Dragon Soul (2010)

by Jaida Jones

  I was starting to get a bad feeling about this guy, and not for the first time. Behind me, I could feel Hatty tense up like a dried squid and I knew that whatever he was thinking, it was along the same lines as me. Which said a lot, because weren’t they supposed to be on the same side?

  When you couldn’t trust your own allies, what was the world coming to?

  I was getting a little too theoretical for my own liking. I was pretty sure this story wasn’t something he’d just made up out of the blue, either, and people who talked about themselves like they’d read a tale in a book were more than a little bat-shit crazed. I needed to get out of here, back to a world with dangers I could understand, like getting robbed in the night or losing a friend to disease. They weren’t small by any means, but at least they made sense. They were predictable. This guy wasn’t.

  “What was Volstov’s great advantage in the war?” the magician asked, drawing something out from behind his back while my heart hammered in my chest.

  It took me a minute to realize I’d seen this thing before, even though recognizing it threw me for a loop at first. I’d been the one to find it—and, after that, I’d been the one to sell it, for a pretty fucking price, at that. So I knew before he got to his grand finish what it was he was planning on showing us. The closer to the compass he brought the piece—at first glance it was a hunk of twisted metal, the surface dull and burned on one side and fiercely polished on the other, exactly the way I’d found it—the wilder the motions of the hands became until, at last, they scissored to a stop. All four of them pointed to the piece of metal, curved and sharpened at one end like a lotus leaf.

  I was pretty tempted to say something to the effect of Yeah, I’ve seen that, and before you ever did too, but I managed to restrain myself. I deserved a fucking medal.

  “All right,” I said. “That’s pretty incredible.”

  “Your lack of imagination…” the madman began, then trailed off, like he didn’t even think chastising me was worth his time.

  “I’ve got a lot of imagination,” I countered, just because I was too stupid to hold my tongue. “It’s free, isn’t it?”

  “Then imagine this,” the madman said, thrusting the twisted hunk of metal right up into my face. “Imagine what the Ke-Han Empire could do if they harnessed the power of the dragons. Even a mouse could restore us, given the right materials for re-creation.”

  A shiver ran down my spine. He was crazy all right; only a madman would dream of trying to start up a war it’d taken us one hundred years to end in the first place.

  “What does that have to do with me?” I asked, holding my voice steady. “Why didn’t you just take the thing for yourself and leave me to live out the rest of my uneventful, unimaginative life?”

  “We find things for a reason,” the madman said. “I believe in destiny. That you are so well suited for this task must be the trick of an ill-humored god, but I have never been one to ignore the signs. Unless, of course, it works in my favor.”

  If you believe in destiny, I thought, then what do you think about our city now? Or the people starving in the streets for all anyone cares? Why not let the dragons be?

  Destiny wasn’t the sort of thing I had any reason to believe in. And the people who did believe in it pissed me off something fierce. I eyed Hatty’s dagger, wondering if I could get it away in time to arm myself and make a break for freedom.

  Even if I could, that would’ve been too fucking stupid, even for me. Where did I think I’d go after that?

  “All right,” I said again. “I’ll play this game. You want something from me. Let’s get it out in the open.”

  “Aha,” the madman said. The ghosts over his eyes settled into the shadows, coloring them faintly gray, and if that wasn’t the creepiest sight I’d ever seen in my life, then I was prepared not to live much longer just so I wouldn’t have to see what could top that. “The way I see it, matters are simple enough. You have two choices.”

  “And those are?” I asked, with more courage about my prospects than I felt.

  “One: You die here,” the madman said, simply, like he was telling me how much it’d be for that pound of rice. “You’ve seen enough of something far too important to continue your life as it is—and there’s no doubt in my mind that you’d sell the information to the highest bidder, no matter what I might tell you of the repercussions.” He paused to let that sink in, and I paused to agree with him. He was right, in a way. I’d sell that information, but not just for the money—I’d do it for a personal grudge as well, just to sink him in deep shit.

  Next to me, Hatty cleared his throat, probably bored with proceedings and ready to get back to his wife and kids, or whatever it was he had at home. If he’d been as scared as I was before, he sure as hell wasn’t showing it now.

  “I see you’re impatient,” the madman continued. “Well, I will oblige you. We all have business to attend to. Very well, then; your second option is to give yourself up in service to your country after so much of your life has been devoted to matters other than patriotism. As you might have guessed, we are currently short on manpower. Tragically short, in fact. Most of us who still operate do so unbeknownst to his imperial greatness.” He tilted his head, like he was imparting some big secret to me. “It’s rumored that the first man among us who can restore the empire to its former glory will be honored for five generations. With such a prize on the line, you can hardly blame us for not working together.”

  “Real honorable,” I said, but at least I didn’t spit on the floor. “Why don’t you send my friend here? He seems sturdy. He could probably handle it.”

  At my back, Hatty stiffened. Ha-ha, I thought. See how he liked it.

  “Soldiers are suspect in these distressing times,” the magician said. “We cannot deploy them as we might wish to, especially with an embassy from Volstov arriving at our capital in a matter of days. For this mission, we are in need of someone less impressive, less memorable, than a real hero. We are in need of a dung beetle.”

  It bothered me less that he’d called me a bug and more that he was referring to a mysterious “we”—like he could’ve been talking about anyone, and the last person to know who I’d be in cahoots with if I signed up for this shit was me.

  I looked around nervously, momentarily caught Hatty’s eye, and shared something with him I wish I hadn’t: sympathy.

  I ignored it. “You have no reason to trust me,” I said. “Whatever you want me to do—I mean, supposing I even could do it—what tells you I wouldn’t just up and run?”

  “I’ve taken precautions against that,” the madman said. Then, before I had time to react to that, he grabbed my hand with one of his and pressed the compass into my palm.

  Light flashed through the room, about as sharp and bright as the pain that flashed through my hand. It was like reaching down for a piece of scrap metal that hadn’t yet cooled off from the street fires, only about ten times worse. I could feel the burning in my blood, scorching white. And then, as soon as it had started, it was all over.

  “I require a very special part of the Volstov dragons for my plan,” I heard him say. “Only one survived the crashes at the end of the war. Some foolish creature ran off with this part after the capture of her pilot—thought he’d sell it, no doubt. The trick of it is he actually managed to unload the thing before I caught up with him. That is what I need, and it is the only thing I need, aside from your fair personage, of course; I can’t be distracted by every discarded talon and scale scattered about our fair countryside. I’ve calibrated this device to find what I desire, and only that. Even a dung beetle should be able to handle so simple a task.”

  I blinked, tears sparking in the corners of my eyes. I wasn’t about to let anyone see me cry, certainly not these bastards, but it was my body reacting to pain and not my heart reacting to any deeper hurt.

  For there, implanted into the palm of my hand, was my treasure. It was the perfect size.

  “You’re going to need s
ome gloves,” the madman said.

  ROOK

  The facts, as my fucking blabbermouth brother was so fond of saying, were these:

  That idiot with the broken face knew even less than I’d given him credit for. Either that, or he was the best liar I’d ever seen, but considering some of the shit I’d threatened him with, I doubted it. He didn’t seem like the fucking type.

  He’d bought the scale off some guy living in the Cobalt foothills—the kind of rat bastard who made a profit off of everyone else’s misfortune. When pressed—my boot on his neck and the sound of Thom’s pen scritching away at the page as he took notes like this was a fucking ’Versity class on how to shit-kick information out of somebody—he added that that rat bastard had said something about the scale coming fresh from the Ke-Han capital, which was where all the good stuff was being sold these days.

  That was when I’d yanked Ginger up by his collar and held him there until he started turning all sorts of pretty blue and purple. It was a rare fucking son-of-a who could lie through something like that, and I wasn’t about to go waltzing back into Ke-Han territory based on information some Cindy trying to save his own ass fed me.

  And that was pretty much where the transcription had ended too, since Thom had some kind of prissy problem with writing down words when they were being choked out of a prisoner. Prisoner my ass, since Ginger deserved what he was getting, and worse, but in the end none of that mattered.

  He wasn’t lying and he’d told me all he knew.

  He could get out, get lost, get a bunch of his friends to come after me, get revenge, whatever he wanted. I could deal with that; I’d dealt with a whole lot worse.

  Anyway, I didn’t even have to prepare myself because I’d done enough to make Ginger piss himself sideways trying to get away from me, and still I refused to let him go. After the little mother-licking piece of shit fainted I let him drop, storming out of the room and waiting for Thom to follow.

  “What do you think?” I asked. I didn’t have any more room for getting angry, since I’d about taken up all the room in my body already. But if I had, I’d have been pretty fucking pissed that I’d stooped to asking my kid brother his opinion on something to do with the corps and my girl.

  Fuck me, but I didn’t have anyone else to ask.

  He was busy folding up his notes like he was just as surprised to get a consult on the subject as I was, but his head flew up like a startled fucking rabbit’s once he caught on. At least he’d held his own in that brawl downstairs, but barely. And my attentions were divided the entire time because I needed to be looking out for him, which wasn’t anything like brawling used to be.

  “He had little reason to lie to us,” Thom said, rubbing his sleeve over his mouth. There was still ink under his nose, but fuck if I was gonna be the one to point it out. Hell, I wasn’t gonna be around forever, and eventually he’d have to start picking up on these things for himself. “Men tend to lose their reticence once their bladder’s done the same, if you’ll pardon the allusion.”

  I didn’t know what the fuck he was asking me to pardon since I was the one who’d made the guy piss his pants in the first place, but I figured playing along’d be faster than starting another argument. My teeth were gonna be powder by this time tomorrow with how tight I had ’em clenched. I deserved some kind of award just for keeping a civil tongue in my head, but bastion if I didn’t hate all this prancing around.

  “It does make sense,” Thom continued, stopping up the inkwell he carried around with him and rubbing his thumb over the top nervously. I folded my arms over my chest and waited for him to start making sense.

  “Well, it makes sense that contraband items would be appearing from the conquered territory,” Thom continued. “Not to sound like a lecture—I know how much you hate that—but all the Ke-Han’s resources are no doubt currently quite strained; they can’t attempt to rebuild their city, recall all their soldiers from their stations, deal with the chaos currently visited upon their capital, and keep a sharp eye on everything that enters and leaves the city, all at once. The black market thrives even when conditions are prime for stopping it. And besides…”

  “There’s a whole lot more they can sell now,” I finished. Lecture or not, that was something I could understand.

  “It is a curious question,” Thom murmured, suddenly lost in his own little ’Versity world. I wanted to tell him to snap out of it right away, but it was finally a topic that was halfway useful. “One would assume that all the major parts have been returned to Volstov—the Esar issued strict commands on that matter. But Balfour did say there was a great deal of protest—”

  “Politics,” I muttered. “None of my fucking business. Better than having ’em in a museum, anyway. They wouldn’t’ve wanted it.”

  “It is troubling,” Thom concluded, looking up at me. “A great many things about the past few hours have been exceedingly troubling, but I mean this more on a hypothetical level.”

  “You mean what,” I said, with enough bite to my words to make him rethink the gobbledygook he was currently spouting.

  “There’s a difference between sitting back and watching as you help a man to piss his breeches for information,” Thom clarified, “and wondering what will happen to the world if the technology behind such weaponry is being sold to whoever is capable of paying for it. Do you see the difference?”

  Bastion help me, but I almost fucking laughed.

  “In any case,” Thom went on, looking away from me to attend to his collection of fucking quills, “it would seem that the scale you have now must have come from the Ke-Han capital. The route it traveled is conjecture; we can’t trace its trajectory beyond knowing where it began and where it ended up.”

  “So you’re saying we gotta make a detour into Ke-Han territory?” I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less if I was being perfectly fucking honest with myself. My skin twinged just thinking about it—a whole mess of scars left neat as you please across my back like I’d been the one thrown from my horse into some nasty fucking blueberry brambles, only these weren’t by accident. There wasn’t much love lost between the Ke-Han and me, and I was pretty sure they knew what I looked like a little better than some backwater Volstovic farmhands.

  “I…Oh,” said my genius brother, catching up with the lead dog in the race at fucking last. “I suppose that is what I’m saying, isn’t it?”

  Not one word about the Hanging Gardens of Wherever, either, and I had to give him credit for that if nothing else.

  Thom drew in a deep breath, so I knew that whatever he said next, it was going to be something real stupid.

  “Do you really think that’s wise?” he asked finally.

  “No,” I answered.

  He frowned. “If you would take just a moment to—”

  “The Ke-Han hate me,” I said, “and they have every right to. I hate them, too. I’m not going there thinking it’d be easy. But if they’re selling off pieces of her, then I’m going to be there, plain and simple. I’ll track down every last rat bastard who thinks they can do something like that and live, and I’ll teach them all the lessons their mamas didn’t.” I grinned, but I didn’t feel like I was smiling. “And I’ll finally see a little piece of the place I’ve been fighting all my fucking life too. Pretty funny, isn’t it?”

  “But what do you hope to accomplish?” Thom asked miserably.

  “I’m taking what’s mine,” I told him. It was as simple as that. “She deserves to rest the same as anyone when they’re dead and gone. And no one else out there has any right to touch her.”

  We were quiet after that, though I wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d won the argument. I wasn’t the sort to hold by any kind of tradition, so maybe I’d just stunned him silent by telling him I wanted to lay Have to rest, but this definitely wasn’t over. There was no winning with some people, no matter how fast you talked.

  From outside in the hall, where I’d tossed Ginger after I’d finished with him, I heard
a low groan, which meant he was waking up. He’d have to explain how he’d ruined his breeches to his wife, if he had one, and I tried to think about that instead of whatever was happening on the other side of the mountains. It was bad enough she’d been busted to pieces, but the other thoughts I was having were even worse. I had to start moving to stop thinking them.

  “I’ll go with you,” Thom said, a little too loudly, like he’d forgotten how to control the volume of his voice.

  “Who said I wanted you to come?” I asked. It couldn’t be that easy.

  “Well, it’s like this,” Thom said. “You’re going to need someone who has…connections. I could write—right now, right here—to the people I know at the ’Versity. The dragons weren’t my specialty, but I know a few students who did study them, and—more important—I know their professors. I know a man who studied the black market. There’s so much I could do to help you, and…you’re going to need help, Rook,” he said at last. There was pleading in his eyes, in his voice, in the stubborn set of his mouth.