Breaking Ties

by Vaughn R. Demont

  I turn around just enough to see him over my shoulder.

  “We Keth are taught that such exertions should kill us, yet here you are, James. You summoned your will on a wasted effort.”

  I crack a smile. “I think you’re underestimating the resourcefulness of Coyotes.”

  He shakes his head. “No. You called for help. You are Ra’keth, you are above help. You are a sorcerer, a king among sorcerers and you still act as if you only just stumbled on your first tome and cast your first light spell.”

  “If I’m so weak and pathetic, why haven’t you taken the throne from me?”

  “Because I do not want it.” His hands clench into fists, his breathing much more measured and controlled now. “Do you believe I forgot myself because of some curse, some foolishness on my part? I wanted no part of the politicking and brinksmanship. I simply wanted to care for my dragons, to treat them as something other than servants.”

  “So you went with subjects instead.” I roll my eyes. “Classy.”

  With that, he gestures with his hand and whispers, “Force.”

  The only thing I feel is my impact against the wall, the pressure on my chest keeping me aloft as he strides toward me, his eyes shifting to a more serpentine appearance. “Do not pontificate on things you know nothing about, child.”

  Okay…as Spencer might say, there’s some backstory there.

  “Hey, I didn’t change their name, remember?” At least it’s easy to talk, though my back is aching now. “They’re just as free as they were before. Just as meddling too.”

  “And who do you think gave them that freedom? Who do you think steered their impulses from mere guarding of wealth to obtaining wealth of their own? Who do you think influenced their instinct to protect human sorcerers into an urge to aid humanity, the race from which their lords are born? You have done nothing but reap the benefits of my labor.” His eyes are intent, determined, and I half-expect a forked tongue to shoot out of his mouth.

  I need to get ahead of this. “Um…thank you? I’m grateful for your hard work, and it’s certainly shown. Dragons are far more benevolent than I ever could have imagined them, and the world’s a better place for your work.”

  Something I learned in D&D: when in doubt, kiss the gamemaster’s ass.

  He closes his eyes, and when they open again, they’re human, and I’m dropped unceremoniously to the floor. “I apologize. I…” He takes a breath. “That was not appropriate.”

  “I take it that your work wasn’t regarded highly by the other Ra’keth? Were there a lot around in your time?”

  “There were several hundred, though it was the Age of the Usurper, so our number dropped quickly. Wars were fought, thousands killed, mythics raised up and created to be little more than tools. The dragons were considered perfect, many were bred for war. In the end they were set upon each other, clan against clan, rookeries were burned. I was the only one to ask why.”

  “So…you became the King of the Dragons to protect them?”

  He simply nods.

  “I don’t really see any issue with that. I don’t want to kill you, it doesn’t seem like you want to kill me, so why not just let me go? There are people worried about me.” I motion to the wall. “Open the door, please.” I try a small smile. “What do I call you, anyway?”

  A few seconds pass. “The names I have gathered are too old, even the least formal of them. I cannot give you even one.”

  “Well, you go by Ra’saar, right?”

  “That is my title, not my name, and it is not for this form, my…” Disappointment creeps into his voice. “My true form.”

  “Well, dragons seem to just shorten their names for the human guises, how about we do that? Like, Ras or something.”

  He furrows his brow. “What would make you say that?”

  “Well, Coda’s short for Codacintha, Parivian was shortened to Parry, Davinicus cut down to Dave…”

  “No, no. The name you suggested.”

  “What, Ras?” I spell it out. “R-a-s?”

  A small, though genuine smile. “It is similar to a word, old when I was young, from one of the first dialects of magic. Rasj. It requires a skilled tongue to link the hard S and the sibilant J.”

  “What does it mean?”

  The smile remains as he speaks the word in Sigil, whispers echoing in undercurrents to carry it to my ears, working it into a word I’ll understand. “Teacher.”

  “I’d say that had an air of destiny, but since we don’t have destinies, it’s likely coincidence. Besides, you said you wouldn’t teach me.”

  He shakes his head. “I won’t teach you my magic, but I can guide you toward finding your own, if you are amenable to that.”

  I chew on my lip because, let’s face it, I’m not nearly as competent as I’d like. I’m an apprentice, and apprentices aren’t supposed to learn alone. “Why are you helping me?”

  “Despite my protests, I now remember myself, what I lost. And you, you remind me of one of my students.”

  “One of? So you had a lot of them?”

  “Four, at one point. We were not always hated. Even during the wars among the Ra’keth, there were children being born into magic every day. Keth blood needed little reason to manifest then, so there were always new apprentices in search of teachers.”

  I work through that. “Is that why dragons are so protective of sorcerers now? Maybe some part of you remembered?”

  He shows me an open palm.

  Confusedly, I stare at it. “Are you asking for payment?”

  He blinks and looks at his hand, then me. “No, it is a simple gesture. It loosely means ‘I have nothing for you’, or ‘I do not have an answer to give’. This is no longer done?”

  I shrug. “I dunno.” I grin. “That’s how we do it now.”

  He tilts his head and awkwardly moves his shoulders. “I…don no?”

  “It’s ‘I don’t know’ said very quickly and with no respect for the Queen’s English.” I wave him off before he can ask. “It would appear we can teach each other.”

  “Indeed.” He nods. “But first, we must work on your pronunciation.” He sighs discontentedly. “You speak Sigil like a Dwarf.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Spencer

  December 19, 11:50 pm

  “Find.” No change in direction. “Seriously? Do I have to swear at you every time?” I grumble, smack the brick with my open palm as I turn in a complete circle, the arrow never changing direction. We’re on the North Bridge, and it’s cold. The North River has frozen over already, thanks to an early cold snap, and since the ice is pristine, I’d guess James didn’t fall over the side.

  And yes, I tried looking up.

  “This bit of railing’s newer than the rest.” Ozzie’s been inspecting it for the last minute or so, the Benz pulled over with its four-ways on.

  “I told it to find the Lightning Rod, why would it stop on a bridge? Maybe the running water’s messing it up?”

  Ozzie gives me a look, and I give him one back.

  “What? I occasionally read fantasy novels.” The Dwarf folds his arms.

  “It has nothing to do with James. It’s to better understand adorkable girls so I can get them in bed.” Oh damn it, have I subconsciously been reading Mercedes Lackey because it’s the kind of stuff he reads?

  And James still hasn’t read Hitchhiker’s, the smug bastard. Doesn’t even watch Doctor Who. Some half-Brit he is.

  Ozzie in the meantime has moved on and is for some reason still examining the railing. “Jesus, would you quit with the railing? I doubt he transmuted himself into several lengths of steel.” I think on that a couple seconds… Nah, he wouldn’t do something like that.

  “No, I think something went through this a while ago. Like something went over the bridge. I don’t remember any accidents here in th
e last couple years though.” He peers at it.

  “Ozzie, who cares if there was an…” Wait wait wait. “Ozzie, how old would you say the railing is? I mean, how long ago would you say it was put in?”

  He snorts. “You better not be asking that because I’m a…”

  “A Dwarf. Yes. I’m a racist asshole. You can hit me again after you answer the question because I know you can.”

  Now it’s a glare. “Three years, maybe four. Five on the outside. I’d be more accurate but my mother is human.”

  He starts ranting about stereotypes, but I’ve tuned him out because I think I know what this chunk of new railing has to do with the brick telling me that this is where the Lightning Rod is.

  I met James for the first time the night he left his boyfriend, I’ve covered that. I gave him a bus ticket to go to the Capital, and that bus’s route went over the North Bridge. And James told me himself that he never got off the bus in the Capital, and that night is within Ozzie’s time frame, and…

  “Oh God.” I stare at the railing. “That bus was on the news. I was still in high school when that happened.”

  The Dwarf looks askance a second and then catches up. “The bus that went over the…” He stares at the railing. “I forgot that happened here.”

  “I think James was on that bus.” I look over the side, down to the ice. “I think this is where James became the Lightning Rod, or at least it’s an important place that has, um, what’s that word he uses? Recognizance?”

  “Resonance.” He places his hands on the metal, not really able to look over the side like my taller self. “It’s like the sanctum, there’s a bit of him here that rubbed off, and since it’s such a rudimentary enchantment, it got confused, seems like. If he was on the bus, it’d be a traumatic enough experience to leave this…residue for the enchantment to get fooled by.”

  “So it won’t find James?”

  He seems frustrated now. “It will find James. We might have to find a few more of these places, though.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “He didn’t tell me about this.”

  “If it’s any consolation he didn’t tell me either. If this happened to him, Ozzie, it was a near-death experience. I could understand being tight-lipped about that. I mean, I almost got chased down by a horde of zombies once. I’m not too crazy about reliving that.” I wonder if I should pat his shoulder or something, but before I have the chance, he heads toward the car, pointing at the passenger-side door.

  After I get back in, he pulls away and finishes crossing the bridge and looks for a place to turn around. The car is quiet. “I take it you two have some relationship thing where you tell each other everything?”

  He nods, doesn’t answer.

  “Ozzie, he was probably going to tell you. Like I said, he hasn’t told anyone, I think. And we don’t even know for sure if it happen—”

  “It happened.” He sets his jaw. “He has nightmares sometimes, always takes a few minutes where he’s breathing heavy, like he’d been suffocating. Never wants to talk about it. He only takes the el. Never the bus. It all fits. He nearly died in a bus crash, he had a boyfriend who beat him, another who was murdered. He didn’t tell me about this. What else hasn’t he—”

  I cut him off there. “Talk to him about it. I mean, stuff like this shouldn’t fester. It always wrecks the relationship.”

  He perks a brow at me. “How exactly are you a relationship expert?” The Dwarf appears to have given up, working a U-turn.

  “Eleven seasons of Cheers, seven seasons of Buffy, everything written by Chuck Lorre, sitcoms, dramas, procedurals with subplots for the shippers, and countless romcoms where simple communication would’ve saved the romantic leads about forty minutes of screen time.” I think on that. “Wow, I would be awesome in a relationship.” I chuckle nervously. “No offense meant, of—”

  The seat belt loses all slack as the air bags go off to the front and side, accompanied by a loud crash, crunch, I don’t know how to describe the sound. I feel pulled in varying directions as the crunching sounds continue, tires screeching somewhere ahead of us, behind us, to the side. My ears are ringing. My first thought is that the shotgun went off. Something’s pressing hard against my chest when everything finally stops moving.

  Movies handle it with shaky cameras, sound effects like someone emptied a Dumpster filled with scrap metal. TV usually just cuts to black with the crashing sound and either comes back from commercial with the aftermath, or goes to credits to keep you guessing. But crashes always mean one thing, depending on the kind of movie you’re in.

  In a detective movie or a procedural, someone hitting your car means you’re getting close to the culprit and you’re on the right trail. In a comedy, an accident is a risky play for laughs, but everyone will be okay, and my getting cut off midsentence by the crash is a good sign. Personally, I’m hoping we’re in a controversial Mercedes-Benz commercial where they justify their five-star safety rating.

  I don’t want to be in a drama where a car crash means someone’s getting cut from the cast. Only Ozzie and I are in the car, and I know I’m breathing.

  And he’s not.

  Ozzie’s not breathing.

  That’s when the gunfire starts.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Spencer

  December 20, 12:02 am

  “Oh shit. Oh shit shit shit shit!”

  The car is right side up, and my seat belt comes loose with a bit of struggling as I duck down, working to get Ozzie free to pull him down as well. His face is covered in blood, the air bag having hit at a bad angle. I don’t know how to tell whether his neck is broken.

  The gunshots sound like a pistol, but that’s all I’ve got. I don’t know if I can…

  I don’t know what to…

  Oh God, what do I do?

  The shotgun’s on the floor, loose from its silk covering. Maybe I could…

  What, shoot it out with lightning bolts on a public road and probably hit someone or blow myself up? And what about Ozzie?

  All I know about CPR is that when Ozzie did it to James he did it to “Another One Bites the Dust” and as a Coyote I refuse to throw Fate a softball like that. Also, I’ve only seen it done before, never done it myself.

  What I do know from TV is that Ozzie doesn’t have a lot of time if I want to bring him out of it, and the only thing I can think of is magic, and Coyotes really aren’t “spec’d for that” as James would put it. If I had that diamond James keeps around his neck, I could cheat it and try a couple things, since apparently the energy doesn’t care who’s calling on it as long as it’s in Sigil and…

  And the “shells” in the shotgun were made based on that stone.

  I keep low while another bullet takes out what’s left of the window, and reach into the back to lift up the gun and open it, shaking one of the stones into my hand, the cylindrical diamond glowing in my palm. Now all I have to do is speak some Sigil.

  Oh damn, I don’t remember how to speak it. And I can hardly shake Ozzie awake and get him to hum a few bars so I can fake it.

  No, god damn it, I am not going to have a death scene on my hands that turns me into a grizzled, angsty son of a bitch.

  James has used magic around me, I just need to remember what he said. Okay, one time over the summer, Ozzie was putting in a pane of glass on the skylight and it fell and broke and James cut up his arm really bad and Ozzie was freaking out and James played through the pain and said…

  Said…

  I remember the word, imagine one of my cards, the Joker for Sora, as I let my Bard’s tongue shape the syllables.

  “Heal.” The cylinder in my hand has lost its glow, looking like cheap plastic now. The Dwarf’s body starts to twitch as sickening sounds emanate from his chest and arms, bones shifting and setting and knitting back together, wet schlorps as organs mend.

  H
e’s still not breathing.

  The windshield shatters as I pull out the other “shell”. I won’t come this far, I won’t almost pull off a trick on Fate herself by taking away someone slated for death. Damn it, I’m going all the way. If she didn’t want me doing this, she wouldn’t have arranged for me to get kicked out of the clan.

  Ozzie just needs a jolt to get his heart started, and lightning is under the element of air, but I don’t want too much or I’ll probably fry him. Definitely not an Ace, face cards would still be too strong. Something lower than a ten, stronger than a two. I envision the five of spades and the sparks that dance through a storm, one hand holding the last cylinder, the other on his chest, over his heart.

  “Kaze.”

  The Dwarf’s body practically jumps a foot off the seat and lands, his skin smoking under my hand, a red blotch of a burn there.

  But he gasps. He breathes. His eyes slowly open, and I shove him back down as he tries to get up. The next gunshot saves me having to explain why.

  Unfortunately, the shotgun’s shells look faded. Weird, since it could fire off a lightning bolt and be fine. I guess that’s why it’s magic, not logic. I load the shells back into the shotgun—probably best not to leave those lying around.

  I also hope James will understand that I’m currently on top of his boyfriend. It’s strange, the things that go through your mind when someone’s shooting at you, like wondering what the best music for the scene would be.

  “Any ideas who’s shooting at us?”

  Ozzie croaks, swallows, tries to get his breath. Can’t blame him for that. “What happened?”

  “We crashed, you crashed, people shooting, and I’m not peeking to see who because I’m not in the mood to catch a stray bullet.” Another shot, and the back window’s out. “I really hope you have an understanding insurance company.”

  That’s right, Spencer, make jokes, it’s the sidekick’s job. It’s either that or curl up in the fetal position and cry, and as appealing as that choice is, I want to live.