Dragon Soul (2010)

by Jaida Jones

  “Well, my mother imparted more than just the occasional beating,” Badger said, almost smiling, like maybe that’d been a joke. I was surprised he’d bothered to listen in the first place, let alone that he’d remembered long enough to refer back to it later.

  “You must’ve been firstborn,” I said. “They always miss out on the fun stuff.”

  “First of four,” Badger said thoughtfully. “I wasn’t aware I’d made it obvious.”

  “Only to someone from a big family,” I told him, flexing my hand happily. “Don’t worry. As far as I’m concerned you’ve done ’em proud tonight.”

  “I’m glad it’s working,” Badger replied. He threw the empty skins onto the fire, which crackled sickly in response. “You should remember what they look like so you can keep an eye out.”

  That was the end of talking about our families, I figured. It was about as clear as a command. That was fine. Probably for the best. No point getting too close to the enemy, and all that good sense.

  “Spiky little green things,” I answered. “I got it under control. When I find the motherfucker that did this to me again I’m going to show him what it feels like to have foreign objects jammed into uncomfortable parts of his body.”

  Badger snorted like maybe he was laughing, and I cracked an eye open to check.

  “Didn’t know they bred a sense of humor into soldiers these days,” I said.

  He sighed, settling back—or at least, looking as settled as he ever could. “My attitude toward our mutual acquaintance is an exception to the general rule.”

  “That fucking bastard,” I agreed. “Whoever thought he was worthy of a promotion ought to be kicking themselves right about now.”

  Badger made a noise like there was something stuck in his throat. “Understand, it’s a rather difficult time for the empire, at present,” he explained, slowly, drawing each word out as though his honor depended on the enunciation. “Our great emperor has…and now the capital is beset by a diplomatic envoy from our conquerors. When you take into account that our magicians were all but destroyed in the final days of the war…”

  “Leaves us at kind of a disadvantage, doesn’t it?” I said. The things he was saying weren’t news, by any means—enforced mourning for our great emperor aside, it was like a punch to the gut of everyone’s pride that we’d lost—but it sounded different coming from the mouth of someone who got all his information through official bulletins instead of gossip and hearsay.

  “It does,” said Badger. “No one knows exactly how many survived the destruction of the dome. Very few, perhaps a dozen. Under normal circumstances, I believe the matter of the magicians would take precedence over all when it came to rebuilding. But the emperor has been distracted, I understand, with the delegation, and such things get swept under the rug. As a result, those who remain are enjoying more freedom than they might otherwise have been given.”

  “Freedom?” I said. “Freedom our friends in Volstov wouldn’t allow, I’d wager.”

  “They…” Badger said, trailing off again.

  “Huh,” I said. Why wasn’t I surprised the guy was involved in something shady as shit? I looked down at my hand, where the itch had faded but the skin was still red, like I couldn’t fool it with some dumb plant. “So this guy’s got a plan to track down the fire-breathers and no one thinks to ask how he wants to do it, so long as he gets it done.”

  “Favorable results are very effective in silencing those who would disagree with unfavorable methods,” Badger said. There was something about the calm in his voice that made me want to clock him again. “But so long as he is successful—so long as you are successful—I doubt it will matter much to anyone, one way or another.”

  “That’s a cold fucking way to look at life,” I protested, surprising myself a little. I wasn’t some naive kid who expected the world to be fair and just. Hell, I should’ve laughed at myself just for thinking about it. Still, being a part of it pissed me off—the first time I’d ever thought about general rights for the people, because it was my thumbs caught between the bamboo.

  “It is what it is,” said Badger, turning away from me to stare into the fire. If I hadn’t seen his face before—up close and in the daylight—I would’ve assumed he was an old man now. There was something about the way he held himself, and the lack of passion in his voice when he spoke about things that ought to have fired up any young soldier: our country and patriotism and the like. He was a strange one. “I would keep an eye on that hand of yours, if I were you. Concern yourself with the things you do have control over.”

  “Yeah.” I sighed, not really sure what I was supposed to do with that except agree. “I guess so.”

  “If we keep on this road at this pace, we’ll reach the desert by tomorrow,” he added, tucking back against one of the bigger rocks.

  “That all depends on what my friend here tells us,” I said, holding up my hand. I hadn’t missed that “we,” either. Privately, I was thinking it might not be so bad to have a partner that wasn’t stuck in my hand and could actually talk. Not that I’d ever say it out loud.

  “Of course,” Badger said. “You’ll be sure to keep me informed.”

  I didn’t altogether like how sure of himself he sounded, but I guessed there wasn’t much I could do about that. I faked a yawn. “If I up and leave you in the morning, you can always follow me with your great tracking skills. I’ll never know you’re still on my trail.”

  “It isn’t so terrible to me,” Badger said, tone measured, “that I am not adept at sneaking around in the dark.”

  “You wouldn’t last a day without your titles,” I told him. “Just a bit of friendly advice.”

  The sound of the fire dying down began to soothe me, and I wasn’t planning on ignoring the aloe’s help. I’d take sleep where I could get it because I was starting to get crazy with how tired I was, and that wouldn’t help my case for freedom in the slightest.

  “I can’t help but notice,” Badger said softly, “when I was looking at the compass…The hands aren’t moving at all, are they?”

  “Maybe you’d better get some shut-eye,” I told him. “Don’t think your eyes are working right.”

  I tucked in against a bundle of silks—wrapped around with some cotton fabric that’d already been damaged by the fires, just to keep them safe from all the sand and grit. It made a good pillow and it’d make some fine dresses, too, once I could get it back to my folks. My mom and my three sisters would have to drop all their regular work and start sewing, ’cause Madoka was about to bring them a gold mine.

  I heard the Badger huff softly. Maybe he was laughing at the look on my face, and maybe he had every right to laugh. Or maybe he was just jealous that I had a pillow and he didn’t. Either way, I didn’t care much about it, because I was getting some much needed sleep, and that was something you couldn’t pay for with a whole field of silk.

  ROOK

  I was starting to have these dreams, and I sure as shit didn’t like them.

  It’d been a long time since I’d had to dream about flying, since dreams were supposed to be for what you couldn’t do. When I woke up I had a sour taste in my mouth and a dark feeling in my gut, and being around other people only made it worse.

  “We’re half a day from Karakhum now,” Thom said. “Here’s an interesting fact—did you know that khum is the generic name for desert in these parts? Kara just so happens to mean capital, as well, which makes the etymology of the name…”

  I didn’t want to know the look I was giving him right then. All I could hope was that it was enough to make him feel his balls start to shrivel—that is, if they were even still there, which was something I currently had to ask myself every minute of my fucking life. At least he had stopped talking, which was a fucking gift from the desert gods—who, by the by, shared the same mythological roots as the Ke-Han pantheology or whatever the word was—and if I’d been a praying sort of man, I would’ve dropped down to my knees and kissed the sand right where
I was walking.

  Except I wasn’t a praying man, and I didn’t want to waste the time.

  “I’ve always wanted to see Karakhum,” Thom said, very carefully. Good. He’d better be careful. If I had to hear one more interesting fact about something that ended in the syllables “ology,” I was gonna hit him and we’d both fucking regret it.

  “Yeah?” I snarled. “Why’s that?”

  He seemed shocked I’d even asked him something, then this sickening grateful look came over his face, like I’d done him a big favor just by talking to him. If he didn’t start getting more faith in himself, then he really was hopeless, but it wasn’t my job to teach it to him. If he acted like he was worthless, then fuck me if he wasn’t. It was only once he grew a pair and stood up for himself that he’d start being worth anybody’s time.

  But apparently no amount of punching could get him to bounce right back up. He just let it roll off his back like water off a duck and kept coming back for more.

  “Well,” he said, stumbling over a rocky patch, “if you must know, I read a book about it a very long time ago. Not much information came out of the desert—it was too difficult, what with the war, and they trade mostly by sea with Jikji through a port city quite, quite far from Karakhum, since tensions over the mountain border were so heated. The book was a very old one, and I found it in the trash.”

  “Did you teach yourself to read with it or something?” I asked. The whole thing was ridiculous enough already, but when Thom didn’t answer I let out a groan. “Bastion fuck,” I said. “That’s rich.”

  Thom shrugged. “I’m sure the book was somewhat incorrect factually,” he admitted, like that mattered. At least it didn’t have to do with his favorite topic, the ologies of the world. “I can’t imagine—what with the trek through the desert to the port being so arduous—that things are really as luxurious as the book led its reader to believe. Still…”

  “It’s a fancy daydream,” I said. “I get it. I’m glad this is fun for you.”

  “I’m trying to look on the bright side of a shit situation,” Thom said, and immediately after looked horrified.

  I couldn’t help but grin. “That’s more like it. But don’t use language like that. Makes you sound uneducated.”

  “I know,” Thom said miserably. “Thank you, Rook. I was aware of that.”

  “Guess I’m just a bad influence,” I told him.

  “The worst there is,” he agreed.

  He had me there. Bastion, I was even the first one to admit it. It was why he shouldn’t’ve been here, talking on and on about the things he was gonna learn, when I was the one leading him through shit and muck and sand and dirt, cursing all the while and dreaming of other stuff—the stuff in my life that came between us. Life was too fucking up in the air right now, and I was too fucking down on the ground.

  “Do you want to talk about anything?” Thom asked.

  “We were talking.”

  He scuffed at the ground, causing himself to trip again. I could’ve told him that would happen, but again, there was stuff a guy had to learn by himself. How he’d lived in Molly for so long without at least a broken nose or a couple of missing teeth to show for it was a real miracle, but he’d done it somehow—probably by talking common thugs to sleep and giving them the slip while they were snoring. Anything was fucking possible.

  “Right. We were talking…about something you have relatively little interest in,” Thom pointed out.

  “If you knew that already, then why do you keep talking to me about it in the first place?”

  “Because I don’t know what else to say to you,” Thom said. “Isn’t that obvious?”

  I guessed he was right. He usually was, even if he was thick as brick most of the time. It was how much of a genius he thought he was when he could walk right into a wall because he wasn’t looking where he was going that grated my fucking nerves.

  “Pretty obvious,” I agreed.

  “Do you have any suggestions?” Thom asked, looking like he already knew the answer to that one. Good. He should have.

  I grunted, feeling like this was a waste of time. “Half a day to Karakhum, right?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Thom said. He was being careful again, but I could tell he was real pleased to hear that I’d been listening to him. Someday, when I was feeling more charitable—which was liable to be never, but as they said in the Fans, a girl could always hope—I’d have to fucking teach him not to be so disgustingly grateful for the meager scraps of attention people threw his way. “Why do you ask?”

  “When we get there, we’re lookin’ up that friend of yours, right?”

  “Geoffrey,” Thom interjected, looking at me instead of the road ahead and stumbling over some low little scrub bushes as a result. He could look where he was going; that’d help. “Geoffrey Bless.”

  “Whatever,” I said, shaking off the annoyance like a horse shook off flies. My little brother could be a damn big fly when he wanted. “Sure. Him. How long’s it gonna take to find him once we get there?”

  “Hum,” Thom said thoughtfully, like this’d never even fucking crossed his mind. “Well, when I last heard from him, he was still the only Volstovic man living in his city. Like it or not, visible minorities do tend to stand out.”

  “Sounds like a lot of fun for him,” I muttered, scratching the back of my neck. “We just gonna waltz around for a while and ask for the paleface, then?”

  “Rook!” Thom said, like he was a fucking woman and I’d walked in on it, scandalizing him so bad he needed a big feather fan to hide behind. “Please. Just—allow me to do the talking.”

  “Figures you’d learn sand-talk,” I grumbled. I was just giving him a hard time for the hell of it now, but that was at least familiar. Felt comfortable, almost—like something we both knew how to do, and no one had to think too hard about answering or feel like an ass for too long afterward. “All that brain in your head and you choose to fill it with useless junk.”

  “I…” Thom began, wilting a little. Then his back straightened with that ridiculous, stubborn pride of his and he gave me his professor look. “The correct term is Khumish; with khum meaning desert, as I explained before. Khumish is the language of the desert—well, the most universally spoken, in any case. As Geoffrey found out, there are all sorts of offshoots in dialect that make it impossible for anyone ever to become truly fluent.”

  “Bet that broke his little heart,” I said, and Thom shot me another look, this one good and mean.

  “Some people find learning an adventure,” he sniffed, following up by nearly turning his ankle on a rock.

  “Some people oughta learn how to walk in a straight line before going adventuring,” I said, and kicked the rock off the trail when I passed it.

  “Yes,” Thom said. “I take your point.”

  After that, I let nature and the desert take its course with the conversation, and it dried up like a prune. I was feeling too caught up in my own skin to work as hard as I had to with him, and clearly the way I was behaving was giving Thom the same thoughts about me. Whatever. Nothing I could do about it now, and maybe if we ever managed to track down my girl’s magician in the Khevir dunes, then I could ask him to build me some kind of brother who could keep his footing and who ate less than a stableful of horses.

  There were only two reasons I was still willing to put up with this little visit to Thom’s old ’Versity pal. Number one: Apparently he was liable to have a map of the Khevir region, which I was real eager to get my hands on. Number two: Thom’d gone and written that letter to Adamo, and damned if I wasn’t the least bit curious to hear his reaction to our girls being sold off, piece by piece, like they were prime parts of a cow at the butcher on Sunday morning. I was half expecting Adamo’d be there himself when we showed up to the other piss-pot professor’s house, but Adamo wasn’t bell-cracked like the rest of us, and even he couldn’t travel that far in this amount of time. Not unless he was flying.

  So that was it, every
thing I had to look forward to: a map and a letter. Just a heap of paper when you got right down to it, and the fact that something like that was what we were questing for really ticked me off.

  We didn’t even know if that dirty little snake from the campsite had been telling the truth. It made me itch at night, and when I wasn’t dreaming of flying, I was dreaming of that bastion-damned claw he’d been holding. He was just lucky it’d been me and not Ghislain who’d found him, or else he might’ve found himself in twice as many pieces as our girls. Fuck only knew how many other parts were in greedy, grasping hands like his right at this minute, while we were wasting our time tramping through desert, desperate for whatever scraps life threw our way. It made me want to smash the whole countryside out of existence.

  It was when I got into moods like that that I needed to get the hell away. Spend some time checking the path ahead just so I wouldn’t knock my brother’s face in just for looking at me funny. And he had kind of a funny face, sometimes—round with a snub nose that was nothing like mine—so it was hard not to. I was pretty sure he could tell too, because he stopped talking to me about ologies and desert wildlife and the maximum recorded heat on any given day in the dunes and was quiet, watching his feet now, just like I’d told him.

  So I sure as hell wasn’t the only one who was fucking relieved when we finally made it to Karakhum, cresting some dune and seeing it right away when we hadn’t before, hidden neat as you please inside a dusty little sand valley. Nothing at all like Thremedon, who made damn sure everybody knew where she was.

  For a capital city, it sure looked like a big dust bowl to me. First off, we passed through these high stone gates that I knew Thom was just dying to tell me had originated in such-and-such a place and were commandeered by Lord Obviously Compensating for Something. But he kept his mouth shut and so did I—probably because the louder we were the more attention we’d bring to ourselves. And even if we hadn’t been out of place in the Volstovic countryside, we sure as shit were out of place here.