Home, At Last.

I judge impetuosity to be better than caution.

a"Niccol Machiavelli.

Niccol Machiavelli was an a.s.shole.

a"Walter Slovotsky.

It was sundown when they landed in the front yard of the New House, the house where Jason had spent most of his time growing up, before the move to Biemestren.

As they circled in, a crowd of people gathered below, their elongated shadows playing across the gra.s.s: a few warriors from Frandred's team; some farmers in from their fields on business; Petros, the deputy mayor; and Lou Riccetti. The Engineer was grim as death as he stood, fingers twining impatiently, thin lips pursed perhaps in sorrow, perhaps in irritation.

*There's news,* the dragon said as he thunked to the ground. Ellegon's mental voice held a quaver of excitement. *About your father.*

"Jason," Lou Riccetti said, "quickly: how many did you leave behind you in Melawei?"

"Two. Ahira and Walter Slovotsky."

"Then," Lou Riccetti said, choosing this words slowly, carefully, "I think your father might be alive. I may have a lead on where he is. Come with me inside; we've got to talk to Aldren."

CHAPTER 13.

"All Men Are Created Equal . . ."

We boast our emanc.i.p.ation from many superst.i.tions; but if we have broken any idols, it is through a transfer of idolatry.

a"Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I find that we all get more legendary as time goes by. "Legend" means, basically, "bulls.h.i.t."

a"Walter Slovotsky.

A trader had brought word of Karl Cullinane's death just the tenday before.

Lou hadn't been sure whether or not to believe it.

Then Aldren came Home.

"As far as I know, I was the last one out searching for you," Aldren said as they sat in the living room of the New House. "I was posing as a mercenary soldier looking for work." He sat back in the big leather chair next to the fireplace and drank more from his big pewter tankard of ale. In the light of the crackling fire, he looked ordinary enough: fortyish, gray hairs streaking a roughly-cut brown beard, a few scars on his hand and a few laugh lines around his eyes. "I must have hit Pandathaway about three tendays after you all left; and I figured that if you'd gotten as far as Pandathaway by the time Ahrmin left, you'd likely be chasing after Karl.

"Which, it seemed to me, made the search for you pointless. But, just in case, I headed north, up the coast, on the grounds that it might be a good idea to scout out Guild strengths in some of the coastal cities; we don't like to work that close to Pandathaway, but maybe we're going to have to, way pickings have been.

"In any case, I found that there were fewer guildsmen around than there ought to have beena"skeleton crews everywhere, and they looked scared."

He drained his ale and signaled for more; Riccetti himself refilled it from the hogshead in the corner.

"I'm not the best swordsman around, and I'm not too good with a gun. But there's two things I'm real good at: I can blend into the furniture, and I can drink any two men under the table. I got a couple of them drinking, and then drunk. And they started talking.

"Seems that Ahrmin and all of his sh.o.r.ebound force died in Melawei."

That didn't surprise Jason; Walter Slovotsky had said that he wouldn't let anyone kill Karl Cullinane and live to brag about it.

"When their relief force got there, they were stinking in the sun. And there was a note left behind, pinned to one of the corpses, part of it in a language that the slavers didn't understand and part of it in Erendra. There were three signatures to the note. The part in Erendra read: The warrior lives.

"Scared the s.h.i.t out of the slavers, but what could they do?"

Jason swallowed. The warrior lives. The same thing somebody had said in the Enkiar tavern. He walked to the mantelpiece and ran his fingers along it, the heat from the fire beating against his legs, even through his trousers.

Outside, leathery wings rustled in the night.

*What do you think?*

I don't know. What do you think?

There was no answer as Aldren went on: "Then, about six tendays ago, a guildsman in Lundeyll woke up next to one with his throat cut. Another note, also with three signatures. The word is that a dozen men, several of them Melsa"but not all of thema"caught a ship out of there the next morning, just ahead of Lord Lund's proctors."

"s.h.i.t." Tennetty slapped her hand down on the arm of her chair and laughed. "He could be alive. Leaving town just ahead of trouble is the Cullinane family trademark, Jason."

Lou Riccetti's smile and nod were distant. "Lundeyll was the first town we fled from, on This Side." His smile vanished; he shook his head. "Your namesake died there," he told Jason. "He was my best friend." Riccetti bit his lip. "I'm sorrya"go on, Aldren."

"Another note, also with three signatures." Aldren reached for a map. "In Wehnest, on the way back, I picked up news that it's happened again, on Menelet. In any case, the slavers believe that your father and his two comrades are somewhere in the Shattered Islands, or maybe on Salket. Every guildsman is either hunkering down, hoping they'll hit somewhere else, or trying to hunt them down."

Lou Riccetti leaned forward. "Aldren just got in yesterday. I was putting together a team to go hunting for them, too. But your arrival suggests another idea."

Kethol nodded. "With Ellegon to place us, we've got a good chance of getting to them before the slavers do, particularly if we can figure out where they'll hit next."

*Thanks for the vote of confidence. But it all depends on where they're going to hit next, and on how well we can guess.*

Aeia smiled. Jason had to admit that his adopted sister was lovely when she smiled. "We know where they're going," she said. "Just draw a line. They're headed for Endell. Probably Ahira's idea; when they get close to dwarvish territory, they'll be safe. If the slavers don't catch up with them or cut them off first."

*That seems to be generally true, but I doubt that Karl or Walter are going to draw a straight line for the slavers to follow.*

"We have to know." Jason began to pace back and forth. "We have to tie it all down, and quickly."

Lou Riccetti raised an eyebrow. "Before the slavers get to them?"

"It's not that." Jason dropped heavily into his chair. It was like ripples on a pond, like the skipped stones. When Jason was a boy, his father had little time to play with him, and after they moved to Holtun-Bieme, that time had dropped off to virtually nothing.

But he remembered a day, when they were back visiting Home on some business, and an evening, as the sun set, when his father took him down to the lake and taught him how to skip a stone across the water. The trick was to pick the right stone, to curl your index finger around it, then throw it sidearm, just right, and it would bounce five, six, seven times across the still, flat water, each bounce sending out a circular, expanding ripple.

Word that Karl Cullinane was alive was spreading after the strikes, like the splashes of the stone that day.

"If he's alive, he can handle all the slavers in the world," Jason said. "It's not that; we have to nail this down, tight, before word of this reaches my mother."

He stood. "My father's death hit her hard." Harder than any of you know, or are going to know. "I won't have her hopes raised and then dashed. We have to settle all this and get back to Biemestren before word reaches Holtun-Bieme. We find out if my father's really alive, and we find out fast."

Ellegon spoke up. *I can drop you off along the coast and rendezvous later, but I have a run that can't wait forever. Daven's team is not going to be able to hold out without a resupply.*

And more; Ellegon might be needed to extract Daven's team, a few at a time.

There was another matter. I want you to check in on my mother, and stay with her if necessary.

Doria was a gooda"Doria had been a good healer, but she wasn't a healer anymore, and she couldn't read minds.

*True. But I don't like picking her brains. It's not like with you.*

Do it anyway.

Still, it shouldn't take many of them. They had more of a Walter Slovotsky job than a Karl Cullinane one: Locate, find, make contact and extract. Get them to a rendezvous with the dragon and get them all out. And back to Biemestren.

"Best to start from the other end," Tennetty said. "Endell; work our way south, hoping that we don't pa.s.s them by, or if we do, that we pick up a live trail."

Kethol nodded. "Just you, with Durine and me to keep an eye on your back. Small and fast. We find them, rendezvous with Ellegon and lift out."

"And me," Tennetty said, quietly. "You can't leave me behind. Not for this."

"And Tennetty," Durine said. He studied her with a curious intensity. "But that's all."

Lou Riccetti nodded. "That makes sense. Take tomorrow to rest upa"there's some things I want to get ready for youa"and you can leave the day after."

"No," Aeia said. "That is not all. I have to know. I have to go. He's my father, too," Aeia said. "Or isn't my blood Cullinane enough for you?"

"Definitely not." Lou Riccetti shook his head. "Not you, Aeia. You have to stay here. You're needed; the matter is closed."

As she opened her mouth, he raised a palm. "I can'ta"force you to stay here. But Ellegon won't carry you into dangera"not this time. Until it's proven otherwise, we have to hope that Karl is alive, but a.s.sume he's dead. If Jason's going into harm's way to find him, then we have to consider who the Cullinane heir is. You think Andrea's likely to have any more children?"

Aeia shook her head.

"Then who else will produce the Cullinane heir, if Jason doesn't come back? Which is why you stay, too, Bren Adahan."

For a moment, Jason thought that Lou Riccetti was going to prevail, but then Bren Adahan shook his head.

"You may be correct, Mr. Mayor," he said slowly, choosing his words carefully, like a man picking his way barefoot across sharp stones, "that, if Jason dies, the Cullinane heir has to come from her womba"but I don't have to be the father. I would not be the father. I'm still a Holt. The Biemish barons would not stand for the father of the Heir being a Holt, or the son of a Holt." His fists clenched. "While I resent these private matters becoming subjects for public comment, let me point out to you that my only chance at having Aeia for my wife is to keep Jason Cullinane from getting killed. He will stay alive." His fingers curled around the arm of his chair, their knuckles white.

He looked Jason square in the face. "Which is why I am coming along, Jason Cullinane. I will see to it that you stay alive, no matter what it takes."

Tennetty stood. "Everybody drink up, then hit the sheets. Tomorrow, we pack; we leave the day after."

Jason couldn't sleep. It would have been nice if there was somebody to hold his hand while he slept, but there wasn't, not anymore. Valeran was dead, and so was Chak. Mother was too dependent on him, even if she didn't know it. Doria wasn't here, and Karl Cullinane was dead.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Everybody died on him. Chak, Valeran, Father, even Vator. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Why did he have to die in a fight over a slave? Was it worth his life?

s.h.i.t. It just didn't make any sense. None of it made sense.

Jason sat in a weathered wooden chair on the porch of the New House, carving idly at a sc.r.a.p of pine and staring out at the starlight, watching the slow pulse of faerie lights off to the west. Somewhere in the distance, dicalas chittered in the trees.

A dark shape pa.s.sed overhead: Ellegon on the last leg of a patrol. The wards around the valley prevented anyone from bringing in magical implements, but couldn't react to creatures unenc.u.mbered by spells. While the dragon spent little time here these days, the resident raiders appreciated being able to reduce the guard on those few days when he was around. A night's sleep was a precious thing.

Are you out there? That didn't make any sense, either. If Karl Cullinane was alive, nothing in the world would have kept him from his wife. If he was alive, what were Walter Slovotsky and the dwarf up to? Sure, it made sense to prevent the slavers from returning to Pandathaway to brag of having seen Karl Cullinane's dead bodya"but they couldn't possibly be counting on maintaining that kind of deception. The word would eventually get out.

But maybe he wasn't dead. Jason hadn't actually seen his father die; all that any of them had seen was a wounded Karl Cullinane leaving them behind, and then an explosion.

Could he have triggered the explosion from far enough away to have survived it?

It wasn't impossible. Or was it?

He could be alive. In which case Jason wasn't going to have to take the crown, not yet.

That felt good. As if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Or as if, maybe, a weight was now being lifted; he couldn't tell, yet.

But it felt good.

The door behind him yawned open, light splashing through and pushing the edges of darkness away, although only a little. Jason turned to see Lou Riccetti, an undyed cotton robe belted tightly over a pair of Home jeans, a pair of wooden clogs on his feet. Riccetti had a wooden box and a mottled gla.s.s bottle under one arm; in his other hand he held a lantern. He set the lantern on a table.

"What are you doing up at this hour?" Jason asked.

"I was going to ask you that." Riccetti chuckled. "You should go to bed." He pulled out the bottle's wooden stopper with his teeth, then spat the stopper carefully onto the tabletop. He set the box on the table at Jason's elbow. "Maybe some of the Best will help." He tilted back the bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then handed the bottle to Jason.

Jason sipped the fiery liquor out of politeness. It tasted horriblea"but then again, he'd never developed the Other Siders' taste for corn whiskey. No, that wasn't fair. It wasn't just the Other Siders; Home was doing a modest trade in Riccetti's Best, although other distillers were springing up all across the Eren regions and into the dwarvish north and elvish east.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, pa.s.sing the bottle back and forth.

"The council wants me to talk you out of doing business with the elves over powder," Jason said. "But will you listen to me?"

"I will listen, but I'll do what I think best. Don't count on persuading me." Riccetti shook his head. "You don't have the information I do. Or the feel for what happens next."

"You sound almost like Doria," Jason said, chuckling.

Riccetti laughed. "Maybe I do. Been a long time since I've seen her. When you get back, tell her I want a visit. Maybe she could bring your mother, and whenever Slovotsky shows up, we could all play some bridge."

My father played bridge, too. It was one of the Other Side innovations that just hadn't caught on. Like the shower.