.u.s.tered through his mustache. ”She's here on behalf of Captain Kiggs and Counselor Dombegh. You will answer her questions properly, or we will find harder quarters for you, Grandpa.”
”It's all right,” I said. ”Would you mind leaving us?”
”Maid Dombegh, you heard what he just said. It wouldn't be proper!”
”It will be perfectly fine,” I a.s.sured him in a soothing voice. ”Captain Kiggs will be down any minute now.”
He set the torch in a sconce and left me, grumbling. The room, which served as storage most of the time, contained some small casks; I pulled one up, sat down, and smiled warmly at the old men. ”Which of you is which?” I said, realizing I would already know their names if I were here legitimately. To my embarra.s.sment, I recognized the skinnier of the two, the one who hadn't spoken yet. He had shooed Orma away from me at that disastrous dragon procession five years ago and had helped Maurizio carry me home. I had grown a lot taller since then, and he was old; maybe he didn't remember me.
”Sir Karal Halfholder,” he said, sitting up straighter. He was dressed like a peasant, tunic, clogs, grubbiness, and all, but his mien was that of a well-bred man. ”My brother-in-arms, Sir Cuthberte Pettybone.”
It was Sir Cuthberte who'd taken me for a strumpet. He bowed, saying, ”My apologies, Maid Dombegh. I should not have been so boorish.”
Sir Karal attempted to preempt my next question: ”We'll never tell you where our brothers are hiding!”
”You'd have to seduce us first!” Sir Cuthberte twirled his mustache. Sir Karal glared at him, and Cuthberte cried, ”She's smiling! She knows I jest!”
I did know. For some reason, it kept being funny. Old men, hidden for decades with only other old men for company, found me worth flirting with. That was something.
”The Crown knows where your order is,” I said, suspecting that was likely true. ”I don't care about that; I want to know where you saw the dragon.”
”It came right up to our camp!” said Sir Karal. ”We said that!”
Oops. I'd have known that if I weren't lying. I tried to sound impatient: ”From which angle? From the north? The village? The wood?” Saints in Heaven, let there be a village and a wood nearby. In Goredd, both were a good bet but not guaranteed.
However, I'd got them thinking, so they didn't notice my ignorance. ”It was dark,” said Sir Karal, scratching the stubble on his skinny chicken neck. ”But you're right, the beast could be staying in the village as a saarantras. That hadn't occurred to us; we'd been looking to the limestone caves, south.”
My heart sank. If it was dark, they hadn't seen much. ”You're certain it was a dragon?”
They looked at me disdainfully. ”Maidy,” said Sir Karal, ”we fought in the wars. I was left punch in a dracomachia unit. I have soared through the sky, dangling by my harpoon from a dragon's flank while flaming pyria whizzed around me, scanning the ground desperately for a soft place to land when the beast finally caught fire.”
”We all have,” said Sir Cuthberte quietly, clapping his comrade on the shoulder.
”You don't forget dragons,” snarled Sir Karal. ”When I am blind and deaf, senile and stroke-addled, I will still know when I'm in the presence of a dragon.”
Sir Cuthberte smiled weakly. ”They radiate heat, and they smell of brimstone.”
”They radiate evil! My soul will know, even if body and mind don't work!”
His hatred hurt me more than it had any right to. I swallowed and tried to keep my voice pleasant: ”Did you get a good look at this particular dragon? We suspect we know who he is, but any confirming detail would help. Distinctive horn or wing damage, for example, or coloration-”
”It was dark,” said Sir Karal flatly.
”It had a perforation in its right wing,” offered Sir Cuthberte. ”Closest membrane to its body. Shape of a ... I don't know. A rat, I want to say. The way they hunch their backs when they eat.” He demonstrated, realized how silly he looked, and laughed.
I laughed back, and pulled out my charcoal pencil. ”Draw it on the wall, please.”
Both knights stared at the pencil, horror writ large on their faces. St. Masha and St. Daan. It was a draconian innovation.
Mercifully, they blamed not me but the peace. ”They infiltrate everything, these worms,” cried Sir Karal. ”They've got our women carrying their blasted devices as casually as smelling oils!”
Sir Cuthberte took it nonetheless and drew a shape upon the wall's graying plaster. Sir Karal corrected the shape. They squabbled a bit but finally settled on something that did, indeed, look like a rodent eating corn.
”That was his only distinguis.h.i.+ng mark?” I asked.
”It was dark,” said Sir Cuthberte. ”We were lucky to make out that much.”
”I hope it's enough.” Long experience with Orma told me the odds weren't good.
”Whom do you suspect it is?” said Sir Karal, his fists clenched in his lap.
”A dragon called Imlann.”
”General Imlann, who was banished?” asked Sir Cuthberte, looking unexpectedly delighted. The knights both whistled, long and low, producing an interval of rather apropos dissonance.
”Did you know him?”
”He led the Fifth Ard, didn't he?” Sir Cuthberte asked his fellow.