Page 47 of Realm of Thieves

“Our punishment for questioning the government,” I say. “Which I suppose is the same thing.”

“Mmmm. Did you know the Kolbecks were one of the first families who left Sorland once the dragons were confined?” Torsten asks me, his heavy-lidded, golden gaze steady on mine.

“I figured as much,” I say. “Though I never learned much about the other realms. The schools in Esland are quick to censor the truth.”

“We went to Esland first,” he goes on. “Found it too inhospitable. Nothing but sand and rock and death. Then we moved on across the Drage Passage to what is now Altus Dugrell. We found a land of wealth and prosperity. But you Eslanders, instead of following in our footsteps, you went to Esland and stayed there, perhaps because it’s the closest port to the Midlands. Your false beliefs stifled you.”

“Notherbeliefs, remember?” Andor says.

“Semantics,” Torsten says. “She was raised in those beliefs. As much as we like to say that we’re in charge of our destiny, where you’re from, who raised you…all of that is imprinted deeply. It’s hard to escape from your birthright.”

I raise my brow at his statement. I want to point out that I did escape from my birthright and I am in charge of my own destiny. But seeing that I’m currently in the grasp of the Kolbecks, I don’t have a leg to stand on, and Torsten seems the type to form an opinion about you that’s set in stone, immovable no matter what you say.

So I decide to bring the conversation back to him and make it personal. The way he brushed away questions about his own father gives me something to work with.

“If what you say is true,” I say to Torsten after a small sip of my drink, “then I’m extra curious as to what happened with your father.”

He gives me a hard stare, trying to intimidate me. I stare right back, though I can tell that the eyes of the rest of the Kolbecks are volleying between us.

The standoff ends when he taps the side of his glass with his nail. “My father lives on property,” he says. “A house at the end of the Blomfields where he’s taken care of. He isn’t…well in his head.”

“He must be quite old,” I surmise. Torsten has to be in his sixties or seventies, which would put his father at eighty or ninety, at least.

“You wouldn’t know it by looking at him,” he says under his breath, his gaze going back to the dragon skull. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looks sentimental.

“Our grandfather Ollie is a reminder of the perils of suen,” Andorspeaks up, which brings a glare of reproachment from his father. “He took too much of it over the years. Back then, before Steiner had a chance to modify it, it was a lot for people’s systems to handle. Some even grew addicted to it without knowing about the long-term effects.”

Torsten grunts. “They were the pioneers,” he says gruffly. “People like my father risked their health to push the limits of the human body.”

So now you keep him tucked away from you and out of sight?I can’t help but think. Some reward for being the pioneer of the family.

“The dragon egg trade hasn’t been going on all that long in the grand scheme of things,” Torsten continues. “It was my own grandfather who had started using it when the effects were becoming known to the realm, and when thieves first started braving the Midlands. Before him, it was just used by witches and sorcerers.”

“And so now you’re not worried about ending up like your father?” I ask, knowing I’m flying too close to the sun with this one. “If the suen wasn’t refined until Steiner got his hands on it, then that means only the suen over the last, what, five, ten years has had no ill effects. What about all the usage before that?”

That brings a sharp glare from him, like I thought it would. “I have seen what my father has become. I know how to exhibit control.”

Still, there’s a chance that he’ll end up exactly like his father. And I can tell that’s something he fears. He seems like a man who will hold on to the reins of his family until the bitter end, even if he ends up going mad.

He’ll steer them all into madness.

But that’s none of your concern, I remind myself.You won’t be here to see the demise of the Kolbecks, because unless he dies or there’s some sort of interfamily coup, he’ll be the one to run them into the ground, not the Dalgaards,not the Soffers. Just him and his own ego. And all of this will just be a bad dream.

I glance at Andor at that thought, only to find him staring right at me, enough that I feel a flush of heat in my veins.

Well, I suppose even the worst nightmares can have their bright spots sometimes.

Chapter 15

Brynla

“Land ho!”

Above the sound of the choppy water smashing the sides of the ship and the groan of the timber as it rolls in the waves, Toombs’s voice calls out, faint and faraway.

I know that being down in my cabin is making me feel worse—my stomach churns with nausea, my skin is clammy to touch—but I don’t dare go on deck, not now. It’s not just that the closer we’ve gotten to the Midlands, the more the weather has turned, sending lashings of rain and huge swells over the last twenty-four hours, which make being on deck a miserable experience, but that I’m in pain.

I don’t want Andor to know I’m suffering. I know I’m the one who asked him for his healing help, but I don’t want to seem any more vulnerable than I already do. At least Steiner was able to tinker around in his lab and find the right blend of special herbs and leaves to take the place of the tea I’d been drinking to ward off the monthly bleeding. That would be another complication to deal with, and the last thing I want is some dragons finding us first on the hunt because they could pick up on the scent of my blood.

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