Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

Out away from the fire only a fragment of its light and none of its heat touched them. “I really didn’t mean to be humoring you, Ker.”

The mage looked up. “Care?”

“Ker, like the first part of your name? I know you don’t want to be called Keri, but Kerrigan is kind of a mouthful. It’s a nickname, you know?”

Kerrigan shook his head. “No, I don’t. I’ve never had one.”

Will blinked. “Never? I’ve had lots, and even get called by one. Okay, look, Will is my nickname.” He lowered his voice. “My real name is Wilburforce.”

Kerrigan nodded solemnly. “That’s a good, strong name.”

“Now you’re humoring me.”

“Oh, no, I’m being quite sincere. In the Twilight Campaign, there was an Oriosan cavalry commander, Wilburforce Eastlan, who helped drive Kree’chuc north. Surely you know that, and know that is why your name is taken as a particularly good omen.” Kerrigan looked at him with innocent, green eyes. “When we passed through the Valsina area, that’s what people were saying.”

“You know this history stuff, and you don’t know what a nickname is?”

The mage shrugged. “On Vilwan we did not use nicknames.” He hesitated for a moment, then frowned. “I must amend that. On Vilwan I never had one. I don’t know about the others.”

Something in Kerrigan’s voice piqued Will’s curiosity. He turned, bringing his left shin to lie across the trunk of the fallen tree. “You didn’t have any friends who called you stuff? Sometimes, like in the winter, some of the other kids would call me Chill because it rhymes with Will, and is another word for ‘brrrr,’ which is part of my name and because my feet were cold in the bed. I hated that. The ‘Chilly-willie’ name.”

The mage canted his head to the right and nodded a couple of times. Will knew he was taking apart the nickname, studying it the way Resolute had him study tracks in the dirt. Finally, Kerrigan looked at him again and blinked a couple of times. “I see how they got it, yes. And, no, I didn’t really have friends. I remember, when I was very young, that there were some other students who studied with me, but pretty soon we were split up and I was given to tutors like Orla, though none of them was her equal.”

“You had no friends?” Will tried to keep the surprise out of his voice, but failed completely. “No one to joke with, to tease, nothing?”

Kerrigan recoiled from the questions. “Vilwan is a different sort of place.”

“I remember. I was there.” Will stopped short of pointing out that while he was there, he had seen plenty of mages who had friends, who fought together in teams, who could joke. Even Orla had had a sense of humor at times. “I was there at the siege.”

“Well, then, you know. They got me away during the siege.” The corpulent youth sighed. “I wish they had left me alone. I wouldn’t be here, and Orla wouldn’t be dead.”

“Yeah, and Chytrine would have the piece of the DragonCrown you’re carrying.”

Kerrigan’s eyes grew wide and a hand shifted beneath the blanket. “How did you… Did Crow tell you?”

Will shook his head and picked with a thumbnail at a piece of bark trapped in the triangle of his legs. “I’m a thief, remember? You’re guarding that thing as well as a gem merchant with a hoard, or some swain mooncalfing over a locket with a curl of his lover’s hair. No one else would have noticed. Well, probably Resolute—he sees everything. But you’re big enough that most’ll just figure you have chiggers in your armpit.”

“I do not.”

Will shrugged. “Just scratch like you do and it’ll keep folks away.”

“So you knew I was hiding something, but how did you know it was a fragment?”

The thief pursed his lips. Instead of telling Kerrigan he’d not known for certain until he’d seen Kerrigan’s reaction to his bluff, he decided to lie. “You’ve been hiding it since we left Fortress Draconis. Now, aside from the people we got out, the only things of worth there were fragments. The Draconis Baron had to try to get at least one piece out and if there was anyone who could hide it with magick, it would be you. I just kind of figured it out from there.”

“He made me promise not to say anything, not to tell anyone but Crow and the princess. Will, you can’t say anything.”

Will shook his head. “I won’t say a word, but you have to let me help you hide it. Here, on the road, it’s not so important. Strikes me, though, that given what folks think about Crow, Meredo is pretty much going to be enemy territory. Chytrine had sullanciri in Yslin last autumn, so you know she could have them in Meredo.”

The magicker nodded slowly. “Yes, that makes sense. How will we hide it?”

“Easily. We’ll start on the road.” Will shivered. Kerrigan was leaning forward, hanging on his every word. Not having had friends growing up, and with Orla dead, Kerrigan was desperate for someone to talk to. Had Will been setting him up to be robbed, well, it would have been too simple.

The small part of Will that had absorbed all Marcus’ lessons wanted to laugh at Kerrigan. Here he was, a powerful mage, in possession of an item so priceless that the Aurolani Empress would destroy nations to possess it. Kerrigan had already seen the riches that she’d offered the Pirate Queen Vionna for the Lakaslin fragment, so he knew just how much it was to be treasured. Yet despite all that, here he was listening to Will’s advice as to how to safeguard it. In a heartbeat the fragment could be Will’s—the reward for it, too.

Will snorted. “Starting tomorrow, put all your stuff in one of your saddlebags, then fill the other up with junk.” He leaned over and picked up a pine cone. “Things like this, and little animal skulls, funny-shaped rocks. Have Qwc and Lombo find things for you, and spend time looking at them. Offer to show them to the Tolsin men. Let them think you’re a little crazy.”

Kerrigan nodded. “They think that already. And that I’m useless, even though I started their fire for them, wet wood and all.”

“I’d have left them cold. ‘Cept maybe Mably. I’d start a fire with him.”

“No, Will, don’t think that. It didn’t work with Wheele and Orla died because of it.”

“Hey, Ker, stop right there.”

“What?”

“Orla’s death isn’t your fault.” Will held up a hand to prevent a protest. “I know you said I wasn’t good at being a mind reader when I said that before, but you remember back in Yslin? Orla came with Crow and Resolute and the princess and we went after a sullanciri . And that Dark Lancer had made my friends into monsters, and we had to kill them. We didn’t have any choice ‘cuz they would have killed us. But when it was all over, they were dead and they were just kids again. And I couldn’t help thinking, somehow, that there was a way we could have not killed them.

“But, you know, I worked out that it wasn’t my fault. You trace it back, and it’s all Chytrine. She’s the one who made the sullanciri , and she’s the one who wants me dead, and she’s the one who had the pirates attack Vilwan, which meant you had to go away and Orla with you.” His head came up. “You and me, we’re not doing this. We might not do everything right, but we have to do something because if we don’t, then she wins and folks will be dead. Lots of them.”

Kerrigan sat there for a bit, his thick lips pursed. Will wasn’t sure how long the magicker thought, but it was long enough that the cold and the silence began to gnaw at Will. If not for the steam drifting from Kerrigan’s nostrils, he could have imagined the mage had turned to stone.

“That is it, though, Will,” he finally said. “You and I might not do everything right, but at least you’re doing some things right. I…” Kerrigan’s voice failed for a moment, then returned muted and cool. “All the training I had was meant to prepare me for something great. What, I don’t know, no one ever told me. They just made me do more and more and more. And then, when I was leaving Vilwan, the pirates tried to stop us. I destroyed their ship, but the people on the boat with me were hurt and then the ship capsized, and that was my fault, so that those who weren’t dead already drowned. And then I used the wrong spell on Wheele…”