The Dragon Blood Collection, Books 1-3

by Lindsay Buroker

  Goroth didn’t appear fazed by this threat. In fact, he leaned back in his chair and smiled at Tolemek. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  Goroth jerked a thumb at Cas. “She’s better than some lay. The little sister whose career Zirkander has shaped. He’ll risk his life to protect her. I’ll bet my left arm on it.”

  Little sister. Tolemek had never spoken of his own little sister to anyone in the Roaming Curse; Goroth couldn’t know what such words—such a relationship—meant to him.

  “Then that is good for your plans,” Tolemek said softly.

  “For our plans. Don’t worry, I’ll let you question him about the sword and the witch before I kill him.”

  “Good.”

  If the bluntness of Goroth’s words bothered Cas, she didn’t show it. Still under the serum’s influence, she would still be feeling mellow and amenable—what glares and glowers she had given them hadn’t been heartfelt, not like her usual expressions of scathing loathing. No, she was busy gazing out the window. And dreaming about unrequited love?

  Tolemek left the navigation room. He had much to think about.

  • • • • •

  Cas woke from a nap, still sitting in the pilot’s chair. The dirigible moved with the elegance and swiftness of a turtle, so she doubted she had missed anything, but she checked all the gauges and took a reading nonetheless. A stolid guard leaned against the wall by the door. For some reason, she had expected Tolemek there, and she paused in her check, trying to reconcile fuzzy thoughts. She had dreamed that she was telling the story of her life—and of meeting Zirkander—to him and his captain. But it had only been a dream, hadn’t it? She wouldn’t share her past with those two, especially not Captain Slaughter.

  Then her gaze swept across the empty chair beside her... and the plate full of crumbs sitting in it.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” she whispered, something between horror and terror snarling into a knot in her stomach. What had she told them? About meeting Zirkander, yes. More? Anything about the unit, their strategies? Her thoughts were so fuzzy. Tolemek’s truth drug, that’s what it had been. Had he been the one to put it in her food? She hadn’t thought bread and meat could be tainted so, and the captain had eaten from that plate, too, letting her select a sandwich first. Had he doused all of the food, not caring if he ended up telling some truth? Probably. That bastard. Seven gods, she’d given them the colonel’s address, hadn’t she? She scraped through her thoughts, trying to remember what else she had given Slaughter. And Tolemek. He had stood right there and watched the captain interrogate her. Even though she knew they had been captor and prisoner from the beginning, and their goals were at odds with each other, she couldn’t help but feel betrayed. Why had he treated her decently, with respect, all along when he was just going to step aside and allow something like this to happen?

  “You’re to keep on course for the Iskandian capital,” her guard said.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Cas glanced down her form. As suspected, no pistols graced her waist, nor was she carrying so much as a knife on her belt. She slid her hand across the control panel, mulling over what sabotage she might manage from here, sabotage that she might walk away from and which they wouldn’t.

  Or...

  Was it her duty to make sure they didn’t reach the harbor and threaten Zirkander, even if it meant her own life? By crashing the dirigible into the ocean? The captain was up to something that went beyond whatever he planned for the colonel. Would it end with the loss of his life? Those people who had stowed away and jumped them, she didn’t think they had been there for her. Slaughter had suggested as much himself. She needed to find out what they had been trying to stop, then find a way to escape her captors and get to the colonel first. Or she had to crash the dirigible and make sure none of these pirates ever made it to her homeland. And she only had... she glanced at the chronometer and her location calculators. She had lost the entire morning to that truth serum idiocy. It was an hour past noon, and she had less than six hours until they reached Iskandia. This time of year, it should be dark by then. She eyed controls for landing lights. She might be able to flash out a message, using the Korason Alphabet. Assuming someone was paying attention. If she landed at the military air base, they would be, but freighters came in farther up the harbor, over the civilian docking area.

  Flashing a message in the sky wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the captain’s plan failed. A crash. That could be enough. Even if she didn’t walk away from it. Wasn’t she on borrowed time anyway? Hadn’t she almost died three weeks ago? Maybe it was meant to be.

  The door opened, and Tolemek walked inside.

  Cas gave him a single icy glare, then avoided looking at him. His face was unreadable, regardless. He probably didn’t care about her feelings toward him.

  “Take a break, Orfictus,” Tolemek told the guard. “Grab some lunch. I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The guard walked out, and Tolemek kicked the door shut. He moved the plate, sat in the other seat, and faced Cas. She continued to study the controls, though they weren’t all that engaging. Piloting a dirigible took considerably less skill and concentration than handling a flier.

  “I doubt you’re of a mind to accept it,” Tolemek said, “but I would like to offer an apology.”

  He was right. She wasn’t of a mind to accept it. And she wasn’t of a mind to acknowledge his presence, either.

  “Goroth doctored your food without my knowledge. When I realized what had happened... I shouldn’t have stayed and had anything to do with the questioning, but I wanted to stay to make sure he didn’t go too far.”

  Cas gave him a scathing look. Making her betray her commander, that wasn’t going too far? Or having her make a fool of herself by talking about silly infatuations? What was? She didn’t ask. She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say right now. She refocused on the instrument panel.

  “Listen, Cas, please.” Tolemek leaned his elbows on his thighs, interlaced his fingers, and gazed intently at her. “I need your help.”

  She glanced at him, despite her determination not to. That wasn’t what she had expected him to say. “After you let your captain drug me and question me, you want my help?”

  “I believe you might want a chance to get him back, and I can use that.”

  “How?”

  Tolemek held up a small vial, his tidy writing on the label: Truth Serum. It was empty.

  “That’s what was used on me?” Cas asked.

  “It’s another vial. The contents are in the wine he’s drinking right now.”

  Cas kept her face neutral, kept herself from smiling or doing anything that would reveal the hope in her breast. Maybe this was just some new trick. Either way, it didn’t mean he was thinking of coming over to her side. It just meant... what? That he wanted some information.

  “I expect he’ll be back up here after he has his lunch. I want you to question him about something for me. You’ll have about a one-hour window while he’s under the influence of the serum.”

  “Question him about what?” Cas asked. “And why can’t you do it?”

  “I’ve questioned him about this before. He’ll be wary of talking about this subject with me, to the point where he might be able to guard the truth, even under the influence of the serum.”

  “You think he’ll tell the truth to me? Why?”

  “Your opinion doesn’t matter to him. And because,” — Tolemek looked hard into her eyes, as if he could read her thoughts through them, “—according to you, he already told you he betrayed me once.”

  “Oh.” Cas hadn’t been sure he had heard those words or, in hearing them, hadn’t dismissed them immediately. She couldn’t read him at all at the moment. Was this to be some test? To see if she had been lying? Trying to turn him against the captain? She licked her lips, nervous even though she hadn’t been lying. But she had been hoping he might choose her over his commanding officer
of countless years. “So you want me to ask what that betrayal was?”

  “Yes.”

  He kept staring into her eyes. It made her feel like squirming, but she didn’t look away. She was the honorable person here, not his conniving captain.

  “Anything else?” she asked when several seconds had whispered past.

  “Yes.” Tolemek stared down at the empty vial, rotating it a few times between his fingers. “If he mentions Tanglewood or Camp Eveningson, get the details.”

  He stood to leave, but Cas stopped him with a raised hand. “What’s Camp Eveningson?”

  “The Cofah equivalent of Tanglewood. And the reason I can never go home again.” Tolemek took two steps, then paused with his hand on the door latch. “I’ll be listening.”

  After he left, Cas faced the control panel again. Dampness slicked her palms. Why? This wasn’t her trial. Unless the captain figured out what she was up to and shot her. She grimaced. How had she gotten herself stuck in the middle of this? And what line of questions could she ask to get Slaughter to incriminate himself? Would the truth be enough by itself? If she could make Tolemek her ally, everything changed.

  The guard returned, wordlessly taking up his spot beside the door. Maybe Tolemek’s plotting would be for naught. Maybe the captain hadn’t drunk his afternoon wine. Or maybe he had taken a nap afterward and didn’t care what was going on in navigation. Maybe—

  The door opened.

  The captain walked in, ambled to the open chair, and sat down, kicking his heels onto the control panel. Relaxed now, was he? “How’s our progress, pilot?”

  “Six hours to the capital.”

  “So we’ll arrive at night? Good, good.”

  Cas chewed on her lip and thought about how to bring up Tolemek’s concerns. Did she need to wait first, to make sure the serum had taken effect? Did she need to ease into the questioning? He hadn’t, she recalled. He had bluntly asked about the colonel and she had burbled out... far more than she wanted them to know. Far more than she wanted anyone to know, damn them. She could kill the captain for the mere fact that he possessed her secrets.

  The guard walked out. Odd. He hadn’t asked for permission. Even odder, the captain hadn’t seemed to notice. His hands were folded across his stomach, and he continued to gaze out the viewport, a contented expression on his face.

  Time to start.

  “So,” Cas said, “you want Zirkander, and Tolemek wants the sword. What happens if those two mission goals end up being mutually exclusive?” She looked at Slaughter, but only so she could see the door out of the corner of her eye. Tolemek had said he would be listening. But if he wasn’t in the room, how could he? Ah, the door was cracked open a hair.

  “They won’t be,” Slaughter said.

  Cas looked forward again, not wanting to risk drawing the captain’s attention toward the door. “But what if they are? What if Zirkander is the only one with information on the sword, and in killing him, Tolemek loses all chance of learning about it?”

  The captain shook his head. “Not going to happen.”

  “But if it did... you said you’d betrayed him before.” Cas held her breath. Was that enough of a leading line? Or would he be able to ignore it?

  He gave her an annoyed look, though it lacked the fire of the expressions he had launched at her previously. “For his own good.”

  “For his own good? Or for yours?” She was guessing, having no idea about their past.

  “Both.”

  “What happened? That time you betrayed him.”

  “I recruited him, you know. Heard about his disgrace in the Cofah army—it wasn’t unlike my own—and offered him a position with the pirates. I was actually a first mate then, and my own position was tenuous, but I praised him to my captain, explained what skills he could bring to the ship. I’d known him when he was a student at the proving grounds, seen that infantry was a long way from his passion and that he had only gone into the military because of his father.” Slaughter looked at her, his eyes bleary as if he wasn’t sure who she was.

  Cas gave him an encouraging grunt. This wasn’t what she had asked, but she remembered how the serum had made her ramble as well and how she had—unfortunately—gotten around to sharing what they wanted. Besides, she admitted a certain curiosity in regard to Tolemek’s past.

  “He should have been a research scientist,” Slaughter said. “I had a hunch that if I could bring him on board, we could team up, work together, and take the ship from the captain. I’d lost everything when I was forced out of the army, the same as him. Even more so than him. He had been discharged, and I... well, that doesn’t matter now. My plan worked. With his potions, we were able to take down the captain without much of a fight, and we made the ship ours. Mine, I should say. He didn’t care about commanding anyone again. He just wanted to be left alone to do his research. Although he did have this odd notion of being accepted back by the Cofah. Or maybe by his father. You’ll have to get him to tell you that story. I don’t know it in full. I just know he became the emperor card I kept up my sleeve. He was dangerous, and I made sure everyone knew it. People left us alone that way.”

  “You were always intent on helping him then?” Cas asked, though she hoped the answer was no. “You never truly betrayed him? Were you lying to me?”

  “I was always helping him, yes.”

  Disappointed, Cas fiddled with a control lever.

  “Even when he didn’t think I was,” Slaughter added.

  “Such as... at Camp Eveningson?” She didn’t know why she picked that name instead of Tanglewood. Maybe because it meant nothing to her and the details, one way or another, wouldn’t make her gut writhe.

  “Yes. He had concocted this... weapon, I suppose you would call it.” Slaughter closed his eyes, his head back in the chair. “A weapon in a metal canister, a little rocket really. It was designed to shoot up into the air over a populated area and distribute some kind of gas that people would inhale and that would kill them. He said... and I still remember this vividly, because it was a real sign of how out of touch with reality people like him can be... he said, if there were an incredibly deadly weapon in the world, something capable of destroying millions of lives, less people would die.”

  “How so?” Cas whispered, chilled but wanting—needing—to understand too.

  “Because if something so horrible existed, there would be no need to use it. People would give up. You don’t fight something like that. He was going to give it to the Cofah, and then they could finally bring the Iskandians back under their sway. Forever.” Slaughter gave her a big, unfriendly smile.

  Cas rubbed her face. This was the truth Tolemek had wanted her to hear?

  “He was still a little irked with the Iskandians for destroying his career at the time. And he wanted his life back, access to his homeland, a hero’s return to his city. He thought he’d get that if he handed them the ultimate weapon. But I knew him. Better than he knew himself. He was just a kid then. Twenty-five, I think.”

  Cas debated whether to point out that she was twenty-three. She decided to keep her mouth shut. He was rambling his way toward the end of the story, from the point of view Tolemek wanted.

  “He was going to arrange some test for an administrator using—I don’t know. Monkeys, something like that. He’d never tried this toxin on humans, but he thought monkeys would be close enough. We happened to have two spies in the Roaming Curse. One Iskandian. One Cofah. We’re a big outfit. Spies are common. Sometimes we even know who they are and play them against each other.” He opened an eye and grinned at her.

  He didn’t know she wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and direct him back to the point.

  “I told our spies about Mek’s concoction. Or rather, I told other people about it where the spies could hear.”

  “Had he sworn you to secrecy?”

  “Oh, yes. But I was always going around, driving terror into people on his behalf, so they would leave him alone.”

&n
bsp; “And leave you alone too?” Cas asked.

  “Yes, there was some of that. I won’t lie. I’ve benefited tremendously from having the Deathmaker at my back. This is when he got that nickname, you know. Each of the spies stole canisters from him, and each of them went out to test it on the enemy nation. I couldn’t have designed things better myself if I’d been giving them orders. This way, both governments would know exactly how effective his concoction was. Dead monkeys wouldn’t drive fear into men’s hearts.”