“They’re not expecting to be tracked,” Badger offered sensibly, breaking me out of all my slow-paced thinking. Easy to get distracted too, my thoughts running every which way like wind furrowing the sand.
“Still, they aren’t headed toward the seaside at all,” Malahide said. She folded her legs gracefully to inspect a bit of a tear in the hem of her skirt. I envied the knowledge that, no matter how cracked up she was, she was still in a better state than I was—mentally and physically.
“Maybe they’ve gotta meet up with somebody first,” I said. “How the hell should I know?”
“There’s more to this,” Malahide began, then trailed off, huffing as the wind picked up, this time from a new direction. “Press on,” she said sharply.
She stood at once, and Badger followed her; he offered a hand down to me and I took it with my left one, letting him haul my ass up. Pride was one thing; being practical was another.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I grumbled, when he looked too closely at me. “Let’s keep moving. Can’t let the scent go dry or whatever it does.”
“Don’t push yourself too hard,” Badger warned.
“Don’t have a choice,” I told him, and I guessed he knew I was right, ’cause he didn’t say anything else after that.
The days were all starting to blend together, and even worse than that were my dreams. Flashes of light, the sound of water, voices I didn’t remember. Everything smelling like metal, the hot sun beating down on me, only a few of my silks left to shield me from the sky. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing anymore or why I was doing it; I could remember the faces from my dreams better than I could remember my own mother’s. And when I woke up it’d be dark out, dunes rising and falling around me, like a sea of sand I was drowning in.
“Madoka,” a female voice said.
I snapped awake to find Malahide kneeling beside me. She even managed to make that look delicate; if there was sand getting everywhere on her, she sure as shit didn’t look too bothered by it. Her hair was perfect, her skin still the same milky white court ladies kill for, and I had no idea how she did it.
“It isn’t your fault, my dear,” she said gently, and wrapped her arms around me, pulling me against her chest. I could hear her heart beating and I wanted to throw up, but eventually the rhythm soothed me enough so I could pull away and breathe easier. “We’re close now,” Malahide went on, gently taking my arm once more. I felt her roll back the sleeve and I winced. “I wager an hour is all we need. They slept there all day, and I do not believe they are getting an early start, like we are. Think of the water, and the trees; the shade at last. But most important, think of our prize.”
Since when is it “our” prize, I thought, but there was something about her voice that was soothing.
Malahide held up my hand in front of my own face without any warning, and I was forced to look at it. The places that’d been red before were laced with green; the skin directly in contact with the metal had turned a sickly shade of black.
“Concentrate on this,” she said. “Do not avoid it. There is someone in this world who turned your own body against you. I know it is difficult, but you must continue to fight in the hopes that one day you will be able to turn his own body against him.”
Sounded pretty good, I thought. With new strength in my legs and arms, I hauled my own self to my feet this time.
“An hour away, huh?” I asked. Badger was already raring to go, and I was getting used to walking on empty promises and feet that felt like deadweights.
Malahide nodded.
“Well, that’s not so bad,” I said, and started on my way, not looking to see if my two new friends had my back.
ROOK
Of all the things I’d been expecting, milking a little practical understanding out of Professor Mollyrat Thom wasn’t one of them.
But I didn’t want to think about all that. I’d wasted enough of our precious fucking time already nancing around the desert and crying about my horseshit feelings, and now it was time to wake up and get a little practical. Because the last thing I wanted to do was show the mastermind behind my girl that I was some wishy-washy weepy-whiny shitbag who couldn’t handle the truth when he saw it with his own two eyes.
“Just needed some fresh air,” I said, stepping back inside.
“That’s my excuse for coming out here too,” Sarah Fleet replied. “Have some pudding and let’s talk.”
So there we were, eating bowls of pudding that had rice in it, trying to get around the weird feeling that part of it might’ve been burned, or maybe we just didn’t understand the delicacy, being Mollyrats and all. I looked over at Thom and saw him wolfing it down, and I slid him my own portion. Whether he took it or not didn’t matter. I was too fucking excited to be hungry.
“So,” I said. “What’s the plan?”
“You don’t like it?” Sarah Fleet asked.
“It’s delicious,” Thom reassured her, snagging my bowl after setting his down.
“Grows on you, this one,” Sarah Fleet said. “All right, you’re anxious to get started. I’m assuming you’ve brought me something I can work with? All I need’s a memory to start with; you leave the rest to me.”
More magician mumbo jumbo, I thought. Even Sarah Fleet, who was different from the rest, couldn’t help it. I shook my head.
“Don’t speak in riddles,” I told her. It was more polite than I usually had reason to be, but this woman was special. She licked her spoon and shook her head, like for whatever reason she was disappointed in me. I didn’t like the feeling.
“And here I thought I was being straight as an arrow with you boys,” she said. “Guess that doesn’t help us any if you’re slow as mud.”
“We don’t have that much experience with magicians,” Thom clarified, his mouth full of rice pudding. Just like a real diplomat.
“Well I don’t mean a real memory,” Sarah Fleet elaborated. “I’m not one of those creepers with a quiet Talent who’ll go mucking around in your head quicker than you can say boo! No offense, boys, I’m sure you’ve got a lot of those hanging around, but what good’s a memory for helping you to find something, anyway? Memories are in the past, and what you want is decidedly from the now.” She shook her head slowly, punching the air with her spoon. “Now, what I meant is a physical memory—like a remembrance token. If my little girl was your lover, you’d have kept a lock of her hair in a ribbon, wear it next to your heart, that kind of bullcrap. You get me? Or is that still too much of a riddle for you?”
“Oh,” said Thom, blinking. “You mean…” He trailed off and turned to me, clearly not wanting to say anything without my rogering it first, which I guess was loyal, if misguided, of him. Wasn’t anything like working with Havemercy—doing first, asking later—but what was like working with Havemercy?
Answer to that was: Nothing.
“Yeah,” I said. Only problem was we didn’t have anything like that on us. I had a scale from Chastity and a claw from Compassus, and nothing at all from my own girl. Just more proof that the world wouldn’t pass up a chance to shit on a Mollyrat. I had a feeling Sarah Fleet knew it too, or at least she could tell by the look on my face.
I didn’t go in for wearing my heart on my sleeve like some idiots, but people always knew when I was upset.
“What’s the matter, boys?” Sarah Fleet asked, looking from side to side, even though she didn’t really need to, her eyes being the way they were. “You look like I caught you with your pants down.”
“Nothing like that,” Thom said, sounding horrified at the very idea. “I’m merely afraid that we don’t have what you’re looking for. Of the parts we have been able to locate, neither of them has come from Havemercy herself.”
Sarah Fleet sat back in her chair and grunted. There was a glimmer of something in her eye—the lazy one—that I was pretty damned sure I recognized. “Lucky for all three of us that I wasn’t asking, then, isn’t it?” she said, before getting up from the chair and disappe
aring into one of the rooms farther back in her house.
Something inside of me did a flip, just like Niall messing around on Erdeni before we flew out. Luckily I had better control over my outsides than my insides, and Thom had no clue.
She hustled back pretty quick for someone with her build, which was just as well, since if she’d taken any longer, I’d’ve probably lost my cool and gone back there to haul her in. There was something in her hands, largish, with a bit of a curve to it.
Sarah Fleet put the scale down on the table, and it was almost like she’d torn a hunk out of me and plonked it down in the dining room.
I’d have known one of my girl’s scales anywhere, even if this one was in way better condition than all the rest of ’em put together. It was what she’d looked like brand-new, and I had to swallow quick because otherwise I was gonna hurl all over the place. She was just sitting there, resting smack-dab in the middle of the dining-room table like no more than a potholder or one of those round things you put under mugs of coffee to keep the table from staining. Somehow it looked right at home among the bowls of rice pudding. I snorted, because there wasn’t much I could say.
“Don’t start blubbering,” Sarah Fleet warned. “And I don’t want to hear any lectures about stealing, either, because you can’t steal something that came from you in the first place.” She didn’t seem that impressed by the scale, but then I wasn’t really surprised. That was my girl all over. She did reach out and touch the metal, her finger against the arc of white steel, and she sighed, like coming home. “All right,” she said. “I only have one rule, and that’s never mix food with magic. You get all kinds of unwanted mess that way, and it always spoils the taste.”
Thom slowly lowered his spoon. There was rice in the corner of his mouth, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. At least he’d had time to finish, though he’d eaten two portions in the time it’d taken Sarah Fleet to eat one. If we’d been alone, I’d have told him to take a good look at the magician, because that was where he was heading with an appetite like that; but the magician in question had sharp fucking ears and might’ve been able to use a spoon as a weapon.
We weren’t alone, and I needed Sarah Fleet’s help, and even someone like me knew when to keep my mouth shut about a woman’s weight—when it worked to my benefit, of course.
“I’ll clear the table,” Thom said, with an eye between Sarah Fleet and me like he knew his place among the three of us. Someone had taught him real manners somewhere along the line, on top of all that horseshit he’d picked up at the ’Versity. Before Sarah Fleet could say otherwise, he’d scooped up the bowls carefully and scuttled out to the kitchen like an unwanted roach.
“Not bad, that one,” Sarah Fleet said, with an approving eye that made me jealous for no good reason. “He’s got lovely manners, for example. Unlike some no-account brawlers I could name.”
“You want me to clear the table, or you want to get this done quick?” I replied.
“Guess you can’t take a hint,” Sarah Fleet said, rolling up her loose sleeves to reveal her soft white arms. She looked a little like the pudding she’d made, which nearly made me laugh, but I was getting real good at this whole controlling-myself thing. “All right, have it your way. Bring that thing over here now and be quick about it. My boyfriend won’t stand out there waiting all night.”
“If you’re talking about Kalim—” I said, with a warning in my voice. But I picked up the scale and brought it around to her side of the table. It was hot in my hand—maybe it held the heat from the desert or something—but to me it felt like the blood pumping underneath skin and not like a part of a dead thing at all.
Sarah Fleet, the dotty old bag, winked at me with her wonky eye and pulled out a tatty old magician’s pouch. She rifled through it for a moment, and then came up with what looked to me like an ordinary old sewing bodkin.
“Ha!” she said.
“We gonna do some needlepoint for Havemercy?” I asked, unable to help myself. From the back of the kitchen, I could hear water being pumped and the clink of dishes being washed. It was just like Thom to pick up a skill like that out of all the things he could’ve learned. Probably did an ace load of laundry too. And considering how he was in charge of washing things, and how we didn’t go around smelling like cows, I guess he did. “Sew a few doilies and that’ll lead the way?”
Fleet smacked my arm with her free hand, scooting her chair closer. “Watch that smart mouth,” she said. “I’m the one holding the needle here, so don’t get cocky. Now give me your hand.”
“Why?” I asked, instantly suspicious of anyone who pointed out that they were wielding a weapon, then asked for my hand. It sure as shit wasn’t because she wanted to shake.
“Oh, my mistake,” said Fleet. “I was under the impression that I was speaking to Airman Rook of the Esar’s famous Dragon Corps, not Sissy-man Sal of Miss Petunia’s Flower-Farting School for Pansies. You got a problem with that?”
I slammed my hand down on the table, then turned it over, palm up. In the kitchen, the water stopped running. Bastion only knew what Thom thought we were doing in here, I told myself, and grinned.
Fleet pricked my finger with the needle before I could blink—she moved fast for an old sack—and before I could tell her exactly where to stick that needle next, she’d pricked herself too.
“Hate doing it this way,” she muttered, pulling the scale closer and turning it over, so it made a shallow metal bowl. After that, she squeezed a few drops of her blood into the scale, then lifted my hand to do the same to me. “It’s messy as anything, but it works. Well, sometimes. Try not to faint, now; it’ll all be over soon. Besides, I just washed these floors last month.”
I wasn’t complaining. Pain wasn’t something that bothered me much. I’d been pretty well versed in it since I was a sapling, and I was too eager to get going to even feel it, really. Adrenaline always worked the same, whether you were in the air or in some grandmother’s kitchen. Nothing in the moment mattered; you were already somewhere else, in front of yourself in time.
Fleet picked up the scale real carefully, turning it slowly one direction, then the next. Mixing our blood together, I guess. Then she picked up the needle and dropped it into the center of our little puddle of combined blood. All at once, I felt a deep kind of tingling in my skin, like something in the air had changed, or the wind was picking up quick—except we weren’t outside anymore.
There weren’t any sounds of dishwashing coming from the kitchen now. I could feel Thom watching us, but I couldn’t look away from the dragonscale.
“So when’s the magic start happening?” I asked, like I couldn’t feel a thing. Fleet probably knew better than to let me make shit up.
“Shut it,” said Fleet, all her attention on the scale. “If you distract me, I could always mess up and have a compass that leads to Shirley-Sue the milk cow instead of your girl.”
I buttoned my lip.
But nothing happened.
That was usually the case with magicians. They talked big, set things up with a lot of bluster and bravado, then you sat around while the clock ticked, waiting to be impressed. Some of them had little magic shows to make idiots like me, common people without any Talent to speak of save the ones that weren’t blessed with capitalization, understand something was happening at all. But Fleet wasn’t like that, and I was glad she wasn’t like that, and this wasn’t some Hapenny Lane stage but an old lady’s house. All I felt was uncomfortable between my skin and my muscle, like I was getting a fever.
Then the needle started moving.
“Bastion,” I said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Fleet replied, standing. I did the same.
She wouldn’t have to tell me a third time. Why the hell was I acting like a wide-eyed penny-parlor boy in the first place? Guess my girl always had one over on me, even from the grave.
I smiled thin and watched the needle gain momentum, spinning round in its little bowl like a clock gone crazy, a compass
with no due center. Our blood—Fleet’s and mine—together, had done this. Kinda special when you thought about it. Never seen anything like that before, and I’d seen a fuck-ton of all kinds of strange things in my time.
“Patience,” Fleet said, more like she was talking to herself. I was on the edge of my seat and feeling weak in the knees like a lady from the Fans who’d just found out she was in the family way, but I kept myself up anyway. Didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of anyone.
“Ah!” Thom said from the kitchen.
The needle stopped turning, righted itself, vibrated a couple of times, complete with a low whining noise. Then it fell flat into the bowl, pointing, as far as I could tell, just a hair shy of due north.
“Huh,” Fleet said, sitting down hard. The chair beneath her groaned. I pretended like I didn’t need to sit and was just choosing to ’cause the chair was there and all, and let my knees give up.
“Huh what?” I asked.
“Seems like someone else got the same piss-poor idea into their head as you,” Fleet said. She had a thoughtful look on her face. “Direction’s pretty precise, too.”
“Okay,” I said, like that actually meant something to me. It didn’t, but maybe I’d get lucky and the old girl would elaborate.
“Don’t humor me,” Fleet snapped. “You know what this means?”
“Nope,” I told her flatly.
“That’s right, and don’t you forget it,” Fleet replied, wagging her finger. She looked tired, though, and I wondered if Thom and I were gonna have to haul her to bed after this was all over. “Means you’re not the only one who can’t let little darlin’ go, apparently. Someone in the desert’s having a go at putting her together,” Fleet explained finally, letting out a deep breath. “They’ve got the soul too, or they’re close to it, which means at least one of ’em knows their top from their tail. Just look at that needle.”
Dragon Soul Page 27