Blood of Dragons

by Jack Campbell

  How long would it be until someone noticed that fire, sounded alarms, and the harbor erupted into activity?

  Kira looked ahead again, willing her boat to move faster, grateful when a gust of stronger wind came to fill the sail. She could make out the darkness of the seawall to one side and the high ground marking Meg’s Point on the other. The lighthouse on Meg’s Point came into sight, giving her a clear mark to steer by. The wind picked up again as sheltering headlands around the harbor fell behind her.

  Where should she aim for? Anyone lurking in ambush would be on one side or the other. She had no idea on which side Prince Maxim’s boats were lying in wait. With no better option, Kira aimed for the center of the entrance, trying to remain equally distant from both sides.

  A bell began clanging loudly behind her, breaking the calm of the night. Distant shouts carried faintly across the water. Kira risked a look back and saw that flames were now shooting up from the deck of Prince Maxim’s ship, illuminating the harbor around it. Setting her face forward again, Kira drew her pistol and held her course.

  She slid down low as the boat neared the entrance to the harbor, hoping that no one would be able to see her in the light from the stars and from the rapidly growing fire on the ship behind her. A blind man couldn’t miss the sail, of course, but Kira had to hope that no one would pay attention to a boat leaving the harbor while they were scrambling to deal with a burning ship. The fire was now lighting up boats from the other Imperial ships pulling alongside Prince Maxim’s ship and figures clambering aboard to try to fight the fire. Kira didn’t think they’d have much luck at that.

  More shouts, coming from a different direction as the roar of alarms and excitement grew around the burning ship. Kira risked a glance to port and saw several longboats leaping out of concealment near the breakwater just inside the harbor entrance. She held her pistol ready, barely breathing as the boats swung away from the breakwater, oars flashing in the night as they sent white spray flying. The sight made Kira remember the “white-winged ships” of Jason’s favorite story from Urth.

  No one on the longboats seemed to notice Kira’s little craft as they raced into the harbor toward the floating bonfire that Prince Maxim’s ship was rapidly becoming. Lying low, Kira thought she caught a glimpse of the robes of Maxim’s Mage in one of the longboats. She redoubled her efforts to hide her Mage presence.

  The wind freshened some more, pushing her boat along faster. Maxim’s longboats were well past, so Kira risked raising herself to see better as her boat sailed through the broad channel between the breakwater and Meg’s Point. The light from the burning ship had become so strong that it shone on Kira’s sail. She took another look back and saw the ship fully engulfed in flames. Squinting against the brightness of the fire, Kira saw Maxim’s longboats still a little ways from the ship.

  The harbor rocked to the blast of a detonation as the aft ammunition magazine exploded, the combined force of all the shells tearing apart the stern and hurling debris in all directions. Kira felt the force of the concussion on her back and saw it ironically offer an extra push to her sail.

  Another look back as her boat cleared the harbor. She couldn’t see Maxim’s longboats. How badly had they been hit by the force of the explosion? It was too much to hope that a flying piece of shrapnel had hit Maxim, but Kira wished for it anyway. The burning ship’s bow rose upward as the shattered stern sank to rest on the bottom of the harbor, fire engulfing what was left of the ship.

  “I hope you’re enjoying the show,” Kira said, imagining that Princess Sabrin could hear her.

  The swells of the sea began rocking the boat in an oddly gentle rhythm. Where in the expanse of waters was Jason? Instead of relaxing as Caer Lyn fell behind, Kira’s anxiety spiked again as she searched the night for any sign of Jason’s boat.

  The thread. It wasn’t there. Kira’s heart sank. If the thread connecting her to Jason had vanished, did that mean…?

  She got a grip on herself. This was a Mage thing. What would her father advise? Search inside yourself. But she was concentrating so hard on blocking her Mage presence that—

  Of course. She was suppressing the thread along with everything else related to her Mage powers.

  Kira cautiously relaxed her efforts, hoping that Maxim’s Mage was too far off to spot anything.

  There it was! Visible as a slightly luminous gleam like glowing spider silk leading off to starboard. Kira gasped with relief and adjusted her course, the thread acting as a compass aimed at Jason.

  Kira caught her breath. A patch of white had briefly appeared to one side as she swept her gaze across the sea. Looking back that way full on revealed nothing. Blast it! Just her imagination at work.

  Wait. One of the sailors on The Son of Taris had told her a trick for when acting as lookout at night. A faint image, a faint light, would be invisible when looked at directly, but if you turned and looked from the corners of your eyes it would appear.

  She tried, aiming her sidelong gaze with the help of the faintly visible thread. There it was. A small white object, barely illuminated by the light of the stars. Kira tacked the boat, swinging the tiller as she aimed to intercept the sail.

  She could see it clearly now, the thread leading straight to it and strengthening as the distance grew less. Kira adjusted her course again, aiming ahead of the other boat’s track to intercept it.

  Closer and closer. Now she could see the hull, then the faint outline of one person at the tiller of the other boat. Was he looking her way? She couldn’t tell. The figure looked like it was slumped over, not sitting straight. But the thread was like a cable now, pointing unerringly toward the other boat. Kira damped it, clamping down on her Mage powers to avoid the chance of being sensed.

  Closing rapidly now, and still the huddled figure at the tiller of the other boat hadn’t moved. Unable to restrain herself any longer, Kira yelled as loudly as she could. “Jason! Jason, it’s me!”

  No response. Closer. “Jason!”

  He must have been pushing himself hard. Too hard? Had the exertion and exposure been too much for him? Had she gotten this far only to find Jason had perished? No, impossible. The thread would’ve broken if Jason died. But he could be on the edge of death, too far gone to save. Fear drove another shout. “Jason! Answer me this instant or I’ll never speak to you again!”

  “Kira?” the hail came back in a raspy, weak voice that was nonetheless clearly Jason’s. “It’s really you?”

  She didn’t know whether to laugh with relief or yell again. “Yes, it’s me! Heave to so I can bring this boat alongside you.”

  His sail dropped. Kira, nervous, swung the tiller too late and her boat slammed against the other, but Jason grabbed it before it could bounce away and looped a line over a cleat to hold the boats together.

  And Kira was reaching across and Jason was doing the same and they were holding each other and she was kissing him and sobbing with relief and joy.

  They weren’t safe. Not by a long shot. But they were together.

  * * *

  “I’m a little delirious, I think,” Jason said. “I’d been imagining finding you, and thinking I had. So when I heard you calling I thought it was that again, my mind playing tricks. But that last time, you sounded so worried. And I said to myself, ‘She’s worried about me. That’s really Kira.’”

  “Of course I was worried about you! I’m so glad to see you again and you're all right!”

  Another tremendous explosion sounded from the direction of the harbor. Kira looked that way, seeing a fountain of fire blossoming into the sky, dots of black amid the inferno marking large metal fragments that had once been part of the doomed ship. The forward ammunition magazine must have finally blown.

  “Did you do that?” Jason asked, staring.

  “Why do you think I did it?”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. I had a good reason! It’s Prince Maxim’s ship.”

  “Great! Was he aboard it?”

  �
�No.”

  “Too bad,” Jason said.

  “Yeah. Can’t have everything. With any luck, by the time the fires die down whatever remains of that ship will be so messed up they won’t realize I escaped before it caught on fire.” Kira laughed. “Actually, I left the ship right after it caught on fire. That’ll teach them to pay attention when a girl says ‘leave me alone’!”

  “Kira,” Jason said, “I love you, but sometimes you’re a little scary.”

  “I get it from my mother. Jason, your boat is in awful shape!”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I sailed it from, uh, Gullhaven.”

  “Gullhaven? In this? Jason, this is a short-haul sailboat. It’s not even supposed to be sailed out of sight of land.”

  “I know. But it was all I could get and I knew I needed to get to the Sharr Isles.”

  “You did?” Kira looked around Jason’s boat, which had water sloshing in the bottom. The hull was leaking. The lines holding the sail were badly worn and looked ready to break. “You came all that way in this. You're amazing! But this thing is not going to stay afloat much longer. What have you got that you need to transfer to this boat?”

  “Just a…a couple of empty bottles.”

  “Empty bottles? You don’t have any food left? What about water?”

  “It gave out a while back,” Jason said, blinking at her like he was having trouble focusing.

  “What gave out? The water or the food?”

  “Both.”

  “You poor thing! You went through that for me! Give me the bottles and then get in this boat.” Kira helped Jason clamber into her boat. She carefully got into Jason’s battered craft. Should she sink it? If the Imperials found out they’d guess it was Jason’s.

  Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Kira looked toward the coastline not far off.

  She got both craft onto a heading for the rocks off Meg’s point, putting a loose loop of line around the tiller of Jason’s craft to hold it on course without making it obvious that the tiller had been tied in place. Raising the sail on Jason’s boat again, she got back into her boat from Jason’s empty craft, untying the line that held the two boats together. Leaving Jason’s boat to be pushed by its sail and the surf toward the rocks, Kira swung her boat about and away, heading out to sea again.

  The uproar from the harbor faded behind her as they got farther away.

  But Kira felt something, like someone looking for her, and once again clamped down very tightly on her Mage senses. Maxim’s Mage was trying to find out if she had escaped.

  Everything began catching up with her. The days without food, the exertions of the evening, the tension since she had been kidnapped. She wanted nothing more than to curl up on the bottom of the boat and sleep after stuffing herself with whatever provisions the lifeboat had aboard. But Jason was obviously in even worse shape, having sailed in an open boat this far. She would have to hang on a little longer, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t get something into her stomach. “Jason, can you open that chest? There should be emergency supplies of food and water in it.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said as he pulled out a brass pin and opened the chest. “Looks like bottles of water. And crackers. Hardtack, I guess.”

  “Hardtack would last a long time. Give me one bottle and some crackers. Can you break a cracker for me? There’s a knife fastened to the inside top of the chest. Take some of the water and cracker pieces for yourself, too.”

  Having literally broken the bread for their meal, Jason sprawled on the bottom of the boat, looking at Kira. “I can’t believe I made it.”

  She took another look back to gauge their distance from the harbor. “I can't believe you tried. Did I tell you that you're amazing? How did you know to come here?” she asked around the piece of hard cracker softening in her mouth.

  “That guy Lukas told us.”

  “Master Mechanic Lukas? When did he say that the ships would stop here?”

  “At that talk after the dinner at your parents’ house,” said Jason, as if the answer was obvious. “He said those ships could get from the Sharr Isles to Tiaesun but it would be as far as they could go without refueling. So it’s obvious that if they left Tiaesun with full coal loads they would have to stop at the Sharr Isles on their way back.”

  Kira felt like slapping herself, but she had a water bottle in one hand and the tiller in the other. “I completely forgot about that. I wonder if Mother and Father remembered? Do you have any idea why the Imperial ships weren’t intercepted while they were heading up the coast of Tiae and the Bakre Confederation?”

  Jason nodded. “The Imperials were real smart, Kira. Do you remember at that party, when you thought you saw yourself?”

  “I’d forgotten. Do you mean that was real?”

  “Yeah. Not something supernatural. Someone the Imperials had found who looked a lot like you. I bet she was at that party to hear you talk and see how you walked and stuff like that. Then later they probably made her up to look like your double. You know, the hair and the clothing.”

  “She couldn’t have fooled Mother and Father!” Kira protested.

  “She didn’t. She left the palace at dawn before your parents got up, in full view of everybody long after Maxim’s ships had left. It didn’t seem possible that you could be aboard those ships.”

  “Couldn’t they catch her and figure out she wasn’t me?”

  “She flew off on a Roc! Headed east!”

  “Blazes,” Kira sighed. “They were smart.”

  “It took me a while to figure it out, too. But I sent a message to your parents. I told them it was the doppelganger. So they know.”

  “The doppelganger?” Kira repeated, feeling a little sick inside.

  “Yeah. You said you’d tell them.”

  “I was on my way to do that when the Imperials knocked me out! I never got the chance!”

  “Oh,” Jason said.

  “It's my fault. I forgot to tell them earlier. Is that why you had to come in this boat? Why aren’t you on a Confederation warship?”

  “They wouldn’t listen to me!” Jason said, his voice breaking. “They thought I was losing it. And maybe I was. I just suddenly got this feeling that you really needed me, right then, and I couldn’t wait.”

  “You got that feeling suddenly?” Kira asked, shocked. “Were you on a train?”

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “Um…I’ll tell you later. Why didn’t you explain to Mother and Father what the doppelganger was? Weren’t you with them?”

  “No,” Jason said, shaking his head. “I got sent back to Danalee while your mom and dad stayed in Tiaesun, but before I got there, when the train was going through Minut, I got that feeling and no one escorting me would listen, so I, um, left the train.”

  “While it was moving?” Kira asked.

  “Yeah. And then I jumped off another train and onto a third train somewhere north of that, because I knew I needed to get to Gullhaven.”

  “You jumped off of a train all on your own?” Kira said, feeling an absurd desire to laugh.

  “Two trains,” Jason said. “Because this crazy girl taught me that no one is allowed to go anywhere by train without jumping off along the way.”

  “I'm so proud of you! Someday, Jason, you and I will ride a train to wherever it is going and not jump off. How’d you get that boat?”

  “I…borrowed it.”

  “Stars above, Jason, I just sent it onto the rocks! Why didn’t you tell me that you’d stolen it?”

  “I was going to,” Jason said, “but that ship blew up!”

  “So it’s my fault?”

  “Um…wow…so tired…about to pass out…”

  “You’re not fooling anybody, Jason. But it's all right. Sorry. I'm still sort of tense.” Kira felt tears of relief finally starting. “I can’t believe we’re together, and I escaped from that awful ship, and you were coming to get me, and now we have a chance, Jason. Did I tell you that I love you?”

  “What?
” Jason’s eyes were wide in the night.

  “I realized it. On the ship. Maybe it was my feelings finally reaching that point or maybe I finally realized what my feelings meant. And then I saw the thread. The thread was proof, Jason. I love you.”

  “I…I love you, too,” Jason stammered. “Thread?”

  “It connects us!” Even with her Mage powers damped, when she and Jason were this close the thread glowed between them. “It’s there now! Only it isn’t.”

  “Are you okay, Kira?”

  “Yes! Ask my father! It’s a Mage thing! Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “I did! I love you, too! I feel awful, I can barely think, but I can’t believe how wonderful I felt when I heard you say that.”

  “Good.” Kira smiled at him. “Because it felt so wonderful when I realized I loved you. Get some sleep, Jason. I need you to rest so you can take over from me. No, wait. Before you sleep, there’s something we have to decide.”

  She waved her hand toward the east. “At this time of year, the prevailing winds come out of the west and head that way. You made really good time from Gullhaven, didn’t you? Home is to the west, but if we try to beat against those winds we’ll make such slow headway that we’d be sitting ducks. But we can’t go east because there’s nothing east of us but the Empire, and I am not going there.”

  “Where’s the closest land from here?” Jason asked.

  “South,” Kira said. “But that would take us to the salt marshes north of the city of Ringhmon, and anywhere near Ringhmon is at least as bad a place for us as the Empire.”

  “That leaves north.”

  “Yeah. The Free Cities. But coming out of Caer Lyn means we’re already east of Marida. We’ll have to steer as close to northwest as we can and still make good speed. If we hit the coast east of Marida it’ll be a long, tough walk to the city, but still better than any other option we have. We’d be safe in the Free Cities. They’d protect us.”