Darkness Descending

Sabrino didn’t want to ignore it even though he’d got leave. He’d come to the capital to enjoy himself, aye, but he’d fought too hard to forget the fighting just because he wasn’t at the front. “Big announcement expected!” a news-sheet vendor shouted. “Big news coming!” He waved his sheets so vigorously, the colonel of dragonfliers couldn’t make out the headlines.

“What’s the news?” Sabrino demanded.

“It’s three coppers, that’s what it is,” the vendor answered cheekily. He checked himself. “No, two to you, sir, on account of you’re in the king’s service.”

“Here you are.” Sabrino paid him. He walked down the boulevard reading the news sheet. It was coy about giving details, but he gathered that King Mezentio was about to announce the fall of Cottbus. Sabrino let out a long sigh of relief. If die Unkerlanter capital fell, the Derlavaian War was a long step closer to being over. He could think of nothing he wanted more.

A small boy looked up at him, reading the badges on his uniform tunic. “Are you really a dragonflier, sir?” he asked.

“Aye,” Sabrino admitted.

“Ohhh.” The boy’s hazel eyes grew enormous. “I want to do that when I grow up. I want to have a dragon for a friend, too.”

“You’ve been listening to too many foolish stories,” Sabrino said severely. “Nobody has a dragon for a friend. Dragons are too stupid and too mean to make friends witli anybody. If you didn’t teach them to be afraid, they’d eat you. They’re even dumber--a lot dumber--than behemoths. If you want to serve the kingdom and ride animals you can make friends with, pick leviathans instead.”

“Why do you ride dragons, then?” the kid asked him.

It was a good question. He’d asked it of himself a fair number of times, most often after emptying a bottle of wine. “I do it well,” he said at last, “and Algarve needs dragonfliers.” But that wasn’t the whole answer, and he knew it. He went on, “And maybe I’m about as mean as the dragons are.”

He watched the boy think that over. “Huh,” he said at last, and went on his way. Sabrino never did find out what the effect of his telling the truth was.

He went into a jewelers. “Ah, my lord Count,” said the proprietor, a scrawny old man named Dosso. He started to bow, then cursed and straightened, one hand going to the small of his back. “Forgive me, sir, I pray you--my lumbago is very bad today. How may I serve you?”

“I have here a ring with a stone that has come loose from the setting.” Sabrino took from his belt pouch a gold band and a good-sized emerald. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to restore it while I wait. And can you also size the ring so that it will fit on Fronesia’s finger?”

“Let me see; let me see.” Dosso took a loupe from a drawer under the counter and clipped it onto his spectacles. Sabrino gave him the ring and the emerald. The jeweler examined them. Without looking up, he said, “Unkerlanter work.”

“Aye,” Sabrino admitted, faintly embarrassed. “One way or another, I happened to get my hands on it.”

“Good for you,” Dosso said. “I’ve got a son and two grandsons out in the west. My boy is a second-rank mage, you know; he’s repairing the ley lines when Swemmel’s forces wreck them. His son rides a behemoth, and my daughter’s boy is a footsoldier.”

“Powers above keep them safe,” Sabrino said.

“All hale so far,” Dosso answered. He pointed to the ring. “You’ve got one good prong here--”

“I should hope I do, my dear fellow,” Sabrino exclaimed.

He won a snort from the jeweler. Dosso continued, “That will help, for I can use the law of similarity to shape the others. Magecraft--my son would laugh to hear me call it that; he’d reckon it just a trick of the trade--is faster than handwork, and will serve just as well here. And your lady ... let me see, she’s a size six and a half, eh? Aye, I can do that. I’ll size the ring first, and use the gold I take out to make up what’s missing from the broken prongs. That way, I won’t have to charge you for it, as I would if I used gold of my own.”

“That’s kind of you, very kind indeed.” Sabrinos back didn’t pain him; he bowed himself almost double. He’d been coming to Dosso for many years, not least because the jeweler thought of things like that.

“Have a seat, if you like,” Dosso said. “Or you can go round the corner and drink a glass of wine, if you’d rather do that. Don’t drink two, or I’ll be done before you finish the second unless you really pour it down.”

“I’ll stay, by your leave,” Sabrino answered. “The company is apt to be better here than any I’d find in that tavern.” He perched on one of the wooden stools in front of the counter, almost as if he were at a bar.

Dosso snipped gold from the ring opposite the prongs that held the stone, then reshaped it in Fronesia’s size, using a blowtorch to heat the ends and weld them together. After he’d finished shaping the metal and it had cooled, he held up the ring. “I defy you to tell me where the join is, my lord Count.”