Spark the Fire

by Melissa McShane

  She lifted the partial carcass from the trough and sniffed it all over. There was another scent, something tangy Depik had seasoned it with. She hoped she wasn’t ruining some culinary plan of his, but she was definitely hungry now and disinclined to wait until morning. And she felt bad about rousing Depik just to do something she was capable of doing herself.

  She laid the carcass back in the trough and breathed out a light fire to touch every exposed part, turning the meat to keep it from burning. She’d learned from Akarshan about letting cooked meat sit for a few dozen beats, and she was in the mood for something very rare, so she let the fire burn only enough to sear it, then sat beside the carcass counting heartbeats and breathing in the delicious aroma. While she waited, she sniffed out the lights and liver and kidneys and ate those raw. The taste honed her already keen appetite and made her count faster.

  Finally, when she couldn’t stand the waiting any longer, she picked up the carcass and took it to the center of the dining pavilion, where she settled in to eat. The taste wasn’t quite as good as either Depik or Akarshan managed. She chastised herself for going soft and tore off another mouthful. She really needed to buy a herd of cows and introduce the flight to the marvelous meat.

  Her stomach gave an unexpected rumble. She burped, and tasted something strange, something sweeter than cow meat and almost cloying compared to the tangy seasoning. She sniffed the meat, but smelled nothing out of the ordinary. Another burp rose up within her. This one was sharp and painful, and when it emerged, the sweet taste was so strong she gagged.

  She set the carcass down and sat up, hoping to stretch out the gas pain. Her legs refused to respond. Frightened, she twisted to touch her legs, and agony shot through her midsection like claws tearing her insides apart. She collapsed over the carcass, her arms twitching, and cried out as the pain struck her again. One leg shifted, its claws scoring the stone floor, and then lay still. Numbness radiated from her spine down her limbs even as spasms wrung her abdomen and chest. She cried out more loudly, unable to form words. Poison. She’d been poisoned.

  Her pain-addled brain focused on this fact and roused her to fight her ravaged body. Poison. What did one do about poison? Get it out.

  She raised one hand, steadied it with the other, and opened her mouth as wide as she could manage. Shuddering against another spasm of pain, she waited for it to release her, then swiftly jabbed two fingers at the back of her throat. Immediately a different kind of tremor wracked her body, and she fell helplessly to the floor, barely able to support herself on her elbows before both her stomachs turned inside out and she vomited cow and burning matter all over herself and the floor.

  When the convulsions ceased, she lay on her side, one wing pinned painfully beneath her, and gasped for air. For a moment, she thought she’d been fast enough, that she’d expelled the poison from her body. Then agony wracked her again, and she clutched her midsection and wished she knew how to weep like a human. They did it so readily, surely it provided some relief.

  There’s something else. Something easy. She felt dizzy and swollen, and her breathing was loud and ragged like a storm raging over the mountains. When a dragon ate something poisonous, there was—yes. Lamprophyre pushed herself half upright and looked around the dining pavilion. Everything was so dim. Pillars with fuzzy light blotches attached to them, the low walls of the kitchen—

  “My lady!”

  Someone had heard her screams. Lamprophyre didn’t recognize the voice, or the hands trying to support her—so stupid, no human could lift a dragon. It didn’t matter. She saw what she’d been looking for: the table and chairs Rokshan and Dharan used when they shared a meal with her. Another seizure gripped her, the sharp agony in her stomach almost overridden by the pains in her muscles, like being wrung by hands bigger than her own. She rolled onto her stomach when it was over, blinked away the fuzziness in her vision, and breathed out fire as hot as she could manage to engulf the table.

  In her extremity, control was not something she had much of. Hot liquid splattered the chairs, causing them to catch fire as well, but the table itself fell apart almost instantly into charred black cinders. Lamprophyre grabbed two handfuls of the charcoal and stuffed it into her mouth, nearly gagging again at the horrible bitterness. She swallowed, gulped down more, swallowed again, and had to stop, lying curled in on herself, when another pain struck. Desperate, she stuffed herself until half the table was gone, hoping the poison didn’t act so quickly she was simply killing herself faster.

  The human beside her hadn’t fled when she burned the table. He had dragged her wing out from under her, easing that much smaller pain, and she could barely feel his hands on her arm. If he had thoughts, she was too far gone to hear them. Pain wrung her out again, but more weakly. She continued to lie curled up in a ball, her other wing covering her face. The pain might be lessening because she was dying. She couldn’t die so far from home. How would she ever reach Mother Stone in this condition?

  “My lady. My lady! What’s wrong?”

  Depik. She recognized his voice now. She tried to apologize for waking him, but managed only a low moan. The pains weren’t nearly so close together. She tried to sit, but her body wouldn’t respond more than the merest twitch of her wing tips. Her mouth was dry and tasted bitter, like charcoal—well, that made sense. She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, moistening it. “Depik,” she whispered. “Poison.”

  “Poison?” Depik sounded horrified. “Poison, how?”

  “In the meat.” No, that was wrong. Surely fire would have burned the poison away. But the lights, and the liver and kidneys—she’d gulped those down practically without tasting them. “The offal.”

  “I left them out,” Depik said. “I thought—I was abed, my lady, anyone might have come back here.”

  His thoughts were starting to be audible, like voices rising up through deep waters: more careful, he thought, and why would anyone do such a thing?

  “I need to get inside,” she whispered. She didn’t think she could move, but the idea of sleeping outdoors rather than in the comfort of her cave made her feel sick again.

  Depik disappeared, making her feel unexpectedly bereft. But he came back in a few beats with a bucket of water he sluiced across her abdomen, washing away her vomit. It steamed and sent up a terrible stench, bitter bile laced with the sweet smell of the poison. He began to swab the mess away with a cloth, but Lamprophyre took it from him. “You’ll…burn…yourself,” she said, swiping at the remaining splotches of burning stomach matter and then dropping the cloth into the largest puddle of water.

  Depik walked around to her front and lifted her arm with some effort. “Can I help, my lady?”

  Lamprophyre wanted to laugh, but it would hurt his feelings. “Get…the lantern…” she said. “Light…my…way.”

  With tremendous effort, she rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled with agonizing slowness out of the dining pavilion and into the embassy, where she collapsed. Her heart was thudding so rapidly it hurt, her stomach still roiled with pain, every muscle ached as if she’d been under a rockfall, but she was alive.

  With one final exertion, she dragged her legs beneath her wings and fell into a confused stupor, not quite asleep but unable to move, her brain seizing on moments from the day’s journey and running through them in an endless cycle. She watched Rokshan flung backward by the pyrite’s magic over and over again, and over and over again she tried to reach him first and failed. If this was the poison’s final effect, death might be a release.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  She must have fallen asleep at some point, because eventually she opened her eyes and it was day, and Anamika was standing beside her, saying, “Lamprophyre? Wake up. Didn’t you want to swim?”

  Lamprophyre groaned and tried to sit, but she still ached too much for her muscles to respond. “I’m afraid I’m sick,” she said. “I’m sorry. We’ll have to swim another day.”

  “I didn’t know dragons got sick. S
hould you have soup? Mam always makes soup for me and Varnak when we’re sick.”

  The idea of food of any kind made Lamprophyre’s stomach revolt. “Not now. Maybe later. Now I need to sleep.”

  “All right. I hope you feel better soon.”

  The next time Lamprophyre opened her eyes, what felt like a thousand beats later, Anamika was gone. Lamprophyre focused on breathing, in and out through the mouth, filling her lungs with warm, damp air and wishing more than ever she was home in the mountains, where no one had ever tried to poison her.

  She tried to sleep again, hoping her body would finish purging itself while she was unconscious, but sleep eluded her, and she lay staring at what was in her line of vision, which was a slate where she’d written a number of words beginning with G: gather, goose, grin, goad, garnet. Her handwriting was still sloppy, but it was intelligible.

  She was so used to thinking of herself as indestructible, impervious to any human attack, she hadn’t thought of the ways in which she was vulnerable. Now that her body wasn’t tearing itself apart, she could think more rationally. It was possible that poison wouldn’t have killed her, given how small a portion she’d eaten, but she had to assume whoever had done it had intended her death. But she couldn’t make any assumptions about who that human was. It was tempting to think it was the egg thieves, but she and Rokshan hadn’t made enough progress for the egg thieves to know they were in danger—or was she wrong? In any case, it was possible this was a random human who hated and feared dragons and wanted her gone, and there was nothing she could do about that.

  A shudder ran through her, tinged with pain, the last remnants of the poison. She could still taste it under the charcoal bitterness. She would have to hire guards now, and be more careful with her food; she didn’t think Depik was careless in choosing meat, but he needed to be extra cautious now. Too bad he’d been asleep and hadn’t seen the poisoner.

  She heard Rokshan approaching and managed to lift her head to look at him. “I found—you look terrible. Are you ill?”

  “I was poisoned,” she said. Rokshan’s cheerful expression faded to one of horror.

  “Poisoned? How?” he demanded.

  “In the meat. The offal. Depik left it all out in readiness for today, and someone poisoned it.”

  Rokshan gripped her hand as well as his small one would allow. “But you didn’t die.”

  “It wasn’t fast-acting enough, and I got most of it out of my system. But I ache all over and I feel I could never eat again.” Lamprophyre put her other hand atop their joined ones. “And I don’t know what to do. If I have to defend against this kind of attack…”

  “We’ll post guards. Maybe they can alter the kitchen to be more secure. Didn’t any of your servants see or hear anything?”

  “Depik only heard me making noise after it happened. I haven’t seen anyone else this morning.” It occurred to her that she should have seen Depik at breakfast time. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it was the egg thieves that did it?”

  “Nice? Lamprophyre, you’re still lightheaded if you can call being nearly killed ‘nice.’”

  “True, but at least then I’d only have one enemy to worry about instead of potentially all of Tanajital.” She tried and failed to sit up. Rokshan put his other hand on her shoulder.

  “Lie here and rest. You should probably eat something if you want to keep your strength up.” He hesitated, then said, “You’re sure Depik wasn’t responsible?”

  “Depik? Why the Stones would Depik want me dead?”

  “If he was part of a deep-laid plan—”

  “That’s absurd!”

  “Lamprophyre, it’s starting to look like we have to consider absurdities, given that anyone might have done this. Depik’s sad story might have been calculated to appeal to you, putting him in a position to kill you.”

  Lamprophyre blew out a fist-sized knot of smoke that made her second stomach ache as if it had been the one poisoned. “I heard his thoughts, Rokshan. It wasn’t Depik.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s a relief. I’ll go see what he’s up to and have him make you some chicken broth or something—is that something dragons eat when they’re sick?”

  “Meat broth? Sometimes, yes. But I’m not hungry.”

  “Hungry or not, you need food. I’ll be right back.”

  Lamprophyre closed her eyes and listened to the sound of his retreating footsteps. The city sounded peaceful today, its rumbling higher pitched like birdsong, the muffled murmur of human speech like its quiet breath. It made her feel peaceful, too, despite everything that had happened.

  Footsteps, quick and light, and the sound of the back door creaking shut. “Depik’s ill,” Rokshan said.

  Lamprophyre tried to sit up and the world spun around her. “Not more poison?”

  “No. It’s that illness he told you about, where he can’t get out of bed. He just groaned when I prodded him. You ought to fire him if he can’t do his job.”

  “It’s not his fault if he’s ill. He’ll be back to work soon. Besides, I told you I wasn’t hungry.”

  Rokshan scowled. “Looks like I’ll have to do it. It’s your own fault if the soup is awful. And I’m going to have to send someone for fresh chickens, because there’s no way I’m trusting anything that was in your kitchen last night.”

  Lamprophyre managed to doze while Rokshan bustled around. Servants ran back and forth in front of the entrance, and once she heard a chicken squawk and be instantly silenced. Finally Rokshan was shaking her shoulder and saying, “You’ll have to drag yourself out here, because none of us can lift the cauldron.”

  She groaned, but found she was able to walk on hands and knees to the dining pavilion, where Rokshan had built a fire in the middle of the floor and positioned a cauldron, enormous even by Lamprophyre’s standards, over it. It smelled deliciously of cooked bird, and when Lamprophyre’s stomachs rumbled, for once it didn’t hurt.

  Rokshan handed her a hollow glass tube as long as her arm. “Use this to drink the broth,” he said, “and we’ll bring you the meat when you’ve regained some strength.”

  Lamprophyre examined the tube closely, then put it in her mouth and blew through it. “Almost,” Rokshan said, and showed her how to put the tube in the cauldron and drink through it. The broth was warm, very comforting, and Lamprophyre discovered she was hungry after all. She slurped up broth until her stomach felt less painful, and then ate shredded, boiled chicken until she was full. Her muscles still ached, but the weakness was mostly gone, and she was able to walk back to the embassy and settle herself comfortably.

  Rokshan sat beside her holding a bowl containing some of the chicken meat. “Not too bad,” he said, using the strange pronged stick he called a fork to convey meat to his mouth. “I’m good at cooking so long as it’s over an open fire. I got used to doing it on maneuvers. The Army,” he added when Lamprophyre gave him a confused look.

  “I wouldn’t think a prince would do any cooking,” she said. “In all our stories, princes and princesses have adventures. They don’t do anything simple like cooking or…I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Princes and princesses need occupation as much as anyone. Tekentriya is the most active person I know, and she insists everyone around her be active, too. Manishi is obsessed with magic. Even Anchala spends her whole day researching. I guess Khadar is the only one of us who’s indolent, and even he can’t get away with doing nothing, not as the Fifth Ecclesiast.” He took another bite. “Besides, those adventures never sounded like fun to me. Either the prince had some task that earned him a boring reward, or he had to fight monsters that were likely to kill him.”

  “Well, thank you for cooking for me. I feel better.”

  “It’s my pleasure. Besides, it’s selfishness. I need you well so we can catch Abhimot.”

  Lamprophyre sat up. “You were going to look for him today, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, and I’ve tracked him down. He lives in West District, and his neighbors don’t lik
e him much, based on how quick they were to tell me about his many unpleasant habits.”

  “Unpleasant, how?”

  “He doesn’t keep his part of the street clean and has to be reminded to fuel his lantern—householders in West are legally obligated to maintain a light source along the street. He’s not friendly and he’s never willing to help when someone moves in or gets sick. A few people told me he has unsavory visitors, though they weren’t forthcoming about what ‘unsavory’ looked like. And two children went into some detail about his glass eye and how he sends it out by itself at night to peer in people’s windows.”

  Lamprophyre gasped. “He can do that?”

  Rokshan laughed. “I think that was just the kind of story children tell about anything strange. At any rate, I was going to go back this afternoon and confront him, but if you’re not well, I want to put that off until tomorrow.”

  “Unless he lives in the coliseum, I don’t see how I’d be much help with that confrontation.”

  “I was thinking of the possibility I’d apprehend him and drag him back here. But it can wait.” Rokshan put his empty bowl aside and stretched. “I think I’ll go back to the palace and arrange for guards for this place.”

  “You mean, soldiers? I thought that would look too much like pandering, or favoritism, or something,” Lamprophyre said. “I can hire private guards.”

  “It’s more important you not be hurt,” Rokshan countered. “And Gonjiri has an interest in making sure you aren’t. Besides, there aren’t any private fighting forces I’d trust with something like this.” He rose and picked up his bowl. “I’ll come back this evening to check on you. And if Depik isn’t up by then, I’ll kick him until he is.”

  “Don’t—”

  “I was kidding, Lamprophyre. I won’t harm him. Now, try to sleep.” He waved goodbye and walked out the back door.

  Lamprophyre shifted her position until she felt more comfortable, then tucked her wings over herself and closed her eyes. It was fun to imagine frightening the maker of that wand, who couldn’t possibly expect a dragon to come after him, but the practicalities kept interfering. What would the rest of the city think if she pounced on a human that as far as everyone else was concerned was a helpless victim of the mad dragon? It would only make them fear her more. And yet she and Rokshan didn’t have much choice, if they wanted to learn the truth. She drifted off to sleep hoping Rokshan would find another solution.