"I've heard enough of your pathetic groveling," Roen said, trembling with rage now, twisting Gemini's hair. "How dare you shrug off your culpability? How dare you disavow your family? I was there that night. The night Domi and Cade escaped from your clutches. The night your firedrakes killed one of us." He shoved Gemini another inch forward, and Gemini screamed, nearly falling, his bound hands grasping at the rock. "The night you killed my father."
"I didn't kill any of you!" Gemini shouted. "I've only ever killed one man in my life, and he was my mother's soldier. A torturer. I killed him escaping the Temple's dungeon! I too was a prisoner. I too hate the Temple."
Roen snorted. "You are a paladin of that Temple."
"I was imprisoned! Ask Domi! She . . . she placed me in the dungeon. And my mother left me there to rot. I came here for your help fighting her." He blubbered. "Don't shove me down. I came here to help. To help Domi fight the Temple. To help all of you."
Roen trembled with grief and anger. This worm was trying to trick him. Roen knew it. It was like that in the world. People lied. Deceived. Betrayed. Stabbed one another in the back. He knew enough of the world to know of men's lies. His father had raised him in the forest to escape such cruelty, and as soon as they had emerged to help that world, the firedrakes had slain Julian. So why should Roen now pity a man of that world?
"You are a liar," Roen said. "I will get no information from you."
He shoved Gemini another inch.
Gemini screamed again. "Domi! Domi, please! Domi, tell him! Tell him I was imprisoned. Tell him I'm a good man. Please." He shook wildly. "Tell him I'm good . . ."
Roen's eyes narrowed.
By the stars.
Gemini was weeping like a child now. Could the man be speaking truth?
Roen grunted and tugged him back. "I told you, Domi won't help you now. Only I can grant you life or death. I want answers. How does the Cured Temple find newborns? How do the firedrakes know where to fly to?"
Gemini shook, glanced back toward the cliff, then gulped. Sweat dripped down his forehead. "A map. A magical map, yes. A huge map, large as ship, all with hills and valleys and towns carved of stone. It's old magic. The Spirit himself created the map, the priests say. Lights glow whenever a babe is born."
Roen grabbed Gemini's shoulders and dug his fingers, twisting the paladin's arms. "Where is this map? How many guard it? How many firedrakes lurk in the Temple?"
For a long time, Roen asked questions, and Gemini answered. The paladin wept, begged, shouted threats, called for Domi, and groveled, but he kept answering.
Dawn was rising when Roen had heard enough.
"Silence," he spat. Gemini was begging again to see Domi. "I'll let you live for now."
Roen shifted into a dragon, grabbed the bound paladin in his claws, and took flight. He glided to the beach below, tossed Gemini onto the sand, and shifted back into human form.
"Stay here," he said to Gemini and walked along the beach, heading toward the others.
Fidelity, Cade, and Domi stood together at the edge of the water. They turned toward Roen as he approached.
"He talked," Roen said.
"Did . . . did you hurt him?" Domi whispered.
Roen scrutinized the young woman. There was real pity in Domi's eyes. Perhaps Roen felt some pity within himself too.
He grunted. "He's hurt enough already. He claims to have been in the Temple dungeon, and he's got the scars to prove it, both on his body and his mind. Been tenderized already. Barely had to touch him before he started speaking."
Roen glanced back toward Gemini—the paladin still lay tied in the sand—then back toward his fellow Vir Requis. He spent a while conveying the information Gemini had given him, speaking of the map, of the positions of firedrakes in the city of Nova Vita, of the number of soldiers guarding the High Priestess, and of the Temple layout.
Fidelity sighed and tugged her braid in frustration. "The Cured Temple is too powerful. How can we defeat so many firedrakes, so many soldiers? Even should we slay the High Priestess, another ruler would rise in her stead. How can we crush the Cured Temple with force, only four dragons?"
Roen cleared his throat. "We might not have to crush the Temple. We might . . . be able to strike a deal."
The others all stared at him, eyes narrowing.
"A deal?" Fidelity whispered, eyes widening.
Roen grumbled. "I think you'd better hear it from the man himself. Come with me."
GEMINI
He lay on his back in the sand, head tilted sideways. He watched the waves in the dawn and thought of home.
As the morning sunlight fell upon the waves, Gemini tried to pretend that he lay back in his bed at home. He missed that bed, the bed where he had planted his seed into so many women, creating pureborn children; where he would lie drinking wine, then sleep until the afternoon; where he would hold Domi close, the first woman he had ever loved, stroking her hair, whispering his secrets to her.
Why do things have to change? Gemini thought. Why does the world have to shatter?
He had shed too many tears. No more would fill his eyes. He had screamed too much. No more cries rose in his throat. He just wanted to lie here, to watch the waves, to think of home. Perhaps the weredragons would leave him here. Perhaps they were already flying away, and he would linger here, bound in ropes, and die on the beach. Crab food. It wasn't a bad place to die.
It's beautiful here, he thought, watching beads of light on the waves. The sand is soft and I'm at peace.
He breathed deeply of the salty air and heard a shuffling sound. He looked aside to see small, pale feet walking toward him across the sand. He raised his gaze to see freckled legs, a burlap tunic, and . . .
"Domi." A lump filled his throat.
She stared at him with those large green eyes of hers, eyes he had been lost in so often. But she was different now. She was the real Domi here, not Pyre the firedrake, not the serving girl she had pretended to be. He had known, even in the Cured Temple, that she was a weredragon, but now he truly saw her as one—a child of fallen Requiem, a strong woman, free, not needing his protection. Now it was he who needed her. Now it was she who perhaps would protect him.
I'm the weak one now, he thought, and he hated the feeling. All he had ever wanted to do was protect her. And she had bound him in chains, and now in ropes.
The other weredragons walked behind Domi, still a few feet away. Domi stepped closer, leaving her companions behind, and sat down beside him.
Gemini returned his eyes to the sea.
"I know that you don't love me," he said softly. "I know that . . . that you lied when you pretended to. When you lay in my arms. When you kissed me. When we walked through the gardens, looking at flowers, and when we lay outside at night, gazing at the stars. When we told funny stories and laughed, or sang old songs, or just sat holding each other, watching the fireplace. I know it was an act, Domi. I know that now. I know that you wanted information—about the Cured Temple—so that you could fight us. But . . . it was real to me." He still could not bear to look at her. "I love you, Domi. I love you so much. I was so happy with you. Sometimes when we sat together in that big armchair back in my chambers, your legs slung across my lap, I'd look at you, and I'd think: I'm so happy, and I don't know what I did to deserve such a blessing, such a wonderful woman to love me." A lump filled Gemini's throat. "I was happier than I had ever been with you. And I understand now. I understand what I did to deserve you. I am my mother's son. That's all I've ever been. To Beatrix, I was a stud to plant my seed into women. To Mercy, I was nothing but a dolt. To you I was a tool, an enemy to seduce." He finally dared turn his head and look at Domi. "But still I love you. I can't stop."
She closed her eyes, and he saw a tear stream down her cheek. She lay down beside him in the sand, gazing into his eyes.
"Gemini," she whispered, "I know. I know." She touched his cheek. "My sweet Gemini. I do not deserve your love."
"You have it nonetheless."
Her finger
s intertwined with his. "Gemini . . . Roen said that you wanted to help us. That you would tell me how you can help."
Gemini raised his eyes and saw that Roen, Cade, and Fidelity were listening from several feet away. He returned his eyes to Domi.
"I want to build you a kingdom, Domi. A safe place. I . . . I realize we can't be together again." Gemini's voice shook, and he clasped her hand, that soft, slender hand he had held so often, had dreamed of holding for so long in the darkness. "I know we can never go back. Never be together again in the Temple, walk through the gardens, laugh together, whisper together. I know that we can never return to Sanctus, never return to that fort where we first ate a meal together. Do you remember that fort over the sea, Domi? That life is over. I know this." He reached out to touch her cheek. "But I still want to protect you. I still want to give you a new life. If that can't be a life with me, let me give you a life of your own, a land of your own. For you. For your kind. Let me give you Requiem."
Domi narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean? The Cured Temple rises around our column upon the ruins of our fallen palace. The Commonwealth spreads across our land." Anger filled her eyes. "How will you give me Requiem?"
"I cannot give you a new palace, nor can I dismantle the Temple around King's Column. I cannot return to you all the lands of my family." The tide was rising, and the water flowed around Gemini's feet, stinging the wounds around his ankles. "But I will give you a stretch of land. Maybe here along this coast. A place to build a village. For you. For your friends. A small kingdom, a new Requiem, a buffer between my empire and the Horde in the south. A place where you can be free, Domi. Free to fly as Pyre again. Free to live with the others. The kingdom you dreamed of. It's what you wanted. Let me give you this gift."
Feet stomped across the sand, and Roen approached and knelt above Gemini, fist raised, teeth bared.
"You're in no position to give us anything!" The woodsman spat on the sand. "Your own mother imprisoned you. You're no longer a paladin. You're nobody. Nobody but our prisoner, disgraced."
Gemini turned his head to gaze into Roen's eyes. He spoke calmly. "I'm nobody now. I'm only a prisoner now, bound in your ropes. But I'm still the son of High Priestess Beatrix. I'm still of holy blood. I've come here to form an alliance with Domi. I ask you to join me, Roen, you and the others." Even with his arms bound, Gemini managed to push himself up. He stood on the beach, staring at them one by one. "Fly with me back to the capital. Storm the Cured Temple with me, four dragons roaring fire. We will kill the High Priestess. And we will kill Mercy. And then . . . then the Temple will be mine, and a kingdom will be yours."
FIDELITY
"We can't trust him," Roen said. "A man who'd kill his own mother and sister? Such a man is fully corrupt, and he won't hesitate to stab us in the back once it suits him."
They stood along the boardwalk of Lynport, the southernmost border of the Commonwealth. To one side stretched a row of buildings: seaside temples, libraries of holy books, a silo of grain, an ancient windmill, many domed huts of clay, and several old buildings from the days of Requiem, their wooden timbers hundreds of years old. On the boardwalk's other side stretched the port. Two breakwaters embraced the sea, forming a cove. Piers stretched into the sunlit water, and a hundred ships docked here, mostly the small boats of fishermen. Farther back, near the edge of the cove, several great brigantines had set their anchors, massive warships of many sails. More brigantines sailed in the open sea, patrolling the coast, their sails painted with tillvine blossoms.
Fidelity stood with her companions, the sea breeze caressing her face, the afternoon sun warming her. With one lens of her spectacles broken, she found the world flatter, less alive, less real; only her right eye now saw clearly. Spectacles were a treasure, a lens worth more than gold. It would perhaps be many years before she could afford a new lens. Fidelity sighed, hugged herself, and stared out at the port. She watched a merchant ship, a great carrack with tall masks, navigate into the cove and set down its anchor, and she wondered what treasures it brought from foreign lands, if it had perhaps even been to the Horde itself at the continent of Terra.
Roen was talking some more, and Cade and Domi nodded and added their own words, but the conversation faded in Fidelity's ears, seeming as blurred as the world in her left eye.
The Horde lies beyond that sea . . . where my father fell.
Her one eye might now be blurred, but Fidelity could still clearly see that old vision; she had been seeing it for months now whenever she gazed into the distance, whenever she closed her eyes, whenever she thought of him. Her father, the brave gray dragon Korvin, facing Mercy. The paladin's lance driving into his neck. The gray dragon losing his magic, falling as a man into the sea, and Amity burning, and Fidelity wanting to fly to them, and Cade dragging her away, and tears and so much pain and fire, and—
"What do you think, Fidelity?"
She blinked, realizing that Roen had stepped closer to her. His eyes softened as he looked at her, and he reached out to hold her hands. Fidelity breathed deeply, feeling some of her anxiety ebb away like the retreating tide. In a world of death and chaos, Roen was her anchor, no less grounding than the anchors of the merchant ship before her.
She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head against his broad, warm chest, seeking shelter in his embrace. His beard tickled her forehead. The tall woodsman held her and kissed the top of her head.
"He offers us a kingdom," Fidelity whispered. "Yet he wants us, only four souls, to attack a temple full of an army."
She glanced aside, peering out from Roen's embrace. Gemini stood several feet away, talking to Domi in hushed tones. Both wore heavy burlap robes and cloaks, and both kept their heads lowered.
"Do you trust him?" Roen said.
Fidelity sighed, watching the paladin talk to her sister. A gull landed between the two, and Gemini tried to kick it away, incurring a curse and glare from Domi.
"No," Fidelity confessed. "I don't trust him. This could all be a ruse, a plan for Gemini to lure us back into a trap. He would profess to lead us on an assassination attempt, only for soldiers to leap onto us. Domi believes him. I don't even fully understand her relationship with him. I don't think she does either. She trusts him, but I don't." She raised her head and stared into Roen's eyes. "Yet if we cast Gemini aside, what other hope awaits us? There are only four Vir Requis left that we know of, that's all. We have no army to storm the Temple with, no other aid, no—"
"I'm telling you!" rose a voice along the boardwalk. "Two bloody weredragons in the south. They lead the bloody Horde, they do."
Fidelity frowned and spun toward the voice. Roen stared with her.
The merchant ship had docked along the boardwalk, and dockworkers were busy offloading its wares: wooden crates, burlap sacks, and bundles of canvas. A portly man in lavish, purple robes and a plumed hat stood on the boardwalk by the gangplank, speaking to a lanky priest.
"You been drinking Terran spirits again, Yaran?" said the priest, frowning.
"Aye, I have been," said the rotund merchant. "And you should drink your fill too before the fire reaches this town. Abina Kahan, old ruler of the Horde, is dead and burned. Weredragons killed him, and they're mustering, my friend. Mustering for war. The Red Queen rules there now, and she's thirsty for the blood of the Temple, they say."
Fidelity gasped. Leaving her companions, she rushed toward the merchant. Her knees shook, and her breath rattled in her lungs.
"Pardon me, sir," she said, struggling to keep her voice calm. "The . . . Red Queen?"
The merchant turned toward her, and his eyes softened. Fidelity supposed that she made rather a pitiful sight: a girl wrapped in a tattered burlap cloak, one lens missing from her spectacles, bruises and scrapes covering her skin. She probably looked like a dock rat, an urchin who lived on the boardwalk, scrounging for fallen morsels and whatever seaweed washed ashore.
"Get out of here, scum!" the tall priest said, glaring at her. His lip peeled back in disgus
t. "You're speaking to Ferin of Vale, a wealthy man. He has no time for dock rats."
"It's all right, Yaran!" said Ferin, raising a pudgy hand in a conciliatory gesture. "It's all right. The child has a right to good, juicy merchant gossip as much as any priest." He gave a jovial laugh, turned back toward Fidelity, and his eyes gleamed. "Aye, the Red Queen they call her. A weredragon woman. In the days, she's a tall proud warrior, a barbarian of the Horde. In the nights, she turns into a great red reptile, beating wings like sails and blowing fire."
Fidelity trembled.
Amity.
"You . . . you said there were two dragons?" she whispered.
"Were you eavesdropping?" demanded the gaunt priest.
"Yaran!" barked the merchant, turning toward his friend. "Let the girl ask! She's certainly a better audience than you. Go bless the crates and pull that stick out of your arse." As the priest stormed off, the merchant turned back toward Fidelity, and a grin split his face. "Oh, quite an audience! Very nice."
Fidelity glanced to her sides and saw that her companions had joined her. Roen stood to her left, while Domi, Cade, and even Gemini stood to her right. Others from along the boardwalk stepped up: fishermen and their wives, scrawny urchins, and a few boys busy chewing on apples and jangling dice in their hands.
As dockworkers continued to offload crates, the merchant raised his arms, voice booming out, the consummate performer with a captive audience. "Aye, they said the Red Queen slew a hundred griffins herself, tamed the great Behemoth, and wears the old abina's shrunken head around her neck as an amulet. She has a companion too, they say, a dark, hulking, brutish warrior." The merchant stamped his feet and leaned forward, his face twisting into a demonic mask. Children squealed and fled behind their mothers' skirts. "He's a weredragon too, you know. Aye. The brute can turn into a great gray beast with blue fire, and he follows the Red Queen wherever she flies, burning any who dares challenge her reign."
A gray dragon, Fidelity thought, trembling. Korvin. My father.
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