Deathcaster

by Cinda Williams Chima

  “More sail!” Evan shouted as Scorpion bore down on them. As long as he could keep the bigger ship between Destiny and the quay, Jagger couldn’t get a clear shot at them. But Scorpion was gaining speed, and the straits would not accommodate more than one ship at a time.

  Ahead, in the cut, Evan could see the shimmer in the air, the Boil on the surface of the water that said the barriers were in place. Hopefully, Maslin would wait until the very last minute to catch the light with her mirror to open the magical gates so that Jagger couldn’t counter it. Timing was everything.

  Looking astern, Evan saw that Scorpion was gaining on them and would be on top of them before they made the straits. They had no more sail to deploy. Not only that, ships entering the straits always lost momentum when the high cliffs cut off the wind. Being bigger, Scorpion had more momentum than they did. They had to give way.

  “Hard to starboard!” Evan shouted, pushing the tiller and hoping that by now his novice crew knew what to do with the sails. They leaned, leaned, until the light chop in the harbor was spilling over the gunwales, then righted slightly. They were all but capsized again when Scorpion swept by and into the cut.

  Coming about, Evan gripped his amulet and pushed wind into the sails of their little ship, driving her forward, eating Scorpion’s wake. The bigger ship shuddered, and for a panicked moment Evan thought his worst fears were coming true. Then the waters calmed, the air cleared, and Scorpion plowed on, headed for open water.

  Their own ship pitched and shook, spinning as the sea began to boil around them. Jagger must be closing the straits. Walls of water rose around them and they plunged down until Evan was sure his keel would hit the sea bottom.

  “Hold on!” he shouted. Somehow, he managed to get his feet under him and stood, leaning against the mizzen. Raising both arms, he swept them counter to the whirlpool sucking Destiny down. Water dumped onto the decking from all sides as the spinning slowed, then reversed. They were rising again, until they popped above the surface like a cork, landing with a sickening thwack. Evan drove wind into the sails, relying on his companions to manage the canvas. As Destiny lunged forward, Evan fell backward, cracking his head on the rail. And that was all he remembered.

  33

  BURN THE NEST

  At the dying of the day, slanting rays of the sun gilded the top of the volcano, leaving the valleys and ravines shrouded in darkness. And still, Captain Gray did not come.

  Jenna had put the finishing touches on Lyssa’s armored jacket, and they meant to present it to her on the eve of battle. The dragons had planned a feast to celebrate. They’d carried two goats and a wild boar to the mountaintop and grudgingly consented to roasting one of the goats for Jenna and Lyssa in view of their strange preference for “burnt” meat.

  Jenna passed the time by calling up flame from under the ground. On Weeping Sister, flame seethed close to the surface, sometimes spilling forth as lava, steam, and superheated water. She’d discovered she could call it forth, sending pinwheels flying from the cliffs for the dragons to chase. Red, orange, yellow flames, splitting into smaller and smaller orbs. It was like their own private Solstice fireworks display.

  That distracted them for a while, but they always came back to who was missing.

  Cas kept bulling his way into Jenna’s mind, always asking the same question. Where is she?

  “She’ll come, Cas,” Jenna said for the hundredth time. “She said she would, and she will.”

  The days were getting longer as they approached the summer solstice. So it was late when full darkness fell, and still, there was no sign of Lyssa Wolf.

  All of the dragons were restless, abruptly rolling off the ledge, unfurling their wings, and soaring off the mountain, their scales glittering in the remnants of sunlight, creating pinwheels of their own. Slayer was the worst. He’d never been known for his patience. Now he resembled an immense terrier, somersaulting off the edge, circling around, stooping down on them from high above, changing direction at the last minute to avoid smashing them into the rock. Cas finally lost his patience and chased the young dragon nearly all the way to the Boil before he turned back.

  Jenna knew that hunger was making the dragons cranky. She gestured to the food, laid out on the ledge like an offering to neglectful gods. “Go ahead and eat. I know you’re hungry.”

  And so they did, but the festive atmosphere had dissipated, replaced by worry.

  Slayer returned, landing cautiously in the farthest corner of the ledge. He edged closer. Go find Wolf, he said.

  “We need to wait for her here,” Jenna said. “We don’t want to alert the empress before the attack.” The plan had been to destroy Celesgarde, and then to break through the Boil and fly to the Dragonback Mountains on the mainland. After resting there for a few days, they planned to cross the Indio to the wetlands. If Lyss was still in the capital city, they needed to find her before they destroyed it.

  Will we go tomorrow without Lyssa Wolf? Cas asked, when Jenna curled up next to him to sleep.

  “We will go tomorrow,” Jenna said, “and we will see what we can find out.”

  After a fitful night’s sleep, Jenna rose before dawn to find Slayer crouched on the edge of the cliff, still wearing the saddle, as if preparing to launch. He’d fallen asleep in that position, waiting for Lyssa Wolf, who had not come.

  The dragons, who had been so excited about the prospect of “burning the nest,” were subdued as they ate a breakfast of half-frozen goat from the planned feast the night before. It was a serious matter when a dragon lost enthusiasm for food.

  We go in high, Cas told the fledglings. We’ll see what we see, then decide. Do not attack the city until we know where the Wolf is.

  “Bring everything you want to save,” Jenna said. “We probably won’t be coming back.” Carefully, she folded Lyssa’s jacket and stowed it in one of her panniers. Then she slid into her own battle armor and helmet, and the leather-framed goggles that protected her eyes.

  Over time, the young dragons had each gathered together small hoards of shiny objects—mostly bits of quartz and stones smoothed by ancient oceans. Lyss had brought each of them a leather carry bag, and she and Jenna had sewn on long straps that could be fastened across their chests and over their backs. Jenna had helped them pack them the night before.

  Slayer nudged his hoard sack with his nose. But what if Lyssa Wolf comes back, and we aren’t here? Like before, when we moved to the back side of the mountain.

  “Let’s see what we find at the harbor,” Jenna said. She had a bad feeling that Lyssa Wolf would not be returning to their mountain aerie. An image was swimming in the sea of her mind—a tall ship, moving away from them under full sail.

  Cas broke into her thoughts. Jenna see Lyss on ship?

  “No,” Jenna said. “I just— Let’s go.”

  Jenna mounted Cas and settled her own panniers across the dragon’s shoulders, wishing that they did not have to leave this place, which had become a refuge and a sanctuary.

  You did not come here to hide, she thought. You came here to kill the empress and then return to the wetlands to find Adam Wolf. She’d delayed too long already.

  She was seized with a sudden urgency, a need to get moving.

  One by one, they launched from the ledge, with Cas in the lead. His shoulders moved smoothly under her hands, neck extended toward the sky, his wing strokes sure and strong, with no sign of the injuries he’d sustained in the Boil.

  “Impressive,” she said, rubbing the bare spots behind his ears, itchy places he couldn’t reach.

  I know.

  “Arrogant dragon.”

  Best dragon.

  Jenna laughed. They often needled each other this way. It somehow took the edge off the vulnerability of their connection, their immense reliance on each other. If she ever found Adam Wolf, would there be room for him to elbow in?

  Memories of incendiary kisses rippled through her.

  Yes.

  Would he want to?

&n
bsp; Rabbit in Jenna’s head.

  That was Cas’s term for incessant worrying.

  Cas kept climbing, until they could view the entire southern side of the island. A little higher, and they could see over the island’s spine to the more populated north side.

  The air was lean up here, and Jenna focused on wringing every bit of oxygen from it.

  Jenna all right?

  “I need dragon lungs.”

  Jenna looked over her shoulder, and saw the fledglings arranged in a V formation behind them, struggling to maintain it in the air currents over the mountains.

  I’ve got to stop calling them fledglings, she thought. They are growing so fast.

  Once they’d crossed the mountains, Celesgarde came into view. To Jenna’s surprise, the harbor lacked its usual forest of masts. It was all but empty of ships.

  “Where is everyone?” she murmured.

  The town appeared deserted as well. Even its usual stench of burning peat was fainter than usual. Only a handful of horses remained in the corrals by the waterside.

  Trap?

  “I don’t know, Cas,” Jenna said. “We’re going to have to go lower.”

  Cas lacked the patience required for a slow, circling descent. Instead, he folded his wings and plunged earthward, extending them again to slow down a few thousand feet above the ground.

  The rest of the flight tried to follow suit, with varying degrees of success. One of the young dragons miscalculated and landed in the harbor with a tremendous splash.

  “Don’t teach them bad habits,” Jenna said.

  Need practice.

  “Not right now they don’t.”

  Learn to swim, too.

  The young dragon floundered in shallow water, vocalizing her dismay. That drew a bloodsworn soldier from the building next to the corral. He carried a loaded crossbow.

  Seeing the dragon in the water, he charged down to the pier and raised his crossbow.

  “Cas!”

  But Cas was already plummeting toward the pier, claws extended. He struck the bloodsworn, hard, just as he took his shot. The shot went wild and the soldier ended up pinned to the ground, screaming, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

  A handful of bloodsworn had spilled from the building after the first man. When they saw what was happening, they fled back inside.

  Look for Lyssa, Cas told the fledglings. They spread out through the town, searching for her scent, peering into windows, ripping off roofs and looking inside, which must have been heart-stopping for any occupants.

  Right away, Jenna noticed the scent. It seemed to cling to everything here at the harbor. The smell of home. Of family. Of death.

  Of rebirth.

  Was this the scent of the empress? Or was it something else?

  Jenna. Cas extended his wing, a staircase for Jenna. Ask man about Lyssa.

  Jenna clambered down to the ground, jumping the last few feet to avoid the injured soldier, still pinned to the ground. His eyes all but bulged out of his ashen face when he saw Jenna.

  “Please,” he said in Common. “Please. Let me go.”

  To Jenna’s eyes, he looked to be mortally injured. Then she remembered what Lyss had said about the bloodsworn—that they were all but impossible to kill. That they could live on with the worst kind of injuries. They weren’t very bright, but they would not knowingly betray the empress.

  So it was unlikely that threats or torture would work.

  “Let go of him, Cas, but keep an eye on him.”

  Reluctantly, Cas released his grip and moved aside.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” Jenna said, to the pirate, improvising. “This is an unfortunate misunderstanding. You see, we were coming to join the empress’s forces.”

  The soldier blinked, once, twice, like an owl exposed to sudden sunlight. “Dreki? In the empress’s army?”

  “It’s very secret.” Jenna lowered her voice, as if someone might be listening. “We’ve been training in the mountains so that nobody knows. We were supposed to join the empress before she . . . left.” Jenna took one more look around. “Where is she? Are we too late?”

  “She is not here,” the soldier said.

  Stifling her impatience, Jenna tried a different question. “When did she leave?”

  “Many ships left in the past three days. She is not here.”

  “Where was she going?”

  “I don’t know. Most sailed for the wetlands. Some for the Desert Coast.”

  The young dragons were returning to the quay. No Lyssa, they said.

  “There was someone we were working with. A wetlander with hair the color of wet sand. Do you know where she went?”

  “Captain Gray?” the soldier said, and Jenna’s heart leapt.

  “Yes! We were working with her.”

  “I don’t know where she went,” he said, shaking his head. “She sailed with the others. She might have gone to the wetlands; she might have gone to Carthis.”

  Motioning her closer, he said, “There’s something you should know.”

  Jenna dropped to her knees and leaned toward him.

  When the bloodsworn made his move, it was only Jenna’s dragon-quick reflexes and her clan-made armor that saved her. His curved Carthian blade came up, and would have opened her from her navel to her collarbone, but Jenna saw it coming and slammed the soldier’s elbow with her gloved fist, diverting the blow enough that it glanced off the hardened leather. Jenna threw herself backward out of harm’s way, landing hard on the quay.

  Cas screamed, a bloodcurdling challenge. After that, it was all a blur of glittering scales and teeth and claws and flame. At the end of it, the bloodsworn pirate was reduced to an unrecognizable pile of charred flesh and ash.

  Dead now, Cas said.

  And so he was. But now Jenna had no idea where to start looking for Lyss—or if she still lived.

  34

  HOMELAND

  Lyss said good-bye to Breon at dawn on the day she sailed, waking him from a sound sleep. He’d been groggy and disoriented, and it took her a while to get through to him that she was leaving.

  Once he understood, he tore up his bed, hunting through the bedclothes, then finally reached under his bed and retrieved the little tablet that he used to communicate. His reading and writing skills were rudimentary, but it was better than nothing.

  WHERE? he wrote.

  “I’m going home,” Lyss said. “The empress knows who I am. She is coming, too.”

  His face fell. SORRY, he wrote. He handed her the tablet, scooped up his pipe, and threw it across the room so that it slammed into the wall, shattering into pieces.

  Lyss gaped at Breon. He mopped at his eyes with his sleeve.

  “It’s not your fault,” Lyss said. “You can beat this. If not the first time, then the second, or the third. We will win—I swear it.”

  For a long moment, he stood, head down, fists clenched. Then took back the tablet and wrote, BE CAREFUL.

  “You be careful,” Lyss said. Impulsively, she hugged him. “My brother may be coming here,” she said, her tears dampening his shoulder. “Look after each other until I come back. Stay alive. Escape if you can. If you can’t, I’ll come back for you.”

  Now Lyss stood on the deck of the Siren, peering through the glass to catch a first look at the white cliffs that would signal that she was nearly home. The ship was packed with bloodsworn, yet she had never felt more alone.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the empress who stood on the quarterdeck, shouting orders to her crew, her mane of silver hair flying in the wind.

  Lyss missed Breon. She missed Jenna, Cas, Slayer, and the others. They had provided much-needed relief from the relentless and deadly dance with the empress.

  Even the wolves seemed to have abandoned her. She hadn’t seen them since the ultimatum from the empress. You told me I was the Gray Wolf queen, she thought. I thought you were supposed to offer counsel and advice.

  Her Highlander officers were with her, but after the Bo
sley incident, she resisted confiding in them. She didn’t want to put them in more danger than they were already in.

  On this, her second trip across the Indio, Lyss had at last made peace with the sea. Or at least an uneasy armistice, broken by a few bouts of seasickness when the weather got rough. It was one of those things she needed to conquer to get where she needed to go. And so she would. Present disasters had elbowed ahead of childhood fears.

  During the crossing, she watched the skies, hoping to see a formation of six dragons passing overhead. She was probably the only sailor, anywhere, who had ever wished that.

  She was keenly aware that she was on her way to kill somebody—several somebodies, in fact. Time would tell who’d be on her list. Every night, as she passed into sleep, she imagined the new capital of Celesgarde charred into ash. She imagined sweeping King Jarat’s smirking head from his shoulders. Confronting Julianna and Aunt Mellony and demanding answers.

  Those dreams, dark and bloody, sustained her.

  She touched her father’s amulet, swearing an oath on Han Alister’s grave. On the grave of her mother, of her sister, Hana—of the thousands who had died for the Gray Wolf line. She would win back her queendom, save her brother, and put their father’s amulet into his hands, or die trying.

  You may think you’re winning, Celestine, she thought. But this story isn’t over. I’m going to find Jenna and the dragons and burn every one of your ships to the waterline. I’ll save Breon from the leaf and find Hal Matelon and finish whatever it was we started. How that story would end was anyone’s guess.

  Jada Long Foot came up next to her, and Lyss silently handed over the glass. Long Foot was one of Lyss’s Highlander officers—one of the few clan members of the regular army.

  Jada looked through the glass, then lowered it, slapping it against her hand, her face unreadable. “Are you glad to be almost home, General Gray?”

  To be honest, Lyss didn’t know how to answer that.

  “I’ll be glad to see some forests again,” she said finally. “I’ll never get used to the drylands.”

  “Me neither,” Jada said. “It’s been especially hard on Farrow.” She nodded toward the Waterwalker, who was practicing his sticking on an open stretch of deck with an avid audience of bloodsworn.