“Zia, I swear to Izkarzon that if you make a fuss about me not finding food in a mountain pass, somewhere I have never been, I will repeat that I. Am not. A survivalist. I am just poor.”
Well of course you’re poor, you’re bread. A day’s wage is the same quarter-loaf on the back of your hand. But why single me out? “Did I say anything?”
Drexl grimaced. “You think loudly.”
What does she mean by that?! “You’re no air sorcerer, you can’t read my thoughts.” Best just make sure of that… Zia centered on fire and tried to reach out towards Drexl to see if she felt guilty. Fire, being the element centered on emotion, was theoretically able to read the emotions of others. Theoretically. Never did get that far with my tutor. But how hard could it be? Zia focused on Drexl and “reached” with her flame… and promptly let go of the spell before she singed her friend. A plume of flame erupted between them, ballooning into the sky before petering out.
“What in the sarx, Zia?!”
“Sorry, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“What, because I don’t want to be lectured on my shortcomings, you’re going to set me on fire?!”
“It’s not—it’s not a shortcoming! I was seeing if you were hiding a secret!”
“Oh, like that’s better. I’ve been spending time with you for a year and you think I’d be hiding something like ‘oh, I went through your brain’ and—Zia! Were you trying to go through my brain?” Which option is worse? Trying to kill her or… probably… aw, sarx, I gave it away the moment I had to think. “Zia! What in the name of all that’s Draconic is wrong with you? Is this how you treat your friends, or am I just bread to you?!”
“Have to admit, Zia, that was more than a little rude,” Zidrist said.
“Not to mention, you nearly set her on fire,” Darka added.
“Darka, for someone along on sufferance, you’re awfully rude to your leader,” Zia replied haughtily, on comfortable ground with being self-righteous.
“I’m not along on sufferance, I’m along conditionally to Zidrist leaving Sasson. Which has not looked like the best idea, in the time since.”
“Zid—Deacon, would you kindly reign in your spouse?”
“You will not refer to Darka so dismissively in my presence.”
Oh sarx. She’s not joking around. “Ah… but…” Zidrist’s expression brooked no argument. She was the resident spiritual authority of the Church of Izkarzon, and even an ouroboros ignored that at her own peril. “Yes, Deacon. I apologize, Darka.”
“Forget apologizing to me, I’ll proudly be ‘Zidrist’s spouse’ but you need to apologize to Drexl!”
I was hoping we had gotten off that topic. Drat and condemn it all to Hell but I hate being in the wrong! “I… apologize, Drexl. For…” Drexl cocked a hip and crossed her arms, her expression indicating she would wait however long it took Zia to identify the nature of her error. Sarx sarx sarx! I hate this! “For almost setting you on fire—” Nope, that’s not it. Okay, uhm… “And for trying to read your emotions…” Still not it. But warmer? She raised an eyebrow. What does that mean? “And for not just trusting you. But you started it, you got on my case before I even said anything.”
“Izkarzon devour it you were this close to making a decent apology! Something you have not, for the record, managed in the year I’ve known you! If you didn’t have silver—” Zia blanched. “—Darka would be more useful than you! You can trade a song for a meal at most inns, at least in Dragold.” I only have so much silver. Songs you can trade over and over. That’s useful information.
“If that’s the case, let her earn our next meal, and save my silver for bribes and things like that! Since you can’t—” Sarx, she just said not to call her on that.
“Can’t what, Zia? Do tell. I’m already the muscle, the person with contacts, and provided yesterday’s lunch, what can’t I do?”
“Uh… provide silver?”
Zidrist was massaging her brow. “If everyone is done yelling at each other, I would like to find somewhere to rest for the evening, and we’re making no progress towards that by infighting.”
“I’m not ancie—‘venerable’ and I’m done talking here, I’ll go ahead and see if there’s somewhere we can stay before nightfall,” Drexl said, striding off ahead of everyone.
Leaving me in the company of the unimpressed deacon and her smart-mouthed spouse. I bet she wouldn’t be so brave without her hunger wife. You don’t talk to ouroboros like that. I should just set her on fire… except Zidrist would excommunicate me and I’d have to pay for everything. Still, that can’t be that expensive, can it?
It could, in fact, be that expensive. The Firegate Inn stood before a massive black stone archway, which appeared to be the only way through a wall of fire that reached up into the night sky and extended into the distance to either side of the so-called fire gate. The flames were hot, Zidrist tried them with a branch off a bush and got back a severed piece of wood.
“You want how much for four rooms and a meal?!”
The innkeeper, a bored-looking black woman of indeterminate age, named the same sum that had made Zia exclaim the first time.
Darka put a hand on Zia’s shoulder and said in Draconic, “Before you burn down the inn, Zia, what say I try?” In Loon, the lingua franca of Orth, she addressed the innkeeper. “I am a chorister, what can I get for a night and a morning of song?”
The woman raised an eyebrow. Zia turned away from the whole affair and did as she usually did in tavern settings—look to see who was looking at her. Scanning the room, a young man caught her eye and grinned, hefting his pint of blittero and inviting her with his gaze. She sashayed over to his table, emphasizing what she could of the padding at her hips.
“It’s a rum deal, getting a room on the border,” he said. “The name’s Baron. What’s yours, pretty lady?” A baron? Barons are minor nobility. Let’s see if I remember… a baronet is a knight, a baron is… what, like a hunger? That’s respectable.
“I’m Zia. It’s Draconic. Baron what, if I might ask?”
“They just call me Baron. Overbaron if they think I’m not listening.” He laughed at his own joke, though inwardly Zia figured she must have missed something because it sounded like he was bragging about being overbearing. Whatever. He showed interest and he’s got status.
“I just don’t know what I’m going to do about a room,” Zia said. “Unless my companion can earn our keep with her music.” She put just a speck of doubt and vulnerability in her voice, thinking to inveigle an offer of aid from Baron before she had to make good on her own implied promises. In the background, she heard Darka start singing. Good luck, smartalec. Earn us rooms and board.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Well, I don’t know about the singer lady, she’s a bit on the shelf, but you get the curvy one—” Curvy? Oh, Drexl. Sigh. Of course he wasn’t interested in me. Zia’s expression grew the least bit frosty, but Baron didn’t seem to notice. “—to come visit with you and that’s two rooms taken care of.” Oh. He is interested in me. Me and Drexl. I wonder… I mean, it’d be a way to get Drexl and I to… oh, but I can’t follow through unless he’s bi. But I could talk to Drexl, and if I could at least kiss her it would be a start of something more. I’m a good kisser. I am. We’d just need to get Baron to pay for another room before we let him lead us upstairs, and then… eugh. I can’t make the deacon sleep on the floor, she’s older and that means I get the floor. With Drexl. Who will predictably take the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Unless I impress her with my kiss. Hmm… “Hey, Orth to the pretty lady, what do you say?”
“What about my compatriots? As you noticed, they’re ’on the shelf,’ I can’t make them sleep on the floor.”
Baron furrowed his brow. “What’re you to them?”
“As I said, a compatriot.”
“I suppose I could pay for a room and two more meals. After tonight. You pay, I’ll get you back in the morning.”
“You’re awfully arrogant for a man hoping to share a bed with an ouroboros. I know my lineages, a baron is not my equal.”
“So go get yourself a brat by spirit magic. I’m the overbaron, I can get what I want without recourse to you and your companions.” Get myself a brat by—!? At least he’s reading me as a woman, then. Sigh. Of course he’d have to be a jerk with one thing on his mind. I draw the line at kissing that sort. It’s safer.
“If being overbearing is how you get what you want, maybe you and I should take this conversation outside.”
“Be careful who you threaten, little lady. Plenty of travelers go missing trying to cross the fire wall, you could be one of them.”
Zia took a calming breath. Exchanging verbal barbs always put her on edge. Izkarzon, bless your more than seven-times faithful and let me get this bit of sorcery right. Focusing, she conjured a ball of flame in her hand, white hot. She could feel her palm crisping, her control insufficient to isolate herself from the effects of the flame, but opening her eyes she saw she was having the desired effect on Baron. “We don’t have to go outside. I was already thinking of burning down this inn. Why not start with burning a nice hole in you?” When did mortal injury become a part of my life? I mean, people die all the time in the Daring Kaliskast.
“Queens Religious and Temporal, what’s wrong with you?! We were just talking about a bit of fun and now you’re going to set me on fire?!” Baron exclaimed, scooting his chair back against a wall. Zia stepped around the table, scorching a finger as her fire star failed to align with her palm perfectly.
“You started this conversation going south by presuming you were equal to me. I am ouroboros. I am Sworn to Izkarzon. I am deserving of respect and you proposed putting me to the flame. I’m only replying in kind, sarxwit. I’ll quite happily put you and everyone in this inn to the torch if that’s what it takes to get what I want.” I am really not sure how much longer I can hold this flame. My hand really hurts. And I’m not entirely comfortable burning down an entire inn over one jerk. Unless the inn proves as irritating as this man. Zia was not being entirely honest with herself, but usually by morning she forgot the nightmares of people in a burning mansion calling out her name as it collapsed upon itself. Fortunately for both Zia’s control of her spell and the inn itself, Baron flung his chair to one side and fled the inn. With a gasp of pain, she released the fire star—sloppily, as it turned out. It didn’t simply whisp out of existence, but expanded as it dissipated and scorched her hand to the wrist. Sarx that hurts! Zia thought with a yelp.
With a sigh, Zia turned back to the room, hearing the closing strains of a song Zia didn’t immediately recognize, although the final cheer of “Izkarzon” made it clearly a praise song. The lack of applause was disconcerting, not to mention perplexing until someone shouted, “Get out of here with that garbage, dragon worshiper!”
Zia sidled up to Drexl. “So did we get food in advance?”
Drexl shook her head. “And I don’t think we’re getting it now.” She gestured to Zidrist and Darka. “I don’t think she knows anything but praise music. Maybe she could improvise, I know that last song was new, but I’m not sure they want us to try.”
Zidrist was arguing heatedly with the barkeep, back ramrod straight as someone chucked a pint mug at Darka. “All right!” she shouted. “We’re leaving, we’re leaving! Go sarx yourself! Bunch of faithless fools!” Zidrist and Darka fled the inn, Zia and Drexl on their tail.
This has not gone the way it was supposed to at all. Why would they be so angry about a faith song? Itinerant singers are all over Dragold. A good Izkarzon hymn… Drexl said it was new. Maybe she blasphemed by accident? Zia had heard the declamation of worshiping Izkarzon, but cognitive dissonance had relegated it to so much noise. “Darka, Drexl said your song was new, did you put a blasphemy in it by accident?”
“It was about searching for the heir to Izkarzon! A perfectly honorable and just endeavor!”
“Their issue seemed to be with the song being about Izkarzon at all,” Zidrist said irritably.
“But dragons are holy! It’s in Scripture! Gotorjod shielded the first humans and so cost dragon-kind their wings! Ah, no offense, Zidrist, of course you know that.”
“Evidently not in Fief.”
“Am I the only one who didn’t miss that the issue was the worship of Izkarzon? I thought I was the uneducated one here,” Drexl said dryly.
“What, so all my hymns are no good in Fief? That’s going to be an issue, given Zia’s evident dearth of silver. I guess we’re both useless, ey Zia?”
Useless?! Me?! I had the idea! I am the driving force behind this mission! You’re just some jumped up chorister who married above her station! Don’t think to speak to your betters that way! Zia opened her mouth to utter some well-chosen invective, then caught Zidrist’s cold expression and shut it again. Except I can’t say that. Because she’s the wife of a deacon. And minor clergy still outranks… Zia grimaced to admit it, even inwardly, minor nobility. They are the intercessors before Izkarzon and mortals, or between His heir and mortals, as it will be soon. Remember, this is for a good cause. Money. Power. Marriage. All those good things. She took a deep breath and let it out, and from everyone’s stares she had been woolgathering for a while. Plastering what may not have been a convincing smile on her face, Zia said, “Yep! Useless, that’s us! Although I could totally set the inn on fire, since we’re not fond of it.”
Zidrist appeared to consider the idea, before shaking her head. “Even if they’re a bunch of unbelievers, it would be wrong to kill people for… well, whether it’s wrong to kill people for blasphemy is debatable. Izkarzon did it all the time. But generally the sentence was pronounced by He Himself, after the priesthood presented the heretic to Him, and then He ate or dissolved them. It would be above my station to pass judgment on an entire inn.”
“We’d best get walking, then,” Drexl said with entirely unseemly cheer. “I vote for the big hole on the fire wall as the best bet, if nothing else I’m pretty sure it’s east and that’s where we’re headed!”
Izkarzon Theme
I wanna find our God-King’s heir
To restore rule by laws
The throne has been up in the air
To find a dragon is my cause
I will travel across the land
Searching far and wide
For the heir of Izkarzon
A dragon to preside!
Izkarzon!
It’s Him we need
His rule is our destiny
He’ll rule until the end
This premise I can defend
A cause so true
My faith will carry me through.
Dragonkind will lead us all
As they have since before the Fall!
Though we’ll face trials along the way
With pure faith we’ll succeed
We will pray hard on every day
To find the dragon that we need!
Dragons saved the first humans
From their own foolish acts of sin
Sacrificing their wing spans
For our loyalty to win
Izkarzon!
It’s Him we need
His rule is our destiny
He’ll rule until the end
This premise I can defend
A cause so true
My faith will carry me through.
Dragonkind will lead us all
As they have since before the Fall!
Lead us since the Fall
Lead us since the Fall
Lead us since the Fall
Yeah!
Izkarzon!
It’s Him we need
His rule is our destiny
He’ll rule until the end
This premise I can defend
A cause so true
My faith will carry me through.
Dragonkind will lead us all
As they have since before the Fall!
Izkarzon!
