by Jordan Reece
The hour grew late, and later. Not once did he get anywhere close to sleep, and finally he threw back the blankets. Padding through the darkness to the hallway, he ran a hand along the tapestries until the fabric changed to wood. Then he held his breath and knocked on Westen’s bedroom door.
“Come in, Elario,” Westen called.
Elario let himself in. A fire was lit, but burning low in a marble fireplace. Atop the bed was Westen, bare-chested and the blanket at his waist as he rested against the pillows.
“Why light the fire if you don’t need the heat?” Elario asked, closing the door behind him. “Or bother with a blanket?”
“To remember what it was like to need them,” Westen said, patting the empty place at his side. “I let go of too many things to which I should have held. They had lost their importance. I let them go, and unwittingly let go of myself with them.”
Elario slid beneath the blanket. “What is worse, in your opinion? To die, or to be unable to die?”
“You know the answer.” Softly, Westen chided, “Don’t bury yourself alive, Elario. You might yet prevail. If not, you will reside among the gods for eternity at their feast table. There will be no pain or sorrow, and all who you cherish will be sitting with you.”
“Not all.”
They turned to one another. A hand wrapped around the back of Elario’s head, Westen tipping him until their foreheads touched. “You will live. Afterwards, you will move to a new home far away, where no one will think to search for you. You will meet a man after Dagen’s heart and entwine your lives.”
“Do you set yourself apart from those men?”
“I do.”
“Why? I will understand when you are gone to dig-”
“It is not that at all. There will be years, my dear Elario, that we can fool ourselves into feeling whole. But the time will come when someone mistakes you for my father, and then my grandfather, and this will prick us. As your body grays and slows and sickens, as mine stays stubbornly in the flush of youth, anger or sadness will rule you, each in turn or both at once. You will love me, hate me, envy me and despair for me, fear what will become of me once you pass on. You will loathe that I have stood central in your life, the one lifetime you shall ever have, yet you have been only a small part of mine, and as my eternity lengthens, a smaller and smaller part until I have forgotten you altogether.”
“Do not say such terrible things! This will not happen!”
Westen kissed his forehead. “Are these the words of the dragon’s eye, or yours?”
Elario was quiet, his eyes pinched shut. He saw the starkness of the future that Westen was warning him about, and it was unspeakable.
“Don’t ask me to watch you age and die,” Westen whispered. “I have seen too much of this. I would rather hold you fast in my mind’s eye as you are now. It is better to dream of what could have been, rather than to know what was.”
A lump in Elario’s throat roughened his voice. “Just as well. We would not have gotten on companionably for long with all of our differences, the two of us.”
“No, your prudish nature would irritate me.”
“And you would enjoy poking at it until I roared.”
“You are too timid.”
“Timid? Better that than your recklessness and disregard for good sense.”
“And you sleep too much. I would lay awake bored to pieces, dandling feathers over your nose, or thumping about in another room until you shouted at me for waking you.”
“Which would be well-deserved. And you enjoy wearing those hideous trousers. I know you do. I could never forgive you for that.”
Westen kissed him. Just once upon the lips, and breathlessly. “We might only last a night before falling to shambles upon one another, but what a glorious night it would be.”
They had tonight. No matter what ends they came to tomorrow, this night was theirs if they wished to claim it.
Elario kissed him, running a hand through the shaggy long locks. His heart pounded hard as they pressed together in the bed, the fire softly crackling in its senescence and the rain drumming against the windows and roof.
Their kisses swiftly filled with demand, mouths parting and tongues intruding. Sliding a hand over the thin fabric of smallclothes, Elario cupped Westen’s taut buttocks. His own hips thrust in, nudging their groins together. Then he pushed on Westen’s shoulder to roll him back into the sheets, but Westen pushed on him all the harder and tumbled him over.
There was no struggling with the nightdress to remove it. Westen gathered the fabric into his fists and tore it in half. Yanking it out from beneath Elario, he tossed it away. The smallclothes ended in the same fashion, and Westen lowered atop him with a groan.
Kisses rained down on Elario’s face and lips, Westen sliding to his neck and kissing deeply along his pulse. Hardness rested along Elario’s abdomen; slipping a hand to it, he softly stroked the demanding presence. The drumming from the rain intensified as Westen caught his hand and moved it aside.
A finger touched down upon Elario’s lips just as he began to speak. Then fiery kisses trailed down his chest and abdomen, moving in an unerring line to his groin. Hair spilled over his parted thighs, tickling as hands slid up and down his body.
Elario had hardened with those kisses to the point of pain, each throb from his manhood sending a quake of arousal through him. Digging his nails into the sheets, a short, frantic cry left his throat as a wet mouth took him in. Westen’s tongue danced teasingly around his tip, coated his shaft, and returned to the tip to play there and prolong his agony.
Slowly, slowly, Westen sank upon him in full. Elario bucked in rapture and helplessness as the dragon’s eye caught him up. He was in this strange bed being pleasured . . . he was standing in a heated pool of water with his mouth sinking upon Westen . . . he was Westen, along with himself, and nothing separated their minds.
Then he was himself again, his hands locked upon Westen’s head. Tension had built to an untenable height within him. He thirsted for the tension to break into bliss, yet he wanted it to build even higher and to stay upon this precipice forever. He tried to hold back, but Westen took him in and in and in mercilessly, and the glorious sensations finally jerked the reins of control away. Elario came with a roll of thunder, his cry broken and ragged and swallowed by the tempest in the heavens.
Westen’s breath was harsh and urgent with need. The satiation was Elario’s alone. Wanting to share it, he turned onto his stomach to raise on all fours. Blood returned to where it had just left, bringing him to a partial stiffness as Westen slicked a cream down his entrance. Then their moans braided together at the primal joining of their bodies.
This was what it would have been. This was what they would have had.
Since they were not going to have these things, they took of one another all the more greedily. Westen’s thrusts were aggressive, possessive, and when he paused, Elario drove himself back to demand more. They moved together for some measureless, dizzy spinning of time, the bed striking the wall with their thrusts.
The beat of Westen’s penetrations grew erratic, and then he spilled within Elario with a shudder and cry. Elario shivered as he withdrew, and afterwards they rested in the mussed sheets and blanket with their arms around one another.
Their beginning was their ending. It was bittersweet. That was just how it had to be, to protect themselves from one another. From what was coming.
“I remember quite liking it the other way around, too,” Westen said conversationally. “If you are not opposed.”
Elario laughed so he would not cry. “Far from opposed.”
“Then in the morning.”
“You will only sleep an hour.”
“True.”
“Then wake me in two,” Elario said, because it was their one night, and possibly his last night, and he would claim this joy over and over until his body could take no more.
Chapter Eighteen
It was an ancient widget duster droid, a dusty yellow rattletr
ap with two seats and an empty hopper intended to hold its air-dropped payload. Hobbe was riding back there instead with their belongings as Elario clumsily steered the duster within the barn. The wingspan was inches shorter than the doorframe, making for tense moments of maneuvering to get the duster in place.
Miraculous that it worked at all. This duster had been entirely forgotten, from the looks of it, and the dilapidated barn it was within forgotten as well. The horse stalls were packed with rusty, cobwebbed agricultural equipment, every piece of it resting under a thick blanket of undisturbed dust. The barn was located at the very edge of a substantial farm property, the fields harvested and all quiet for winter.
The high-pitched whine of the engine unsettled Elario’s nerves as he approached the open doors. It was just so loud, vibrating his teeth and rattling his senses. He was sure that people were hearing it a mile off. Perhaps they were used to these sounds in Ruzan, so much so that they would not bother to look up. Then again, there was no reason for a widget duster to be in the air at this time of year.
Nor was there any reason for one to be flying past the palace grounds, but that could not be avoided. They had to take the straightest path, so the aithra fuel in the tank lasted well into the Wickewoods. The fuel was stolen from another barn, barely bringing the tank to a third of its full capacity.
Elario’s head swung right and left to assure himself the wings were clearing the doorframe. From the seat behind him, Westen said peaceably, “We’re out. Just head around the loop to the runway.”
They were once again dressed in their more rugged, plainly colored country clothes, and Elario had on his dirty boots rather than his nice shoes. It was already past midday. Acquiring the fuel had taken time, and so did clearing the runway. As neglected as the barn and duster, fallen branches, broken droid arms, and rotten posts littered it. Now there was a long, clean sweep of pavement beyond the loop. Long enough? Elario hoped so; the runway ended at a field, and he was unable to tell if it once continued onwards through it, or never was.
He wished he had paid more attention during the demonstration in the Grand Market. Working in their favor was that widget dusters were designed to do the majority of the work by programming. Between Hobbe and Westen, the two had managed to outfit the duster in a program made to their specifications. Working against them, however, was the sheer age of the machinery. This duster was far older than the one in the demonstration, and capable of less in weight, range, and maneuvering.
Arriving at the mouth of the runway, Elario idled there and warned, “It might not even get off the ground.” He was looking at the world through two eyes today, feeling that the whole of his sight was important for flying.
Westen squeezed his shoulder in reassurance. “Then it doesn’t get off the ground, and we will find another widget duster on another farm or grow wings and fly ourselves.”
“I do not think that is possible, sir,” Hobbe called from the hopper. “Is that one of your fancies?”
“You exceed your own limitations, Hobbe! Yes, it is but a fancy. Did you find a seatbelt back there?”
“No, sir. I locked myself in place with my magna-draw. I have not activated that program since I worked for the mines. Are you wearing a seatbelt?”
“No need. I am immortal.”
“Just put it on,” Elario said. “You can’t die, but you can get thrown and I would rather not face soldiers or dervesh without you.”
Westen grumbled and did the belt. Closing his hand over the lever, Elario sent a plea to Elequa, and pulled it down.
The widget duster shook so violently in response that he gripped the seat to hold himself steady. The whine increased threefold; the wheels below turned; and the duster propelled itself onto the runway. On the dashboard, lights were flickering and knobs rotating, switches flipped and dials spun. The individual controls indicated speed, altitude, level of fuel, and many mysterious functions related to the programming.
Startled birds took off from the trees, their squawks overridden by the whining engine. Faster and faster the duster roared down the runway, wind slapping Elario’s face and making him squint against it. A great, invisible force pushed him back into his seat, pinning him there. He gasped for breath and clung on as they hurtled for the field at the end of the runway.
It was just long enough. The duster lifted off the ground at the runway’s end and they shot up into the air over the vast acreage. Two men in scuffs looked up from a second barn upon the property. Better tended, larger and newer, the barn was beyond a half-drained reservoir. One man pointed to the duster and his mouth opened in a wordless shout.
“Well, that didn’t take long to be noticed,” Elario called.
“Never mind it,” Westen said. “By the time they report its theft, we’ll be long gone.”
The widget duster righted itself in the air and shifted to follow its programmed route. Though the wind was still sharp and snappish, the force released Elario. A second whine and a grinding sound was the wheels being retracted into the body of the duster. Both of the barns and then the farm itself vanished below for grassy fields separated by strips of trees.
The shaking reduced to a constant, low-grade tremble. Elario relaxed minutely. His greatest fear was that the duster was going to fall to pieces in the air, but that was not happening. It held together as they flew over the outskirts of Ruzan, which was a tapestry of rooftops and roads, pastures and farmlands. His gaze went out to the rapidly approaching city, where high-walled noble homes bejeweled the gentle swells of land.
As they passed over the grand homes, he looked down into their elaborate grounds, which reminded him of the carved roads in Sable. The paths through the gardens formed shapes only appreciated from above. There was a butterfly outlined in white flagstone paths, its giant wings a splendid array of flowers separated by color and swirls of shrubbery. In summer the sight would be dazzling, but even on the cusp of winter, its beauty was not much muted. Gardeners, rendered tiny by the duster’s height, worked within the wings.
An arm stretched past his shoulder. He followed Westen’s pointing finger to a specific hill, which was the highest one in the city. Atop it was a proud building with marble domes on the roof between the towers. Crouched aside it protectively was a massive stone dragon. The arch of its hollowed-out gullet formed the entrance. Streaks of color glowed in its gray sides.
“Is that the palace?” Elario shouted.
“It is.” Westen pulled back his arm. “The palace to sit upon the hill before that one burned down in my grandfather’s youth. Tower to cellar, all gone. It took twenty years to rebuild, and that dragon is the work of a stone knacker. When all of the world has fallen away, and the last of humanity is quenched, that dragon and I will still be standing.”
Chilling to picture that distant point in the future, pitiable too, Westen with what remained of humanity’s glories in a carved dragon for company. Even mechanical men would go silent with time, leaving Westen’s voice as the only one left. Stubbornly, Elario said, “I will keep empty the seat by mine at the feast table.”
A gray shape in the sky caught his eye, but it was just a passenger aerial in its descent to a faraway airfield. Another aerial was a distant speck behind it. His attention returned briefly to the palace, pretty gardens terraced into the hillside around it, and then ahead. Past a sea of homes, which were not noble but still fine, was the Argonauth Road and the Wickewoods. The quilt of trees was speckled green and brown, stretching out all the way to the horizon.
If only they could fly all the way to the south of Nevenin! He stopped himself from checking the dial of the fuel gauge. There was enough to get them over the wall; fretting over exactly how much farther was a useless exercise. He looked over the side to keep himself from the gauge, the duster passing over city blocks and open squares. Ant-sized people strolled along the sidewalks.
The widget duster suddenly lowered. “What is going on?” Elario shouted.
“It just thinks we’re going to let lo
ose the hopper,” Westen said. “It was the best we could do with the old programs in the navigation banks.”
Praying that the sensors still worked, Elario sat nervously in his seat as the duster lowered to just above the tallest trees and homes. The heads of the pedestrians were turning up at the increasing whine of the engine, the duster going so low as to allow Elario to pick out their individual features. Dusters should not be flying here, those shocked faces said.
A red light on the dashboard blinked furiously for the hopper. “It’s going to open!” Elario warned Westen, and Westen shouted the warning back to Hobbe. A squealing creak pierced through the whine.
Horses spooked as the duster dipped lower still. They flew directly over a road, the belly of the duster uncomfortably close to the ground. Elario saw through the topmost windows of the homes on either side of the street, servants staring back at him through the glass in surprise. Westen waved at them like this was all in good fun.
Then the duster jerked up a little, its wing neatly shearing off the top of a pine tree. So much for the sensors. The hopper closed as they lifted to clear the homes upon the cross-street, and the light on the dashboard stopped blinking.
Elario saw the Argonauth again. Great Elequa! They were almost to it, and scores of soldiers were visible upon the road. Dragons of the Blood were stationed below the wall and upon it while members of the Red Guard held up traffic to search the backs of wagons. All of them looked up to the duster in confusion. Then those in tan-and-greens on the wall were shouting and running for where the duster was angled to go over, the closest soldier taking aim and unloading his pistol at it.
Elario yelled and slouched down in the seat. A painful shock went through his body, arching his back and erasing his vision. Westen cried out his name, and then his words turned to garble. Unable to reply, Elario twitched and . . . he opened his eyes to dragon sight and there were the woods, there were the woods with the wall receding into the trees, get the aerials to follow them! Get to the aerials and . . .