Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
The door was on our left. I thought Reynald would do that thing badasses usually did in movies and books when they either choose a chair facing the exit or dramatically move one to face it, but no. He sat with his back to the door and didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.
The bells had struck seven about fifteen minutes ago.
I slipped Everard’s den between my fingers.
“What is that?” Reynald asked.
“A man once gave me three coins. They saved my life. I kept the last one for luck.”
I put the coin away, picked up the small teapot from the ornate metal platter, and refilled our cups. The tea in Taryz was top-notch. This one tasted a little like chocolate and something else, something slightly tart. Rose hips?
The wooden door opened, and three men entered. All three were large, in their late twenties or early thirties, wearing dark gray tabards and dark cloaks secured with a metal clasp in the shape of a dargan’s head. Dargans resembled wolves, and these three did as well.
Same clothes. Same hair: very short on the back and the sides of the head, but long enough to pull back into a short ponytail on top. Drugh understood the power of branding. Anyone familiar with the mercenaries of Rellas would see one of these guys and instantly recognize which company they belonged to.
The leader took our measure. He was slightly shorter than Reynald, with light brown hair and a harsh face. He’d asked for the Magnars and found us instead, but he didn’t seem at all surprised. Drugh Harra in the flesh.
Drugh headed for the table and sat across from me. One of his guys, the blond one, leaned against the wall by the door. The other man, with darker brown hair, moved to the window and stood behind Drugh.
Drugh fixed me with a heavy stare. “You are not Gort.”
“I am his employer.”
“I’m not here for you.”
Too bad. He wasn’t getting his hands on the Magnars. Drugh wasn’t a bad man, but he was dangerous, and no matter how much bad blood there was between him and Filderon, the broker had been his mentor. I needed this to go well, because if it didn’t someone would end up dead.
“Filderon was a greedy man in the truest sense of the word. Some people are greedy until they get comfortable and then they decide they have enough. For Filderon, enough didn’t exist. He was always looking for a way to grab more.”
No reaction.
“That’s why he lied to you that day in the cemetery, when you were holding your mother as she wept. Your father never asked him to take care of you. Your father knew what kind of man Filderon was, and he didn’t expect to die in that campaign. Filderon recognized talent when he saw it. He understood your worth and reasoned you would make him a lot of coin. That’s why he convinced you to abandon knighthood. What was it he said? ‘Knighthood is for people born into money. It keeps them from being bored. You have a mother to take care of.’”
Still no reaction.
“That’s why he took your wife under his wing. He’d ignored his cousin for most of his life. The only reason he showed up at his funeral was because he realized there was an inheritance. He didn’t even know your wife’s name, he just knew there was a sixteen-year-old orphaned daughter, and she would be an easy target. That’s why he didn’t want the two of you to marry. Once you did, he’d lose the money. She came to the wedding with only a quarter of her dowry.”
The commander of the Dargans was a tough nut to crack.
“When Indora Yolenta sent a sack of gold to him to lead eighty people to the slaughter, Filderon wavered. Not because it was wrong, or because he felt guilty about it. It was because he knew that there was no coming back from that. It would finish him as a broker so there would be no more money to be had. But the offer was just too tempting. So much money. He already had the estate picked out where he would retire. That’s why he tried to get all of the Magnars in. He didn’t want Gort’s sons looking for him after their father died at Falcon Point and disrupting his sweet new life. You’ve read the instructions pinned to his chest. Things like trust and loyalty didn’t matter to him at all.”
That was the Dargans’ credo: trust and loyalty.
I had run out of things to say. The silence lay heavy.
Drugh opened his mouth. “Do you think you’ve told me something I didn’t know? There is a reason I stopped speaking to him.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because right or wrong, Filderon was there. He robbed me blind, but he gave me a way to support my mother. He taught me. He was shrewd and patient and he didn’t hold back. I am where I am because he showed me the ropes. Hedena knew her uncle was after her dowry, but he gave her a safe place to stay. When she was scared and grieving, he put a roof over her head and food on her table. She was not alone. She belonged somewhere, and when she was ready, he pulled in all his favors to apprentice her to the weaver of her choice. He treated us as his own. He sat at our wedding for both of our fathers, and he left everything he owned to us. He was family. That’s what the Magnars took away.”