Dancing Fly quickly became a tight fit. Ishe climbed over the middle bench and strapped in. Drosa claimed the seat next to her with a glance that said, Don’t you touch me, while Yaki sat next to Chimon.
Sparrow’s hands fluttered over the controls for a moment as he mumbled to himself. As he took hold of the lever, Ishe caught sight of a small person in a bright blue cloak breaking through the confused crowd and charging for Dancing Fly.
Mei; the name came to Ishe. The young Dragonsworn who proclaimed herself the oldest of the Tenth had her blue cloak billowing as she ran. Dancing Fly fell away from the stair with a lurch, the craft banking away from the cliff, its wings spreading to gather wind.
“No! Yaki, please!” The voice rang out from above before that blue cloak reappeared, leaping out into a patch of brilliant sky, legs running as if the winds would bear her weight. They did not.
She fell, hitting the slanted deck right between Yaki and Sparrow with the snap of both wood and bone. Momentum would have carried her straight through the side of Dancing Fly, but one of her legs penetrated the deck. Her other leg jutted at an angle that made Yaki’s mind cry out in pain simply looking at it. The girl let out one mournful cry and then she twisted, her hands clutching at Yaki’s ankle.
“Please help him!” she pleaded as Dancing Fly neared a vertical position. “You’re the first! You have to!” On the girl’s arm lay a muddled mess of a tattoo that might have been intended to be a cat’s paw.
Yaki jerked her leg away, horrified. Mei had maimed herself for a cause that was the opposite of what they had to do now.
“Don’t move her!” Sparrow shouted over his shoulder after he leveled out the craft and pointed it toward the Foundry.
The concussive cough of cannon fire drew Yaki’s attention to above. “No! Get closer!” Ishe screamed up at the Behemoth. It had drifted back and let loose a hail of cannon fire into the palace.
Chapter Twenty-Three
There is nothing more dangerous as two related dragons within the same acre of land.
Rictus Hana, author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History
Yaz’noth screamed fire as he fought against both the endless waves of paper soldiers and his older self. His body spasmed as the two minds demanded different movements.
Unhand my body, whelping. The voice boomed in his own head, disrupting Yaz’noth’s concentration.
“Let go of me, you parasitic corpse!” Yaz’noth screeched back, trying to reach over with his right talons and rip the head from his shoulder, but his left met it.
You did well, abomination, but your time is past. There can only be one mind. It seized control of his neck again and slammed him into the ground. Yaz’noth’s head rang from the blow and he pried back control, but his older self’s awareness seemed to be everywhere now. Yaz’noth found he could only concentrate on one body part at the time, at which point the elder would use his own neck to bludgeon himself against the wall. Slowly, the control of even his neck began to yield as the old one pried his very awareness loose, muscle by muscle.
Nuh nuh no! Yaz’noth couldn’t whimper out loud as his jaw trembled against his will. He tried to think, to figure out away out of this, struggling stark terror at the prospect of being utterly undone. This had always been his plan: reclaim his memories, learn who he had been. A savage pulling sensation began to tear at his mind. The elder was rooting through his memories like a pig digging for morsels.
“Disgusting.” The words slipped from his stolen lips. “You are actually fond of the insects. You mad creature, you have no idea how far you are from a true dragon. No inkling of what we are.” The grip on Yaz’noth grew tighter with every word. He would have screamed if he possessed a mouth. And as he felt himself begin to give way, the world around them exploded into a flash of green.
“Not again!” the elder roared. The pressure on Yaz’noth’s mind ceasing, he lost consciousness in sheer relief as the air exploded around them. We will finish this conversation later, whelp! The elder ripped the knowledge of all the extensive modifications Yaz’noth had performed to his own body, and the shield flickered into existence around them. Congratulations; you get to watch what happens to insects who to dare to swarm.
Chapter Twenty-Four
What are crystals? The ancients refereed to them as stabilized reality crossings. Although there is quite a bit of arguing about how stabilized they actually are.
From Thoughts of a God, Yaz’noth
Ishe winced as Yaz’noth burst from the rubble, scales smoking, his mouth igniting into that blue lance. With a swing of his head, it sliced down through the Behemoth. The massive ship’s own lances fired only as the two halves began to separate, yet the dragon had already fallen past, reaching out and smashing through several smaller airships that had been too close to the slope. His wings fluttered open an instant before he hit the ground. The impact still sent a shock wave rippling through the nearby buildings. Roaring in challenge, he swung his blue beam through the most affluent mansions in the city, their many floors toppling as easily as Fox Fire’s crew he had sliced in half on the mountainside.
How in the nine hells do we defend again that beam of his? Ishe twisted her knuckles into her palm. It cut through armor and wood all the same. It would split Emperor’s Sword, too. Confidence wavered as the dome of the Foundry loomed ever closer. Lazy Lion already hovered over the hole in its top, the bow dipping to maneuver down into it.
Nothing came to her as the thunder of war filled the wind. She grasped for a strategy, a trick, anything to compensate for the range advantage. There had to be an answer. Her mind still clawed at it as Dancing Fly swooped down behind Lazy Lion and into the Foundry. A cheer went up; Simon saluted from the deck of the small ship as they dove past, down into the heart of the structure. Ishe’s eyes widened at the sight of the sleek ship that lay in the central dock.
“Pull her up!” Sparrow said, and for a moment, Ishe was confused. They needed to land. Then she remembered the girl who had almost jumped through the little ship. “Let’s not crush her further.”
“Got her.” Yaki released her safety buckles and slipped to the floor. The girl keened with agony as Yaki slipped her arms beneath her shoulders and pulled her up.
“She’ll need a stretcher.” Sparrow put them down, the bottom of Dancing Fly skidding on the concrete flooring a few feet before coming to rest. Already, a group of people had split off from Emperor’s Sword and were heading their way. Ishe reached for her hand cannon, but it wasn’t there; it was left in the now very smashed Palace.
Did they really have time for the girl? Wasn’t she one of Yaz’noth’s? She pushed the thought from her mind. They had to get on that ship. Nothing else mattered at the moment. Jumping from Dancing Fly, she shouted, “Hoy!” and waved at the oncoming crowd. Six people, two pretty large. Her fingers flexed; she could go through if she had to. Maybe. “Who wants to help me kill an iron-tithing dragon?” she boomed.
The group stopped short, or rather, the leader stopped and the rest of the crowd nearly bowled him over. To avoid being crushed, he scampered forward; outside the range of a punch but inside the distance of a lunge, he bowed. “You are Ishe of M-Madria?” His voice fluttered in pitch and emitted a strange throbbing noise.
“Yes. That I am.” She grinned, returning the bow. The throbbing noise was the man’s heartbeat.
“This ship, this was”—he winced—“intended for you mother in design. I am Heizo of Ryozo, its designer. According to these orders, you are the captain of this ship.” He pulled from his brightly colored robe a little piece of paper that had clearly been folded. “And I am to come with you.” He looked up at Lazy Lion and swallowed.
“Ease it off!” Simon’s commanding shriek echoed from above, and the man in front of her blanched.
A houseless like herself designed this ship? Ishe smiled. “Good! Now, we have an injured little girl who’s in need of a stretcher. Both legs broken.” She jerk her thumb back at Dancing Fly. “Get her on b
oard and tie her to a bunk.”
Heizo nodded and murmured. One of the larger men broke off from the group and ran back toward the edge of the dome.
“Now, how many do you need to crew Emperor’s Sword?” Ishe did not look back at the others as she strode toward her new ship. Her new ship. The thought made her want to skip around like a little girl.
The group parted for her and Heizo hurried after to keep up. “Smaller than you would think. There are no sails to adjust. Normally, she’d hold a crew of fifty. The majority of those are gunners. She can sleep another hundred in cramped quarters if you need marines.”
Ishe started to swear internally but stopped. All she needed manned were the lances. The cannons wouldn’t do much but scratch Yaz’noth’s dense scales. To top it off, lances were much simpler to use than a cannon. “Good! You know how to handle the engine room, then?”
“Yes?” he said.
Ishe slapped him on the back. “Great. Let’s get you introduced.” Ishe abruptly pivoted. Lazy Lion had set down beyond Dancing Fly, and the crew were hurrying down the gangplank. “Yaki! Sparks! To me!”
“Please, he’s not himself!” Mei continued to babble through pained tears as two large men lifted her onto a bamboo stretcher.
“I know,” Yaki said, not that it made a lick of difference. That his ancient self appeared to have seized control made it even more urgent that he be stopped.
“Captain!”
Yaki looked up, eager for a distraction from the girl’s suffering, to find Gama jogging toward her. Where in the endless skies had he come from? Still, she couldn’t stop herself from embracing him as soon as he came within reach. “How?” she asked.
“Knew you’d get here one way or another,” he said, a happy grin beneath his lenses.
“Thank you.” Her tightly coiled insides unwound slightly as she rose up on her toes, body intent on doing more. Not here. The voice of responsibility held her back. She could hear the hurried footsteps of the rest of the crew down from Lion.
“Yaki! Sparks! To me!” she heard her sister bark, and in the breath, the moment passed. She pulled back.
“Duty,” she said by way of explanation.
He nodded. “Oh!” He fumbled in his pockets and pressed a small piece of leather into her hand. “For next time.” An eye patch.
Yaki let a single raised eyebrow say all the words she needed.
“Not that you need it now, but, you know, if we have to sneak in somewhere again.”
“Yaki, come on! Do you want to see an engine room with five power crystals or not?!”
She spun so fast, she almost tripped, and hurried to catch up to the group.
After a very brief tour of the entire ship, the engine room proved to be glorious. It thrummed with power, pressing on her chest with a similar sensation of standing next to a cannon as it fired, but this shot was a single continuous note. Or, rather, five competing notes. Much larger than Fire Fox’s engine room but cluttered in its own way. Instead of letting the power couplers and transfer networks spill onto the floor, they spider-webbed between the five slots for crystals. The hexagonal room had power crystals in five of its six corners. The sixth had an empty pedestal for holding a shield crystal. The aft wall contained a fire crystal as big as Yaki herself. Tracing the power conduits from each crystal proved impossible; each of the thick cables disappeared into walls so covered with cabling that they became like a bowl of noodles. Still, Yaki counted five conduits into the massive crystal; in theory, you could feed it with the power from all five crystals. What would that do? Probably explode the ship in a fireball that would make the sun jealous.
Through the center of the room stood a drive shaft that drove the ship’s twin propellers. A transmission box split its power near the ceiling, the exposed teeth of the gears hungry for fingers. Yaki stared at this for a moment, perplexed; liftwood impellers were required to run parallel to the ground, not perpendicular to it. Yet there was no ring of liftwood on the shaft. Instead, a belt of crystals ringed it near where the shaft passed through the floor. Almost gray, they made Yaki hiss through her teeth: force crystals. Imported from the northern city-states. Hideously expensive, and probably would have to be replaced with a fair amount of frequency. Between the cost-is-no-object engineering and the mere scent of the room, this ship would eat gold far faster than she could. Mostly copper and iron but also, temptingly, quicksilver rested in the bewildering array of switches that controlled the flow of power from the crystals to the ship. Heizo nervously explained the purpose of each panel: one for the power crystals, a separate one for the drive crystal, and then finally, one that directed the power out to the ship’s many systems.
Power from different crystals could never be allowed to share the same network of conduits. Hence, each crystal had its own network of cables within the room. As long as none of the switches burned out, the entire thing could be operated by two people or even one person, but the switches looked small to her, particularly on the main conduits. Five engineers would have a very busy time of it, she guessed: two to babysit the panels, two to tend the crystals, and at least one more to be on hand once something burned out. They had three.
Sparks watched Heizo with rapt attention. Her cloak discarded, she revealed herself to be among the oddest of the crystal-touched crew. Her electric-blue skin was patterned with orange stripes. Thick stalks, each tipped with a jagged shard of power crystal, protruded from her head and back like very dangerous hair. Wearing thick gloves, overalls, and boots, she nodded along to all of Heizo’s lecture, who was not subtly attempting to keep Yaki between him and Sparks.
Elsewhere on the ship, a half dozen similar tutorials were taking place as the dome rang with the sound of cannon fire.
“This is the captain speaking. All hands prepare for lift!” Ishe’s voice rang out through the engineering bay.
“But I haven’t even gotten to the drive crystal yet!” Heizo wailed.
“Don’t matter!” Yaki grabbed him and pushed him toward the main panel full of switches and tiny glowstones.
“That dragon ain’t gonna wait for us!” Sparks clapped her big gloves together with excitement.
He squinted at the panel. “I thought I had labeled more of these.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Never confuse a duel for a battle. They have very different rules.”
Lord Signa, Lyndon bounty hunter
“Just be sure you stay out of the way,” Ishe growled at the man standing next to her pilot’s seat. His long nails clicked together. Shuri stood directly behind the Steward. They had been on the bridge by the time the shipwright had finished their whirlwind tour of Emperor’s Sword. Ishe did not have time to cater to the ruler or his dog lady. Fortunately, he seemed to get the hint, and they retreated to a couch at the back of the bridge.
On either side of Ishe lay an array of levers, at the center, a stick that, according to the man whispering in her left ear, directly controlled the amount of thrust sent to each of the two propellers mounted at the sides of the ship. Pedals controlled the power going into the liftwood hull, separated into portside and starboard, allowing her to control the tilt of the ship directly. Raiju stood in front of the console next to her, controlling a switchboard that would channel her voice throughout the ship, somehow boosted by a glowing wind crystal in a glass dome.
Ishe felt vulnerable surrounded by glass at the very bow of the ship, but if this ship moved as fast as they said it did, trying to pilot from any other location could be suicidal. “Give me the engine room!”
“Uhhh…” Raiju examined the console in front of him and then flicked a few switches. “Got it.”
“Engineering, give me lift power.” Ishe spoke into a funnel that snaked around from the back of her chair and hovered near of her left cheek.
“Ahhh, crystal one to lift, crystal two to propellers,” the tube responded, and the ship gave a shudder as it lifted from the dock for the first time. Deeps groans emanated from the wood as t
he hull took on the weight of everything within it, reminding Ishe of an animal stretching after a long nap.
Ishe gently pushed down on both pedals, and after a moment’s hesitation, the ship began to rise. Pulling a lever, she engaged the portside propeller to pull the ship into alignment with the huge Foundry doors. The soft whup whup whup sped up into a whirr, and Ishe had to ease off as the ship spun too far. For moment, Ishe felt herself being eight years old, sitting on the rooftop terrace, pretending to pilot a Behemoth as it flew overhead during the New Year festivities.
“The city is burning, Your Excellency.” Shuri’s imperious voice slammed Ishe back into reality. “Surely, there were better candidates to pilot this ship.”
“Not if you want to actually do any damage to Yaz’noth,” Ishe snapped back at her before the Steward could respond. She sat in the captain’s chair. “Raiju, give me gunnery.”
“Yes, Captain.” His finger searched the panel before flipping switches. “Channel open.”
“Gunnery, report.” Ishe straightened out the craft and gave both propellers enough juice to get them moving.
Simon’s voice responded. “Simon says ammo very low. Five shots per cannon. Four earth and one ice. Earth loaded now.”
“Give me lance status. Unload the earth. I want only ice.”
“Aye. Switching out the shells. Lances are…well, they’re lances. They got no power. We have a portside and starboard one. Same ones on the Behemoths.”
“Those are to be manned at all times. If you have a shot, you are to take it. They will be powered as soon as we’re clear.”
“Aye aye. Simon out.”
“Raiju, tell engineering I want those lances powered and ready.”
“Aye, Captain.” Raiju futzed with his own funnel to deliver her orders. Heizo had been blunt in their brief conversation: when the fire crystal was activated, there wouldn’t be much steering available to her. Changing elevation via the liftwood would be her primary way of controlling the burn. Which would work fine as long as the ship didn’t explode. He had been mostly certain nothing would explode.
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