Blood of Dragons

by Jack Campbell

  The call to President of State Jane was short and frustrating. “I’ll do what I can, Mari. But the lack of proof will make it hard to get immediate action ordered, and it sounds like we are already too late.”

  As Mari and Alain walked back toward the waiting Rocs and Mages Alera and Saburo, Alli and Calu accompanied them.

  Mari noticed Alli blinking away tears. “Is that for Kira or Jason?”

  “Both.”

  “I didn’t know you were that fond of Jason.”

  “We are,” Alli said. “The kid never had decent parents. He…he was talking to Gari once, and said that if Kira ever decided she wanted to marry him, he wondered if Calu and I would act as his mother and father at the ceremony. Can you believe that? Mari, we’ve got to find him, help him and Kira.”

  “I’m doing all I can, Alli.”

  “As am I,” Alain said.

  “We can’t ask better than that,” Calu said.

  “And the big guns you built for those new Confederation ships should ensure the Empire knows they had better return Kira,” Mari answered. “Yes, I’m scared for her and Jason, too. But if there is one thing I know, it is that Kira is not going to accept being a prisoner. She’s going to fight them.”

  * * *

  Expecting to be punished for her attempted escape, Kira was surprised when Lady Elegant showed up with dinner. The Imperial woman said nothing, sitting down the plate and glass, then leaving. The guards outside the door glared at Kira the entire time it was open, plainly hoping she would try something while they were prepared for her.

  She sat down to eat, not hungry because of the tension riding inside her, but knowing that she had to keep her strength up. The food was spicier than usual, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem for Kira, but on top of the stress of the day it was too much. After only a few bites she shoved the plate away.

  She took only one sip from the glass before realizing the wine in it wasn’t watered at all. Kira looked down at the liquid suspiciously. Why would the Imperials give her unwatered wine after the events earlier today?

  Shoving away the wine glass as well, Kira glared at the locked door, trying to think of a new plan. She tried to remember everything she had ever heard about Landfall. If she could get away as the ship entered the harbor, there should be a lot of places to hide in the old city. Even the Imperials might not be able to…

  Kira blinked, feeling dizzy.

  She shook her head, but the dizziness worsened. Standing up took an effort. Kira kept a firm grip on the chair as she stumbled to the bunk and fell onto it, rolling onto her back and staring upwards. Inexplicable tiredness warred with nausea inside her as her vision distorted more, rendering familiar objects hard to recognize.

  How much time passed as she lay on her bunk, trying to stop the world from swirling around her? Kira couldn’t tell as she fought the unnatural weariness that begged her to fall into sleep.

  They must have drugged her. As punishment for the escape attempt, or as part of a predetermined plan to start breaking her spirit before the ship even reached Imperial territory? As she fought to stay aware and awake, Kira realized that if she had eaten her full meal and drunk all of the wine she would certainly be unconscious by now.

  She heard the door to her room opening and closing, but could not muster the strength or the concentration to look toward it. A figure came into her frame of vision. Distorted and blurry though her eyesight was, Kira made out the face of Prince Maxim. What did he intend?

  That became obvious as Maxim leaned over, his hands reaching. Kira felt pressure on her chest. Maxim’s hands moved again, and she realized that he was pulling at her shirt.

  More than ten years of self-defense training kicked in without conscious thought, overcoming the effects of the drugs. Kira’s leg snapped up, driving her knee against the side of Maxim’s head as he bent over her from the side. He staggered backwards as Kira made an immense effort fueled by her rage, managing to roll to her side and up, lunging to plant a fist in the center of Maxim’s body.

  Maxim kept backpedaling as Kira stayed on her feet by sheer will, forcing her feet into motion toward him, hands poised for another strike.

  He reached the door, yanked it open and dodged out, pulling it shut behind him.

  Kira hit the door with her full body as it slammed shut. Unable to remain on her feet, she slid down to the deck, trying desperately to keep from passing out. “I’ll kill you if you come in here again!” she shouted through the door. “Do you hear me, Maxim?”

  Sitting on the deck, she slumped against the door as the room seemed to spin about her. The urge to surrender to sleep was almost overpowering. But she didn’t dare pass out, senseless, prey to whatever the Imperials might do.

  Kira fought one of her toughest battles that night, minute by minute, doing everything she could to stay awake. She had never known a night could be so long. But whenever the effort seemed too hard, she remembered Maxim pawing at her and enough anger came to fight off the drowsiness.

  * * *

  She knew when morning had arrived by the sounds of the ship. The feet on the deck above her and in the passageway outside of her room, the conversations she could hear only murmurs of, and the rattle of equipment in use.

  Kira sat on her bed, cross-legged. The effects of the drugs had worn off and her mind was as alert as that of someone who had stayed up all night could be. She thought she probably looked like someone who had been buried a week before and just recently dug up again. But that was all right. That matched her mood.

  The Imperials thought that mother might be Mara, the Dark One, and Kira her unnatural offspring?

  She’d give them the Dark One’s daughter.

  The lock clicked open, the door opened, and Lady Elegant came in with the breakfast tray as if nothing had happened the night before.

  “Get out of here and take your drugged food with you,” Kira told her, pitching her voice into a deep growl. “The same goes for you as what I told Maxim. Come in here again and I’ll kill you.”

  Elegant hesitated, then gave Kira a smug smile. “You’re going to be very hungry, and very, very thirsty, by the time we reach the Empire.”

  “You’re not listening,” Kira said, getting to her feet. “Maybe I should satisfy my thirst by drinking your blood.”

  She only took one step toward Lady Elegant before the woman fled the room so fast that she hit the opposite side of the passageway. Kira’s last glimpse before the door hastily closed again showed Lady Elegant and the breakfast tray tumbling to the deck.

  Kira walked over to the tiny sink, hefting the small pitcher of washing water next to it. Fortunately she hadn’t washed her hands, so the pitcher was full, but there wasn’t very much of it, and she didn’t dare try to ration it because the Imperials might remember it was a source of water for her.

  She went back to the bunk with the pitcher, drinking the water, and sat down again. There were running feet over her head on the main deck. Had Lady Elegant told others of Kira’s threat?

  Were the crewmembers and other Imperials aboard engaged in an anxious debate on whether or not Mara’s offspring would prey on women as well as Mara’s traditional quarry of young men? Were the young men anxiously fingering the talismans that many surreptitiously wore to protect them against Mara?

  The thought shouldn’t have been funny. Nothing should have been funny. But she laughed a little anyway. Because laughter was the only way to keep darkness at bay.

  She wished she could feel the thread to Jason.

  * * *

  Captain Hagen, commander of the police forces of Dorcastle, met Mari and Alain as they dismounted from their exhausted Rocs. “I have bad news, Mari. The decision was made to send out warships to shadow the Imperials, but our search line hasn’t spotted them. Either they are swinging very far north, or they got past Dorcastle before our ships went out.”

  Alain looked out to sea, trying not to let despair enter into him. “President Jane is here?”
>
  “Yes, Alain. And I have been told that President in Chief Julan is on the way to Dorcastle. A message has gone out for Bakre Confederation forces to mobilize, though it is being characterized as a drill so far, not preparations for actual war. If the Imperials are going so far as to attack the family of the daughter, and word of that gets out, as it will, our hands may be forced even if the government doesn’t want war. The people will demand it.”

  “I don’t want war either,” Mari said, looking around. Alain knew that she was remembering the last time war had come to Dorcastle. “But the Empire seems determined to force the hands of everyone.” Mari rubbed her mouth, looking north. “I need to talk to the ambassador for the Western Alliance, as well as the one representing the Free Cities. Can you get them here, Hagen?”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  Mari turned to Alain. “Should we fly to Landfall? Try to meet Maxim at the pier as he tries to sneak Kira onto Imperial soil?”

  He shook his head, fearing only darkness lay ahead for the world. “You know how badly certain persons in the Empire would like to have a clear opportunity to ensure you had a fatal accident. We would be putting you into serious danger, with no certainty that we could save Kira.”

  “Alain, there is nothing between those Imperial ships and the coast of the Empire.”

  “I know.”

  She heard the pain he kept hidden, and held him. They stood looking out to sea, together, yet thinking only of the one who was not with them.

  * * *

  Kira sat on her bunk. She had spent the last few days doing that or lying down, sleeping with her nerves still alert to wake her if the door opened, or meditating to slow her metabolism, conserving energy and minimizing the amount of fluids leaving her body. I knew a fella stranded on a rock in the sea who lasted almost a week without water, the first mate of The Son of Taris had reminisced. He was in awful shape when we picked him up, but he’d spent the time lying in the shade of the rock instead of running around in the sun. Knew another sailor who’d been in a lifeboat with some others, under the sun down south. Her companions started dying after a day.

  “Thirsty” wasn’t an adequate word for how Kira felt. Her throat was painfully dry. Her tongue felt too large in her mouth. She moved slowly when she had to, wanting to avoid expending strength. But so far her heart seemed to be fine, and she didn’t feel dizzy or disoriented. She felt certain that in an emergency she could still summon enough speed and strength to deal with any immediate threat.

  She hadn’t been disturbed for days, not even to empty the chamber pot. Since her need for that had diminished with dehydration, Kira hadn’t minded. The Imperials were obviously waiting for her to give in so they could safely enter the cabin. Kira had no doubt that any water given her would be drugged.

  The hardest part had been the first few hours, as she had struggled with the sense of isolation. The loneliness of her imprisonment was finally taking a toll. But as Kira sat staring at the door that blocked her path to freedom, she had remembered being told to go to her room at home. Usually because of mouthing off to her mother. How many times had that happened?

  She began thinking about her mother, and her father, and Jason entered the mental picture, too. They were out there, somewhere. They wouldn’t abandon her. She might look alone, but she was not. Her parents and Jason were with her. The thread to Jason was too weak to see, but she was sure it was still there. Kira called up memories, reliving her life. What was that poem that Jason had quoted to her once? She hadn’t understood it, so Jason had tried to explain what it meant. But now Kira did grasp the meaning of those words. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage…

  As long as her mind was free, she was not alone.

  But she would also free her body, or die trying.

  And so Kira remained calm, and quiet, through the days and the nights, waiting for a chance that she hoped would come.

  The motion of the ship had been monotonously regular as it plowed through the waters of the Sea of Bakre, though the vibrations had diminished over a day ago, meaning the ship had slowed, probably to conserve fuel since the Imperials weren't running the boilers at their best efficiency. Now Kira felt the motion finally change even more, the ship slowing, turning, feet running on the deck over her head, the feel of the water altering. They were out of the swells of the sea, into somewhere with smoother, protected waters. A harbor, Kira thought. They couldn’t possibly have reached the Empire yet. There were no decent ports along the south coast of the sea between Dorcastle and Landfall, and surely Maxim wouldn’t have veered so far north as to be able to stop in a port of the Western Alliance or the Free Cities.

  The Sharr Isles. They had to be there. The best port in the Sharr Isles was Caer Lyn, and if she knew anything about Maxim it was that he would insist on stopping in the best port.

  Why had they stopped here? Kira heard the rumble of the anchor chain going out.

  A while later the ship rocked to the thump of another ship coming alongside. Kira waited, hearing a lot of noise as orders were called. A low, irregular thunder began resonating through the ship. It sounded familiar, like an avalanche of small stones that went on and on.

  Coal. The ship was taking on coal.

  This would be her last chance to escape before the ship reached the Empire, an unexpected opportunity, what Jason bafflingly referred to as an “eastern egg.” Kira looked toward the sealed porthole. She couldn’t escape in clear sight during the day because getting ashore would offer no refuge. Technically neutral, the Sharr Isles had once again been under growing pressure from the Empire, which had gradually increased the number of “embassy guards” and other forces on the Isles until they outnumbered the Isles’ own small militia. Her mother, trying to eject the Imperial forces with pressure short of war, had yet to succeed as the Empire kept pushing against the limits put on it by the treaty that had ended the war twenty years before. To all intents and purposes, the Sharr Isles were no more friendly to her than the Empire itself would be.

  Would the ship leave as soon as coaling was completed? If that happened, Kira knew she would have to try to escape as the ship was leaving the harbor, hoping to make it ashore and hide inland. That would be a very slim hope with the Imperials in active pursuit, though.

  But the other ships must need coal as well. And coaling took a long time, hours of backbreaking labor by the crew. Each ship would have to take on coal in an operation that would take all day, and even if this ship finished first it would wait on the others. Kira felt sure that Maxim would not want to arrive home in a single ship rather than leading the whole squadron in a triumphant entrance to Landfall.

  She would know when night fell by the sounds of the ship. The crew would be tired. If she could get out and off the ship, she might have time to find a hiding place. That would mean taking out the guards outside her door, but Kira was desperate enough and determined enough that surprise should enable her to quickly overcome them.

  Kira relaxed her control of her Mage powers very slightly, probing for the presence of Maxim’s Mage. There he was, close enough to be still on the ship, but betraying no trace that he had noticed her. She felt for the power around her. Water was never a good place for power, but harbors were better than open water. There should be enough. She wouldn’t need much for the small spell needed to get out of this room. That might alert the Mage as well. She would have to be prepared to silence him if he came to investigate.

  Wait. Wait. Stay calm. Kira heard the work of coaling eventually end, but the anchor wasn’t brought in and the ship remained gently rocking in the harbor. She had guessed right. Night would come, and she would escape this time. Because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

  Kira waited, mentally walking through her escape time and again.

  * * *

  There had been more noise that Kira couldn’t identify. What was going on? Following that the sounds of many people on deck, diminishing and then ceasing.

&nbs
p; She heard an occasional noise as her guards shifted position outside her room. Still two of them. After so much time with nothing happening, they would be complacent, bored, unprepared for a surprise.

  It was time.

  Kira got down off the bunk and quietly, carefully, slowly, stretched her muscles, preparing them for an explosion of effort when she got through the door. When ready, she went to one knee in front of the door, her eyes on the lock. The illusion of a lock in the illusion of a door on the illusion of a ship floating in the illusion of a sea. That was how Mages saw the world, how they had to see the world in order to work a spell. Kira would have to set aside her Mechanic view of the world and, for a brief time, fully accept that of a Mage if she was going to succeed.

  She had done it once before. She could do it again.

  Kira focused on the lock, reaching out to the power in the area. Waiting for a reaction from Maxim’s Mage, she was surprised not to be able to sense him nearby. He had left the ship. Her spirits buoyed by that unexpected windfall, Kira set her mind fully to her task. The illusion of a lock. But if part of that illusion was overlaid by another, an illusion that made part of the lock not there, then it would not hold. The door would be open for her.

  Kira knelt before the lock and concentrated, trying to recall how she had done the same thing six months before. The illusion of a lock. The smaller illusion that part of the lock was missing. That—

  Chapter Six

  Breathing heavily as if after sudden exertion, Kira looked around, totally disoriented.

  She was standing in the passageway. This was still the Imperial ship.

  The bodies of the two guards were lying on the deck outside her door. Both were breathing, but one was bleeding and neither one was conscious.

  Kira had an Imperial dagger in her hand. She must have taken it from one of the guards. There was blood on the blade.

  Her nose hurt. Something was trickling down from it past the corner of her mouth and over her chin. She reached up to wipe under her nose and saw blood on her fingers. Without really thinking about it she pinched her nose to help stop the flow of blood.