Little Dragon, page 13
Lisbeth knew she shouldn’t say what she wanted to say, and yet the words were coming out of her mouth anyway. “You remember Feyodar, right?”
“Feydo…fey… Right! Feyodar!” Villy’s grin was so broad and bright, she wondered if she should feel bad for how she was going to ruin that smile, but she didn’t. No, if anything, she felt angry. Villy couldn’t help what happened with his father, but at the same time, it was hard not to resent how he’d just been whisked right out of the poverty he had been a part of and never really looked back. “He was a right lad, always a funny one. Where did he end up going? Did his mother finally come ‘round?”
“No. He died, Villy. Caught this fever that we couldn’t keep down no matter how much we tried. We spent all the spare gold we had on medicine, and that was when Solomiya first shaved her head to sell her hair, but it wasn’t enough. He died exhausted and in pain.”
“Gods, Lisbeth I… I didn’t know.”
“And you remember Eva, right?”
“Lisbeth, why are you doing this?”
“She died of some sort of infection. We don’t know if it was from a tooth or a cut she got, but her body just couldn’t fight it. Again, we tried everything, and Katyana called in some favors with Mads, but we ran through all the supplies that she could spare.”
Villy shifted uncomfortably, the pleasant atmosphere of the moment shattered between them. It was probably rude of her to do what she was doing, but she didn’t feel bad about it. Not at all. Feyodar and Eva deserved to be remembered. Every single child in Kyerchov who died because of greed or idiocy deserved so much.
They deserved to live.
“Why are you telling me all of this, Lissy?”
“Because you need to know. There are so many sick kids who will never get the opportunity you got, and a lot of them will die because of it. It’s something you need to remember, because if you allow yourself to forget it, you become just like the same nobles we’ve always hated.”
Lisbeth delivered every single one of her words deliberately, but it was because she believed them. Right down to her soul. She was very glad Villy was still largely the same boy that she’d always known, but she was also keenly aware of how quickly that could change. Money and ease did strange things to people.
“I…”
“I know you’re still a kid now, just like me, but soon, you’re gonna be a man. Then, you’re gonna be the Lord Maelfic. If you wanted, you could make some real change.”
She had been worried that Villy would get defensive, because she had essentially turned a fun trip to her home into a serious conversation about the inequality in Kyerchov.
Lisbeth knew that some would consider her banging on and on about it to be quite self-righteous, but she just didn’t understand why it couldn’t be better. There was no reason for some to have so much while others had so little. Wouldn’t the entire city be better if everyone had enough to eat? It wasn’t like the nobles wouldn’t have enough food. They would still have plenty. Just slightly less plenty. Hardly even enough to notice.
“I know that you’re right. I am the heir apparent for my entire family name, but sometimes, it still feels so surreal that I just don’t know what to do. I don’t belong to the slums anymore, but I don’t really belong to the noble circles either. I feel caught between what I was and what I’m supposed to be, and other than helping you, I don’t really know what to do.”
“You can do what you’re doing for me, but with others. Give out food. Medicine. Maybe have a couple of your servants patrol for possible people you could help since I know you can’t exactly walk the streets around here on your own offering people money.”
Villy let out a pondering sound, his arm coming up to rest across Lisbeth’s shoulders. “That’s not a half-bad idea. I’ll need to move a bit slowly, to make sure my father doesn’t get wind of anything, but I suppose something is better than nothing, right?”
“Your something would mean a whole lot to a penniless, sick orphan. Remember before I started scrapping, how someone giving me a single copper could make a difference in whether we were so hungry we felt sick or just regular hungry?”
“…yeah, I remember.”
The conversation definitely faded at that, but Lisbeth felt bolstered. Her family was finally relatively set financially, at least for Upper Kyerchov standards. They had connections to Mads the apothecary and Villy’s family fortune that they hadn’t had before, Lady was recovering, and everyone had accepted Flit. Helping others in the slums would be the perfect topping to it all. While Lisbeth was certainly enjoying the change in her fortune, knowing that others were benefiting as well made it much better.
It couldn’t all be doom and gloom forever, though, especially with Flit being the goofy little thing that she was. Eventually, she woke up from her mini-nap and crawled from Lisbeth’s lap. She climbed up Villy’s shirt and tried to burrow into his thick, sandy brown hair. That broke the tension, and the two laughed, allowing the mood to shift back into the positive until Villy left.
Lisbeth walked with him, of course, taking him all the way to the lifts where she found two guards from his family waiting for him. Ah, that explained how he’d gotten as far as he did without being bothered.
“See you around?” Villy asked, giving her lingering sort of hug. Despite his smile, she could tell that her words still weighed heavily on him.
“See you around,” Lisbeth confirmed, feeling much better about the future. Things really were looking up lately.
She would just have to be especially careful that she didn’t end up ruining that.
10
TRIP AT THE FINISH LINE
Easy was dangerous. That was something Katyana had taught Lisbeth since she was a wee little thing, and she had committed it to her memory, but as the days passed, she began to forget.
Life was blending into a pleasant stream of normal happenings. There were no crises, no sudden illnesses, no attacks, and no robberies. Nothing went awry, and there weren’t any animal deaths or sudden failures of the meager crops they were able to grow around the boardinghouse.
In fact, Lisbeth was able to buy the supplies to build more of a fungi-light setup to support an entire new garden bed. She bought it piecemeal, just in case she was being watched, and set it up a little each day. It would take a month or more to get any actual food from it, but just having it was a huge boon.
With everything going so positively, it was easy to forget to be careful. To smile too much and not be quite as aware as she should be. It was going to get her in trouble, so every time she remembered, she’d try to put herself back into her survival mindset, but it was harder to get back into now than it had been before.
“Hey, it’s almost basket time,” Lisbeth reminded Flit as she crawled all over the port leading back into Kyerchov, excited about their successful haul. Lisbeth hadn’t used any of the caches she’d hidden since she was energized and her scanner said there weren’t any other life signs around, so she went back to the shed and got a bit more. Nothing too big, since technically her family didn’t need any money, and wasn’t that a wild situation to be in?
It was still always best to prepare for a rainy day, though, and Lisbeth was feeling particularly ambitious. She wanted to expand the chicken coop, stock up on some feed alternatives, and maybe even build another garden bed if she could. That way, even if their luck suddenly changed, they’d have a system built in to carry them through to better times.
It really was amazing how just a little extra was changing their entire lives. The gold Lisbeth had been given by her father, by Villy, by her scrapping, was a pittance compared to what the nobles spent—it wouldn’t even cover one of their fancy parties—and yet it had changed her life just as much as having Flit did.
“Hey, you know the rules. You get to roam out in the ruins, but once we’re down the wall, you have to hide.”
Flip chirped at her, which sounded an awful lot like backtalk. After another week together, her little friend had definitely come even more into her personality, which was about ninety percent sass, one hundred percent hungry, and forty percent sweetheart. Lisbeth knew that math didn’t check out, but it was still true. The hatchling was chock full of personality.
As far as she could tell from Lady, that wasn’t entirely unusual for most hatchlings. When they felt safe, they pushed boundaries and explored, sometimes even acting a bit bratty as they figured out the world.
Lisbeth couldn’t really blame them, and honestly, human babies would probably be a lot more entertaining if they could do more than stare, cry, and mess themselves. Not that she would know. She couldn’t remember the last person in Upper Kyerchov who had a baby on purpose. That was for the folks in middle and Lower Kyerchov.
“I know it’s not ideal, but we gotta make the most of your ability to hide in a bag while you’re able.”
Although communication with Lady was still a little shaky, Lisbeth had learned that it wasn’t likely for Flit to stay so small forever. She definitely wasn’t going to be a hulking dragon, like the ones from Lisbeth’s dreams, but she would eventually be ridable.
That idea was absolutely insane to Lisbeth. Her tiny Flit, who could still sit comfortably in the palm of her hand, growing big enough for her to fly around on. Not that she would ever get the chance. Even if she was able to hide her buddy up until she was grown, it wasn’t like they could fly around the caves. If the stalactites didn’t get them, someone with a crossbow would.
That was a worry for future Lisbeth. At the moment, she just needed to get to Lyric and get a couple of silver pieces to hide under the bedroll until she could go out and get the supplies she needed to make the improvements to the boardinghouse.
Maybe, just maybe, if she got really ahead, she’d go to Middle Kyerchov and buy paint to freshen up the outside of the building. She would need to talk to Katyana first, of course. The woman had a reputation that kept them safe, for the most part, but there was a fine line between being considered too much trouble for the amount of fight and making themselves a spectacle worthy of risking death to rob.
Whistling to herself, Lisbeth made it down the rock wall and let out the particular whistle she’d trained Flit to know meant it was basket time. Although the little dragon was still chittering in objection, she listened, clambering down from Lisbeth’s shoulder and curling up in the basket that had most definitely become hers and only hers.
It would be a sad day when she eventually outgrew it, but considering that the hatchling had barely gained an inch in the month since she’d emerged from her egg, that was a long time off.
Lisbeth made it all that way to Lyric’s without any issue, trading the bits she had for five silver pieces and two coppers. It was probably risky of her that she’d gone all the way to the trader’s shop with Flit still in her bag, but the tiny dragon seemed to understand that when she was within her basket and outside of the room, she needed to be deathly silent.
“You’ve been so good today,” Lisbeth murmured as she strolled along, turning over the glow solenoid—or whatever Lyric had called it—in her hands. “When we get home, I’m going to give you the biggest treat.”
Maybe Flit replied, her sound muffled by the bag, but Lisbeth didn’t quite catch it. Mostly because she heard a footstep that was a bit too high to be on the street with her and suddenly, all her senses were on the highest alert.
She didn’t pause, because pausing would be a dead giveaway that she was wise to someone being on her tail, but Lisbeth did duck her head and concentrate, trying to focus on everything around her.
Suddenly, she was aware of far too many sets of steps around her. Some just barely on the edge of her hearing, some above her, some perhaps a single street over. She was being followed, she was certain of it.
Blast, she’d gotten so careless! She knew she needed to be careful, and yet she was walking around the edge between middle and Upper Kyerchov with her goods out in the open and just chitchatting like everything was hunky-dory. Had she suddenly turned into an idiot? It felt like it.
What to do? What to do? Lisbeth’s mind began to mentally map out everything she knew about the area. She wasn’t the most familiar with it, but like many parts of Kyerchov, she had a general idea of which way would lead her home.
All she had to do was get close enough to the boardinghouse and she was likely to be left alone. Sure, it would be leading whoever was following her to the place where she laid her head at night, but she just had to hope that Katyana’s reputation proceeded her.
The footsteps began to speed up, and Lisbeth knew they were trying to pincer her in. She had to decide what to do, and fast, before she ended up surrounded.
“Hold on, Flit,” Lisbeth murmured, feeling like her heart was in her throat. “And stay quiet.”
With one last journey through her mental map, Lisbeth took a deep, steadying breath and darted to the side, ducking into the narrow gap between two buildings.
The result was almost immediate. She heard a couple of shouts, and the footsteps surged toward her. Whoever was following her knew that she was onto them.
That meant the chase was on.
Lisbeth wasn’t stupid enough to erupt onto the side street that the gap between the buildings opened onto. After all, she was already pretty sure she’d heard a set of footsteps there. There was almost certainly an aggressor waiting for her, no doubt gloating at the idea she was about to fall right into their lap.
No, Lisbeth knew better, so she used the mushroom box just below the window to her right to boost herself up onto the lattice of one of the buildings and climb onto the flat roof.
It was a lower level of a much taller building, and Lisbeth wasn’t surprised to pull herself onto a small garden. Folks in Middle Kyerchov often had setups that weren’t possible in the slums. Partially because they had access to better equipment, partially because their buildings could stand the weight of larger garden beds, but mostly because they had the extra space.
Although Lisbeth’s gaze landed longingly on a gourd sitting on a vine just a few feet away from her, she hurried along, racing across the garden and leaping onto the side of the next building.
She couldn’t be certain, but she was pretty sure that she heard more shouts and footsteps below. Had they already spotted her? Or were they looking for where she had gone to? Lisbeth certainly hoped it was the latter, but she wasn’t going to stick around to find out either way. She needed to put as much distance between herself and her pursuers as possible.
This time, there was no lattice to climb up, however, which would have been far more convenient. Instead, Lisbeth crashed into and caught onto one of the thick, copper pipes that moved water from the reservoir to certain wells within Middle Kyerchov. The upper levels had no such thing, of course. The excuse was that the slums were far too high and took way too much material to get the water up, but everyone knew the real reason was that the royals and everyone else in power thought it would be a waste of money to make life in the slums easier.
Lisbeth was also pretty sure that whoever ran the service that carted water from the middle of the caves to the upper had probably paid some people off. It made sense. Pipes would put those carts and their owners out of business.
Ugh, why did everything have to always come back to money? Even running for her life, the need for more always permeated everything.
Clambering up the surprisingly warm pipe, Lisbeth pulled herself up onto another roof and allowed herself only a few beats to catch her breath. She wasn’t anywhere near the lift that went from close by Villy’s manor to the upper districts, but she was near the cable basket that could take her from the edge of Middle Kyerchov to the eastern chunk of her levels of the cave. It would still be quite a distance from the boardinghouse, but at least it would get her into much more familiar territory. While Lisbeth was fairly good at improvisational escape, as she liked to call it, she would gain much more ground on streets where she knew every nook and cranny.
With a new destination in mind, Lisbeth raced across the roof, skidding to a halt when she realized that she’d reached the end of a block.
Drat.
There wasn’t the largest gap she’d ever jumped in front of her, but it was pretty sizable. If she fell… Well, whoever was following her wasn’t likely to give her time to get away and find a healer. Or reset her bones.
A disgruntled squawk came from her bag, and Lisbeth hurriedly let out what she hoped was a soothing sound. “I know, I know, but I promise that we’ll be home soon. This wasn’t supposed to work out this way.”
There was only one option, however. Lisbeth couldn’t let whoever was following her possibly catch sight of Flit. By the ancestors, if they were after her now, it would be so much worse if they thought she had something as valuable as a rare animal species on her, let alone a dragon.
“Here goes nothing,” Lisbeth muttered, taking several steps back before running for the edge. She knew she couldn’t hesitate, couldn’t hold herself back. She just had to fling herself with everything she had to make the gap.
For a moment, she floated through the air, detached from everything. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying, her body completely released from all the forces that usually weighed her down.
Was this what it was like to fly? Perhaps she’d find out one day, if she and Flit both lived long enough to actually take to the skies together…and actually have skies to take to. Unfortunately, that would involve venturing out into the Void, which was a monumental task all on its own.
It would have been nice to stay in that moment, Lisbeth thought. Where there were no worries about where she was going to run or how she was going to get away. Just the experience of the moment.
But that could only last for so long before the opposite roof came hurtling toward her. Lisbeth braced herself, readying to tuck into a ball, but as she rushed nearer, she realized that she was a bit too short to land how she wanted.
