The Seal of Karga Kul_ A Dungeons & Dragons Novel - Alex Irvine [13]
Tieflings down from the mountains mixed with their ancient adversaries, the dragonborn; members of warring nations and clans haggled over the same goods; zealot and unbeliever poured and drank from the same tankards. Crow Fork Market, by tradition and decree, was a place where the only permissible violence was that done to a customer’s purse.
Spiretop drakes flitted from the gate towers and nestled under the eaves of the keep at the center of the market. They were an irritating scourge of some cities, threatening unlucky citizens and stealing anything shiny that caught their attention. In Avankil, Remy had earned bounties from the Quayside neighborhood constabulary for killing spiretops. It was how he had learned to use a sling. They were the rats of the air, only smarter and more vicious than rats. Remy was tempted to take a shot at them now. Instead he sipped his tea and crunched the last of the fried squid, spitting their beaks onto the stones. “All of this came from somewhere else,” he marveled.
“Most of it, yes,” Iriani said. He was rebraiding his hair and pausing every time he finished a braid to take a swallow of distilled liquor from a bottle he’d bought the minute they came through the gate. “When this place was founded, the stories go, all they had to work with was rocks and sand.”
He turned to Remy. “So. Are you staying with us?”
Remy blinked. His conversation with Biri-Daar the night before had unsettled him. On the one hand, he felt that of course he would go with them; they had saved his life. On the other, he had an errand to complete.
On a third hand rested the questions Biri-Daar had raised.
“No,” he said. “I will buy a horse and go to Toradan. I committed to this errand.”
“Let him go,” Lucan said.
Keverel took a swallow of Iriani’s liquor. “Lucan, bury your grudge,” he said. “It is no right act to let a boy go off and die out of an overdeveloped sense of obligation.”
“I am not a boy,” Remy said. “You didn’t think I was a boy when I fought with you.”
Iriani laughed. “As a matter of fact, we did. You fought as a boy fights, all arm and no brain. But that’s good. At least you have the strength in your arm. The brain for the fight comes later.”
“Where are you going to get money for a horse?” Kithri asked, eyes wide and expression so serious that Remy knew he was being mocked. “If you leave now, you aren’t entitled to a share of the spoils.”
Remy couldn’t quite tell if she was serious about this. “That is the code,” Keverel said. “But surely we could make an allowance given the circumstances.”
“Ha! The boy who called me a coward is finding his own cowardice,” Lucan said. “At least that’s what it seems like to me.”
Coming from Lucan, this stung. Remy bit back his first reply and considered the situation anew. “Biri-Daar,” he said. “Do you still think that—?”
“Yes,” she said. “If you go into the wastes alone, you will not survive to reach Toradan. And if you do, you will not leave Toradan alive. Bahamut has brought us together. Keverel would say Erathis. I believe we should show your box to the Mage Trust at Karga Kul. We can trust them, and their magic is powerful enough to discover what lies inside.”
“So he draws demon’s eyes and we’re going to invite him along,” Lucan said. “Biri-Daar, one of these days you’re going to take in a stray and get us all killed.”
“I would sooner die doing the right thing than live an extra day because I failed what I know to be right,” Biri-Daar said. “Remy, I will say it again. The gods have brought us together.”
Remy’s childhood had not featured much in the way of devotion to gods. His mother was