The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons ld-2

by Katie MacAlister

  “Yes, it does. Just because things are amicable now doesn’t mean they won’t go all pear-shaped later, and I want us to be a part of the weyr so we have some protection if that happens.”

  Baltic sighed, but took my hand and led me up the stairs, at the top of which stood two large figures.

  “Good morning, Maata. Tipene. Are you guys banished to the outside, or are May and Gabriel not here yet?” I asked.

  Both of the silver guards greeted me, nodding to Baltic. “It was decided that all guards are to remain outside for your meeting.” Maata looked like she wanted to smile, but she held it back. “We were going to have a stroll around the gardens that you designed. Perhaps Pavel would care to join us?”

  “Oh, that sounds wonderful. I hope we’ll have time to join you later. I’d love to see the flowers again. . . .”

  Baltic gave me a little shove toward the big double doors.

  “Gardens. How delightful,” Pavel answered, looking as if he’d rather have his fingernails yanked out one by one.

  “It won’t hurt you,” I told him, laughing as he followed the two silver dragons.

  “Come. Let us have this over with,” Baltic said, throwing open one of the doors. I hesitated at the threshold, since the last time I had attempted to cross it, I’d been pulled into the beyond, the shadow world that paralleled our reality, where I had seen Baltic watching a bittersweet vision of our past.

  His eyes met mine. I tightened my fingers in his, smiled, and allowed him to see the love in my eyes before I crossed into the house.

  “Well, I might have known this would happen,” I said a moment later as a bone-freezing cold seeped into my awareness. The world shifted and lost color, resolving itself into a grey-toned scene that I realized was colorless because the building in which I stood was made of stone and metal. I rubbed my arms and looked with curiosity around what appeared to be a lobby of some sort. “Brr. Where is this, I wonder?”

  “I do not know, but I dislike it.”

  I spun around to find Baltic directly behind me. “You’re getting into more and more of my visions. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I think this is the aerie.”

  “What aerie?” His eyes were as unreadable as his expression as he looked around and then grimaced. “Ah. The one that belongs to Kostya. End the vision, mate.”

  “End it? How am I supposed to do that? What dragons live in Nepal? Red?”

  Noise behind me had me considering the figures of three men who emerged from the other side of the lobby.

  “No,” Baltic said, grabbing me and pulling me backward, as if he feared we’d be seen.

  “They can’t see us,” I said, escaping his hold, curious now as to who the dragons were. I stepped into the lobby, pausing when a fourth man walked straight through Baltic toward the group.

  “Is it done?” the fourth man asked the others.

  One of the three nodded. “Aye. We have control of the aerie.”

  “Kostya?”

  “Locked in a storage room until his cell is readied.”

  “Good. I’ll pass that on to the chief.”

  “We’re right—this is where Kostya went after the destruction of Dauva,” I said to Baltic. “I remember Aisling saying something about him being held prisoner. But who are those dragons? What sept do they belong to?”

  “None. They are ouroboros. Come, mate, we have tarried too long. The wyverns are waiting for us.”

  The word “ouroboros” rang in my head like a bell. “I really want to see this, Baltic. I think it’s important somehow.”

  “It is not.”

  “How do you know that?” A sudden horrible thought occurred to me. “By the saints! Are these your dragons? Was it you who had Kostya imprisoned? It was, wasn’t it? You couldn’t kill him outright because of your past relationship, but you wanted him out of the way, so you had him locked up in his own hidey-hole?”

  “I am not responsible for this, no,” he said, his lips thinning.

  I avoided his hold and moved closer to the group of dragons. “Then you know who did.”

  “—how long we’ll have to stay here?” one of the men was asking the obvious leader. “It’s bloody cold.”

  “We’ll stay as long as we have to. You might as well see if there’s any food. The chief will be here at any moment, and I’d like to be able to tell her that all is taken care of.”

  “Her? Her who?” I asked no one in particular.

  Baltic looked bored and didn’t answer.

  “Still say it’s wrong to let her call the shots,” one of the three dragons said in a languid Southern U.S. drawl. “Not like she’s even really one of us.”

  “Don’t be such a snob. Her father was high up in the sept, and is said to have had the ear of the wyvern.”

  The man snorted. “Red dragons. All they want is to war.”

  “Which works to our benefit,” the leader said, cocking his head as if he was listening to something.

  “Who are they talking about?” I asked Baltic, a suspicion arising that I hesitated to name.

  His expression was shuttered. “Do you wish to stand here all day, or do you want for us to speak with the wyverns?”

  “Typical nonanswer, dragon. Who—oh!”

  A man appeared out of nothing, seemingly walking through the wall straight into the gathering. I gawked at him, taking in clothing that appeared to be from the turn of the twentieth century, as well as his less than solid form.

  “Is that a ghost?” I asked Baltic in a whisper as the figure drifted over to the group.

  He sighed. “Mate, we must leave now.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of a form. It is a shade. Your time is up, Ysolde. End this vision.”

  “My mistress comes,” the ghostly man informed the others, and over the howl of the wind beating against the stone of the building, I could hear the growing sound of a helicopter approaching.

  “I am leaving now,” Baltic informed me, dropping my hand, which he had grabbed in a futile attempt to pull me away with him. “Either come with me or do not, but do not expect me to agree to another meeting with the wyverns.”

  “Just a second, I want to see—Baltic!” I started after him as he strode away into the dimness of a corridor that led off from the lobby. I glanced over my shoulder and said, “I want to see who’s arriving. You know, don’t you? You know who was behind Kostya’s capture? And who these dragons are?”

  “They are ouroboros,” he repeated, pausing to let me catch up to him.

  “I wonder if they’re the same group as the one I’m looking for.”

  “You are not to look for ouroboros dragons,” he informed me in a haughty tone that he had to know would just irritate me.

  “Oh, I’m not? And why is that?”

  “They are lawless murderers, dangerous, and without any regard for life, be it that of dragons or mortals. They are the single biggest danger to the mortals you care so much about.” He opened a thick metal door and shoved me outside into a sunny but windy snowscape. Immediately the world shifted, and I found myself strolling into the dim coolness of a house that wrapped me in such a familiar embrace, I wanted to sink to my knees and cry with the injustices of life.

  “There you are. I was about to go look in the shadow world for you. Is everything all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Ysolde.”

  “I have.” I blinked a few times to clear my still-fuzzy vision, it finally resolving itself into the sight of May’s concerned face peering at me. “I’m sorry. We were sucked into a vision in . . .”

  The words trailed away at the sight of Kostya emerging from a side room.

  “I’ll tell you later,” I finished in an undertone.

  May’s eyebrows rose as Gabriel, who had been using his cell phone, hung up and strolled over to us. “Drake and Aisling have been detained, but they are only a few minutes away. Greetings, Ysolde.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Baltic.”

  “I’m sorry, it seems this house
is just vision-central for me,” I said, smiling at Gabriel. “Thank you for coming. I’m sure you have better things to do with your time, but we appreciate it. Don’t we, Baltic?”

  “Not in the least,” he said pleasantly, but I could tell his hackles were up by the way he watched Kostya.

  Gabriel relaxed at that, his dimples showing as he wrapped an arm around May. “It is good to know that you are running true to form, Baltic. I wouldn’t know what to think should you be anything but hostile and surly.”

  “You are welcome to my house, Ysolde,” Kostya said, his intentions clear as he greeted me, taking my hands in his and kissing them before turning to Baltic. “I wish I could say the same for your mate.”

  “Sins of the saints, Kostya,” I said, socking him on the arm. “Do you have to bait Baltic every time?”

  “No, but it relieves my spleen if I do.”

  I glared at him until he snapped. “Very well. Your mate is welcome here as well.”

  I smiled and put a restraining hand on Baltic’s arm, which was tense, as if his muscles were poised for attack. “Thank you. We appreciate it, despite the fact that this is really our house.”

  “Is it?” He gave a little smirk. “I believe it is held by the wyvern of the black dragons, and that is me.”

  “Only so long as I allow you to remain so,” Baltic growled.

  Kostya’s eyes narrowed, a little smoke emerging from his nose. “Do you wish to challenge me for the sept?”

  “I do not need to. If I wanted it, I would take it,” Baltic answered.

  “Oh, lord, please tell me I don’t have to let you two boys break each other’s noses again,” I said, sighing heavily.

  Both men turned identical glares on me. “Boys!” Kostya snorted. “We are wyverns!”

  “That may be, but you’re acting like twits dancing around each other with your hackles up.”

  “Twit!” Baltic repeated, outraged.

  “Hackles! We do not have hackles!” Kostya said, just as outraged. “Dogs have hackles. Dragons do not!”

  “Then stop acting like you do,” I told him with a look that I reserve for Brom at his most fractious. I turned to Baltic, giving his arm another squeeze. “And you can cease muttering rude things under your breath. We can all hear them, and even though they’re in Zilant, I can tell what it is you’re saying.”

  He shot me another outraged look, but stopped swearing to himself.

  Kostya’s expression turned martyred. “You are far too outspoken for your own good, Ysolde, but it does not surprise me. It will be a cold day in Abaddon before I ever meet a mate who displays the respect proper to wyverns.”

  I looked at Baltic, expecting him to take offense at Kostya’s speaking to me that way, but he said nothing, just glared. I threw my own good intentions to the wind. “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

  “With speaking the truth?” He shrugged. “I have not seen the red wyvern’s mate in centuries, but from what I remember of him, he was the only mate who knew how to behave.”

  “And speaking of errant mates, where’s Cyrene?” May cut in as I was about to argue the point with Baltic.

  Kostya, who had been matching Baltic’s glare with one of his own, transferred it to May. “That is a very good question. You would have to ask her that for an answer, however, since she has apparently left.”

  “Left? Left for where?” May asked, not looking at all surprised.

  “I am evidently not to be privy to such information. She simply hurled all sorts of insults at me, packed up her things—and several that weren’t hers—and stormed out of here promising all sorts of watery vengeance if I tried, and these are her words, to follow her, woo her back to my arms in order to have my lustful way with her pristine body, or notify you that she had abandoned me for a god who evidently knows how to treat a naiad. Despite that, consider yourself duly notified.”

  “Oh, no, she hasn’t . . . not Neptune?” May asked, groaning. “A god who knows how to treat her? He took her stream away from her until she made me help get it back. She’s absolutely . . . I’m sorry, Kostya, I really am. There’s no excuse for what she’s done to you.”

  “She said she loved me! She made me name her as mate in front of the weyr!”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” May put an arm around Kostya and gave him a little hug. “She swore that this time it was different, and I believed her. I thought she really was going to stay in love with you.”

  His martyred look returned. “I should have known she was trouble. She was always demanding I let her meddle in sept business. I told her no, that was not the bailiwick of a mate, but she would not listen. My mother said it would come to a bad end, but I didn’t listen to her.”

  “Yes, well, Catalina isn’t who I’d really go to for relationship advice,” May said with a little smile as she returned to Gabriel’s side. “Is she still dating Magoth?”

  “No, thank god.” Kostya’s shoulders slumped in a manner that indicated a morose sort of pleasure. “Your former demon lord dumped her for some Hollywood starlet. Mother is currently living with a trio of bodybuilders in Rio, and only comes to plague us when she remembers that Drake has children.”

  “She sounds like a delightful person,” I said dryly. Baltic looked bored, glancing at his watch. I estimated I had about ten minutes before he would demand we either get to business or leave. “Perhaps we could get started without Drake and Aisling?”

  “I would prefer that we wait, but since your mate appears to be anxious to leave, I’m agreeable to begin the discussion. Kostya?”

  “We might as well. No good will come of it whether we do it now or later,” he said with dark foreboding, gesturing toward a door.

  I looked at the door, glanced at Baltic, and spun on my heel to march in the opposite direction, throwing open the double doors that led to a room filled with tall, glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling bookcases, warmed by amber pools of sunlight that poured in through the mullioned windows. “Our library.” I sighed with happiness. The furniture wasn’t, of course, the same as I remembered, but the way the light streamed in through the windows, the peculiar quality of it as it filled the room, swamped me with the sweetest of memories.

  “My library now, I believe,” Kostya said with unnecessary emphasis on the pronoun. “I will allow the meeting to be held here, since you seem to desire it.” His gaze shifted to Baltic. “It is a courtesy I am happy to extend to you, Ysolde, despite the fact that you and your murderous mate are at war with the weyr.”

  “Oh, for the love of the virgin . . . will you please stop trying to bait Baltic?” I snapped, tired of all the posturing the wyverns felt it necessary to adopt. “He’s not so uncontrolled that he’s going to fall for that.”

  Baltic lunged forward so fast he was just a blur. The resounding thud of the two men going down in the middle of the hardwood floor, accompanied by the tinkle of a couple of glass knickknacks sent flying as they crashed into two occasional tables, left me with the intense desire to do a little smiting, but I managed to hold on to my temper.

  “You make it very difficult to convince everyone that you’re not the barbarian they call you,” I told Baltic as he punched Kostya in the face while trying to throttle him with his other hand.

  Kostya shifted into dragon form, Baltic following suit.

  Another occasional table, this one a pretty octagonal inlaid with rosewood, slammed into the wall. “No dragon form!” I yelled, looking with dismay at the remains of the table. “Human form only, and if you break anything nice, I’ll have more than a few things to say to both of you.”

  “You’re going to let them fight?” May asked, jumping aside when both men, now back in human form, rolled around beating the tar out of each other. “Is that wise? Mightn’t things get out of hand?”

  “I don’t think so. I figure it’ll clear the air a bit.”

  May looked like she was going to say something, but to my surprise, Gabriel spoke first. “I’m sorry, Mayling
. I would like to say I’m above such things, but the opportunity is one I really don’t wish to miss.”

  After a moment of surprise, she gave him a lopsided smile and gestured toward the combatants. “If you really must.”

  “I must,” he said, giving her a swift kiss before flinging himself into the fray. May and I moved over to the door, out of the way of the whirlwind of three men who were accompanied by oaths, snarls, grunts of pain, and language that would make a sailor blush.

  “I’ve never seen the dragons come to physical blows so much as when Baltic is around,” May commented, wincing in sympathy when Baltic, overjoyed that Gabriel was now on his list of people to beat up, landed a solid right to Gabriel’s jaw.

  “He’s a very primal sort of dragon,” I said, watching dispassionately but cheering to myself when Kostya crashed to the floor with a fine spray of blood. “No ganging up on Baltic, now, boys,” I told them sharply when it looked like Kostya and Gabriel, who had a history of animosity, had decided to forge a truce in order to tromp Baltic.

  “What on earth . . . are they fighting again?”

  May and I turned as the doors behind us were opened. Aisling and Drake stood staring in amazement.

  “They seem to like it,” I told her. “I suppose it releases pent-up emotions. Now that you’re here, I’ll stop them.”

  “Not yet,” Drake said, peeling off his jacket and handing it to Aisling, his green eyes glinting like a cat’s.

  We all watched with utter astonishment as Drake, with a battle cry that would have done a warrior proud, leaped over the couch and launched himself onto Baltic’s back.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake . . . have you ever met such pigheaded men?” Aisling asked, her hands on her hips. “Ouch. That’s got to sting. Oh, now there’s blood on Drake’s pretty shirt. Our housekeeper will have my head for that.”

  “You have to admit, there’s something—oh, good one, Baltic!—strangely attractive about men fighting each other in this manner. Hey! I said no ganging up on Baltic! I see that, Drake and Kostya! If you boys can’t fight fairly, you can just sit in the hallway!”