Burn

by Patrick Ness

  The RCMP had granted them use of a helicopter to get out here, but the snow was so bad, the pilot would only land back at base, leaving them an hour’s drive to the border.

  “They’re Canadian,” Agent Woolf said, face still in her notebook. “I would trust them to know the fastest safe speed in snowfall.”

  “I grew up in the Cascades, Agent. I know a thing or two about driving in snow.” He only just stopped himself from smacking the horn in anger. “The boy will be long gone by the time we get there.”

  “The RCMP said he was going to detain them until we arrived.”

  “And no one’s heard from him since.”

  “It’s practically a blizzard, Paul,” she nearly snapped, then looked as surprised as he was that she’d used his first name. “Sorry. Agent Dernovich.”

  “Not a problem.” Agent Dernovich scowled. “Veronica.”

  Her voice was innocent as a lamb’s. “Is it the Polish spelling? Pol?”

  “No. Dernovich is Croatian. I’m named after my father’s brother who died in the Great War.”

  “All wars are great if you’re in them.”

  “Do you have anything helpful to say, Agent Woolf?”

  “I mean no disrespect,” she said. “My mind is elsewhere.”

  “No kidding your mind is elsewhere. You’ve hardly looked up from that page for the last two days. Those runes aren’t going to tell you anything different.”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “But what? But what, Veronica?”

  She blew out a thoughtful breath. “The Mitera Thea won’t speak to us.”

  “She won’t speak to anyone. We’ve only gotten written responses out of her, even though we’ve been clear on the possible ramif—”

  “Let me finish.”

  She said it so calmly, he was surprised into silence.

  “What if she sent the assassin herself?” she said.

  “That’s our whole working theory, Woolf!”

  “Not as Mitera Thea, not as a representative of all Believers, but as herself. One person, acting independently.”

  “What difference could that possibly make?”

  “The Believers are riven with sects. Sects that compete for primacy. We’ve always known that the current Mitera Thea is from a sect that relies heavily on prophecy.” She raised a hand to ward off his interruption. “Which is how this investigation first started, yes, you don’t need to tell me. Now, prophecy is usually vague nonsense. Worded so broadly it could mean nearly anything. Anytime anything does happen, the prophecy can be pretty much made to fit in retrospect.”

  Dernovich finally butted in. “So how is that helpful in the middle of a Canadian blizzard when we’re on our way at a frigging snail’s pace to apprehend what might be the assassin we’re looking for. Who is maybe a teenage boy. God, just saying it out loud makes me hear how crazy you people are.”

  She pressed on, wincing slightly, as if she were politely ignoring a fart. “If the Mitera Thea wanted to hide something from us, she’d simply call diplomatic immunity and that would be that, but if she wanted to hide it from other Believers, what would she do?”

  “Leaving aside the question of why she’d want to do that, you tell me.”

  “She might hide it in plain sight. The Believers are believers in red dragons, always have been, but there are five dragon breeds in the world, each of them with a similar but not quite identical language that each uses the same pictographic, runic alphabet.”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “The languages have a lot of overlap. I’ve been trying to translate those runes via the language of reds. They make enough vague sense that way to feel like prophecy, certainly enough for the Believers to build entire Cells around. But what if it’s not in red? We’d never considered it because that makes absolutely no sense for the Mitera Thea. She’d disregard anything in any other dragon language.”

  “But if she was doing it on her own—”

  “It turns out that the runes also make a vague prophetic sense if you translate via the language of the greens and the whites. They make no sense at all via the desert dragon language.” She finally held up her notebook. “They make perfect, almost exact sense if translated via blue.”

  Agent Dernovich’s eyes raced over the page. “Holy shit. Hidden in plain sight.”

  “No one would ever dream the Mitera Thea would follow a prophecy of the blues. It would fundamentally go against who she is. She would, in fact, not be the Mitera Thea if she did so.”

  “But she did.”

  “And if she did that, who knows what other rules she might break?”

  “Hire a dragon to kill humans? It would take a lot of gold to break that taboo.”

  “Believers hand over all their worldly wealth when they join. Paying for it wouldn’t be a problem.”

  Dernovich’s heart sank right down to his belt. “My God, if she’s gone that far—”

  “Then we have to stop her. Fortunately, I think I’ve figured out her target.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m not exactly sure of the name, but I know where and when.”

  “What about why?”

  Agent Woolf looked surprised. “Whyever else, Agent Dernovich? Because that’s where the end of the world begins.”

  Nine

  “WHAT YOU MUST remember through all of this,” Kazimir said, “is that you are not special.”

  “Well, that’s just terrific,” Sarah said, shivering in the gathering snow. Though the moon was well hidden behind what was probably miles of clouds, the whole farm seemed to glow from the white that covered everything. It was the fourth night in a row she’d tried to get answers out of him. The constant lack of sleep and overall tension were wearing on her. She’d even told Jason about the assassin, even though Kazimir had warned her not to. The fact that Jason hadn’t even doubted her was yet more proof of how strange life had become. “When are you going to tell me something practical, like exactly when this supposed assassin is coming or—”

  “You are merely lucky,” Kazimir continued, ignoring her.

  “Lucky? How has any of this been lucky?”

  “You have no special abilities. You have no special bloodline—or what passes for bloodline among your species. You have no history or strength or intelligence that would mark you out in any way.”

  “Okay,” Sarah breathed against the snowfall. “Now, you’re just being mean for the sake of it.”

  “Do not misunderstand me,” the dragon said. “You may have those things in abundance in other areas of your life. You certainly have shown a resourcefulness and a capaciousness of character I have found most surprising, but for the purposes of your death, there is no intrinsic reason why you should be the one and others not. It is merely a coincidence of timing.”

  “So you’ve said, but I don’t know why I need to be insulted—”

  He grunted in what finally seemed to be frustration. “Because there is a prophecy about you, Sarah Dewhurst.”

  She stopped. “Me?”

  “Not you in particular.” The dragon looked around at the farm, the snow, the forest, the steel antenna, and great shadow of Mount Rainier hidden somewhere beyond. “But this time. This place.” He looked back down on her, his eye seeming to glow, and not for the first time she was reminded of the old wives’ tale of dragons being able to hypnotize you. “This exact time. This exact place. And a girl.”

  “What’s supposed to happen?”

  “A moment in which war itself pivots.”

  “War?”

  He looked frustrated, but not at her. “Presumably. The language of prophecy is never so clear. It is always ‘worlds colliding’ and ‘worlds ending.’ Which is why they should usually not be taken seriously.”

  “I shouldn’t take someone coming to murder me seriously?”

  “On the whole, one should worry less about prophecies and more about the lunatics who believe them.”

  “So I have a lunatic coming to
murder me?”

  “That is accurate.”

  “Because he believes a prophecy that isn’t true?”

  “That is what is so troubling. This one has proven quite true so far.” He frowned. “My breed are scholars, and as such, rather more skeptical than others. We freed ourselves from the Goddess long ago and feel no allegiance to the furious dictums she left behind.”

  “You have an actual Goddess? I thought that was just something the Believers made up—”

  “But this particular prophecy, the only one clearly in my own tongue, has been coming true in pieces for decades. We kept it secret, again not for itself but for those lunatics, mostly among your own kind, who might act on it. Yet somehow it was found. As, in fact, it was predicted to be. And so here I sit, watching it unfold further, intervening where I must.”

  “Why you? Who are you that intervention is your responsibility?”

  He didn’t answer at first, clearly deciding how much he would. “Dragon magic is wild,” he finally said. “It is so untamable and dangerous it only properly exists beyond this world. The dragons you know are, in essence, safe containers of it. If the magic came here unfiltered, it would destroy everything.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Sarah said, an understatement.

  “Most humans do not. It would make our relations even more difficult if you did, but the truth is, we exist as a sort of safety valve between you and it. It is a balance that must be maintained or all is lost, for dragon and man alike. But much of the knowledge is forgotten. The blues are the guardians of what remains. The prophecy suggests that this place—and a girl within it—is the pivot of a war that could wreck that balance and destroy us all.”

  “So they sent you—”

  “To do what I can, if I can.”

  “If?”

  He ruffled his wings in a way she guessed was a shrug. “Our theology believes that everything that happens has already happened, somewhere, some time, and will happen again and again, somewhere, some time. In an infinite number of other worlds. We have felt echoes of this happening before where it went very, very badly. We have a vested interest in trying to prevent that happening again.”

  Sarah swallowed. “And killing me is part of this particular prophecy?”

  “You are the pivot,” the dragon said, and for the first time ever, he sounded kind. It was almost more upsetting than being told her death was coming. “If your assassin kills you, then there is no hope at all.”

  Gareth Dewhurst watched his daughter and the dragon through his darkened bedroom window. He couldn’t guess what they might be talking about, but he didn’t believe it would hurt her. It had helped her with Kelby at least once and—as was seeming more and more likely—in a very final way a second time.

  But another letter had arrived.

  The time draws close, Mr. Dewhurst. By now, it is likely your dragon will have performed the first of his prophesied deeds, that of taking an action to spare your daughter’s life. We do not know the exact circumstances of this, but we suspect you know of what we speak.

  How did they know? No one could tell the future, and those who believed they could were lunatics.

  Do not be deceived. He protects your daughter for his own purposes. He will befriend her, but he will lie to her. He will appear as an ally, a confidant. He will not be.

  Gareth Dewhurst was not a stupid man. He knew full well the letter could contain equal lies to the ones it was accusing the dragon of spinning. How could you possibly take an anonymous letter seriously?

  There are larger issues at stake than your daughter, but we know that will not be true for you personally. We appeal to you through her then. She is in danger. The dragon will not harm her directly—we cannot lie, though it would be easier to convince you if we could—but he will, by his actions, cause her to be harmed.

  And if this wasn’t true, if the dragon didn’t harm her . . .

  We ask for action from you, Mr. Dewhurst. If not, we will be forced to take matters into our own hands, which would—through no fault of your own—cause great difficulties for you and your family.

  There was the threat. If he didn’t do it, they would, and screw you, Gareth Dewhurst.

  He was certain they would carry it out, too, for they had sent a delivery to his doorstep this very day.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Sarah said.

  “There is no need for you to,” said Kazimir. “There is only need for you to prepare.”

  “I kind of feel like I’m the one who decides what I need to understand. If I’m the one whose life is at stake.”

  He cocked his head, watching her anger as if he were deciding something. “So be it. Very soon, Russian humans are sending a machine up into the sky, far higher than any other before. Higher than even your airplanes, which have made dragon flying so dangerous.”

  “You mean the satellite?” Sarah asked. “How do you know about that?”

  He didn’t answer. “When that happens, men believe dragons will no longer have dominion over their lives. That you will know all our secrets.”

  Sarah realized how true this probably was. A side effect of humanity’s race to destroy itself, but—

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Dragons won’t put up with that. There will be war—”

  “We have suffered the spies of men for centuries,” Kazimir said. “I would have hoped we could find ways to protect ourselves. But the prophecy says war, a war that will be the end of men and dragons. What occurs here in this very place, in a very few days’ time, will decide whether war happens or not. And because of where you are and when you are, you will be in a position to stop it.”

  “But how could I possibly stop a war?”

  “Others know this about you. It has been foretold. They believe that if they can stop you at the precisely correct moment, then the prophecy will be averted. And war will be upon us, men and dragons finally unleashed. This is why the assassin comes for you.”

  “He wants war?”

  “They do. He himself may not even know. The prophecy suggests he might believe the opposite, which would give his mission a holy imprimatur of peace. If so, he would be coming as a religious fanatic, the most dangerous lunatic of all.”

  She crossed her arms against the cold. “So what do I do then?”

  He shifted from foot to foot. “You will know.”

  She glanced back up at him, realizing. “Oh, my God,” she said. “You don’t know either.”

  The plow might do it. It was old, but it had been built to last, being mostly iron. Dragonhide was notoriously tough, but the plow could break it, if there was any way to get it moving fast enough. There was an old belief, possibly not more than a folktale, that if you rammed a dragon in the exact right spot, their fire-generating organ would burst, killing them from the inside. There were absolutely no authenticated dragon deaths by this method, but Gareth had put idle thought into how he might tie the plow to the front of his truck.

  This new letter, though, told him differently. Apparently, he would have to poison it. That’s what had been delivered today. Three large bags labeled “fertilizer” that weren’t fertilizer at all. The letter told him it was a chemical that mixed violently with that same fire-generating organ and, in sufficient amounts, would corrupt its bloodstream, killing the beast. As dragons were sometimes known to die (on the rare occasions that happened at all) of a similar condition on their own—something like a human having a heart attack—there wasn’t much chance of a human action behind it being uncovered.

  The letter suggested slaughtering a pig and filling its stomach with the “fertilizer,” then feeding it to the dragon, hoping it would swallow it down like dragons tended to do with their food. In order to throw off suspicion, the letter suggested, he should slaughter all three of his pigs as if they were the ones who’d been poisoned, leaving the fertilized one as the second.

  Such a clear plan. It might even work. Sarah would be devastated at the loss of Bess, Mamie, and
Eleanor, but with five thousand dollars in the bank, he could buy as many more as she wanted. And if the letter was right, she’d at least be alive to be devastated.

  If the letter was right.

  “You don’t know what’s supposed to happen or what I’m supposed to do.”

  The dragon looked unhappy. “It is somewhat unclear,” he admitted, grudgingly. “The future shifts. It changes. It’s why prophecies are so vague, so that they may fit whatever circumstances come and still look true. We blues are right to treat them with suspicion. But this one describes things that went on to happen. More than once. It did not, however, fill in every connection or—as you keep demanding—why. Perhaps those events even happened not because they were foretold but because someone read the prophecy and caused them to occur. Regardless, the stakes are high enough that it cannot be ignored.”

  “Who says it’s prophecy anyway? Who made it?”

  “Our Goddess, of course, as I’ve said.”

  “There’s no ‘of course’ about it, Kazimir. Everyone knows Believers worship one. No one knows dragons do, too.”

  “We do not worship her.” He made a grumble of disgust. “She created us and then tried to destroy all Creation.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she is the untamed magic I spoke of. It exists just out of your sight, but it rages against your world like a tempest. She was the one who reached into it and brought all dragons into being in the blink of an eye. We contain only a fragment of that magic; she channels it all and cannot exist in this world for long without destroying it. She is fire without boundary and would devour everything. It is the nature of gods to do so. They must either be defeated or trapped in the confines of something like your human minds lest everything they touch turn to ash.”

  “You defeated your own Goddess?”

  “We did what was necessary. Millennia ago. But that does not mean that there are not those who would carry out her mission no matter what the cost.”

  “But if we know it, know it’s coming, couldn’t that stop it?”

  “Knowing the future is part of that future’s past. Perhaps the foreseen happens because we try to change it.”