Dragon Soul

by Danielle Bennett

  He was a real piece of work, my brother.

  But that wasn’t the point, anyway. The point was, Thom wasn’t where I’d told him to stay, and this time it was a place where it actually counted. Sure, in the barren wasteland that was the Volstovic countryside it might’ve been a little dangerous. Might’ve been wolves or a bear or something, and trust Thom to get into an argument with a cub about honey when the mama bear was right nearby.

  This wasn’t “might’ve been dangerous.” This was dangerous. And Thom’d pranced off somewhere with his camel he didn’t know how to ride and his friend I didn’t trust and a whole resting hole full of angry fucking desert riders who’d probably kill first and find out who they’d killed later. Just like me.

  When I found him I was gonna clap a collar and a leash on him. That way, he couldn’t ever wander off, and if he found it offensive to his pride or whatever, then he might as well complain to the dogs, ’cause they were all that was gonna listen to him after this.

  Yeah, I guess I was a little angrier than I should’ve been. But Thom wasn’t anywhere in sight, and since I’d told him to stay out of the fighting, I could guess that he’d gone and done the one thing he always did: He hadn’t fucking listened. I got off my camel, since I wasn’t about to go charging into an enemy base looking like I was charging into an enemy base. Kalim had their attention, we’d all but wiped out their forces, and I stalked straight into the heart of the rival camp, listening with both ears for anything that sounded like someone trying to kill my brother before I got the chance to.

  It was quieter in the center of camp—a real deceptive kind of quiet that made it seem like the fight hadn’t only died down, but like it’d never happened in the first place. And I hated that sound—silence like nothing’d ever happened. Like no matter where you were, dirt or sand or wind or time or whatever was gonna come and bury everything sooner or later, everything I’d done and everything Thom’d said buried along with it. Kalim’s men’d already rounded up the survivors, and I stepped neatly over a body without batting an eye, the kind of thing Thom’d never be able to do.

  “Thom!” I shouted, not giving a fuck who heard me. I could handle myself. Bastion, I was mad enough to want someone to have a go at me. “Hilary, you little shit! If you make me track you down instead of coming out on your own, you’ll think everything that happened up until now was just a real pleasant dream, you hear me?”

  I heard a scuffling sound from behind and I whirled around quick, putting my knife up even if—and maybe especially if—it was my dimwitted brother.

  It wasn’t him, though, and it wasn’t even a desert rider. It was a fucking Ke-Han bastard, and of all the things I needed to see right now, a face like that definitely wasn’t one of them. He said something angry in that language of theirs that sounded like river murmurs, and all of a sudden I was remembering all kinds of things I didn’t particularly want or need to. The scars on my back itched like fire, and I did my best to remember what was important—because I was pretty sure it wasn’t starting up another hundred years’ war in the middle of the fucking desert.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I told him. He had a long, ugly scar down half his face, the kind you got from real mean fighting, war battles and not sitting up on your horse for most of them, either, and I was pretty sure he wanted to talk to me about as much as I wanted to talk to him. I could just count myself lucky that he didn’t know what I really was: not just your typical Volstovic to hate but probably one of the people he had reason to hate most. And I had my reasons to hate him. So everything was fair and square.

  He shouted something again—the same thing, I was pretty sure, even without good ’Versity learning—and I snapped a little this time, making damn sure my knife was visible. Maybe the idiot hadn’t seen it before. Maybe he was looking for a fight. Maybe I was gonna have to kill him.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying,” I told him, calm as I could when I felt like all my nerve endings were going off like homemade firecrackers. “But I’m pretty fucking sure it’s got nothing to do with me though, so like I said: Go fuck yourself. Have a great fucking day.”

  He stared at me like I was speaking a completely crazy fucking language—which I guess I was. I was about to pop him one for getting in my way while I was already pissed off when someone came crashing through the bushes behind us, followed by a couple of other someones, all making as much noise as they could. Just like that, my Ke-Han barrier up and melted away, avoiding me to move sharply across the sand and toward the intrusion. I had more than half a mind to just continue where I’d left off, but a relieved, strained little voice pulled me up short.

  “Rook?” it said, all happy and terrified at once.

  I stormed right after that Ke-Han bastard and straight up to my brother, who’d—judging by the looks of things—apparently gotten himself taken prisoner by two women. Sure, one of them was kind of beefy and the other one looked suspiciously like a skinny man in a big dress, but it was still a pretty fucking embarrassing situation. I grabbed Thom up by his collar and dragged him forward, spitting mad twice over now, if such a thing was even possible.

  “What in bastion’s fucking name is wrong with that head of yours?” I demanded, one fist inches away from his face, so he knew I meant business. He cringed. “You can tell me all about Kara-fucking-khum and whether or not the rainfall this year’s been up to snuff or what the national flower is, but when it comes to staying in one damn place, that’s too hard for you? Common sense just too much to process on top of all those cindy lessons of yours?”

  “Geoffrey’s dead,” Thom choked out, which wasn’t a fucking apology, but it did bring me up short.

  “Dead?” I repeated. Not my finest fucking moment, but I was surrounded by a bunch of strangers in the desert; two of ’em were Ke-Han and one of ’em, the boyish-looking woman, might’ve been Volstovic. Nothing was making sense, so as far as I was concerned, I was holding my own pretty nicely.

  “Indeed,” mused one of the women—the smaller one, whose face just wasn’t quite right. I didn’t like it. She looked like the kind of woman who’d have a few surprises waiting if you took her to the mattress, but fortunately, taking anybody anywhere was the last thing on my mind. “He stole something of mine, then quite unfortunately turned up with his throat slit. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “I’m not,” I said, and meant it. “He was a thief. Got him into trouble out here more than once, and if that wasn’t enough to stop him, then he got what he deserved. Pity I didn’t do it myself.”

  I was half expecting to get myself chastised for that one, but I guess even my brother knew how to keep his trap shut once in a while.

  “I take it this one belongs to you?” the woman went on, not looking at all fazed by what I’d said.

  “Yeah,” I told her. “Something like that. Unfortunately.”

  “I think he stole…what we were looking for,” Thom said uneasily, as I lowered him back to the ground. He leaned closer to me, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “The Ke-Han woman has a compass embedded in her hand. I’ve seen it. And…I heard them use the Ke-Han word for dragon more than once. Its etymology is different from that of the creature in their myths; the word even sounds like ours. And it’s not entirely out of the question that they would be here for the same reasons we are. Otherwise, how do you explain their presence? They clearly aren’t native to the desert.”

  “Huh,” I said, looking at them again.

  Thom was pretty close to pretty fucking right. Even I had to admit it. What in bastion’s name were these three freaks doing working together? A Ke-Han soldier, a Ke-Han woman—who would’ve been real pretty, not my type but still good to look at, if she hadn’t been drenched in sweat and sand—and then this Volstovic bitch who made me fucking uncomfortable and no mistake, staring at me with her big eyes and smiling at me with her thin little mouth.

  “Whisper, whisper,” she said, tilting her head. “I recognize you.”

&
nbsp; “Who doesn’t?” I muttered, not in the mood. “I don’t sign autographs and I don’t tell stories, so don’t even try it.”

  “I’d never dream of insulting you so,” she replied. “My name is Malahide. I believe we’ve both worked for the same man.”

  Everything was starting to click. Not that I wanted to stand around and contemplate or theorize or even put two and two together to make four, but sometimes I guessed I had to do the bare amount of thinking in order to get shit done—and the problem was, what we’d come here for was still missing.

  If this bitch was telling me we’d worked for the same person, then I could wager a good solid guess as to who it was, and it probably wasn’t Charlie the Grinder down on Hapenny, because she wouldn’t’ve turned enough coin and he wouldn’t’ve bothered with her. It was th’Esar she was talking about, and anyone who worked for him and was going after my prize wasn’t on my side at all.

  I fingered my knife—Kalim’s knife—and the Ke-Han soldier stiffened.

  “Don’t work for him anymore,” I said. I didn’t want things to get too real too fast, but I didn’t want to be the last one to draw my knife out, either. And the nice thing was, of these three idiots, I was the only one armed. Even the soldier wasn’t carrying a sword, or at least he wasn’t wielding a weapon big enough for me to see from where I was. He was a mean-looking bastard but I wasn’t being delusional when I thought, just looking at him, that I could take him. “So what’s this I hear about a compass?”

  The bitch’s face changed; I could practically see her thinking. She was a Mollyrat at heart if ever I saw one, with one of those mean narrow faces you couldn’t trust long enough to let them look at you, and I stared her down while the cogs in her head were turning. She was trying to figure out a way to get one up on us, but she sure as bastion wasn’t going to on my watch.

  “Whatever you’re planning, don’t fucking bother,” I said. “I’ll know when you’re lying too, so don’t fucking try it.”

  “You have me there, Rook,” she replied, holding up her hands. It was a typical tactic—pretend to surrender when you still had all your weapons—and I took my knife out, real slow, just to examine it. The soldier stepped in front of the bigger woman and the Volstovic “lady” didn’t do anything except for rearranging some of the lace at her collar. Thom swallowed, too loud, beside me.

  “Rook, I really think…” he said, then shook his head. “No, never mind. They’re dangerous. I don’t like it.”

  “My name is Malahide,” the bitch said, when she saw we were done conferencing. “These…friends of mine are named Badger and Madoka, respectively. We are, it would seem, after the same treasure.”

  “Imagine that,” I said. “Small fucking world.”

  “Hmm, eloquent as one might expect,” Malahide said. “That does put us in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really,” I told her. “Way I see it is, I’ve got an army of desert men on my side. All I gotta do is say the magic words and they’ll be on your tail, so…Not really a pickle for me. You guys, maybe. Us? Nah.” Maybe it wasn’t the whole truth—I was embellishing a little—but it was kinda close to the way things were. If I told Kalim these three idiots were rakhmans or whatever, no doubt he’d come down on them the same way he’d come down on the rival tribe. Especially if I pointed out these knuckleheads were after the dragonsoul. Sure as hell didn’t jibe with Kalim’s plans—not mine, either, but a good way to convince Kalim he didn’t like somebody was to give him a reason why that somebody didn’t like him.

  I just had to hope none of them had any power that was useful. Didn’t think so. If they did, they’d probably have called it out on us already.

  Malahide turned to talk to her friends, and of course they were speaking in Ke-Han. It was quiet but I could still hear them, a foreign word here and there, so I looked at Thom—maybe, for once, he’d have something to say that was actually useful.

  “She’s trying to convince the other—Madoka, her name is Madoka—to show you her hand,” Thom said tensely. “The soldier doesn’t want her to. Maybe you should put your knife away.”

  “Here,” I said, shoving the knife into my belt before stepping forward. “See?” I said, holding up my hands for everyone to get a real good look and know for themselves that I was disarmed. “Nothing up my sleeves, no trick weapons, not even a pocketknife. I’m clean and you can pat me down if you want. Show me that bitch’s hand.”

  “Really, Rook,” Malahide said, tsking and trying too hard to be a sweet little buttercup—but I saw right through that act and, personally, it made me sick. “Your reputation is something of a bother to everyone—his highness included, as I’m sure you already know—but that kind of language is uncalled for. I doubt sincerely you would be able to do the things ‘this bitch’ has proven herself capable of.”

  “In other words, hold my fucking tongue and show the fairer sex some well-deserved respect?” I offered, parroting some words that Thom probably recognized well enough.

  “Somehow it sounds so dirty when you say it,” Malahide said. “Show me the fucking compass,” I replied.

  Malahide turned to the Ke-Han woman—Madoka—and put a hand on her shoulder. In response, Madoka flinched, and I thought, Attagirl. Badger, the soldier, wasn’t having any of it; he gave me a look like he wanted to tear my throat out, and I grinned back at him until he looked away, back to his friend.

  Her face was nice and strong, and she was clenching her jaw real tight, like something somewhere was hurting her. There wasn’t much I could do to not look threatening, so I just stood there, waiting for them to make up their minds. They could do this easy or they could do this hard, but it looked like everyone was gonna forgo pride and go for option number one, which was a real nice change from the way things usually shook down.

  Then Madoka stepped forward, holding her hand out.

  It looked bad. I’d seen wounds festering in my time—mostly while I was still in Molly, actually, since if a man got hurt in the corps he kept it between him and the meds—but this was one of the worst. Even the smell was bad, and when I made a face like I was gonna puke, Madoka laughed. Not at me, but at herself. I liked that. Of our three new acquaintances she was the only one I didn’t want to punch in the face. It reminded me a little of how the boys acted when they’d been injured, back in the old days at the Airman. This was a woman who knew how to take a hit and go on standing. I could respect that, if nothing else.

  “What is it?” I asked Malahide.

  “A part of a dragon,” Malahide replied. “It was placed in her hand by a third party—someone it has not yet been my pleasure to meet—for reasons that are becoming increasingly murky.”

  My jaw clenched, and I looked Madoka in the eye. “That hurt?” I asked.

  Malahide translated, and Madoka laughed again, then nodded.

  “So let me work this out,” I said, turning my focus to Malahide. I’d rather have spoken to Madoka, but we didn’t exactly speak the same language, so I’d have to go through a go-between or not talk it through at all. “You’re here ’cause th’Esar sent you after my dragon, since he’s under some big fucking delusion that she belongs to him. And she’s here ’cause someone—probably to do with the Ke-Han—is under some big fucking delusion that they can make her belong to them.”

  “And you’re here because you’re under some big fucking delusion that you can turn back the hands of time,” Malahide concluded, smoothing her hair back from her face and looking proud of herself for getting a good one in, past all my armor.

  Behind me, Thom stiffened, but I ignored the words for the bullshit they were. Only thing you could do to prove a liar right was start arguing with ’em. “So what the fuck’s he doing here?” I asked, nodding at the soldier. He scowled.

  Malahide shrugged. “Backup, I suppose,” she answered. “As you can see, he’s very protective of her.”

  I shrugged too, but it was because I was done talking with her. My attention back to Madoka
, I held out my hand, palm up. “Show it to me,” I said, hoping she could understand that much.

  She hesitated, giving me a look, and I tried to explain with my fucking eyes that I wasn’t gonna pull a fast one on her. In her hand was a piece of my girl—I just knew it—and even if it wasn’t the dragonsoul I’d come here for, it was something.

  It was also the biggest clue we had for where the dragonsoul’d gone, and I needed it to tell me where I was heading next.

  Slowly, Madoka put her hand palm up on top of my own palm. It was kind of like I was holding hands with my girl, and I swallowed, staring down at it. Sunken into all the peeling, miserable flesh, I could see it, ticking away like an awkward heart, the hands whirling around over the surface and pointing everywhere and nowhere all at once.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” I said, once I could speak again. “What’s it supposed to be pointing out?”

  “The dragon piece is still too close for it to do anything other than that, unfortunately,” Malahide said. She smiled so much like a fox that if Thom hadn’t come forward at that moment, I would’ve actually gone after her, just to wipe that expression off her face. There was just something about her that rubbed me all the wrong ways, and I didn’t want to look at her any more than I absolutely had to.

  “It’s close,” Thom said, repeating things the way he liked to when he was about to come up with some kinda hypothesis or thesis or whatever applied out here in the desert. “But we don’t know what direction to take, and if we choose the wrong one…Well. It won’t stay close very long.”

  “Thanks for that, Professor,” I told him, antsy for a whole lot of reasons, the most important of which being what fucking direction we were supposed to head in now. “Real helpful.”