Dragon's Fire

by Gwynn White

  “Indeed it is.” Her father looked at Axel. “I’m in.”

  “I’ve wanted nothing more for the last two decades,” Chad said.

  “The stars weep as they look down upon my land,” Jerawin said. “I want nothing better than to drive the invaders out. That happens by taking the palace in Cian.”

  Stefan ran a hand over his face. “I will do what you need me to do, although my lust for war has long been sated.”

  Axel grimaced at his friend. “Stef, I get that. But this time, you’ll be on the winning side.”

  “Why do you think I’m doing it, Ax?” Stefan said dryly. He and Axel exchanged a smile full of brotherhood and understanding.

  “So, the Burning.” Axel turned to Jerawin. “I’ll bet my life that Felix plans to send operatives into Oldfort to plant cameras to film the Burning. Keep your men on alert for his spies, but don’t stop them. I will also send Magridal and one of her teams to put up some of our own cameras. I want our monarchs to have front row seats when Lukan burns the town.”

  Chad cleared his throat. “Am I the only one who has noticed the flaw in that plan?”

  Axel gave his old friend a withering look. “Clearly, we have to come up with something to keep Lukan entertained during the gassing.”

  Chad smiled. “Glad to see you are still on your toes, Axel.”

  Jerawin rubbed one of the moons tattooed on his cheek. “Do we issue gas masks to my people and send them into the streets to dance for him?” From his expression, he found the whole idea of entertaining Lukan distasteful.

  “Risky,” Stefan said. “Felix said that Chad’s original gas had been”—he made air quotes—‘“refined.’ I don’t think we want to risk humans dancing under that shower.”

  Chad gave a wry smile. “I really started something with my gas.”

  “You did what you had to do.” Axel plopped down onto his chair and tapped the table. “Suggestions, anyone?”

  No one spoke.

  Finally, Lynx stirred. “What if we fake it?”

  Axel’s head cocked. “Explain.”

  “Felix uses Dreaded to frighten people. We all know he programs them and then plays them later. Can we do something similar?”

  Axel and Stefan exchanged questioning looks.

  “What do you think, Stef?”

  “It would work if we could choreograph convincing death scenes, which we play back for his cameras,” Stefan replied cautiously. “Axel, you could trigger the show from Jerawin’s burrow. When Lukan arrives in the morning to look for your corpses, he’ll find a ghost town.”

  Axel spun to Jerawin. “Are your gods going to complain? Rain meteorites down on us or something equally a horrible if we skip the festival?”

  “I think they will accept that Lukan is doing enough in the raining department. That said, my people and I will double our worship, just to be on the safe side.”

  “The Winds will help, too,” her father added. “As, I’m sure, will Chad’s spirits.”

  “With that pantheon, we can’t go wrong.” The excitement bouncing off Axel belied his dry voice. “Jerawin, we have to know where Felix’s people plant their eyes. And then we need a few practice runs of the festival, down to the last detail. When it’s right, we record it.”

  “I’ll get my troops and my theater group working on it.”

  “None of this solves the problems of the monarchs,” Stefan said. “As terrified as they are of Axel, none of them will be happy if he springs this on them. I imagine Liatl in particular will use it as an excuse for war.”

  Axel shrugged. “Liatl doesn’t need an excuse. He’s coming for us, Dragon’s Fire or not. I think having him here will do more to dissuade him than leaving him out would. And as for the rest of them . . . they’re going to be coping with a lot of things they don’t like. Crowded sleeping facilities, for one. Everyone in this town will be below ground. If any of the buggers object, I’ll march them at gunpoint onto the streets. I’m sure Lukan’s gas will be delighted to hear their complaints.”

  Lynx waited for the ripple of nervous laughter to settle. “We all know you don’t mean that. But Stefan is right. Have a speech prepared.”

  “Have you ever known me to be lost for words?”

  Jerawin’s fingers brushed Lynx’s hand. “Don’t answer.”

  She grinned. “I won’t. As you said, his head is big enough.” As crazy as their plan was, she believed they could pull it off. Only one doubt lingered. She waved at the room. “Lukan will attack this place, looking for us.”

  “He’ll have to find us first.” Jerawin puffed with obvious pride. “My burrow is hidden by the stars. I believe they will protect us.”

  Lynx’s eyes widened. She turned to Axel. “So that’s what you meant when you said one has to go through the temple to get to the palace.”

  He nodded, looking as chuffed as Jerawin. Then a serious mien settled on him. “But just in case your gods are off having their own party on the solstice, we don’t want Lukan tearing the place apart looking for secret bunkers. I think we need a diversion.”

  “Lukan will never destroy something so amazing,” Lynx said with certainty.

  “I’m not risking it. Lukan needs to believe that Jerawin and his people got a warning and escaped into the mountains. Only once the moron leaves Oldfort can everyone come back to the surface. The monarchs can then go home, but the bolt hole to the burrow will have to remain open until I can guarantee the skies above the town.”

  Jerawin picked up Axel’s hand with the severed finger. “Why do I think you are asking me for a sacrifice of men?”

  “Because the gods help those who help themselves. You know it’s the only way to protect your temple, your burrow, your people, and your visiting monarchs.”

  A deep sigh from Jerawin, and then he gestured to Chad. “Now I know how you felt so many years ago. How did you choose your sacrificial army?”

  An expression of profound sorrow furrowed Chad’s face. “We held a lottery. A red ice crystal won you death. We still honor the spirits of those who fell for us.”

  “Hmm . . . perhaps I will call for volunteers. I can then choose a few I believe best suited to enduring Lukan’s torture to meet the butcher when he arrives.” Jerawin’s voice dropped. “Under interrogation, they will say that the rest of us escaped into the mountains.”

  “I hate to be ghoulish,” Lynx asked. “But if we hide everyone, why would the monarchs believe that the poison worked?”

  Chad puckered his face. “A dog, perhaps, tied to a stake?”

  “That would not work.” Everyone looked at Stefan. “Felix said animals are impervious to the poison.”

  The group fell silent.

  Lynx gnawed her lip, trying to dream up a solution that wasn’t utterly repugnant. But without putting a human out to die, there seemed no obvious answer. Tragically, if Lukan was to be thwarted, then a life had to be sacrificed. But then, hadn’t so many lives already been wasted in this war? Wouldn’t thousands more be squandered if they didn’t pull the monarchs together to build an army to defeat Lukan and his Dragon, once and for all?

  Jerawin’s voice interrupted her internal argument. He rubbed a hand across his face. “I see no alternative but to empty my prison cells for the occasion. Those condemned to death will meet their death in Lukan’s Dragon’s Fire. They will finally do some good by being our witnesses.”

  A heavy mood settled, but no one objected. It seemed they had all argued themselves into the same corner that she and Jerawin had.

  The sound of belly laughter made her look up. Chad’s tall frame quaked with mirth.

  “Care to share the joke?” Jerawin asked, looking aggrieved.

  “The spirits have suggested a novel idea to me to ease the pain of this terrible situation.” Chad tossed a hank of ginger hair over his shoulder. “How about I get my people to create us four effigies to leave on the town square for Lukan?” He patted his chest and then gestured at Lynx, Axel, and Jerawin. “We usually hono
r our dead with ice-crystal statues, but I think, this time, scarecrows would suffice.”

  Lynx’s mouth dropped. She glanced around to assess the others’ reaction to this macabre plan.

  Axel stared at Chad as if he’d grown two heads. Jerawin groaned openly. Her father patted his cheek with a scared finger. Even Stefan seemed stunned.

  “Come, my friends,” Chad cajoled. “I know the pain of sacrificing people—good people—to con the Dragon. Seventeen years ago, when we were trying to fool Lukan into believing he would win the mines, I would have given my spirit if someone had offered some levity . . . some mirth in that hellish time.” In turn, he fixed each of them with a sharp green eye. “Humor is what gets us through crisis. You all know that. At least let us laugh at Lukan’s expense when he finds our offering.”

  Lynx allowed herself a grin. “Put like that . . . I love the idea. I’ll even sacrifice a braid and some feathers for mine.” She took Axel’s hand. “And you can have a red ice crystal instead of your gorgeous ruby.”

  Axel nudged the fruit platter. “And give Lukan some ice crystal? Thanks, but I’ll settle for a cranberry.”

  Jerawin rubbed his face. “Allow me to send my personal tattoo artist. I would hate my face to look anything but perfect.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “The gods will forgive much, but a bad tattoo job is one sacrilege I would hope they’d avenge with both fire and brimstone.”

  Chad grinned. “Send her along. I’ll get our youth working on the finest effigies ever made.”

  “And I will send a matching braid to go with Lynx’s,” her father added.

  Lynx’s heart leaped into her throat; Lukan would see her father’s effigy and know he was involved. “Father, that’s too risky. It is one thing for the kings to know, but another to taunt Lukan. At least wait until we have Talon and our army is ready to march.”

  “And continue to cower?” Her father frowned. “How can I do that?”

  Lynx looked to Axel. “Persuade him, please.”

  Axel looked first at her and then at her father. “Thorn, you know the risks?”

  “Of course I do, but . . .” A speculative glint in his eye. “Lynx, I’ll make you a trade. You accept that the Light-Bearer’s name is Nicholas, and I will forbear until he is found and our army marches.”

  Anger ignited in Lynx. He may have been her king, but this was cruel. How could she betray her son’s identity? Until Talon saw himself as Nicholas the Light-Bearer, what right had she to go against his wishes?

  “But if you hadn’t called him Talon, would he ever have rejected his name?”

  Lynx recognized the voice: Dmitri. So the seer was listening in on this meeting? It made sense. He had a point about Talon’s name, even though she still railed against his logic.

  She skewered her father with her fiercest look. “That’s blackmail.”

  “It is what you did to me regarding a certain boy and his egg raid. Even the stakes are the same: the safety of the Norin tribe versus the desires of one person. Do we have a deal or not, my Lynxie?”

  Annoyingly, he had a point, too. “When you put it like that. But I still don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t like breaking an age-old law to benefit my son, but I did it and look how well Clay turned out.” His voice softened. “My Lynxie, in time, you will see that this is right, too.”

  Lynx took a sip of her tea and smiled wryly at Axel. “I’m wondering if this was such a good surprise after all.”

  He planted a kiss on her cheek, sending a shiver of want through her.

  She smiled at her father while speaking to Chad. “Make four effigies. No braid of my father’s will be coming.”

  Grinning from ear to ear, Axel added, “Chad, rope Meka in to help when he arrives. It will be a good way of broaching the subject of possible death with him.”

  Chapter 42

  Meka skulked in the shadows at the end of the stable block. Grigor and his new friends were preparing for a hunt, and he was torn between joining them for the first time since that terrible dinner and slipping back into the forest. He blew out a frustrated breath, sending a billow of steam from his mouth. Not wanting to be seen yet, he pressed his face against his gentle gray gelding’s belly.

  As much as he loved the freedom of the forest, loneliness had driven him here today. But after watching the crowd, he wasn’t sure that months of winter solitude were enough to prepare him for the teens Lukan and Kestrel had picked out for him.

  Like Grigor, they were all perfectly turned out in extravagant, fur-trimmed silk and velvet. Dressed in a sensible wool-and-fur coat, trousers, and fur-lined leather boots, he would probably look like a low-born next to them. They were also all beautiful in a superficial way. He wondered if the ugly high-born babies were drowned at birth. Somehow it wouldn’t have surprised him.

  Exploring the forest alone had given him plenty of time to think. Tao’s comments about the controlling Avanov dynasty occupied a lot of those thoughts. Why were the elite the only people permitted an education? He may not have been interested in reading, but that didn’t mean that others wouldn’t be, if given a chance. Why weren’t they given that opportunity?

  Tao had mentioned something about ice crystals. The implication was that they were bad. He pondered a great deal on why that would be, but with no clue on what ice crystals were, those mental excursions always left him frustrated.

  Understanding confinement better than most, Meka had also thought a great deal about the freedom to travel—or the lack of it in the empire. Why was Lukan so scared of letting people go where they wanted to? Why had he kept him and Grigor prisoner for so long? And, if what his father had said was true, why had Lukan controlled Tao, Nicholas, and Lynx? And what had happened to change his and Grigor’s imprisonment almost overnight?

  But the most troubling question of all was why Lukan had chosen Grigor to be his crown prince when he had a perfectly good son of his own to fill that role.

  The forest and its seemingly endless, frozen trout-filled streams had offered no answers. Perhaps he would get some answers at the first High Council meeting he and Grigor had been commanded to attend. It would coincide with their seventeenth birthday, less than a month away.

  If he could have asked Tao the answers to all these questions, he would have, but his father hadn’t been back. Sadly, Tao had a habit of disappearing for months at a time, so until he stepped back into Meka’s life, there seemed nothing he could do to track his father down.

  He shivered, nothing to do with the cold, knowing that wasn’t entirely accurate. Often in the forest, he sensed a presence watching him, but when he looked around, no one was there. Sometimes he thought—hoped—it was Tao. Once or twice he had considered calling Tao’s name but had been too embarrassed to try.

  One of the girls in the courtyard laughed at a boy swaggering around her.

  The sound set Meka’s teeth on edge.

  The temptation to slip away was overwhelming. But for once, the lonely silence of the forest sounded even less appealing than these horrible people. He pulled on his horse’s reins with a gloved hand, and they stepped out into view.

  Grigor was the first to see them. “Meka! Have six feet of snow finally defeated you?”

  His brother’s face spilt into a huge grin.

  Grigor pleaded daily for Meka to join him and the other teens in their activities. Just because Meka chose not to didn’t mean Lukan had divided them in any way that mattered: He and Grigor had never been closer. Through choice, they still shared a bedchamber in the turret. Often, before drifting off to sleep, they discussed Lukan’s inexplicable about-face. Grigor was no wiser than he was as to why Lukan had released them. But neither of them was stupid enough to trust their very scary uncle’s motive.

  Grigor left his horse in the hands of his groom and crunched across the slushy courtyard. He smacked Meka on the back. “Welcome to hunting.”

  Meka shifted self-consciously as twenty strangers turned to stare at him. He nodded at them
.

  They bowed at him.

  It was unnerving.

  So were the furtive glances exchanged amongst them. They thought him a complete enigma. That was when they were being polite. Freak was the actual word Grigor had used to describe their reaction to him.

  Meka shrugged. His first impression of them had not been positive, either. He thought as little of them as they thought of him.

  His only regret was Natalia. He looked at her now with more interest than was wise because it closed season on Natalia. She was Grigor’s. Done deal.

  Grigor moved over to stand between Meka and Natalia; Grigor must have seen his appreciative, almost wistful expression.

  Meka forced his focus back to Grigor. “Yeah, well, the streams are so frozen that even ice-fishing is a challenge.” He cracked a joke he knew his brother would understand. “It’s time to hang out with the living—instead of the gutted.”

  Grigor gave him a wan smile. “I suppose you’d like some introductions.”

  “I’ll figure it out as we go along. What are we hunting?”

  “Stag.”

  “Or whatever is stupid enough to flit too close to our crossbows.”

  Meka hadn’t a clue who had addressed him, but the comment irritated him. It summed up what he had felt about these people. He turned to find the speaker and looked into the face of Brute, the troublemaker from the dinner. His ferret-faced sidekick stood just behind him.

  “You have a name?” Meka asked.

  A hesitation, then Brute sneered, “Konstantin.” He jerked a thumb at his shadow. “Leo.” Another pause. “I suppose I should slot a ‘Your Highness’ in there somewhere.”

  Meka almost wished he had persevered with the ice-fishing. But refusing to be driven away again, he laughed. “Your words, not mine.”

  The boy flushed, and Meka guessed that had been the right answer. He turned his back to mount his horse. Still wobbly in the saddle, he loved his sure-footed gelding for more than just opening up the forest to him. The horse handled his clumsy attempts at riding with mild-mannered charm, even when Meka forgot to bring him apples and carrots. He took the reins and waited for Grigor to lead the hunt.