The heavy fog still enveloped the city as Hepplethwaite Alething slipped out of the house on Grayfont drive. As Hep made his way to the castle, he could hear - if not see - the city start to get ready for the day. Bakers headed to their dough, butchers to their sausage, night watchmen for their beds. Hep only got lost twice in the unfamiliar streets of Blue Hill.
The sun had crept above the horizon and started to do its job of burning off the fog when Hep arrived at the foot of the avenue that led up to Star’s Grace. In times when soldiers on foot and on horses were more to be feared than magical or aerial assaults, the rulers of Gwenddon had built and rebuilt their citadels on a ridge overlooking Carenburh on one side and the River Twn on the other. All that meant to Hep is that he had to climb a steep road with short legs every time he had to report to his boss.
Hep did not recognize either of the guards standing at the gatehouse. He was not surprised. The guards on duty in the small hours would either be new or being punished for some minor transgression. Not ones that Hep would regularly encounter. His not knowing them, however, also meant that they did not know him. The guard that stopped him hesitated to wake the second ranking noble in the castle, the one who gave orders to the commander of the garrison. The commander of the garrison, in turn, gave her orders and could put her on night duty for the foreseeable future.
Informing her of his job did not sway her. Not many knew that the Duke personally employed an investigator. Hep had to imply that standing out in the nice, fresh air of a night was not the worst duty the guard could have. He did not actually describe the alternatives. The woman’s imagination could do a better job of that than he could. She relented, calling to a boy napping inside the gatehouse.
The response was quicker than Hep had expected. He had supposed the boy would be back with a message to let him enter. Hep had been to the Lord Steward’s apartment many times. He did not need an escort.
Instead, it was the Lord Steward’s personal secretary, Dustan de Troi. That was good news. The Lord Steward would already be awake. It was also bad news. She would be distracted by whatever issue required her to already be awake. Given that the normally dignified de Troi was hurrying enough to be out of breath, very distracted.
“Inspector Alething,” said de Troi. “I hope that you are not requesting the Lord Steward’s attention on a frivolous matter.”
“If it were, I would still be home in bed,” said Hep. He tilted his head towards the guards. “It certainly is not something to discuss here.”
“Very well. Follow me.” De Troi turned on the heel of an immaculately shined boot and led Hep into Star’s Grace.
Instead of turning to the right inside the gate to go to the Lord Steward’s office, de Troi turned left. Surely, Hep thought, we are not going to see the Duke himself. But de Troi continued across the courtyard, past the keep and the Duke’s residence, to the North Tower.
Hep groaned inwardly. The North Tower was only used for one thing. Its roof was the highest point of the highest building in Carenburh. On the roof, there was no shelter from the prevailing winds. Perfect conditions for a dragon to take flight. Whatever the Lord Steward was dealing with, it required her to take her true form.
Getting to the tower roof meant another long climb for Hep, up steps made for legs twice as long as his own. He missed the elevators of Frandylshyn. When he had made it to the top, he was greeted by a sight rarely seen by the citizens of Carenburh and one few had ever seen this close - a dragon in its innate form.
Larquimax, the Lord Steward of Star’s Grace and effectively the administrator of the government of the kingdom on Gwenddon, was an iridescent azure, with a belly of shamrock green. She had spread her wings, testing the wind. They stretched well past the edges of the tower.
“There have been reports of boars as large as carriages in County Kreel,” she said, staring off to the north, not even turning her head to acknowledge Hep’s presence. A dragon’s true form could do many things. Speaking Gwenish words was not one of them. Hep heard the Lord Steward’s voice in his head.
“They seem to only be about in the early hours. None of the local hunters have been able to wound a single one. We need to know if these beasts are fey, magical, or chaos-touched. I have bet Kronberg that they are fey. I think he agrees with me, but he is betting that they are normal boars, warped by chaos.
“I am off to hunt. It should be fun. Can your business wait a few hours?”
“I am afraid not, my Lord,” thought Hep.
“Very well, then. Come along. Dustan, the steps, please,” said the dragon.
De Troi brought a set of steps from the edge of the tower and placed them in front of the Lord Steward’s wing. Many dragons would not allow anyone to ride them. They remembered their role as steeds while enslaved by the Dragon’s Bane spell. Larquimax, however, had almost achieved the rank of Great Wyrm herself. It would not do to show such pettiness in front of her subjects.
Dragons, however, were not designed to be ridden. The steps would have helped a human onto the dragon’s back without too much awkwardness. Hep had to get an inglorious boost from de Troi. The secretary kept his face carefully expressionless as he instructed the dalibor how to seat himself and where to hold on. During this process, the dragon twitched her wings impatiently, with increasing amplitude and frequency.
When de Troi finally removed the steps next to her, the Lord Steward leapt off of the tower. She dove down towards the Twn before spreading her wings and soaring into the lightening sky. Hep buried his face in her scales, holding on so tightly that the scales threatened to cut into his fingers. The dalibor, by their nature, were an almost subterranean species. In the arcological city of Frandylshyn, one could go days or weeks without seeing the sky. Now, the sky was all around Hep.
“Now, what brought you to me this early in the morning?” asked the Lord Steward.
It was a good thing that the Lord Steward could read his mind, thought Hep. There was no way he could unclench his jaw enough to speak. Hep described the scene he had observed in the house on Greyfont Drive. By both inclination and training, Hep’s reports were detailed and accurate, rather than concise. They had flown many miles by the time he had finished his account.
“Polarma is a relatively new nation,” said the Lord Steward after contemplating Hep’s news for several minutes. “They broke away from Krondak after the fall of the Empire, joining the Five Nations. I suppose it should now be. There! There’s one!”
The dragon instantly fell into a dive as steep as the one that had launched them from the tower back in Carenburh. Hep found it no less terrifying the second time. He could not breathe. He was not sure that his heart would not explode, the blood was pounding so loud in his ears.
This time, when the dragon pulled out of the dive, it was not a smooth, fluid motion. Only Hep’s death grip kept him on her back as she came almost to a halt in midair.
“Got him!” she shouted exultantly in Hep’s mind as she assailed his ears with a tremendous roar.
The dragon labored to gain altitude. Hep still struggled to stay on her back as the thrashing of whatever she had grabbed rocked him back and forth.
“That’s enough of that!” she said. Hep heard a bone cracking crunch. The thrashing stopped.
“This one should do,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
As she flew, the Lord Steward resumed discussing the murder as if she had not been interrupted.
“It should be the Six Nations, now. Seven or Eight, if Tremora or Kortan decide they can’t go it alone. They really shouldn’t, you know. They’ll need allies when Krondak decides it wants them back.
“Ambassador Naram was the first envoy we received from Polarma. Quite a smart lady, but I got the impression she was just feeling her way. Polarma’s diplomatic corps is brand new. Their ambassadors don’t have any formal training. They just have to send out their most charismatic and hope for the best. In my estimation, Naram would have proved adequate.
“I agree that the evidence of an Iron Shadows ritual is an attempt at misdirection. A heavy handed one at that. Neither the Shadows’ god Prnabg or their king Stout Anvil have any reason to drive a wedge between Gwenddon and Polarma or between Gwenddon and Peroka. Nor do they have a reason to embarrass Gwenddon by having a diplomat assassinated on our soil. Surely, whoever is really responsible would not think we are as simple as to be fooled by so blatant a fabrication?”
“Maybe an offshoot of the Shadows? One which thinks that Prnabg wants to overthrow Stout Anvil?” suggested Hep. “No, that does not work. It was not an actual Shadows ritual. Perhaps it is a distraction. Something noisy for us to focus on while they perform the act they truly want to perform?”
“If that is the case, you had better find the culprits quickly. Another thought occurs to me….”
The pair bandied about other explanations on their way back to Carenburh. Neither of them found any of those ideas at all satisfactory. As the sun approached its zenith, they approached the city.
“I’ll have to drop this beast in the castle courtyard,” said the Lord Steward. “No point in having to haul it down from the top of the tower.”
Hep had all but forgotten the reason for their trip. Their discussion of the murder had distracted him enough that he had loosened his grip on the dragon’s scales. The reminder that they were flying had him tightening up again.
The dragon flew in low over the castle. She dropped her burden as she passed over the courtyard. She did another pass before landing near the corpse of her prey. Hep fell off as she shifted to her human form, landing on the courtyard cobbles on his rear.
As a human, the Lord Steward was a tall, willowy woman with long, white hair. She wore the azure and shamrock gown that was the only outfit Hep had seen her wear outside of state functions. Ignoring the dalibor clamboring to his feet, she walked over to the boar laying precisely in the center of the courtyard. Lying on its side, it rose above the Lord Steward. Each of its tusks were longer than Hep was tall. He had never seen such a beast.
The Lord Steward poked the boar’s belly with a long, slender finger. “I think I’ll win my bet with his Grace,” she said. Hep was somewhat disconcerted by her speaking aloud. “It will have to be analyzed, of course. Our mages will have such fun with it.
“What are you going to do now?” She turned to Hep.
“Get some breakfast.” He looked at the sky. “Or, lunch, I guess. Then I’ll see if I can take a look at that knife from the scene. I have some ideas about that.”
“I have no doubt that you do. No doubt at all.”
Den of the Red Wolf 