Dragonfire, p.10
Dragonfire, page 10
Disappointment crashed through Ashe like a stone dropped into her stomach. She was about to be scrutinized yet again by disbelievers, like she had been her whole life.
Defiance rippled in the wake of defeat, banding her spine with steel and setting her jaw like a bowstring. Swiveling out of Nuna’s grip, she faced the lowest ledge in the room, a stone crescent jutting out across the floor like a beckoning hand, though its occupants looked far less inviting. The younger two were close to Ashe’s age, the other pair far older—clearly family, all with the same brown skin and black hair, all postured in the same bored sprawl, all watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes.
The elderly man raised his fist, and a Wingmaiden hovering just outside the crescent loosed a horn from her waist strap and blew it. The sound roared through the chamber, bringing the level of conversation from loud chatter to dull murmurs. While the last of those whispers died, Meriwa strutted to the Council’s box and leaned against it, arms folded, watching Ashe with hawkish intensity.
If this somehow devolved into a fight, Ashe would kill Meriwa first.
“You face Killik, Tapeesa, Novuam, and Asiaq.” Nuna pointed to each of the family in turn: the older man and woman, the younger woman and man. “These are Allfather and Allmother, Allsister and Allbrother—the Grand Council. They have given wisdom and direction to the Legions of the Mountain for many, many years.”
Asiaq spoke something under his breath, flicking a glance at his sister, and Nuna translated sheepishly, “But you are the first kokma to ever claim bonding to a dragon, and the first to set foot in Ujurak.”
Ashe didn’t need a translation to that word. She fought not to scowl. “Whatever questions they want to ask, I’ll answer. I have nothing to hide.”
Nuna translated, and the Grand Council looked among themselves in silent conversation. Ashe hooked her thumbs into her belt and rocked back on her heels, letting a streak of casual defiance brace her stance—telling them with her posture as well as her gaze that she did not fear them.
Fearless is my name. She clung to that oath while Killik spoke back to Nuna in tones as dry and cracked as his skin.
“Allfather asks how you came by a dragon.”
“The gods sent a messenger to bring me a starstone.” Ashe directed her focus straight to Killik, holding his shrewd, ancient gaze. “When I was in danger, I spoke into it, and Bresnyar heard. He came for me.”
Even now, her bowels clenched at that blurred memory of rain and battle on the Talheimic cliffs, of Bresnyar’s earth-shattering might and violent fire lighting up the night; how he’d swept into her life like a golden avalanche and helped her find the will to live again; helped her find herself.
Tapeesa spoke this time, and Nuna translated to Ashe, “Allmother asks how you are able to fly with no saddle.”
“I’m not afraid of falling. Bres has never let me go.”
A faint murmur swept the chamber at her irreverent address of her dragon’s name. Meriwa’s eyes narrowed even further.
Asiaq spoke in a slow, lilted drawl, his hooded gaze fixed on Ashe, and she stared right back at him. He reminded her of Sander, another bored and preening royal with a thirst for power and title moving beneath the surface of his cunning eyes.
“Allbrother asks if there is any reason we shouldn’t throw you to the Legions to be torn apart and solve all our dilemmas at once.” A faint note of apology flavored Nuna’s translation this time.
“Because flames spread,” Ashe growled, and Asiaq’s head tipped at her tone. “If there’s one of me, chosen by the gods, there could be more. Maybe next time you exile your dragons as punishment, they all come back with Wingmaidens from other lands. The gods aren’t playing favorites with Oadmarkaics for dragon riders anymore. Throwing their chosen Wingmaiden to your Legions might just seal your fate.”
The translation and rebuttal came quicker this time, a strange dance of an argument. “Allbrother says the Ancestors will not remove their favor from the chosen. They will not allow this honor to be taken from us.”
“Tell Valgard that. They’ve seen it happen with their wells.”
Hushed murmurs fanned over the walls at Nuna’s translation, and Asiaq reclined in his seat, fingers drumming the stone, eyes boring into her like dagger-tips. Ashe ignored him and looked to his sister instead; plain-faced and small in stature, but there was something to the slant of her brows and mouth that made her cunning more visible than her brother’s, sending a warning chill down Ashe’s spine.
Novuam did not ask a question. Instead, she spoke a single word: “Apiriak.”
A gasp journeyed around the room. Asiaq slid upright again, pinning his sister with a wide-eyed look, but the Allfather and Allmother nodded. Meriwa straightened in disbelief, arms falling from their cross.
“What?” Ashe hissed. “What does that mean?”
Beneath her tan complexion, Nuna paled. “Apiriak is the Test of all Wingmaidens before they earn their brand. Allsister is demanding you face it to prove your right to be Bresnyar’s wing.”
The chatter crescendoed in an ear-splitting roar, dragons and Wingmaidens alike adding their voices to the flurry, and this time it was Meriwa herself who took her horn and blew, bringing querulous silence back to the chamber. Allfather stroked his full, braided beard, regarding Ashe with the same scrutiny as countless men who’d falsely believed she owed them any explanation of who she was or where she stood.
He was Rion Bartos, Cadre Commander. He was Mad King Jad of Mahasar. He was Tribune Noaam over Siralek.
She wished she could pound her fist into his face until he bled.
After a moment’s regard, he dipped his head, and the Allmother spoke rapidly to Nuna.
“You and your dragon will face Apiriak,” Nuna raised her voice to be heard above the growing clamor. “If you survive, they will consider your honesty and hear your appeal. If not—”
“Apiriak takes you.” Meriwa’s hiss brushed the shell of Ashe’s ear at her arrival, her hand already circling her arm and towing her toward the tunnel mouth. “We leave now.”
This time, Ashe was content to go with her; the din in the chamber suggested more danger waited here than outside. But she held Novuam’s stare while she backed away, and in those glittering eyes she found more cleverness than in all the room’s other occupants combined.
Ashe’s death in this Test would not be cold-blooded murder to separate them from their so-called Ancestors; success or failure rested on Ashe’s bond with Bresnyar. And the Grand Council expected failure.
Scowling, Ashe snapped her arm free of Meriwa’s hold and stalked back into the heart of Ujurak.
“Your disrespect for the Grand Council disgusts me,” Meriwa growled when they moved out of earshot of the chamber. “No Wingmaiden would ever dare—”
“According to all of you, I’m a charlatan, not a Wingmaiden. So your reputation is safe.”
Meriwa slid her hands into her pockets and quickened her stride; curiosity stoked by that uneasy posture, Ashe fell into step with her, weaving back across the balconies toward the prison.
“You’re not so certain I’m going to fail,” she said after a time. “You think there’s a chance I could pass the Test, and that terrifies you.”
Meriwa scoffed under her breath. “Only because I know Bresnyar. He nearly burst his hearts bringing Ileria to the Innuin. However you’ve enthralled him, he claims the same loyalty to you now, and you seem the sort to use his strength to your advantage.”
“We share strength. I don’t use anything he doesn’t give freely.”
A derisive snort was the only answer, and Ashe gave up that argument; it would lead nowhere with Meriwa still convinced Bresnyar had bonded with her against his will.
She studied her escort from the corner of her eyes, that face full of quiet violence. Meriwa wanted her gone, wanted her dead; yet she’d kept quiet, lingered by the Grand Council, and never spoken an ill word against her in the hearing.
“I’m surprised you didn’t kill Nunajik and offer to translate in her stead,” Ashe said carefully. “You could’ve twisted everything and given them a reason to kill me. Why waste your chance to have me thrown out of this mountain?”
Meriwa was quiet for so long, Ashe thought they might make the rest of the journey in silence and she would never have her answer. They slipped back into the prison hive before the Legion Head finally spoke, voice pitched low. “It is…beneath a Wingmaiden to learn the common tongue of your kingdoms. That is how bored tribesmen waste their time.”
“And yet, here you are, wasting your time with me.” Ashe regarded her more closely by dragonfire’s light. “So, they don’t know. Who taught you? Aeosotu?”
“Dragons know many tongues. They are forbidden to teach them to their Wingmaidens.”
“Then—”
“I did not need to share my knowledge to see you dead, you are already going to die. Allsister did not offer you mercy, she outwitted her brother by offering a solution to a problem he could not solve.” The look she shot Ashe spoke of a deep, personal rage, as if Asiaq’s failure was somehow Ashe’s fault. “And now you will perish for it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Meriwa shook her head. “Why risk so much? I’m certain the tribeswoman told you it was as good as death to come here, posturing with one of our dragons.”
“Even if it was posturing, I’d still come.” Ashe pocketed her hands and looked ahead, a trace of Cistine’s face flickering through her mind. “Someone I love like a sister needed me to come here and appeal to your Council. I’d do it even if it cost me everything.”
Meriwa’s breath caught audibly, but she said nothing more when they reached the cell, merely unlatched it and shoved Ashe inside; the lock had barely clattered back into place before Aden and Kristoff were up, striding to greet her.
“How did it go?” Kristoff demanded.
“Did they harm you?” Aden added sharply.
“No injuries…not yet.” Ashe tugged her hair back from her temples with both hands, knotted it, and met Aden’s eyes. “Train with me.”
“Why?”
“For the Test. If we’re going to bring the Legions against the Balmond, I have to prove to these people I’m really a Wingmaiden.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MALECK WAS RUNNING from the cabal.
Thorne could think of no other cause for his friend’s erratic travels, spearing back and forth across Blaykrone territory like a specter. Cistine felt him traveling south one day, and the cabal pushed near to breaking on his heels, only to wake after a few fitful hours of sleep and realize the sense of him tacked sharply north instead. Then east. Then west.
“He’s running from us,” Cistine agreed bleakly one dawn, marking another course change on the map—north to west this time. “From me.”
Thorne met Ariadne’s eyes over Cistine’s head and saw what he always feared most in his strategist’s eyes: resignation and despair.
She believed it, too.
Hopeless frustration slithered through his chest, banding his lungs so tight it was difficult to breathe. Here they were, weeks deep into fleeing, with little to show for it. He and Cistine had taken to shorter training sessions at greater distances now that Pippet was with them, and they were no closer to finding Maleck or returning to the front lines. Every goal they held seemed to slip further and further from their grasp with each passing day. Maleck, the war, Stornhaz, even Cistine’s plan with the Door…
Some plans he preferred over others; yet each one was thwarted, and he liked that even less.
A hoarse cry split the air, tearing Thorne from his reflections. His hand sailed to his dagger as he spun up off his knees too late. A lithe shape barreled from the trees, slamming into Ariadne so hard they both went rolling across the cold ground, and before Thorne fully registered the familiar mottled hair and wicked, grasping hands, blood flowed, leather snapped, and Ariadne cried out in shock and pain. Then Pippet was up, Ariadne’s augment pouch in hand, sprinting into the trees.
Cistine snapped to her feet with a yelp, and Thorne pushed her toward Ariadne. “Stay here—I’ll catch her!”
Swift as Pippet was, she lacked his endurance. She broke like mad through the undergrowth, and Thorne paced himself at a steady run after her, vaulting fallen trees and crashing through the foliage with his forearms braced, snapping branches. He kept his stride smooth and held that dark, bounding form in sight. In some ways, ever since he’d lost her in that corridor in the courthouse, it had been this: him always chasing her shadow.
With a last burst of speed fed by the memory of that night, Thorne launched himself over a log, palms skimming the arch, and slammed his booted feet into Pippet’s back. She tumbled head-over-heels with a cry and fetched up hard against a stump, clutching her arm to her chest, sobbing. “You broke my arm, you broke it, oh stars, it hurts, it hurts—”
Thorne crashed down beside her, snaring her by her other elbow and spinning her toward him. Steel flashed from the nest of her body in a backhanded arc; Thorne seized her wrist and shoved it, and her, against a sapling, the impact rattling through both of them. “Aden taught me that trick, too.”
She glared up at him, both arms unhurt, one holding a dagger—Quill’s dagger—and the other Ariadne’s satchel. “When I’m finally free, I’m going to kill you first. I’m going to make the Key watch.”
In one deft blow, Thorne knocked the dagger from her hand, spun her from the sapling and pushed her to her knees in the leaf litter and dead plants. “How did you come by that blade?”
“Quill let down his guard.” Her tone was casual, a smug smile sprinkling the words. “Oh, Quill, I can’t feel my hands, please loosen my bonds just a bit, I’ll behave, I promise…I know you’re just trying to keep me from hurting myself, but you’re hurting me…” A nasty laugh spiraled from her. “He’s so easy.”
Thorne yanked her around to face him, wrists pinned in one hand, taking her chin in the other. She glared up at him without fear or love. Just hate and hunger and vindictive pleasure in eyes that never should have seen war. Eyes he remembered full of tears, that voice untouched by cruelty, screaming at him to get up when his father sent him to his knees in that apartment corridor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she blinked—the only sign that perhaps he’d cut past that vicious guard for once. “I didn’t save you that night in the courthouse.”
“Save me.” Her lips curled. “I don’t need saving.”
She hurled her weight forward and broke his hold, jaw agape, mouth going for his throat so sharply he didn’t have time to block.
A hand snared the back of Pippet’s collar, ripping her from Thorne’s hold and smashing her backward into a brawny grip: Quill, chest bleeding from a slash dealt by his own stolen Svarkyst dagger, falling back on his haunches and scooting away from Thorne, dragging Pippet with him. She bucked wildly, gnashing her teeth and screaming for the augment pouch dangling limp in Thorne’s grip. “Give those to me, they’re mine, I need them! You’re just wasting them with all this training that doesn’t matter, you can’t keep her from dying on the Door and when she does I’m going to take every last drop of augmentation and I’ll use it to tear all of you apart! Starting with you!” She slammed her elbow backward into Quill’s abdomen, and he groaned but kept his grip. “I hate you, you’re just like a slaver and the only reason I ever behaved was to make you love me so you’d let me leave! You’re not my brother, you’re not my father, I wish I’d put my knife in you instead—”
Thorne set the pouch aside, stripped the armored thread of Maleck’s scarf from around his bicep, and went to them. Kneeling across Pippet’s thrashing ankles, he gagged her and tied the cloth in the ratty tangles of her hair. She went on cursing, screaming, struggling, and over her head Quill met Thorne’s gaze with such anguish in his face, it cracked Thorne’s heart in half. Any reprimand for Quill’s lax guard today died on his lips.
His friend was grieving the death of his sister, and grief was irrational—Thorne knew that better than anyone. Julian and Cistine had paid the greatest cost imaginable when he’d lost Baba Kallah.
He straightened and took Pippet under the arm, yanking her up beside him, speaking over her enraged squeals to Quill. “That wound needs attention.”
Quill pressed a hand to his chest, blood spilling across his fingers. “It’s just a scratch.”
“Nightwing.” Defiant eyes slashed to Thorne’s face. “I have her. Let Tati help you.”
The fight went out of Quill’s posture so abruptly, it sent Thorne’s stomach into a plunge. With one hand, Quill freed Pippet’s bonds from his belt and tossed them to Thorne; with the other, he kept pressure to his wound. Pausing just long enough to snatch up his dagger and Ariadne’s pouch, he vanished back toward the camp.
Thorne held Pippet by the throat and banded her arms behind her back, ignoring her spitting rage and the half-muffled threats slipping around the gag. Despair churned in his middle, and fear for Quill, who counted wounds from his own sister as nothing. Three stark cleavings down his cheek from her unpared nails; a gash across his chest from her blade. How many more wounds would he take before she succeeded in what she claimed she wanted—killing the brother who’d given everything to keep her alive?
The uncertain future lurked beyond Thorne’s sight on the short, fraught march back to the camp, where he shoved Pippet down beside the dying fire and went straight to Quill, seated on an overturned stump, head bent while Tatiana cleaned and bandaged his chest. He laid a hand on his shoulder, and Quill reached back and gripped it, his hold tight like a dying man clinging to the last thread of strength inside him.
Without letting go, Thorne looked at Cistine and Ariadne’s faces, his strategist banding a cloth to the shallow cut above her hip where the Svarkyst steel had bitten through, severing her pouch. “We need a new plan.”
“For Maleck?” Cistine asked.
“For her.” Thorne jerked his chin at Pippet. “She’s desperate because she’s weaning from the augments.”
