Dragon Unleashed

by Grace Draven

  “You’re lying. You refuse to help Estred.” Gharek’s voice held a flat note, as if he didn’t believe his own accusation but wielded it anyway in a vain attempt to hold on to that dead hope.

  “I am not.” Malachus smiled down at the little girl, who returned the smile with a hesitant one of her own. She might not understand the layers of conversation exchanged between her father and his visitor, but she sensed the tension in the room. “If I could help her, I would, but I can’t. Even if draga blood worked the way humans assume, I’d have to be draga. Drawing blood from me in this form would do nothing.” He swept a hand in front of him to encompass the room. “Neither you, nor Estred, nor this house would survive my transformation.”

  He didn’t exaggerate. His skin burned hot, smoke wreathing off him in ghostly plumes, and the draga inside threatening to commit suicide by transforming without the aid of the mother-bond’s magic. Malachus held on to his control by his fingernails while the sweat poured down his back and his heart felt like it might burst.

  A draga’s transformation was both epic and violent. He’d witnessed it twice while he fostered at the monastery, and each time was so horrified by the event he’d consulted the sympathetic monks as to how he might reject his heritage and remain human. If he changed now, even with the mother-bond’s help, he’d destroy this house and everyone inside it.

  Defeat slouched Gharek’s shoulders, and his head drooped. Estred took a step toward her father. “Papa?” Tears thickened her voice.

  Had he not learned of Gharek’s vocation as the empress’s cat’s-paw, Malachus might have dropped his guard at the sight of the other man’s crestfallen demeanor. The foreknowledge served him well. Gharek’s head snapped up, his eyes hard as marble and just as cold. He pressed his free hand to his chest as if his heart pained him. “Then this is of no use to me,” he said. A sleight-of-hand movement and he turned his palm to reveal the thing Malachus had hunted for a lifetime across numerous kingdoms and two continents—his mother-bond, Golnar’s most lasting gift to him, given at his birth as both his heritage and his protection. The only physical part of his mother left in this world.

  The sound erupting from his throat bore nothing human in it as a surge of longing mixed with a draga’s impatient fury slammed into him at the sight. For a moment, Gharek’s eyes rounded, terror darkening his irises as he glanced down at his prize and then at Estred, who’d wrenched herself from Malachus’s touch to press herself against the wall.

  Gharek pivoted, raised his arm, and pitched the mother-bond toward the opposite end of the corridor. He didn’t pause to see how far it sailed, spinning around again, dagger drawn, to lunge for Malachus. Sunlight winked off the blade as he slashed, aiming for his midriff.

  Malachus leapt back, barely avoiding a gutting but still catching the blade across the top of his leg. “To me!” he shouted, using the language of the draga.

  As if sentient and powered by its own force, the mother-bond rebounded off the floor where it lay and shot back toward him. It clipped Gharek on the top of his shoulder as it whipped past, landing in Malachus’s palm with an audible smack. Startled by the hit, the cat’s-paw checked his second lunge.

  Unfazed by the wound Gharek had carved into his leg, and rocked by a tide of power that smashed through him when he finally held the mother-bond, Malachus snagged his adversary’s wrist, twisting his arm over his own forearm until the other man went up on his toes. He hooked the mother-bond’s sharp curve under Gharek’s throat. A harder bend on his elbow and the cat’s-paw dropped his bloodied blade.

  Threatened by the mother-bond’s sharp edge, he still struggled in Malachus’s grip. “Run, Estred!” he bellowed to his screaming daughter. “Run!” The little girl fled down the hall, disappearing from view. The moment she was out of sight, Gharek laughed. “Now what, draga?”

  Fire roared through Malachus’s veins, backdrafting into his muscles until they twitched under his skin, and his vision clouded in a red haze. Gharek’s bitter amusement sounded far away, though they were almost locked in each other’s arms. The mother-bond seared his palm, throbbing with a magic both potent and familiar—the last vestiges of his mother Golnar’s spirit captured in bone and bequeathed to her son. It was power and heritage, birthright and salvation.

  And it was incomplete.

  “What did you do to the mother-bond?” He practically snarled the words, fighting down the draga’s imminent rise. Something about it was wrong, missing. He pressed it harder to Gharek’s throat, the feel of warm blood trickling over his fingers.

  Gharek laughed again, unafraid. “I diced in two games and lost in both. I’d planned to lure you and take a small portion of your blood for Estred, unlike the empress, who plans to harvest every last drop. I gave her a replica of the bone with enough splinters of the real thing embedded in it to fool her sorcerers.”

  His heritage, desecrated by human hands. Draga bone was dense, hard to break, but not impervious to damage or, in this case, the whittle of a human’s knife or chisel.

  Desperate rage swamped him. If he didn’t need to know Asil’s whereabouts, he would have cut Gharek’s throat in that moment. He needed all of the mother-bond to transform. Never, in any of the scenarios he imagined regarding the difficulties in retrieving his birthright, had he considered that someone might break the claw tip apart. The hope that he’d manage to transform and avoid the empress burned to ash. He had the mother-bond but was now worse off for it. “Where’s Asil?”

  Gharek swallowed, the movement pressing the bone’s edge deeper into his skin. More blood trickled over Malachus’s fingers. “Is that her name? Halani never said.”

  Malachus had never mentioned Halani’s name, yet Gharek knew it and alluded to a conversation between them. The cat’s-paw had somehow gotten his hands on her. The hot rage turned icy. He was done with games and with mercy, even for the innocent Estred’s sake. Like him and so many others, she’d learn to live without her parent.

  “I’ll take you to her,” a voice said from the doorway. Siora, Estred’s nurse, stood there. Somehow, she and the others had escaped their imprisonment in the buttery.

  Malachus wasn’t concerned about them. He’d have no trouble dispatching a group of servants if necessary. “Where are the others?”

  “Gone. Fled to their houses.” Her strange, faraway gaze landed on Gharek for a moment. “I sent Estred with the cook.”

  Her devotion to her charge didn’t win any favors from Estred’s father. “Help this bastard,” he said between clenched teeth, “and I will hunt you across the Empire for your betrayal. There will be no place you can hide from me.”

  He gasped out a curse when Malachus curved his bent arm a little more. “You’re assuming you’ll survive today,” he told Gharek. “And if you do, you’d best look to yourself and your daughter’s survival. The empress will hunt you across her empire once she discovers your deception.” He looked back at Siora, uncowed by Gharek’s threat. “Why would you help me?” He was a stranger to her, a threat to her charge, and for a short time, the person who’d imprisoned her and others. She had no reason to help him.

  “Because he’s wrong in what he’s done,” she said. “And because you’ve spoken for those whose voices most refuse to hear.” She didn’t explain that last odd statement. Her serene gaze shifted from Gharek to him. “I’ll take you to the old woman if you let him live. He’s all that stands between Estred and a rock-throwing mob offended by her appearance.”

  Just as she had no obvious reason to help him, Malachus had none to trust her, yet that didn’t matter. He needed whatever help was offered, even at the risk of entrapment or betrayal.

  Gharek made no sound when Malachus cuffed him hard on the side of the head. He slumped in Malachus’s grip.

  “Put him in the wine cellar,” Siora instructed, as Malachus tucked away the mother-bond inside his tunic and hoisted the unconscious man over his shoulder
. “His steward has a key to every room in the house except that one.” Malachus halted next to her, waiting as she rifled through Gharek’s clothing before triumphantly producing a key. “I’ll hold on to it for now and return it later.”

  “If you want to live, you can’t come back here,” Malachus told her as he followed her down the hall toward a narrow flight of stairs leading to the floor belowground. “You’ve exiled yourself by helping me.”

  Siora shrugged, pushing open the cellar door to let Malachus and his burden through. “I’m used to homelessness.” She pocketed the key and set to work helping him bind Gharek with strips of the sleeves they cut away from his tunic. Malachus used the last strip to gag him before wedging his body into the narrow space between two wine casks in the corner farthest from the door. No doubt one of his staff would find him soon enough.

  He and Siora left the house, closing the courtyard door and its gate behind them before strolling away together as if they were simply visitors returning to their own home. Malachus concentrated on diminishing the smoke twisting around him until it completely disappeared. The draga inside him continued to thrash.

  “You’ve stopped bleeding,” Siora said. She gestured to his leg where Gharek had slashed him.

  Malachus glanced down at the injury. The cut no longer stung, and as his companion noted, it no longer bled. The mother-bond had worked its magic, inciting the draga but also strengthening his healing abilities tenfold. Beneath the skim of dried blood staining his leg, the wound itself had healed. Siora’s observation held an unspoken question. He sighed. “Were you out of the buttery while I talked to Gharek?”

  She nodded. “For the last part. Blood on a dog and all that.” A tiny frown knitted the space between her eyebrows. “It’s difficult not to wish otherwise, especially for Estred, and especially in the face of such obvious magic.”

  “It’s only magic for the draga to whom it belongs,” he said.

  “I wish you could help her.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. If dragas possessed all the abilities humans assumed they did, they’d be gods. “So do I,” he said.

  Siora gestured toward a street that curved away from the line of houses. “This way,” she said. “Hurry.”

  She was a petite woman, neither long-legged nor powerful, but she sped through the crowded city with Malachus in tow, instinctively finding those ever-changing spaces in a sea of people that seemed to open up before them and close instantly once they passed. Malachus was ready to shoulder aside any who got in their way but found he needn’t bother. In no time, he and Siora had raced halfway across the city, into its murkier depths where the streets became closes, the buildings more ramshackle, and the people far less well-heeled.

  They halted at the entrance to an alley garlanded by lines of laundry hung to dry. Dreary hovels, leaning against multistoried dwellings in danger of collapsing at the first hard sneeze, lined either side of the close, and Malachus glimpsed between the flutter of hanging linen the high brick wall where the close ended.

  Siora pointed to one of the hovels with its roof partially caved in. “There. That’s the forge where he’s hiding her.” She made to walk that way, stopping at Malachus’s grip on her arm.

  “You owe me no loyalty,” he told her. “But know that if you’ve led me into a trap, the cat’s-paw will never have a chance to hunt you.” He was fresh out of forbearance. If Siora attempted to stitch him, she wouldn’t live to regret it.

  She had large round eyes, nearly as dark as his own, and farseeing. Just like with Gharek’s threat, her serene expression didn’t change, and Malachus didn’t sense any fear in her. “No trap. There will be one or two guards keeping watch. They’re hired men with no allegiance to him other than what his money has paid for.”

  Which meant they wouldn’t risk their lives to keep their captive from being taken. Malachus hoped his assumption proved true. It would make it that much easier and quicker to retrieve Asil and return her to Halani. To improve his odds at triumphing in a confrontation, he nocked the last bolt he had into the crossbow he carried. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to fire it.

  Another frown disturbed the placid set of her features. “I haven’t been wholly honest about your Asil.” Malachus froze, and his hand flexed on the crossbow. Siora glanced at the crossbow, and for the first time fear flickered across her face. “Gharek didn’t hurt her. I know that for sure, but her captivity must have brought about memories of terrible things. She’s walked the Dream Road the entire time he’s held her.”

  “What is the Dream Road?” When she described it, he nodded. “I’ve heard it called by similar names. Those who suffer escape their suffering one way or another.” He scowled. “Are you certain Gharek didn’t abuse her?”

  She nodded. “Gharek uses cruelty for a purpose, not entertainment. Torturing Asil didn’t serve a purpose, though he did take a smear of her blood while she walked the Dream Road.”

  In that moment, Malachus almost lost control of the draga. “What?” He growled the word.

  Siora stepped back. “A shallow cut on her forearm, just enough to wet his blade. He took it to Koopman in the Maesor to feed to his vile trap shadow. It’s how he learned of you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  Her long stare burrowed into his soul. “Would you have let the cat’s-paw live if I did?”

  “No.” He wouldn’t have left him in one piece, much less let him live.

  “I thought not. My first loyalty isn’t to Gharek, to you, or to Asil. It’s to Estred, and she needs her father to live. Nobility is an indulgence for those with only themselves to consider. It’s a harder thing to embrace when others are at stake. You held Estred to help Asil; I protected Gharek to help Estred. He was wrong to abduct Asil. I’m righting that wrong by helping you. I won’t make Estred pay for her father’s sins by letting you kill him.”

  Malachus studied the small woman in front of him, remembering Halani’s pinched features as she weathered his scorn and condemnation over his discovery of her grave robbing.

  I’m not defending, only explaining. It is wrong . . . Condemn us if you will, but know why we do it, not why you think we do it.

  The fury inside him died, allowing him to calm the draga enough to keep from combusting on the spot. Halani and Siora were of like minds and philosophies. Philosophies he was just coming to understand, even if he didn’t always agree with them.

  “Take me to the forge,” he said.

  Siora remained true to her word. No trap or ambush awaited him and only one guard kept watch over Asil. It seemed almost too easy to dispatch him. Malachus left Siora to stand watch over his unconscious form while he searched for Asil in the abandoned smithy.

  He found her next to what was left of the actual forge, tied to a support beam by a length of rope with one end knotted around her thin wrists. She didn’t react when he approached, her slow-blinking gaze even more distant than Siora’s, looking upon another world only she saw. Her features were slack, her breathing steady but slow, as if she slept with her eyes open. And she was filthy.

  Had Malachus dragged Gharek with him to the forge, he would have broken both his arms and his legs as punishment for Asil’s condition. Never before had he seen Asil other than neat and tidy. This was not the same woman. Caked in dirt, her hair a matted rat’s nest and her clothing reduced to rags, she reeked. He thanked the gods Halani wasn’t here to see her mother’s appalling condition.

  Malachus crouched in front of her so she could look him in the face. Even this close, her eyes didn’t quite meet his. She sat not far from the beam to which she was tied, her bony hands resting on her knees. He dared not touch her, afraid that doing so would send her deeper into whatever sanctuary she’d found in her mind. “Asil, it’s me, Malachus. Do you remember me?”

  No reaction, and her distant stare remained unwavering. A roach crawled down
her arm, and Malachus flicked it away. He tried again, this time speaking to her as if they met together for a quick chat.

  “Halani is here in Domora. She wanted to come with me to find you, but I told her I’d bring you to her. She’ll be very happy to see you. She loves you and has worried about you.” He eyed the knot binding her wrists together. “I’m going to untie you. You’ll feel some tugging on your hands.”

  Still she said nothing, but her lips moved with the soundless utterance of words. Was it the mention of her daughter’s name that had brought out this response? A small triumph, but one that gave him hope Asil might yet abandon the Dream Road and return to this world.

  She remained placid while he worked the knot loose and when he rose to cut the rope from the beam. He tossed it aside before returning to her. “Can you hear me, Asil? I want you to stand and walk with me. I’ll help you. If you can’t, then I’ll carry you.” He recalled Halani’s grim story of Asil’s capture. “The choice is yours. I’ll do whichever you wish, but we have to leave here so you can go home to Halani.”

  He’d barely finished the sentence when she suddenly stood, neither stumbling nor weaving as he’d expected, considering her physical state. Her arms hung limp at her sides, and her eyes stared beyond him, but she didn’t shy away. To his amazement, she reached out and grabbed his hand, dirty fingers entwining with his.

  Humbled by her trust, Malachus gently squeezed her hand. “Good choice,” he said. She walked beside him with sure steps as he guided her through the forge’s gloomy interior to where Siora still stood next to the unconscious guard.