21. The Supreme

That night, he slept like an unquiet cat. At least at the beginning, because after Tahisran came back and launched into a long speech about where Azune had gone, he managed to cast himself into a more peaceful sleep. He didn’t even bother trying to remember the details: after tossing and turning in his straw mattress, the only thing he wanted to do was to be dead to the world for some hours. He dreamed that he was sitting on a hill, talking alone with Lusombra. The dream was pleasant, the black horse was smiling, and Dashvara felt free and happy. Everything was wonderful. Thus, when he began to hear knocks at the door, Dashvara covered himself with the cushion and growled with ill humor. He got to sleep some seconds more, only to wake up again, shaken by a merciless hand.

“Get up, steppeman!” Rowyn’s voice called out.

“I’m already awake,” Dashvara muttered, not even opening his eyes. It was too cruel. He wished he could punch the republican so he could continue talking with Lusombra, but the room was seething with noise. Lessi was laughing. Fayrah was chattering. Dashvara growled again, and once more, Rowyn shook him.

“All right already! I’m awake,” he sighed, sitting up.

Rowyn grinned.

“That’s the fourth time you repeat it. I hope for you that this time it’s true, because, if not, I was figuring on eating your doughnuts.”

Dashvara’s eyes suddenly widened.

“What? Doughnuts?”

Rowyn laughed and patted his shoulder before standing up.

“I should have started with that,” the kampraw commented to himself.

The doughnuts were delicious. Dashvara was already with the third one when he truly started to wake up.

“Azune has told me about your adventures yesterday,” the Pearl Brother communicated to him cheerfully, his arms folded behind his head. “You look just terrible with this tunic, you know?”

Chewing on, Dashvara lowered his gaze to the tight tunic. Rowyn was right.

“The other clothes are drying,” he only replied.

“That’s why I brought more with me.”

Dashvara observed the kampraw fixedly while this one was taking out a tunic and some pants from his bag. He bit his lips thoughtfully.

“Are you aware that I have no money right now to pay you for all these favors?”

Rowyn snorted.

“You won’t pay me with money.”

“So you admit you aren’t helping me selflessly?” Dashvara ventured.

Rowyn’s face darkened.

“Does it seem so strange to you that someone does something for you selflessly?”

Dashvara didn’t answer at once.

“No,” he said finally. “Not if that someone is a Xalya. But the foreigners I used to know, that is, the bandits and that kind of people, never do anything selflessly. I apologize if I offended you.”

Rowyn drummed his fingers on his forehead as if concealing a smile.

“You didn’t offend me, steppeman. I am a tolerant man. And now get dressed and let’s go to see the Supreme.”

“Can we go too?” Fayrah asked excitedly.

Dashvara gave her a piercing gaze.

“No.”

* * *

The headquarters of the Pearl Brotherhood was situated in a house that didn’t clash at all with the other ones. Located in the Dragon District—and, from what Rowyn said, not very far from the Court—its front was half-timbered with red lumbers, and its door was richly adorned. The same as most of them, actually.

Rowyn and Dashvara left the morning warm heat behind, and they went into a room with a long table set in the middle. There were more than twenty seats there, Dashvara evaluated. According to Rowyn, the Brotherhood hadn’t so many members.

“How many are you in all in the Brotherhood?” he asked out loud.

Rowyn shook his head, saying nothing, and Dashvara sighed.

“Is that a secret too?”

Rowyn smiled.

“Somehow,” he admitted. He pointed to a door at the back of the room. “Sheroda, the Supreme, is still in a meeting, but when this door opens, we will be able to go in. Sit down wherever you like.”

Dashvara glanced around, and as nothing drew his attention, he sat down.

“How many members are involved in that plan for wiping out the slavers?”

Rowyn swallowed saliva.

“We are not going to wipe out anybo—” He fell silent. “Please, steppeman, don’t ask me tricky questions.”

His answer struck Dashvara like a punch.

“You said you’re not going to wipe out the slavers? But didn’t you mean to put an end to them?”

Rowyn glimpsed at the closed door before answering:

“Put an end, yes. But through legal means.” He paused. “We aren’t warriors, steppeman. I am an investigator. I search for proofs, and I give them to the Supreme. And then, she decides what to do with them.”

Dashvara crossed his arms, pondering on his words.

“You mean… the city warriors themselves will take care to do away with the slavers?”

“They will arrest them and condemn them,” Rowyn confirmed.

“On the orders of the Court?”

“Yes, indeed. The urban cohorts will take care of all that. If it all turns out well, the arrest will work out without spilling even a drop of blood.”

Dashvara could not feel as optimistic as Rowyn.

“I suppose that attacking a Diumcilian man isn’t so difficult for the Tribunal of Dazbon, but what about the Faerecio?”

Rowyn stiffened.

“The—” He gulped. “Those… oh, er, well.”

Dashvara guessed the truth.

“Those won’t be punished, huh? Yeah. They are a patrician family. How could anyone attack them even though their Eternal Bird has flown away where the wind carried its feather?”

Rowyn had blushed, but he looked at him curiously when he heard the rhetorical question.

“What is the Eternal Bird?”

Dashvara suspected that Rowyn’s intention was to change the subject; all the same, he briefly explained to him what the Eternal Bird was.

“Dignity, confidence, and brotherhood,” Rowyn echoed, absorbed. “I like it.”

“Few people in their right mind do not like it,” Dashvara smiled.

Rowyn made as if to speak when, suddenly, the closed door opened, and a red-haired human in an orange tunic appeared, standing inside the doorway—his face was ashen, and there was a mad glint in his eyes. He grinned, baring all his teeth; two of them were of gold.

“Aha, lo and behold! The famous big mystery,” he laughed, crossing the door. His laugh was hoarse. Dashvara’s ears ground only at hearing it. He estimated his age. He was relatively young. Though his extravagant composure was so natural that Dashvara could have sworn he had spent fifty years improving it.

“Dashvara, may I introduce you to Axef,” Rowyn said. “The disintegrator. Axef, this is Dashvara of Xalya.”

“Oh, of course! Dashvara of Xalya, son of Pifpan and Tapia of Xalya, the mighty daft steppeman, prince of the fans, and fighter of—”

“Axef!” Rowyn thundered, reddened.

Before the Duke’s intervention, Dashvara would have gladly smashed that wizard’s face in. And after it, he would too. But he remembered he was in someone else’s house.

“—And fighter of the ring,” Axef concluded, looking very decent. “Or was it, ‘fighter of the limp’? Fighter of the bliss? I can’t recall. I don’t lie. Unless I lie because I don’t recall…”

“Don’t pay attention to him, Dash. He’s a jerk.”

Axef did not seem to take offense. He just smiled mockingly and tucked his hands into the pockets of his orange tunic. He looked like a rascal dressed like a fool. With a composure more feigned than real, Dashvara got up.

“The door is open. So I supposed we can go in now,” he hazarded.

Rowyn turned to Axef.

“Are they already gone?”

The wizard nodded, and assuming a thoughtful expression, he said:

“But even if they weren’t gone, I wouldn’t tell you. The idea!”

Dashvara shook his head. Is it me or did I get into some den full of mentally unbalanced people? Well, according to Aydin, I am unbalanced too after all… With Rowyn, he headed for the door.

“Let me guess, he is mad, isn’t he?” he whispered to the Duke.

Before answering, this one glanced at Axef; the wizard was still gazing at them from the other side of the room.

“Not quite. That’s the worst. But he’s happy making us believe it. Don’t take his words to heart: he is only testing you.”

Dashvara met the wizard’s smart eyes again, and he averted his own. I see. What a curious freak. They crossed a corridor in the dark, and Rowyn knocked on a half-open door.

“Come in.”

A cold breath went up Dashvara’s spine and an eerie feeling came over him. That voice was both authoritarian and soft; a voice that encourages you to know it but also to fear it. In the six years he had patrolled the Xalya lands, he had learned to pay attention to instinct. But he had also learned to overcome it when the circumstances required. So he silenced his small, cautious voice and followed Rowyn inside.

The room was utterly different from the other one. High and semicircular, it had white marble walls and large glazed windows through which the sunlight was shining. Dashvara blinked, and then he saw the silhouette sitting on a sort of throne. Like a queen of fairy tales. Arrayed in a splendid black dress.

“Come here, Xalya man,” Sheroda asked.

The Supreme had very beautiful golden eyes. A skin white like the foam, and a hair silvery like the Moon. She was like a…

“Not so much,” her rosy lips warned him with a thin smile.

Dashvara stopped about four paces away, blushing, and he took one pace back. He would have liked to take some more steps backwards, but he didn’t dare. He felt awkward, and he didn’t know why. Only Rowyn’s presence, behind him, relaxed him a bit.

“I am Sheroda, Supreme of the Pearl Brotherhood. Rowyn talked to me about you and about your actions in Rocavita. He wants you to work in his team about the Arviyag’s affair. And if I got it right, you, too, want to work with him. Am I right?”

She was direct, Dashvara commended mentally.

“That’s right. I want to punish those slavers and free my people.”

“A goal worthy of consideration,” Sheroda signified in a leisurely tone. “At this moment, we have four active members. Plus Axef. Another one would be welcome.”

So the mad wizard is the acolyte, Dashvara remembered. The rest of the members had to be the reformed thief and the retired dragon-monk. With five persons, it certainly was quite difficult to enter the slavers’ hideout by force to neutralize them. Sheroda continued:

“Rowyn has suggested that I, with your consent, name you as an acolyte of the Pearl Brotherhood. They say your people were destroyed by an alliance of savages,” she whispered mildly. Dashvara could even feel his pitiful hand on his cheek… but that didn’t make sense, because Sheroda had not moved from her throne. “So you have no place to go to,” she went on. “Rowyn told me you are a great warrior, aren’t you?”

Dashvara nodded. He qualified:

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“A warrior, at least. Greatness is subjective.”

Sheroda smiled.

“Look. Our Brotherhood has had a lot of practice in assisting the lost souls. These are not members of the Brotherhood, not even acolytes, but they receive our protection whenever they need it.”

Dashvara was now sunk in her golden eyes, and he was barely paying attention to her. The Supreme was smiling in such a lovely way…

Dashvara’s eyes fluttered, and he swore silently. You could have warned me, Rowyn, that I was going to meet a bloody witch… He was almost sure that she was bewitching him. Unless he was just imagining it?

“So, then,” Sheroda said, concluding, “if you want to punish the slavers, I invite you to join our Brotherhood. Being an acolyte supposes no irrevocable compromise. You can leave when you like. In exchange for your services, you will receive money and protection.”

Sounds like quite a good deal, Dashvara acknowledged in his mind. He withdrew his gaze toward the glazed windows, and he sighted a bird perched on a tree branch. For an instant, he came back lucidly to the world.

“So? What do you say?” the Supreme asked impatiently.

The last thing he wanted to do at this moment was to turn his eyes back to Sheroda. However, he did.

“So I will be able to take part in your plans of rescue, right?”

A teasing sparkle lit Supreme’s eyes.

“Right.”

“Good. And… from what I’ve seen, in this town, you need coins to pay for board and lodging, so… You said you will pay me, didn’t you?”

He heard Rowyn’s snort. Sheroda gave the hint of a smile, and without any reason, Dashvara gave it back at her… and then erased his smile, exasperated.

“I did. But, of course, the pay depends on our patron’s satisfaction,” the Supreme answered with composure.

Oh, the Patron. Of course. Dashvara did not ponder longer: he needed money, and it was in his interest to be on good terms with the Pearl Brotherhood. He suspected that, being alone, he was as much likely to save his people as to sing being mute.

“It will be a pleasure to work with you,” he finally said.

The beautiful golden eyes gleamed.

“That’s fine. Rowyn will tell you what to do. Just a point: you work with them. And you work for me. Don’t forget that,” she whispered. “Welcome to the Brotherhood.”

* * *

“Who is she?”

They were walking along a street, and Dashvara was following Rowyn, not even worrying about where this one was guiding him now. He was still as if spellbound by two golden eyes, even though these were not in front of him anymore.

“You mean the Supreme?” Rowyn said. “Well. Nobody knows for sure. They say she is a witch, but she says she isn’t. She bewitches like one, though. I think you’ve already noticed it.”

“Mph. And how. For a second, I even thought you had poisoned me with your doughnuts. Her eyes are inhuman.”

“Well, you know, nobody knows for sure if she’s actually a human,” Rowyn smiled. “Tildrin says she comes from beyond the Walker Ocean. He loves fantasizing about the Supreme’s past. But, in fact, we know very little about her.”

Dashvara dodged a little girl who was running, a wide smile on her face, and he asked:

“Tildrin is one of the members, isn’t he?”

“Aye.”

“The dragon-monk or the reformed thief?”

Rowyn grinned.

“The reformed thief. I’m going to introduce you to them now. I asked them to go to the refuge. They must be waiting for us now.”

“What?” Dashvara looked at him, confused. “Wait a minute, the refuge? But didn’t we just leave it?”

“No. That was the Supreme’s house,” Rowyn explained, “the Brotherhood’s headquarters. I meant the refuge of our band. Once there, I’ll explain to you what we’re going to do.”

This time, Dashvara had to dodge a tall woman; and he nearly crashed into a militiaman as impressively bulky as that Shamvirz of the White Hand. Rowyn tugged at his arm as the guard was growling:

“Hey! Look where you’re going!”

Dashvara snorted, as tense as a bowstring. That noisy hive of activity was even more bewildering and overwhelming than the Supreme’s eyes. He could have sworn he had seen, that morning, more different people than there actually were in the whole steppe. Minutes later, Rowyn tugged again at his arm when he almost received a plank blow in his face: the carpenter who was carrying it was a reckless fool, and some passersby raised their voices. At last, they went into an empty alley.

“Eternal Bird, that’s insane,” Dashvara muttered.

He heard a giggle behind him, and he turned, surprised. It was Axef. He hadn’t even noticed that the wizard had followed them.

“You’ll get used to it,” Rowyn assured, slowing the pace. “Come on. We’re almost there.”

I’ll get used to it, eh? Dashvara doubted it very much. Mainly because, as soon as he had rescued the prisoners, he would have to go on with that damned revenge. He snorted to himself. So you don’t want to punish the murderers anymore? Of course, you’re far from the steppe, most of your people are dead, and you have no one to remind you of your duties as a firstborn son. Except for Aligra… I should have delegated her the title of firstborn. I’m sure she would come out better than I would.

Rowyn stopped in front of a door.

“Here we are,” he announced.

He gave some knocks, and seconds later, the figure of a gray-haired, wrinkled-faced ternian appeared in the doorway; he wore a blue tunic richly adorned.

“Duke!” he grinned. “I was starting to believe that the Supreme had eaten you alive.”

Rowyn gently pushed Dashvara inside while replying:

“Didn’t you say, some days before, that the Supreme never eats? Let me introduce you to Dash, our new acolyte. Is Kroon here?” he asked.

The ternian nodded and pointed at a small shape that was sitting in an armchair, apparently asleep, in front of a table plunged in shadows. Dashvara felt his heart in his mouth when he saw the dragon-monk. The individual didn’t have legs, his face was ravaged by scars, and a white blindfold was hiding one of his eyes. The other one was shut. It was quite hard to guess what sajit race he belonged to.

Good, fine, he thought. A mad wizard, an old thief, a one-eyed cripple… The team was truly assorted.

“My name is Tildrin,” the ternian introduced himself with a smile while Axef was closing the door, plunging the room into darkness. “So you’re the man who’s going to cover our backs while we steal the papers, eh?”

The question confounded him.

“The papers?”

Rowyn cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Sit down. Can I draw the curtains a bit?”

“No!” Kroon snorted sharply, opening the eye.

Rowyn smiled, sarcastic.

“You are not so asleep, after all.”

“A tallow candle, perhaps?” Axef suggested, sitting down at the table. “Or a shadow swaddle for covering Kroon’s eye.”

The dragon-monk growled, and his eye detailed Dashvara.

“So you are the barbarian from the steppe.”

Barbarian yourself. Dashvara breathed out silently.

“And you must be the dragon-monk of Sifra,” he replied.

Kroon made a face and stretched a hand to snatch a bottle.

“Sit down. Duke, you too. Let’s get down to business.”

“Would you like a bit of wine, brother?” Tildrin offered.

Quite surprised, Dashvara realized that the ternian was looking at him; he shook his head. On the contrary, Rowyn helped himself to a cup filled to the brim.

“Where’s the Poisoned-woman?” Axef asked in a tone of voice almost normal. The wizard was twiddling nervously with a tassel of his long tunic.

“She couldn’t come,” Rowyn merely replied.

Dashvara felt curious.

“Who’s the Poisoned-woman?”

“Nobody. Axef calls Azune so.” Rowyn turned to Kroon. “How’s the plan going?”

The dragon-monk drew a folded scroll out of one of his pockets and threw it on the table as if he were dealing out cards. Rowyn flattened the parchment, and Dashvara craned his neck, intrigued. The plan showed several buildings with their inner rooms. Some colored lines crossed it.

“I’m sorry, Kroon, but we need a candle,” Rowyn apologized, lighting one. “It would be kind of stupid if we get in a muddle for so little.”

Kroon grumbled and covered the other eye with another cloth. Axef suggested bringing him a bag to put it over his head, to which the monk replied he could go jump in the sea with it. With smiling eyes, the wizard fell silent, dove into his pocket, took hold of a small knife, and began to file his nails while Tildrin and Rowyn studied the plan carefully. Dashvara got impatient.

“Can you explain to me what the plan does represent?”

Rowyn nodded, and without withdrawing his gaze from the scroll, he pointed at a rectangle.

“There’s where we’re going to steal the proofs. Here” —his finger drew a circle— “you have Arviyag’s private rooms. And this” —he drew a bigger circle— “is the building the slavers owned in the Docks District, with the ‘commercial’ warehouse. There’s where they have confined the twenty-five prisoners. But, anyway, that doesn’t matter for now: what matters is to steal Arviyag’s cash book and his correspondence with the Master and the Faerecio. Something that might charge him and scandalize the Court enough to make them deliver an order to search Arviyag’s house.”

At first sight, the objective seemed good enough to him, but in any case, Dashvara’s attention had been caught by something said in the middle of the explanation.

“Did you say twenty-five prisoners?” he gasped.

Rowyn gave a glance at Tildrin, and the thief nodded.

“Approximately. I counted them while they were getting off the wagons. I may have missed one, or I may have counted one twice. The Duke says they seemed to be less than twenty. Azune says the same as I do.”

Twenty-five Xalyas… Dashvara felt the corners of his own mouth stretching into a quivering smile. That was the best news he had heard since he had left the dungeon.

“But yet, we aren’t sure that all of them are Xalyas,” Tildrin added.

Go ahead! Come and dampen my hopes, you thief.

“What the heck! They are prisoners, and that’s all we need to know,” Kroon replied, taking off the blindfolds from over his eyes. Apparently, his both eyes could perfectly see, though he still narrowed them into slits. “This time, they won’t reach Diumcili. Ha! That rotten devil will die of frustration when the cohorts show up in his house.” A sardonic smile furrowed his awful visage. Echoing him, Axef let out a giggle that covered Dashvara’s forehead with a cold sweat.

Rowyn cleared his throat.

“Let’s get back to the point. There are about twenty men in that building, and among them, there are about a dozen mercenaries. All of them, including the retainers, come from Diumcili. Right, Tildrin?”

“Right.”

“There’s a main entrance, and also a service door that leads to the warehouse. There was once a wooden staircase leading to the flat roof, but it has been destroyed not long ago. All the windows are barred, including those of the upper floor. By day, the doors are guarded, and by night, they latch everything. The second floor is what interests us,” Rowyn said, “because there’s where Arviyag’s office is, just over the main entrance.”

Kroon mumbled.

“I’m getting the impression we’ve already heard all of this, don’t you think, Duke? Now can we proceed?”

“I was repeating it for Dash,” Rowyn defended himself.

“Permit me,” Dashvara intervened. “Why don’t we ask directly the urban cohorts to search the house? As you seemed to like the legality and all that stuff—”

“Precisely,” the Duke cleared his throat as the others smiled. “We can’t send the cohorts to search anybody’s house without having some kind of proof beforehand. It’s quite obvious. You need a document capable of causing a real scandal to activate the bureaucracy and carry out a raid of that magnitude. Otherwise, you can be shouting at the judges the greatest truths every day, they won’t pay any attention to you.”

Dashvara made an eloquent face to show his opinion about the matter. Those civilized people… he thought. Tildrin intervened, obviously excited:

“Look, Dash, the goal is simple. Now we only need a plan.” He smiled, baring his old, yellow teeth. “The idea is to enter there when Arviyag isn’t at home. You know—from what I’ve found out by eavesdropping on the guards in the inns, he sleeps in his office. So we have to get him out, in one way.”

“Or another,” Axef remarked. “There’s not only one way to solve a problem, Til. What a narrow mind you have.”

No one responded, and Dashvara supposed that, eventually, not encouraging him to go on talking nonsense was the best behavior.

“Yeah, okay…” Rowyn meditated. “In four days, the Stairs races will be celebrated. The races last the whole night,” he explained for Dashvara. “And Lord Faerecio is an enthusiastic follower of this sport. Arviyag will accompany him, and he’s likely to go out with most of his guards.” He paused. “Speaking of stairs, what about the ladder? How’s it going?” he inquired.

“Ready,” Tildrin declared, grinning broadly.

Rowyn looked pleased.

“Things are taking a turn for the better, it seems. Let me explain to you, Dash. We’re going to get into the building from the top, through the flat roof. We have crafted a ladder with a length of forty feet. In principle, it should be enough. On the roof… as far as I know, there’s no guard. Right, Tildrin?”

“Right, Duke. That was my impression, at least. But, as you already know, my sight isn’t very reliable.”

“Yes… Well. All the flat roofs have a trapdoor,” Rowyn continued. “This one will probably be locked. So—” He hesitated, and he looked at the wizard. “Axef, you will go with Dash and me, and you will open it.”

“And how, if I’m not allowed to cast spells?” the wizard objected bitingly.

“Axef… You said you’d do it. Will you?”

“I will, I will. Though, who knows, actually. I don’t like the ladders.” As his three friends cast him a dark look, he giggled, amused, as if he had reached his aim. “Duke, if the ladder collapses, I swear I will blow you up in the air.”

Rowyn paled.

“It won’t collapse, Axef. Besides, you are no levitator. Remember? You are a disintegrator.”

“Oh. Does it matter? With an explosion, everything blows up.” And he concluded serenely, “Truth to tell, your scheme is an amazing and dreadful garbage.”

Once again, they ignored him. The scheme didn’t seem so bad to Dashvara, except for a detail: he would have rather concentrated his attention on freeing his folk and not on stealing some damned papers.

“Good,” Kroon said. He stretched a hand and took the candle. He blew it out, plunging the room again into the dark. “Much better like that. So you two are going to go in there with the barbarian. What about Azune?”

“Someone has to retrieve the ladder while we are inside, and those will be Tildrin and her,” Rowyn determined.

The crippled monk raised his eyebrows and let out an amused and low “hoho”.

“I’m afraid that won’t be to her liking, Duke.”

Rowyn assumed a helpless expression, not looking too much concerned.

“That’s life. Now we only have to pray to the White Dragon that we will be lucky and that we’ll find those documents at the first attempt. If we don’t find them in the office… we’ll have to find another way to get your people out of there, steppeman.”

There was a silence. Kroon was twiddling with the little of his beard that remained on his wretched face. Tildrin was scratching the table with one of his ternian claws. Rowyn was piercing the scroll with his eyes as if trying to memorize it. As for Axef, he was braiding one of his red locks, putting a dreaming face.

Well, what a team I have here… Dashvara smiled. Finally, he spoke:

“I have no intentions to wait four days. My brothers could embark in the meantime. And what interests me is my brothers, not Arviyag’s destiny. I’ve got an idea.”

Rowyn and Tildrin looked at each other, teasingly.

“Steppeman,” Rowyn said calmly, “these things aren’t done overnight. That sort of operations have to be planned and planned over and over, and…”

Dashvara cut him off. To be sure, his idea seemed to be drawn from a fairy tale, but he bet it would work:

“You see. In Rocavita, while I was trying to find out where the Xalya women were, I passed by the Faerecio’s house, and I overheard a conversation between Arviyag and the house owner. From what I heard, Arviyag wants to get married to the daughter of that Faerecio, but this daughter, Wanissa, is in love with someone else. I propose to go and see that young woman and suggest she write a letter to Arviyag asking him for a date. How do you feel about it?”

Kroon frowned, Rowyn and Tildrin made a reluctant face, and Axef breathed out, shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling.

“I think you’ve just deserved the place among us,” the wizard declared in a strangely earnest voice.

Rowyn gave a hint of a smile, erased it, got back to smile, and finally shrugged his shoulders.

“It could work,” he confessed. “The Docks District is about twenty minutes away from the Beautiful District by coach. That should give us about an hour, at the very least. Who takes care of it?”

“I will,” Dashvara assured, standing up. “If you only give me the address of the Faerecio’s house.”

The four of them suddenly squirmed on their seats, nervous.

“Wait a moment. Are you planning to go there right now?” Rowyn inquired.

Dashvara shrugged, surprised.

“Do you have something more urgent to do? I suspect that writing that kind of letter may require several hours.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that she send the letter to set a date this very night?” Tildrin asked, alarmed. His wrinkled cheeks had slumped down.

“We are not prepared yet, Dash,” Rowyn explained patiently. “Do sit down.”

Dashvara frowned.

“And what do you have to prepare? The ladder is ready. According to you all, the wizard is able to open the trapdoor. Then we only have to put things in practice, don’t you think?”

Rowyn swallowed, a deep wrinkle furrowing his brow. Tildrin’s head dandled, and Kroon stared at him thoughtfully.

“The barbarian is right,” this one suddenly said. “You’re driving me crazy with those useless chatters of yours. Let’s go!” he shouted briskly.

Dashvara almost expected him to stand up. But, of course, he couldn’t.

“Honestly, I don’t know if…” Rowyn vacillated.

Then, Dashvara understood. That group, as Rowyn had pointed out, had no warriors—except Kroon, perhaps, but obviously, he wasn’t one anymore. They probably had never risked their life getting into a den full of slavers that would make no bones about killing them if they found them in their house. Dashvara recalled his first battle; skillful with the saber, and proud like a fool, he had stood astounded in front of a red nadre foaming at the mouth. He had only managed to kill the small biped dragon when he had realized he was going to die if he hesitated just a second more.

“It’s a lost bird that hesitates too much,” Dashvara sighed patiently. “Where do the Faerecio live?”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Axef who answered:

“In the Beautiful District. Blue Lady Street. It’s a huge mansion with blue and golden stripes on the edge of the windows. Run and fly, brave knight, for tonight the flower dies,” he sentenced.

“They won’t let you go in,” Rowyn intervened. “They will never let a stranger talk to the Faerecio’s daughter. Forget it, Dash. We have to find another way to do it.”

Dashvara wavered.

“And what about Almogan Mazer? Where does he live?”

Kroon raised an eyebrow.

“Al? He’s the secretary of the Faerecio. What does he have to do with—?” Then he understood, and his disfigured face lit up. “Ah!”

Rowyn narrowed an eye.

“Ah, what? I didn’t get it. Does it mean you know that Almogan Mazer?”

“I know him. He’s the son of a comrade of mine, an ancient dragon-monk that died in an orc attack. I myself helped to pay for his last year of studies so that he could be graduated. He lives here, in the Dragon District. In the Liberty Square. Just next to a gambling house. That boy—” He smiled. “Ah. Don’t say hello to him for me. I am supposed to be dead, got it?”

Dashvara did not ask for a reason.

“Got it. If all goes well, I’ll be back right away.”

“Hey!” Kroon called him when he was already laying a hand on the door handle. “And not even a word about the Pearl Brotherhood. You only talk about the slavers, got it?”

Dashvara rolled his eyes.

“Got it.”

The cripple’s narrowed eyes sparkled, approving.

“Good barbarian.”