Dragon Soul

by Danielle Bennett

  “I have no need of pretty women,” Kalim replied. “I prefer my companions to be beautiful.”

  “This ain’t beauty,” Rook said, and spat savagely—grossly—downwind. “Just some nasty shadows masquerading.” Kalim smiled widely and Rook rolled his eyes. “Guess there’s no accounting for taste,” Rook snarled. “Just be careful she doesn’t cut your dick off. Snip snip, you got me?”

  “This is universally understood,” Kalim agreed.

  Rook fell back to confer on something with his companion, and I was left with a whirlwind of sand against my boots and thoughts ricocheting from my chest to my mind. I had lived with many secrets in my time, but Kalim himself was intimating he saw through the most deftly kept secret of all.

  It was impossible. My showmanship was impeccable. Even Dmitri had never guessed, and we had known each other since childhood. I would not have said Dmitri knew me better than I knew myself—my particular nature required that I know myself better than I could ever allow anyone to know me—but I had always assumed it would be he who realized before anyone else.

  This was confounding.

  “Do not let it distract you, in any case,” Kalim suggested lightly. But there was something in his eyes that suddenly frightened me. “How close are we now to our prey?”

  The wind picked up, and I scented something dark upon it. Magic, I realized all at once, and I grasped the camel’s reins, pulling him up short.

  I couldn’t afford to be distracted now. Kalim was right about that, at least.

  “Do you sense something?” he asked, his light air of a moment ago completely vanished.

  “Magic,” I told him, quite honestly. I breathed in deeply, and nearly regretted it, so potent was the reek of spellcasting that washed over me. “Foreign, perhaps. But there’s something familiar about it, too.”

  I wasn’t in the habit of thinking aloud—I’d rarely had the opportunity, since losing my tongue—but I felt almost compelled to do it now. Kalim didn’t trust me, and I needed him to. If honesty was the trade I had to peddle in order to win him over, then so be it. Old Nor would’ve been proud of me to see me in action.

  “Perhaps they seek to rebuild what was lost,” Kalim suggested. “To use this magic now for their own ends?”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that,” I told him. It was one thing to entertain my own private concerns about our enemy’s intents. It was quite another to hear those same concerns uttered aloud. “Honestly, is there no sense left in the world? One would think that you men might have better things to do than chase a sentiment into the desert.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Rook grunted, coming up on our side with his companion. “It’s rude to talk about things that have nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s ruder to eavesdrop,” I pointed out.

  “So why’d we stop?” Rook asked, instead of rising to the bait. Our relative progress across the desert was apparently the only thing that penetrated his thick skull.

  “Malahide says there is magic afoot,” Kalim explained, just as I’d opened my mouth to do so. It hadn’t been so very long ago that I’d needed someone else to speak for me, but no one had ever done it of his own free will before. It was strange, and I was entirely sure that I did not like it.

  Nevertheless, I was about to elaborate when I heard a shout from behind, and Kalim turned us around just in time to see Madoka drop from her camel like a sack of new potatoes fresh off the back of the cart. Badger was down by her side in a flash, with the swift necessity of a soldier’s movements, and I found myself struggling to dismount as well. Kalim let me free and I fell to the ground, somehow managing to keep from twisting an ankle—these bastion-damned boots were useless in the sand—and I hurried over to her.

  The scent of the magic was thick in the air now, a heady, intoxicating aroma that made it difficult to sort out anything else. Almost a blessing since I could no longer smell the rotting in Madoka’s hand, but it meant that I would have to work much harder to detect the now-elusive scent of the dragonmetal, and my own quarry, beneath all the rest. Layer upon layer, like a fine lady’s evening gown, with the truth of her body hidden underneath so much silk and brocade and lace.

  I took Madoka’s hand—the good one—in mine.

  “Hurts,” she muttered through clenched teeth. Though the light in the sky was quite dim, I could still see that she was growing increasingly pale.

  “We’re getting close,” I told her, the wind picking up around us. I felt almost guilty, using her pain as a kind of compass itself, but I’d been trained to make use of every tool at my disposal, and I couldn’t afford to forget myself, not even now. Not when I’d finally come so close. When we grew too near to our target for the machinery in her hand to work properly, it was Madoka’s relative threshold for pain that I followed, alongside my nose. There was nothing else to it.

  The breeze gusted up into my face, and my nostrils flared, drawing in the scent of my surroundings. Everything paled against the magic, but there were little hints of other things: Madoka’s fear and pain, Airman Rook’s furious impatience, the corrosive tang of dragonmetal in Madoka’s palm, and something else. Something quite familiar, in fact. That I hadn’t recognized it sooner was a matter I would later scold myself for. It was as plain—for lack of a better expression—as the nose on my face.

  “Madoka, my girl,” I began, with some urgency in my voice that was neither put on nor exaggerated. “Would you like to know what I have just discovered?”

  “Sure,” Madoka said, humoring me as she struggled to sit up in the sand. Badger put a hand behind her back and steered her upright. “Why not?”

  “The smell of magic that I’ve run across just now—the air positively stinks of it here, so I can only imagine he thinks himself safe—shares a certain odor with that nightmare in your hand, as well. It’s a signature, if you will. All magicians have them, because all magicians have more ego than brains. Call it a shared trait.”

  I watched her closely as the realization sank in, the emotions on her face as evident as if she’d been a mechanical compass herself: all the gears shifting and moving to create a new sense of purpose. She no longer looked as though she was about to shuffle off into the afterlife. How could she possibly, when the man who’d done this to her rested so close at hand?

  She got to her feet, and I saw a new resolve burning in her eyes. She would reach our destination, I knew that much, and bastion help any man who tried to stand in her way. Feeling rather proud of myself, I stood a moment later and nearly stepped backward into Kalim, who’d crept up on us without warning.

  “You have the gift of many tongues,” he noted, his face entirely impassive, so that I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. The wind whipped the sand around us and I winced as it stung my cheek, then drew my shawl tightly around my face to avoid a second occurrence.

  “Just not my own,” I answered, and I couldn’t have said what I was thinking just then either. The smell of the magic was inebriating me. It was the only possible explanation. “Come,” I added, in more serious tones. “If we linger here, we may inadvertently alert them to our presence, and I do so enjoy the element of surprise. Especially when there is only one magician among us—or should I say witch?—and my Talent is abstract rather than physical.”

  “Let’s crush them,” Madoka said, with a good helping of the fire I’d seen in her when we first met. “It is…‘them,’ right?”

  “You’re much smarter than you look,” I said, all too aware of Rook’s companion standing nearer to us, and translating what I said in the Ke-Han language back to the airman himself. He was useful for something, then, after all, and I had underestimated his abilities. Well, it would not happen again. “I believe there is more than one magician.”

  “I don’t care if it’s a whole army of fucking magicians,” Rook snarled, and I got the distinct impression that he was being completely truthful. “We’re going in there and taking back what’s mine.”

  “Hmm,” I said, al
lowing a small smile to play about my lips. “I wonder if it will truly be that simple.”

  It was going to be incredibly interesting to see what came of our little expedition, nearly everyone in it for his own separate reasons and all of us intractable to a man. Again, I found myself the odd one out, with no personal stakes beyond professional pride in the matter. Kalim had his tribe; the airman had his dragon; Madoka’s troubles were deeply personal; Badger had Madoka, I supposed; and the translator seemed to have his own reasons—it certainly wasn’t for the adventure of the ride. I’d never been bothered by such a thing before, but it niggled at the back of my mind like a splinter, small yet insistent.

  I studied the camel for a moment before mounting it with relative ease. It was rather the same as riding a horse, if slightly more uncomfortable. Swiftly, Kalim was behind me again, and I twitched the reins quickly, setting us off before he could say any more troublesome things. Now was not the time to theorize. There was a storm cloud ahead of us and the dawn was an eerie gray.

  The sun was coming up more rapidly now, staining the desert a rosy yellow and taking the cold sting out of the night breezes. Magic was thick in my nostrils, guiding me like a banner’s wave to meet our goal. The air itself was pale and shimmering—or perhaps it was my eyes watering from the stench, and I myself was hallucinating, like a child drugged before the removal of a rotten tooth. Whatever it was our opponents were doing, they were so engrossed in it that they hadn’t taken the time to set up proper perimeters—no watchmen or scouts. Perhaps my quarry, having slit that man’s throat, had presumed it sufficient to sneak away in the chaos between two warring tribes. Or perhaps, like me, he was simply feeling the weight of time on his shoulders, what he’d spent and what he had left behind. A man pressed for time could be engrossed in what he was doing to the exclusion of all else. We might well ride right up to his doorstep in the open sunlight before he noticed anything amiss—or so I hoped and planned.

  As long as we moved swiftly, I could be sure we wouldn’t lose the advantage of surprise, which we sorely needed. This magic was a brand more potent than my own; it must have been, for what it had done to Madoka’s very body. I certainly could not contemplate the trick this man had pulled, nor how our magicians back in Volstov might undo it. And, on top of that, my own magic was by no means combative. Airman Rook and Badger were soldiers, but physical strength against this more violent strain of Talent was not a match on which I could bank good money for my side winning. The question in my mind now was, What in bastion’s name were they doing? All this desert, I thought, and all that power inside that dragon part. If they were unleashing a storm, I truly did not wish to be caught in the middle of it.

  Rook kicked his own mount into a pace with ours, and Kalim wrapped his fingers around the shaggy fur in the camel’s neck. On our other side, Madoka appeared, and after a moment, Badger alongside her. It was certainly the largest—not to mention the strangest—group I’d ever traveled in. My inability to trust such a large collection of individuals was why I had never chosen to be a true soldier. And so I was somewhat out of my league, wasn’t I?

  What we were traveling toward would almost certainly dissolve us, but for the time being, I could allow myself to relish the bizarre and unfathomable feeling, rare as it was, and passing strange.

  “You smile like a jackal,” Kalim told me. “In my homeland, this is a sign of good luck.”

  “Let’s hope it’s my good luck,” I said, and set us going even faster.

  THOM

  The sun was coming up over the desert, and we were following the Esar’s agent to the dragonsoul.

  It wasn’t exactly the way I’d envisioned our quest drawing to its close, but then I presumed it was the sort of thing that Sarah Fleet would’ve found monstrously entertaining. Had she been with us—I was relieved all over again that she was not—her barking laughter would have signaled our approach to our enemy. And yet her Talent might have proven somewhat useful in our current situation. Magicians: always a boon and a bane, never quite one thing without being its opposite.

  At least I’d finally found a way to make myself useful for my brother, even though impromptu translator hadn’t exactly been the position I’d had in mind. It was something I could do, and it was clearly driving him insane that the woman Malahide could switch between languages the way he switched between moods, just as quickly and just as naturally. We’d have to keep an eye on her. Rather, we’d have to keep an eye on everyone, since we were only working together now because it suited everyone’s purposes to do so. I held no illusions about what would happen once we reached the dragonsoul and put paid to the men currently holding it.

  It was going to be ugly. For my part, I knew exactly where I stood—Rook and I were the only two bound together by blood—but I was less certain of the others. Would Kalim hold fast to preestablished loyalties and take our part, for instance, or would he decide to claim the dragonsoul as his own? Was Malahide in deep enough cahoots with the Ke-Han man and woman that she would stand with them, or would she be setting out on her own as soon as she’d located what she believed was hers? It was the most complex mathematical problem I’d ever tried to sort out, and in all likelihood it was a waste of time trying to put two and two together, but I wanted to be prepared, no matter what happened. It was the most I could do.

  I twisted the reins around my wrist and squeezed the camel’s sides with my heels, spurring her onward while trying to close the distance between myself and Rook. Only Malahide seemed to know how close—or how far—we were from the site of this mysterious thief, and I had no intentions of being caught off guard.

  I’d long since given up the idea that she was lying to us about what she “smelled.” Even I—and I was no magician—could taste the strange colors of the air. My tongue burned, and my throat was tight around every breath I drew in. At first I’d wondered if it was simply the way the desert felt when one was about to ride straight into a sandstorm—just our luck, wasn’t it?—but Kalim wore an expression now that he would not have for a simple storm, something to which he had been accustomed all his life.

  Unfortunately, I could not consult with him. He was too close to Malahide for that, and as Rook refused to trust her, I couldn’t ruffle his feathers by appearing to do so. It was a paranoia that almost appeared jealous, depending on the light.

  Riding blind into the center of the storm, at least, was the sort of thing for which my brother was built. No one was born to be comfortable in a situation such as this one, but Rook had been groomed for it. He was ready, even if I wasn’t.

  “Just don’t fall off your mount,” Rook muttered to me, quiet enough that, presumably, neither of our Volstovic-speaking counterparts could hear us.

  I drew up alongside him as quickly as I could, feeling marginally embarrassed when he had to slow his camel so that I could do so with less difficulty. Still trying to learn, in any case. I was stubborn as all bastion-blessed, and I wished more than ever that Rook could appreciate determination as much as he appreciated results.

  “I haven’t yet,” I replied.

  “What the fuck’s happening?” Rook added, with less venom than I’d expected. The curses themselves held no bite. They were merely rote expression, and I wished again I had some talent—like his—that would prove useful in a bind.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted unhappily. “There is magic. But I don’t know why.”

  “What sort of stuff’s inside the soul, do you think?” Rook asked.

  It was a very deep question, especially for him, and I thought about the best philosophical way to answer it before I realized he’d meant what was physically inside Havemercy’s soul, and that it wasn’t as deep as I’d thought. More suited to the moment, though. I sighed and shook my head. “I can’t say for certain,” I replied. “Sarah Fleet seemed to indicate it was some combination of Well water and personal magic—blood, sweat, and tears, perhaps without the tears part. A little bit of pure magic and a little bit of personal Ta
lent, and there you have it.”

  “But it’s powerful enough to bring something alive,” Rook said, and then added quickly, “to bring someone alive. Right?”

  “Sarah Fleet seemed to indicate as much,” I reminded him. I wasn’t an expert on dragons, but I did at least know the answer to that. “And if the magicians in possession of the soul plan to resurrect her, then I’d assume they’re thinking along the same lines. Whether or not she would be the same as when you knew her, I couldn’t say. It’s complicated, but the basic principles…Well, it’s an animating force.”

  “Real powerful,” Rook said.

  “Mm,” I agreed.

  I didn’t like the color of the sunrise now. It was bright and sunny at first, but the higher the dawn crept the less colorful it felt, as though there were some half-transparent substance between us and the horizon blocking off the full source of the light. The air itself felt thick—countless sand particles swirling up with the quickening wind—and I’d long since forgotten about the marginal discomforts of sand getting here, there, and everywhere now that I realized it was becoming more and more difficult to see.

  “Hey,” Rook said. His voice was calm but a little urgent. “Whatever happens, I wanna—”

  Then the wind picked up so ferociously that even Rook’s camel reared.

  Mine tossed me from its back so easily that I wondered if it had even been trying, all those times before, or if it had simply been toying with me. My wrist yanked against the reins as sand flew in from every which way, forming a barrier between us and the sunlight. In my confusion and fear, I managed somehow to wonder if Rook had, with his impeccable instincts, sensed this coming. He might well have been trying to say his good-byes to me, or at least he was trying to impart some last piece of wisdom in hopes of keeping me alive. A fool’s hope, I thought wryly, and hit the sand in slow motion, with a solid oomf.

  Either the men we were pursuing knew we were here for them, or they were just very lucky in dismantling our pursuit with their own private actions.