Through the End

by Parker Jaysen

  “Raptor’s not under a reflector,” I scold her when she returns with a hypo. “Ow.”

  “It’s my last run anyway,” Dinah says flatly.

  I close my eyes.

  “You have a fever,” Dinah says. She rustles in the med kit again, and puts something bitter directly into my mouth.

  “Scoot over,” she says. “I’m going to make sure you don’t get worse.”

  There isn’t room on the pallet for two people, I think, but it’s my last thought before I realize Dinah must have given me something to make me sleep.

  We’ve been stuck here for days while we monitor the vanishing hellhole and its aftermath. It’s time to acknowledge that the hellrun is broken, if not beaten. I have a pronounced limp. The dragon is huge. It’s possible that it grew perceptibly since the team reunited. Dinah is skulking around looking for something to fight.

  Thea has established intermittent communication with the guild, and this would be great news, except her secretiveness has redoubled and I don’t know how to pull rank to find out what’s going on.

  I don’t know if I want to.

  I might have lost track of days.

  Some glory run this has turned out to be. An awkward reluctance hangs in the air as we putter around camp by night and rest sleeplessly by day.

  It’s late evening. On a normal travel night we’d be well on our way, but even though the hellhole has all but disappeared, we decided to give my leg one more day to heal.

  Lucy’s at my tent asking to speak with me. Thea must have sent her to do her dirty work. Finally. Stasis will end.

  “Just tell me,” I grit out.

  Lucy looks startled. She’s standing in the entry of the tent, because there’s nowhere else to stand. “Okay,” she says. “We’re leaving.”

  At first I think she means they’re taking over the mission and telling us to get going. That we’re on our way to deliver Mouse. But she means something else.

  “They’re going to kill Mouse. The guild.” She is whispering, as if Mouse can hear them. As if Mouse could understand them.

  I frown at her. In my grumpiness, I almost say something I would regret. Demon dragons, and all that. I flash on that viper at the pool, the weight of the dagger in my fist.

  Lucy’s looking at me expectantly.

  I suppose I should have suspected something like this. It’s a guild rider’s first instinct. Dragons are evil. Of course the guild will kill her. It’s what the guild does.

  But it’s not something any of the four of us really believe anymore.

  “What do you mean, leaving?” I say.

  “We’re taking her and hiding her.” Lucy manages to look both miserable and defiant at once.

  “We.”

  “Thea and me.”

  I’m the opposite of authoritative laying on this pallet with one leg stretched out.

  “What if I come to a different decision?” I feel a clutch of something like adrenaline. This is a mutiny. I am supposed to act.

  Lucy hesitates. “We hope you don’t.”

  I push myself up into a sitting position. This is not the proper way to do this. Mutiny or meeting, you have to put everything on the table. Like cards.

  “We don’t even have a table,” I mutter. Lucy eyes me uncertainly.

  “Get everybody.”

  We sit in the cool sand with a stack of canteens nearby under a reflective canopy, Dinah on my left hand.

  “I want to be clear,” I say. “No decision has yet been made.”

  Thea opens her mouth but immediately closes it again.

  “I guess you want to do one thing. We can talk about that. Other people want to do other things. Everybody has reasons. But we’re here, they’re not, and I will determine what is the right thing to do. My decision.”

  “The guild might override,” Thea offers.

  “You have suggested absconding with guild cargo,” I say sharply. “So are you the voice of the guild here?”

  Thea firms her mouth but says nothing.

  “There’s no guild voice here – or we’re all guild.” I look at the circle of faces, our little band of riders. I see the strength in all of them. “We’re all guild, and we are capable of making a path in the darkness. It’s what we do. But help me understand something.”

  I glance over at the dragon, just now happily tidying up a meal of scorpion, tossing bits of pincer and carapace around like game tokens.

  “Why have they put us through all this, just to – do this thing?” I let my gaze settle on Thea. “It could have been taken care of even before your marsh run. They could have had us do it. They still could.”

  “Not that we would,” mutters Dinah.

  “They have been using eggs for a while now.” Thea looks offended at the very notion. It’s clear this was new information to her, as it is to us now.

  “Using?”

  “They grind them up, infuse this and that.”

  Charlie looks at the raptor parked next to the tents. “Infuse. Servos?”

  “More. Much more. We think – ” Thea stops and looks at Lucy and then continues. “We think Mouse enhances our mage abilities, just being nearby.”

  Has my dowsing been more sensitive with the dragon around? Dinah has seemed particularly fast, blurrily so. Ley magic is known to be useless in the desert, yet Lucy charted the hellhole.

  Maybe there’s something to it.

  “So what, they’d grind – ” I stop. “Okay, for real, how much does she understand what we say?”

  Thea smiles and Lucy laughs.

  “How much do you understand, Mousie girl?” Thea says.

  Mouse pushes aside her scorpion game, and walks what is for her two paces from the other end of the campsite. She reaches with one claw – a single talon the size of my forearm – into the solar’s halo of lamplight and delicately taps a helmet that’s lying in the sand there, on one side where there’s a line of encrusted gems.

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “She’s showing you the infused mechanism.”

  This creature, a couple of months old, still a child by most definitions, understands our intent, our meaning, if not our words.

  She is sentient.

  We humans argue for a long time. Eventually the sun comes around again, and we pause for rest, for thinking, and I withdraw to my tent and seal the flap.

  When I’m thoroughly alone, I hit the pallet again with my fist. This poor pallet has taken a lot of abuse this run. Well, it’s no great shakes either, as a bed. So there.

  The guild has been my life since I was barely more than a child. My sister, Philippa, went ahead of me in the guild, eventually moved on to the great southern continent. A family tradition, the guild.

  And I love it.

  There are no saints. I’m no saint. Riders work hard and play hard. And there have been screw-ups, and scoundrels, and riders who put personal profit over duty.

  But the guild has subverted itself, if this is true, if they’re grinding up sentient creatures to fuel the very fight against them.

  Of course the dragons fight back. Who wouldn’t team up with hell itself to save its offspring, its future?

  My braid has come undone with all my tossing. I push the hair back from my face.

  Thea hadn’t known, or she says she hadn’t. But my instinct is to trust Thea. She’s forthright, highly competent, and Lucy is in love with her. That has to be enough to go on.

  Thea’s been talking to “the guild” all along, the whole journey. But specifically who? And are they sympathetic to the dragons? Or do they even know? Maybe all we have to do is tell them. Dragons are sentient. And they’ll just be, my bad.

  Somehow I don’t think so.

  I feel sick. How many eggs have I delivered? What else have I carried?

  Who could think this is good or moral?

  The tent flap parts, and Dinah slips inside.

  She held me so gently at the poolside, and she holds me so gently right now, i
t’s like she’s keeping me afloat in the middle of this terrible decision.

  I turn my face into Dinah’s cheek.

  Dinah being so close should distract me, but somehow things are clearer.

  Mouse is my responsibility and mission. Even if the guild gave her to me and even if they meant something twistedly different, I will protect this creature.

  I’ll be protecting her from the guild itself.

  Dinah shifts, and I realize that she’s still awake.

  “Don’t make a decision that leaves me behind,” Dinah whispers.

  Holy shit.

  I’d never leave her behind, she knows that. But now I see it’s more than the dragon. It’s Dinah, too. Her rads, her future, her life. In my hands, as surely as she’s holding me now.

  I turn in the barely-dark, and Dinah is looking at me soberly. “Okay,” I whisper, and I’m answering Dinah’s request and maybe something more.

  “Okay?”

  We’re looking into each other’s eyes and I don’t ever want to move. But I nod and Dinah kisses me.

  It’s a chaste kiss for a millisecond, like a peck one might give a friend.

  Then it’s not chaste.

  “This is out of order,” I think I hear myself say, and then my mouth is eager on hers. Desire blows through me like a shot of venom, making me feel a fuse of liquid heat deep inside.

  “We kissed in the pool,” Dinah says. She puts her hands to my face. “We looked at each other like this and we kissed.”

  We’d kissed, yes. But not like this. This is hot and is going to go much farther right now, on this ridiculous pallet, and I moan and meet Dinah’s tongue with my own instead of trying to impose order.

  Years, and she tastes exactly the same. Salt and citrus and she has brushed her teeth before coming in.

  My stomach jolts at the realization that she must have wanted this before she even came in. Wanted me.

  “You taste like lemon and mint,” Dinah says. “How is that so delicious?”

  “Lemon and mint is delicious,” I whisper. We’re on a pallet built for one and my leg is killing me, and I couldn’t care less.

  I brush Dinah’s face with my fingertips, her cheek, curling one hand around her jaw.

  There’s hesitancy in her eyes.

  She came here, she kissed me, how can she be hesitant? Dinah! Dinah, the bravest rider anyone has ever known.

  She’s still holding back.

  Dinah closes her eyes with a hitched breath. If she doesn’t want to go any farther than this, I’ll respect that. I start to pull my hand back, but Dinah presses her face into the curve of my palm, catlike.

  I raise my head and again meet Dinah’s lips with my own. “I’m glad you’re here,” I say, without pulling my mouth away.

  It’s not much as exclamations of undying love go, but at least I don’t humiliate myself.

  “Anyway,” says Dinah gruffly, “I’ll go wherever you say, as long as it’s with you.”

  I shiver in the cooling air. Dark is deepening and the desert lies open for our final leg. Our final move – but first, caffeine. Then, decisions.

  The other two smirk when Dinah emerges from my tent. We’d only mostly snuggled.

  But we’d crossed a line. A good line! But a line.

  And I have no time to analyze any of it, because mutiny awaits.

  “I’m glad you didn’t slip away in the night,” I say to Thea.

  Thea looks uncharacteristically uncertain. “Possibly we should have,” she says. “You could have gone on, gotten credit for the mission.”

  “It’s no longer a mission I want credit for,” I say heavily.

  Thea seems to relax, as if she’d worried that they’d wake to guild leadership taking custody of us or killing the dragon while we slept.

  I should have worried the same. Who knows what ears the guild has? Maybe the raptors have recorders. How have I never thought of this?

  If they have, it’s too late anyway.

  “Where had you planned to take her?”

  In all the earnest arguing last night, no one had asked this.

  “She was smaller when we first started talking about it,” Thea admits. “But there’s an old volcano basin at a place called Monterrey, about three nights from here. I’m told it’s defensible, little-traveled. We thought we would get there, hunker down, get our wits about us.”

  “Who told you? Who else knows?”

  Lucy looks alert and Thea folds her hands. “I can’t tell you that until I’m sure you won’t harm her.”

  Dinah slams her canteen against the rockface. “We are here contemplating mutiny ourselves, you guild toad.”

  In cards, toads usually win, I want to say. Instead, I hold out my hand, palm up. Dinah curls her fingers around my hand.

  “Maura,” says Lucy quickly, before anyone slams anything else.

  Maura – Maura who does everything by the book, who once dinged me for bringing back too much garnet? That Maura?

  “We trained together,” Thea says simply. She looks drawn and worried.

  Training together is a real bond. I glance down at my own fingers entwined with Dinah’s. And it makes sense. Maura has principles. I know that much.

  “Okay,” I say. “Do we know everything we need to know?”

  “No.”

  Thea has come to put all her cards on the table. We clear a circle of sand one more time. It feels like a ritual, a new one. The guild mutiny rituals: a handbook.

  “The raptors have trackers on them. To find injured riders or abandoned raptors,” Thea adds. “We have to disable them if we don’t want to be found.”

  “Nuh-uh,” says Dinah. “That’s no good, if they’re monitoring us and those raptor signals go dead. But what if the team splits in two – ” she holds up her hands to stop any argument. “I’m not saying who is who in this scenario, but don’t touch the trackers, and some of us – ” and she barely stops herself from indicating Thea and Lucy – “some of us take the raptors, trackers and all, as if the mission is still in order.” She’s talking faster and gesticulating as she continues, and it’s clear she’s thinking she’s not in the group continuing to Sand City.

  I try not to smile. She’s adorable when she’s excited.

  “And the other two,” says Dinah, now not stopping herself from pointing to herself and me, “take the dragon. Go cross-country towards this Monterrey, wherever it is, and hide there.” She abandons all pretense. “We’ll leave you with all the supplies to enhance your survival.”

  She folds her arms triumphantly.

  “Absolutely not,” Thea says. “The dragon is ours.”

  Mouse raises her head. Her large multifaceted eyes, green and chaotic violet, look around the group before coming to rest on Dinah.

  Dinah shrugs. “She votes for me.”

  “There is no vote,” I say. “Creatures can’t vote.”

  Mouse keeps her eyes on Dinah.

  “Whoever it is,” I say, “that’s a long walk.

  “We ride the dragon.”

  I will swear to my dying day that Mouse raised her eyebrows at that.

  “Di.”

  Thea and Lucy and Dinah erupt into argument. Mouse looks amused, if that’s even possible.

  I stand. “I think I have the facts. I am going into my tent to think it through. Talk amongst yourselves, whatever.” I pause. “Watch out for Dinah if you play cards. She cheats.”

  “That’s a dirty lie!” Dinah is laughing. “I win is what she means.”

  Finally it’s clear: everyone is my responsibility in this decision. The dragon, the weird guild escort. Dinah.

  The future of the guild itself rests on this decision. Surely there are more riders who would back this move, but they aren’t here. However it breaks down, the guild won’t be the same. If I fly off on the back of a dragon with Dinah, my future with the guild is over. But my future with the guild is inevitably altered anyway – her last run.

  The sight of the dragon’s
eyes on Dinah keeps me coming back to the idea. If we’re doing this for sentience, shouldn’t we trust that sentience?

  On the first day of training, Dinah, one of the smallest new riders, was next to me in line. No one really thought much of her that first day, not even me. Little. Quiet in the classroom. What was to notice?

  Until it came to physical training. It wasn’t that she was particularly skilled – we could see that her magic was in her bodily strength. But more than that, she chose the hardest challenges. If there was a rope ladder, she went for the highest peg. If there was a pool, she’d jump at the widest point.

  She laughed uproariously when she fell. She crowed when she made it to the top.

  And if she won a race, which was always, she’d circle back, lap the losers, and cheer them on with such fire! Personal bests became routine with Dinah around.

  You do the thing all the way.

  Why the fuck are we even here otherwise?

  Why else indeed.

  I open the tent.

  “We will escort the dragon to the volcano,” I announce without preamble. “Dinah and I.”

  They’ve expected this decision, it’s clear. Lucy puts her hand on Thea’s arm, but Thea isn’t arguing.

  “We don’t know if she can even carry us. She’s young.” I look around at the team. “There are other questions. What’s your cover story when you get to Sand City? We need comms security. And there’s a spare raptor one night’s ride from here. So let’s get organized.”

  Thea comes to my tent to pick up the sack of medical machinery we found at the ruins. “Maybe these will distract the council,” I say.

  “Ha, right.” She stands in the doorway like she has more to say. “A creature like her.” She shrugs. “You can forget, because she’s made of sheer power, that she’s vulnerable.”

  She cares about the dragon, deeply. I can see it in her. “I’ll be careful.”

  “And the other one, the mage. She has vulnerabilities, too.” As if a guild elder could know more about Dinah than I do.

  I think of Dinah’s superhuman arms cradling me so gently in the water.

  “She is brave, but not about everything,” Thea says.

  What nonsense. Dinah is afraid of nothing.

  Dinah is certainly not afraid to mount a fucking dragon. She goes right up to Mouse’s head and talks to her for a moment, just quietly enough that I can’t hear.