That thought sobered me up pretty quick, but at least the sour-bastard mood I’d been in this whole time didn’t come back.
Sarah Fleet sniffed and gave us another once-over, which made it a twice-over, all things considered.
“Havemercy,” she said then, and Thom put a hand on my shoulder just as my knees damn well turned to water. I needed to sit my ass down in a chair, all right. “I never thought she’d have such rotten taste, but there’s no accounting for what the magic does when it gets loose of you.”
“She was a bat-crazy piece of work,” I said, more sure than I felt. “Should’ve known there’d be a crazy bat behind her.”
“You watch your mouth,” Fleet said, brandishing a fist that looked like bird suet in a flesh-colored sack. Then she turned to my brother, who seemed to have recovered from his bout of embarrassment or whatever-the-fuck he’d been suffering from. “And I’ve got some idea why you’re here too. I’m old, boys, not deaf, dumb, and blind.”
“Really?” Thom asked, and the hope in his voice was pretty hard to listen to. I guess I’d been making his life all kinds of miserable these days, and what I hadn’t managed to crush out of him, the desert’d gone and finished for me.
Of course, I could probably blame that camel just as much as I could blame myself, but we were equally at fault. A sobering thought.
“Sure,” said Sarah. “You’re here because you can’t move past your own damn stunted adolescence and you don’t wanna let go of any chance you have to recapture it.”
That wasn’t it at all, I thought. Fleet might’ve had Have’s eyes and her sense of humor, but only one thin slice of her insight.
“Someone’s sellin’ her,” I broke in. I didn’t even want to think about what my voice sounded like just then, too earnest and fucking sincere. I didn’t know how in the hell someone who looked like cooked pudding was going to help us, but I knew that if anyone could help us, it was this bizarre old loony holding my heart in the middle of the desert. “Havemercy. We crashed in the Ke-Han capital, morning of the last battle we ever fought, and now there’s carrion birds breaking her up and selling her off piece by piece, like a fucking animal you buy for dinner. It ain’t right.”
Sarah Fleet stared at me, past my eyes and right down deep into my fucking soul, like Thom was always talking about when he got into a poetic mood, only this didn’t make me want to punch anyone’s lights out. Hell, I let her do it; I even stared back. I didn’t have a damn thing I was ashamed of anymore, and Have herself’d picked me when I was little better than one of the muck-boys cleaning out stalls. If that was what Sarah Fleet was looking for—some quality that made me stand out better’n the rest—then she’d probably be looking a long damn time. She was and wasn’t the same as my girl, I realized. She had the same attitude, the same whip-smart tongue, and I bet she knew all the dirty words to the drinking songs, but that was only almost enough. We hadn’t been through the wars together.
“All right,” she said finally, throwing up her big hands in surrender. “I’ll help you track her down. But only because you spat on my floor when I was talking about that motherfucker.”
“Esar’s looking for her too,” I pointed out, while next to me Thom tried not to have a stroke.
“Oh, honey,” said Sarah Fleet. “I know.”
CHAPTER NINE
MALAHIDE
Neither of my new companions trusted me.
I hardly blamed them for their paranoia. The big soldier—whose name, I’d since discovered, was the same as the Ke-Han word for badger—never once took his eyes off me, no matter where I was, or what I was doing. Even if I told him I needed to freshen up and would require some privacy for the task, he was always there, lurking in the shadows and making a true nuisance of himself. Luckily for him, he’d been given an excellent chance to recuperate before he’d learned a little something more about me from the Ke-Han girl Madoka.
Unfortunately for me, because of his prying eyes, I had yet to bathe the soot and mud from my body.
A lady needed to keep some parts of her body secret.
I was unclean, and that always irked me. I truly loathed the prospect of setting out with them into the desert unwashed, and I needed to be able to smell our quarry over the stench of my own body.
“Really, Badger,” I said, watching him from the corner of my eye, “I am in need of a bath.”
“Fine by me,” Badger replied, his face unmoving as the mountain rock rising up around us.
We were at a stalemate. I had no idea what Madoka had told him, but surely I wasn’t as dangerous-looking as all that. My Volstovic charms worked no wonders at all on him; I’d already played the strongest part of my hand, which meant that I had no further tricks just yet up my sleeve. Those would require more finesse, some study of my friends. Once I knew them better, I would better be able to play upon their senses with a show of my own emotions—or rather, I hoped that I would be able to do this. The only trouble was that Madoka herself saw directly through me; even under Dmitri’s disapproving stare, I had never before felt so transparent.
“It’s not as though I’m going to run away,” I tried to reason. Badger crossed his arms over his chest and said nothing. “After all, as I’m sure Madoka has told you, I intend to set out with you.”
“You a magician?” Madoka asked. She’d been relatively quiet all day, after we’d come to our little agreement; she was recuperating, and it was understandable. The compass buried in her skin had been placed there with such miserable clumsiness that it was difficult to look at it for too long, and the stench of rotting flesh had been overwhelming me since I’d started tending to her. A friendly enough gesture, I thought, though it seemed to make Badger extra wary of me.
It taught me one thing, however: The girl was essentially expendable, at least to the mastermind behind all this.
The Esar had incredible instincts—he was paranoid himself, sometimes to a fault, but he always knew when someone was plotting against him. His plan had been to strike first, and there was his only error. He hadn’t struck first, just simultaneously, with the half-imagined, half-real enemy that rose constantly like a specter, reaching for him over the ridge of the Cobalt Mountains.
Honesty, I thought, would be the sweetest trick of all. Perhaps I could assuage their fear of me somewhat if I showed them I was harmless as a little fly.
“I am,” I told her.
Madoka spat. “Hate ’em,” she said.
“You must have had a bad experience,” I replied benignly. “I can tell that the man behind that blight on your palm was a careless individual, and selfish on top of that. If I were in his shoes, and capable of such power, I would be much more precise in my actions, so no one would suffer needlessly.”
“Yeah?” Madoka demanded. She was fiery; I appreciated that in a conversationalist, and was happy to talk to her for as long as it took to get myself some time alone with a washcloth and a bucket of water. We’d decided to leave the following morning—whether or not Madoka still had her fever.
Foolish of her to agree to that, but commendable, in any case.
“Indeed,” I replied, trying to indicate to her how a proper lady would speak.
“What is in your power, then?” Madoka asked.
I let out a delicate sigh, adjusting my collar around my throat. “Scent,” I replied. “I’m a tracker.”
“Like a dog, you mean?” Madoka asked.
This time, when I smiled, I made sure she saw my beautiful, pearl-white teeth. “Like a wolf is the comparison I prefer,” I told her.
That might not have helped my attempts at innocence, but at least it gave her a lesson in thinking a bit before she spoke. Ironically, I had become quite fond of her—less so of her overly large, relatively brutish bodyguard, but he was a simple man, and simple men were not my point of interest. If he had a single perceivable complication beyond the physical presence of that unfortunate scar, I might have appreciated his sullenness more.
“I do need
a bath,” I said. “And I intend to have one.”
One thing I knew of the Ke-Han was that they were far less prudish about nudity than Volstovics; it was physical intimacy that bothered them, whereas holding hands or even offering a public kiss in Thremedon would not cause any passersby to so much as bat an eye.
I lifted my hand to my collar, then gave up the pretense that I could bluff them in this matter.
“I am a private woman,” I said. “I do not enjoy bouts of exhibitionism like the one you both seem so intent on forcing me to display.”
“We’ll look away,” Madoka offered. “But if you bathe anywhere, you’re doing it right here.”
They had forced my hand. At least, in the little house we’d chosen to take up as our quarters for the time being, there was the remnant of a standing screen—once operating, I assumed, as a makeshift wall for the tiny hovel. I stepped behind it, where it was dark and shadowy, and there was no chance for my silhouette to be cast clear against the surface.
“Do keep your promise,” I murmured gently, and began to undo the buttons at my throat, lace tickling my chin.
“Can’t imagine anyone going to such great lengths to spy on a skinny thing like you anyway,” Madoka said, and the echo of her voice told me she had indeed turned to face the wall.
“Not everyone was blessed with such a full figure as you, dear,” I trilled in sharp retort. That particular topic had always been a sensitive issue with me, and it was the most common observation thrown at me by other women with the express intention of wounding the image I held of myself. I’d grown used to such jabs long ago, but as I’d said: Going so long without a bath was taking its toll on my normally equable nature. I stepped eagerly into the little basin—hardly a proper bath, but it would have to suit my needs for the time being—and crouched low to soak my washcloth.
The Badger man huffed, a noise that made him sound like a badger indeed, and I was reminded to be as quick about my actions as possible. The standing screen would serve its purpose, but as someone who normally bathed with at least two locked doors between herself and the outside world, it was safe to say that I was feeling ever so slightly vulnerable.
“Don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what’s got you tramping through the desert like a camel in a dress?” Madoka called. “I mean, what’s so special about this dragonmetal anyway? What was good about it is all torn up and destroyed now, isn’t it?”
“Well, I can’t speak for myself,” I said, wringing out the washcloth before resubmersing it. “You may not believe this, but I am at heart a rather simple girl.”
Madoka snorted, and I liked her even more.
“Just seems to me like trying to gather up stones after the castle’s been blown apart,” she said, and I somehow knew that she was examining the compass in her hand. Cursing it, no doubt, and I didn’t entirely blame her. “Doesn’t make any damn sense to me.”
“You have to think further along than that,” I said gently. It was a bit like leading a horse by the nose, but I wanted to give her some feeling of control in this matter. I could detect the beginnings of defeat in her voice—the fever talking, and doubtless the constant pain in her hand—and it would do her some good to sort out a problem or two with my guidance now rather than let it all overwhelm her a second time.
I’d told her that I could just as easily carry on without her, and that remained the truth. My personal preference, however, was to carry on with her, and that I kept to myself.
“You’re going to have to give me more to go on than that, Malahide,” Madoka said. “I’m no visionary, just a Seon sow with incredibly bad luck.”
“Indeed,” I said, enjoying some private amusement at the colorful language she chose to employ. It distracted me from the chill of the water, which was refreshing but somehow didn’t leave me feeling as satisfactorily clean as a good, hot bath would have managed. “Here, then. What is the likeliest thing someone would build with old castle stones?”
“’Nother castle?” Madoka asked, after she’d taken some time to think about it. She didn’t sound entirely certain of the answer, which was darling. I bent myself practically in two in order to submerse my hair under the water, taking care that every inch of me remained behind the shadowy protection of the screen.
“Quite so,” I replied, and Badger huffed again. “Did you suspect that yourself, my soldier friend? How clever you are.”
“War’s over,” said Badger, simply. “Man’d have to be a fool to try to build himself a dragon now. They’re outlawed. Part of the treaty. Was there when it got signed.”
I wondered how much of that he believed.
“And yet the race carries on,” I said, twisting my wet hair over one shoulder, wringing it out. One couldn’t be too rough during this process—that would split the ends—but I wished for my hair to dry quickly, and so these precautions were necessary. “I imagine there are some among your ranks for whom creating a replica of Volstov’s dragons became something of an obsession. Understandable, since they were such a visible force in the war, not to mention the considerable damage they were able to accomplish, visited upon your very capital. I myself, were I to see such things firsthand, might fall prey to the same obsession. You mentioned that only a fool would take it into his head to reconstruct a dragon. Have you considered a madman?”
“Watch it,” Badger said, and I heard him moving to take up his guard post by the door. He was constantly on the alert, a quality I admired deeply. “Remember who you’re talking to.”
“My apologies,” I offered, stepping carefully out of the basin. The towel I’d brought for traveling was a small and scratchy piece of work, but it did the trick well enough, even if it did leave my skin redder than usual and splotchy with the cold. “I spoke impartially, without any particular bias toward one side or the other. I did not fight in the war per se—as you can see, I am no soldier—so it is not a matter of any real meaning to me, one way or the other.”
“Sure,” said Badger, but I could tell that it bothered him. The only consolation I could award myself was that he already didn’t like me very much; nothing I did now would lower me too drastically in his esteem. “Don’t worry about it.”
I dressed myself quickly, in the spare set of clothes I carried with me for just these emergencies, then bundled my dress away for washing later. My hair would dry quickly in the hot desert air, and that was as much as I could wish for, at the moment. Already I felt better, if not completely presentable, and my senses were clearer and sharper than they’d been in days.
I knew exactly what path we would take to follow those nomads, and in following them, we would find my man once more. Now I had an extra weapon on my side; he stood no chance of evading me a second time.
When I emerged from behind the screen, Madoka was holding her hand above her face like she was staring into the sun. The hands on the compass had remained locked into place ever since she’d fainted, which was for the best. It meant that the nomads were keeping to a straight course for the time being, which would make following them considerably easier. And as long as they did not pull too far away from us, the mechanism should still continue to prove beneficial to our team.
I was no expert on the desert, and I highly doubted my Ke-Han companions were, either. We would simply have to be cautious, and pace ourselves according to the whims of the sun and sand.
When I sat down next to Madoka on the bed, she was too tired even to pull away.
“I’m helping this bastard,” she said instead, staring up at her hand. “I think he’s totally insane. What’s he going to do after he’s built a dragon? Send it on a rampage? Try and attack Volstov? Best thing I can think of is he gets caught and the emperor makes him take his life for treason, but then everyone involved with him’d have to go down too. And that includes me and Badger. Doubt Volstov’d really appreciate the excuses, would it? ‘I’m innocent, but I did all this shit anyway…’ Don’t think it’ll really fly, will it?”
“You have
a fever,” I told her, laying my cool hand over her forehead. “And you’re babbling. It’s my fault for bringing up such a polarizing topic in the first place; I merely thought it might do you some good to have something else to think about.”
“I’ve got too much to think about in the first place,” Madoka said.
“We’ll leave at nightfall tomorrow,” I told her, smoothing the sweaty hair back from her forehead. I had no reason for being so kind, only that people responded to it better than anything else. “Then you’ll have to concentrate on keeping your body upright, and you won’t have the time to think at all.”
Madoka laughed like a barking dog. “You’re a real comfort, Malahide. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Rarely,” I confessed, which was the complete truth, for once. “Get some rest.”
Truth be told, I was having some difficulty at present with following my own advice. I could not coax myself, however hard I tried, to sleep while the sun was up, and it seemed that the Badger man couldn’t either—though whether or not that was because of his natural predilections or his refusal to take his eyes off me was unclear. He would regret it later, though conversely my Talent would shield me from feeling the effects of missing a good night’s sleep. We sat on opposite ends of the small room, Madoka stretched out and snoring on the bed between us and Badger with his back to the door. He was evidently a vigilant soldier, and a man of some honor, since when first I’d met him he’d been using his skills to help that boy. If only, he might have been thinking, he could stay and help the child further. But now we had our own mission, and we would leave him to the hands of fate rather than the hands of soldiers. Whatever happened would happen. It was none of our concern.
Neither of Badger’s traits, unfortunately, was one I could use to my advantage. Men of honor disliked a spy on principle, and that he was having difficulty in pinning me down clearly made him anxious.
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