Dragon-Bound Thief: Teaser Chapter

Dragon-Bound Thief: Part 3

Chapter 2

Luri fussed over him like a mother hen. Chaif pretended to be annoyed by all her bother, but in the wake of his trip across the slippery heights of Silverdale, her attentions were profoundly comforting. Even her lecture.

"Chaif Taibor, I swear," she clucked, "of all the crack-brained things you've done in your life, this has got to be one of the worst." She spoke softly because although the room was private, the walls were thin. "Now this is going to sting a little," she warned.

Chaif gritted his teeth. Luri had treated his wound as carefully as any physician. After she had forced him to drink a large glass of spirits, she had dug the main piece of the wooden splinter out of his leg. The splinter was not as big as he had thought—nowhere nearly as big as it had felt on the dark rooftops of Silverdale. To get it all out, she had been forced to slit more of his skin around the wound. She had done it with a little knife that was as sharp as any doctor's, a knife she had cleaned as carefully as any doctor would.

Next, she had gone back into the wound to clean out all the little black slivers she could find. Chaif thought he had already leaked more than enough blood across the tops of the houses he had traversed, but she bled the wound more to "get the poisons out." Every step of her treatment had hurt. Now she had a bottle of spirits poised over him to finish cleaning the wound. When he was a child, his mother had used similar stuff on his scrapes and cuts. The word sting would not begin to describe what Luri was about to inflict upon him. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and nodded for her to go ahead. He was determined not cry out. There was too much at stake. The peace wardens were probably already searching for Eldin's burglar, and he wanted no questions about what Luri was doing to him at this time of night.

Fire exploded in his wound. His leg twitched, and he gasped. Fortunately the flash of agony subsided before he took a second gasp. Shortly the wound felt dead. He watched her stitch up the gash in his leg with a needle and thread, but he noticed only pinpricks and tugs as she sewed.

Once Luri had tied up his injury with a clean wrap, she stood back. Her eyes were sad. "As my oldest and dearest friend, can you tell me it was worth it?"

He started to give a flip answer. After all, he had paid for this night so he would seem to be just another gentleman caller—a false trail for any questions from the peace wardens. However, he reconsidered his response when he saw the concern in her eyes. Besides, his head was spinning from the spirits. At this point he did not think he could be clever. "Yes." He nodded to show the certainty he felt. "I managed to poke a really big stick into that bastard Eldin's eye tonight."

"But he'll never know who or why," she chided. "He'll think this was some random burglary." She frowned. "And if they ever do catch you, then he would know." She shook her head sadly. "But you would be an old man before you saw the light of day again." She snorted and sat down in the room's only chair. "So if you do succeed in paying back the guild for what they did, and they never know who or why"—she held up her hands helplessly—"what's the point?" She glared at him and repeated, "What is the point?"

"It's for my father," he replied, and the memory came rushing back. Chaif's father, Tel Taibor, had been ambitious. After he had retired from the guard, he had taken up brewing, first as a hobby while he ran a tavern, then more seriously when he started to make money from the ale he brewed for his customers. Chaif and his mother, Iette, helped in the tavern. Life was good.

At least it was good until his father began to sell enough of his own brew to bring him to the notice of the Brewers' Guild. Unlike the Bootmakers' Union, the Tinkers' Federation, and all the other respectable associations of Silverdale who welcomed newcomers to the trade, the Brewers' Guild was a tight coterie of four brew houses that brooked no competition. Tel Taibor had ignored their first mild threats and had kept producing his well-liked beer, even through a series of increasingly obvious acts of sabotage. The one act Tel could not ignore was the savage beating he had received the night of Chaif's thirteenth birthday—a day that had changed Chaif's life forever.