Patricia Briggs - Hurog 02 - Dragon Blood

DRAGON BLOOD

Patricia Briggs

For Michael Enzweiler, Mary and Bob Kerns, Ann Peters (aka Sparky), and Kaye Roberson; my

reading, writing, and riding buddies.

1—TISALA IN ESTIAN

It takes many years of hard work and dedication to produce a competent torturer. Young men just don't

want to take the time to learn the craft.

—Lioth of Edelbreck, Royal Torturer

"It's just like skinning a rabbit," the old man said to his grandson. There was strength in his grip that

belied the age on his face as his sharp knife removed another sliver of flesh from Tisala's finger.

"I've never skinned a rabbit alive." The boy looked ill, like a newly blooded recruit, thought Tisala.

The old man lost all patience with him. "Don't be an idiot. Now watch."

The next move of the knife forced Tisala's attention back to her body. Eventually she would tell the old

man what he wanted to know, but if she could wait long enough, they could trust none of what she said.

But she'd only been there something under two days and already her body ached and her mind flinched

away from what had been done to her.

"What do you know about Alizon's rabble, little girl? Tell me and I can quit hurting you," he crooned as

his knife worked its magic. "I don't like hurting little girls, but you are hiding something our king needs to

know. A brother shouldn't try to hurt his own kin. What Alizon is doing is wrong and you know it. All

you need to do is tell me who's helping him and I can stop."

She didn't fear death, not even death by torture. Death was a constant companion in the battlefield, as

often a friend as an enemy. Betrayal, though, betrayal was truly frightening. Best she die fast, before she

could hurt someone she cared about. She'd bide her time and see if she could use her tongue as a goad

to make the torturer slip. Someone had once told her that her tongue was her most formidable weapon,

and it was one they hadn't taken from her.

"How can youdo this all day?" asked the boy passionately. "Grandfather, cannot the mages make a

person talk?"

The old man snorted. "The mages can make a person say anything the mages want him to, but they can't

get real information from magic. Good information comes only from men like me. We save lives on the

battlefield, give our king his victories."

"Why are you doing this one here, instead of in the castle?" Bravado, not curiosity, sparked his question.

Tisala could tell that he knew the answer already.

"For secrecy." The old man's voice trembled, betrayed by age.

The boy sneered. "Because if his precious nobles knew what we did here to a noble woman, they'd join

Alizon's rebellion. Torturing a weak woman is filthy work, unworthy of the king's torturer. He'll get rid of

you, too, Grandfather, when you're done here."

Quite likely,thought Tisala.

"I do what I am told, boy. I am the king's man." The old man was so agitated, he slipped with the knife

and blood cascaded down her arm and over his hand.

The boy looked at the mess, swallowed hard, then turned and ran, shutting the heavy wooden door

behind him, leaving the old man distracted from his work, cursing the mother that raised her boy to be

weak and foolish.

Tisala almost couldn't believe the old master was so stupid, but he continued to look at the door with the

knife in his blood-slick grip—so near to her hand, held only by his inattentive clasp. Tisala never waited

for second chances.

She twisted her wrist, breaking his grip, and then drove her shoulder forward. She caught the hand that

held the knife and used it to slice the old man's throat.

Tied to the bench she lay on, she couldn't slow the old man's body down as it fell, nor move out of the

way of the blood gushing from his ruined throat. But she held on to his hand with her own, damaged and

bleeding though it was. Once the body hung limply, she slowly shifted her grip from his hand to the knife.

For a terrible moment, she thought the knife was going to slip from her weak grasp, and she'd be stuck

tied to the table. But when the old man's arm slid away, the knife was still clutched desperately in her

hand.

The knife, small but sharp, cut through the ropes as easily as it had sliced through her skin. Her body

moved sluggishly, stiff from being tied too long, and weak from shock and the indignities visited upon it.

She ignored her aches as best she could, and she found a bit of rag to wrap around her hand.

No one ran in to investigate the sound the body had made. Hope rose a notch higher as Tisala weighed

her chances.

The boy had said they were not in the castle, but she knew better man to trust anything she heard in a

place like this. Still, if it were not true, then she might as well slit her own throat now. She was hardly in

any shape to walk unnoticed through the royal halls. Maybe the boy had been right.

The hope of escape made her fumble with the crude bandaging on her hand.

Where could she go? She had to make the right decisions but her thoughts flowed like mud.

She had friends here in Estian who would hide her.

If someone followed her tracks through the city—very possible in the condition she was in—she would

be sentencing her friends to death.

She couldn't afford to run home to Callis in Oranstone on her own. If she went home now, she'd be

signing her father's death warrant. Their public estrangement, ostensibly because she was tired of her

father abiding by his oaths of loyalty to the king, was the only thing that kept her father out of Jakoven's

cells. If he saw what Jakoven's man had done to her, he'd start a war on his own—and the time was not

right yet.

She pulled herself back to the immediate situation.Think, Tisala, think. Five Kingdoms under

Jakoven's rule, surely there is someplace to hide.

Outside of the city, Tallven was firmly in the hands of the High King Jakoven, whose family name it bore.

Tallven was all grasslands, no mountains to hide in. To the south was Oranstone, where she couldn't go

because of her father.

East was Avinhelle, and she had acquaintances there, but four years ago Avinhellish lords had conspired

to betray the Kingdoms. Caught and humbled by fines and hangings, the remaining lords would hand her

over as soon as they realized who she was in hopes of demonstrating their loyalty to the king.

West was Seaford, but she didn't know many people there. Seaforders were sailors and they explored

the oceans, leaving politics to land-bound folk.

North … Shavigmen were coldhearted savages. She remembered seeing a troop of Shavigmen when

she was a very young child, their pale hair strung out behind them as they charged down upon a hapless

village on their monstrous horses. Remembered the cries of terror of her countrymen. "Shavig," they

called. "Shavig."Shavig. She shivered.

"Barbarian?" laughed Ward, pushing his exotically pale hair out of his eyes. "Tisala, we're stubborn,

obnoxious, and coarse. But we're hardly barbarians. We evencookour food … if it's convenient."

Ward of Hurog. She had a sudden vivid image of him the last time she'd seen him, his sword red with

Vorsag blood. He was strong, strong enough to stand up to King Jakoven if need be. Moreover he was

not involved in the king's half brother Alizon's rebellion. He lived in a keep on the coast, not too far from

the Tallvenish border. Surely she could find it.

Better yet, she had information for him—a payment of sorts for helping her. She slipped on the old man's

shoes to protect her feet and took his cloak off the wall. She would have taken his clothing as well, but

death had released more than just blood. Wrapping the cloak around her nakedness, she decided she

could steal clothing before she left the city.

She opened the door and climbed up a long flight of stairs to another door. She opened it, too,

expecting to find a hall or another room, but there was fresh night air and a set of stone steps that led up

into a tidy alley.

The guard who stood in front of the door didn't even turn around, his eyes scanning the rooftops and the

shadows.

"He'll learn, Master Edelbreck. Boys grow up," he said in the flat, nasal tones of an Estian native.

He didn't live long enough to understand that it hadn't been the torturer who'd opened the door behind

him. The knife was very sharp, and Tisala took the guard's belt and sheath to carry it. His knife was

crude, an eating utensil rather than a weapon and she left it on the ground beside the body. Leaving the

sword was a more difficult decision. She longed for the reassurance of its weight, but in Tallven, only

armsmen and nobles carried swords.

Swordless, Tisala disappeared into the maze of Estian, leaving no trail for the king's men to follow.

2—WARDWICK AT HUROG

I've found that after the harvest is finished, I have time for renewing old acquaintances and discussing

politics.

"You're cheating," Oreg said, and pain seared down my vision, weakening me until the flame I'd lit on the

bowl of water flickered a sad, faded yellow and died. "I told you not to draw on Hurog—you might find

yourself somewhere else when you need magic, and then where would you be?"

I wiped sweat off my forehead and glared at him. He looked more like a young man with dark hair and

pale violet eyes than an old dragon, but appearances often lie—something I've found to be useful myself.

Oreg looked young and vulnerable, and I looked big and dumb. Neither happened to be true.

Oreg ignored my wrath and nodded at the bowl. "Try it again, Ward."

He maintained the shield that separated me from Hurog's magic, and the pain made it difficult to work

what power I had left. Losing touch with Huroghurt.

"Concentrate,Ward."

Over the past few years I'd grown to hate those words. But working magic with Oreg had become my

refuge when the pressures of running Hurog grew too great. It's not easy to rebuild a keep.

Technically, Hurog, lands and keep, belonged to my uncle, Duraugh. But four years ago, my uncle

proclaimed me Hurogmeten in my dead father's place. Ironically it was Hurog, not my uncle's richer

estate, Iftahar, that gave him power to do so—for Hurog, which had lain in ruins by my own actions, was

the heart of Shavig, northernmost of the Five Kingdoms of Tallvenish Rule. If my uncle, Duraugh of

Hurog, called me Hurogmeten, then all of Shavig was prepared to go to war in defense of that

proclamation.

King Jakoven, unwilling to begin a civil war when his seat was so uncertain on the throne, ignored

Hurog. I stayed on Hurog land, where ignoring me was easier.

But even if my uncle had not returned Hurog to me, it would still have been mine, by bond of blood and

bone.

I looked at the bowl of water and envisioned a flame roaring from the surface. My world narrowed to

the water in the bowl. Something shifted in my head, and the stone bowl cracked as flame rained to the

floor borne by a sheet of water. Power roared from the soles of my feet through the hair on the top of my

head, and I shook with the effort of redirecting it back to where it had come.

When at last I stood empty, I realized the sound I heard was Oreg laughing.

He waved at the fire and it dissipated, leaving only a damp spot on the flagstone floor of the guard

tower.

"If you can break through my shielding," he said, still fair hiccuping with laughter, "I suppose there's a fair

chance you can pull magic from Hurog wherever you happen to be."

I felt a surge of triumph replace the emptiness, and I grinned at him. "I broke your magic?"

"Hurogbroke through my spell when you called it," he corrected, and his humor gave way to

bemusement.

I picked up the pieces of the bowl and set them on a small table. "Hurog's magic feels different to me

than it did before I killed you," I said. I knew it sounded odd, but I never forgot that I had killed him. He

just hadn't died the way we both had expected him to.

"Different how?" He perched on the edge of the only stool in the tower. We'd furnished it sparsely so

that there would be less to burn when my magic went awry. The tower was one of six on the wall

surrounding the keep proper, so there was only stone nearby. The scorched bits of rock on the tower

wall proved the wisdom of Oreg's choice of classroom. Almost four years of work and I still had

occasional, and spectacular, miscalculations.

"Do you remember Menogue?" I asked. The hill with Aethervon's temple stood deserted outside of

Estian—deserted by people, that is. We'd had a vivid demonstration that Aethervon hadnot left the holy

temple when his priests had died a few centuries ago.

"Yes."

"The magic here at Hurog isn't as focused as that was, but I sometimes feel as if there's some intelligence

behind it." I looked at him. "Something that might break your shielding when I called for it. It's gotten

stronger the past few months, ever since you taught me how to separate my magic from Hurog's."

Oreg's eyebrows pulled together. "Interesting. Has the connection between you and the land altered?"

I shook my head. "Not that I've noticed."

I left Oreg in the tower and crossed the bailey to the keep. I had a while before arms practice, and

whenever I had a spare minute, I worked on the keep.

Once Hurog had been made entirely of blackstone, but many of the stones had shattered when Oreg's

death had destroyed the keep and its walls. Blackstone was expensive, and when we started rebuilding,

there had been little gold to buy it with. Whatever quarry had supplied the original builder with stone was

lost to time, always supposing that he'd gotten the rock from somewhere nearby, as was

customary—Oreg didn't remember one way or the other.

But Hurog had an old granite quarry, so we'd used granite instead and the result was … odd. Black

pockmarked with gray made the keep much less imposing, and part of me regretted the loss of the old

keep bitterly.

We'd rebuilt the inner curtain walls, except for a properly secure gatehouse. Instead we had only a

primitive set of wooden gates while our blacksmith and our armorer labored mightily to supply the

ironwork we needed. Most of the outside of the keep had been finished as well. Our progress had been

unusually quick because of the aid of the dwarves, but I suspected that it wouldn't be completely rebuilt

until my body was dust in the grave. The keep wasn't overly large by the standards of the Five

Kingdoms, but neither was the workforce we had to rebuild with. The outer curtain wall was no more

than a pile of rubble enclosing nearly thirty acres of land. I hadn't even had the heart to begin on it.

The harvest this year had been the best in memory, aided in no little part by the disappearance of the salt

creep, which had been growing in the best of the fields since before my great-grandfather's time.Magic,

whispered the people, and looked at me in awe.Dragon bones , I thought, and hoped the wheat we

harvested wouldn't poison the person who ate it. It hadn't last year, or the year before. Nor, to my relief,

did it seem to have any other unusual properties.

With harvest over, while others hunted for meat or sport, I worked on rebuilding the keep with whoever

wanted to help. The dwarves came and went at their own whim—and there were none here now. Two

days a week, I paid for a work party, but even with good harvests Hurog wasn't rich. We'd finished the

roof and the inner supporting walls of the keep last winter, but it was still mostly just a shell of

half-finished rooms.

From the inside, the great hall looked much as it had in my father's day, since I'd been firm on keeping

the granite where it didn't show inside. The wall with the family curse written on it had taken the most

time. Finding the correct stones and setting them in proper order was somewhat more taxing than the

court ladies' puzzles, since each of the pieces weighed over a hundred pounds, and several stones had

been smashed when Hurog fell.

My uncle thought I was foolish to work so hard on it, since the curse, which predicted Hurog's fall to the

Stygian Beast of mythology, had already been broken. My brother, Tosten, said I did it because I'd been

instrumental in breaking the curse. But I hadn't realized, until I saw Oreg's face, that I'd done it to protect

him from the too-rapid changes of the past few years. When you're over a millennia old, change, even for

the better, is a hard thing. And it was he, as much as I, who had broken the curse.

I touched the wall lightly with one hand and bent to pick up a grout bucket. For the past few weeks,

we'd been working on the floors. One of the Blue Guard, an Avinhellish man, was the son of a mason.

He'd taken one look at the cracked mess left on the floor of the great hall after the keep fell and declared

it unfixable. If I'd known then the amount of work the stupid floor was going to be, I'd have timbered it,

or even just left it dirt. It took us months to get the floor level enough for our mason. I think he took

covert enjoyment in giving me orders.

The main doors of the keep were awaiting hinges capable of supporting their great weight, so there was

nothing to slow the boy who barreled into the great hall. He stopped in front of me and opened his

mouth, but he couldn't get a word out for lack of breath.

"Take it slow, boy," I said. We waited for a long moment and several false starts before he could speak.

Meanwhile, I examined him for clues to his identity.

He was clothed rather well, even for a freeholder's son. The woolen trousers were newly dyed, and the

shirt was linen—a cloth that had to be purchased, as flax didn't grow in our climate. The boy looked like

Atwater's get, tall with dark eyes that swallowed the light.

"Sir, there's bandits, sir. Down by Da's farm. He sent me here to get you."

He was covered in sweat, and once he'd gotten his message out, he had to give his all to breathing again.

"Atwater is your father?" I asked, and he nodded.

I always knew when there was trouble brewing on Hurog land. Oreg said it was because I was tied to it

by blood right, and told me that several of my distant ancestors had the same tie to the land. Hurog

spoke to me—when I listened.

A swift touch of magic showed me that there was no fighting near Atwater's farm now, which meant that

the bandits had been driven off. If Atwater or one of his family had been killed, I'd have known about it.

They belonged to Hurog in a way that had nothing to do with law and everything to do with blood.

"Don't fret, boy," I said. "Atwater's been fighting bandits longer than I've been alive. Let's get my horse,

shall we?"

In the end there were three of us following the boy. He plainly thought we needed more; I thought we

could do with less. Rides with Oreg and my brother were always more interesting than pleasant.

My brother, Tosten, rode his new roan war stallion, a gift from our uncle, and came with the excuse that

the animal needed exercise when he found me saddling my own horse in the stables.

Tosten was never going to be as tall as I was, but the past four years had given him a man's face and a

fighter's body. He looked cool, competent, and clever (as some court woman said in my hearing).

Competent and clever, I agreed with. Coolness might come with age—maybe in fifty years or so.

While I waited for Tosten to saddle his horse, Oreg showed up and, without a word, took out his own

gelding. Except for his dark hair and half a head in height (Tosten was taller), he and Tosten looked

enough alike to be twins.

"Bandits," I said in answer to Oreg's look as I mounted and lead the way out of the bailey.

"My brother spied them near our farm and Da sent me here for help." There was a hint of accusation in

the boy's tone. Three people, it implied, would not be much help.

The air was chill with the coming winter. We'd taken the last of the harvest in this week. Oreg said he

thought it might snow soon, but today the leaves still clung to the branches of the rowan and aspen in

bright clumps that stood out against the dark greens of the pines and firs. Pansy, my stallion, snorted with

pretended fear and shied violently when a falling leaf fluttered too close. In battle, not even a heavy blow

would cause him to step to the right or left without my request, but outside of serious work, Pansy loved

to play.

The shortest path to Atwater's farm skirted the edge of the mountains where the land was too rocky to

plow. The farm was isolated in a hanging valley away from the other cultivated fields of Hurog. That

isolation had lured bandits into thinking it was a target before, but none of them had ever managed to

take anything from Atwater. I didn't think that was going to change today.

The turf was still soft enough that the steady trot I'd set was unlikely to cause the horses much stress.

People were another matter entirely.

"We need to hurry," said the boy for the third time. I'd had a gentle mare found for him, but I needn't

have. He sat her bareback (his choice) and was impatient with the rest of us for holding him back.

"Never arrive for a fight breathless," snapped Tosten.

"If they overran your farm, we'd smell smoke by now," I reassured the boy, shooting Tosten a repressive

look. "They might not have seen the farm, or your father may have driven them off or killed them. Either

way we don't have to hurry. There can't be very many of them, or I'd have heard about it before they

made it this far onto Hurog lands."

"Don't worry about Tosten, boy," said Oreg cheerfully. "He's as impatient as you are."

Tosten sank into silence. Oreg, in contrast, was unusually lighthearted, teasing the boy until he

smiled—at which point my brother let his stallion speed past us. With a glance at me, the boy sent his

mare cantering after my brother—obviously hoping I'd hurry after both of them.

"I wish you wouldn't bait Tosten," I murmured to Oreg.

Oreg just smiled, though his eyes didn't light up the way they did when he was really amused. "Your

brother has had plenty of time to decide that I'm no threat to him. Time he grew up. If I choose to tweak

his tail a bit—that's between him and me. He doesn't need your protection anymore, Ward."

I rolled my eyes. "You encourage him," I said.

"I frighten him," Oreg corrected, and even his mouth was serious. I must have looked unconvinced,

because he shook his head and said, "I'm no threat to his relationship with you, and he knows that. It

hasn't been about that for some time." Oreg smiled again, but this time it was a genuine one. "Poor lad's

fighting dragons."

It was an old Shavig saying about someone who was displaying rash bravery impelled by fear. The ironic

twist to Oreg's tone was because in this case it was literally true. Oreg's father had been half-dragon.

Oreg could take dragon form when he wished, and considered both the human seeming and the dragon

his true forms.

I weighed what Oreg had said. Tosten was the only one who knew the whole story about Oreg. As my

heir and as my brother I thought I owed him that. Perhaps it would have been better if I'd stuck to

half-truths.

Atwater's boy waited for us at the top of the trail, though Tosten was still ahead.

"Tosten told me it is magic that lets you see there's nothing wrong at my home. There's a lot of folks who

are frightened by magic."

It sounded like a personal observation, and I looked at him sharply. He colored up, but his eyes met

mine squarely.

"Most folks know you can do magic, my lord," he said firmly. "Most of us are grateful for it. Father says

that they'd never have found my brother and his hunting party caught out in the blizzard if you hadn't

joined in the search."

I smiled at him and he dropped in beside us. Tosten, when Oreg is not around, usually knows how to

charm people into doing what he wanted them to. It came from being a bard, he claimed, but I thought it

might be a bit the other way around. Charm, good voice, and clever fingers made for good bards.

As we neared Atwater's farm, the land told me death had visited here recently. Death was no stranger to

Hurog—its mortal residents came to an end on a regular basis—but I had to assume that this death had

something to do with my being summoned here. Whoever had died was not of the earth of Hurog, which

meant it wasn't Atwater or his people. It must be the bandits.

Nevertheless, when we passed the boundary at the edge of the farm, I drew my sword. Tosten (who'd

let us gradually catch up to him) and Oreg drew steel likewise. The path we'd taken approached the

farmhouse, which from the rear was more of a fort than a house, but a lookout spied us riding down into

the valley and let out a series of notes on his hunting horn—Atwater's own call. The tightness eased in my

shoulders.

A moment later the unmistakable form of the holder, himself, came around the corner. Seeing us, he

whistled an all clear, so I sheathed my sword.

The boy heaved a great sigh of relief and nudged his mare into a gallop.

When one is a grizzled old war lord or the younger son of a holder, one may gallop as much as one

wishes. Since I was a young lord who was trying to live down various reputations, I slowed my horse to

a walk.

Mounted on my father's old war stallion, walking was sometimes adventurous. Pansy knew better, but I

let him snort and huff and generally announce to everyone watching that he was dangerous and would be

much faster than that little mare if I would just let him go.

Atwater nodded at me when we got close enough to talk. "Thank ye, my lord, for coming. But the

problem of bandits has been dealt with. I've the bodies if you'd like to look at 'em."

Atwater was a mountain of a man, approaching my height and build. His pale blond hair fading

unnoticeably to gray was braided in old Shavig style—unusual now, but not worth commenting about.

His beard, however, was a magnificent thing. Fiery-red, it covered his face and a fair bit of chest A little

barbaric by proper Kingdom standards, but my Hurog folk were beginning to exhibit a pride in our

Shavig heritage.

Like many of the older men at Hurog, Atwater had fought to put down the rebellion in Oranstone at my

father's side. Sometime during the campaign, Atwater had conceived a dislike for the previous

Hurogmeten. I hadn't been fond of my father for my own reasons, but even I had to admit there weren't

many men who could fight as well as he had. Most of the men who fought under him wouldn't hear a

word against him. I don't know what my father had done to Atwater, but it had taken me the better part

of two years to make him see that I was not the man my father had been.

Tosten, Oreg, and I followed Atwater and his son around the building into the chaos of children and

relatives who helped him farm and protect the land. At the center of the fervor were three dead men,

covered decently for the sake of the children.

I dismounted, handed my reins to Oreg, whose gelding Pansy tolerated, and pulled the blankets aside to

look at the dead men's faces. I took care to keep the blankets arranged so the children couldn't peek. I'd

seen one of them before, but it took me a moment to remember where.

"Mercenaries from Tyrfannig," I said, dropping the cover over the last man's face. Tyrfannig was the

nearest seaport town half a day's ride to the south. Hurog bordered the ocean, but her shores were too

rocky for ships to harbor in. "They must not have caught jobs with the merchants going south and

decided to become self-employed." Sometimes mercenaries didn't see the difference between looting on

a battlefield and looting from anyone they could. "I'll see if anyone in Tyrfannig wants the bodies.

Otherwise we'll bury them ourselves, eh?"

"Yes, my lord."

I started to turn away, then realized something about the wounds I'd seen on the bodies. "Who took

them down?" Atwater was famed for his bow work and could use an ax on people as well as wood, but

he'd never have taken on these bandits armed with nothing more than a knife. Yet the two bodies with

the most obvious death wounds had been killed by a short blade, not an ax. I didn't know about the

third—and wasn't about to examine the bodies more closely with all the children milling about.

"No, sir. My oldest boy, Fennel, saw them coming in time to warn us. I sent Rowan to you, and we

waited. After a bit I tracked Fennel's trail to where he'd seen the bandits. And I found them three dead,

sir. And I found what killed 'em, too. You'll never guess."

As we'd spoken, Atwater's wife had come out of the house with a little sprite of a girl about six.

"It was a girl," the child caroled in satisfied tones. "A girl killed them bandits all by herself."

Atwater's left eyebrow buried itself in his hairline. His wife shrugged.

"My aunt could have killed them," I said. "Why are you so surprised a woman took care of them?"

Atwater shook his head. "Maybe Stala could at that. But I'd be surprised if aman in this woman's

condition could have walked from where we stand to my home, let alone killed three healthy men with

naught but a puny knife. Would you come look at her?"

Bemused, I nodded at Oreg. "Stay out here and keep the babes out from under Pansy's feet, please?"

Tosten gave his reins to Oreg, too.

Atwater's house was dark and close, insulated for winter with dried grasses and straw. I had to duck my

head to avoid rubbing the ceiling.

The fire in the hearth was more for light than warmth—that would change as winter approached. One of

Atwater's older daughters sat on a nearby bench sewing, a bucket of water by her feet should a spark fly

out and touch either fur or straw. She nodded at me, but turned shyly back to her work. I didn't know

how she could sew in the dim light. Even with the fire so near, I could barely tell there was a person

buried in the furs in front of the hearth.

But I could smell the distinctive odor of rotting flesh. I knelt beside the furs and touched the skin on the

back of the unconscious woman's neck, feeling the dry heat.

"She hasn't moved since I found her, my lord," said Atwater. "Her weapon's on the table. After seeing

the bodies, I thought I'd better get it out of her reach."

I got up and looked at the knife on the table. Not a hunting knife—the blade was too short, not even a

Patricia Briggs - Hurog 02 - Dragon Blood

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