by Anthology
“The kaffa tin.”
Song closed her eyes and shook her head. “Of course.” She looked at me then. “Whatever she told you, you can’t trust her. She has used you for you entire life. How do you not know that by now?”
"And so what? I should trust you?" I said the words, but at the same time couldn't shake her words. Why was I putting my life on the line for a woman that had betrayed me and everybody I loved? Who had pulled me half-way across the world for reasons that I couldn’t understand. Why?
Song said, "I can't tell you that you should trust me but—”
And then, mid-sentence, she threw herself to one side, raised her gun.
I squeezed the trigger.
Two gun-blasts exploded through the desert. I squeezed my eyes shut and when I opened them again I was on my back, looking up at the big blue sky. Pain radiated from my shoulder.
Oh…
And then desert became the streets of Aelia Capitolina and I was on my back again, surrounded by screaming students and hammering feet, the diesel belching of trucks and the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. Feet crunching towards me through the cold and wind of the desert; in the muggy heat of the city Sina pacing, gun in hand. Two skies, both blue and yawning.
Sina-now-Song leaned down over me. Their faces were once face, separated by twenty years. Agents of the Commissariat, cold, calculating.
They aimed their gun at my face. I was, had been, certain I was going to die. I squeezed my eyes shut. I had cheated death the first time, all those years ago, and now it had come to find me again. Full circle. What choices, what path had led me out here to this patch of desert to die?
I had come here because I loved her still, I realized now.
Another gunshot. A final one.
My eyes fluttered open. Blue sky. No Song, no Sina. I turned my throbbing head and saw her.
Attia. She looked the same, just older. A few more lines. But those eyes, those beautiful mismatched eyes. She stood like a figure from memory, in the entrance of that stone tower, a Mandate rifle smoking in her hand. A stood just like she had stood in Aelia Capitolina all those years ago with a gun in hand and a look of shock on her face. This time there was no shock.
“Attia,” I croaked. She looked at me. All at once those years were swallowed up.
She scrambled down the loose rock that led from the tower and came to kneel beside me.
“Cacō, Gaius,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” There were tears in her eyes.
What is happening.
She felt at my arm, pulled my shirt open. I turned my head and saw Song’s body beside me in the desert. Her face, slack now in death, looked no longer like an immovable stone.
“You saved me,” I whispered.
“No,” she replied. She sniffed through the tears. “Not yet.”
She untied a kerchief knotted about her neck and pressed it into my shoulder wound. I growled in agony. “Res mutatae mutatae non sunt,” she intoned. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” She laughed bitterly through the tears. “Probably not quite what we meant.”
What does this all mean, I tried to ask. Why weren’t you there? Why did you leave me? Why are you here now…
But the pain was bright light and it was shooting through my vision. I could only manage a grunt. All the exhaustion of the trip pressed down on me. The days on the road without sleep. The terror at being caught, at being found out. The fear of finding this woman who now leaned over me…
The more things change…
I passed out.
***
EXCEPRT FROM “ON DRACI AND REVOULTION”
(REDACTED)
It was once said that the true power of the draci lay in the fear that they engendered. They kept a vicious balance. Who dared start a war when the retribution would likely raze all your cities to the ground? Who dared start a revolution when it could be swallowed in searing flame? Nothing burned so bright or so hot as dragonfire. Nothing.
***
10
I woke inside the tower. Night outside—again or still, I wasn’t quite sure. White bandages were wrapped about my shoulder, and by the lightness that spread now through my body I guessed that I was probably on painkillers. I touched the wound tentatively. It seemed that bullet had only grazed me. Another scar.
Attia. Had that been her, truly?
I pushed myself upright and fought a spell of dizziness. I swallowed the vomit that rose in my throat. I stood and stumbled out into the night.
She sat at the bottom of the slope, by a low fire, tending it with a stick. My heart lurched. She sat hunched and lost in thought, her brow furrowed. She looked up at me when I emerged from the tower. She smiled.
“You’re awake,” she said.
I didn’t move. I didn’t get any closer. “What is going on?” I said.
Attia bit her lip, her smile faltering. “Come,” she said. “Sit down.” I hesitated. The strain between us was palpable. What had I expected after all these years? I made my way slowly down to the firepit. A beaten metal pot rested among the coals, and steam poured from it. I noticed then that Song’s body was gone. As I sat I saw that beside Attia was a metal chest, about the size of a suitcase. The clasps were firmly shut and GA-239 had been etched on the smooth surface. “I suppose we have a lot of catching up to do,” she said.
“I waited three days for you,” I whispered.
She exhaled loudly. “I know.”
“What happened?”
She prodded the fire with the stick. “I was arrested,” she said. “Not long after we split up. I thought I was going to be killed.” She shrugged. “Apparently they thought I was too valuable to waste away in the labour camps. They wanted me to work for them. Weapons research.”
So she had been arrested. “After all they did. All our friend they killed.” I didn’t even feel angry anymore. Just tired and confused. “You could have said no.”
“I was ready to die rather that work for them,” she said. I could hear the anger in her voice. “Until they told me that they’d found you. That they knew where you were. They even showed me fotos of you sitting in the kaffahouse where we’d agreed to meet.”
I remembered suddenly the fotos that the Commissariat Major had shown me in the hotel. Those fotos from all those years ago. A slow realization bloomed inside of me.
“They said that they would leave you alone if I worked for them. They said that if I didn’t do what they wanted, if I tried to talk to you, then they’d kill you.” She looked up at me then, tears in her eyes. “I did terrible things Gaius. I did them to protect you. Because I loved you.”
I was stunned. I couldn’t begin to wrap my head around what she’d said. “All these years, I’d thought…”
“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”
All those years on the run, hiding, alone. I remembered every relationship I’d tried to forge, how they had all been poisoned by the bitterness that I carried within me. I thought of the image I’d made of Attia, the coward, the betrayer. The woman who had cast me away for the sake of her work. The one who had left me alone and ruined my life. I’d made a story in my head, a story of my own life, that of a man wronged and cast aside. But the opposite was true. They self-pitying narrative I’d crafted, the one that had controlled my life, was a lie.
She’d loved me enough to throw away her life, to go against everything she’d believed. And in return I’d hated her.
"Attia," I said. I was beside her. In her blind spot. Her face had shifted, contracting like it did when she worried over an unsolved problem. I reached out and brushed her arm lightly. She was so close. She smelled like the fire and lavender soap.
I stood. "Look at me Attia." She did. I reached down and pulled her to her feet. In those mismatched eyes I my own pain, mirrored back at me. Look what they’ve done to us. I reached for her with both arms, one good and one bad. She staggered forward into my embrace. Her body felt so familiar against mine. I hugged her tig
ht, and didn’t care about the pain that arced through my shoulder. I held her, and hugged her, and then I started crying. As I wept I felt as though she was the one holding me, but then her body began to shake with tears and we were holding each other.
We stayed like that for a long time.
Afterwards we fell back to the ground around the fire and sat with our arms about one another, silently staring at the low flames.
“I worked for them for years,” she said after a time, her words muffled into my chest. “In their labs and universities. I thought of you. I dreamed of running away, finding you, and escaping. But I was watched too closely. I couldn’t risk it. Then, several years ago agents of the Primary Directorate came to me. They said they wanted me to defect to the Mandate, to supply them with information on their weapons programs. I did what they wanted. I came here, worked with the best scientists in the Mandate, feeding the Commissariat secrets all the time. I helped them build a weapon.”
“The Dragon’s Egg,” I said, looking at the chest beside her.
Attia frowned. “That’s what we called it, yes. When it was completed I stole it. I went into hiding. I told Song that they could have it. If they brought me you.”
I shook my head. “You wanted to trade me for the Egg.”
Attia nodded. “But I knew that as soon as they had it they would kill us both. Once you were here I had to get you alone. I planted that message in the kaffa tin, hoping you would find it.”
“In the museum,” I said. “Was that you?”
She nodded. “I got desperate. I needed to see you. I was hoping to pull you away, but Song was too close. I couldn’t get you alone.”
“So what now?”
"We'll go south. Into the disputed territories in India if we can.”
"Will that work?
She shrugged. "I don't know. I feel like our chances are better together though."
But they’re still impossibly long, I didn’t say.
Silence stretched between us then, accented only but the occasional pop from the fire.
I rubbed a hand through my hair. Dust shook free. I looked askance at the metal chest. “I still don’t understand. Why so much trouble for a dragon’s egg?”
“It’s not a dragon’s egg.”
“What?”
"Come here," she said.
She took me by the hand and led me into darkness. Holding my hand in hers, she knelt down and pressed it against the metal box.
"Open it.”
I was almost afraid to. What was she trying to show me?
I reached down and released the clasp. I swung the chest open, and frowned. Inside the chest, resting in a wood frame, was a perfectly round sphere of silver-white metal. I reached out and pressed my hand against it. It was just slightly warm to the touch. I didn't pick it up, but I could feel the denseness of it. "I don't understand," I said.
"Gailium," she said.
I stared at her blankly. Nothing made any sense.
"I would have called it Arturium if I’d known you liked your new name,” she said sadly. “A new metal, one made in a laboratory. Remember when I said that if I ever found a new element I'd name it after you? I did it. "
"This is the Dragon's Egg?" I said dumbly.
"All spies have code-names." She laughed then, though the frown never left her face. It made her look sad and afraid at the same time. "The dragons are dead. They wanted to replace them. You can’t remake the past, but you can create something new.” She glanced at her watch, and then the sphere. "Not long now," she said. "You'll see soon enough. We’ll be safe here."
She closed the lid of the chest and took me by the hand. We scrambled up the rock slope towards the tower, her helping me balance with my bandaged arm. I could feel that widening gulf in my understanding again. This whole ordeal had felt like I was stumbling from one dark room to another. Was she just rambling?
We reached the top of the hill from which the tower emerged, and instead of climbing inside we skirted around the base until we looked over the desert to the East. The moon swung low through the sky and it illuminated a smattering of sandstone ruins below. They were so old and covered in desert that in my minds-eye they manifested as labyrinthine canyons as much as anything man-made.
"I don't understand."
She pressed her finger to my lips. "Just watch. Wait."
The spectre of death still hung over us. She had dragged me into the most dangerous situation of my life. More dangerous, even, then Aelia Capitolina. Maybe I should be mad at her, but when I studied her face all I felt was a thrill.
"I love you," I said.
The wind whipped through the ruins below. “You don’t understand,” she said. “What I’ve done…”
What was she—
And then, far in the distance, a flare of light. Attia, the salt-flats, the stone city below, were all illuminated as bright as day. I squeezed my eyes shut and turned away. Even through eyelids, and then my hand, the white light shone over everything. When it faded I opened my eyes and blinked in the direction of the light. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, brighter than the ten-thousand stars, rose up into the pre-dawn sky. And then there was a low, rumbling boom. A heaven-shattering explosion.
"You see now," Attia said. "You see what they made me do. What I did for you.” She made a sound and I wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying.
The more things ch—No. This wasn’t merely a replacement. We had lived too long in the shadow of our history. I found her hand and squeezed it tight. Make something new.
The horizon shone white with the fire from a second sun. One brighter than dragonfire.
Monica Enderle Pierce
http://stalkingfiction.com
Judgment(Novelette)
by Monica Enderle Pierce
Originally published in The Dragon Chronicles by Windrift Books.
It was near closing time and McKay’s Saloon was full of chasers and herdsmen talking, laughing, and caterwauling when Peregrine Long staggered past and stumbled up the wooden stairs to the Sheriff’s office.
At Peregrine’s insistent banging, Sheriff Wolfberg unlocked and opened the door.
“You better have a darn good reason for waking me at this hour,” the sheriff muttered. Yellow light spilled from the doorway and, mid-yawn, he spied Peregrine’s bloodied face and sooty clothes. “Long? What in Sam Hill happened to you?”
Peregrine rasped, “Get me a stiff drink, and I’ll tell you.” He scuffed across the wood floor, dragged a chair back from the deputy’s table, and groaned as he sat.
Wolfberg poured a double shot of Dragonfire whiskey and clunked the bottle down beside Peregrine’s hand. “You need a doctor. Your story can wait.”
Peregrine grabbed the man’s brown vest and pulled him forward until their faces almost touched. “No, sir, it can’t. We’ve got less than one day.”
“Or what?”
Peregrine released him and tossed down the whiskey. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, leaving a grimy smear. “Or the Judge will be here looking for payment.”
Sheriff Wolfberg planted his palms on the scarred, wooden table and leaned over Peregrine. “You’d better explain that, son. You better explain very clearly what you’ve done to bring that hellish beast down on Bonesteel.”
***
EARLIER…
The leather saddle creaked as Peregrine swung down from his blue roan’s back. With a practiced hand he hitched his new pony beside Deputy Isabeau Hightower’s buckskin gelding as he squinted at the blue March sky with his good eye. It was midmorning. He sucked in the cool mountain air.
It was a fine day to be alive.
Peregrine patted his horse, Tohcta, then swung around and headed for McKay’s Saloon. Like a swamp reed, his lanky frame had an unmistakable bend when he moved. Spurs jangling and boot heels thudding he crossed the wooden walkway and pushed through the saloon’s doors into a dim room.
The air was warm and thick with the stench of ale a
nd sweat. Cigarette smoke hovered around the lights, twisting into ghostly patterns as Peregrine passed through it.
“So I says, ‘Why’d you go and kick a big ole snapping turtle like that for?’” Bobby Mack, a mouthy troll chaser from Shao San’s Circle S Ranch, was repeating his favorite story to everyone within earshot. Bobby loved big stories, especially when he was telling them.
“Whatcha doing in here, Long?” Jack McKay asked from behind the scarred, mahogany bar as Peregrine bellied up.
“Buying a drink.” He surveyed the one-room saloon for Isabeau but spied her sister, Simone, beside Bobby. She musta been riding the deputy’s horse. Peregrine fought a snarl. His like for Isabeau was countered by his dislike of Simone. She was dirty, in more ways than one.
None of the riders acknowledged him. Bonesteel was a company town, controlled by Pico Connelly. People lived and died working Pico’s Double L sheep herds. The man had built Bonesteel from nothing to wealthy. And Peregrine was a one-eyed outsider.
McKay swiped a beer-stained rag across the bar. “You don’t drink.”
Bobby sneered at Peregrine, and then continued his tale. “So he says, ’I thought it was a rock.’ Can you believe that? A rock!” He hooted and swigged his beer. “Dumb as a duck, that boy.”
Simone glowered at Peregrine as he leaned on the bar and answered McKay.
“Today I do. Dragonfire.”
The red-haired bartender shrugged and poured a shot of amber whiskey. He jerked his chin toward the saloon’s wavy glass windows. “That a new pony for Pico’s string?”
The shot burned all the way down and put fire in Peregrine’s gut. He cleared his throat. “She’s mine.”
McKay’s ruddy brows rose.
Bobby and Simone squinted through the window. “Where’d you get the money for a fine pony like that?” Bobby asked.
Peregrine clunked his glass down. “Saved it.”
For eight years Peregrine had worked the Double L’s pony lines. But his odd eyes—one brown, the other gray—made men uncomfortable. The color of steel, the left one didn’t focus and made the world blurry. He was born that way and often wore a black patch over the eye. But it didn’t keep Peregrine from being a fine and fast shot with a revolver or from doing his job well.