Duty Bound by Lindsay Buroker
“He sent a note that he was leaving, yes.”
“I hope you have the dock master keeping an eye out for other ships heading to our shores. Ships that would be less welcome than dwarven ones.”
Targyon’s eyes narrowed. “You believe attackers are on the way?”
“I think there’s a reason the elven ambassador and all his staff left the city in a hurry,” Jev said. “And that it was more than my rudeness to his garden.”
“Hm, I will send word out to all the zyndar families in the area to prepare troops. For good or ill, we have a lot of war veterans now.”
“Yes, Sire,” Jev said. “Oh, did you hear the news yet about the sabotage to the Water Order Temple?”
“I heard. Guild involvement is suspected.” Targyon raised his eyebrows. “A guild you’re supposedly aligned with.”
Zenia stared at Jev, remembering his comments from the night before.
“I’m not any more involved with Iridium than you are.” Jev waved to the desk chair, and for some reason, Targyon’s cheeks turned red. “I’ll let you know if I decide to let one of the guilds suborn me, but for now, please just know that Inquisitor Marlyna loathes me for some reason, and anything she says about me is likely a lie.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Targyon murmured, his face hard to read.
Zenia hoped nothing happened to make him question his trust for Jev. Jev didn’t deserve to have his honor questioned. It sounded like he had enough steaming poo being heaped on him right now without Targyon doubting him.
“I won’t delay your breakfast further.” Targyon waved to the door and looked pointedly at Jev’s bowl. He hadn’t been shoveling spoonfuls in his mouth during their meeting, but he still held it. “If there’s any chance you can find Grindmor today,” Targyon added, “I would be extremely grateful.”
“We’ll try,” Jev said.
Zenia nodded, wishing they could promise more than trying. But she knew they couldn’t.
“I guess breakfast is over,” Jev said as they strode out of the office.
“Unless you want to store it in your beard for later, yes.”
He grinned at her, then waved to her vase. “If I had a more substantial beard, I’d offer to carry those in it for you too. So your hands don’t get tired.”
Zenia blushed, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe because his eyes kept gleaming at her.
“I’ll hurry down and put them in the office,” she said.
“I’ll get some horses and meet you out front.”
She nodded and strode toward the stairs. Only when she was halfway to the office did she think to wonder if Jev’s good mood was due to her accepting his flowers. More than that, she’d been carrying them around. Did he approve?
“Going anywhere interesting?” Rhi asked as Zenia passed through the office.
She was one of only two agents already at a desk. Sort of at a desk. She was standing behind it and exercising her calves as she read a report.
“The townhouse of a wealthy land buyer.”
Rhi looked at the flowers in Zenia’s hand but didn’t seem surprised by them.
“Any chance that will be more interesting than yesterday’s visit to the office of boredom?” she asked.
“It’s always possible if you want to come.”
As Zenia set the vase down on her desk, a desk that had acquired more folders since her last visit, she noticed the wrapped gift resting unopened on Jev’s desk. Should she take it to him? No, whatever it was, he didn’t likely want to cart it around the city. But she would tell him about it. So it didn’t get buried by folders and go unnoticed for weeks. Zenia would be disappointed if she gave a man a gift and that happened to it.
“You sure you don’t want to open that?” Rhi asked, her bo in hand, her calf exercises complete. “Or light it on fire and throw it out a window?”
“This office doesn’t have any windows.”
“Guess we’re foiled then.”
On a whim—or maybe a hunch—Zenia grabbed her weapons belt with her knife and pistol out of her desk drawer and buckled it on. She didn’t know if this Tildar would lead her to Grindmor, but she had a gut feeling that he was up to something—and might not want the king’s Crown Agents to know about it.
Thanks to the help of a stable boy, Jev had three horses saddled when Zenia walked out with Rhi. He smiled to himself, pleased he’d guessed right, that Rhi would be in the office and want to come along. Zenia opened her mouth, seeming startled by his assumption. He might have felt silly if she had come out alone, but he merely bowed as they approached and offered the reins.
He was a touch disappointed that Zenia no longer carried the vase—he wasn’t sure why, but it had delighted him to see her clutching it close and walking around the castle with his flowers—but it would have been impractical on a horse.
Rhi said nothing about the flowers or her part in advising him. He wondered if she’d told Zenia that she’d helped—and questioned him about marriage.
“I forgot to tell you yesterday,” Zenia said after she mounted, “but I ran into Zyndari Naysha in the castle courtyard.”
“What?” Jev blurted, his good cheer evaporating.
The idea of Zenia chatting with his ex-fiancée alarmed him—what if they talked all about him? The stupid teenage boy he’d been when Naysha first came to know him? What could possibly have brought her up to the castle two days in a row? Trouble with her husband? For years, he’d imagined that scenario and how he would nobly step in and take her back if she wished it, but now? His father might consider it a reasonable match—and Jev would prefer it to marrying some stranger who manipulated the old man into arranging a marriage—but it wasn’t something he daydreamed about anymore. Now, he daydreamed about… someone else. And night-dreamed too.
“She brought a gift for you.” Zenia’s tone was neutral, and he couldn’t tell what she thought of that. “You were out, so she gave it to me to put on your desk in the office. It’s there now.”
“Huh.”
“We didn’t open it,” Rhi said. “Zenia wanted to.”
“Rhi.” Zenia glared at her.
Rhi grinned.
“Yes,” Jev said, recovering some of his equanimity. “With her bo, no doubt.”
“Zenia doesn’t have a bo.”
“Oh? I must have been thinking of someone else.”
Zenia nudged her horse toward the gate, apparently considering the conversation over. Jev would happily do the same, but now, he was curious about the gift and what it signified. Maybe Naysha was still trying to assuage her guilt. It would be foolish of him to think she wanted anything else from him. He nobly resisted the urge to make an excuse and run into the castle to open it.
Jev let the two women take the lead on the way into town while he kept his eyes open for trouble, whether enemy operatives skulking around the city or Iridium’s people out setting more explosives. He didn’t like that the Water Order inquisitor had complained to Targyon about how Jev was supposedly aligned with the Fifth Dragon. There were enough rumors flying around about him already.
“This is the street,” Zenia said, slowing her horse as they turned at an intersection.
Stone townhouses lined either side of the boulevard with wide walkways out front and trees spreading shade over them. The homes reminded Jev of Naysha’s townhouse, the one he’d spied on, and he realized they were only three blocks away.
It wasn’t surprising. Even though zyndar owned land all over the city, most preferred to reside near others of their social status. His family’s city house was nearby too. Sometime, he ought to check in on his cousin who, the last he’d heard, resided in it.
“Mostly zyndar live in these homes, don’t they?” Rhi eyed the three- and four-story structures, many with marble steps and columns and carved wyverns or lion heads mounted over the doors, along with other accents to add flair—or maybe pretentiousness.
Jev smiled faintly, knowing that wasn’t a word that would have come
“Yes, they do,” Jev said when the women glanced back at him. “Zenia, you said Tildar is a renter, didn’t you? Maybe he’s trying to buy this property from the current owner too.”
“A townhouse would be a good investment,” Zenia said. “I’m less certain about a swamp.”
“A swamp?” Rhi asked.
Zenia explained her findings from the day before as they rode toward a house even more pretentious than the others. It had gold gutters and drains, and the wyverns and gryphons peering down from the rooftop appeared to be made from solid gold, too, rather than marble. Should thieves with large enough muscles to remove them ever come along, the house would be vandalized promptly.
“Think it came that way?” Jev asked. “Or did he modify it?”
Zenia shrugged. “Maybe the zyndar landlord lives on the other side of the kingdom and hasn’t been by recently to object to the modifications.”
They halted their horses in front of the yard, and Zenia double-checked the address.
“This is the right spot,” she said.
“Nice fountain,” Rhi said dryly, pointing her bo to a pair of sculpted stags locked in battle near the walkway up to the house. The sculptor had made them anatomically correct—and well endowed—with the water for the fountain coming out of their nether regions.
“This Tildar either has a disturbing sense of humor,” Zenia said, “or he wanted to irk his neighbors.”
“Can it be both?” Rhi asked.
“He tried to get appointed to a political office a few years ago. Maybe the reasons he failed had nothing to do with his common birth.” Zenia dismounted.
Jev did the same, looking toward the windows and trying to tell if anyone was home. If Tildar was a businessman, he might be out working.
“Did you research him, Zenia?” Jev asked. He couldn’t imagine she’d had time, as she’d been as weary as he the night before, but she nodded.
“As much as I could find in the library this morning. He was mentioned in those newspapers I was perusing yesterday. He’s been quite busy in the last few years. When his bid for political office didn’t work out—zyndar are almost always chosen, and that was the case this time as well—he hosted a few rallies and tried to start some movements among the common people. Jev, you may not have heard, but this was fairly commonplace in the city while the king and so many of the zyndar were gone. People gathering and protesting, trying to get written up in the newspapers and sometimes threatening to quit their jobs en masse if commoners weren’t given a voice in government. Tildar was among them, fighting to diminish zyndar power and put power into the hands of the people. That was one of his rally cries. He argued to end the monarchy and start a democracy in which all people had a vote, though from what I was able to gather, he wanted more of a rule-by-the-rich than a rule-by-the-common-man.”
“You did sleep last night, didn’t you?” Jev couldn’t believe she’d found time to do so much research.
“Not as much as I wanted to.” She touched the front of her dress, the small lump that signified her dragon tear. “I’ve been having…” She glanced at Rhi, who’d dismounted and was waiting. “Never mind.” Zenia lowered her hand.
Rhi frowned.
Jev wanted to pry, but maybe she would tell him later when they were alone. He jogged up the broad marble steps and pulled the gold chain for the gold doorbell.
The sound of footfalls on steps drifted through an open window. Jev’s nerves danced a jig in his belly. After hearing all Zenia had researched, he felt more hopeful that this man might be a genuine lead, that he was someone who believed he could indeed gain if the current order were somehow upset.
The door opened, and a woman in a maid’s uniform with a very short skirt answered the door, a rag and bottle of silver polish in her hand. “Yes?”
“I’m Zyndar Dharrow.” Jev gestured to Rhi and Zenia. “These are friends.” He thought he might get further if he didn’t announce right off that they were on an investigation for the king. “We need to speak with Tildar Braksnoth.”
“He’s not here. He’s out of town on a business trip.”
Jev looked to Zenia. She touched a hand to that lump under her dress, and her eyes grew unfocused.
“Where did he go?” Jev asked.
“Rokvann, he said.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Soon, I think. Perhaps you could try back in a couple of days, Zyndar?” The maid was polite, and Jev didn’t sense duplicity from her, but he would wait for Zenia’s verdict. “I can bring paper if you would like to leave a message.”
“No, thank you. I’ll try again later in the week.”
The door closed.
“Is it against the Crown Agents Handbook to sneak into people’s houses and snoop around?” Rhi asked.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to do anything criminal in the line of work,” Jev said dryly, waving for them to descend the steps. That window was still open.
“What if Zenia uses magic to do the snooping?”
“Oh, I think that’s encouraged then.” Jev lowered his voice. “Zenia?”
“She was telling the truth,” Zenia said. “But she also didn’t know much. Her thoughts suggested Tildar is polite enough to her but treats her like the hired help, not a confidant. To her disappointment. He’s in his fifties but, in her eyes, still quite handsome. She wears skimpy uniforms, hoping he’ll invite her into the bedroom, but he hasn’t yet. Apparently, Tildar lost the love of his life to a zyndar man who keeps her as a mistress, and he hasn’t been that interested in sex since.”
Rhi’s mouth drooped open. “Your new rock tells you a lot more than the old one did.”
Zenia shifted her weight uneasily. “Well, she thought we were judging her for her short dress and felt defensive. That made her think about her reasons for wearing it. Sometimes, the new dragon tear gives me more than I meant to seek.” She still looked uncomfortable.
Jev made a mental note to ask her about that later, to see if anything disturbing was going on. He well remembered Cutter’s warning about the significance of an actual dragon being carved on the front.
Hoping to take her mind off her concerns, Jev smiled and touched his chest. “Judging her? Me? Do I look judgmental?”
“A little stern maybe when you’re not smiling,” Rhi said. “It’s the beard.”
“Actually, it was more me. I did have the thought that the dress was awfully short, which made me think Tildar might require she wear it because he’s the lecherous type to impose himself on the help, but…” Zenia shrugged. “I didn’t mean to convey that with my expression. I didn’t think I had.” She glanced down at her chest—the dragon tear—again, then shook her head and made a dismissive gesture.
Jev would definitely ask her about that gem later.
“What next?” Rhi asked. “I hadn’t planned to head to Rokvann today.”
“Why don’t we go out to the man’s newly acquired property?” Jev didn’t know if they would find any inspiration out there, but he hoped for some luck. The fact that Tildar had a lot of grudges against the zyndar didn’t mean he was a criminal mastermind or had anything to do with Cutter’s and Grindmor’s disappearance, but they didn’t have any other leads to follow. The land acquisition was odd. Jev just hoped they weren’t inadvertently investigating some other, unrelated case that they hadn’t even been assigned yet.
Zenia nodded. “I was going to suggest the same thing.”
“I wasn’t,” Rhi said.
“What were you going to suggest?” Jev asked.
“That we go pummel some Fifth Dragon people in revenge for bombing the temple.”
“I don’t think the Fifth Dragon had anything to do with the dwarves’ disappearance,” Jev said. “I think Iridium was preemptively striking against Archmage Sazshen, since Sazshen supposedly wanted to put an end to Iridium and her people.”
“Supposedly.” Rhi
“So, who stands to gain if we’re distracted by a tiff between the guilds and the Orders?” Jev wondered.
Rhi opened her mouth, but Zenia spoke first, lowering her voice and turning her back to the window. “We’re being watched. The maid.”
“She’s probably wondering why we’re skulking out front.” Jev took a step toward the street.
“Wait.” Zenia slipped her dragon tear out on its leather thong. In broad daylight, it wasn’t as obvious when it was glowing, but a few tendrils of blue light emanated from its core. “I know Rhi was joking, but I think I can snoop magically. Maybe poke into the man’s office. I just need a minute.” She wrapped her fingers around her dragon tear and closed her eyes.
The curtain at the front window moved. The maid leaving? Going to get someone else? Or just shifting so she could hear them better?
“What are the odds,” Jev said in a louder voice, “that we could talk the king into installing a fountain like that at the castle?”
Rhi looked dubiously at the water streaming out of the stag statues’ appendages. “I think he’d fire you if you suggested it.”
“He can’t fire me; I’m zyndar.”
“He’d find some way to get rid of you.”
Zenia lowered her hand and nodded toward the street. They collected their horses and moved several houses away before speaking.
“Cutter and Grindmor aren’t tied and gagged in any of the closets,” she said.
Jev grunted. He hadn’t expected that, though it would have helped them meet Targyon’s deadline.
“And I didn’t see anything incredibly condemning,” Zenia went on, tapping her chin, “but there was a room that was completely filled with swords and firearms. Not a collection someone with too much money mounts on their walls.”
“My grandfather had such a collection,” Jev said dryly. “It’s still in one of the libraries in the castle.”
“One of the libraries?” Rhi asked.
“My family has lived there for a thousand years. We’ve purchased a lot of books in that time. We have an armory, too, which is what it sounds like you’re describing. But we do have a whole castle to defend. An armory for a townhouse seems excessive. Were there many other people inside?”