Dragon's Fire Read Free Page A

“Maybe I should go by myself,” she suggested.
    “Bring the baby,” Zist agreed. “I’ll tend the beast.”
    Carissa returned later, smiling and carrying a sack full of goods.
    “They cost more than they should,” she said when she handed the bag to Zist. “The lady fed us, though, and had fresh milk for Carissa.”
    Two days later they came upon a wagon by the side of the road. It had been burned down to the wheels.
    Zist halted. He went to the wreck, crawled around and through it, and came back thirty minutes later, his face grim.
    “They were caught while they were sleeping,” he told Cayla.
    “How do you know it wasn’t an accident with a lantern?” Cayla asked. While holders used glows, the Shunned had to make do with what they could scrounge, and that often meant candles or lanterns.
    “I’d rather not say,” he replied grimly.
    “I suppose we should keep a watch at nights,” Cayla said.
    “Maybe we should turn back,” Zist said. “This is beginning to seem more dangerous than I’d feared.”
    “Perhaps this is what happened to Moran.”
    “Perhaps,” Zist agreed, his face going pale. With a sour look, he gestured to the burned wreck. “There has to be a better way to deal with the Shunned.”
    “We don’t know what happened here. We know that some were Shunned for murder. After being Shunned, what would stop them from murdering again?” Cayla responded. “Perhaps we’re only seeing justice done.”
    “No,” Zist said, shaking his head firmly. “That was a wagon much like ours.”
    Cayla realized from what he’d left unsaid that the occupants of the wagon were much like them, too—a man, woman, and child.
    “We should move on before we attract attention,” she said firmly.
    “I’d like you to keep watch from the back of the wagon,” Zist said by way of agreement.
    “Of course.”

    When they camped that evening, Cayla brought out her pipes and Zist’s gitar. They had left their best instruments behind as they had the telltale stamp of the Harper Hall to distinguish them as works of craftsmanship. Instead, they had brought older instruments, as befitted their status of homeless Shunned.
    “Let’s play a bit,” Cayla said as she handed him his gitar. “The baby’s asleep and all bundled up for the night.”
    Zist took the gitar and started tuning it; he recognized her desire to calm them both down from the horrors of the burned wagon.
    Cayla adjusted her pipes slightly to match his gitar and then, with a twinkle in her eye, started into a lively reel, daring him to keep up.
    Zist smiled back at her, matched her pace, and then exceeded it, nodding a challenge back to her, only to find himself surprised as her fingers seemed to fly over the holes and switched pace and melody at once.
    “Very nice,” a voice called out from the darkness as they finished the reel in record time. “Have you any other songs?”
    Zist stood up quickly, started to grab for the cudgel he’d laid close to hand and stopped, raising his gitar instead. As a weapon it’d do in a pinch and it had the advantage of not being obvious.
    A thin, lanky figure stepped out of the shadows toward the fire.
    Zist’s eyes swept over him, then back to Cayla, who’d turned her back to the fire and was scanning the darkness. She trilled a quick note on her pipes but Zist wasn’t fooled—the note was a D sharp, three notes up from C, meaning that Cayla had spotted three others around the fire.
    Pretending to check his gitar, Zist glanced behind the stranger and caught sight of the gleam of several pairs of eyes. He strummed his gitar twice, changing chords, as though checking his tuning but really letting Cayla know his tally of two. That made five, total.
    “There’s a baby in the wagon, she’s sleeping,” a woman’s voice called from the far side of their wagon. Six.
    Zist tensed, his jaw clenched angrily.
    “Her name’s Carissa,” Cayla replied in an easy tone to the woman. “Please don’t disturb