Chapter 89 - Try Not to Burn This One Down, Darcent
Leaving the dress shop and heading north to our appointment, I’d rarely seen Annalisa in such a good mood. While it’s true that the devilborn girl flitted from fits of excitement to deep melancholy and back as quick as the breeze could change, I’d rarely seen her simply content and focused on something.
“You just wait, I’ll be the most amazing at wearing dresses! Did you know they have competitions where ladies line up in corsets and get scores? I bet I’d win easily—maybe unless Mithra were there—but how long do you think it will take them to make the alterations? I don’t want to rush them, but I really want that dress. Why did you ask about masks? I don’t think we should do any fighting or stealing in that, it would be too difficult to move fast or fight or keep it clean but oh my stars, did you see the lace pattern?”
I only half listened. The conversation didn’t seem to require a second participant, except as a target. I imagined this was probably how her training dummies felt when she went to work with her combos. My mind was still elsewhere, unsure how to broach the subject of Lenise and Daggertongue to my partner. After another few minutes of hearing about the dress, I decided the best approach was the direct one.
“Anna,” I said, cutting her off.
She stilled, immediately on guard.
I told her what I’d learned about Lenise and Daggertongue. And laid out what I believed to be the merits of both secrecy and disclosure.
Annalisa believed only one of our choices had merit. And I certainly wasn’t prepared for the immediacy and no uncertain terms of her position.
A flash of pain erupted from my cheek, and I found the cobbles spinning up at me dangerously quickly. I sprawled across the street, barely able to move for the pain in my face. The world stopped making sense for a bit, and when I rolled over on my back and gasped up at the evening sky, Annalisa appeared over me. She was so angry she vibrated. The blue-black veins bulged on her forearms as she squeezed her fists. Her polished horns suddenly looked incredibly threatening.
She hadn’t even punched me. It had been an open-handed slap. And as soon as I pushed up to my knees, she dealt me one on the other cheek that sent me sprawling to the cobbles again.
“Anna, what the hells?” I shouted. We were almost to the cusp of the upper city, and people were staring. This wasn’t the downs, you can’t just assault people and get into fights near the upper city. Adventurers patrolled up here—strong ones. And we had bounties.
“How could you even consider,” hissed Annalisa.
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I scrambled back onto my feet before my devilborn partner could lay me flat again. “I have to consider everything, Annalisa. I’m trying to run this organization, and that means looking out for the people in it. Daggertongue isn’t someone we want as an enemy. Trust me, I’ve looked into him. He could squeeze us out of the downs in a heartbeat.”
“And that makes it ok to backstab your friends?” she shook her finger in my face. “I already told you. If you start to become the monster—if you go down that path… well, even looking down it is probably bad. What about Mithra, did you think of her? Everything she’s done for you—that she’s still doing—to keep Lenise safe? And you’d ruin everything just to buy yourself off? She’d kill you! And I don’t know if I’d want to stop her.”
She shook her head and turned away. “I thought you were better than that. Better than the rest of them.”
“The rest of who, Anna?”
She didn’t answer. She stalked off, back down the hill. “Let me know when you come to your senses,” she shouted back. “Until then, guard your own damn self. Try not to burn this one down, Darcent.”
Unsure whether she meant the library or our friendship, I watched the polished glare of her horns disappear back into the crowd. So, that was where she stood. This certainly made a bugbear’s furry cock of things.
I hefted my satchel, both cheeks stinging. Ignoring the stares, I pressed on toward the upper city—alone, this time. And perhaps feeling more alone than I had since the night my mother… well, you know the story.
The hill climbed as the sun dropped. Dragonmaw is, as ever, a city of the night. The first stars began to wink and I’m sure the astrologists were breaking their fasts at the Stargazers Guild. Beneath the waking light of the wane dragons, I made my way to the Royal Arcanists Repository, the biggest library in the upper city (though Madam Peaks’ had a larger and likely more enthusiastic clientele).
You might wonder why it’s called the Royal Arcanists Repository when there aren’t any royals to be had in Dragonmaw. To be candid, so was I. Maybe I’d ask.
The repository was near the university district, west of the noble quarter, but east of most of the mainstream religious temples. From the courtyard I could see all the way down to the sea, as well as both sides of the Sungate where the last beams of pink light beyond the horizon painted the base of the clouds over the water. I watched the light fade along with the stinging in my cheeks before approaching the library.
The doorman gave me the exact sort of look you’d expect a snobby upper city servant to give a lower city dregg: one that ran the entire length of his prodigious nose and jumped from the top of his curled lip down to where his opinion of me lay. I didn’t like him much, either, but I had business here.
“Are you lost, young man?” he asked.
I wished I could have hit him square in the eggs like I had the rude Lucitian doorman, but I’d already spotted four guards before I’d even hit the main entrance. Not pushover paladins, either. These had polished armor and pole axes. Books are valuable, and the collected works at the Royal Arcanists actually belonged mostly to the city’s upper-crust—on loan or lease to the society.
“I’m supposed to meet with the Lady Pelladine of Marks Hill,” I said, drawing a scrawled missive from my pack.
The doorman’s scowl deepened. “The Lady is a very busy woman whose time is not to be wasted,” he said.
I straightened the note and cleared my throat. “I’m also meant to to tell you, “Rory, stop being such a trullen sod and let them inside forthwith. I haven’t got all night, have I?” I lowered the note. “Are you Rory, then?
The man’s reddening face sunk into the stiff neck of his collar as he looked away.
“Welcome to the repository,” he mumbled. I stepped past him and through the threshold.