Dragon Soul

by Danielle Bennett

  I caught Madoka giving me a look like maybe she wanted to get her hand back, but I couldn’t stop staring at the compass. Even if it wasn’t pointing toward what I needed, it was still a real part of my girl. It felt weirdly too private, like I was looking at her insides or something, which I guess I was. I had a feeling she wouldn’t’ve liked it—she wouldn’t’ve liked any of it—but then, there wasn’t much I could do about it now.

  “That would be our dilemma, if the compass was the only tool at our disposal,” Malahide admitted, smiling at Thom like a woman about to reveal she wasn’t just getting fat on account of eating too much. She’d get a lot further with that act on Thom than she would on me, but I was still gonna have to knock her one if she took it too far. If this turned out to be the kind of woman Thom fell for, then we were done. Family was family, but in-laws were a fucking life sentence.

  “Lucky you,” I said flatly. If they thought they were going anywhere without me, they had another think coming. “What’s that?”

  “Now, now,” Malahide trilled, in her arch little voice. “A lady never reveals all her secrets at once. Far too wanton, don’t you think, Rook?”

  “A real lady, maybe,” I countered. Madoka said something I didn’t understand. It sounded like a question, though, and then right on cue like I’d asked him, Thom translated.

  “She wants to know if we can get going,” he said, standing at my side like a living, breathing dictionary with too much personality for everyone’s good. “The fighting’s all but stopped, and she believes we are wasting our time by just standing here. Though the words she used weren’t half so polite.”

  I snorted, and Madoka shot me a funny little smile. I didn’t usually like women smiling at me unless I knew the reason for it, but I figured I could make an exception at least once. A sudden flurry of hoofbeats on the sand gave me enough time to drop her hand and grab my knife, whirling around ready to finish whatever some bastard had decided to start up again.

  Except it wasn’t some bastard. It was Kalim.

  “My enemy is dead,” he said, sliding off his camel as everyone fell silent. I guess a desert prince was enough to shut up even as weird a group as I’d managed to gather. Even the way he walked made it obvious he was somebody important, as compared to the rest of us, and that kind of attitude could sew all kinds of mouths shut. “Before I killed him, he told me that the magic was in the possession of a witch, and that she planned to unleash it for him. Now I see that he did not lead me astray. He would not let strangers into his camp lightly, and yet here I see three of them.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Malahide said smoothly, dipping low into a Volstovic curtsy. She really did have a move for every situation. I was starting to think she might even’ve outmaneuvered Adamo in a chess match, but she’d’ve won by being sneaky, not by being clever. Probably the way I’d’ve won at chess, if I ever wanted to play chess—which I didn’t. Too fucking boring. “I must admit, it’s something of a shock to hear my native tongue spoken out here, as far from home as possible.”

  “Are you the witch he spoke of?” Kalim asked, striding right up to her the way I might’ve done if she didn’t creep me right out. He hadn’t washed the blood off his face yet—hadn’t had the time, or maybe this stuff was fresh—and the look on his face would’ve sent any real noblewoman from Volstov into a dead faint.

  Madoka hid her hand behind her back, and I didn’t exactly blame her. If I was on anyone’s side at the minute, I guess I’d have to say I stood with Kalim, but more than anything else I was always on my own side. I’d wait, same as Madoka, to see which way this shook down.

  “I am a witch,” admitted Malahide. Not only didn’t she bat a single dark eyelash, but I could practically see the hen feathers in her fox’s mouth. “And so many other things besides that. I am called Malahide.”

  “And I am Kalim,” Kalim said, one hand still on his knife. He had to stoop a little to look her in the eye. “You are the witch he spoke of, but you do not have what I am looking for.”

  “Regrettably, no,” Malahide said. “It was stolen from us.”

  Next to me, Thom was watching with both eyes peeled wide open. Even in books, he’d probably never read about a scene like this. We made a pretty odd group: the prince of the desert; Madoka with a dragon compass buried in her hand and her Ke-Han bodyguard; Malahide, the penny-fee freak show; my brother the professor; and me, whatever that was. We were all after the same bastion-damn thing, and someone’d up and stolen it from all of us, which meant there was one more person in our little gang who had yet to show his face and be counted. It wasn’t nice of him not to introduce himself politely like everyone else.

  “Stolen,” Kalim repeated, savoring the sound of the l on his tongue a little too long. He turned to me. “Is this true?”

  “Yeah,” I piped in, seeing my chance to remind everyone that I was still here and this was my bounty before it was anybody else’s. “But there’s good news, too. This one here says she’s got a way to track him,” I said, nodding toward Malahide behind her back. Given the right motivation—my motivation this time being to tie that bitch’s hands behind her back for the good of my cause and to the detriment of hers—I could be as helpful as a schoolboy. “A real trump card. She’s the only one who knows how to do it, too. Being a witch and all, guess that makes sense.”

  Malahide’s head snapped around like a snake’s and I grinned. I didn’t know what she’d been planning, but I’d just done a real good job of ensuring the odds were three-on-three. A fair enough fight for a Mollyrat.

  “I see,” Kalim nodded, thinking over what I’d told him. “My men are heading back to camp now. I have killed the man who stole from me, and the rest is personal.” He looked at Malahide a moment longer, giving her a real once-over, like a man looking to buy an expensive horse. Then he seemed to come to some kind of decision, so whatever he’d been looking for, I guess he’d seen it. “For my part, I will accompany you to find this thief. To think that my home should allow so many rakhman past its borders of late…I must be the one to carry out this duty. Magic is well and good, and gifts from the gods do recognize a true leader. But I am a man as well, and do not wish to have other people prove my worth for me. I will go.”

  “Truly,” Malahide began, “that isn’t necessary—”

  “He has started out ahead of us,” Kalim said, cutting her off. Another thing I liked about him: Once he’d made a decision, things happened real quick. “We will need to ride swiftly after him. I will not have my progress impeded by witches who walk.”

  He whistled sharply, a strange little trill that cut off just as quickly as it’d started. I heard a strange, scuffling kind of sound, and out of the dark came a string of seven or so camels, all fully kitted out for battle, though their masters were conspicuously absent.

  “Take your pick,” Kalim commanded, with none of the easy air he usually had about him. This was an order and we were meant to follow it. One day I’d have to take him to task for assuming he could boss me around like anyone else, but for now, going along with Kalim the leader suited my needs well enough. Let him be the one to deal with the horseshit, and let me be the one who took the final prize. “But be quick about it. Witch, you ride with me.”

  I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d been some kind of master strategist. Maybe I wouldn’t have been half-bad at chess after all. I took up my piece—guessing anyone could’ve called that Rook—and prepared myself to ride fast and straight. A compass that half worked and a sneaky witch who could work.

  We’d make it, all right.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MALAHIDE

  For the first time in my life, I was riding a camel. At least it wasn’t bareback.

  I couldn’t say I was particularly grateful for the experience, even despite the comfortable saddle. Of all the surprises I’d run across in the desert, finding myself face-to-face with one of the Esar’s infamous airmen definitely ranked up near the top. I certain
ly hadn’t expected to discover that he’d formed an alliance with one of the nomad tribes, either, which was how I’d wound up riding the camel in the first place. And, I suspected from his attitude, Airman Rook was threatened by me and therefore did not like me very much.

  All in all, bouncing along on the sand, pressed up against a stranger with princely airs as I tried to pick up the scent of the dragonsoul above the odors of blood, sweat, and camel, I was quite ready to lose my temper. Indeed, I might have come to the edge of my patience at last had I not detected the one smell on earth guaranteed to quicken my pulse and set my blood to burning.

  It wasn’t only the dragonmetal I could taste upon the wind.

  The thief in question was the very man I’d been following across the mountains. More than that, he wasn’t alone.

  I took the reins from Kalim, spurring us around in a sharp turn to the right. I’d never ridden a camel—when would I have had the chance?—but I was practiced on horseback, and the basics were essentially the same. I even felt a slight kinship toward the beast, lumpy and ungainly as it appeared next to the sleek, more desirable form of a horse.

  Next to us, the airman Rook kicked his own mount up to speed, matching our pace with his own. He wasn’t giving me an inch, which was a trait I normally liked in a man, but just now—so close to the conclusion of this saga, and my prize—his relentlessness was getting under my skin. Since Kalim was behind me, I couldn’t even check to see how Madoka was doing with one bad hand, but she had Badger to look out for her, and the other Volstovic was hardly a threat. In fact, I barely bothered to remember his name.

  I had rather shamefully lost track of time somewhere between the sun’s set and our prize being stolen right out from under Madoka’s nose, but now I could tell that the sky was starting to lighten. The pure dark was lifting, and the moon had already passed above our heads long ago. We had a few hours left, I could only guess, but it was a clumsy assumption, based on nothing but my own hope and makeshift calculations.

  It didn’t matter. I would ride through the day, if I had to. No one else could stop me.

  At least the prince behind me was not foolish enough to try to make idle conversation with me. He did not trust me, same as Rook, which was why he kept me close—a little too close, perhaps. It was behavior that would not have passed even in an Arlemagne court, but his reasons were different. While Rook’s fur was ruffled by my power—the sort of man who did not appreciate the idea that a woman could do something he could not, nor the concept that women came in all shapes and varieties of beauty—Kalim was cautious of me, and wary, because he was respectful. Magic seemed to be a currency favored in the desert. And why not? It made absolute sense. No vein of Well water had been found here in the desert. The only magic one could observe was the tireless strength of constant riding. No one here seemed to grow weary of all the sand, the heat, the inability to feel like one’s skin or one’s belongings were ever truly clean.

  In summation, Kalim respected me and I respected him, for the sole reason Rook did not respect me: because we were very different.

  I was still breathing in deeply, a rhythmic pattern that suited the bump and jostle of the camel beneath me. After all, I had to adapt to my current surroundings, and what better way than this? An hour or so ago—it was difficult to keep track of time, and the sand had long since destroyed the mechanisms of my prized pocket watch—Madoka had told me the pain in her hand was growing substantially worse. This meant we were on the right track. The scent grew stronger. We approached our quarry, but his party was substantially smaller, and he was riding fast.

  I wondered idly if they would stop to rest. We could draw up to them while they slept. In broad daylight, with no shade or shadow nearby but the ones our own bodies cast before us, we would put an end to this charade, once and for all.

  And I did so want to meet the man I’d been following.

  If some of us more rational folk could keep him alive for long enough to squeeze a few answers out of him—questionable because of the dark, murderous rage I scented, among other less savory things, from Airman Rook—then he would prove just as valuable in mind as the dragon piece he carried.

  It must have been something special, if so many were after it. Our numbers were almost humorous by this point, and I did have to wonder who would come out victorious in seizing the physical object, claiming “success” as their own. I also wondered what the Esar would do with this item if and when it was returned to him. No doubt he would destroy it—the grandest irony of all—so that no one else could ever possess it again, and he himself would see it only as a haunting specter in his darkest, most uncertain of dreams.

  Indeed, it was enough to make a woman jealous that so many here chased the object in question for their own personal reasons, and were not merely envoys of another man. Madoka, Badger, and perhaps the quiet Volstovic were all pieces similar to pawns; I was a bishop, and Kalim and Rook were the knights. How quaint that we had made our chessboard the vast and inescapable planes of the desert.

  “You think hard,” Kalim said behind me.

  I paused in my task. Thinking and working came hand in hand for me. As I scented I thought, and both enhanced each other. I could more easily chase a thing the better I understood it, and the only way to understand was to analyze. Still, I had found the direction. I kept my senses keen, but by the same token, I did not wish to be rude and alienate a potential ally.

  “It is necessary for my work,” I explained.

  “By which you mean your magic?” Kalim asked.

  I glanced over at the other riders. Rook’s companion was having trouble with his camel, whose face was a pure, blissful expression of spite if ever I had seen it. Rook himself saw that Kalim and I were conversing, and his hawklike gaze was fixed upon us so unwaveringly that I had to wonder whether or not sand even got in his eyes or if it bypassed him completely, sensing another more violent storm. Madoka and Badger were still riding steadily just a few feet behind us, and I sighed, having to trust that they would do well enough on their own. If anything, Madoka was stubborn beyond the normal limits of strength.

  She’d be all right. On top of that, she’d see Badger through, as well.

  I smiled faintly and murmured my confirmation. “Indeed,” I said. “My magic.”

  “You breathe in deep like a camel,” Kalim told me, laughing. “But you do not snort out again like one.”

  “What a charming comparison,” I said. It was better than some comparisons I had received before, the most frequent of which were cur, hound, mongrel. “How very quaint.”

  “Quaint,” Kalim repeated, rolling the word upon his tongue. “This means charming?”

  “Something of the sort,” I replied. “It is more nuanced…Would you prefer we spoke your language?”

  “No,” Kalim told me honestly. “I need practice.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said. “So you are using me?”

  “In many ways I am,” Kalim said. He tightened his arm about my waist and, though he was not a man whose nature I could immediately guess—it was far too natural to be summed up so easily—I allowed myself to flutter a gasp of surprise. “No pretenses, please,” he said at that, and now I could tell he was scowling. “I am not lying to you. Why should you lie to me?”

  “My apologies,” I said. “I mean no offense.”

  “Perhaps lying is your nature now,” he told me, clipped and short. I was offended, but he was also quite right.

  I spared a look at his face: I could only see one half of it, but it was hard and handsome and very dark, his nose straight, his chin sharp. His brows were thick and there were many lines around his mouth; tanning from the sun and laughing at jokes and all manner of vibrancy collected in those little wrinkles. He was clearly a man who lived life every day—or every night—to the fullest, and the kind of man it was difficult to woo. I had my work cut out for me, but I needed a fourth ally for myself, Badger, and Madoka. It would turn the tables and the tides in our favor.


  After that, it was every last man for himself, or so the saying went.

  “Do we approach our man?” Kalim asked me. “How do you tell?”

  “It isn’t something I can very easily explain,” I began, with the usual excuses. Then, because I could see the corner of Kalim’s mouth frowning, I went on, which was very unusual. “I smell him, one might say,” I explained. “And the piece he is carrying—I can smell both.”

  “This is an admirable talent,” Kalim said. “How did you come by it? Or were you born this way?”

  I thought back to my unimpressive and uninspiring youth. I was not one of the lucky creatures born into money and power, destined for intrigue and idle fame. Talent was by no means rare, but I had none of it, and it had been worth it to me at the time—and still was worth it—to trade away pieces of myself to enhance other pieces. Tit for tat, it might have seemed to anyone else, but I was clearly bargaining with fate to the point of cheating nature itself.

  “I was not born this way,” I replied.

  Kalim snorted—like a horse, himself. “No you were not,” he agreed.

  I didn’t much appreciate that implication, as it came far too close to the truth of the matter for my own liking, but it would not do to clutter my impassioned thoughts by allowing my own fur to be ruffled. My clear head was one of my finest weapons, and I planned to use it to the fullest extent of its capabilities. “Now, Kalim,” I replied, as prettily as I could manage. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know well,” Kalim told me. “But it can be our little secret.”

  He spurred his camel faster, and Rook drew up beside us, not giving me time to ponder that peculiar statement. “If you’re making plans between yourselves, then shit, Kalim,” Rook said, “how desperate are you? You come to Volstov with me and I’ll find you fifteen women prettier than this one.”