Vahly swore silently, her palms sweating. He would never swallow her little act.
The window bled moonlight over her shoulder.
Vahly winced, knowing what she had to do.
Getting to her feet, she faced the window. In one movement, she jumped and grabbed the window’s stone ledge. As she hauled herself up—smashing the stones out of the poor scroll she’d stolen and probably ruining everything—the footsteps closed in, coming around the corner. Maur would see her.
The leaded glass pane opened with a squeak. She latched it on the hook above, then on her belly, she edged out of the wide, rectangular window. She let her feet drop away from the opening, on the outside of the palace.
Night air rushed up the mountainside and tangled her hair as she flipped over carefully and slid lower, using her hands to hang from the outer ledge. Her two injured fingers were quite insistent on this caper not lasting long. She had to find a foothold or she would topple and plunge into the dark drop.
Turning to peek at the elevation, she heard the voices as if they were right above her. The amber glow of a lantern reflected off the window glass.
Had they noticed the window was open?
It was impossible to know exactly how far Vahly was above the forest that surrounded the mountain, but she had a pretty good guess. The library wasn’t on the highest level of the palace like hers and Amona’s chambers, but it was only two levels below. Still very high.
“Nice work here, Vahl,” she whispered to herself.
In a second, Lys would look out here to investigate. Draes would’ve noticed the night air, surely. And Maur would accidentally shove her off the edge. It would be the perfect solution for him. Vahly would be out of the way. He didn’t believe she would ever have the power to save them anyway. Maur stubbornly refused the idea that the sea folk might win the war.
Hands shaking, Vahly tried to still her brain.
The voices faded. The light from their lantern disappeared.
Vahly had no energy to celebrate that. Her fingers were giving out.
One by one.
First, the one she’d injured on the seaside cliffs. Then the two beside that one. Next, the one that she’d ripped getting into the chamber.
Panting with the effort not to fall, she moved the flexible soles of her boots right and left, up and down, desperate to find a foot hold.
At last, her toe found purchase on a tiny ledge. She put her weight on it.
“Please hold me, rock,” she whispered. “I’ll never step on you again if you keep my arse in the air for a minute or two longer.”
The rock did hold. She moved each hand to a new hold, ignoring the pain in her fingers. When she thought the dragons had moved far enough from the library, she dragged herself back up and through the window. Panting, she slumped against the wall.
Her gaze went immediately to the place where the floor had opened earlier.
She blew out a heavy breath.
It was still closed.
No one knew she had been in there.
After closing the glass over the window, she crept down the second tier stairs and slipped out of the library.
It was late, but Nix and the Call Breakers would still be up. Vahly touched her chest and felt the scroll under her vest. If anyone could help her translate the elven words at the bottom, it was Nix.
After a stop in the dark kitchens to grab a loaf of bread and a crock of cider, Vahly walked the labyrinth of passages to the palace entrance.
She handed the cider to the taller of the two entrance guards. “Big day, huh, Rip?” The taller of the two was infatuated with Amona and he knew that she knew. It was enough to keep the male on her side. “I thought maybe you had missed out on some of the festivities, this being your watch and all. Ty?” She handed the second guard the bread.
The guards accepted her offerings, nodding.
“I’m going for a short walk. All this attention is a little much for me, you know?”
“I can imagine,” Ty said.
With a wave, she made her way into the night and headed straight for the cider house.
Chapter Five
At the edges of the Red Meadow, a ridge rose steeply, rocky and covered in nettle one had to avoid or resign oneself to a sennight of fierce itching and burning. Clanless dragons had tunneled a veritable city inside the ridge.
Voices, the clanging of pots, and all the sounds of living life flowed from the numerous doorways. Lit by torches, stone stairways ran up and down the ridge like uneven seams in a poorly tailored cloak. Two dragons in their human-like form argued over a basket of bread on a high stair on the eastern side of the makeshift city. Another dragon hurried down the lowest outer staircase, a sword glinting from the creature’s belt.
Dragons tried to avoid using dragonfire on one another. If at all possible, they settled arguments with blades that hardly ever brought blood and only injured their pride.
Atop the high land formation, the windows of Nix’s three-storied cider house glowed—a welcome beacon in the night.
Boots crunching over sand and stone, past Nix’s chaotic apple orchard and its glorious smell, Vahly wondered what her friend would think of the bond Vahly now had with the Lapis.
Well, she didn’t exactly wonder, she thought as she leaned on a tree to take a breather. Nix would be far from elated about the bond. Vahly picked at the tree’s papery bark and sighed. Nix didn’t trust Amona or any of the Lapis clan. But Vahly wasn’t sure how Nix would actually react. Would she remain a close friend, or would she want to distance herself somewhat from Vahly now that Vahly would have to answer Amona’s Call when or if she was summoned to action?
Stomach twisting, Vahly hoped the Call Breakers wouldn’t ban her from the cider house. That would put her in a dung position. It wasn’t as if Vahly had a choice whether to bond with the Lapis. Amona was, for all intents and purposes, Vahly’s mother. She had saved her life. And continued to come to the rescue when Jades ran into the lackluster Earth Queen and decided to show exactly what they thought of Vahly.
Nearly there now, she plucked a pepper from a head-high plant and sniffed its pungent aroma before moving on, a habit she had picked up years ago.
Vahly wanted to be bonded with the Lapis. She was glad of it, proud and pleased at the unexpected development. But she still felt the same connection to the Call Breakers and her friend Nix. No matter how Amona claimed Vahly, she remained an outcast like the kynd that spent their free hours at the cider house.
Besides, their dropcider had a much better kick.
Inside the carved, wooden door, Nix’s establishment was packed to bursting with dragons.
Sitting at one of the many round gaming tables, Dramour adjusted his eye patch. The lean Jade-blooded dragon had seen his fair share of war, but the horrors hadn’t stolen his ability to see the joy in life. He noticed Vahly and winked.
“How are pickings?” he said over the din of coins and stones exchanging hands, raucous laughter, and the bang of mugs on wood.
Dramour wore his usual midnight blue cloak. Slits for his bright green wings boasted pewter buttons and blue embroidery in patterns of cracked dragon skulls and curling flames. His white shirt, shockingly clean compared to everyone else’s clothing, fit snugly over a frame built by years of training with the Jade battle dragons and more than one horrible feud with the Lapis that Vahly called family.
At some point, he’d realized how ridiculous it was that the creatures that should have banded together to fight the murderous sea folk were killing one another instead. He’d left the Jades and their feud, broken the Call, and come to work for Nix.
Thankfully, the Jades and the Lapis had agreed on peace for the time being. But everyone knew it wouldn’t last.
Vahly often wondered what Dramour would do if his former general marched in here and demanded his return.
Normally, the clan dragons shunned the clanless, but with the approaching threat of the rising ocean, would they continue to do so?<
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Vahly flipped the pepper she’d nicked into the air, catching it neatly before tossing it again. “Pickings are slim, my friend. Slim, indeed. Though I did snag some of that rare fern I told you about.”
At the same table, Ibai and Kemen joined Dramour’s game. The mixed Jade and Lapis-blooded dragons worked as healers for Nix’s small army of spies and smugglers.
Ibai rolled a pair of black dice, and Kemen finished his cider before throwing a wave at Vahly.
Ibai sniffed, his gaze darting around the room. Sometimes he reminded Vahly more of a bird than a dragon. But he didn’t have the brain of a sparrow. That dragon held worlds of knowledge in his shifty little head. Ibai had healed Vahly more than a few times after a fight.
“Did you find the fern on the sea cliffs?” Dramour rolled his own set of dice, then leaned an elbow on the table to watch his luck spill out. “Can’t get enough of danger, can you?”
Kemen gave Vahly an approving nod. Kemen and Vahly were well known for daring one another to steal from the Lapis treasury. Kemen had been caught attempting the foolish deed, forcing Vahly to make up a wild excuse for the dragon, claiming he’d been looking for her because of an emergency outside Nix’s establishment. The excuse worked only because the guard that had nabbed him was a complete idiot and allowed Kemen to escape with his life.
Vahly snorted at Dramour. “Don’t worry, mother. I have been climbing those cliffs since I was a babe.” Her hand darted in front of his nose, snatched his cider, and then downed the rest of the cold liquid.
“How dare you?” Dramour held a hand to his forehead like he was going to faint.
Vahly’s gaze flicked to Ibai. “You should thank me, Dramour. I just saved you from being too drunk to notice Ibai is about to turn that second set of dice to match his first throw.”
Dramour’s eye widened. “What?” He turned, then lurched forward, jostling the table and spilling Kemen’s drink. He snatched Ibai’s hand. “I thought you used that brain of yours to win.”
Ibai laughed nervously. “Sometimes only luck can grab a win, Fine Eye.”
Fine Eye was Dramour’s nickname. He’d been a handsome dragon in his youth, or so they claimed. Vahly was not attracted to dragons. The scales didn’t do it for her. She knew well that even if she was interested, she could never mate with one. Her body was not set up to handle dragon mating; the parts involved were all wrong and they tended to breed in full dragon form.
“And by luck you mean cheating,” Vahly said to Ibai. She patted Dramour on the back. “Let him go. Whatever coin he wins he’ll use to buy some fine salve that you’ll most likely need in the future if you keep annoying his rather large brother.” Vahly nodded respectfully at Kemen, who almost smiled in return—that was the most anyone got out of him.
Dramour released his hold, a wry grin pulling at the green scales around his mouth. “All right. But you’re rolling again, Ibai, and this time, I’m watching.”
Kemen threw a small chunk of jade into their piles of old human coins and glittering stones while Dramour shouted to Baww, the cider house’s chunky barkeep, for another cider.
Oil lamps hung from the rough hewn timbers of the ceiling, and smoke rings issued from the nostrils of a narrow-eyed male named Euskal and a bald female named Miren, who were obviously having a contest of sorts. Beyond them, five dragons—all newer Jade smugglers that Vahly couldn’t keep straight—threw bones on the chalked floor, amid a scattering of coins and precious stones. The largest of the bones landed in the chalked twelve-pointed star. A big win for that fellow. An even bigger loss for the others.
Vahly stepped quickly around them, knowing a fight was coming.
One of the losers slammed a fist into the winner, and chaos ensued, nostrils smoking and talons slashing.
A chair flew backward.
Vahly, snickering, ducked to keep from being hit. She headed for the bar where countless glass liquor bottles in every color of the rainbow perched precariously on a wall of wooden shelving.
Thankfully, Dramour and Kemen hurried to drag the new Call Breakers apart before the fight escalated into a bout of dragonfire. Nix would have murdered any survivors if they burned her cider house down over a game of bones.
One of the Jades pulled a knife.
Kemen kicked him in the gut, throwing off the other dragon’s balance. Then Kemen stole the knife in one quick movement.
Dramour held another male dragon by the scruff of his black tunic. Releasing his grip, he shoved the male into his fellows. “Leave off, fools. If you want a proper fight, you can find me outside in an hour.”
Narrow-eyed Euskal broke away from his smoke ring contest with Miren and shouted to a group hanging halfway out the side door. “Dare you to fly over the Lost Valley! I’ll give you five rubies and a jade piece if you go beyond the peak.”
“I’m not that stupid, Eus!” It was Aitor. He drank from a dented mug, then wiped a blue-scaled hand across the burn scars that marred his mouth.
The scars were shocking. It took a lot of dragonfire to scorch a dragon’s scales. Normally, it was only seen when dragons asked an artist to mark them with a symbol or design. He must have been tied down by an angry Jade and tortured. Vahly was selfishly glad she hadn’t been around for that one.
“You’ve been trying to get rid of me since that fouled up robbery on the Jade blacksmith’s guild,” Aitor added. Vahly remembered that heist. A fun night. “I won’t be downed that easy,” Aitor said.
Euskal worked his way through the crowd to the bar where he stuffed his mouth full of pickled scorchpeppers, a snack Vahly was sad to say she could not handle. She tried them once. That afternoon had not been pleasant.
“Coward!” Euskal shouted at Aitor around his mouthful.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Aitor laughed at his own wit. “Vahly, buy the poor dragon a cider. He shouldn’t be talking down to himself like that.”
“I’ll buy that drink,” Vahly called out, “but don’t come crying to me when he’s off his head and clips you with that jab of his.”
The cider house filled with laughs. Euskal was well known to be terrible at boxing, a pastime dragons loved. The sport had all the fun of fighting but didn’t use up their dragonfire magic. They could box for hours on end.
“You’re kind of an arsehole, Vahly.” Euskal grinned and shook his head.
“But you love me.” Vahly gave him a toothy smile.
Small platters of venison sat beside the goodies covering the stone bar top. Vahly took a bright yellow brazenberry, ready to enjoy the kick they gave to one’s energy levels. The sour-sweet fruit exploded on her tongue. Then, leaning over the bar, she grabbed the wooden mug she kept there. Flashing a chip of lapis between two fingers, she ordered a pint of cider from Baww, who’d returned from filling Dramour’s mug. Baww’s wings fluttered as he took payment for her drink and Euskal’s.
“I wouldn’t pay for that Blackwater-cursed fool’s drink.” Baww lifted his bronze pitcher and let a stream of cider flow into her mug. Little drops of the chilled drink fell onto Vahly’s forearms.
Euskal shoved his mug forward. “She didn’t ask your opinion about it, keep.”
“It’s not the best of times, my friend,” Vahly said. “No matter how many females he has stolen from you, we must stick together.”
The cider went down, nice and cold. Stones, she was glad the Breakers felt no need to open great pits of golden earthblood. They rejuvenated themselves and their dragonfire magic by lounging near a crack in the ground where the Fire Marshes began—a far better system than the Lapis’s smoking pits of painful heat at the palace. Far better to the last human anyway.
Baww secured Vahly’s lapis lazuli chip inside the jewel box sitting beside a set of shelves. Crockery and glass jars of fermented eggplants crowded the space. “I know we’re all nigh on doomed, but is there something else wrong?” he asked.
Vahly had to keep the new developments quiet for now. A full-scale alarm wouldn’t help things. N
ot yet. “It’s nothing Nix can’t fix.”
“And here she is now.” Baww grinned, looking over Vahly’s head.
There was a shout of greeting, and Nix sauntered down the wide, stone steps from the second floor.
The room exploded into toasts to the cider house’s owner and operator.
Nix’s ample hips and bosom, the complete opposite to Vahly’s lean build, had most of the males drooling as she dramatically entered the common room where she pretty much ruled as Queen. A red and gold brocade pouch fixed to her belt shifted as she walked. Vahly knew it held precious stones for bribing members of the Lapis and Jade clans. Nix never let laws get in the way of collecting secrets for this or that lord or lady.
“To Nix!” Dramour called out. His lean face drew up into a lopsided grin, his river-green scales shining. “The only matriarch we’d ever answer to!”
Nix’s laugh bubbled out of her throat as she slid gracefully to the bar top to take up her bookkeeping ledger. She wore a gold ring on every finger. “If I were your Matriarch, you’d all be hiding in Jade and Lapis treasure rooms waiting on my Call to clean those lofty lizards out.”
Laughter shook the stacked rock walls and mortar plumed from the larger cracks around the windows.
Body swaying, Nix winked at the crowd and they cheered for her again. “I’m sorry they’re being so ridiculous,” she said to Vahly while writing five quick tallies inside her ledger. Her long, white writing quill bobbed near her apple-shaped cheeks.
“They’re always like this for you, and you know it,” Vahly said. Nix deserved the adoration. She’d given these kynd a place to feel welcome no matter what. “You make this house a home. Plus, there’s the cider.” She held up her mug and Baww refilled it.
“Don’t let Amona hear you talk like that, calling this place a home. She might decide you have too much rebel in you.”
“No leader! No leash!” Ibai and Kemen shouted from the other side of the room.
The rest of the crew took up the chant.
“Speaking of Amona,” Vahly said, leaning over to whisper into Nix’s ear. “We need to talk. Can we go to your rooms?”
Fate of Dragons Page 6