Valkyrie's Shadow

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 5, Chapter 9

The Tiger and the Dragon: Act 5, Chapter 9

Chapter 9

18th Day, Upper Wind Month, 1 CE, 1300 Hours

“Hmm, what can I say…”

A wisp of frigid air raised the hairs on Liam’s arms. The source of that frigid air – a maw lined with teeth as long as and probably sharper than knives – hovered less than a metre in front of his face.

“This is the third retake in two weeks, but you’ve still only managed to score sixty per cent.”

“I-it’s alright, isn’t it? This is the optional test anyway.”

“That’s a poor attitude to harbour, Liam,” Hejinmal said. “If the director was here…”

Liam swallowed. His gaze went past the Frost Dragon’s snout to the blackboard behind him. On the right side of it, something that could only be described as a crater sent a myriad of cracks through the wall. Orphanage Director Yuri Alpha left it there during a classroom lesson some time ago. The director claimed that it was an ‘accident’, but no one could grasp how one could nearly punch a hole in a thick limestone wall by accident.

Hejinmal’s turquoise eyes dilated. He let out a frosty sigh.

“If you feel that way, why do you keep challenging this exam?”

“Because…”

Because my friends all took it.

They all beat him, too. Most of them got at least a seventy on their first try.

“Because it’s good to broaden your knowledge,” Liam said.

The assistant professor’s eyelids narrowed. A low growl rose from the Frost Dragon’s throat.

“You shouldn’t offer empty reasons, Liam,” Hejinmal said. “Furthermore, knowledge is not to be underestimated.”

Liam turned his gaze downward. That was the problem with Frost Dragons. Their senses were so keen that they could sense what was going on inside of someone’s body. They could see, smell, hear and feel the world far better than any other race could – they even had senses that Humans didn’t have. Once they understood how any one race worked, it was nearly impossible for a member of that race to hide their feelings and reactions from them without suitably strong methods of concealment.

One remedial lesson later, Liam staggered out of the schoolhouse of the Azure Sky, Iron Fist Institute for Promising Young Children.

“Oh, you survived.”

Kali’ciel’s head snaked out from the shadow of the orphanage wall. The Juvenile Frost Dragon examined him curiously.

“Hey Kali,” Liam said as he walked by, “what are you doing here?”

“I was wondering if my brother would eat you for failing three times in a row,” Kali silently padded up to walk alongside him. “Those tests are so easy – why do you keep having to retake them?”

Kali’ciel had also taken the test. She came out of it with a perfect score, just like Liam’s sister.

“You’re only saying that ‘cuz you’re a Frost Dragon.”

“What’s wrong with being a Frost Dragon?”

“Do you know what a potato is?”

“Of course I do,” Kali replied. “A potato is a potato.”

“Where do potatoes come from?” Liam asked.

The Frost Dragon fell behind Liam to squeeze past a Troll Merchant’s wagon. She sniffed at its contents as they went by.

“Potatoes are food, so Humans probably farm them.”

“How?”

“Like how the Quagoa raise lizards. There are probably vast herds of potatoes roaming the Empire, raised by Human Farmers.”

Liam frowned at the mental image. Frost Dragons had perfect memories, but their heads worked funny. Kali’ciel could read a book once and recite it from memory word for word ten thousand years later, but whether she understood what she was reciting was something else entirely.

“Wrong.”

“What?! Y-you’re just lying because you want to be right!”

“Why would I lie about potatoes?”

Abstract ideas and associations without experiences were crazy hard for Frost Dragons. Often, it was impossible. This, of course, meant that she either did perfectly on tests or ended up worse than someone who had just answered randomly because she tried to match her own experiences to the questions.

Potatoes were food. Dragons ate meat. Thus, since Kali’ciel had never seen a dug-up potato plant before, imagining them as a herd of animals made the most sense to her.

Most people would say that made Frost Dragons dumb. But that wasn’t true at all. The way that their minds worked made them super good at the things that they regularly did. The more they learned and the older they got, the better they were at everything that they became accustomed to. At least until something changed from what they thought they knew.

“Oh, I found one I think you’d like,” Kali’ciel said.

“Found one what?”

“Half a block away, walking in the opposite direction.”

Liam peered towards the place Kali’ciel indicated, spotting a tall, slender girl around his age with dark brown hair that hung past her shoulders. He turned his gaze forward, but it stuck to the girl again.

“Wh-why are you following me, anyway?”

“That’s a good question. Habit, I guess?”

With that, the Frost Dragon turned into a nearby alley and scaled the city’s inner wall. Her scaly tail vanished into the frozen aviary.

For the past few months, Liam, Saye and Kali’ciel went to school together. Well, it was more that they left school together since Liam and Saye had been living at the orphanage since last spring. When the Frost Dragon wasn’t working, they wandered around the city after classes, looking for new and interesting things.

This was probably weird since Frost Dragons were supposed to be solitary in nature. Kali’ciel, however, claimed to be following in the footsteps of one of her elder half-sisters – Hejinmal’s younger sister – who was supposedly strong and all-around amazing.

That was her reasoning at the start, at least. Saye was the most ‘successful’ kid in class so Kali’ciel chose her to follow around and learn about the city. Somewhere along the way, they had become a ‘group’ that people recognised, including Kali’ciel.

Liam followed the fancy promenade running through the central district of the city. Some people were watching the adventurers spar at their training hall, but he ignored them and kept going. He made his way past the Maids and footmen working around the district and exited out the other side. After zig-zagging through a half dozen blocks, he arrived at a quiet merchant inn.

He opened the door. A hearty aroma wafted out to greet him. Liam made his way to the far corner of the tavern, where he found the person he was supposed to meet in a softly-lit booth along the wall.

“Yo, kiddo~ Looks like ya failed again.”

Liam sat down across from a blonde-haired woman with coral eyes. She wore a foreign outfit over her curvy, yet fit figure. Her name was Tira: a ‘Ninja’ who worked for the Sorcerous Kingdom. Around midwinter, Lady Shalltear had put Tira in charge of Liam and Saye. The woman was responsible for training them into some sort of agent for the Ministry of Transportation.

They were supposed to be ‘inspectors’ or ‘investigators’, but Liam was pretty sure that inspectors and investigators weren’t trained to do what Liam and Saye were being trained to do.

“Did you wait long?” Liam asked.

“About an hour. Listening in to the Windflower crew helped pass the time, though.”

Exasperated sighs rose from the booth behind Tira.

“Aw, why so serious?” Tira grinned, “I’m a spy. You guys are spies. This whole tavern is fulla spies! Spies are one hundred per cent okay in the Sorcerous Kingdom.”

The whole tavern being full of spies wasn’t an exaggeration. Being a spy wasn’t a crime in the Sorcerous Kingdom, nor did the Sorcerous Kingdom do anything about them. In the end, the entire intelligence community said ‘fuck it’ and the Midnight Mantle transformed into a den of information brokers, intelligence agents and other related vocations that one might find in a story. There were agents from as far as the City State Alliance and even the Sorcerous Kingdom’s allies had people in the establishment.

Werther Killrey, the proprietor of the Midnight Mantle, took the strange turn in stride. He was in the process of renovating the inn, proofing the rooms against eavesdropping and divination. The tables were made more private and the employees of the establishment were retrained.

The Midnight Mantle was probably the only inn in the region where the staff didn’t say a word upon one’s entry. They didn’t approach patrons unless they were called for. People still hired its rooms for normal purposes, but they were more often than not used for private dealings.

As a result, the Midnight Mantle had become one of the ‘busiest’ inns in E-Rantel. It was a bonanza of information from across the region; a marketplace that traded in commodities of a different sort. Werther was even considering purchasing the neighbouring buildings to expand his business.

Liam placed his hands on the table, slowly moving his fingers.

–we moving yet?

Tira rested her chin in one hand, the fingers of her other moving in response.

–yep, got the green light.

–green light?

–founder picked it up from somewhere. Means we got the go-ahead.

The ‘founder’ Tira referred to was Ijaniya, a legendary Ninja who was a member of the Thirteen Heroes. According to Tira, there were all sorts of weird terms that came into common use at that time.

–when do we go?

–sundown. Transport will be in the harbour.

–what do we bring?

–got supplies for the operation already. They brought local clothes for us.

–we’ll be there.

“Want lunch?” Tira asked, “My treat.”

Liam looked up from the table. Tira had a warm smile on her face. For someone who had supposedly carried out thousands of assassinations, starting from when she was younger than Liam, she was a remarkably friendly person.

Some thought it was an act, but he was pretty sure that it wasn’t. She just cared for the people under her like a big sister. Ijaniya was an infamous organisation known throughout the region, but, to Tira, it was her precious family. A legacy that was passed down through the generations to her.

“I have to go and get Saye,” Liam answered.

“Then we’ll have ‘em pack something up for the two of you,” Tira said.

Fifteen minutes later, Liam left the Midnight Mantle with two meals wrapped in brown paper. He stared at the packages as he made his way over to the central plaza.

Their life now was so different from where they grew up. They lived in an orphanage paid for by the Sorcerer King. The food was good, they never went hungry and they had a warm and safe place to sleep. People on the streets didn’t walk around like they were scared something might happen to them. Even little girls could wander around at night free of worries.

At first, he thought that maybe it was Fassett Town that was screwed up. Their job in Roble showed that the rest of the world was more like Fassett Town, so it was probably the Sorcerous Kingdom that was special. They didn’t even look down on the fact that he was an orphan kid who had to grow up rough. Instead, they accepted him for what he was and gave him work to do.

The sound of a choir drifted over the central plaza as he drew closer to the E-Rantel Cathedral. He walked by the Magician Guild and the Adventurer Guild, eyeing the Merchant stands displaying magic items and equipment across from them. He stopped at one that had display cases filled with scrolls. A woman in clothing from the Empire came over.

“Is there something I can help you with, young man?”

“Do you have any Invisibility scrolls?” Liam asked.

“…we do,” the woman answered, “but what do you plan on using them for?”

Liam turned and walked away. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman frown slightly.

A lot of Wizards didn’t like Rogues. They actually didn’t like anyone who didn’t ‘work’ for their magic. Sorcerers learned magic by ‘grasping’ it with their senses, which Wizards didn’t consider proper study. Rogues and Bards were even worse in their eyes: they had the Ability to ‘trick’ scrolls, wands and other caster-restricted magic items into working for them, skipping all of the hard work that magic casters put into learning their craft.

“Good afternoon, Liam.”

He stopped in front of the cathedral, nodding at the Acolyte who had greeted him.

“Hey, Max.”

Max – who had no last name – was an orphan from the city. Max didn’t even know if his real name was Max, but since everyone called him that, he decided to stick with it. Unlike Liam and Saye, who had been taken in by the Azure Sky, Iron Fist Institute for Promising Young Children, Max had been taken in by the cathedral and was in training to be a Cleric.

“A Squire will chase you out with a warhammer again if you bring food inside,” Max eyed the packages in Liam’s hands.

“But I see you guys eating in there all the time.”

“Not during services we don’t,” Max replied. “Saye’s in the choir so she can’t eat right now anyway.”

Liam checked the time. There were still thirty minutes left until the early afternoon service was over. He went over to sit in the shade of the cathedral entrance, watching the people in the plaza. The Merchant from before was handing over some scrolls to a man in a brown robe.

“Is the temple selling stuff yet, Max?” Liam asked.

“Are you kidding?” Max answered, “We still don’t have enough mana to keep up with all of our followers.”

“But you have like ten times the people as before.”

“Yeah, and it’s not enough. We started short. All the new people are Acolytes and Squires like me, anyway. We can’t make anything good.”

“Mmh…”

Liam’s training made extra sure to drill the importance of magic items into him. The problem was that magic items were hard to get in E-Rantel. Locally-made stuff was mostly snapped up by the Adventurer Guild. People from the Empire came too, but their goods were expensive and their Merchants asked stupid questions.

The choir started to sing again, marking the end of the service. Liam got up and brushed himself off, watching the men and women stream out of the cathedral. A few minutes after the last of the temple-goers trickled out, Saye appeared.

“Over here,” Liam called out.

His sister came over, an instrument case at the end of one sleeve of her choir uniform. Every day, Saye attended school in the morning, performed as part of the cathedral choir in the afternoon and trained with Ijaniya in the evening.

“What did Tira say?” She asked.

“We’re leaving today,” Liam answered. “We have to be at the harbour by the evening. Do you need to do anything before then?”

“Not really. I’ll let the Priests know that I’ll be away for work until…how long are we going to be gone for?”

“Dunno,” Liam shrugged. “It’s supposed to be a big job, so at least as long as the last.”

For their last job, they were sent to help make a certain sequence of events work to achieve a specific result. There was a schedule and they knew roughly what to do, plus some things had been arranged for them. Their new job was completely open-ended and they had no idea what sorts of missions they would be sent on. They were only supposed to ask questions if it had to do with completing their missions, and they only knew what they were going to do after they were handed their orders.

They ate lunch in the main plaza and then Saye dragged him into the cathedral to attend the late afternoon service. After that, he waited at the entrance to the cathedral’s stables while his sister changed out of her choir uniform. Two familiar figures came down the street, their plate armour gleaming in the afternoon sun.

“Vicar Aspasia,” Liam lowered his head in greeting. “Sister Alessia. I hope the day finds…what’s that smell?”

An indescribable odour rose from one of the two women. Sister Alessia, who usually smiled, was wearing a very frowny frown, so it must have been her.

“Let us not ask, yes?” She said.

“It’s the result of our Adamantite-rank exam,” Vicar Aspasia smiled.

Sister Alessia’s olive eyes slid over to give Vicar Aspasia a look that probably shouldn’t be cast at a Vicar. Liam checked below their gorgets, finding orichalcum tags still dangling from their necks. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one failing at tests today.

“What’s that smell?” Saye appeared from the stable entrance.

“The inside of a giant rodent’s mouth,” Vicar Aspasia said.

“…what?”

“A giant, talking rodent, that she was.”

“Ai, do not start talking like the thing now.”

“She was huge and floofy,” the Vicar said, “and strangely polite. I would have rather spent my time petting her, but we had to fight her for our Adamantite-rank exam.”

“What happened during the fight?” Liam asked.

“She grabbed Sister Alessia with her tail and stuffed her in her mouth, then she chased me all over the room. The battle was one-sided.”

“Ridiculous,” Sister Alessia put on a disgruntled look. “Why does a rodent with a four-metre-long body have a twenty-metre-long tail? The tail was broad and harder than steel; I do not know how she can even move properly. Something kept banging against my armour while I was in her mouth, too.”

Getting chewed on by a giant rodent didn’t seem like the exciting life of exploration and discovery that the Adventurer Guild advertised. Liam was glad he had a normal government job.

Sister Alessia dragged herself into the cathedral. Vicar Aspasia parted with Liam and Saye with a smile and friendly word.

“Do we need to pack anything?” Saye asked, “We’re going to be there for a long time.”

“They said they have stuff prepared for us,” Liam answered. “There’s even clothes. Let’s go before we’re late.”

Liam left the plaza with Saye, going down the street to E-Rantel’s front gate. He eyed the instrument case in her sister’s left hand.

“You’re bringing your lute?”

“I doubt they’ll be packing an instrument,” Saye replied. “If they don’t want me to take it, I can send it back. Better than needing to come back and get it.”

Saye’s skills as a Bard were invaluable the last time they went out on a job. They had been dumped in the countryside of Roble with their orders and little else. They had worn clothes and magical brooches to keep them from dying of exposure, but they weren’t allowed to bring any food, money, tools, or weapons.

She had them join one of the streams of refugees heading towards the port city of Rimun and went to work right away. She sang and told stories for food and everything else they needed, gathering information at the same time. If it had just been him there, he would have had to do odd jobs to get by. It would’ve been tough since everyone was looking for work.

The customs officials at E-Rantel’s southern gate checked them for goods before letting them through. Not far from the gate was a gravel lot where a half-dozen wagons were parked. They climbed onto one with a ‘Corelyn Harbour’ sign on it and the Soul Eater took them down the road.

“Did you learn anything new about the Draconic Kingdom?” Liam asked.

“Not much,” Saye sighed. “Just more stories.”

“Didn’t you say that the Queen there is descended from a Dragon?”

“Yeah. It still doesn’t sound right, but everyone seems to think it’s true.”

How did that even work? He tried to imagine a Frost Dragon getting married to a Human, but he couldn’t figure out what happened after that.

“I wonder what she looks like. Do you think we’ll meet her?”

“She’s a Queen,” Saye told him. “We’re not going to randomly run into her on the street.”

“The Sorcerer King walks around on the street.”

“The most we’ll probably see around are some Nobles,” his sister rolled her eyes. “It’s a Kingdom so there should be plenty of those around.”

Were the Nobles Dragons too? Saye frowned at him as if she knew what he was thinking and thought it was dumb.

“Anyway,” she said. “All the stories say the same thing, but they don’t say anything useful. The Draconic Kingdom gets raided all the time by Beastmen. It’s like they’ve been at war forever.”

“So…what?” Liam said, “they just fight every day?”

“More like get eaten every day,” Saye replied.

Did that mean he would get to fight, too? His trainers in Ijaniya were teaching him how to fight, but their last job didn’t have any fighting at all. He was almost like an errand boy while Saye did most of the work.

Saye’s look returned.

“I hope you’re not thinking of getting into fights,” she said.

“Why not? The trainers said I was stronger than the usual kid off the street.”

“Beastmen are strong, Liam. They’re not like city people or villagers. They’re like Ogres with fur and claws and big teeth. If there’s any fighting, the adults will probably do it.”

Liam sighed, drawing one of his daggers and working it in his hand. He had already killed plenty of things. Well, practice things.

An unlimited amount of ‘real’ targets could be summoned for them to train against, so he just practised and practised and practised. The more he practised, the stronger he got. He got better at a whole bunch of things at the same time just by practising how to fight. It was a lot easier than studying the stuff they tried to teach him at the orphanage.

“Don’t you want to fight?” Liam asked, “They trained you in combat, too.”

“Why would I want to fight?” His sister answered, “I can do way more things without fighting than I can by fighting.”

“I don’t think you can do any of those ‘way more things’ when a Beastman is trying to eat you.”

Saye glowered at the dagger in Liam’s hand. In an up-front fight, Saye was about even with him. If Liam fought like Assassins were taught to fight, it would be a lot harder for her.

Still, that meant she could beat up most grown men pretty easy. Despite being able to, she tended to avoid doing things that would lead to fights. If anything, she used her strength and toughness to take abuse. Just like with the jealous maid in Viscount Santz’s household, she could invite violence and use it to make people feel sorry for her or make others look bad. Little did anyone she drew into her performances know that, as a Bard, she could just heal herself when she was done doing whatever she was trying to do.

Their wagon rolled through the entrance of Corelyn Harbour, following a ramp down into the town centre and stopping in a lot near the front of the town hall. Three other wagons were parked there. One of them went all the way to the town on the Theocracy border. Another went to the town near the Imperial border. The last went all the way to Crosston in the west.

The Soul Eater waited for the people waiting for its wagon to get on before heading back to E-Rantel. Liam looked around the plaza, watching the evening crowds go about their business. Corelyn Harbour was probably one of the nicest-looking places in the Sorcerous Kingdom; its atmosphere was distinctly different from E-Rantel.

Part of it was because it wasn’t as crowded. Corelyn Harbour was about half the size of E-Rantel, but only had a third of the people. There was a sense of space that couldn’t be found in the city, giving it a refreshing and relaxed air. The people all looked content and friendly, and, at the same time, everyone carried themselves as if there was some grand purpose in their lives. It wasn’t a place where people simply lived from day to day – it was a place that felt like it was going somewhere and everyone knew it.

“I still can’t get over how huge that temple complex is,” Saye said. “You’d think the cathedral grounds in the city would be bigger.”

“Well, the country has more space,” Liam replied. “Sister Alessia said that Countess Corelyn set aside that huge area specifically for the temple and all of its stuff.”

Not only did the town have a big temple, but there was also a school and university for the Faith of the Six in the Sorcerous Kingdom, which included accommodations for all of its staff and students. Sister Alessia said that it would eventually train hundreds of Acolytes and Squires every year to meet the needs of the Human population.

“Wanna get dinner before we head down?”

“Eh…we just ate three hours ago.”

That definitely wasn’t something Saye would’ve said last spring.

They walked out of the town centre, following the highway until they reached the ramp down to the harbour. A group of familiar faces were gathered at the waterfront near the covered drydocks, unloading crates from several wagons. Tira grinned and waved them over in a very un-Assassin-like way.

“Looks like ya made it in one piece,” she said.

“Were we supposed to run into trouble?” Saye asked.

“Eh…not really,” Tira answered. “Force of habit. Just used to new agents like you two getting intercepted and killed on the way to a job once in a while. Guess that’d be weird since we’re working for this country.”

She said it in such a lighthearted way, but Liam was pretty sure she wasn’t joking. For all of her warmth, Tira and the rest of Ijaniya had lived a life in the shadows until recently. With so many of the organisation’s combatants headed to the Draconic Kingdom, he would finally get to see them in action.

“Did you let Director Alpha know that you were headed out?” Tira asked.

Saye looked at Liam. Liam looked away.

“Liam!”

Liam flinched at his sister’s ire. Now they had to go back to the orphanage.

“Lucky for you I let her know,” Tira’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “I had to sign a ‘field trip permission form’ though…did Lord Demiurge have to do that the last time?”

He sighed in relief. Liam didn’t know about any sort of permission form, but it looked like they would still be able to go.

“Do we get to know what we’re doing yet?” Liam asked.

“Not yet,” Tira answered. “We’ll be briefed on the other side. But before that, we’re going on a spooky little trip.”