Dragon Master (Dragon Collector Book 2)

by Simon Archer

  “What dark thought crossed your mind just now?” Rebekah asked, with a light jab in my side.

  I jolted and looked over at my captain. “Nothing of consequence.”

  “I beg to disagree, friend,” Rebekah said with a furrow of her eyebrows. “You look as though someone you love has died. The color drained instantly from your face. Where did your thoughts go?”

  “I was thinking of Martin,” I said, constructing the lie with half-truths.

  “Hm,” Rebekah murmured, listening. She harbored feelings for the man, as well, and I wondered if she would be willing to listen to my own thoughts and feelings in regard to Martin.

  “It was a moment of doubt is all,” I continued. “He will win this, I am sure of it, but my mind exercised the idea that he did not win. Or worse. If he did not make the top ten and was dismissed from the introduction.”

  “try to take comfort in your faith in him,” Rebekah suggested. “After all, you trained him, and no one has won this tournament more than you. He had better training that Madame Lilysmyth would be able to give in two weeks.”

  “Do not let her hear you say that,” I warned with a teasing tone.

  Rebekah rolled her bright blue eyes dramatically. “I have been arguing with that woman for years now.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said dully, not wanting to hear this argument again. Nevertheless, Rebekah proceeded as if she had not told me this story several times.

  “I have tried to reason with her,” Rebekah griped. “She can train and ready the inductees for the other two phases of the introduction process. However, it only makes sense to allow the captain of the guard to train them for the physical portion. And the training would be extended for longer than two weeks.”

  “Yes,” I said disinterestedly.

  “Instead, Madame Lilysmyth insists that all the trainees must have equal time and equal instruction, so they are not biased, which is ludicrous. It is like comparing apples to oranges, and yet she must keep them the same.” Rebekah huffed with a final sigh and crossed her arms.

  “Are you finished?” I asked, knowing the answer to my own question.

  “I do not know why she is so stubborn,” Rebekah proceeded. “I am not asking to change the entire introduction process, which is her whole deal, and I respect that. It is a practical suggestion that she will not even consider.”

  “Maybe you should try again,” I ventured.

  “I do not believe she will listen,” Rebekah sighed.

  “She changed the rules to let Martin in,” I reasoned, thinking it through. “Maybe she is more open-minded than you think.”

  “Are we speaking of the same Madame Lilysmyth?” Rebekah checked, looking at me sharply.

  “I just do not understand why you would not at least try,” I pressed, “especially if you are still so riled up about it.”

  “I am not riled up,” Rebekah protested.

  I held out my hand, signaling Rebekah to look at her own body language. It had shifted to a tense, closed-off crumple of limbs. Her legs were crossed at the knee, her arms hugged tight around her chest, and her shoulders had crawled up to her ears.

  Slowly, Rebekah unraveled herself. I watched skeptically as my captain returned both feet to the ground and straightened her back. She cleared her throat in an attempt to cover her embarrassment.

  “I apologize,” Rebekah said slowly.

  “No need.” I waved her off.

  “That woman irritates me so,” Rebekah muttered, almost to herself.

  An idea pricked in the back of my head in response to Rebekah’s comment. Her body language and blatant irritation fueled the idea. It was like a young teenager being interrogated by her parents, full of defensiveness and slight embarrassment.

  I leaned back on the bench and straightened my legs out as far as they could go. I shot Rebekah a curious look, which she caught.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Do you think of Madame Lilysmyth as a friend?” I wondered gingerly. Asking this question felt like poking a bear.

  Rebekah scoffed and immediately looked away from me. The dismissive grunt and distancing herself from the question automatically gave me my answer.

  “You do, don’t you?” I confirmed incredulously.

  “She is a smart woman, Diana,” Rebekah defended. “Stubborn as all hell, annoying, temperamental, and stuck in her ways, but smart all the same.”

  I chuckled, thoroughly amused by my discovery. I gave Rebekah a couple of pats on the shoulder and let the matter lie. It was comforting to know that Rebekah had friends of a sort outside the guard, even if those friends included one of the most frustrating women on the continent.

  A trumpet sounded, signaling the start of the tournament. Nobles took their places in the wooden stands, dressed in their finest outerwear. It was a celebration, after all.

  When the horn finished its announcement, King Atlus rose to his feet. Immediately, the rest of the court followed suit. I watched the crowd rise in an uneven wave. Whenever King Atlus executed his power like this, I always found myself amazed and jealous. It was impossible not to see the weight of the king on the land. I often wondered if Atlus truly knew the impact he had and how he could wield it to his will, for better or worse. The silent following of the court just now was a perfect visual example of just how much power the king had.

  Once again, the trumpets sounded except this time, there were more of them, and they struck up a melody. Two flaps in the tent across the way opened up. One by one, the competitors proceeded out of the ten. Each of the thirty-two carried a large flag with their family’s coat of arms on it.

  We watched the rainbow parade emerge from the tent. Intricate family flags flew high, some of them catching the easy-going breeze. They fanned out around the arena, to smattered applause from their family as they entered.

  Upon seeing the flags, panic clenched my stomach. What would Martin carry? He did not have a coat of arms or a sign or anything to signify his family origins here in Insomier. Surely they would not let him walk out with nothing. He was the first of his kind, so not having a family flag to carry was something rather unusual.

  However, when Martin emerged, last in line, he did indeed carry a flag. It blazed a silky white with a purple dragon stitched in the center. It replicated Ffamran almost perfectly, with his flowing hair and massive wingspan.

  I could not help but smile at the sight of it. It was the perfect symbol of Martin and the mark he left on Insomier. He was the King of Dragons, even though not everyone knew it. The symbol could not have been a better fit. I wondered who had thought of it. Instinctively, I knew Martin had to have a hand in it somehow. He would not have let it be anything else.

  The competitors stuck their flags in the ground in a semi-circle around the opposite side of the stands. They flowed high above in the light breeze, seeming to reach for the heavens. Each competitor stood beneath them, save for Em, who sat under hers, which was still attached to her chair. Some ingenious person had attached the flag pole to Em’s wheeled chair so she would not have to carry it out. Now, a servant came and detached the flag. They stuck it in the ground for the young noblewoman.

  A wave of murmurs fluttered about the crowd. I caught only pieces of gossip. Concerns for Emerald competing. Scandal at the king permitting Martin to be introduced when he was no noble. Surprise at the number of male competitors this year. It was all nonsense. I did not care for the mutterings of the nobles. They hardly ever concerned anything important and were not worth my time. I learned that early on in my time at court. Or rather, Alona had taught me that their words did not matter.

  “They will never accept us, Diana,” she had told me when we were about thirteen years old. “You have to understand that they think us different than themselves. No matter how hard we try to be like them, we will always be different.”

  “If we join the guard, then they cannot say anything bad about us,” I tried to reason, though hope infected my every word. “We will be respected.�
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  Alona shook her head, sorrowful and doubtful. “We will always be those two poor girls from Absolum. No position in the guard is going to change that. It is better not to focus on what they say.”

  “But what they say means everything!” I argued. “Their say is the only way to get ahead.”

  “You need to change your definition of getting ahead,” Alona warned. “You will waste years being miserable and getting nowhere.”

  As per usual, Alona had been right. But I never told her so. I locked away my feelings over time and hid them behind impenetrable walls. They guarded me against the whispers and the judgments of the court. It had been years since I’d let their words bother me. However, now that Martin was the center of their concerns, old wounds reopened and threatened to bleed.

  It was not the first time I imagine whisking him away, abandoning this whole ordeal and living out by the sea. Neither of us was made for this life anyway, or that is how it felt sometimes. I knew he craved it too when the weight of the kingdom fell too heavily on his shoulders. Though, like me, Martin would not leave. There was a sense of duty that compelled him to stay. Some unspoken promise made to himself, to his dragon clan, or to someone else. I did not know.

  My own oath to protect and serve the kingdom of Insomier tightened around my neck each day, like the noose I once wore. Ever since that moment of publicly defying the king, I imagined that rope around my neck. The bristles scratched, and some nights, I dreamt that it never came off.

  Watching the competitors fall into line to hear their match order, that invisible noose pressed against my windpipe. The whole spectacle was simply for show and entertainment. Two weeks of combat training proved nothing. Any of those inductee pansies would not last a week out in the field… except for maybe Martin.

  To temper my growing irritation, I focused on him. I watched his face stay stoic as it was announced that he would first be facing against Ursaman. He was a bulky guard, something of a beast when it came to combat. This only made sense, considering his Merkin was a grizzly bear that liked to pace about its rock structure in the Zoo, growling at anyone who came near.

  Their match was one of the first. Martin was a broad and tall man, but he dwarfed in comparison to this giant of a man. I liked Ursaman. He was kind and gave the most comforting hugs, though I also knew he would not go easy on Martin. He would throw his weight at him, aiming to halt and crush.

  Martin sized him up quickly. I could see it in his eyes as he zeroed in on his slower movements. When the starting trumpet sounded, Martin zoomed behind the massive man before he could finish a blink. He wasted no time in jumping onto his back. He wrapped his hands around the man’s thick neck and his legs around the man’s waist. Martin hooked his elbow in the crux of his opposite wrist and yanked back.

  Ursaman groped at his arms and bent forward, trying to throw him over his head and off him. However, Martin locked his feet together at Ursaman’s navel and tightened his thighs. He squeezed his eyes shut with the effort and held true.

  The large guard whipped about. He attempted to dislodge Martin in every way he could think until he finally felt flat on his back, squishing Martin.

  An audible grunt erupted from Martin as the wind knocked out of him. A gasp escaped the ground, and tension heightened as Ursaman rolled about on the ground. He crushed Martin with each movement, and he groaned in response. Still, Martin held on.

  Ursaman’s face flushed red, then a deep violet. His eyes bulged from his face as he gulped for air. The crowd shouted their encouragements, their insults, and their curses. All the while, Ursaman’s skin looked more and more like a ripe cherry.

  “Tap out, man!” Rebekah called out to the burly guard, but her advice was lost in the rest of the din.

  Martin’s eyes closed in frustration and weariness. My chest tightened. If he could only see how close he was. Just a few more seconds and Ursaman would lose consciousness…

  Sure enough, Ursaman’s stocky limbs went limp above Martin, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. A trumpet howled, signaling Martin’s victory. Only then did he let go, his own arms and legs flattening against the grass in exhaustion.

  Assorted cheers and whoops went up from the crowd. It was an exciting first match, and many had not expected the foreigner to win. More murmurs went up as three servants dragged Ursaman’s deadweight off Martin. This was going to be an interesting tournament, indeed.

  “No, thanks, I’m fine,” Martin said sarcastically as he got up on his own. No one had come to help him up. “I didn’t just get crushed by a three hundred pound bear or anything. I’m just dandy.”

  I laughed as he wobbled his way off the field. His ears caught wind of my laughter, and he looked up in my direction. Martin’s eyes met mine, first displaying surprise, then the gaze softened, and he rewarded me with a smile.

  When our eyes connected, a pang whizzed through my gut. I clutched it and bent over with a grunt. Immediately, Rebekah’s hands were on my back.

  “Diana,” she said, worried. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I lied, knowing exactly what this pain was. The familiar sensation of my stomach being ripped open with a knife sliced through me once more, and I bent over further. The corruption decided to make itself known again.

  “This is not nothing,” Rebekah argued. She clutched either side of my shoulders and guided me through the stands. “We have to get you to the infirmary.”

  “No!” I hissed through the pain.

  “Diana,” Rebekah replied sharply. “Now is not the time to be stubborn.”

  “I cannot go to the infirmary,” I explained, my voice low. “They cannot help me.”

  Rebekah froze at my words, her brow furrowing in thought. Her hands stiffened. I could feel her grip change as she processed what I was saying.

  “Who can help you?” Rebekah whispered in my ear.

  “I need Alona.” I hated saying the words, but she and Korey were the only other humans who knew. Since Korey was competing, I had no one to rely on save for my old friend.

  “Then I will take you to the Zoo,” Rebekah proclaimed, and I barely had a moment to analyze the flash of desire that flickered in Rebekah’s gaze at the mention of Alona before another burst of pain hit me.

  My captain pushed through the stands, making excuses as we went. She claimed I had too much to drink. She assured another woman that I had eaten a bad batch of eggs. Lies poured from Rebekah’s mouth as she led me out of the arena and out of the all-seeing eyes of the court.

  I was not worried about them, however. The only eyes I cared about were the piercing green ones who watched me double over in pain just before he was expected to fight again.

  25

  “Diana.”

  Her name left my lips, and I couldn’t help but step forward. Something caught my arm and prevented me from racing towards her. I jerked out of its grip, but the thing clamped down again with a vice-like grip. I turned to face the figure, intent on snarling in their face, when the angelic face of Maria came into view.

  “What are you doing?” Maria asked, still holding my arm with a surprising amount of strength.

  “Something’s wrong with Diana,” I explained. I tugged once more, but Maria held on. If anything, she managed to pull me closer.

  “I saw,” Maria said in a soft whisper. “But you cannot leave the arena. You will be disqualified.”

  “I can do whatever the hell I want,” I protested, “and I want to check on my friend.”

  “You saw that Rebekah went with her. She will be taken to the infirmary and taken care of,” Maria reasoned. “I cannot imagine she will be happy if you forfeit the tournament for her sake. She is not worth that.”

  I wanted to snap back, “Yes, she is!” However, I swallowed the words.

  Logic insisted that Maria was right, but compassion cried out a different answer. If Diana was ill, then I could heal her. My other healing abilities still worked without having to face Hennar. It was only when I faced t
he corruption that I also had to face the false king, or dragon slayer, or any of the other dozen names he had been given.

  My arm went slack in Maria’s grip, and she took that as a sure sign that I wasn’t about to run off to Diana’s aid. I licked my lips and cracked my neck back and forth. The compulsion to dash away and help Diana was still there. It itched like an uncomfortable shirt tag at the back of my neck. Still, I held firm on the sidelines and watched the next match, hoping it would distract me.

  Unfortunately, the pairing didn’t comfort me in the slightest. The fierce Korey stood across from Emerald, who still sat in her wheelchair.

  My jaw dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Oh no,” Maria gasped beside me. Her hand rose to her mouth, and she spoke through her fingers. “This is pure cruelty.”

  “You’re telling me,” I agreed. “Korey could kill her with one move, and knowing her, she just might.”

  “Killing is not allowed in the tournament. In fact, it is strictly forbidden,” Maria said, as if she were reading from the rulebook itself. I turned to Maria and gave her a skeptical look, complete with a raised eyebrow.

  “You were being hyperbolic, weren’t you?” Maria checked.

  “Yep,” I said with a single nod.

  Simultaneously, we turned our heads back to the impending match before us. Em rose from her chair and stepped into the circle. She bent her knees slightly and held up her fists, ready to strike. Korey followed suit, stepping into the circle, though she didn’t mimic Em’s stance. Korey’s hand remained down at her sides, and her knees locked beneath her.

  I could feel the whispers of the crowd like goosebumps along my skin. They were nasty and full of doubt. Some were topped with giggles, and others were silent, with only disapproving looks to show. If I could feel it from across the field, I knew that Em felt them all the way down to her bones.