Spark the Fire

by Melissa McShane

  Hard, heavy footsteps roused her some time later from dreams of flying backwards and upside down. Confused, she raised her head, blinked at the world not being reversed, and stood. She felt only a little wobbly, and her stomachs had settled.

  Then she heard Depik shout, “My lady! Help!”

  With a lurch, she propelled her still-awkward self out of the embassy into the courtyard, which was full of uniformed soldiers. Two of them had Depik by the arms and were dragging him toward the street as he kicked and thrashed. “What the Stones do you think you’re doing?” she roared, bringing every soldier in the courtyard to a halt. She shoved her way to Depik’s side and grabbed the arm of the nearest soldier, her fingers wrapping entirely around his arm and overlapping. “Take your hands off him!”

  “My lady ambassador,” someone said from behind her. She released the soldier and turned. The male who addressed her wore the bright uniform General Sajan had. He tilted his head to look up at her where she towered over him, his thoughts showing only a hint of fear: can take care of herself, God’s breath, no idea who’d try such a thing.

  “What are you doing with my cook?” she said, not quite as loudly.

  “My lady ambassador,” the uniformed soldier said, “this man is accused of poisoning you. We’re taking him into custody.”

  “What?” Lamprophyre turned to stare at Depik, who shook his head violently. “Depik didn’t poison me.”

  “With all due respect, my lady, he had the most opportunity, and he’s a known vagrant,” the soldier said. “We’ll interrogate him and prove his innocence or guilt.”

  “But he—” Lamprophyre closed her mouth. She didn’t want to reveal her secret ability, certainly not in the middle of the street, but she also couldn’t allow them to subject Depik to whatever interrogation they thought necessary. Particularly since the soldier’s thoughts about the word “vagrant” weren’t complimentary.

  She turned on the soldier again. “He’s not guilty,” she said. “I’ve already interrogated him and I’m satisfied of his innocence. That should be enough for you.”

  “My lady, you can’t possibly know—”

  “I know, soldier,” Lamprophyre said, taking a few steps in his direction and forcing him to stand with his back arched to meet her gaze. “Depik has my confidence. If he wanted to poison me, he’d be much smarter about it—or do you think he doesn’t know he’s the first one suspicion would fall on?”

  The soldier swallowed, the sharp lump in his throat bobbing up and down. “No, my lady.”

  “I appreciate that you and your people want to keep me safe. Thank you. But wouldn’t it be better to ask around the neighborhood to find out if anyone saw someone skulking around here last night?” Lamprophyre not very gently peeled hands off Depik’s arms and prodded Depik in the direction of the kitchen. “And if you do find out who did it, I’d like to know.”

  The soldier made a complicated gesture, stepped away from Lamprophyre, and shouted, “Form up!” As the soldiers tramped about getting into a regular, square formation, the male said, “I hope you’re right, my lady.”

  “I am,” Lamprophyre said.

  The soldier shouted again, and all of them marched away down the street.

  Lamprophyre let out a long breath. “Well, that was an exciting way to wake up,” she said.

  Depik was staring at her. “My lady,” he said, faintly as if he were out of breath, then more loudly, “You don’t know I didn’t do it! Why did you protect me?”

  Lamprophyre regarded him. “Did you poison me?” she asked.

  “Of course not!” His thoughts fiercely matched his words, with a fainter undercurrent of she shouldn’t believe me, I look so guilty, never in a million years would I…

  “I believe you,” Lamprophyre said. “And it’s like I said: if you were going to poison me, I think you’d be smarter about it. But I gave you a chance when no one else would, and that matters to you.”

  Depik’s mouth fell open. Then he let out a great, sobbing breath, and tears trickled down his face. “Why?” he said. “I’m nothing to you.”

  His tears made Lamprophyre uncomfortable. “I suppose because you needed help,” she said. “And dragons don’t give help with an eye to how it might be repaid. I don’t know how humans do it.”

  “Most wouldn’t,” Depik said. He wiped his eyes and said, “I’m feeling better now, my lady, and whatever you want for supper, I’ll do. But no more leaving food here overnight, not even if it’s more convenient.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” Lamprophyre considered her stomach. “Something light, I think. And not complicated. I hope Rokshan didn’t leave you a huge mess when he made soup.”

  “My fault he had to,” Depik said, but his thoughts weren’t nearly so grim and despairing as they usually were when he contemplated his illness. “Go on and rest, my lady. Leave it to me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lamprophyre walked back into the embassy and settled in front of her slate. Practicing her handwriting would keep her from fretting too much about Abhimot and the wand. It occurred to her that someone capable of making such a weapon knew far too much about dragons’ weaknesses, more even than dragons did, and that he might have more weapons at hand. He might be more dangerous than they thought.

  She’d written a dozen words starting with the letter G a dozen times each when she heard Rokshan’s quick footsteps approaching. “I feel better,” she began, but fell silent when she saw him, his expression furious. “Is something wrong?”

  “It turns out one of Abhimot’s neighbors liked him better than I thought,” Rokshan said. “Abhimot’s fled.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “How do you know?” Lamprophyre exclaimed.

  “I had a feeling,” Rokshan said, “just a passing instinct that I should check Abhimot’s neighborhood again. His house was empty, and the woman across the street told me she’d seen him leave two hours earlier, heavily laden like he was going on a journey. Somebody must have told him I was asking around, and he legged it.”

  Lamprophyre let out two impatient bursts of smoke. “Well, Stones take him,” she said irritably. “How will we ever find him now?”

  A shadow fell across the entrance. “My lady, supper’s ready, and there’s enough for his highness if he wants,” Depik said.

  “Thank you, Depik, we’ll be right there,” Lamprophyre said. When he was gone, she said, “Do you want supper?”

  “How can you think of food right now?”

  “I’m grateful I’m alive to be hungry, that’s how. Let’s eat, and we can discuss a new plan.”

  Though the destroyed table had been removed, no one had replaced it, so Rokshan sat cross-legged on the floor next to Lamprophyre and ate crumbling handfuls of ground-up cow meat. “This is surprisingly good,” he said. “Maybe hiring Depik wasn’t so crazy.”

  “I told you,” Lamprophyre said with her mouth full. She chewed and swallowed and added, “This can’t be impossible. Abhimot ran, which makes him look very guilty. So it’s essential we find him.”

  “I can’t think how,” Rokshan said. “Tanajital’s a big place, and Gonjiri is even bigger. Lots of places to hide, even for a man with a glass eye.”

  “If he were a deer or a boar, I could hunt him by scent, but you humans mostly smell the same to me. He doesn’t have that scent Khadar wears, does he?”

  “Not to my knowledge. It’s unfortunate he doesn’t have a more obvious impairment. Something that would stand out.”

  “Or had strangely colored hair or skin. Then I could skim low over the city, and we could spot him that way.” Lamprophyre stopped with her hand halfway to her mouth. “Maybe that’s not impossible.”

  “He looks just like everyone else from above,” Rokshan said.

  “Yes, but what did Sabarna say about diamonds? That they could be made to see things very far away?”

  Rokshan wiped his mouth. “I think those are for viewing known locations, not finding someone.
”

  Lamprophyre waved a dismissive hand at him. “Yes, but what I’m getting at is maybe there’s magic for that. Not necessarily a diamond, but some other stone.”

  “Huh.” Rokshan’s eyes unfocused as he looked into the distance past Lamprophyre’s ear. “That does seem like useful magic. I’ll wager there is such a thing.”

  “So we should ask Sabarna?”

  Rokshan shook his head. “She goes to bed early, and rousing her is impossible. I don’t think we should wait for morning. That means…”

  Lamprophyre scowled. “I don’t trust Manishi.”

  “Neither do I, but in a backwards way, that makes her trustworthy, if only because we can trust her to try to cheat us.”

  “But suppose Abhimot is a friend of hers?”

  “That is extremely unlikely. I did mention she doesn’t work with others, right? Even if she knows him, she’s not likely to care about protecting him. If she learns he’s created an artifact no one’s ever thought of before, she might actually help us for free if it means being able to steal his work.”

  Lamprophyre stood. She no longer felt wobbly, her stomachs didn’t hurt, and her vision was clear. “Then let’s talk to her now, and maybe we can track down Abhimot tonight.”

  Lamprophyre waited impatiently in the parkland outside the palace for Rokshan. The sun was halfway below the horizon, but the trees in the park blocked her view of it, so all she could see was the sky shading from rose to peach to a blue the exact color of her clutchmate Flint of the boring name and handsome body.

  She huddled in on herself, hoping to go unnoticed, and listened to the night birds taking wing. Flint had always been her good friend, but so was the rest of the clutch except for stupid Coquina. Their clutch was so lopsided, with five males and only two females. Most of the males would end up finding mates from the previous clutch, but Lamprophyre couldn’t help feeling guilty at not being interested in any of them. There was nothing wrong with pair-bonding outside your clutch, it happened all the time, but Lamprophyre felt as if she’d been offered a delicious cow someone had gone to the trouble of butchering and cooking perfectly and turned it down. At least none of her clutchmates were pining after her. That would make everything so awkward.

  She heard Rokshan approaching and unfurled her wings, crouching low for him to mount. “Did she have something?”

  “She did,” Rokshan said, “and I’m trying not to feel very, very suspicious that she so readily parted with it.” He dangled a blue stone hanging from a silver chain in front of her face. Lamprophyre grasped it and turned it to catch the last rays of sunlight. It had been polished, but beneath the almost liquid blue of the surface lay dozens upon dozens of tiny cracks that gave it the appearance of a sheet of ice. As she turned it, color sheeted across it, blue and green and violet like an oil slick.

  She sniffed it. “It’s just an ordinary feldspar,” she said. “Pretty enough, with the polishing, but I don’t see anything unusual about it, aside from how it doesn’t occur locally.”

  “Manishi impressed upon me the importance of not losing it,” Rokshan said. He retrieved it from Lamprophyre and put it around his neck, then mounted and settled himself securely in the notch. “Its actual purpose is for finding lost things. You hold the image of what you want to find in your thoughts, and the stone resonates with the image to lead you to it.”

  “But we haven’t seen Abhimot.”

  “Not up close, but I did see him this morning when I was asking around. At least I hope that was him, because if more than one person lives in his house, we might be out of luck. But I’ve run out of ideas.”

  Lamprophyre moved away from the trees and spread her wings wide. “If it turns out you’re wrong, the stone will at least lead us to someone who knows him.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. All right, let’s head northwest.”

  The cool night air banished the last of Lamprophyre’s queasiness. She flew swiftly in the direction Rokshan indicated, making slight course corrections but mostly staying on the northwest heading. Within a few hundred beats, they were past the great wall of Tanajital and winging across the cultivated plains. “He can’t have gotten far,” she said.

  “No, and the stone is tugging downward. What’s down there?”

  Lamprophyre scanned the dark ground, sparkling here and there with firelight. “I don’t—no, there’s a small human city below us. Is that where he is?”

  Rokshan leaned far out. “It’s where the stone is pointing, at least. Go ahead and circle around, just to be sure.”

  Lamprophyre made a great sweeping loop around the black blotch of lantern-lit buildings before descending to land some dozen dragonlengths from the city. “Now what?”

  “It’s dark,” Rokshan said. “You could come with me into the city.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe?”

  “I’ve been contemplating all the potential weapons this adept might have, if he created the wand. I’d rather not face him alone.”

  Lamprophyre nodded. “I thought of that, too. All right. I can conceal myself—it’s nearly full dark, but better not take chances.”

  With her bright blue scales dulled to near-black and her copper membranes faded to charcoal, she glided silently over the rooftops while Rokshan called out directions in a low voice. She’d just swept past a building taller than its neighbors when Rokshan said, “He’s in there.”

  She took another look around. The tall building was surrounded by empty space on both sides. To the west, the space was brightly lit and full of humans, most of whom went in and out by an entrance that was large by human standards. Lamprophyre’s head and shoulders would barely fit through it. To the southeast, the space was smaller, but it was also dark, illuminated only by one lantern over an even smaller doorway. Lamprophyre said, “I’m going to let you off there and then sit on the roof.”

  “The roof? Are you serious?”

  “All it takes is one person coming outside at the wrong time to let Abhimot know he’s been found. You go inside and get him to come out here, and then I’ll pounce on him.”

  Rokshan slid off down her shoulder and crouched to regain his balance. “And if we start a riot when the dragon attacks the innocent human?”

  “Then we start a riot. But I have faith in your ability to make this work.”

  Rokshan grimaced, but headed for the door. Lamprophyre leaped for the roof’s ridge beam, flapping hard to lower herself lightly onto it. It was narrow, forcing her to dig her toe claws into the wood and spread her wings for balance. After a few heart-stopping moments, she relaxed and let her concealment fall. She would be visible if anyone looked up, but Lamprophyre knew from experience that humans very rarely looked up.

  She listened to the thoughts of the humans beneath her, but heard only commotion and confusion she had to block out. This would be so much easier if she could listen just to Rokshan, or, better, the thoughts of Abhimot. Maybe there was a magical artifact that could manage it. It was too bad she didn’t want anyone to know she could hear thoughts, or she might work with an adept to create such an artifact. Though the only adepts she knew were Manishi and Sabarna, and Manishi was prickly and Sabarna unable to set foot outside. More black marks against the potential project.

  She surveyed the entrance on the brightly-lit side. Humans greeted each other and went inside together, or left in pairs or groups of three. None of them were Abhimot or Rokshan. Lamprophyre wobbled again, then froze as someone glanced upward. Whatever had drawn the female’s attention was nowhere near Lamprophyre, and the female paused only for a beat before walking on.

  Music filtered out of the building into the evening air, rising and falling every time the door opened and closed. Lamprophyre hadn’t heard much human music to date, and what she had heard hadn’t impressed her much, at least the compositions. But humans used so many different instruments it almost didn’t matter that their melodies were repetitive and their harmonies rarely included more than four voices. If Lamprophyre
had been at all musical, she might have occupied her time when she wasn’t learning to read with learning to play those unusual instruments.

  The door opened again, and two figures exited. Lamprophyre was interested enough in the music she didn’t at first realize one of the two was Rokshan. He had his hand on the shoulder of the second male, who was taller than he was, and appeared to be directing him across the open space toward the street. The second male carried a walking stick, but didn’t lean on it. Lamprophyre disengaged her toe claws from the wood and pushed off, gaining altitude rapidly.

  Once Rokshan and Abhimot were on the street, she dared listen to their thoughts. Abhimot was thinking get him alone, take his things, definitely a rich plusher with clothes like that. Rokshan’s thoughts were much clearer and well-focused, a single repeated line of Lamprophyre, watch where we go and dive once we’re around the corner.

  She did as Rokshan instructed, waiting for her moment. The two turned a corner that put them out of sight of the tall building and the humans hurrying in and out of it. Rokshan immediately lowered himself to one knee and bent his head as if searching for something. Abhimot raised his stick to strike Rokshan. And Lamprophyre plummeted, spreading her wings at the last moment to course past the two of them and pluck Abhimot off the ground and carry him away.

  Abhimot screamed, a high, sharp, terrified sound Lamprophyre wished she could muzzle. “Shut up, or I’ll drop you,” she said. “On purpose.”

  The male flung his arms around Lamprophyre’s arms, his hands scrabbling desperately for something to hold onto. He stopped screaming, but his breathing was ragged and his legs kicked helplessly. Lamprophyre flew a few dozen dragonlengths more, leaving the city behind, before descending. When she was near enough the ground that falling wouldn’t injure Abhimot, she dropped him, shaking his grip free of her arms. He hit the ground with an oof and lay sprawled there for a few beats, then tried to rise. Lamprophyre landed beside him and put her foot on his chest, pressing down gently and digging in her toe claws just enough that he could feel them through his clothing. He started to scream again, but Lamprophyre pressed harder, and the sound cut off.