by James Maxey
Feeling completely, truly safe for the first time in memory, Anza closed her eyes and cried herself to sleep in the cradle of Blasphet’s wings.
JANDRA WOKE TO the sound of a woman screaming. Her eyes popped open as the echoes faded. She felt a flutter of panic; total darkness engulfed her. Was she blind? The disorientation faded and she remembered she was underground, deep in the mines.
She’d seldom encountered true darkness. Above ground, even a cloudy, moonless night still possessed some faint trace of light. Within the palace where she’d grown up, there were many shadows, but she was never far from a torch or lantern. When she’d had her powers, she could create light simply by sprinkling dust in the air. She sat up, tossing off the blanket that covered her, taking a deep breath to calm her racing heart. She felt stupid. She was too old to be frightened of the dark.
She groped for the visor she’d placed beside her rolled up coat that she used as a pillow. The walls of the mine came into sharp focus as she slipped it on, not that there was much worth looking at. They were in a long shaft of black stone. Up was rock, down was rock, side to side was rock. The only living things to be seen were Shay and Lizard. Shay was sitting up, his back to the wall. He already had his visor on, hiding his eyes. The short braid he normally wore had come undone, and his red hair lay about his face in tangles. He hadn’t shaved in a week, and the shadow of stubble around his mouth made him look older. Coal dust had darkened the creases of his skin. His shotgun was in his lap, grasped with both hands. Life underground was proving hard on Shay. He’d grown increasingly silent the deeper they moved into the earth.
The cool, dank tunnels were also taking a toll on Lizard. The little earth-dragon was pressed up against Shay, staring at Jandra with a wide-eyed gaze. He looked worried.
“Have long have you been awake?” Jandra asked.
“You were talking in your sleep again,” said Shay. “You woke up screaming.”
“Did I?” Jandra cocked her head. She had a fleeting memory of a woman shouting, but it was ephemeral, the echo of an echo. “What did I say?”
“You were talking to someone named Cassie,” said Shay. “Just before you woke, you screamed, ‘It’s mine!’”
Jandra brushed the hair back from her forehead, puzzling over this revelation. She thought about her tongue, how it could possibly speak without her mind controlling it, and grew aware of the bad taste in her mouth. “I need water,” she said.
Shay held out the leather canteen. She uncorked it and took a deep drink. The water had a sulfurous taint to it. There were numerous streams and pools in the mine, but most tasted like rotten eggs. It wasn’t pleasant to drink, but neither was it dangerous. Vendevorex had provided her with a thorough education in chemistry. Sulfur posed no harm to the human body when ingested. The main downside was that her spit was taking on the foul odor. In fact, she was starting to reek, period. When she’d still been in control of her nanotech, the tiny machines had kept her skin clean, her breath fresh, and her hair untangled. Low tech grooming was tedious and almost pointless in a coal mine, where every surface she touched sullied her further.
She put the jug down and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, feeling the coarse grit that covered both her hands and her mouth. The black grit reminded her of the black sand of an oil-covered beach—one of Jazz’s memories.
“Can you remember your dream?” Shay asked. “Who’s Cassie?”
“My sister.” Jandra cringed. “I mean, Jazz’s sister. I don’t remember the dream directly. I feel like my brain is sorting through all these extra memories. Jazz’s life story is starting to make sense finally. All the random, disconnected memories are becoming a coherent sequence of events.”
“A lot of slaves worshipped the goddess, but I wasn’t a believer,” said Shay. “It’s hard to swallow the idea that she was real.”
Lizard jerked his head upward when Shay said the word “swallow.” The little beast’s vocabulary was limited, but he knew all the words connected to food.
“Real is a relative term. Jasmine Robertson wasn’t a goddess. She was a human, born a thousand years ago.”
“I’ve read about that time,” said Shay. “The Human Age. It must have been like paradise.”
“Not quite,” said Jandra. “Human civilization took a toll upon the earth. Vast areas of the globe had their native species plowed under and replaced with agriculture based on a few select plants, like corn. The soil had to be constantly replenished with petroleum-based chemicals. Poisons meant to fight pests worked their way into the groundwater. Water was also contaminated by runoff from digging into the earth for various minerals. To get at coal, humans would tear down entire mountain ranges. They burned that coal non-stop for two centuries, forever altering the atmosphere.”
“Was the sky of the whole world like the sky over Dragon Forge?”
“Not quite. They constantly refined technology to make it cleaner. That’s one reason Jazz’s memories confuse me. She could have done so much to make the world better with her brilliance. Instead, she decided to tear the world down.”
“Was she insane?”
“No. She was a genius, and something of an outsider, but not insane. Her sister, Cassie, had been born blind due to a side effect of a drug her mother had taken while she was pregnant. Cassie was an early recipient of artificial retinas. Jazz was fascinated by technology, and by biology, and, well, by everything, really. She wasn’t insane—she was… overly confident. She thought she understood the world’s problems and could fix them. Fixing the world, unfortunately, meant cutting the world’s human population from eight billion to eighty million.”
“I can’t even imagine eight billion people,” said Shay. “Where did everyone stand?”
“The world’s bigger than you can imagine,” said Jandra. “I don’t think I really grasped just how big it was until Jazz took me to the moon.”
“To the… you mean, you’ve been… the moon?”
Jandra nodded.
“How? I mean, not even dragons fly that high, do they?”
“Jazz knew a short cut. There’s apparently a different kind of space that exists under our reality. Jazz called it underspace. She stole the technology for traveling through it from Atlantis.”
Shay scratched his head. She sensed that her explanations were only making things worse. “Atlantis is an alien artifact that arrived on Earth at the tipping point of its environmental collapse. It was a machine intelligence programmed for almost perfect altruism—a living city designed to serve the needs of its citizens. It could have ushered in a true golden age… except, Jazz was one of the first people to encounter it. While the machine intelligence was far more advanced than anything she’d ever experienced, she was able to subtly alter its mission. She stopped its altruism at the edges of its immediate environment. The humans who went to live in Atlantis are effectively immortal. The city ignores the rest of the world. Jazz has since reduced mankind to a feral state, devoid of advanced technology. She thinks this is the wisest path for the long-term health of the world.”
Shay nodded. If he didn’t understand, at least he was humoring her. “You’re still talking about Jazz in the present tense.”
Jandra lowered her head as she realized he was right.
“What if I’m using the present tense because she’s still alive?” Jandra whispered. “I need to get a genie back so I can fix my brain. I think… I think she’s slowly pushing me out of my own memories.” Despite her best efforts to hold them back, tears trickled down her cheeks.
Shay scooted over toward her. He placed his fingers gently on the back of her hand. Lizard’s small claws fell next to them. She shuddered.
“Whenever… I go… to sleep,” she said between sobs, “I’m afraid… I won’t wake up as me.”
Shay slid beside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “Shh,” he said, in a soothing tone. “You’re just getting scared by a few bad dreams.”
“No!” she protested. “You
don’t understand. Nothing terrifies me more than losing my identity. I was raised by a dragon. I’ve always been confused about who I am.”
Lizard looked up at her with a concerned expression. Shay squeezed her hand more tightly.
She wiped her cheeks. “I’ve always… I feel crippled because I didn’t have wings, or a tail. I feel ugly when I look in a mirror and see skin instead of scales.”
Shay stroked the hair back from her face and said, softly, “You aren’t ugly, Jandra. You’re the prettiest woman I’ve ever met.”
Jandra rolled her eyes. “Inside, I’m all broken up and scarred. I’m a freak, raised by the wrong species. Now I’ve had my brain rewired by thousand year old egomaniac. I have to be the most screwed up person who’s ever lived.”
“Jandra,” said Shay, “if you’re screwed up, then the world needs more screwed up people. You’re incredibly brave. My mind went blank with fear when Vulpine attacked, but you kept your wits. I was on the verge of peeing myself while you calmly reloaded your gun. You’re amazing. You bossed around Bitterwood. You took away an earth-dragon’s own axe and killed him with it. Could a brain-damaged freak do these things?”
“Why not?” She attempted to grin but couldn’t quite manage it. “No wonder I wake up screaming. I’m a brain-damaged freak with a violent streak.”
“You’ve also got a compassionate streak. You put your life in danger to save Lizard. You’re kind and caring. Despite all the awful things dragons have done to you, you aren’t consumed with bitterness and hatred. More than anyone I’ve ever met, you’re trying to make the world a better place. Lizard’s right… you’re a good boss.”
“Good boss,” Lizard cooed. “Good, good boss.” He stared up at her as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. The little dragon turned his gaze to her backpack. “We eat?”
Jandra laughed, then hiccupped. “Flatterer,” she said. “Yes, we’ll eat.”
Shay released her hand. “If you want to talk more about this later, I’m ready to listen. You don’t need to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders alone.”
She looked at Shay, his face only inches from hers. Of the three people she’d ridden with from Dragon Forge, he was the last one she would have expected to still be with her when she undertook what was probably the most dangerous mission of her life. This seemed like an insane amount of effort for Shay to go through in order to get his hands on some books. A light clicked on in her head.
He hadn’t come all this way for the books.
“By the bones,” she whispered. “You like me!”
He grinned. “Of course I like you.”
“I mean… you’re… interested in me. As a potential, um, mate.”
He looked away sheepishly and cleared his throat. “I haven’t… I mean… I’m really…,” his voice trailed off. He took a deep breath and looked back toward her. “Yes. I find you, as you say, interesting. On many levels. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
“How long…?”
Shay shrugged. “It… it wasn’t love at first sight. You are… you’re a little intimidating, to tell the truth. But there’s… there’s something… something about the way you stand. Your shoulders are always pulled back. You hold your chin up. It’s so… regal. I understand how a woman raised in a palace might find the interest of a slave… unwelcome.”
“No!” said Jandra. “I mean… I didn’t know. I hadn’t been… I’m just… I’ve never been taught how to look for the, uh, signals. The only man who ever showed interest was Pet, but I always found his attentions… creepy. I felt like a mouse under the watchful gaze of a hungry cat. He may have given me a false sense of what indicates a man’s interest. Since you weren’t constantly leering, I just didn’t suspect.”
“I didn’t… I don’t know the signals either,” said Shay. “Among slaves, we’re usually matched with whoever our masters choose. Courtship isn’t something I’ve had any experience with. When I look at you, I do feel… it’s something like hunger, but nothing like hunger. It’s… It’s—”
“Lizard hungry,” said the earth-dragon, tugging on Jandra’s sleeve.
“We should eat,” said Jandra, welcoming the change of subject. This wasn’t a conversation she felt ready to have. She turned her back to Shay. She flipped open her back pack and reached in for the hardtack inside. “We have a long way to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY:
SWIFT DECISIVE ACTION
JEREMIAH’S HANDS TREMBLED as he cut away the watery black rot from the soft, lumpy potato. He dropped the remaining white chunk in the large iron pot he crouched over. He felt sick to his stomach. No doubt the stench of the mound of partially rotten potatoes he sat next to was the blame. It didn’t help that his head was throbbing from his earlier “training,” or that his arms and legs were covered with knots and bruises. These same knots and bruises had kept him from sleeping much at all the last few nights despite his exhaustion. His bed was a pile of empty potato sacks, and he was still using the same filthy blanket he’d been wrapped in by Vulpine. He wiped his brow with a burlap rag. He was sweating, despite the chills that shook his hands.
When Jeremiah had arrived at Dragon Forge, he’d been hungry, weary, and freezing. He’d possessed a half-formed dream that he would be welcomed into town by some kindly woman who looked like his mother. She would give him soup, clean clothes, and put him to bed in a big, soft mattress with clean sheets.
Instead of a kindly woman, he’d been met at the gate by a pair of thuggish teenagers who’d taunted his thin limbs and the tear-tracks down his filthy face. He later learned their names were Presser and Burr. They’d finally allowed him in, and brought him before a frightening man named Ragnar, who looked like a wild beast with his mane of hair and leathery skin.
Ragnar had made the rules of Dragon Forge clear: If you wanted to eat, you had to work, and, what’s more, you had to fight.
“Can you do that, boy?” Ragnar had demanded.
“Y-yes sir,” he’d answered. He’d never fought before, but he had Vulpine’s knife still tucked into his belt. He imagined it might be satisfying to bury that knife into some dragon, though the exact details of how that might happen were fuzzy in his mind.
“Find a job for him,” Ragnar had told the guards. “He looks too scrawny to be of much use, but get him outfitted with a sword, at least. Can you use a sword, boy?”
“I-I’ve never tried,” said Jeremiah.
Presser chimed in, “There’s a sharp end and a dull end. Once you learn which end to grab, it’s not so hard.”
Jeremiah wasn’t sure if he was joking.
Burr added, “We’ll get him trained, sir. Make a regular soldier out of him.”
Ragnar grunted his approval, then dismissed the boys with a wave.
Presser and Burr had pushed Jeremiah before them out into the street. In the sunlight, the two guards' youthfulness was apparent—though both were taller than Jeremiah by a head, he doubted either was older than fifteen. They swaggered as they walked in their chainmail vests and iron helmets, sky-wall bows slung over their backs.
Once they reached the middle of the street, Burr said, “Presser, give me your sword. Leave it in the sheath.”
Presser had complied. It was obvious that Burr was the leader of the pair. Burr gave the sheathed sword to Jeremiah. The weapon was only a short sword, two feet long at most, but it was still heavy. Jeremiah looked up quizzically, not certain what he was supposed to do next.
Burr removed his own sheathed sword from his belt and swung it, slapping Jeremiah hard on the back of his right hand, knocking the sword from his grasp.
“Ow!” said Jeremiah. “What did you do that for?”
“You heard Ragnar. We’ve got to teach you to fight. The first thing to learn is don’t drop your sword. Pick it up.”
“You’ll hit me again!”
Burr swung his sword, attempting to slam it into Jeremiah’s thigh, but Jeremiah jumped out of the path of the blow. He had good refl
exes, and eluded Burr’s next two swings as well.
Unfortunately, with his attention focused on Burr, he hadn’t seen Presser slip behind him. Presser grabbed him, pulling him to his chest in a bear hug.
“Damn, this boy thinks he’s a jackrabbit,” said Burr. “You can’t be a soldier if you’re afraid of getting hit, Rabbit.”
To prove his point, Burr punched Jeremiah in the stomach. After that, the lesson had devolved into a rather thorough beating that drew a crowd. No one intervened. In the end, they’d tossed Jeremiah, half conscious, into the kitchen and said, “This is your new home. We’ll come around in a few days to train you some more. Next time, don’t drop the damn sword.”
LIFE IN THE kitchen wasn’t completely miserable. It was warm, at least, with the wood-fired ovens churning out endless trays of cornbread. On the stoves, pots of beans and potatoes simmered night and day. Thankfully, no one tried to talk to Jeremiah other than the occasional grunted command. No one cared who he was or where he’d come from. Jeremiah took comfort in this, since he was certain that, if he did talk about everything that had happened to him since the night the long-wyrm riders attacked Big Lick, he would cry. That could only result in further beatings from Presser and Burr.
Even without talking, he still found tears welling up in his eyes, which was odd. He wasn’t always the bravest boy in the world, but he wasn’t a crybaby. The only times he normally felt weepy was when he was getting sick. Maybe it was more than the stench of rotting vegetables that made him queasy, or the heat of the stoves that made him feel feverish. His sweat smelled funny. He was so tired. He wondered if anyone would notice if he crawled into the back room and took a nap.
Before he could act on the impulse, the door to the kitchen burst open. He raised his hand to shield his eyes from the bright winter sunlight outside. The chill wind cut right through him. Two shadows stood in the doorway.