Dragon's Fire

by Gwynn White

  Grigor continued to eye him for another couple of heartbeats, and then he turned away. He spoke to his brother, “What you fishing with?”

  Meka held up the lure he was knotting to his line.

  “Okay. Me, too.” Grigor dug in his tackle bag.

  Tao couldn’t help himself; he burst into laughter. “Boys, this isn’t deep-sea fishing.” He sat next to them. “You’ll catch nothing with those chunks of metal.”

  “Then what do we use?” Meka demanded. “Worms?”

  “You could use worms, but where’s the sport in that? These are trout. You need to tickle them out with a fly.”

  “Don’t see too many flies around here. And just as well, too.” Grigor looked pointedly at Tao and then grinned at Meka. “One never knows what piece of turd they’ve been sitting on.”

  Meka grinned right back. “I got to say, though, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a big turd before.”

  Tao knew exactly was they were implying but ignored the provocation. “You don’t know what flies are? Yet you tell me you fish. Who taught you?”

  “We taught ourselves. And we do catch.” Meka was suddenly defensive.

  Tao almost regretted forcing Meka to admit just how lonely his life was.

  “I am sure you do very well with what you have.”

  “Are you saying you catch better fish than we do?” Meka demanded. “Unlikely, given the amount of practice we’ve had.”

  Tao considered pointing out that Meka was a true Avanov. He’d had no problem believing Tao’s fishing stories when Tao offered a means of escape from the cage. But now all that deference was gone.

  Saying that would raise too many questions Tao wasn’t ready to answer. “What’s the biggest fish you have ever caught, Meka?”

  “Three pounds,” Meka declared with pride.

  “My boy—Nicholas—caught his first three-pound fish when he was about five. It’s been a long time ago since I saw such a tiddler on either of our hooks.”

  Meka’s face lit up. He licked his lips and spoke hesitantly, “Low-born, I command you to show us where we can catch such big fish.”

  From his adventures through both boys’ minds, Tao understood the hesitation—the confusion—behind Meka’s words. Lukan may have told him and Grigor they were princes, but the titles meant nothing. Prisoners in the cage, the boys had never successfully commanded anyone Lukan had sent to watch them. Meka was grasping at straws here, and the boy knew it.

  Tao longed to take his son in his arms and to tell him help was at hand. But if he was to make any headway with Meka, the boy had to see Tao as the alpha of this pack. Without that, Meka would neither respect nor defer to him. Meka would learn nothing from meeting his father.

  “You can command me, Meka. Whether I obey, of course remains to be seen.”

  Grigor licked his lips and then tried his luck at persuading Tao. “What choice do you have, low-born? You know who we are.”

  Again, Tao longed to clear Grigor’s doubt about the extent of the so-called powers that came with his grand title. But first Grigor needed to learn a lesson in manners—not even a crown prince had the right to call a fellow human being a turd.

  “I have all the choice in the world, Grigor. I do nothing I do not wish to do. But if you would like to ask me—politely—to help you to improve your fishing, then I’ll do it willingly. I’ll be at the gate to the cage at the same time tomorrow afternoon. An apology, a please, and a thank-you will get you your first lesson on tying flies.” He fixed Grigor with a steely eye. “And not the kind that sit on turds.” His gaze shifted to Meka. “The kind that catch fish”—he stretched his hands wide—“yea big.”

  Tao stalked to the nearest tree, a giant spruce. He stepped behind it and grabbed the air the way he had seen Dmitri bend the light. When the rainbow sparkled, he stepped back in the fourth dimension.

  He turned to watch his sons through the haze.

  Grigor’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. Meka swore, a colorful collection of words he could only have picked up around the saltiest guardsmen.

  Grigor’s face clouded, and he clenched his fists. “This is your fault. If you hadn’t been so hell-bent on fishing here, we wouldn’t be in this mess now. We could have been in the cage, talking to Tao.”

  Meka’s eyes fluttered closed. When he opened them, the boy’s intense focus reminded Tao of a young wolf stalking. Lightning fast, Meka’s fist came up.

  It caught Grigor in the solar plexus. All the air oomphed out of him, and he buckled onto the grass.

  Leaving his brother writhing, Meka scooped up his gear and marched up the riverbank toward the palace.

  “Like I said, they grow up as unchecked as weeds.” Dmitri stood behind Tao.

  He turned to face the seer, knowing he should reply, but words failed him.

  Dmitri gestured at the boys with his chin. “What do you intend doing about them?”

  “Apart from putting them over my knee and giving them a good spanking for their rudeness?” Even as Tao voiced his frustration, he knew his words were counterintuitive; hitting had been his father’s way of dealing with children. It had not been successful.

  Dmitri chuckled. “Aye. Apart from that.”

  Tao sighed. “I guess I will bend some light for them.”

  As he moved to step back into the mortal world, Dmitri grabbed his shoulder. “Before you go. I suppose you have considered the cameras watching them?”

  Tao’s jaw dropped. He snapped it closed and slapped his forehead with his palm. “Dragon’s ass! The cage is monitored, isn’t it?”

  “Aye,” Dmitri said with a dryness that would snap green timber. “I can’t be thinking for you all the time.”

  Tao paced. “I know. I get that. Damn. What am I supposed to do about cameras? And what about today?” Paralyzing fear gripped him for his sons. He spun to a stop. “Lukan will go mad if he knows they have gone! He could hurt them.”

  Hand on his chest where the axe had fallen, Tao stared at Dmitri.

  “Be still. All is well.” Dmitri patted his arm. “When they frustrate you so much you want to clonk their heads together, remember how you felt when you thought Lukan would harm them.”

  Tao realized he had been played. “Object lesson,” he grunted. “I’ll put that in my teaching repertoire.”

  Dmitri cracked a small smile. It faded, and his face settled into its usually stern mien. “You need to think like an Avanov again if you are to protect your boys—while inflicting object lessons on them.”

  Tao nodded. “I can do that. I think.” He started pacing again and then halted. “How do I stop cameras recording them doing what Lukan doesn’t want?”

  “You tell me.”

  Tao stared at Dmitri blankly. But it was obvious the seer wasn’t going to reply. In fact, Dmitri turned pointedly to Meka. The boy skulked toward the drawbridge.

  Tao stuttered, “The light? Something to do with that?”

  “Intention and illusion. You reside in a higher dimension now, where matter is more refined.” Dmitri waved his shining arm around the patch of forest they stood in.

  Everything in the fourth dimension looked more vital and brilliant than anything Tao had ever seen before—even if it appeared dead in the mortal world.

  “Learn to manipulate the cruder matter in the mortal world with your intention. That way you can create any illusion you want. Two boys fishing at a lake for the cameras to catch, if that is what is required.”

  How? Tao gaped, bemused.

  “It’s nothing more than simple physics.”

  Tao had never been particularly interested in the science and physics books in the archive when he had been alive. Would that present a problem in his death? With more important things to worry about, he shrugged the thought away. “Is that what the cameras saw while we were gone?”

  “Aye. Yet another boring afternoon on the lake. Even the most alert guardsman will struggle to keep interested in such a scene—one that has p
layed out thousands of times at this very lake with those very boys over the last decade.”

  Tao nodded, not entirely sure he understood about matter, illusion, and intent, but he would practice before he met his sons again. The thought of them spending any more time in that cage was untenable.

  Just as untenable as Nicholas in Lukan’s hands.

  Tao knew he should go and help his sons, but he had to know what was happening to his cub. “I know my boys are my priority, but is Nicholas—”

  “I told you,” Dmitri snapped. “He is no longer your problem.” A deep sigh, more like a moan. “Be thankful you only have Grigor and Meka to deal with. Compared to how the Light-Bearer welcomes me, they are as eager to embrace you as fledglings greeting a father with a beak full of worms.”

  “He hasn’t called for you?” Tao remembered the deal Dmitri had made with Nicholas.

  “He is unconscious in his cell.”

  Tao flinched. He opened his mouth to plead with Dmitri to allow him to tend to Nicholas.

  Dmitri cut him off. “It will crush you to see your cub as he now is. Harsh as it may be, I cannot risk that when I need you here.” He pointed to Grigor and Meka.

  The twins had reached the bridge.

  Although obviously trying to lose themselves in a mounted hunting party headed to the forest, they stuck out like only two boys scuttling under whinnying horses’ bellies could.

  A guardsman shouted out, “Hey! You boys! What are you—” His voice dropped away, and he bowed low.

  Tao guessed his sons had been recognized.

  He swore.

  Then, praying to the Winds that illusion and intent would help him wipe clean a guardsman and half a dozen high-borns’ minds, he hurried over to join them.

  Chapter 16

  The palace clock chimed four, each gong sending a spurt of acid into Lukan’s belly. He should have been in his bunker, with Lynx and his chosen few, but instead he headed to the bedchamber he still shared with Kestrel.

  If that failure wasn’t bad enough, Nicholas was still to awaken. Every moment his son languished seemed to bring Lukan ever closer to the executioner’s block. Axel, the one who carried the fatal axe, was halfway across the Izmodo Sea in that fast airship of his.

  Even Felix had managed to get himself maimed today.

  Lukan didn’t even want to consider the loss of his brother. The empty gnawing at Tao’s death would probably never abate.

  Despite his life hanging in the balance, he now had to face Kestrel. His face contorted with loathing. With her whining voice and faded beauty, she most certainly had not been spared a bed in his bunker.

  None of that mattered now.

  The Sixteen—Fifteen, because Morass didn’t count—expected him to keep the acknowledged mother of his heirs as his official mistress. That was on a good day. Most of the time they whispered amongst themselves that he should marry her. When the mutters grew too annoying, he had Morass eliminate one of the complainers’ closest family members. That always stilled the clamor.

  The Sixteen may have bought the story that Grigor and Meka were his sons, but Lukan didn’t believe it. Not for a second. Never in their sixteen years had he looked at them and felt the pull he had with Nicholas. His every instinct told him Nicholas was his flesh and blood. That sense had never kicked in with Kestrel’s—and Tao’s—sons.

  He paused at the apartment door and took a deep breath.

  Two guardsmen, who should now also have been writhing in agony as the Dragon’s Fire hit them, stood alert, waiting for his command to fling open the door.

  He nodded.

  As usual, Kestrel held a glass of chenna in her hand.

  Although well aware of the time, Lukan made a point of looking at his watch. “Hitting the chenna already? It’s only four o’clock.”

  He sank into a chair.

  Kestrel placed her glass on the table and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. The reek of alcohol soured her breath. As usual, she brought her lips to rest against the side of his neck. Her kiss jerked to a halt, her lips hovering above the spot Lynx’s bastard son had bit him.

  “What’s this?” she demanded. “Which one of your other lovers dared to leave her mark on you?”

  He shrugged, ignoring her.

  She stumbled around the chair to face him. Seeing the scratch marks from Nicholas’s claws on his face, she laughed.

  It was bitter.

  “Well, whoever she was, she got you good.”

  “Shut up, Kestrel. It wasn’t one of my other lovers. It was Nicholas.”

  Kestrel’s face, faintly red from years of sneaking chenna in the middle of the day, paled.

  “Lynx’s son?” She flopped down onto the chair opposite him. “What happened?”

  Her familiar jealousy of her sister infuriated him. “I removed my son from the care of my wife and my brother. That’s what happened.”

  Kestrel flinched, as she always did when he spoke of Lynx being his wife. Unbelievably, Kestrel still lived for the day when he would annul his marriage to her sister and marry her.

  That blind devotion, regardless of how badly he treated her, was one of the reasons he despised her so much. And his contempt was the main reason she drank—he knew that, too—and it irritated him even more.

  But even he had to admit her love had bought him years of loyalty. Never once, no matter how drunk, had Kestrel betrayed his confidence about Lynx, Tao, and Nicholas.

  He would have commanded Morass to kill her if she had. And damn the Sixteen.

  “Where’s he now?” Kestrel whispered.

  Not wanting her to suspect how terrified he was, he ran a finger casually up and down his scar. “He’s in a coma.”

  Her breath hissed; she knew exactly what would happen if Nicholas died. “And now?”

  “He’s alive. I saw him move his hand and twitch his leg on my informa.”

  “On your informa? Where is he?”

  Lukan thumped the armrest with his fist. “Do you always have to repeat everything I say? You know how much it annoys me.”

  Her bottom lip trembled. She stood. “Let me pour you a drink, and you can tell me what happened.” She walked to the chenna decanter and poured them each a tall glass of the fiery red alcohol. She had drunk most of hers before she handed him his glass. “H-how did Tao and Lynx react to you taking Nicholas?”

  “Tao is dead.” He studied her face.

  It was devoid of emotion.

  That she felt nothing for his brother made him loathe her even more.

  She turned to the chenna decanter. “And Lynx?”

  He laughed at her expressive back. “Stop wishing your sister ill. It is unbecoming. And whether Lynx is dead or alive, I will never marry you.”

  She slumped into herself and then, with a rare spark of defiance, faced him. The effect was lost, however, by the tears swimming in her eyes. “I—I have given you everything, Lukan. My love, my body, my life. I even gave up my sons, my own children, for you.”

  The injustice of that accusation incensed him.

  Lukan tossed his chenna glass at the wall. It shattered next to Kestrel, splashing alcohol on the hideous black dress she always chose to wear. He had once found them attractive. Not anymore. Now they made her look like a ghost—a ghost of the sister she would never be.

  “By the Dragon! Not that old one again. You were only too happy to dump your brats with the wet-nurse. When last did you even visit them? Probably not even once this year. There are lizards living under rocks with more maternal instinct than you will ever have.”

  When Grigor and Meka were about a year old, Mother Saskia had declared them strong enough to leave the convent. Kestrel had brought the babies into their bedchamber so she could give them their nightly feeds. That first night, the boys had screamed in turn until the small hours of the morning. The sound, coupled with Kestrel’s tears as she struggled to cope, had incited his rage. The temptation to beat them—and her—as his father had once beaten him was ove
rwhelming. But Lukan would never drop to that level.

  Instead he had issued Kestrel with an ultimatum: him or her babies.

  She immediately handed her sons to a nanny.

  The girl had been the first in a series of women who took care of Grigor and Meka until they were old enough to start in the schoolroom.

  The first lesson his five-year-old heirs were taught was to swim.

  That was when Lukan had fenced in the ornamental lake for them. They were Tao’s sons, after all, and that counted for something.

  He even gave them swings, a twenty-foot-high Ferris wheel, a carousel with moving dragons for them to ride, and a huge climbing frame in the shape of the palace for them to play on.

  When they turned six, he had gifted them fishing rods and tackle.

  Nicholas seemed to love fishing, why wouldn’t his cousins?

  The boys had grasped the rods with delight. They now lived to fish.

  And to stop people—the living at least—from attempting to corrupt them with the Dmitri Curse or talk of Tao and Lynx, Morass had killed anyone who dared speak to them.

  It only took a few executions, and the boys were outcasts. In the eyes of the palace occupants, anyone who approached them was cursed—as cursed as Lukan had been at that age.

  Hard as that might have been for Tao’s boys, it was for the best.

  It had kept them safe.

  As long as they fished in the ornamental lake, with no knowledge of Dmitri, Nicholas, or their real father to stir their emotions, he had never needed to imprison them the way he had his own son. Or have Morass kill them, the way Tao had died.

  Not once in all this time had Kestrel complained.

  He may not have been their father, but he considered himself a good uncle. Tao would have been pleased, had he known about it before he died.

  Which, of course, he hadn’t.

  As misguided as Lynx was, she was an excellent mother. Yet another comparison where Kestrel fell short.