“It’s been a long day for you all, I know,” the nurse said. “Take some time to relax, the doctor will call for you as soon as Cipao feels a little better. For now, he says, the man must rest.”
“We understand,” Mamo said. The nurse left the room.
Mamo turned to Sukina. “Thank you for coming here to help, dear. You probably have plenty of other things you need to do.”
“Actually, Mrs Wells, we’re on the way to another mission.”
“Please, I’ve told you before,” Mamo said. “You can call me Versalina.”
“Sorry… Versalina.”
I was looking at Sukina in surprise. Another mission. I tried to ask the question in my mind, but I’d forgotten I needed that connection to the collective unconscious.
“Now, do you really have to leave so soon? Pontopa’s father would have a fit. I was hoping that we could all stay safe for a while here.”
Sukina looked towards the doorway. “Versalina, I must ask, can we have a word? In private…”
Mamo bit her lip. Then nodded. She and Sukina walked out of the room.
Ratter had lowered itself down to Faso’s lap and the inventor was stroking the automaton, like a cat. “Discharging static,” Faso explained, when he noticed me looking at him in confusion. “He gets that when he’s in the air. It builds up in his little wires.”
I smiled. “You sure are an odd one,” I said.
Faso shook his head. “So, what was all that about?” he asked.
“Shh,” I said because I was listening to the voices coming from behind the door.
I heard some words – ‘heritage’, ‘Pontopa’, Sukina saying, “you must tell her”. Then Mamo raised her voice a little. Sukina snapped something back then Mamo went quiet. Then, I heard someone sniffling.
“What the dragonheats?” Faso said.
“Shh!”
Another few moments passed, Sukina and Mamo entered into the room, sat down without saying a word to each other. Mamo’s eyes were red.
“You’ve probably guessed that I’m going to Cini’s palace tomorrow,” Sukina said. “To rescue the boy, Artua. He isn’t the king’s nephew after all but, in fact, is of great importance to Gerhaun. Francoiso Lamford’s news that the king isn’t quite himself has got me even more worried. Something strange is happening in the palace and I just have a hunch that Prince Artua isn’t quite safe. In short, Pontopa, I’d like to ask you to come with me.”
Mamo nodded but didn’t say anything.
“But my parents,” I said.
“I’ve talked to Sukina about this,” Mamo said, her voice a little broken. “Your father will be quite safe here and it’s about time you realised your abilities.”
“My abilities? Mamo… You knew?”
“We’ll talk later about this, Pontopa, I promise. Before you leave, if Papo recovers. But I think he should be there, really. I’m sorry we’ve kept it from you so long.”
I blinked off the confusion. What in the dragonheats was she talking about?
The door opened and the nurse walked in the room. “Thanks to the good doctor,” she said. “Your father’s making a quick recovery. It’s not serious, fortunately. The bullet didn’t hit any organs or shatter any bones.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Then sprang up out of my chair, forgetting how tired I was. We walked out into the patient’s room.
Papo was propped up in bed by what must have been half a dozen pillows. A little colour had returned to his cheeks. He wore no shirt now, displaying his lithe and supple muscles. A poultice had been wrapped around his arm with something green and spongy pressed against the wound.
“Well,” he said. “We made it.”
“We did,” Mamo said and took hold of his hand while she broke down in tears. She took a stool by the bed. Doctor Forsolano gestured us over to the other wooden chairs placed around the bed.
“Papo, you’re something sometimes. Why did you have to rush out ahead of everyone else?”
“Hey, I just wanted to check the coast was clear. I’d rather I got shot than one of you lot. Darling, come here.”
I moved closer, knelt down besides the bed. He moved his wounded arm to ruffle my hair but grimaced as soon as he tried to stretch it too far.
“Rest it,” Doctor Forsolano warned him. “Pontopa, maybe you’d be better on the other side.”
I took my chair to the other side of the bed, placed it besides Mamo. From there, I also took hold of Papo’s hand.
“I’m sorry, Papo,” I said. Tears welled in my eyes.
“Pontopa,” he said. “I heard you’re a fugitive now…”
“Welcome to the club… We’ll probably all be in the Tow Observer tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe here,” Doctor Forsolano said. “The king has no idea I exist, let alone where I am.”
I looked at the doctor in surprise. “But you’re one of the best doctors in the land.”
“I was… But since I decided to create this honest rehabilitation centre in the middle of nowhere, I’ve also escaped the watchful eyes of Cini’s troops.”
I nodded. “That’s reassuring.”
Mamo took hold of my hand. “Pontopa, dear. Can I have a word with your father a moment?”
Damn all this secrecy. Anyone would think there was a conspiracy. “Okay,” I said. “Come on, Faso, Sukina.”
Faso stood up, but Mamo said, “Sukina can stay. And Doctor Forsolano needs to be here, of course.”
Faso and I walked out the room together.
“You think Sukina and your parents are trying to set us up?” Faso asked with a cocky grin.
I snorted. “You wish,” I said.
“Somehow, I do.”
I decided to go back in the sitting room and finish my tea. That way, I didn’t have to put up with Faso. I was beginning to tolerate him a little better, although at this moment I just wasn’t in the mood for him. But my parents, Sukina and Doctor Forsolano didn’t take long discussing what they needed to discuss.
Soon, Mamo came in to get me.
“Come on,” she said. “There’s something we’ve all got to tell you.”
“I guessed that,” I said. Part of me knew exactly what it was, part of me didn’t want to admit it.
I followed Mamo back into the bedroom, Faso trailing behind like a loyal puppy. He took his seat by Sukina at the foot of the bed. Doctor Forsolano was now on Papo’s right, checking his bandages. I sat down besides Mamo and took hold of both Mamo’s and Papo’s hands.
“Dear,” Mamo said. “It’s about time you knew this.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m adopted.” I turned my head from Mamo to Papo. Part of me wanted to feel anger, but when I saw the sympathetic expressions on my parent’s faces, no anger came.
“Not quite, dear,” Mamo said. “Although, Papo… He’s not your biological father.”
“Mamo? But—”
“And, technically, I’m not your biological mother either.”
Doctor Forsolano smiled. “But in many ways Versalina… you are.”
“What?” My expression must have been a mixture of astonishment and confusion. “What the dragonheats is this about?”
“Pontopa,” it was Papo’s turn to speak. It seemed planned out as if both Mamo and Papo should have equal weights in the conversation. “We met your first mother during the dragonheats. I was resting from my injuries, near Doctor Forsolano’s old place, in the countryside just outside Slaro. I’d recovered well enough that your mother and I decided to go out blackberry picking together.
“There, we came across a woman on the verge of death. She’d managed to escape remarkably, from Labour Camp 33. She said she was a dragonseer, and pregnant with child. She needed help, so your mother and I took her to Doctor Forsolano right away.
Papo turned to look at Doctor Forsolano, who nodded. “I wasn’t able to save her,” he said. “All the herbs and drugs in the world would not bring her back. Cini II’s guards had beate
n her hard in the labour camp and were about to kill her for not keeping up with her quota. But she told us we couldn’t let the child die.”
Mamo took the story from here. “She told us about the dragonseers. A dying people who were crucial to the fate of dragonkind. She had a dragon herself, that they’d murdered, in her own words. An opulent ruby red, she’d told us, its life taken away by the old war automatons. His head then severed by King Cini II’s own sword, as if it was a hunting animal, left lying there bloody on the ground.
“We had to save the baby, she told us. King Cini II was hunting down the dragonseers and they’d discovered who she was at the camp. She managed to escape barely, through the barbed wire electrified fence just as she’d learnt they’d ordered her execution. If she died it would wipe out an entire line of these people she called dragonseers. She told us the legends, she told us about Gerhaun Forsi’s Dragons and Ecology and how other dragonseers had already been killed by the king. And she begged Doctor Forsolano to do a caesarean and get the baby out there. Give it a chance.”
“But she was only five months pregnant,” Doctor Forsolano said, “so there was no chance we’d get the baby out alive. It needed a womb to incubate in. Fortunately, at the time, I’d made some discoveries in medicine. I’d learnt how to move a baby from one womb to another, using a thin connection of malleable pipes that helped expand a woman’s tummy, so to speak, and let the baby be born.”
“I was barren, you have to understand, Pontopa. This is the reason you’ve never had a sister. But Doctor Forsolano presented your father and I with a solution. There would be two caesareans. One on her to take the baby out, one on me to put the baby back in. I’d need to keep a cage in my womb to house the baby, with special pipes that connected to the umbilical cord. It was a spark of luck that me and your mother had the same blood type.”
My jaw had dropped towards the floor at this point. Really, you couldn’t make this stuff up. Part of me wondered if they were all pulling my leg, but the straight expression on their faces and tone of their voices contained no traces of humour. “So, you’re my mother, but you’re also not my mother…”
“Thanks to Forsolano’s genius,” Papo said.
“Such a remarkable story,” Faso said. “And all done with technology. Are you sure you hate automatons so much, Pontopa? Doctor Forsolano, if I might ask, I’d love to have a look at that womb-cage sometime.”
“I don’t do it anymore. It had complications…”
I looked again at Mamo. I’d always thought her healthy. “Complications?”
“Your mother made it through strong, but I tried it on two other women, and they all died in childbirth. For me, that was enough.”
“But the future of science…” Faso said. “Doctor Forsolano, there has to be sacrifices sometimes.”
“Not when people’s lives depend on it, Mr Gordoni. I put people’s health before everything else.”
“Even when you can save thousands of lives in the future?”
“It won’t,” Doctor Forsolano said. “Versalina was an anomaly. When I think, from experience, about how the machine worked, it’s a miracle that she survived.”
“Dragonseer blood,” Sukina said. “We’re tougher than we look, you know.”
“I know,” Doctor Forsolano said. “There’s certainly something in you, Pontopa.”
I stood up and started to pace the room. It would take me a little while to get my head around this. I was perhaps the only person in the world with two biological mothers. Did that make me a dragonseer or not?
“Papo, you know I have to leave tomorrow,” I said. “I’m a dragonseer now. I met a dragon queen, and she told me what I have to do. I know you don’t want me to go Papo. I know you want to protect me. But this boy is important to Gerhaun and there’s so much I have to learn.”
Papo breathed in heavily as if to let in a sigh, but he was cut off with a grimace and he clutched his hand to his shoulder.
“Easy, Cipao,” Doctor Forsolano said.
“I know. I guess this is something we have to accept. But you mustn’t do anything that gets you into any danger, you hear me? I’ve got to rest well at the end of the day, knowing you’re alive.”
“I’ll stay safe, Papo, I promise.”
“Then send us a postcard,” Papo said with a smile. “And really, get out of there as soon as you can.”
“Thank you, Papo,” I said, and I kissed him on the cheek. “Mamo, thank you.”
And I walked to the open window to get a breath of fresh air.
I slept in a twin room with Sukina. Faso took the single room next door and I kept being woken up from his snoring. Mamo, I believe, slept in the chair downstairs watching over Papo. I kept hearing the creaking of floorboards as Forsolano got up every hour or so to tend to him through the night.
Breakfast the next day was vegan – no eggs or sausages or bacon, much to Faso’s dismay. But Forsolano had admonished us for overdoing the secicao and he advised it was better to get a good mix of fruit and veg and recover the vitamins. So, on his long table, he’d laid out a selection of salads, hummus, rye bread, tabbouleh, falafels and all kinds of other rich delights that I wondered how he’d managed to source all the ingredients, being in the middle of nowhere and all that.
Forsolano had let Papo out of bed to at least have breakfast with us, although he was under a strict time limit of half an hour.
I tried not to linger too long before I said goodbye to my parents (if I should be calling them that now). I didn’t want any more tears or angst – I just wanted Papo to rest and Mamo to look after him. But I lingered long enough to tell both of them I loved them and that I forgave them about the whole adoption thing.
Papo had to stay at Forsolano’s and Mamo wanted to look after her. So we decided that only one nurse would come with us to the clearing, just to make sure we didn’t get lost.
In the hallway, I gave Mamo a big hug then and she cried in my arms. “Dear, you must come back, you hear me?”
Sukina smiled. “She will,” she said. “I’d put my own life before hers any day.”
Mamo looked at Sukina. “Don’t you go getting yourself killed either, dear. Or you for that matter, young man.” She turned to Faso.
Sukina laughed and Faso grimaced. “No one’s going to die, Versalina,” Sukina said. “We’re all too valuable for that.”
Mamo smiled and Papo stepped forward. He tried to reach out with both arms with a hug, forgetting that his left was in a brace. He grimaced when the right extended further than the left. Then he accepted defeat and gripped me with one arm. “Your Mamo and I both love you, you know that?” she said. “And we’re only protective like this because we’d much rather be the ones getting into trouble than you.”
“I’ll stay safe, I promise, Papo,” I said.
“So you go in, get the boy, and get back here safe.”
“I understand.”
We left Mamo with Papo at Forsolano’s and traipsed back to the clearing in the forest to leave with Velos. I felt him as we approached, and he didn’t seem happy having to spend the night there while we slept so comfortably on Forsolano’s soft mattresses.
But, as soon as he saw us, I felt him perk up a little. He raised his head to the sky and let off a huge roar.
“Shh, Velos,” I said and then sang a song quickly, without knowing what I was doing.
“He’s just saying hello,” Sukina said. “And don’t worry, I’m sure we’re miles from Cini’s troops here.”
“I hope so,” I said. And we took off towards Slaro.
Part VI
Cini
“There is no more valuable resource in this world than secicao.”
King Cini III
22
We decided to fly east for a while then north instead of taking the direct route northeast to Slaro. The latter would take us through a valley where Slaro had heavy fortifications. But the king would unlikely expect anyone to fly over the five-thousand-metre high Caprio
Mountain range. Airships found it difficult to get over there with the thin air.
Of course, it was also much colder up there. This time of year, there was snow and we had to put our breathing masks on to ensure we had enough oxygen. Without the storage offered by Velos’ armour, we wouldn’t have been able to pack the necessary winterwear to get us through. But now some trench coats and Saye Alpaca Wool jumpers from kept us warm enough for at least the few hours we had to stay high.
Just before we reached the mountains, Sukina had taken a little while to brief us on the plan. She had a contact within the city, a publisher known as Simpra Grandola who lived just southeast of the mountains, and who could shelter Velos underneath his printing office. We’d leave Velos there and Simpra would escort us towards the Palace Station tram stop, where he knew of a secret tunnel into the palace. After that, it would be a matter of stealth, Ratter would be able to help disable some guards, if necessary. Sukina said she’d show us the exact schematics of the palace once we reached our first destination.
We approached the plains of Slaro from above, the land once stripped bare by a glacier that had run westwards. From above, you could see the grey-yellow smog clouds roiling down below. A mixture of coal smoke and secicao from all the processing used to blend secicao and create the oil.
When I looked at it then, I could see what Sukina and Gerhaun meant by how secicao was taking over the world. You didn’t notice it so much when you were down on the ground in Slaro. Just a general clamminess and the thin sunlight which brought a little warmth to the city before it plunged into a cold night.
“You’re home now, Faso,” I called back. “You want to set up your enterprise here?”
“I’ve changed my mind about that.”
“I don’t blame you,” I shouted and then we dove into the clouds. It was if I’d suddenly entered a room filled with chain smokers. I started coughing and hacking and it took me a couple of minutes to adjust.
Dragonseers and Airships Page 19
