The odds suggested it wasn’t anyone they knew, but a feeling of dread crept into Rysha’s stomach.
Trip stopped. “Hells,” he whispered.
Rysha glanced at him.
“Dreyak,” he said.
“Is he…?”
“Dead.”
“Keep walking,” Kaika said quietly, coming up behind them. “There are eyes out here. A few people have noted our passing with more interest than it should have deserved.”
Trip turned onto the waterfront street leading to the docks—and the posts. Rysha didn’t want to look as more of Dreyak’s body came into view, but she couldn’t help but notice his chest was bare and someone had carved words into the flesh.
“What’s that say, Ravenwood?” Kaika asked. “It’s not the king’s tongue.”
Rysha would have preferred not to use her linguistics background for deciphering languages carved into people’s bodies, but she made herself look long enough to read the two words. “Spy. And witch.”
“Guess that answers what I was wondering earlier,” Trip muttered.
“Dreyak’s location?”
“How commonplace magic is here and if sorcerers are shunned.” Trip stopped a few feet onto the docks and looked out toward the water. “I did also wonder if Dreyak had completed his mission.”
“It looks like he was killed recently, doesn’t it?” Rysha wasn’t an expert on how long it took bodies to decompose, but no scavenger birds had been by to peck at the flesh yet—thank the gods. She wagered he’d been killed the night before or even that morning and strung up that day.
“Keep walking,” Kaika repeated. “We shouldn’t be seen staring at the body. I don’t know what his mission was, but we don’t need the locals thinking we were a part of it.”
Trip didn’t move. He gazed out at the calm water, as if he sought answers in it.
“Let’s check with the captains of those ships to see if they’re taking passengers.” Kaika moved to pull the wagon past Trip if she needed to, but she frowned at him as she did, and added, “Captain,” as if to remind him of his rank and that he was supposed to obey orders.
“Go see if they’re sailing tomorrow, ma’am,” Trip said. “I need to—I’m staying here for the night so I can sneak out here after dark. I’m not going to leave his body strung up for the seagulls to peck away at.”
“And do what with it?” Kaika asked, sounding exasperated as she surveyed the area around them again, squinting at anyone watching them with too much interest.
“Have a funeral, put his body to rest. And then find out…” Trip opened his hand, then closed it in a fist. “Why and how he was caught and killed. He was too good to simply chance upon criminals or police officers and be shot. And, if I can, I’ll find out for him what he came to learn.”
Rysha started to ask what that was, but Kaika gripped Trip’s shoulder.
“Listen, it’s not wrong that you want to help a fallen comrade, even if he was an ass of a comrade most of the time, but you have a mission.” She tilted her head toward the wagon.
“Yes. Now I have two.”
When Trip turned his determined gaze on Kaika, Rysha saw the sorcerer, not the humble and obedient lower-ranking officer. He wasn’t exuding power or attempting to manipulate Kaika, at least Rysha didn’t think so, but he was letting them know he wouldn’t be swayed in this.
“I’ll stay with you and help,” Rysha said, not that there had been a question. She just hoped Kaika wouldn’t be stubborn about this and insist on going back on her own, on reporting that they’d deliberately disobeyed orders and gone AWOL.
“Fine,” Kaika growled. “One night. I doubt anyone is sailing out this late in the day, anyway. This doesn’t look like the kind of city where captains take besotted couples out on sunset cruises.”
Rysha smiled, vaguely aware that there were outfits in the capital that did that.
“Watch the wagon,” Kaika told Rysha, then headed down the docks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Rysha said.
Kaika gave her a flat look over her shoulder, probably finding the polite obedience hypocritical after Rysha had implied she would stay with Trip, no matter what orders she was given.
“We might get in trouble when we get back,” she murmured to Trip.
Rysha wasn’t sure what Kaika would report. Blazer would definitely have written them up for insubordination. Rysha liked to think she had a closer relationship with Kaika and that she would be more lenient. But she wouldn’t place money on that. For all her silly talk about sex and having fun, Kaika always did her job, and she did it well.
“I know.” Trip shrugged. “But even if we didn’t owe anything to Dreyak for helping us with the portal and the pirates, it would be good to investigate this. We—Iskandia—might stand to get in a different kind of trouble if the word gets out that we were the ones to fly Dreyak over here, that he was last seen in our company, and now he’s dead.”
“Trouble with whom?”
“Prince Varlok and his family.”
“The current ruler of Cofahre? What is—was—Dreyak to him?”
“Unless I miss my guess, a little brother.”
Rysha stared at him. “I know the names of all of Emperor Salatak’s legitimate heirs. There are eight males, including Varlok, the oldest.”
Trip nodded. “None of whom are known to have dragon blood, right?”
“Right,” she said, wondering how he’d known. The names of the imperial family were common knowledge to those who paid attention, but dragon-blood status wasn’t something newspapers printed.
“Dreyak did have some dragon blood, so I assume he had a different mother. That would make him a half-brother then. But someone who worked for the throne and was trained to protect its interests. He was here because of those interests and the role Iskandia played in them.”
Rysha removed her spectacles to clean some of the travel grit off them and to contemplate this new information. “Something to do with the exile of Salatak?”
Trip nodded.
“So, in staying to investigate, to help Cofahre, do we risk betraying our own people?” This wasn’t why she had agreed to stay with Trip.
“I just want to find out what happened to him. It may matter someday.”
Rysha looked at the covered wagon again and couldn’t help but worry what might happen if they stayed here, but she leaned against his arm to show her support. Or maybe she wanted his support. She wasn’t sure.
Kaika walked back toward them, scowling.
“Nobody leaving in the morning?” Rysha asked when she was close enough.
“Nobody going toward Iskandia or willing to take us. I could have worked on the latter problem—” Kaika pounded a fist into her open palm, “—but there wasn’t much point when the ships weren’t bound for anywhere convenient to home.”
“We’ll find a way back,” Trip said. “Once we’ve dealt with this.” He didn’t look back at Dreyak’s poor dead body, but he tilted his head in that direction.
“You’re building an airship if nobody wants to give us a ride, right?” Kaika asked.
“It is likely I could find the necessary materials here.” A smile ghosted across Trip’s somber face as he looked toward one ship’s sails.
Rysha couldn’t imagine the city’s authorities standing by as a sorcerer magicked an airship together at their docks, but she kept the thought to herself. If they had to build their own transportation, that would give them time to investigate Dreyak’s death. Even though she worried about all the babies they now had the obligation to care for, she supposed that if they had stayed in those stasis chambers for thousands of years, they could survive another week.
THE END
Afterword
Thank you for following along with my Heritage of Power series. The fourth book, Unraveled, will be released in February. If you want to be notified when it’s available, please sign up for my newsletter:
http://lindsayburoker.com/book-news/
> I’m finishing up a couple of bonus scenes that go along with Dragon Storm (just in case you were wondering what Ridge, Sardelle, and Jaxi thought when Trip first appeared on their radar!), and those will go out to subscribers as soon as they’re ready.
You’ll also receive a free copy of my Beginnings fantasy bundle. This includes four of my series starter novels and also the stand-alone novella Dragon Rider. That story takes us back over a thousand years to when Bhrava Saruth first started to believe he was a god.
Lindsay Buroker, Origins
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