Ymmen changed course. We were going to follow it, and him.
The metal dragon was easy to follow. It made a terrible whirring sound as whatever strange engines and wheels inside of it churned. From its snout it emitted trailing plumes of heavy black ghastly smelling smoke, that Ymmen was more than careful to stay above.
How could Abioye ever think that thing was anything like a dragon? I thought in appalled shock. I remembered how the young man had looked at the Lady Artifex’s journal, and how his long finger had caressed the fine drawings within. I had thought he had a love for dragons. A hiss of disdain came from Ymmen above me.
“Poison Berry,” he repeated, and I realized then that it was his name for Abioye. I would have laughed, were it not for the horror of what we were hunting.
But still – I couldn’t reconcile these two different parts of the man that I had met. For just the briefest of moments, he had seemed as if he might have understood. He had been the one to tell me the truth of Dagan Mar and our imprisonment there, after all. Not that he had done anything about it! I thought, just as quickly. Abioye’s ‘answer’ to the fact that Dagan Mar would rather see us all dead than free was to simply offer me a position changing his bed sheets. He was either a fool or arrogant, or both.
We had flown well past Inyene’s keep and the east-west path that led through the Masaka, and now I saw Abioye’s real destination. There was a singular spire that rose from the craggy foothills of the mountains, tall and without any surrounding buildings. Ymmen gave a wide circle as we watched the metal dragon alight, and for Abioye to fall off its back with a grunt of pain.
“Magic,” Ymmen said to me, and I knew that he wasn’t just talking about the metal dragon below us. He seemed to be talking about the entire tower. Or something within it.
Abioye had stumbled his way to a trapdoor, pulling the handle and shouting, “Montfre!” before he climbed down. There were narrow windows in the body of the tower, and as we circled, I saw a light kindle first in one of them, and then another.
But the windows only start halfway up, I saw. And then I realized that, as we circled, I couldn’t see any doors at the base of the tower at all. How did whoever was inside leave? Or get food?
From the air, of course. There was a bundle of ropes and bags beside where the metal dragon sat, and I figured that must be some sort of pulley system to deliver supplies. Ymmen was wary of approaching closer, but the metal dragon once again appeared to have fallen dormant. Wisps of smoke still rose from its mouth, but its eyes were dark, and there was no movement from its body.
“I think it’s safe,” I said – although I wasn’t sure ‘safe’ was the right word for it. At my encouragement, Ymmen dropped closer until he had landed on the edge of the tower top itself, his rear claws clutching the crenellated edges delicately as he set me down. He extended his nose to sniff at the scales of the stilled metal beast beside him before curling his lips and hissing at it, and pulling back.
“You smelled magic from in there,” I whispered to the black dragon. “And those things are powered by magic. There must be some kind of connection.” I crept to the still-open trapdoor to see a circle of winding stone steps descending into the tower. Muffled voices came somewhere far below. I wished that I had any kind of weapon at all with me, and cursed One-Eye for taking the Lady Artifex’s dagger. But without even a rock to my name, all I had were my fists and my luck.
Come on, Nari, you can do this, I told myself, and crept downwards.
Chapter 14
Arguments
“Well, at least it’s not that horrible Northern wine that you drink!” a man’s voice grumbled below me.
I had crept down several flights of the stone stairs, passing wooden doors at every landing. This place smelled odd, a touch of wet, damp stone but also the passing scents of stranger smokes and fumes. A little like the smelting works, I thought, although one room I passed reminded me of the herbarium in which my mother spent a lot of her time, constantly storing, crushing, or drying some wild Plains flower or another.
The stairs were lit by the flickering radiance of a fire just around the corner from me, its pop and crackle mingling with the creaks and shifting noises of furniture, and hiding the sound of my approach – at least I hoped.
“It’s Torvald brandy. The very finest, my friend.” I recognized Abioye’s voice, although it sounded different from how he had spoken inside the mines. It was thick and a little slurred from his excesses, and lighter and a little more carefree than it had been before. It was almost fascinating to hear how he acted in a place where he clearly felt more natural.
Almost fascinating, because at every turn I remembered that all of these same comforts – from fires to horrible northern wines or Torvald brandies – were not afforded to slaves at all.
“Finest,” the unknown man’s voice coughed bitterly. He didn’t sound very old at all. The second man – Montfre? – sounded as young if not younger than Abioye did.
“Hey, what’s this?” I heard Abioye say, and there was a shuffle of things knocking each other, and then a loud smash of glass on hard floors.
“Gah! What are you doing! That was my very last batch of magewort tincture!” the younger Montfre shouted, and I heard the sudden sound of things being rearranged and moved.
“Oh, sorry,” Abioye said. “What’s magewort anyway? Does it taste good?” Some more lurching steps.
“Just, please – sit down over there, Abioye!” this Montfre said in frustration as the sounds of the younger man cleaning up continued. There was a heavy thump as I assumed that Abioye had fallen more than sat.
“Shouldn’t that be Lord Abioye?” he said in a high-minded way.
A moment’s pause, and then Montfre’s voice returned, lower and sullen. “Of course. I forgot for a moment who it was I was speaking to. I thought it was my friend.”
“Montfre!” Abioye burst out, “I was joking. Forgive me. It’s the wine. Of course you’re my friend – how long have we known each other now, ten years?” Strangely enough, I heard real alarm and sympathy in Abioye’s voice at that moment. As if he really wanted this Montfre to be his friend and couldn’t understand why he wasn’t.
I knew the answer however in the next moment, as there was a heavy rattle of chains.
“Six years in these, Abioye,” Montfre said heavily, and I heard him glug and swallow.
“I… I know.” Abioye was quieter. “How many times do I have to say that I am sorry? I had no idea that Inyene was going to throw you in chains! I really didn’t.” The air was tense, and I could tell that there was a story here between these two. I wondered if it was something that I could use against Inyene, so I moved a couple of stairs closer, towards the edge of the door.
“And you did try to blow up her laboratory,” Abioye reflected, and I once again despaired at his drunken, quicksilver moods.
“It was my laboratory!” Montfre said with real passion, taking another glug from, presumably, the Torvald brandy. “I had put four years of work into that place, and your sister used me!”
I waited to see how Abioye would react, curious as to whether he would defend his sister.
“I know.” He sounded crestfallen. “Everything that she’s managed to build comes from your work. If only she’d never seen those little toy dragons you made.” Abioye sounded regretful.