The Steward’s eyes narrowed, widened, and then narrowed again. “What do you think one ship can do against that?!” He pointed, nearly stumbling against the railing. Yaz’noth’s winged over the city, toward the other cannon. On his way, he dipped sideways over the naval academy. Something small fell from the cage on his back. It hit the roof of the main building and exploded into fire.
“It can kill him! He doesn’t know you have it. Elemental lances are the only thing that he fears now.”
“And who’s going to fly it? You?” He sneered at first, and then the expression fell from his face as his eyes turned calculating. As the seconds passed, his teeth bit down on his lower lip.
Ishe grinned until the corners of her mouth hurt. “With your blessing, sir. Everyone else is a little busy. I have a crew outside the wall. Send them a message. I know you can do that. My sister and I came to help you. That why we’re here. Despite everything, Golden Hills is our home. Let us defend it. We will do better than standing here!”
The Steward’s eyes focused. “Did you and your mother engineer this?” he hissed through his teeth, too low to be heard by the crowd.
“No.” Ishe held his gaze and matched his tone “I am my mother’s daughter, but we are not the same.”
“But you’re not very different.” He drew himself up, his years seeming to fall off him as his back straightened. “Ishe of Madria, this pains us, but the Emperor calls you to his service.” His voice boomed out to everyone assembled.
Shouts of protests erupted.
“Silence!” the old man roared with a slash of his nails. “We are the Steward of this nation. Would you have the Emperor’s Sword left in the scabbard, undrawn? We choose evils we know, and I know these two well. And I know none of you will captain her better. Ishe, swear on your mother’s love you will defend this city, for Madria’s love for both of you was the only constant in her life.”
Ishe reeled slightly, the truth of those words striking through the armor of her grin. A sudden gush of grief nearly knocked the words she had to say from the grasp of her mind. In recalling the words, she realized she stood on the edge of an abyss. With them Ishe of Madria’s legacy would be hurled into it. The end of one and start of another. This many people, combined with the battle to come, her new mantle would never come off. She kept her eyes on the Steward and swore. “I swear on my mother’s love to defend this city and its people from this threat. On this day I take a new name. I am Ishe, the Storm Coyote.”
The words became true as they had in the storm that birthed the name. The Steward’s head recoiled a fraction as the spirit shone out from her features as an unworldly light. They stared at each other over her long, thin muzzle, large ears straining for his next words. A grin played out across both her mouth and her muzzle as jubilation flowed into her heart and electricity played over her fingers.
He sees us! He sees me! Coyote sang in her head, pouring in countless numbers of plans and tricks for dealing with dragons.
“And I thought it was your sister who was far gone. Go, beast! I hold you to your oath, in the name of the Emperor.” He turned to the crowd, who had stepped back as if Ishe were about to rampage like the dragon below. “Let them pass! Then all of you are to do likewise. Defend the city. This is a battle and we must turn it into a war.”
Ishe found herself chuckling but not really sure what she found funny about the terrified nobles who scampered out the way. The way Yaki looked at her had no humor in it, a baleful realization. As Ishe stepped forward, the shine of Coyote’s mantle disappeared, the muzzle vanishing from the bottom of her eyesight. Yet the sensations of these things remained; the scent of the court’s terror as they shrank away made her grin ever broader. Coyote himself continued to sing joyously in her head and heart in many languages at once.
Chapter Twenty-One
Quicksilver, although forbidden in the Great Wyrm’s Empire, still moved within it in vast quantities. Yet there was a term among dragons that stood for hopelessness: Bleed me for silver.
Rictus Hana, author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History
As Yaki watched the canine visage surrounding Ishe fade from view, the manic grin on her sister’s face stayed, along with the wicked gleam in her eyes. Ishe had interrogated Yaki on all the details of her activities in the city but had managed to avoid much of her own escape. She had indeed allied herself with the being that had ended the world before, as Mother had. Embraced him publicly as Mother never had.
Is that why Coyote allowed Mother to perish? Did he see something in Ishe? Had they made the deal before it happened?
“Come on, Yaki. We got work to do.” Ishe beckoned and Yaki fell in behind her. Drosa stepped up beside her. The set of Drosa’s jaw communicated that she did not approve of Ishe’s god either, but she had known. They had clearly had words about this. Yaki ached to have her own, and more than two or three at a time. With an exasperated huff, she caught up to her sister.
“You want to hit me?” Ishe paused as the door of the throne room was opened for them. “Drosa did earlier.”
“No.” Yaki wanted to do much more. Anger and fear were piling up in her mind, and the words to express them were all in this guttural reptilian language. No time now. Last night would have been the time. But those few hours that were not planning for this day had been spent sleeping.
“I had to do what I had to, Yaki,” Ishe said as she walked out through the doors and made for the grand stairway. “Otherwise, I’d be digging in the bones with Mother now. She promised us to him.” There was a pleading to her words, and Yaki might have imagined a canine whine in strange parallel to them.
“Some deals worse than death,” Drosa said from right behind them. Ishe flinched a smidgen but maintained her momentum. Yaki silently thanked Drosa for her anger. Seeing it had cooled her own and crystalized the right words. Reaching out, she caught Ishe’s hand. “Both monsters. Still sisters.”
Ishe’s hand enveloped hers and she gave a laugh, not the deep chuckle of the Rhino that had thumped around the decks of Fox Fire but higher with a nervous edge. “Today, let’s be heroes. Plenty of time for monsters later.”
“He’s coming!” someone shouted, and together Ishe and Yaki broke into a run. Drosa turned sharply, eyes peering back as screams of panic echoed though the throne room. Ishe snatched her hand and pulled her along with Yaki, the three of them forming the tip of a spear as they ran through the opulent waiting chamber and pounded down the spiral staircase. Down and down they went, through the narrow passage. Yaki’s hunger re-blossomed in the wake of her pounding feet.
They emerged at the far end the great hall. They sprinted across the shining floors. Yaki pulled even with long-legged Drosa as Ishe fell behind. When they were halfway to the stairway, the front wall exploded.
Yaki flailed her arms as if she could grab the air to slow herself, as a massive shape crashed into the floor. Yaz’noth emerged from the dust, his massive form, along with the added bulk of the cage on his back, forced to stoop slightly. “Where is it?” he boomed, massive head snaking from side to side as peered around the great hall. He finally focused on his own head hanging across the hall.
“Move!” Drosa pulled Yaki. Yaz’noth had come in to the side of the entryway. They could still make it. Yaki resumed her run as Yaz’noth pulled himself fully into the room, knocking chandeliers from their mounts, the cage scraping against the ceiling as its cannons swiveled for targets. One sighted directly on the trio.
“It’s Ishe and Yaki, lord!” a small, blue-robed figure shouted from the contraption on Yaz’noth’s back.
Yaz’noth head whipped around suddenly and his tail followed suit, slamming down with enough force that the shock wave sent Yaki to her knees. He had not passed the gauntlet entirely unharmed; scales were missing in several places, silvery scabs covering the wounds.
“Haaaa, Yaki!” he declared, his voice booming as if he were an overly fond grandpa. “And Ishe,” he added in a sterner tone. “So good to see you
both. Why don’t you both stick around for a bit? We have so much to talk about.”
“Our deal is done, Yaz’noth!” Ishe shouted up at him. “Let us pass!”
“I think it’s in your interest to stay, Ishe. I have to have a conservation with my new daughter.” He grinned.
His smugness made Yaki’s chest boil. Daughter? He dared! “No! Never!” she growled at him.
This only increased the delighted smile on the dragon’s long face. “Where did you learn Draconic?” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid my version might be a little rusty,” he spoke in the same language. “Ooooh! It’s in the quicksilver! Did you sample it?” His eyes nearly vibrated in their sockets, with a childlike glow. “Of course you did. How much metal are you consuming?” He began to reorient himself toward them. “What do your droppings look—”
A volley of shells exploded against the side of his head. He barely flinched as the corners of his mouth turned down. “One moment,” he said before scything down a dozen soldiers who were charging in from the kitchen doorways with his lance of blue fire. “We’ll talk later. Come along, all of you.” He began moving again, herding them toward the back of the great hall.
More soldiers attempted to penetrate in to the room, but a cannon shot from Yaz’noth’s crew drove them back. Others in the cage, including the young girl who had asked her for the secret of her survival, were now pointing crossbows—not at her, at Ishe and Drosa, the meaning very clear. Yaki wondered how much a crossbow would hurt her now. Yaz’noth wouldn’t kill his “daughter” unless she forced him to. How to use that?
“Why the hell are you in here, Yaz’noth?” Ishe shouted at him. “You did all this to visit a dead relative?”
“I’m here for many reasons. It is the start of a grand empire, for one, but right here, I will reclaim all I lost three hundred years ago.” Yaz’noth reached out and tore his dead head from the chains that held it aloft. Then he raked a single talon across his shoulder, peeling thick scales away from his skin. They rolled off their fellows and fell to the floor with a metallic dunkt dunkt dunkt A mix of silver and a liquid the color of molten iron bubbled up from the wound. Yaz’noth pressed the severed stump of the head’s neck onto the wound. Yaki found herself watching in fascination as the mixture flowed up into the head. The jaw twitched first and then the lids of the visible eye fluttered.
A shudder went through Yaz’noth’s body, and he let out a violent hiss. He shook himself. “That’s right; tell me. Tell me who we were,” he said in a garble of Draconic and Golden Hills.
Yaz’noth raised his forelimb nearest to the new head and held it in front of the elder eyes, splaying the talons as if they were something new. In a blur of movement, the paw slammed into the floor. “Stop that! Or I’ll cut you right back off!” Yaz’noth shouted, a blue glow blooming from his throat.
A tap on Yaki’s shoulder and a jerk of Ishe’s head called her attention to fact that Yaz’noth’s tail no longer blocked their path. They weren’t the only ones who noticed, and a crossbow bolt whipped through the air about a foot from Ishe’s nose. Still, step one.
Ishe turned back. “What’s the matter, Yaz’noth? Reunion hitting a few snags?”
“Quiet!” Yaz’noth snapped. That traitorous limb sank its talon into the floor and pulled Yaz’noth’s entire body, twisting it to bring Yaki and other into view of its uncracked eye. The jaw swung open as if to breathe a flame out. Yaki stepped in front of her sister and Drosa, arms spread. Yet flame did not come. “No!” Yaz’noth scolded his second head like an unruly dog. “We will not kill them. It has been three hundred years! You do not understand! She isn’t human!”
The second head’s eyes narrowed.
“Yaki,” Ishe whispered, “I’m catching a little of this, but Coyote suggests telling the old Yaz’noth how you were cr—I mean, what he did to you.”
Understanding bloomed. Yaki smiled at the newly revived dragon. “Your younger self replaced my human heart with the forge of an unhatched dragon. Now I’m some sort of cursed half-breed.”
The elder head went stone still.
“That’s what the Grand Wyrm got wrong! You can’t just punish; you have to reward! It’s immortality to them!” Yaz’noth hurried to explain.
In response, the second head snarled, and everyone watched as Yaz’noth’s neck slammed his own head into the ceiling so hard that it cracked one of his antlers in half as the rest of the head went through it. The neck pulled back and attempted to slam him nose-first into the floor. It froze, quivering, his nose inches from the checkered pattern. All the humans on his back gasped. “No! This is my body! Not yours! Not anymore!”
The elder head begged to differ. All four of his legs pistoned straight, slamming the entire cage into the stone ceiling, the bars buckling outward. Yaz’noth’s legs were still partially bent. Trembling.
“Get out!” Yaz’noth growled in Golden Hills. “Get out, all of you!”
The Dragonsworn began to abandon their perch. “Time to go!” Ishe declared, and nobody disagreed. Yaki turned to resume her run for the door down into the lower levels, and prayed no one had bothered to bar it.
When they were halfway there, it opened and issued forth a flood of white. Paper animals of all shapes rushed through the doorway, Bears, tigers, cranes, frogs, and many more rushed forward. A quick glance to the side showed every orifice of the room being flooded. The Steward’s counterstroke. Each animal was marked with two painted eyes on their white surfaces. Yaki heated her fire as the wave came to meet them, but the animals parted or leapt over them; for a moment, it as if she were running beneath an avalanche.
An anguished roar shook the hall, followed by searing heat washing over her back. Yaki kept running as the second wave shot out from their destination, consisting entirely of gargantuan paper snakes of diamond-shaped folds.
Yaki risked a look back as she reached the doorway. The snakes were swarming Yaz’noth’s body, twining themselves around his legs and neck. He burned them to ash with a wide cone of orange flame. He moved with no hesitation against the paper army; either the battle for the dragon’s body had been won already or they had a truce for the moment.
Ishe had also paused.
“Ship!” Drosa cried out. With a nod, together they turned their back on Yaz’noth and hurried down the hallway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Do not mock the bravery of insects you crush with your thumb.
Admiral Madria
Ishe seethed at the presence inside of her as they joined a stream of servants racing toward the stairway. The god hadn’t volunteered any clever plan to kill Yaz’noth while he wrestled with the paper animals.
I suggested punching him.
And what would that have done? Ishe snarled back.
Probably have broken your hands.
Why couldn’t you have just done something, like at the grove?
A dragon’s hide is much harder to break than a rope. Besides, squishing a dragon sounds like a lot of work.
What was the point of declaring myself a Coyote, then?
I AM helping. At the moment, I’m lending you some of my mountain of stamina.
What? Yaki ran slightly ahead of them, hands snatching golden knickknacks from the richly decorated furnishings. Sulfurous smoke trailed from her nostrils and mouth. Drosa was on the other side of hallway, running stiffly, pounding her feet into the ground as if to punish it. Between them, servants in white-and-red livery were hurrying either toward the entrance with them, arms full of possessions, or toward the upper castle, bearing weapons.
Ishe stumbled, her legs and arms suddenly leaden, lungs on fire.
Your body is not particularly suited for running; you should try a different one. Coyote sniggered in her head.
Give it back! And she might have said it out loud if her lungs were not gasping for every wisp of air she could suck in.
Coyote sniggered again. Well, if my help is unappreciated…
You’re helping! You’re helping!
Ishe thought desperately as pain rose in her heart.
Well, okay…
The pain and heaviness vanished. Ishe straightened up and resumed her speed.
You’re going to be very sore tomorrow.
Don’t care.
The door was wide open, but as Ishe ran through it after Drosa and Yaki, she didn’t immediately see the sky. Instead, the three of them were greeted by the belly of the Behemoth hovering directly outside the palace, propellers whirling to bring the cannons to bear on the grand hall. Smaller ships, civilian and military alike, were pulling up to the stairway, servants and residents climbing up rope ladders. Ishe looked further up to see another ship hovering near the balcony as flocks of paper birds swarmed, some darting off to individual ships, sending orders.
“Look!” Drosa pointed, and Ishe saw Dancing Fly flitting through the crowd of boats.
Whipping out the makeshift signal mirror, Ishe raised it to toward the small craft, yet its meandering course did not alter. Did they not see it? “Drosa, can Eyah signal them?” she asked.
Drosa shook her head, her hair still black. “Eyah still done.”
“I do,” Yaki said, going still for a moment before tossing her head back and breathing out a ten-foot column of flame into the air. Ishe took an involuntary step back; people surrounding them screamed and retreated, opening up an clear area at the summit of the stairway.
Dancing Fly dipped toward them, Sparrow smiling broadly beneath his mustache as he pulled the craft up to the stairway. Chimon waved at them to come aboard. “Come on yas guys!” he exclaimed. “Lion is heading for the Foundry now.”
“I thought you were waiting for us to signal,” Ishe said as she climbed aboard.
“We thought Yaz’noth smashing the wall was a very clear signal,” Sparrow said as Blinky clicked in greeting.
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