The Dragon Nimbus Novels: Volume I: Volume I

arched planks of the span and fetched up right beside him. One guard had made it as far as the bridge, the others were just a bit slower.
    With a mighty yank, Darville pulled the linchpin of the bridge, just as the young thief had done earlier.
    “Yoowll!” The guard on the bridge fought to cling to the railings. He scrambled for a purchase for his feet. They slipped again and again on the rain-dampened planks. He was sliding into the muddy, surging river, even as his fellows grasped his flailing arms to help him back up onto solid ground.
    “Quick, down this alley before they go around and catch you, sir.” Fred led the way between the backs of two sprawling workshops with overhanging dwellings above.
    “You just got promoted to sergeant, Fred.”
    “Begging your pardon, sir, but you can’t promote me. I’m a Council guard.”
    “Then I’m transferring you to the Palace guards as a sergeant.” Darville dived behind a dustbin as heavy footsteps entered the narrow alley behind him.
    “What are you going to pay me with? Most of the Palace guards are being paid by the Council and owe their loyalty there, instead of to you. Though they don’t much like working for Lord Krej.” Fred crawled over a wall into yet another alley; this one barely wide enough to admit them single file. The confines of the river islands didn’t allow for much room between buildings.
    “I still have some funds—rentes from the city—even though the lords are withholding their tithe to the king until I’m crowned.” Darville stopped for breath and looked around. He hadn’t been in this part of the city since he and Jaylor had been boys. “There’s a path off to the left that will work us back toward Market Isle. We can get into the palace from there.” He led the way.
    “I’ve got a widowed mother and three sisters claiming my pay.” Fred paused to make sure they weren’t being followed.
    “I said I’d pay you.”
    “Just making sure. I mean, what’s a man to do when he’s got family depending on him and the price of bread goes up every day? Some of the troops have wives and children to think of.”
    Silence lay heavy between the two men for a moment. “I’ll accept the transfer,” Fred offered. “Rather do honest work for you than spying for the Council anyway. Once they know for sure where their pay’s comin’ from, some others might follow me.”
    Darville wanted to laugh. He hadn’t had this much fun since he was sixteen. Eluding his tutors and governors was a full-time occupation then. Circumventing the selfish ends of the Council seemed to be taking the place of those childish pranks.
    Darville leaped over a pile of garbage with a lithe spring, reminiscent of his misspent youth. His landing was a little awkward and he growled a curse.
    “Good. Don’t be obvious about recruiting. The time might come when I’ll need the element of surprise. As of this moment you are my personal bodyguard. Move your things into the alcove beside my apartment. Where I go, you go.”
    “Yes, sir.” Fred snapped upright to full attention. “I promise to serve you faithfully to the exclusion of all others. Even if you turn back into a golden wolf and rip out my throat.”

Chapter 2
     
    “P rincess Rossemikka! What have you done?”
    Rosie opened one eye and glared at her governess Janataea and the silent maid hovering in the doorway. Her vision rapidly shifted from clearly gray-toned to an onslaught of confusing colors. To mask her momentary disorientation, she concentrated on how her fingers flew through her thread game. The length of colored embroidery silk never tangled and knotted in her intricate pattern.
    If only she could weave the threads through one more series of movements, she might understand how the circles of life and fate had brought her to this instant in time.
    “Rosie, this . . . this is a disgrace,” Janataea wailed.
    Rosie didn’t think so. She had taken the tangle of threads in Janataea’s embroidery box and organized them. Just because she had chosen to arrange the skeins in a star pattern on the floor instead of in the box, it shouldn’t bother her governess.
    “You know what this is, don’t you? This is an eight-pointed star, a cabalistic sign that is forbidden.” Janataea’s voice grew strident.
    Rosie didn’t know what made an eight-pointed star different from a five or six. She didn’t know anything that hadn’t occurred to her or been told to her in the past two years. Her life