Miracles could happen, I guess. Even here, where the gods didn’t know my name.
There was something different about the ride today, something that got my blood pumping the way it had in the old days. It was like I could smell something on the air, something an awful lot like metal, and old, smoky memories that wouldn’t get out of my head no matter what I did to try to shake ’em off. It was like the magician somehow knew we were coming for her, and this was her way of letting us know we were on the right track. Whatever it was, I breathed in deep, and on my left Thom let out an explosive sneeze.
“Someone is walking over your future grave,” Kalim said, smiling slyly in the dark in a way I was sure Thom didn’t much appreciate.
“I hope we locate it soon,” he muttered, rubbing his nose while he kept his wrist twisted into the reins like I’d shown him. Just in case. “I’d like to lie down in it and take a good long nap.”
“Race you to the next dune,” I said, in no mood for his morbid, drippy crap. The moon’d come out now, a cold white sickle overhead that seemed impossibly far away from the ground. It was hanging around up there just to piss me off—it was in the sky, and I wasn’t—so I needed something to distract me from having a staring match with it.
Kalim heard me, and slowed the pace of his camel to match mine. “We have nearly reached the place the desert woman calls her home,” he said. “If it is a race you are interested in, I will take up the challenge, Mollyrat Rook.”
“All right,” I said, already feeling the familiar, gut-wrenching mix of blood and adrenaline kick into my veins. “You’re on.”
“I am on?” Kalim asked, dark eyes clouded with confusion.
“Means go!” I called, giving my camel a good dig with my heel. We took off, almost like flying only not so smooth, and kicking up sand every which way so I couldn’t see what the hell I was doing. Just the outline of my target, the dune, no more than a big slumping outline against the dark sky. Kalim came pounding up behind me and I leaned forward, urging my camel on. It wouldn’t take him long, with his mount, to draw even with me, and once that happened it was all over. Still, I wasn’t about to let a man win a race with me just because he happened to have something like years of experience and a better-bred mount under his belt. This was a matter of pride.
I steered suddenly to one side, cutting him off so that he’d have to slow down or risk introducing his mount’s head to my camel’s ass. It wouldn’t be a pretty crash, in any case, and maybe it was kind of a dirty tactic to use, but I was representing Mollyrats everywhere, and damned if it wasn’t what every one of them would have done. From somewhere behind us, Thom let out another whoop, and I put on a brilliant burst of speed just as the dune loomed up ahead of us.
Kalim’s camel was coming up fast behind us, but it was too late for him, and I took both hands off the reins right as we crashed into the dune in an explosion of sand flying everywhere. My girl grunted, like this wasn’t at all her idea of a good time, and I laughed like I’d forgotten how to do it in the first place, somewhere low and deep in my chest.
Kalim rode up seconds later, before I’d even had the time to stop laughing. He didn’t look all that pissed about my dirty trick though. In fact, when I calmed down enough to look at him, I was pretty sure he was smiling.
“I will remember that trick for next time, Mollyrat Rook,” he said.
“You’d better,” I answered. “Hey, you can even use it, pretend it’s yours.”
“You’re both insane,” said Thom, after we’d waited for him to catch up with us. But I knew my brother, and I was pretty sure he was smiling. “Completely and utterly.”
“Perhaps next time you will join the race, Mollyrat Thom,” Kalim said innocently, starting the slow climb up the hill, sand scrabbling down behind him.
Thom snorted, then followed after him, which left me bringing up the rear. My girl was still tossing her head around, like she wanted me to know she was better than what I’d put her through, and I took a hand off the reins to pat her head. She’d done an okay job, beating a real nomad-bred camel. It’d be something for her to gossip about, back in the pens at Karakhum. And everyone needed a little bit of flying just once in their lifetime.
We crested the dune and came to a shallow valley, glittering gray and empty in the night. Kalim pulled up short, and Thom gasped, and I stopped telling my girl just what a good girl she was long enough to take a look.
In the middle of the valley was a dark little house, bigger than the tent Bless’d used to store all his supplies, but still not much more than a shack. It was next to a stretch of water; there was some vegetation, too, not looking too pretty but still managing to be alive. The whole thing looked like a painting, but definitely not real at all, shining ghostly under all that moonlight.
“That is where she lives,” Kalim said, speaking softly like he thought she might be able to hear us from all the way up here. “If you wish to turn back, now is your opportunity.”
“Hell with that,” I said.
“I share my brother’s opinion, if not his eloquence,” Thom agreed in a roundabout sort of way.
“I did not see you as the sort of man to change his mind,” Kalim confessed, and he chirped at his camel to start her forward down the sandy slope.
I’d be a rotten fucking liar if I’d said my heart wasn’t pounding—partly from the adrenaline of the race, but partly from what I was riding to. I didn’t want to come out this way, on the back of some ordinary beast; whether the camel’d been brave or not had no bearing on what I’d known, once upon a time, like a legend from one of Thom’s pieces of research. No less important and more fucking real.
There was no telling what this magician’d think of three strangers riding down on her in the middle of the night, either.
I wondered, idly, what she looked like. Pretty, maybe. Probably a little scary too. But she’d been a part of my girl and I knew she’d be beautiful; I could feel it, and my blood was hot as the sand at noon.
Kalim pulled up short before we even got halfway there.
“This is as far as I go,” he said. “This business is not mine.”
“You’re just gonna wait here?” I asked. “You come all this way to hang around outside?”
“I do not entirely understand this phrase hang around,” Kalim said. “But I will be here when you have concluded your business; I will guide you back, as I have promised.”
I felt Thom’s eyes on me and I looked over to him, not even having to ask him what the fuck he wanted from me. “Well,” Thom stammered. “I just…Do you want to go alone?”
“You turning pussy on me?” I asked.
Thom shook his head quickly. “That’s not it at all,” he said. “But this isn’t about me, Rook. I just wanted to be sure—”
I didn’t wait for any more of his out-loud thinking, just nudged my camel back into a trot. If he followed, he followed. If he stayed behind, then maybe Kalim could teach him how to ride a camel in all that extra time they had alone together. It said a lot about my esteem for the nomad prince that I’d leave him alone with my brother, but to be honest, Thom could probably do more damage to himself alone in the desert than someone who was actually trying to fuck him up, so I was glad Kalim was around to look after him.
Except then I heard the sound of Bessie snorting, and I realized Thom was coming with me after all.
It wasn’t what I’d been expecting, but count on my brother to pull an unpredictable move out of nowhere. He did what he wanted to when he wanted to do it, even if he tried to pretend that wasn’t what he was doing at all. We were a lot alike; it was just that he didn’t want to be compared to a bastard like me, and I guessed I didn’t exactly blame him for it. Just got on my nerves sometimes to see him pretending to be somebody he wasn’t, that’s all.
“Are you nervous?” he asked, then laughed quietly to himself. “Of course you’re not.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “I’m practically shitting myself.”
We came up on the house, trying to be quiet, but not too quiet; no use making anyone think this was some kind of ambush. Thom even had the decency to dismount with less comedy than usual, and I squared my shoulders.
It wasn’t like heading to meet my maker, because that’s exactly what it was.
“I guess we gotta knock,” I said. It burned my balls that Kalim was up there at the top of the dune watching us shuffle around down here like frightened goats who’d got lost on the way to the watering hole, but I wasn’t going to pussy out, either.
Instead of wasting any more time with second-guessing my actions—the moment I started to do that, I didn’t have anything left—I strode up to the door and knocked on it, loud. I wasn’t just anybody. I was here and I was gonna get some of the answers I deserved.
“It’s open,” a voice came from inside.
I looked at my brother. He was looking at me. We had a moment—one that made all the sand sticking to my skin start to prickle. Then I stepped forward and took control, shoving the door open with my shoulder.
I had to duck a little just to get inside.
It was quiet in the room, but it wasn’t lonely. Smelled good, like home cooking might’ve smelled; some herbs and spices that burned in my throat going down. There was a chair and a table and a curtain separating the room in two; I couldn’t see what was beyond all that, and I didn’t care to try. Sitting in the chair at the table, holding a cup in both hands, was the shortest old bag I’d ever seen, and monumentally fucking fat, wearing a pair of too-large spectacles on her big nose that made her look half-witted and cross-eyed.
The first thought that ran through my head was that I was too late. The magician was dead and we’d come out here for nothing. Anger sparked hot in my chest and my belly and I turned to leave, but Thom put both hands on my back and forced me—with strength even I didn’t know he had—all the way inside. He closed the door behind us, too, and that left us just standing there, me and Thom and the old bag.
She had sharp dark eyes that looked familiar to me, like I knew her from somewhere.
“Pardon me for interrupting your deep fucking thoughts,” she said, “but I think I have the right to know who you are, boys.”
If I hadn’t known her just by looking into her eyes, then the voice was a dead giveaway. I heard it every night in my dreams; before I’d needed to dream about it, I’d heard it every night while my life was still like a fucking dream, or at least the life I’d always dreamed of living. Me and Havemercy, together, just like that.
For the first time in a long time, I was floored. Needless to say, I couldn’t open my mouth for anything.
Thom took control in all the ways he didn’t know how when he climbed up on a camel’s back. “My name is Thom,” he said, “and this is my…brother, Rook.”
“Okay,” the magician said. “I’m Sarah Fleet. Names mean nothing when I haven’t heard ’em before.”
Thom looked at me again, realized I’d lost all my faculties, and, like a brave little soldier, pushed on. “Rook was a member of the Esar’s Dragon Corps,” he explained. “Back when the war was still…Have you heard about the war?”
“Son, I’m living in the desert,” Sarah Fleet, the dragonmaker, said. “Not down a fucking well or anything. We won. Hooray.”
“Right,” Thom said, somehow undaunted, though I guessed he’d at least had a lot of practice trying to talk to people who couldn’t give two shits about what he had to say—it was called “Thom’s Fucking Life,” and I was currently experiencing it myself. “Then you must also have heard about the role, ah, that the Dragon Corps performed in securing our victory?”
“I might have,” Sarah Fleet said, adjusting her giant specs to look up at me. She was the one with bug eyes, and yet I was the one who felt fucking pinned down like a bug. It was un-bastion-damned-fair, and I was just opening my mouth to tell her so when Thom stepped down hard on my foot.
It hurt. He was heavier than he looked.
I was gonna kill him.
“That’s good,” he said quickly, voice cracking there for a minute like he could feel the end of the world sneaking up on him. “You…You ought to be very proud of yourself, for your contribution to the nation’s victory.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Sarah Fleet, contempt practically dripping from her jaws. A dragon in an old bag’s skin, that was her. “I’m real proud of myself. Can’t begin to tell you. Got myself a one-way ticket out to the middle of nowhere on account of how clever I was, just because I went and made something a little too fiery for th’Esar’s tastes. You come to bring me my medal of honor or get up my hoo-ha like a lot of sand?”
I spat on the ground when she mentioned th’Esar’s name—I’d gotten into the habit of spitting, thanks to Kalim—and Thom looked horrified that I was spitting on somebody’s floor, but Sarah Fleet didn’t even blink a buggy eye. I was starting to get the feeling back in my hands, but slowly, like a dying man coming back to life just after seeing what was waiting for him in the great beyond. I didn’t know what the hell’d come over me—I’d never felt like this before—but it sure felt like some kind of magician’s trick to me.
“Your pardon,” Thom said, pressing on bravely like he didn’t know he was walking straight through a battlefield. He even gave a little bow, like he thought that’d make it any better, and wouldn’t you know it? The old bag cackled and looked pleased. “I shouldn’t have brought up such a sensitive topic.”
“What’s sensitive is leaving an old woman in peace, not barging into her only sanctuary in the middle of the night,” Sarah Fleet corrected. She peered at him with her creepy, unblinking eyes. “What you are is rude, young man. I ought to send you back to your mother for a good wallop and a change of diapers.”
“My mother’s dead,” Thom said evenly. He’d learned a little from his time in the Airman, even if it’d take a dentist’s pliers to yank the truth of it out of him. “And I do apologize for the interruption. It’s just that we’ve been traveling a dreadfully long time, and I’m afraid there’s no excuse for the toll the desert’s taken on my manners. We certainly didn’t intend to barge in on you in the middle of the night. However…”
She looked at me again, Sarah Fleet, with Havemercy’s eyes—only magnified to about five times their usual size, and looking all wrong inside some old lady’s head. “This bed wetter for real?” she asked me.
Just like that, the ice melted. I let out a real whoop of a laugh, while Thom stared at me like he wasn’t sure I hadn’t finally up and lost my mind on top of everything else.
“He’s for real,” I told her, breathing deep to ease the tightness in my chest. “And I’m the one who rode your fucking dragon.”
“Watch that mouth,” Sarah Fleet snapped. I could’ve kissed her, toad face and all, but something told me she’d’ve snapped my dick off for trying. In her eyes, I wasn’t anything special, just some rat from the worst part of Molly, but it was the exact same look I’d always gotten from Have, and it comforted me, like a babe at his mama’s breast.
“He can’t,” Thom said wearily, and I knew he really had given up on all his fancy etiquette rules, at least for the time being. “This is what he’s like. All the time.”
“Well no wonder your mother left you,” said Sarah Fleet, “since one of you’s a brute and the other one’s a damn Cindy. I’d’ve had you drowned at birth, myself, but then the only child I gave birth to got me bounced from the capital, so how’s that for gratitude?”
It was the weirdest fucking experience of my life. For the first time, I wanted to shut up just so I could hear someone else talk. Thom looked at me, then shook his head, clearly reading whatever he needed to off of whatever expression I was wearing. I didn’t know, and I couldn’t be bothered to guess. Without warning, Sarah Fleet stood up. She was just about as tall standing as she had been sitting, which was a feat in itself, and she moved like her bones ached, if there even were bones buried under all that jelly. I couldn’t exactly be sure.
&
nbsp; Anyway, she was real slow moving, but I could wait.
“You’re the one who flew my girl, then?” she asked, looking me up and down. I wanted to correct her—my girl—but whatever magic she was working kept my tongue in my head.
“That’s me,” I said instead, tossing a loose braid over one shoulder. “She wouldn’t look twice at no one before me. Heard she even bit some poor fucker’s hand clean off.”
“Wouldn’t look twice at anyone before you,” Sarah Fleet said sharply. “That’s the correct way to say it. I can see you were raised in a gutter, but don’t let’s drag everyone else through the same muck.”
Yes ma’am, I thought, but I kept that one all to myself.
“You must be wondering why we’ve bothered to come all this way,” Thom interjected, either because he felt left out or because it was killing him to go so long without talking.
“Boy,” said Sarah Fleet, “you are a clever one. ’Versity-educated, no doubt, with a stick like that up your ass. ’Course in the ’Versity, you’ll find more and willing things besides sticks, but I’m betting you know all about that.”
Thom turned red all over and started to sputter, face looking kind of like a squashed tomato, and that was all it took. I was laughing my damn fool head off again.
I felt better than I had in weeks, maybe even months. It was the kind of good feeling that settled in real deep down and got its hooks into you. If Thom hadn’t been here, I probably would’ve just sat there all night and let the old bag hurl insults at me. But as much as I wanted to do just that, I couldn’t. Outside of Sarah Fleet’s little pisshole-in-the-sand shack, there was a whole world that wouldn’t slow down for nothing—anything—and somewhere out there someone was still selling parts of my girl to strangers who didn’t know her and didn’t deserve her either. I couldn’t ignore that. Not even when I’d found the one who’d breathed the life into her in the first place.
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