Could she eat other metals, too? Maybe gold was just candy for dragons; she had certainly never heard of a golden dragon. What if it did terrible things, like rot her teeth?
That’s silly, she told herself. My teeth are fine. She crunched down on the relay.
By the time Ishe shouted, “ALLS AGROUND!” Yaki had eaten the entire relay, and her stomach, while grumbling, no longer threatened her liver with suffocation.
Other metals did work as filler, at least. Yaki put the lid back on the small crate of medical crystals and lifted it to her chest.
“We return!” Ishe declared to the wide-eyed, wounded crew, who gathered around Lazy Lion as Yaki climbed up onto the deck. Yaki took her place beside her sister and waved with one of the dozen medical crystals she had found in the hold. All the crew boggled at the ship and her crate. “Step one is completed!”
As the crystals were distributed, Yaki watched grins spread among her crew. An audible buzz of excitement rose among the clusters of people as Ishe explained how shares worked and how each of them owned a portion of the crystals they held.
Soon, Yaki found herself on the other side of the crowd. Several crew members were hurrying down the slope to the badly wounded in the skiff; the others lingered around Ishe. One crystal-touched woman had been outside the group, Naga’s long, scaled body coiled around itself, creating a pyramid of sorts with her human torso as a capstone. The only clothing that at adorned her human torso was a scrap of black fabric around her chest. Her emerald eyes stared at Yaki’s feet.
In the scramble of the raid, Yaki had almost forgotten how close she had come to losing Ishe right after seeing her again. Now she remembered how this woman had been leading a squad, armed with only a crossbow against the Dragonsworn. If she hadn’t skewered Ishe with her own bolt, she knew who had. Yaki tossed down her now-empty crate as her chest rumbled with fire. Forcing herself to keep breathing prevented the flame from building but caused black smoke to leak from her nostrils. “What?” she rasped.
The tip of Naga’s tail rattled once and stilled. “Captain, that bolt that hit your sister? It was mine. I apologize.” She looked up then, her bright green eyes looking down through Yaki’s. Single scales dotted her cheeks as freckles, but her face had more than enough humanity to show the deep circles beneath those eyes. Guilt. Her face screamed it.
Yaki took another step toward the woman, and Naga coiled deeper into herself. A half-rattle sounded but was quickly stifled by shoving that the noisy tail deep into her coils. Nine hells, am I really that terrifying? The thought punched through Yaki’s anger. Naga had made a mistake, probably an honest one. Yet that changed nothing. Guilt, Madam Mana and Mother both agreed, must be resolved. So, even as that anger faded Yaki kept the rage in her features, despite it becoming no more than a mask. She crooked a single finger at Naga, beckoning her closer.
Naga uncoiled her body and bowed; only then did her head level with Yaki’s.
Heads had glanced toward Naga and then back again to whatever they were doing by the time the crack of Yaki’s palm striking Naga’s cheek echoed back down the mountain.
Yaki’s hand stung as Naga straightened herself. The blow had spun her a bit, but the snake woman was too massive to be bowled over by a mere slap, no matter how hard. Her tail alone easily outweighed Yaki by four times.
“Fhive. Blows,” Yaki ground out. “No. Crrrrr-stral.”
“Yes, Captain.” Naga gave a small, grateful smile. She moved to place her back against a tree, pulled off her scrap of a shirt, and spread her arms.
“Yaki?” Ishe called out.
Ignoring her sister, Yaki sank down into a partial squat, pulled her fists to her hips. Exhaling, she extinguished the fire inside and inhaled clean air. Yaki pumped five punches into Naga’s midsection, each delivered from her hip. Each impact made Naga’s entire body twitch.
“Done,” Yaki announced as Naga slipped down the length of the tree with a long hiss of pain. Stepping back, Yaki found most of the crystal-touched watching with knowing approval, while a few looked around as if they were waking from a bad dream. Those would be the newer sailors.
Ishe crossed her arms, the thoughtful pucker of her lips making her scar more evident than usual. Disapproval? Or simply figuring things out? Yaki wondered if Ishe herself should had delivered the punishment that Naga clearly wanted. Worry about it later. Yaki pointed to a cluster of crew. “Help her.” They rushed to gather Naga up and carry her up.
Yaki made a mental note to deliver the woman a medical crystal later that night. No sense being short-handed. Morale dealt with in a Mother-approved fashion, Yaki took out her journal and walked toward Sparks. They had a refit to work on.
Chapter Nine
Liftwood was first domesticated by a dragon who had lost the ability to fly. She planted a huge plantation of it and secured the trees to the ground with chains and granite weights. Forced to stay on the ground, the root network grew vast. Legends say that after two decades, the entire plantation ripped itself from the ground.
Rictus Hana, author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History
“She shot you,” whispered the man named Rufus in response to Ishe’s question.
“It wasn’t an accident?” Ishe watched her sister kneel in front of a crystal-touched who wore a pair of overalls and thick work gloves.
“’Course it were. That don’t matter, do it?” Rufus smiled lopsidedly, not that he could do anything but be lopsided with the canine features spreading from left to right over his body.
“Madria has certainly whipped crew for less,” Ishe said, remembering the resigned faces tied to the mast of Fox Fire. After the incident with the Lyndon Navy, several sailors had been punished for various offenses, mostly loose lips while on shore.
“Don’t you worry ’bout Naga. Take more than a beating to stop her. She served in the Steward’s navy for a decade, and those scales don’t make her any less tough. So, everyone else is okay? They’re coming back?”
“They’ll be back soon,” Ishe promised, and grateful for the change in subject, she launched into the story of the raid. Although she left out both Coyote’s hindrance and aid.
Soon, she had an audience to retell the story of the raid to, only exaggerating the number of crew they had to fling off Lion by a couple. Afterward, the conversation turned to emptying bellies, and a hunting party formed; Rufus and a woman named Ember were keen on the idea of getting fresh meat to the returning raiders.
Ishe looked beyond that gathering of crew and did not see Yaki nor Sparks. “Let me…consult with the captain.” She’d seen both Yaki and Sparks dart between the skiff and Lazy Lion a few times, but neither had stopped by the group.
They let her go reluctantly, the hunting party heading for the forest. Ishe found her remembering all the questions she had for Yaki as she climbed up onto Lazy Lion’s deck. The hatch stood open, beckoning with the sound of someone humming a tune. Peering into the murk below decks, Ishe spotted two figures bent over sections of the hull. Unlike Fox Fire, where wires ran naked across the liftwood hull, the builders of Lion had covered the wires with wooden tiles. Yaki and Sparks had pried almost all of the tiling up, exposing a network of golden filaments.
“Oi there!” Ishe announced herself as she climbed down. Sparks looked up, her skin an electric blue with a broad stripe of orange sweeping over her eyes. She had no nose, and her eyes were all dark beneath her eyelids.
Ishe returned the smile. “Hey, Sparks,” she said. “I need a word with the captain.”
“Oh.” Her bright if toothless smile faded as she looked at Yaki, who still sat hunched, facing away from the hatch.
Yaki gave the barest of nods.
“Well, I’ll help you finish the wiring refit in a bit, then.” Sparks stood in an oddly boneless manner, wobbling a moment. She wore a pair of heavy leather waders and leather gloves so thick that they wouldn’t look out of place in a forge. Once moving, Sparks exited swiftly and closed the hatch behind her.
&n
bsp; Where Sparks had been working sat a pile of twisted copper wire sorted into lengths. “Why are you redoing the wiring of this ship, Yaki? We just need it to take us into the city. The ship handled fine.”
Yaki shook her head and continued fiddling with something in her hands.
Clapping a hand to her face, Ishe groaned as she then pulled it down and off. “What is it, then? We finally got time to talk while the others straggle back. Why are you such a drama b—hound?” She stomped around to in front of Yaki and knelt. Finally, she saw what Yaki held in her hands, a coil of gold wire wrapped around a wooden dowel of some type. Yaki kept her eyes glued to it, a child’s pout on her lips. “Now, what is that?” Ishe asked, suddenly wondering if less of her sister had survived the injury than she thought.
Yaki tilted her head up, allowing Ishe to see her face. The swelling of her injured eye had begun to recede, the flesh around it still purple and bruised, the eyelid slightly sunken, but the other eye looked clear in the muddy light cast by the glow crystals mounted in the ceiling. “Food.”
“Food?” Ishe echoed, not entirely sure she had heard correctly.
In response, Yaki unwound a few inches of wire and snapped it. He held it up. “Food,” she confirmed, and placed it in her mouth with the reverence that a priest might give a holy relic. “Mmmmm.” Yaki’s entire body relaxed, the hunch that Yaki had been holding herself in since Ishe’s arrival melting away, as if the little length of gold were the most potent painkiller in existence.
She swallowed. Her uninjured eye opened, and with it, her other eyelid lifted a fraction. Something shone in that socket, reflecting the dim light in a manner that no organic membrane could.
“Stop it,” Ishe whispered. “You can’t eat metal!” It had to be a trick. All of Yaz’noth’s jeering insinuations about Yaki hit Ishe so hard, she nearly lost her balance. His story about being rejected by his own kind and the fervent hope that his followers had.
The pain came back to Yaki, slamming down onto her shoulders as if an invisible sack of rice had been thrown on them. “Need gold,” she said, voice so low that no one would have believed it emanated from Yaki’s small frame.
All the pieces were lining up in Ishe’s head. It made sense, all Yaz’noth’s interest in Yaki’s health, but it was totally impossible. Yaz’noth, despite his claims to divinity, was mortal. Tough, yes. Long-lived. And perhaps brilliant, but she’d seen Hawk injure him. Watched him writhe in pain as he blasted the warrior with fire. He couldn’t do this.
“I prove,” Yaki said, picking a wooden rod like the one she’d used to wrap the threads of gold.
“Yaki…” Ishe spoke her name, not sure whether she wanted to stop her sister or to see this.
Either way, Yaki opened her jaw wide, almost too wide, Ishe heard a small urp, a rude squeak of a sound. A tongue of flame erupted from Yaki’s mouth, enveloping the end of the rod. Ishe fell back from the heat with a curse as Yaki bit down on the flame, cutting it off. She finished her exhalation as twin plumes of black smoke bloomed from her nose. “I dragon,” Yaki said, her eyebrows furrowing in concentration. “More e-ver-y. Daay.” She slumped a little as she finished her sentence. The stick had become a small torch. She snuffed the flame with her other hand.
“No. You’re not a dragon. I won’t allow it.” Ishe remembered that conversation in the dark of Yaz’noth’s lair, his loneliness. She hadn’t heard it at the time. Too angry, he had wanted to tell her he’d done this. “He can’t have you!” Ishe reached out, grabbed Yaki by the shoulder, and hauled her into an embrace. Yaki returned it with crushing strength; a heat pulsed out from her chest that made Ishe’s skin prickle, heralding coming sweat.
“I’m hungry,” Yaki growled out. “All time. Healing eye.” She sniffled. “Hurts. Always hurts.”
Ishe refused to let go. Sweat began to roll down her face. “He’s not going to win,” Ishe said as Yaki’s body began to heave. “We’re going to kill him for this. Not just for Mother, for you. And then were going to find a way to reverse this. We’ll go to Lyndon. If their doctors can’t help, we’ll hunt down the white buffalo herself and I’ll put her in a headlock until she takes that thing out of you. I don’t care how many people I piss off. How many skulls I’ll add to the Sea of Bones. He won’t have you.”
Yaki gave a little snort of laughter; her tears felt like hot tea being dripped down her front as Ishe continued to rant. “You need gold to eat? We’ll get it; if the Steward doesn’t cough it up for saving the city, then we’ll hunt down any ship that carries a gold coin if we have to. They think Mother was an evil bitch? Wait till they get a load of the Storm Coyote.”
Yaki jerked her head up, knocking it into Ishe’s jaw. The force of it closed Ishe’s teeth together with a clack. They slid away from each other. The question in Yaki’s eyes danced without needing any words.
A nervous grin grew on Ishe’s face. “Mother’s the Silver Fox but worshiped Coyote, told us all his stories. I’m flirting with names. Doesn’t mean anything.” Ishe shifted uncomfortably; for the briefest of moments, she felt something twitch at the base of her spine. No additional false sensations. Could that be because Ishe had told her this before, or was Coyote holding back those sensations so she Yaki didn’t see it?
Yaki cocked her head; now anger sparkled in her one good eye. “Why lie?” Then she pulled out the journal and a pen. She wrote at an angle Ishe could see. He abandoned Mother. Then: He let her die.
Coyote might be the world’s greatest liar, but Ishe appeared to have much to learn on the subject. “He helped get me here. I never would have made it through the storm without him. It’s not a big deal. You have the Death Panther, I have him.”
Yaki tapped the pen on the paper for a moment, as if the words were jammed up in it.
“We need help for this, Yaki. Neither of us would have gotten this far without help. Is the Death Panther’s help free?” Ishe reached out for Yaki’s wrist, who pulled it away and scratched her shoulder. Near the Death Panther’s mark.
“No.” The tapping pen stopped and she wrote, What does Coyote’s help cost?
Ishe stared at the words for a moment. What would it cost her? Since invoking the trickster, thought that would have been foreign to her, like how to bamboozle the guard, had simply sprung up in her head. What was in the name? Some peoples said your name contained your very soul. Others like Low Rivers changed their names whenever a major event struck their lives, identities shifting in response to who they needed or aspired to be. To be known as the Coyote would ban them from all ports; to the world, it would appear they trucked with world-destroying madness. “It costs what it costs, Yaki. I’ll pay it as I have to.”
“No. No Coyote.” She made a deep, inhuman sound in her throat as she wrote several lines into the journal. The king of tricks offered Mother none against Yaz’noth. Why would he offer them to you?
“Simple,” Ishe said. “She only learned the stories. Coyote wants more than that.”
He ate the moon. He could easily eat you, Ishe. Yaki wrote.
“We’re all morsels of meat, Yaki. Getting eaten is always a possibility.” Ishe chuckled. “You want to play who’s got it worse?”
Yaki’s scowl broke and she plucked another strand of wire from her spindle.
“You have enough of that to last the night?” Ishe asked; the moment between them had passed. A new barrier stood between them now. Yaki would see in time that Coyote deserved to be let out from his prison a little. It would be okay.
“Day or two.” Yaki nodded at the spindle of gold.
“Good. I’ll send Sparks back down to help you.” Ishe said. The boards creaked underfoot as she made her way to the hatch. She paused with her hand on the ladder. The air was pregnant with something else. Something more to say danced on the tip of Ishe’s tongue. Yaki watched her, waiting. Ishe smiled back. “We’re gonna win.”
“How?” Ishe asked.
“We go to the Steward and we take Mother’s place.”
“And this?” Ishe gestured at the stolen ship around her.
“Ah.” Ishe waved the concern away. “We won’t tell him about this.”
Yaki buried her good eye in the palm of her hand and shook with suppressed laughter.
With an odd sensation at the base of her spine, Ishe climbed the ladder back into the daylight.
Chapter Ten
A dragon mother will defend her eggs with her life but finds the resulting hatchlings contemptible and will either abandon her nest or drive them out as they hatch.
Rictus Hana, author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History
As the sun set, the Mad Eye glowered at the world through a hole in the cloud cover. Yaz’noth glared right back at it. “Go ahead and watch, whatever you are up there.” Yaz’noth thought of the ancient stories he had dug out of ruins beyond the Spine. The whispers that Coyote’s reasons for crushing the moon between his teeth had been far more pressing than a simple dare. That there had been something in that pale planetoid that had to be destroyed. And from that, a fragment of the malevolence had survived in the Mad Eye. It obeyed no pattern and always seemed to be watching on the rare nights that Yaz’noth ventured from his lair. Clouds, if any existed, parted like an open eye. Just like tonight.
Yaz’noth dug his claws into the rocky slope and hoisted himself farther up the mountain. His wound was now a mere tightness in his belly. Its still glowed the dull red of a cooling forge behind its concealment. A shiny new belt encircled his midsection, silvery chains, an alloy of iron and aluminum anchoring a piece of the Odin’s sphere armor to his belly. Far from perfect, but it had taken far longer to build the contraption on his wing than he had thought it would. As it turned out, his impatience had been prudent. A window had opened with the departure of the Golden Hill’s navy, one he planned to take advantage of.
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