05 Dragon Blood: The Blade's Memory

by Lindsay Buroker

  Sardelle crept in, following the wall toward the kitchen. Maybe it was cowardly, but she thought she might leave the explaining to Duck and check on Tolemek. Fern spotted her.

  “Sardelle.” She rushed over and intercepted her.

  “Yes?” Sardelle asked. After the night she’d had, she did not want to be interrogated about spiders, but she forced a smile.

  “You look tired.” Fern clasped her hands, then wrinkled her nose. “And you smell of smoke.”

  “That’s what she gets for traveling with Captain Kaika.” Duck smiled, but raised his brows in a question when he met Sardelle’s eyes.

  “I’ll explain soon.” Sardelle knew someone would have to share the details as to what had happened, and that it was either up to her or Kaika, but she couldn’t bring herself to blurt out that Apex had died. She needed to sit down first and brace herself with coffee, since she felt like doing nothing except sleeping after being up all night again.

  Duck’s expression grew worried, but he did not question her further.

  Now you’ve got him thinking something happened to Ridge and that you don’t want to share it in front of his mom.

  I’ll explain soon, Sardelle promised.

  “Please, you can use my bathtub to wash up. So long as there aren’t snakes in it.” Fern curled a lip toward a terrarium as she wrapped a sinewy arm around Sardelle’s waist. “Come, this way. I’ll heat some water for you and make tea. Or do you prefer coffee?”

  “I—ah.” Emotion thickened in Sardelle’s throat, surprising her and making it difficult to get more words out. It had been so long since someone had mothered her, and she hadn’t realized how much she had missed it until Fern’s solicitous arm came around her. With a pang of longing, she realized she wanted this, wanted to be welcomed by someone, to be part of a family again.

  “Nobody offered me coffee,” Duck said as Fern steered Sardelle toward the kitchen. “I was shot, remember?” Duck clutched his shoulder, though neither of his wounds seemed to be bothering him anymore. That reminded Sardelle that she needed to attend to Kaika’s injuries before falling asleep. Kaika was so stoic that one could easily forget she had injuries.

  As Fern pushed open the kitchen door, she pointed back at Duck. “You move those snakes and spiders out to the shed in the yard, and I’ll bring you coffee and apple bread.”

  “Oh?” Duck brightened. “A lot of apple bread?”

  “I brought the ingredients over to make several pans. Ridge forgets to eat, so I have to fatten him up when he’s here. A woman likes something on a man to grab on to, right, dear?”

  Sardelle flushed, the memory of grabbing on to things in Fern’s bedroom coming to mind. Ridge wasn’t exactly skinny; he had all of those nice, lean muscles to hold on to. “I’m fond of his current physique.”

  Duck grimaced. “I’ll get to these cages. Anything to keep from hearing about the colonel’s physique.”

  The familiar tingle of dragon blood washed over Sardelle as she stepped into the kitchen. Six vials hung in a rack on a counter next to Tolemek, who was hunched over a microscope, oblivious to the fat gray cat butting its head against his jaw. Another cat sat on a stack of sketches while watching a hairy-legged spider amble across a rock in a small terrarium.

  One of the exterior doors thudded shut, and Fern peeked back out into the living room. “Ridge didn’t come back with you, dear?”

  Sardelle winced. “No. We were separated. The MPs took him.”

  “Oh. Well, he’ll tell a few stories and charm his way out of any trouble.”

  Sardelle wasn’t so sure about that. She was glad she had an excuse not to mention that Ridge wasn’t with the MPs anymore and wasn’t anywhere that she could sense him. Since Fern did not believe in magic, there was no point in bringing that up.

  “I’m in need of a blacksmith to craft a delivery mechanism for my concept,” Tolemek said without lifting his head.

  “Is he talking to me or to you?” Fern whispered to Sardelle.

  “Is there a local blacksmith?” Sardelle asked.

  “Datlesh, several blocks away.”

  “Then I think he’s talking to you.”

  “Is he always so rude?”

  Tolemek frowned over at them, dark circles under his eyes and a frown riding his lips. “Your son has given me an impossible task, no time to do it in, and no resources with which to do it.”

  “So, yes.” Grumbling, Fern headed for the stove. She frowned at all of the equipment cluttering the counters on either side and a kettle boiling something miasmic. “How am I supposed to make that young man something to eat with all of this… this?” She batted at the blue steam wafting from the kettle, then threw open the windows.

  “Is Cas with you?” Tolemek asked Sardelle. “I didn’t—” He glanced at Fern and lowered his voice. “I didn’t sense that sword return.” He waved vaguely toward the yard.

  Sardelle hadn’t realized he could sense it too. She groped for a way to tell him that Cas hadn’t come back again, but knew she would have to explain the whole night once she started. Maybe it was just as well. The story would not grow any more pleasing for having been delayed.

  “Come out into the living room for a couple of minutes, please,” Sardelle said. “I’ll tell you what happened. Uhm, Fern, the coffee would be welcome. Thank you.”

  A moment ago, Tolemek had been complaining about not having enough time, but he did not hesitate to walk away from the microscope and lead the way to the living room. His face was grim. He knew something had happened.

  Sardelle took a deep breath and followed him, bracing herself to share the news.

  • • • • •

  Dawn found Ridge sailing among the low-hanging clouds off the Iskandian coast, appreciating the sea breeze tugging at his scarf, the thrum of the propeller in his ears, and the subtle vibration of the flier under his butt. This was where he was meant to be. He wished he could forget the trouble he had left behind, but he kept worrying that he hadn’t been able to contact Sardelle and let her know where he was going. He also worried that he was on a duck hunt when the ducks had all flown south for the winter. He was going entirely on what Therrik had believed. Who knew if anything reliable existed in that brain?

  Even if Therrik was right about the lighthouse, there were more than a hundred of them to search. He had already visited two and found them empty aside from surprised lighthouse keepers he had roused from bed. He refused to feel dejected until he checked the one on that island he had been thinking of, as that seemed an ideal spot. But he couldn’t help but realize it could take weeks for him to investigate all of the lighthouses, even if he ruled out half of them as impractical.

  Ridge dipped below the clouds so he could gauge how far up the coast he had gone. He had passed the town of Crasgar’s Bay, and the waves churning and breaking against the rocks below told him he was flying over the thirty-mile-long Fury’s Cauldron.

  “Twenty more miles to the island lighthouse,” he said, knowing the spot was right in the center of the Cauldron. Briefly, he wondered why he had spoken aloud. He had his communication crystal activated in case anyone tried to contact him, but he had already flown out of range of the base. There probably wasn’t much point in having the device active, except that he hoped he might chance across some of his people on the way back from their fool’s mission. When he had left, he hadn’t risked lighting lamps in the hangar or checking the telegraph machine, not when he had worried that the MPs would catch up with him at any moment. No, he had pushed open the rolling doors, then run straight to the two-man flier. He was certain Therrik hadn’t had any authorization to let him go—his disappearance had probably already been discovered. Had there been fliers and pilots to spare, someone might have sent one after him, but there was no one in the city left to chase him into the skies. He wouldn’t likely suffer further punishment until he returned. If he didn’t find the king, he wasn’t sure if he dared return at all.

  Before he could lament his fate
further, movement in the distance caught his eyes. A dark shape flew through the gray clouds, its size too great to belong to a bird. The craft was heading in his direction, toward the capital, so hope rose in his breast. Maybe one of his people was returning.

  Ridge tapped the crystal. “This is Colonel Zirkander from Wolf Squadron. Identify yourself.”

  Initially, Sardelle’s communication crystals had only gone out to Tiger and Wolf Squadrons as a test, but everyone had seen the practicality of them—so much so that nobody had questioned too much exactly what technology had produced them—and they had been installed in all of the military fliers across Iskandia. Thus, Ridge expected a prompt answer.

  Instead, only silence came back to him. He repeated the call. The dark craft rose, the clouds obscuring it from view. An uneasy feeling replaced the hope Ridge had felt. He nudged his flier upward, picking a route that would let him intercept the craft if it did not change its route. It might be a non-military flier—there were a few handfuls of decommissioned and private ones out there, such as the two craft that were maintained by Harborgard Castle. But it might be something else too. The clouds and the early morning light had made it hard to tell the color, but it definitely had dark paint, dark paint that reminded Ridge of the unmanned fliers that had tried to shoot him and Sardelle down in Cofahre.

  Seeing one here wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it was surely unwelcome. He had hoped they would have more time to retrieve the king and get the squadrons back to the city.

  As he searched the sky, the clouds whispered past his face, leaving droplets of moisture on his goggles. He wiped them with his scarf. With the visibility poor, he would need all the vision he could claim to spot another flier up here. Since his own propeller buzzed in his ears, he would never hear an enemy approach, not until a machine gun rang out, so his eyes were all he had up here. His eyes and his intuition.

  If he were dealing with another human being, he might have weaved around, expecting the other pilot to take evasive moves to avoid being found, but those unmanned fliers had used simple patterns, almost like machines obeying a punch-card program. He didn’t doubt that the vial of dragon blood attached to the control board gave the craft uncanny intelligence, but it couldn’t replace a human brain. He hoped.

  The dark shape, its body almost identical to a one-man Iskandian flier, soared into view again. It was still flying south, in the direction of the capital, but at a higher altitude than Ridge had anticipated. He grimaced. If it fired from up there, it would have the advantage.

  He pulled back on the flight stick, climbing at the same time as he carved to the side, knowing he needed to reach it but hoping to make a harder target as he closed. If it was a scouting craft, it might not be programmed to fire, but he couldn’t bet on that. It had twin guns mounted above the nose, and he squinted, spotting something else on its belly, something black and blocky.

  “Seven gods, is that a camera?” Ridge thumped his hand on the side of the cockpit. His people were supposed to be developing an aerial camera, and he’d seen prototypes on dirigibles, but they hadn’t managed anything lightweight enough for the fliers yet. “Damned Cofah don’t need to worry about weight when they don’t have pilots,” he growled.

  The bangs of a machine gun rang out like hail on a tin roof. Cursing himself for having been caught staring at that camera for too long, Ridge threw his craft into a barrel roll, then banked into a thick cloud. Belatedly, he decided there was probably no point in trying to hide from something without eyes. That dragon blood would allow the unmanned craft to sense him in the same way as Sardelle would.

  Nonetheless, his swoops and rolls kept the bullets from striking him. As he came out of the cloud on the far side, he pulled up, climbing hard, hoping to rise above the enemy craft. Despite the fire, it had not diverted from its route to chase him.

  “Must have more pictures to take,” Ridge grumbled and turned to chase it. He was not going to let it sail in and collect images of the capital, especially not when he had left the hangar door yawning wide open, where the empty interior would be all too visible.

  “You are not going home,” Ridge announced, accelerating after the craft. “Or back to some mobile base.” It horrified him to think that a landing dirigible or carrier ship might be waiting fifty miles off the coast for its return.

  He jammed one hand into his pocket to rub his wooden dragon figurine, then focused all of his concentration on the craft. The wind railed at his face, burning his cheeks as he struggled to catch it. He hated to think that the Cofah might have made a craft that was faster than his, but his was a two-seater and had a pilot. The other flier had nothing except the camera and the guns to weigh it down.

  Ridge tilted his wings slightly to take advantage of wind gusting from the rear. He wasn’t sure if that was what helped, but he finally closed on the Cofah craft, cutting in on a diagonal approach rather than from straight behind its tail.

  At first, it did not make any evasive moves, and he rested his thumb on the trigger for his machine gun, thinking he might get an easy shot. Then, as he pulled within range, it dropped down, spinning through the clouds. At the first dip of the nose, Ridge reacted. He cut the angle tighter and gained ground. Though he was still at the edge of machine-gun range, he fired, hoping for a lucky shot. He thought he clipped a wing, but that was not a vital target. He needed to take out that camera—and the vial of dragon blood powering the craft. The latter would be protected by armor, but he fired again, aiming for the body.

  The craft veered again, but he clung to it like a leech stuck on a man’s ankle. Thanks to the crashed flier he and Sardelle had dissected, he had a good idea of where that vial should be. He swooped left and right as they dove, trying to hit the body from the side. His bullets riddled the fuselage. Smoke wafted from the tail of the craft. As its dive turned into a plummet, both craft dropped below the clouds, and the rocks of the Cauldron came into view. Ridge probably should have felt fear at the speed he was maintaining and at the rapid way those rocks were approaching, but the exhilaration of the hunt thrummed through him. He fired again to make sure that craft smashed into the sea, never to report back to its home. He would pull up well before he risked crashing himself. He glimpsed that camera on its belly and fired at that. It was knocked off, smoke rising as it flew away from the craft. Good. It could not be retrieved.

  As he was about to pull up, certain the unmanned flier would crash, a massive boom rang out. A ball of orange flame exploded right above the sea. Startled, Ridge yanked on the flight stick. The shockwave slammed into the belly of his craft. He would have been bucked from his seat if not for his harness. As it was, the force of the blow rattled his teeth—and every nut holding his flier together. For several seconds, he had no control of the craft, and he envisioned his wings being torn off and the body tumbling into the sea.

  Finally, the steering responded to him and he flattened out, skimming scant feet above the waves breaking below. Water sprayed the side of his face, and he gulped and glanced back. The flames had disappeared, leaving only bits and pieces the size of confetti floating on the surface. Unless he had struck the dragon blood vial and that had somehow caused that much energy to be unleashed, he couldn’t see how such a powerful explosion could have been the result of anything on the plane blowing up.

  “Note to self,” Ridge said, ignoring the tremor in his voice. “The Cofah unmanned fliers are rigged to explode if it becomes clear their mission will fail.”

  He wished he had foreseen that. He had very nearly been taken out by that trap. Even worse than death would have been being killed by something without a brain.

  “Embarrassing,” he muttered and was suddenly glad he was out of Jaxi’s range. She would have had even more biting comments.

  A creak came from the frame of his flier. Ridge sighed and veered toward the coast. He would need to land and make sure he hadn’t taken any serious damage. He looked around to get his bearings, then twitched in surprise. The whitewashed tower
of the island lighthouse rose up less than a mile away.

  Instead of heading toward the mainland, he veered in that direction. Had he been in his one-man flier, he could not have landed on the compact island—there was little more to it than the lighthouse in the center, a few tufts of grass in a small yard, and the rocks raising it up above the surf. But so long as his thrusters hadn’t been blown off in that explosion, he would have room enough to land this craft.

  Ridge wiped droplets of water from his goggles and tried to determine if anyone was home. It had grown light enough that he could not see if a lamp burned in the lantern room, but a keeper ought to be on duty around the clock. A bunkhouse and storage area hugged the base of the tower. He thought he spotted a figure in the window—someone looking out toward him. In case he was correct, he offered a cheerful wave.

  He swept around the tower once to make sure nobody with guns was waiting in the grass. If a kidnap victim was being held here, he would doubtlessly have guards. Not that he could go anywhere. The shoreline was barely visible from here, and nothing about the churning waves and sharp rocks said a swim would be advisable.

  Not seeing anyone outside, Ridge activated the thrusters and lowered to the ground. The port side one gave a hiccup and only operated at half power. He gritted his teeth, trying to compensate and keep the flier level. A bevy of seagulls squawked and flew away.

  “Critics,” Ridge grumbled, finally feeling his wheels bump against the ground. He came down hard on one side, but did not think he had done any more damage.

  The door in the base of the lighthouse opened. Two big men with short hair, broad shoulders, and nondescript clothing walked out. One was missing an eye. The other had a nose that had been broken at least three times. Right away, Ridge knew two things. One, these were not lighthouse keepers, and two, this was the right place. What he didn’t know was how he was going to avoid being shot. Damn them—why couldn’t they have come out looking belligerent and thugly while he had been in the air? Now it was too late to turn the flier toward them and put his machine guns to use.