No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished

by Rachel Aaron

  She looked at Marci as she finished, greeting her gawking stare with a resigned sigh. “I suppose Raven told you what I am?”

  “Of course I did,” Raven chirped, fluttering up to land on her shoulder. “I’m a very proud papa.”

  “You are most definitely not my father,” the general said as she turned back to Marci. “I hope this won’t damage your ability to trust me, Miss Novalli,” she said, holding up her metal hand. “I assure you that, other than a few modifications, I’m as human as you or Myron. I was actually born right here in Detroit, and I can show you pictures if you need proof.”

  “No, no, I believe you,” Marci said quickly. “It’s just that I’ve never…that is to say, I didn’t know you were possible. The last I’d heard, we were still trying to figure out how to make enchantments stick to paper clips, never mind a full-blown person.”

  “I’m a bit of a special case,” the general said, sitting down in the seat across from her. “And I’m not actually enchanted. I have no magic of my own. My body is simply a complex spellwork conduit for Raven’s magic. He provides the power, I decide how it should be used, sort of like a pilot.”

  “How did that happen?” Marci blurted out. “I don’t want to be rude, but you have to admit it’s not a common thing.”

  “Hardly,” the general agreed. “There have only been a handful of successful human constructs in all of history. All made by Raven, I might add.”

  The spirit shrugged. “What can I say? I enjoy playing god.”

  “So we’ve noticed,” the general said, turning back to Marci with a smile. “Don’t let him fool you. He plays like it was his idea, but I asked for this. A long time ago, Raven appeared to me when I was dying and offered me a second shot at life. I accepted, but only if I got to remain in control. He agreed, and the rest is public record. I’ve been working for the government—first the US, then the UN—as a weapon protecting humanity from the monsters who suddenly appeared in our midst with moderate success for five decades now.”

  “Five decades?” Marci said, staring at the general’s lineless face. “But you don’t look more than forty.”

  “I assure you, I’m much older than that,” the general said with a chuckle, rapping her knuckles against her thigh with a metallic clack. “Being made of metal and plastic does occasionally have its advantages, as do constant upgrades. I’m actually eighty-six.”

  “Wow,” Marci said, doing the math in her head. “So when you said you were born in Detroit, you meant actual Detroit. Not the DFZ.”

  The general’s face grew angry. “I was born before any of this, back when there was no magic and Detroit was just another struggling Midwest city. I grew up thinking magic and dragons and spirits were all just make-believe. But when the flood came, I learned the hard way how wrong I was.”

  By the time she finished, Marci was practically bouncing in her seat. “You were there?” she cried. “That means you saw the return of magic and Algonquin’s flood with your own eyes! What was it like?”

  “The end of the world,” she replied bitterly, giving Marci a look that knocked the excitement right out of her.

  “I’m sorry,” Marci said, suddenly ashamed. “It’s all history to me. I didn’t think about what it must have been like to live through it.”

  “That’s good,” General Jackson said calmly. “It’s not the sort of thing you want to imagine. But I don’t mind answering your questions. When the flood came, I was still in the Marine Corps. I was at home on leave visiting my family when we felt the ground shake. We thought it was an earthquake, but I learned later that what we’d felt was the meteor hitting the bedrock of the Canadian Shield eight hundred miles away in Quebec. After that, we felt something far worse. It was painful, like something inside us was rupturing, but not in our physical bodies.”

  “The tearing open of magic,” Marci said, nodding. “I’ve read about it.”

  “Trust me, it wasn’t fun,” General Jackson said with a shudder. “Since I wasn’t a mage, mine was over quickly, but my brother was in crippling pain for nearly an hour. We were trying to get him to go to the hospital when the ground shook again, only this time, it didn’t stop. When we went out to see what it was, all we saw was a wall of water.” She shook her head. “It washed everything away. My entire neighborhood was destroyed, and my family drowned. I was the only one who survived, but not for long. My legs had gotten crushed when the house came down, so even though I’d survived Algonquin’s wave, I was going to bleed out anyway. That’s when Raven appeared and offered to save me.”

  “She thought I was the devil,” Raven said with a chuckle. “That was fun.”

  “What else was I supposed to think?” she growled. “I didn’t know magic was real yet, and you were a giant talking bird. My choices were devil or pain-induced hallucination.”

  “But you took my deal all the same.”

  “Of course I took it,” she said. “I’d just seen my entire family killed by something I couldn’t understand or explain. I wanted only one thing, and I didn’t care if I had to make a deal with the devil to get it.”

  Marci could guess what that was. “Revenge?”

  “No,” Emily said, looking at her like she was crazy. “The power to make sure nothing like this ever happened again. That’s why I do all this.” She gestured at the jet. “That’s why I endured the decade of operations and experiments it took to get my first body up and running. So that when creatures like Algonquin try to step on us, I can step back and stop them. That’s why I’ve done everything I’ve done for the last sixty years, and it’s why I’m so excited to find you.”

  She gave her that strange look again, as though Marci were all the hope in the world. “You’re what we’ve been waiting for. Hard as I’ve worked, I always knew I was a stopgap, a makeshift weapon to help us limp along until the Merlins returned. Now that you’re here, we can finally start pushing back for real, and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.”

  “I see,” Marci said, feeling suddenly insufficient. “But you do know there’s a chance I won’t be one, right?”

  “Oh, you’ll do it,” the general said with absolute confidence. “We’ll make it happen.” She tapped the window, where the double-layer skyline of the DFZ’s Skyways was lighting up for the rainy night. “We’ll go down there and do whatever it takes to get your spirit back online. I don’t care if I have to bring you Algonquin herself in buckets, the first Merlin will be ours. I will make you humanity’s shield, or I will die trying.”

  There was conviction in those words far deeper and older than Marci’s involvement in this, and it made her feel decidedly like a pawn. Normally, Marci hated that, but it was hard to be angry at someone whose only wish seemed to be for you to protect humanity. The whole thing was enough to stir up old childhood dreams of heroism. Dreams Marci promptly squashed. Heroes did stupid things like get themselves killed selflessly. She was a mage pushing the boundaries of magic. If she was going to do something as dangerous and reckless as sneaking into the DFZ on a quest to become the power that could finally unseat Algonquin, then she was damn well going to get something out of it for herself and Ghost. She was also going to make sure she stayed in control. General Jackson seemed like a fine and noble soul, but she was still military, and the military had a bad habit of taking over when push came to shove. When that happened, Marci had to be ready to shove back harder. First, though, she had to get her cat back.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” she said, peering out the window as the plane finally set down. “Right now, we need to get back to the house where I first bound Ghost. That’s not going to be easy with Thunderbirds in the sky.”

  “Actually,” Sir Myron said, joining them at last. “The Thunderbird is the least of our worries. Algonquin has her whole panoply out on patrol in the wake of her war declaration. The Thunderbird just watches the sky, probably because it’s the only patrol area straightforward enough for a storm spirit. The rest of A
lgonquin’s group are far sneakier and just as dangerous in their own ways. Vann Jeger was her best fighter, but there’s no such thing as a harmless spirit.”

  “So what’s the plan, then?” Marci asked. “The Thunderbird already knows we’re here, which means we’re bound to get tailed when we leave. If the others are as dangerous as you say, it sounds like we’re screwed.”

  “You would be if you were with anyone else,” Sir Myron said, running his fingers over his maze-inscribed rings. “But you’re with us, Miss Novalli, and we do not get screwed.”

  From anyone else, that would have been some grade A hubris just asking to be put down, but this was Sir Myron Rollins. He was famous for a reason, which meant Marci was willing to spot him the benefit of the doubt. “If you say so,” she said nervously, running a sweaty hand through her hair. “Let me give you the address.”

  Myron nodded impatiently, tapping his foot as Marci found a piece of paper and wrote out the address where she’d worked her first job in the DFZ, squinting in the fading light as the rain from the Thunderbird’s vigil in the sky poured down around them.

  Chapter 14

  By the time David closed the door, Julius’s hand was wrapped tight around the hilt of his Fang. Part of it was general principle: no dragon was comfortable being injured around a more-powerful opponent. Mostly, though, it was because David was Bethesda’s preferred candidate, and given what had just happened with their mother, Julius wouldn’t have trusted him to steal an unguarded bag of money right now. But for all of Julius’s nervousness, the Fang’s magic rolled right over David without making him so much as shudder, meaning whatever he was here for, he didn’t intend violence at the moment. That didn’t mean he couldn’t change his mind later, of course, but for right now at least, David was peaceful, and Julius decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No,” the senator said, stopping at the foot of his bed. “Believe it or not, I’m here to help you.”

  Julius was firmly in the ‘or not’ side of that statement, but he was determined not to jump to conclusions. “Okay,” he said, loosening—but not removing—his grip on his sword. “What’s up?”

  “This,” David said, tossing a formal-looking scroll on the bed beside Julius’s leg. “I’m officially resigning from the race for the open Council seat.”

  There was no way Julius had heard that right. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his bandaged head. “Could you say that one more—”

  “It’s all right there,” his older brother said, pointing at the scroll. “Read for yourself.”

  Julius picked up the scroll, breaking the seal and spreading it open on the bed. Sure enough, it was exactly what David said: a statement revoking his candidacy for the Council race written in the flowery, archaic language usually reserved for formal surrenders. But while the meaning was clear, Julius still didn’t understand. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not a fool,” David said with a shrug. “Continuing a campaign you have no hope of winning is a waste of time and resources. Ian was gaining modest ground thanks to your support, but your masterful handling of Gregory’s little stunt has turned a small shift into a clan-wide movement. I can’t even walk down the hallway now without hearing dragons claiming they always knew you were special, and since you’ve already thrown your weight behind Ian, I find myself at a terminal disadvantage.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” Julius said, feeling unaccountably sad for his brother. David might be a snake, but he’d been legitimately trying to win a spot on the Council. If he quit, they’d be right back to only having one candidate again. “Everyone’s excited right now, but as soon as something else happens, they’ll forget and move on. You can’t just give up.”

  David shook his head. “If we had longer, there might be a chance, but even if Ian fails to get the vote called early, I still have less than twenty-four hours to turn a landslide around. I’m good, but I’m not that good.”

  “But—”

  “Enough,” David said tiredly. “I’ve no interest in lost causes. They’d be deathly insulted to hear it, but when it comes to elections, dragons aren’t so different from humans. We all like to be on the winning team. If Gregory had killed you, as everyone was certain he would, your dreams of a Council would have died along with you. But that didn’t happen, and so everyone’s jumping ship.”

  Julius swallowed. “Is that what you wanted? Me to die?”

  “Of course,” David said with a careless shrug. “It’s not personal. I was on top under the old system. Why would I want that to change? When I saw my chance at greater power, I colluded with Bethesda to bring you down. We were planning to just scare you off with the traps and threats to your mortal, but you’re surprisingly difficult to corner. Gregory was supposed to fix that. He was the final solution, the last, great blow to finally knock you out of our feathers for good, but that didn’t work either. Not only did he not kill you, he lost spectacularly and gained you the public support of Conrad. That’s a sweep by anyone’s standards. Now the whole mountain’s falling over itself to save face by proclaiming how much they were secretly on your side the whole time, and I find myself unwilling to continue throwing good money after bad.” He sighed. “You’ve won, and since this was only ever about power for me, I see no reason to keep fighting a losing battle. Especially since, as you’re always so quick to point out, there will be another Council election for me to win in five years.”

  It was completely out of place, but Julius almost laughed at that. “If you can’t beat us, join us?”

  “A real dragon always finds his way to power,” David reminded him. “I lost this round, but five years should be plenty of time to let you and Ian make a proper mess of things before I come in to show you how a representative government should be run.”

  He finished with a confident smile, and oddly, Julius found himself grinning back. Up until a few moments ago, he’d been sure this was all a ruse. David was a dragon’s dragon. “Surrender” wasn’t in his vocabulary. “Strategic retreat” was, though, and that was what David seemed to be doing. He wasn’t giving up, he was shifting strategies, and that gave Julius more hope for the future than anything else so far, because he was here talking about it.

  Under the old Heartstriker, the only answer to a defeat like this would have been to go down swinging, taking as many of his enemies out with him as possible. Now, though, thanks to the election cycle, David could simply wait for another chance. There was no need for violence, no logical reason for the death and blood and waste that had always been the hallmark of draconic power struggles. The fact that he’d come here with a letter instead of a knife for Julius’s throat was proof that Julius’s plans were already working. Yet again, he was seeing Heartstriker change right before his eyes, and Julius was so happy about that he couldn’t sit still.

  “I can’t tell you how much this means to me,” he said, pushing himself up off the bed. Even with the new strength from his meal, standing probably wasn’t the best idea, but Julius was determined to shake his brother’s hand properly. “I’m sad you’re leaving the race, but I respect your decision, and we really do need the Council up and running as soon as possible. With your cooperation, we might be able to get this whole thing wrapped up by dinner.”

  There might even be enough time to hold their first session, which meant that he could put forward the vote to free Chelsie and F-clutch tonight! No more interruptions or grandstanding, just a united clan actually moving forward. Together.

  That was enough to make Julius dizzy with happiness. Or maybe it was just the blood loss. Either way, he was grinning like an idiot when he stepped forward to take his brother’s outstretched hand, shaking it with every bit of strength his poor abused body could manage. “Thank you for being so mature about this, David. Your decision to bow out peacefully will make a huge difference.”

  “It’d better,” David said, grabbing Julius’s fingers in a crushing grip. “Because this who
le Council system needs a great deal of work. Having one seat that’s split between five Fangs and one that’s elected from everyone else is hideously unbalanced. Even with Ian’s new popularity, I still had enough guaranteed votes left in my pocket to make him sweat. You got your seat simply because no other Fang could be bothered to run.”

  “I know it’s not perfect,” Julius agreed quickly, trying in vain to wiggle his fingers out of David’s. “But this was just our first attempt based on the power structure we had at the time. Once the Council’s established, we can change the rules to divide the power up more equally, starting with the Fang’s seat.” He grinned at his brother. “Seeing how you’ve been a senator for longer than I’ve been alive, I’d be happy to hear your expert opinion on how best to do that.”

  “I’m sure you would,” David said, squeezing harder. “But you mistake my meaning. I like having one seat for five Fangs. Far less competition, and it’s not like getting a Fang of your own is hard.”

  Julius stared at him, confused. “What do you—”

  “Pulling the tooth out of the Quetzalcoatl’s skull initially is a challenge, to be sure,” David went on. “But once they’re out, the Fangs will go to anyone who fits their broad requirements. Just look at Justin. Surely you don’t think he’s what our grandfather envisioned for a Knight of the Mountain? Of course not. He got his Fang because he was reckless, prideful, and violent. For a tooth that was already out of its skull, that was good enough. And now that you’ve done the impossible and dislodged the Diplomat’s Blade, any reasonable, politically inclined Heartstriker should be able to waltz right up and—”

  His free hand—the one he wasn’t currently using to crush Julius’s—darted down to grab the hilt of Julius’s Fang where he’d left it on the bed. But while David was faster than a human, he wasn’t particularly fast for a dragon. Julius, by contrast, was still the fastest of his clutch. Even injured, he grabbed his brother’s wrist with time to spare. His brain, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly as quick on the pick-up.