Drumindor (Riyria Chronicles, #5)

by Michael J. Sullivan

Royce offered the tavern keeper an artificial smile, which was reflected back.

this Royce Melborn of The Rose and Thorn—he has two friends, and a fine pair they are. Real wealth is not measured in the weight of useless yellow metal, but by the hearts of those that love you.”

I’d like to remind you, Heath, that you owe me a grandson.” “I’ll get to it.” “I didn’t build this business for it to crumble because you’re too busy changing the world.” “I just haven’t found anyone yet.” “You’re too picky. If she’s got four limbs, two eyes, and most of her fingers, you shouldn’t complain.” “As you can tell, my father’s standards are high.” Hadrian chuckled.

“You’re married, aren’t you, Mister Blackwater?” Shelby asked. “A successful man like you. You must have a nation of children by now.” “Actually, no. I…ah…I was in the military for several years, and since then, well, you’d be surprised how hard it is to find a woman with most of her fingers.”

The arbitrary compulsion to sleep, whether he liked it or not, was a forced constraint and another reminder that he was a pawn in a game he didn’t want to play. The whole thing was stupid. At least he thought so until Gwen fell asleep with her head on his shoulder.

“I had to deal with him when setting up this route. Turns out, people are considered just as much an import as oil or apples.” “Don’t like him?” “Didn’t say that. He’s good at what he does. Hard worker, smart fellow. Not certain he has a soul, but no one’s perfect.”

“That sergeant had every intention of killing me, and not in a nice way.” “There’s a nice way?” Hadrian nodded. “Oh, yeah. There’s good and bad to everything,

“Why is it that up north we insist on hard wood, and the closest we ever get to comfort is lining a chair’s seat with cane?” “Because of the church, lad,” Arcadius said, eyeing a stone chair laden with cushions. “Too much comfort means a closer relation to the body and a more distant one from the spirit. Misery makes all of mankind better people.” He took the plunge and collapsed into the all-consuming pillow-chair that hissed as air escaped the cushions. Joining with the pillow’s song, Arcadius sighed contentedly. “I fear that I’m doomed to wickedness.”

Hadrian was sliding on river ice but hoped his newfound fluency in Royce-speak would help him safely reach the far bank.

“How can you be so perceptive and intelligent about most things, but so dim-witted about this? You’re like a man unable to find the sun because that bright light in the sky is blinding him.

Look, Royce is in love with you. Trust me on that. He just doesn’t know what that means or even how it works. This is a foreign language to him, and he’s having translation problems. At the moment, he thinks you hate him.”

“It’s like being on the bank of a river and watching the greatest treasure in the world float right by, but there’s nothing I can do—I never learned how to swim.”

“One doesn’t use a sixteen-folded, single-edged Tiliner blade to dig a ditch,” his father used to say. “There are shovels for that.”

The professor had long sought to banish Royce’s demons, teaming the two of them in the hope that Water could convince Oil to be more social. It hadn’t worked, or at least it hadn’t worked well enough. Now, Arcadius was calling in reinforcements.

Auberon agreed to stay, if only to make certain the fish was well prepared, and the leftovers properly stored. “You take an animal’s life, then you have an obligation to make its death worth something.

“I believe that what the lady is saying,” Auberon ventured, “is that it might be wise to withhold judgment on a whole nation of people and instead stick with evaluating the person in front of you based on their own merits and not the track record of hearsay.”

Of course, there was an outside chance that while inebriated, he had been suave, and eloquent, dashing, attractive, and…and with enough yarn, cows might learn to knit sweaters.

“Sewers.” Royce nodded. “Ratibor has them. Like a man-made river beneath the city. Very convenient. Got rid of a lot of bodies that way.” “Gwen calls the flush bucket the best thing since shoes.” “This is why dwarfs scare me.” Royce pointed at the tap as if it insulted him. “If they can do stuff like this, what else are they capable of?”

That she was noble was as obvious as a hailstorm to the hatless.

I meant the boyfriend part.” The lady laughed once more and put a hand to her face as if ashamed of herself. “Well, I have eyes—two in fact—and they both work. The man is in love with you, and about as jealous as a squirrel with one acorn facing an endless winter.” This made Gwen laugh. She made no attempt to hide it.

“I didn’t mean that as a joke,” the lady said. “Oh, sorry. I just had this image pop into my head of a squirrel wrapped in a dark hood and cape.”

Instead, learn not to judge a beach by its slope or color, but by each grain of sand. Do that, and you might start to realize how it’s not just the beach you’re learning to see more clearly.”

Smart means you know lots of stuff; wise is understanding what to do with the stuff you know.”

Dwarfs are weeds to a farmer, chainmail to a blade, a deep body of water to an armored knight, or an antidote to a poison.” “So you’re the poison?” Hadrian asked. “That’s surprisingly self-aware.” Royce scowled. “If you’re looking for accuracy, they are the pebble in my shoe—small, trivial, but irritating beyond belief.” “You realize you’re about to risk your life to save thousands of those frustrating pebbles?” “Every job has a downside.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Gravis asked. “Seems pretty straightforward,” Royce replied. “Hadrian and I distract Falkirk while you do your magic and purge the system of pressure, hopefully in time to save this portion of the world.” “You might find distracting him a bit of a challenge. He’s stronger and faster than he looks.” “So am I.” “But you can die.” “Point taken.”

Seeing Hadrian miss with both swords was like seeing a drunk miss the floor.

He also didn’t seem stupid, which really irked Royce. Most of his past adversaries had tended toward the skull-half-empty side since thuggery and brilliance were paired about as often as polka dots and plaid.

The sensation was more a concoction of horror mixed with equal parts of this-cannot-be-real and why-would-I-expect-anything-less.

“I would read any story with Royce and Hadrian in it. They don’t even have to do anything special. I’d listen to them as they create a shopping list.”