On second watch, Alias looked over at Akabar, who lay under only one wool cover, and his arms over that. Gently, she dropped a fur hide over him from chin to knees. In no time he pushed most of it aside, and his arms, clad only in his flimsy robe, once again lay exposed to the cold air.
Either he’s got some magic trick to keep warm, or he carries the heat of the southern sun inside him, Alias thought.
Olive, under the pretext of keeping the extra bedding dry and safe from marauding beasts, slept on top of most of them. In sleep she looked deceptively childlike and innocent, the swordswoman thought. But Akabar, with his beard and the sun-wrinkles about his eyes, looked older.
Alias studied the sleeping Dragonbait, trying to decide if he looked older or younger. He slept as peacefully as a child, yet even with his tail drawn up between his legs and curled beneath his head, the power of his warrior’s frame was apparent. Alias wondered if he didn’t sleep, as the saying went, the sleep of the righteous, untroubled by his dreams because he lived up to his own standard of goodness.
He was neither a slow riser nor one to awaken with a start. Whenever she awakened him, he opened his eyes curiously, smiled that toothy grin, and gave a pleasant chirp. The few times the party had shifted camp in the middle of the night to avoid being stumbled upon by goblins and orcs, Alias had discovered the lizard already awake, lying very still, sniffing the air, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword.
She wrapped one of her own blankets about the lizard’s shoulders, a custom she’d adopted from her travels with the Company of the Swanmays. She’d missed the sisterly concern the seven members, all women, had had for one another, but she hadn’t felt comfortable enough among the strangers with whom she now traveled to perform so intimate a gesture … until tonight.
She thought very hard about Dragonbait, about all he’d done for her, all she knew about him, all the things she felt about him. He was the least human of her companions, he couldn’t talk to her, and she had little idea what went through his mind, yet Dragonbait was the only member of the party she trusted completely. Regardless of what Olive had said about failing to communicate with him, she knew that the two of them, lizard and swordswoman, had an understanding.
“You’re not my bondservant, are you?” Alias whispered to the sleeping lizard. “You’re my brother.”
She’d never really had any siblings, at least as far as she knew. Her mother, an uncommunicative fisherman’s widow, had never told her of any, and when her mother died, just after Alias reached her teens, no long-lost relatives appeared at her wake. The following year Alias ran off to avoid being bonded to a decent but unimaginative weaver. It wasn’t until she had insinuated herself into the Swanmays that she felt any kinship to anyone. The Swanmays had relished the risks and beauty of the open wilderness as much as she did. Just remembering them now made her throat tighten with emotion.
Yet, the feeling she had for Dragonbait, one she was certain he shared, could not possibly be based on mutual interests. As far as she knew, they had none. His behavior toward her was most definitely the tender protectiveness of a brother. Oddly enough, Alias realized that she felt the same way about him. And the strength of that feeling without, as she perceived, any logical foundation, was what made her so certain there was no one closer to her in all the world.
Despite the admission of her feelings for the lizard, she was no closer to remembering anything about their past association than before.
Her relationship with Olive was as clear as glass. Alias knew she could trust the halfling to look after the halfling first, the party’s possessions second, and everyone else probably not at all. Though the bard had shown one flash of bravado in Mist’s lair, taunting the dragon long enough for Alias to get back on her feet, bravado was not the same as courage, and had nothing at all to do with heroism. Alias realized that Olive would weigh every risk against how much treasure she estimated lay at the end of Alias’s quest.
Akabar was a little more complicated. He was on a quest of his own to prove to himself that he was more than a Turmish merchant. Eager to collect his own adventures to relate to his profiteering wives and, Alias conjectured, probably anxious to keep from returning so soon to a family with little tolerance for such nonsense as adventures. Alias was certain that if he hadn’t stumbled across her case, he’d have found some other adventurer to lavish his attentions on. She felt she could trust him not to deceive her, but she wasn’t going to count on him to lay down his life for her. She knew the mage possibly had one other reason for accompanying her, but he had been wise enough to deny it, so she wasn’t going to dwell on it.
She wasn’t aware she was falling asleep, but when the wreckage of the inn began to shimmer and reform into the building she remembered from years ago, she knew she’d drifted into some dream. Angrily she tried to shake herself awake, frightened that her dereliction of duty would bring great harm to the party, but she had no success.
The inn took on an increasing solidity. First, the thick timber walls returned, their joints sealed with dabbed mud. Doors and tables and chairs and the bar seemed to rise from the ground. Without moving, Alias found herself seated at a small table by the firepit.
Alerted by the groaning beams above, Alias looked up. Overhead, the charred timbers grew whole, the drooping section of ceiling that had survived the fire straightened. Planed boards crisscrossed the timbers and, though she could not see them, Alias heard the clatter of pottery shingles as they multiplied across the boards outside. Chains began to snake downward from iron hooks which sprouted from the main timbers. The ends of the chains blossomed into gourd-shaped lamps, burning oil from small wicks.
The flame in the firepit flared into a roaring blaze, and the North Gate Inn began filling with customers, though they did not enter by the door. Alias heard them first, the mutter and roar of many people speaking all around her. She fixed her attention on a booth in the corner where she heard an argument, but all she could see were shadows.
Of course, I might not be dreaming, Alias considered. This could all be some fantastic illusion. But the noise would have wakened the others, and they would still be here sleeping beside me. No, this was a dream, she concluded.
Suddenly there was a tremendous clatter to her right. Her head turned in time to witness a burly man berating a small servant girl for spilling wine down the copious cleavage of his female companion. As the youngster protested her innocence, the man stood up and loomed over her. He was twice her height, but Alias caught the glint of sharp steel as the servant reached into her apron pocket.
A loud roar came from the corner booth again, and she turned her attention back to it. No longer occupied by shadows, it was filled with people of depth and color. A tired cleric and a young fighter argued some fine religious point. The cleric insisted that Tempos was a corruption of the southern Tempus, and that Tempus was the correct pronunciation. This supposition seemed to madden the fighter, a northern barbarian on his manhood journey, no doubt. His face, already quite red from several drinks, flushed even darker. He was preparing his argument by reaching his right hand over his left shoulder to grasp the lion-headed hilt of the massive sword strapped to his back.
Alias wondered which of the two arguments would be the first to cause a room-clearing brawl.
“Neither,” answered a pleasant voice. Alias started at the reply. A young man stood beside her table, holding two crystal glasses in one hand and a dusty bottle in the other. He sat in the chair beside her, setting the items he carried on the table. “But devastation will arrive shortly,” he assured her with a lopsided grin and a wink. Alias would have judged him to be not yet twenty, but his suave manner belied her estimate. He wiped off the bottle and extracted the cork with an expert ease.