The Dragon Keeper

“You persist in thinking of her as some angelic girl-child who befriended you when no one else would. Perhaps she was, at one time, though I doubt it myself. I suspect she was just being kind to someone as friendless and awkward as she was herself. A sort of alliance of misfits. Or kindred spirits, if you would prefer. But she is not that now, my friend, and you should not let those old memories sway you. She is out to get whatever she can from our relationship and at as little cost to herself as she can manage.”



Sedric was silent. Friendless and awkward. Misfits. The words rattled inside him like sharp little stones. Yes, he had been so.



As always, Hest had told the truth. But he had a knack for studding it with tiny, painful but undeniably true insults. A memory rose, unbidden. A hot summer day in Chalced. He and Hest had been invited to an afternoon’s relaxation at a merchant’s home. The entertainment had consisted of a wild boar confined in a circular pit. The guests had been given darts and tubes to blow them from. The others had found great amusement in maddening the trapped creature, vying to stick the darts in its most tender places. The culmination of the diversion had been when three large dogs were set on the creature to finish it off. Sedric had tried to rise from his bench and move away. Hest had unobtrusively gripped his wrist and hissed at him, “Stay. Or we’ll both be seen as not only weak but rude.”



And he had stayed. Even though he’d hated it.



The way Hest now jabbed him with tiny insults reminded him of how he had helped torment the pig. Hest’s face then had had that same dispassionate but calculating look that it did now. Going for the tenderest flesh with tiny, sharp words. His sculpted mouth was a flat line, his green eyes were narrowed and cold, catlike as they watched him.



“I wasn’t friendless,” he said quietly. “Because Alise was my friend. She came to visit my sisters, but she always took time to speak with me. We exchanged favorite books and played cards and walked in the garden.” He thought of himself as he had been then, shunned by most of the young men at his school, a source of bafflement to his father, a target for teasing by his sisters. “I had no one else,” he said softly, and then hated himself for how much those words betrayed about him. “We helped each other.”



But the whispered comment seemed to have touched and softened something in his friend. “I’m sure you did,” Hest agreed smoothly. “And the little girl that she was then was probably flattered by the attention of an ‘older man.’ Perhaps she was even infatuated with you.” He smiled at Sedric and said quietly, “How could I blame her? Who wouldn’t have been?”



Sedric stared at him, breathing quietly. Hest returned his gaze, unflinching. And now his eyes were the deep green of moss under shade trees. Sedric turned away from him, his heart tight in his chest. Damn him. What gave him such power? How could Hest hurt him so, and a moment later melt his heart?



He looked down at his hands, still holding Hest’s blue shirt. “Do you ever wish it were different?” he asked quietly. “I am so tired of the deceptions and trickery. So tired of holding up my end of the pretense.”



“What pretense?” Hest asked him.



Sedric looked up at him, startled. Hest returned his gaze blandly. “If I had your wealth,” Sedric ventured. “I’d go somewhere else, away from everyone who knows us. And start a new life. On my own terms. Without apologies.”



Hest spat out a laugh. “And very quickly there would be no wealth. Sedric, I’ve told you this before. There is an immense difference between having money and true wealth. My family has wealth. Wealth takes generations. Wealth has roots that stretch far and wide, and branches that reach out and twine through a city. You can take money and run away with it, but when the money is gone, you are poor. And all you have before you is the prospect of long years of very hard work so you can build a foundation for wealth for the next generation.



“And that’s something I have absolutely no interest in doing. I like my life, Sedric. I like it the way it is. Very much. And that is why I do not like it when Alise proposes to upset it. I dislike it even more when you seem to think that’s acceptable behavior on her part. If I fell, what do you think would become of you?”



Sedric found himself looking down at his feet as if shamed as he mustered the last of his courage to take Alise’s side. “She needs to go to the Rain Wilds, Hest. Give her that, and I think it will be enough to last her the rest of her life. One chance to be out in the world, doing things, seeing things for herself instead of reading about them in tattered old scrolls. That’s all. Let her go to the Rain Wilds. You owe her that. I owe her that, for wasn’t I instrumental in bringing her to marriage with you! Give her this small, simple thing. What can it hurt?”