Within the Dragon's Jaw (The Dragon Thief Book 2) Read online

  “Maeve, can you let me in?”

  Ty glanced behind himself but didn’t see anything else, though he was concerned that if he lingered in the street too much longer the attackers would see him and then they would come after Maeve as well. He didn’t want to be responsible for bringing anyone to Maeve.

  “What are you doing here this evening?”

  “Apparently I’m having a conversation with you while I have a crossbow bolt sticking out of my shoulder.”

  Maeve’s eyes widened slightly. She let out a grumble before motioning for Ty to step inside. When he did, she closed the door.

  “Lock it,” Ty said.

  “I did,” she said. “Do you care to tell me what exactly is going on?”

  Ty looked around the inside of Maeve’s home. It had been a long time since he had been here, but not much had changed. It was small, cozy, and had a faintly medicinal smell to it at all times. The main area was furnished with a table and chairs, a thick carpet running in front of the hearth. A cookstove off to his left already had a pot of boiling water on it. The hallway to the back would lead to Maeve’s rooms, along with her private entrance. Maybe Ty should’ve gone there.

  He took a seat on one of the chairs but couldn’t lean back, so he leaned forward instead. He rested his uninjured elbow on his knees and twisted so that he could look up at Maeve.

  “I got shot.”

  “I can see that,” Maeve said.

  She still hadn’t moved toward Ty, which surprised him. He would’ve expected Maeve to have been more interested in trying to remove the crossbow bolt.

  Maeve wanted answers. Given the silence that had been between the two of them since Ty had left, perhaps she deserved that.

  “I think it was a Priest of the Flame.”

  “Tydornen!”

  “I don’t know if they really were Priests of the Flame,” he said. “Only that they were dressed like it. Not just dressed like it, but they were wearing one of the markers.”

  “Then they were priests,” she said.

  “Again, I don’t really know if that’s the case or not.”

  “I agree. No Priest of the Flame would shoot a crossbow bolt at you.” She regarded Ty for a long moment, heat in her gaze. “Unless you did something.”

  “I got a note, and when I answered the request on the note, I found one of the priests there. He attacked me, Maeve.”

  “Is this the man who shot you?”

  “I don’t even know. I got away from him, headed back to my home, and gathered my belongings before getting out. I found one of my neighbors lying in the street, and when I checked on him, he was unconscious. The other two came at me. Somebody shot me.”

  “So you don’t know that this was the priest.”

  “The other, the first one, had the marker of one of the priests. He carried a crossbow as well.”

  Maeve clucked, a sound Ty knew all too well was one of disappointment. “We should get this out of your back. Why don’t you come with me?”

  Maeve guided him to the back of the home, down the narrow hall, and to one of the small bedrooms. A lantern in the room had been already been lit, and Maeve turned it up, brightening the room. The cot looked just as Ty had remembered, and the smell of the room was filled with a mixture of blood, medicine, and something he couldn’t quite place.

  “Take a seat. Lie down. I will remove it.”

  “Is it going to hurt?”

  “Not as much as leaving it in would hurt,” she said.

  Ty lay down, resting so that his right shoulder and the crossbow bolt were easier for Maeve to access. He twisted his head so that he could watch the old lady as she worked. Maeve tottered around the room, gathering supplies before taking a seat in front of Ty.

  He remembered the first time that he had come to her. He had not been injured then, at least not physically. Bingham had offered him a chance to work with him. He had appreciated Ty’s eye for dragon relics, the same eye that Ty’s mother had appreciated. But Ty didn’t want to be a thief. At least, he hadn’t thought he had. So Bingham had sent him on to someone he had known.

  In hindsight, Ty wondered if Bingham had known that he would eventually return. Maybe Bingham had suspected that Ty wouldn’t be happy working with a healer, or perhaps he knew that the money wouldn’t be enough.

  Using her scissors, she cut away the fabric of Ty’s shirt and peeled it back. Each time that she touched Ty’s shoulder, pain surged through him. It was hot and burning and left him in agony.

  “An interesting bolt,” Maeve muttered. “It’s buried quite deep.”

  “It’s a crossbow.”

  Maeve sat for a moment, resting her hands on her lap. “And you know so much about crossbows?”

  “I’m not saying I know all about crossbows. I’m just saying a crossbow is a crossbow. Of course the bolt is going to get very deep.”

  Maeve began to rub something on Ty’s back. It was cold, almost icy cold, and a numbness swept through him.

  When it did, the pain and agony that he’d been experiencing in his shoulder started to ease, leaving him without quite as much heat as there had been before.

  “Let me tell you what I know about crossbows,” Maeve said. “Unfortunately, in my years, I have seen my share of injuries. Some of them are deep like this, which suggests considerable tension on the string. Others are deep for a different reason. They use a specific type of bolt.”

  Maeve started to tug. Another wash of pain surged through Ty as Maeve pulled on the crossbow bolt until it finally came free. She pressed a dressing up against Ty’s back and placed the crossbow bolt close enough to Ty for him to see.

  “In this case, the bolt itself is strange. If you would have taken a moment to examine it, you would recognize the reason.”

  Ty twisted so that he could look at the crossbow bolt. As his eyes adjusted, a bit of clarity coming back to him, he realized just what Maeve suggested.

  “That’s dragon bone,” he whispered.

  Maeve just nodded. “Now tell me, Tydornen, why would somebody fire a dragon-bone crossbow bolt at you?”

  Chapter Five

  Maeve had been silent while Ty lay motionless, letting the old woman stitch him up. She had mixed a compound, rubbing it all around the wound, and then had stitched deep inside of Ty before applying another layer.

  “This is going to pull, and I don’t want you getting too active in the meantime. That means no fighting.”

  “I don’t try to get into fights,” Ty said.

  “So they just happen to you? Interesting. Most people who end up fighting find that they have done something to have precipitated it. Perhaps you are unique, Tydornen. Perhaps you alone have the ability to get into fights without having any reason to do so.”

  She patted him on the shoulder and shifted so that he could sit up. “Of course, why would I expect anything different from you?”

  “Thanks for helping,” he said to Maeve.

  “Did I have much choice?”

  “You could have turned me away.”

  Maeve tsked. “You know better than most that I would never do that.”

  Ty sat up, looking around the inside of the room. It had been a while since he’d been here, though when Ty had stayed with Maeve, helping to organize, clean up, and otherwise work with the healer, it had been much the same. “I’m sorry I left you.”

  “If you think that’s why I’m upset, then you don’t know me very well, boy.”

  “I’m not a boy any longer,” Ty said.

  “The way you’ve been behaving tells me that you’re still a boy. And perhaps since you are quite a bit younger than me, I can call you boy regardless. Anyway. Do you want to talk to me about what happened?”

  Ty shook his head. “Not particularly.”

  “So you don’t want to tell me why you have a priest supposedly shooting you with a dragon-bone crossbow bolt?”

  Ty reached for the dragon-bone bolt. There was a danger in having it here, though he do
ubted that Maeve knew it. He would have to dispose of it before one of the Priests of the Flame came for it. If they knew that they’d hit him, they could possibly use the bolt to track him, and he most certainly did not want anything to happen to Maeve just because he had come here for help.

  “It was one of the Priests of the Flame,” Ty said.

  “Why would one of the priests do that?”

  “Probably because of Albion.”

  “Your brother?”

  Ty rolled the dragon bone in his hands. Despite having been sunk into his shoulder, the bolt remained almost perfectly white. It was smooth, straighter than he would’ve expected, and the sharpened end was as dangerous as his dragon-bone dagger.

  “Albion got mixed up in something,” Ty said, looking up at Maeve. “I’m not exactly sure what it is, but they think he left something for me.”

  “Did he?”

  “Not that I know of, but it turns out that I didn’t know my brother nearly as well as I thought I did.”

  Maeve rested her hands in her lap for a moment. “Why don’t you come out and have a mug of tea with me while we talk?”

  He got up, and as soon as he bore his weight on his legs, pain shot up his back. He tried to stabilize so that it didn’t hurt quite as much, but he tottered for a moment, resting his good arm on the bed.

  “I did what I could about the wound, but it will take time for it to heal,” she said. “But then, you know that.”

  Ty just nodded.

  With his good hand, he scooped the satchel with the dragon pearls off the ground and carried it out to the living room with Maeve. He took a seat at the table, resting his uninjured arm, and settled his head in his hand.

  She turned to the kitchen, tending to the pot at boil and preparing a mug of tea. It reminded him of when he was much younger, back when he had first left the jungle and his home there and when he had first come to the city, thinking that he might find answers. He’d found Maeve willing to help, to work with him, and to offer him a bit of comfort.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “I don’t know what there is to say,” Ty said. “I am trying to figure out what happened with my brother, and the only thing that I really know is that he got himself involved in something dangerous.”

  “Is there a reason he would do that?”

  “Our parents,” Ty said.

  Maeve turned, and she frowned deeply. “Are you still looking for them?”

  It was all he ever cared about. She knew that, though. They had gone through it when he had still worked with her. “Until I find them.”

  She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “How long do you intend to look?” She glanced up at him. “Your mother left you how long ago?”

  “It has to be about five years,” he said softly.

  “And then your father went after her. At a certain point, even a boy like you needs to realize that they may not be coming back.”

  It was the second time tonight that he had been called boy.

  But maybe she wasn’t wrong.

  When it came to his parents, there was a part of him that felt stunted, as if he couldn’t grow until he knew what had happened.

  At this point, he no longer knew. The more that he had learned, the more he had come to realize that maybe his parents hadn’t been quite who he thought they were. That didn’t mean he couldn’t help them. It just meant that finding them involved digging into places he wasn’t necessarily comfortable going. It was the reason he’d gotten tied up with Bingham and everything that he did.

  “Not much has changed there,” Ty said.

  “Other than you,” Maeve said.

  He shrugged. “I can’t say that I’ve changed either.”

  She frowned at him. “Perhaps we should talk.”

  He wasn’t really in the mood to talk. At this point, he just wanted to rest, and then he had to go digging. His mind had already worked through what it was going to involve, and he had come up with an answer, though he wasn’t entirely sure that answer was going to work for him.

  It would be tricky.

  “Tell me what has troubled you,” Maeve said.

  “Maeve, I know you’re just looking out for me and you want to try to help me. It’s just that I don’t know that this is something you want to get involved in.”

  “And you claim to know what I want to get involved in?” Maeve took a sip of her drink, setting it down the table in front of her. “I remember when you came to me all those years ago. Scared. Confused. Lost.”

  “I didn’t come to you like that.”

  “No, you came because he sent you to me. I thought you might stay with me. He hasn’t sent that many to me. Only those he thinks might be ill-suited for his kind of work. And here I thought you had a gentle soul.”

  “You don’t think I do?”

  “I think you could, but I also think you let yourself get caught up in the dangers, and the possibility that exists within those dangers.” She shook her head. “And you ignore what you have in front of you.”

  “That’s just it, I don’t have anything in front of me.” He took a drink of the tea before setting it down and looking at Maeve. “Are you so upset that you won’t help me?”

  “I’m upset that you think that would be reason enough for me to be irritated with you. I’m upset that you think that you had any reason to disappear, and that you weren’t willing to stay.” She shook her head. “I suppose I’m upset that you didn’t want to learn.”

  “It wasn’t about you,” Ty said.

  Maeve leaned back, taking a long sip of her tea. “It took me a while to come to grips with that. There was a time when I believed that it was about me. I thought that perhaps you decided you didn’t want to learn from me.”

  He shook his head. “You know it wasn’t.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I know nothing of the sort. You disappeared. You decided that you would rather risk yourself than learn from me.”

  He resisted the urge to argue with her. She knew that he hadn’t simply disappeared, though perhaps in her mind he had slipped away while she was off gathering supplies. It was a weakness, Ty knew that, but in hindsight he wasn’t sure that he would do anything differently.

  “I needed to do whatever I could to find them. I went to the only person I thought might help me.”

  She looked up at him, and it seemed to him that a question flickered in her eyes, and at first he thought she might not say anything. She shook her head. “Have you ever questioned why?”

  “He knew my mother.”

  Maeve stared at her hands for a moment. “Is that the only reason that you think you should have gone to him?”

  He wished that it were so simple. It wasn’t so much that he had gone to Bingham because he had known Ty’s mother. That had been a part of it. Surprisingly, that had only been a small part. Bingham had known Ty’s mother, which meant that Bingham had known the kind of things that she had been involved in.

  “He was always interested in dragon relics.”

  Maeve held her gaze on Ty. “Does that bother you?”

  “I never really understood it. I suppose I still don’t. I thought that going to him would help me learn more about my mother and the kinds of things that she was involved in.”

  “What makes you think she was involved in anything?”

  He smiled. “I know that the king chases the dragon relics. The more ornate, the more detailed, the more he values them.” Much like the relic that he and Olivia had stolen earlier. “The more I got to know about my mother, the more I started to question why.”

  “Did you find any answers?”

  What did she want him to say? That he stopped looking for those answers? When Bingham had shown him how much he could earn, and how he could use that money, Ty had stopped his focus on the dragon relics in favor of stealing and learning tradecraft, thinking that he might find something. He never had, though.

  “No. I didn’t find the answers. And I thought my
brother never looked, but it seems like he stayed more involved than I knew.”

  Maeve studied him for a long moment. “Not just more involved, though, is it?”

  Ty sighed. “No. Not just more involved.”

  Albion had been far more involved. He had been the Dragon Thief.

  “How do you feel learning the truth about him?”

  He snorted. It should've been a simple answer, but it wasn’t. He didn’t even know how he felt about that. Ty nodded. “I have a feeling that my brother has always been caught up in it.”

  He told her some of what had happened, at least when it came to Ishantil, but he wasn’t willing to reveal everything to her. He trusted Maeve, but he also had learned something while working with Bingham. He had learned not to trust.

  At least, not to trust too deeply.

  Then again, that wasn’t Bingham’s lesson. Ty had learned that on his own.

  “Dangerous,” Maeve muttered, shaking her head. “I wonder if he knew.”

  He meant Bingham.

  “I don’t think so,” Ty said. “If he knew, he would’ve told me.”

  She looked up at him, and there was a flicker in her eyes that left Ty wondering if perhaps she doubted that. Perhaps she knew something more.

  Maeve turned her attention back to her work.

  Ty fell silent. He wasn’t sure how she might react or what more he might have to say. When he’d first gone to her, he hadn’t known how to tell her about his parents, or why they had disappeared. He supposed he still didn’t know how. Now that he knew his brother was the Dragon Thief, it was even more difficult to know what to say to her.

  “If you need a place to rest, you may stay here,” Maeve said.

  Ty looked up, smiling tightly. “Thank you.”

  “It saddens me that you left me. Not because of what happened to your family, though that saddens me as well. I feel like there is much that you never shared with me.” When Ty opened his mouth to object, she raised her hand, cutting him off. “Now, you don’t need to remind me that I don’t understand what you went through, or that you might not have known all the details at the time that you were here. It saddens me that you weren’t able to have the opportunities that you deserved. You didn’t have the opportunity to live a life that you deserve.”