There was no time to be arguing. At least, not now. Arguing would take too much attention. Yaki gestured to the empty seats. The pair clambered aboard as Yaki stared at the control levers. Dancing Fly was a bit more complex than a glider. The pedals were simple to divine the purpose of—they were simple power regulators—but would it have killed the manufacturer of the vessel to label the levers?
“Let’s go!” Gama said, and Grim shoved Dancing Fly out into the sky. The speed at which gravity grabbed them took Yaki by surprise; she forgot all about Yaz’noth for a blissful moment as the first lever she tried did not open the wings. They fell into the haze of smoke before she remembered the pedals and stopped their descent. The second set of levers opened the wings, and they were moving over the city as if nothing had gone wrong.
Overhead, Yaz’noth spiraled up, the haze below him stirring with his motions. Each beat of his wings flashed silver. He had what appeared to be a wind crystal protruding from his mouth. Beyond him, a shell exploded in the distance. Good luck, Ishe, Yaki thought as she turned toward the industrial distinct and composed a sentence in her head. “Need power crystal,” she shouted back at the passengers. “One in-d—” She stumbled on the word.
“Is there a power crystal in the industrial district?” Gama finished for her.
“No! The ones you require are in the wreckage of the Behemoth,” the Steward answered. “How many do you need?”
“Two,” Yaki answered, steering toward the paper mills. The question would be where the paper warehouse was.
“Give me your mask, Shuri,” the Steward said.
“Your Excellency, please, no,” Shuri responded.
“Do you have any other paper? I do not. What is the worry? You saw the crew of that ship. You’d hardly stand out among them.”
“They are all monsters. Led by agent of the Destroyer, no less. Please do not imply that—”
“Enough. The Golden Hills are undone now; if the Destroyer or his daughters wish to be the mechanism of revenge on its killer, then I will not argue.” That made Yaki turn in her seat. “Give me your mask.”
Shuri pulled the mask from her face, revealing her black nose and blunt half-muzzle. As she handed it over, she peeled her lips back to show her fangs to Yaki. “This is what you did to me. Savoring the view? I will have your head one day for it.”
Yaki ignored the threat, her gaze focused on the Steward. “No. No destroy. Save.” The words tumbled from her mouth, out of order, in Draconic grammar.
The Steward shook the mask out into two large sheets of paper and pulled a pen from somewhere on his person. The paper trembled, straining to be as flat as possible to receive the steward’s ink. “Destroyed. Look at the fires.”
Yaki did, briefly banking Fly to give herself a view of the flames that consumed the crest of the hill. The parks that had served to separate the neighborhood were dotted with dancing red trees and bushes.
Correcting course, Yaki saw plumes of smoke reaching for the sky, birthed from floating embers or missed cannon shots. Too much for the small fire brigades to begin to handle.
Yaki felt that now-familiar pressure on her back, and the interior of the city wall became nothing but ash and rubble. A small, pained voice pleaded out of her recent memories: Save him. Please, Yaki!
Cold horror struck. It spread like ice from her heart downward, freezing the hunger pangs in her stomach and stopping the twisting of her intestines that she had grown used to. “No…” she breathed.
Yet there was no putting the thought back after it had bloomed, no way to unsee the flower. One being capable of saving the city now, no, not the city, the people within it: Yaz’noth himself. The dragon would have to knock down buildings, dig trenches, carry water from the river. He’d have to do it soon and despite any injuries that Ishe managed to inflict. And he wouldn’t do it to be nice. He’d need an incentive.
“Yaki!’ Gama cried out, shattering her frozen thought process. She twisted the wings of the craft, but not fast enough to avoid clipping an unlit lantern off someone’s makeshift roof porch.
“There,” the Steward announced as a paper crane winged out from his hand and turned back toward the fallen ship. “I’ve instructed any surviving crew to salvage the power crystals and load them onto a skiff. You can drop us off at the Royal Red paper mill, and your sister will have her distraction.”
Yaki remembered walking past that mill before she had made her aborted attempt at talking her way inside the Foundry. An urge to make a crack about its conditions rose and fell against the wall of effort it would take to make it. They flew past it at first, and Yaki circled around. It gave them a view of the battle Yaki knew she couldn’t be allowed to win.
Emperor’s Sword dove like a magpie harassing a hawk as Yaz’noth dove for one of the remaining cannons. The cannon fired as Yaz’noth twisted to the side. The shot nicked his shield and ricocheted off. It exploded a full second later. Yaki’s vision went green.
It proved to be the cannon’s final shot: Yaz’noth’s breath cleaved its barrel in twain. Yet Ishe made him pay for the cannon. Sword’s thruster lit as it followed after the dragon. Both elemental lances scythed out from its sides as the entire ship swung sideways and spun into a tumble. The ship transformed into a wheel of death. No shield stopped it as Yaz’noth pulled out of his dive at the last moment; he chose the mountain over the lance. His wings snapped in as the lance cut across his thigh before he slammed into the side of the mountain. The impact exploded into a shower of ice and rock. It triggered a small avalanche, with largest stone being the dragon himself. He rolled down the slope like a log before catching himself, slapping a front and rear limb against the mountain. It halted his tumble but not his momentum; he slid down the slope like a thousand-ton runaway sled.
The sound of Yaz’noth crashing into the ground was a deceptively soft thud that Yaki could hear with every bone in her body. The angle didn’t allow her to see Yaz’noth, but the impact threw up a new cloud of dust and ash.
“Did she get him?” Gama asked in hushed awe. Above, Emperor’s Sword floated, wobbling like a drunken boxer. Something blue popped out of its side like a bird passing a dropping. It exploded in a blue flash that forced Yaki to blink.
The roar that answered combined elements of a jungle tiger’s sawing roar and an elephant’s trumpeting.
Yaki let out a breath and belatedly realized the unclenching feeling in her chest was relief. That triggered a new round of self-hatred as she set the craft firmly on the deserted road in front of the paper mill.
“One fleet of flying distractions coming up,” the Steward said, his voice sounding nearly upbeat as he clambered over the side of Dancing Fly.
“What do we do now?” Gama asked.
Yaki found her graze drifting to the wall, where cannons sat facing uselessly in the wrong direction. A dangerous plan formed. “Steward!” She gathered the syllables that had come from Shuri’s mouth.
The man had gotten ten feet from the boat. He turned. “Yes?”
Yaki stared at him; anger glittered in bloodshot eyes, but the slump of his shoulders spoke of weariness. “To save the city…” She licked her lips. “What would you give?”
His eyes narrowed. “Golden Hills is lost; even if the gods bless us with a torrential downpour, Valhalla and Lyndon will pick the carcass clean.”
“What would you give?” Yaki wished she could be more articulate, explain who he’d have to kneel to.
“I would kiss Lady Night herself to undo this day,” he said.
“Yes,” Yaki said. You might have to do that. With a nod toward him, she lifted Dancing Fly off again.
“Yaki, talk to me,” Gama said, his voice cracking with frustration. “I can’t do your talking for you if I have no idea what you’re thinking!”
Taking a deep breath, Yaki began to explain her plan in small chunks of words. To his credit, Gama did not interrupt, only gulped nervously.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When times are
bad, those with gray hair are fond of shaking their heads, declaring we live in an end of an age. While the last age ended in catastrophe, not all do. Some ages creep in while the world sleeps, and humans ignore the signs that rules have changed.
Seek Fire, Chief of the Turtle Clan of the Low Rivers Tribe, Lorekeeper
“WHY WON’T YOU FUCKING DIE!” Ishe shouted back at Yaz’noth after he roared in defiance. He sported a new gash of sliver, cutting across his back at an angle. It should have lopped off his leg at least. Instead, he was already putting weight on the leg. She’d purposely left that cannon open to him. And it had worked. The only thing she’d manage to cut off was about a quarter of the dragon’s tail that had been outside the bubble of his shield.
Wasn’t fair.
Now he was on the ground, daring her to swoop down on him. She was down to three power crystals, and according to engineering, a third was showing signs of stress. They were losing maneuverability faster than they were injuring the dragon. The sky was empty of airships; they were probably attempting to catch up to the fleet. To turn it around. That would be at least a day. How long could a dragon fight? How long could they duel?
Yaz’noth reared up on his hind legs, angling that second head up at her. Crudely attached on Yaz’noth’s shoulder, it had no neck. Ishe could feel its glare, a different sort of cruelty. This wasn’t the same dragon. The Yaz’noth she knew would be shouting at her, taunting her, offering deals. He didn’t move the same, either: his tail did not twitch like a cat’s, nor did his reptilian snout ape human expressions. This dragon did not know her, regarded her as another ant with a pointy stick. She wondered if it remembered what it had seen while it had hung in the great hall.
Yet something was missing. A chunk of metal lay at the dragon’s feet. A round piece of armor plating. She recalled it flashing as he turned. He’d been careful not to expose that bit to her. It had covered the wound that Hawk had inflicted. That had been long before he had gotten the quicksilver, but he’d still worn armor. His scales so thick that while the elemental lances inflicted wounds, she was an alley cat versus a tiger. And he still worried about that spot.
Couldn’t do anything to him while he stood down there. But if the Steward arrived…
“Raiju, we have to get him in the air,” Ishe said, thinking out loud.
“Uh…yes?” Raiju answered.
“Give me engineering.”
Told you that the cannon was a trap, Yaz’noth thought at the elder.
“Silence, whelp!” he hissed back.
Yaz’noth felt the elder strain to maintain his hold on their body. That last blow had seared him to the bone. He had to admire how skillfully the elder had pulled the quicksilver that had patched his wings and redirected it into the wound. Now, if he could do that same to the quicksilver that secured the elder to his shoulder, then this horror story might come to an end.
The wound was now sealed, the muscles bonded together, the majority of the quicksilver returned to his closed wings, filling the tattered holes in the membranes. Another wound like that and there wouldn’t enough left to fly.
Above them, the airship hovered uncertainly. I don’t see why you’re so dismissive of the humans. The only reason we’re alive is due to the shield crystal grown by humans. And it was a group of humans who nursed me back to health. The Grand Wyrm saw the symbiosis.
“Grag’noc was exiled from the Dream and a true tyrant! Never mention him again,” the elder growled.
You died trying to extract a tithe of iron from the city. Yaz’noth had been curious if the human legend had been true.
“What are they doing now?” the elder asked instead of rebutting. Yaz’noth turned his attention outward to the ship. The ship was listing to one side as its propellers dragged it forward. A tendril of will extended through his memories, rooting through everything he knew of torchships, which was little. Rumors and speculation only. This ship did not match the descriptions, too big. So fragile, all wood. It could go up against a larger cruiser. The elemental lances gave it plenty of sting. But those lances were not nearly as hot as they needed to be. They’d cut a wing off, but it wouldn’t fare much better against an armored plating than it did against his hide. Was that purposefully? The lance crystal he possessed had been lifted from a trader from the northern states. It had longer range.
You think too much, whelp, the elder growled, and that intruding tendril slid back from his mind. Yaz’noth’s mind sagged with relief as he thought of Ishe. Somehow, she had gotten that ship. He was certain of it. It could be no other; its captain had known precisely the range of his breath and generally how fast he could react to an attack. He wondered if she knew he wasn’t in control, that the destruction around them hadn’t been in the plan. Not that it mattered; she was doing her damnedest to kill him. Not that he blamed her for that.
What was she doing now? They were stalemated. More maneuverable versus longer-ranged. The elder seemed happy to rest for the moment as the ship crept overhead. The rush of the quicksilver had ended, and Yaz’noth felt his nostrils pulse as the elder tried to scent more in the air. Yaz’noth debated telling himself about the Foundry, but the ship extruded a power crystal before he settled on a decision. It fell directly toward them, pulsing with its otherworldly blue light.
Yaz’noth did not need to explain the danger of that crystal. They ran, at a lope, wings opening. The ship opened fire with its cannons before the crystal hit the ground, small pops ahead of the concussive blast that threw Yaz’noth into the air before he could beat his own wings. Yaz’noth saw the shield green flash feebly before something stung his left wing. They nearly fell right there but for the song of the wind filling their wings and pushing them upward. The wind crystal protruded from the end of his muzzle.
Are you getting tired, grandpa? Yaz’noth couldn’t help but taunt.
The elder sent the equivalent of a mental backhand that blurred Yaz’noth’s vision. “You rely too much on these toys! It is time to go.”
You’re going to run away? Yaz’noth laughed as pressure increased.
“We are going to regroup and heal,” the elder growled.
Yaz’noth set himself to pushing back and found, to his surprise, the pressure easing. There was one certainty, however: his elder self would take him apart the moment he could devote himself fully to the task. With what metal? It will take months to heal properly. You have two days before an entire fleet with nothing to lose starts hunting us. And the captain of that ship knows where the lair is.
The elder shot one of the probing tendrils of thought into Yaz’noth’s memories but found no lies.
Ishe nearly cheered as one of the earth shells blasted off nearly half a wing. Instead, she threw her head back and howled with frustration as the dragon merely wobbled a moment before finding his air, the wing reforming with pure silver liquid. Small droplets broke free as he beat his wings. Her hand shot out to grip the red lever, electrical energy crackling over her the skin of her hand. A swoop would finish him off.
In her mind’s eye she saw his countermove, merely lifting his head and breathing out that lance which would slice through the ship, which would hit the ground in two pieces. “Patience,” she told herself through a snarling muzzle. “Patience,” she said again through human lips.
“Captain?”
Ishe found Raiju staring at her, face pale with fear.
“Your…”
Wrenching her hand off the lever, Ishe pushed herself back into her seat. Her spine extended too far, and she found herself sitting on it uncomfortably. The seat was like the entire bridge, too enclosed. Couldn’t feel the wind or smell the battle. But she could smell his terror as he stared at her. “We’re about to kill a dragon. Keep your wits about you.” Ishe took a breath, waiting for the feeling of human skin to muffle away the air. Yet it didn’t come.
Where was Drosa? Oh yes. She knew of the Destroyer. Despite being isolated in that cursed valley for two thousand years, they knew of the Destroyer. “I a
m not the Destroyer!” Ishe declared as she piloted Sword to keep on Yaz’noth’s tail, mentally urging him to keep climbing. She’d dive past him, roll the ship, and hit that weak spot. At least, that’s what would have happened if Koshue, Fire Fox’s best gunner, had been on the ship. Yaki’s crew was doing their best but would not be enough.
“Tell Drosa to come to the bridge,” Ishe said. “She should see this.”
And with that, her human skin returned. As if Coyote were shy of the golden-haired warrior.
“Are you all right, Captain?” Raiju asked.
“I will be once this scaly bastard is dead. Look.” Ishe grinned as a white flock rose from the industrial district, mere dots at this distance, but they swarmed in an undulating cloud.
“There they go,” Gama said as they watched the mass of paper take flight. The Steward stood on the roof of the paper mill, arms stretched up toward the sky, every vein in them glowing with golden light. The soldiers who had been helping them load Dancing Fly with cannon shells watched with reverence and a quiet helplessness.
Yaki stood, one foot in and one foot out of the little craft. It perched on the city wall, its power crystal keeping it from tipping down into the streets below. Gama made to step into Dancing Fly, and Yaki moved her body to block him. “Stay here?” It came out a question despite her intention. That didn’t matter.
“No way.” Gama smiled and adjusted his glasses. One lens had cracked. “You need me. Let me help. I still want to leave this city with you, no matter what’s going to become of us.” He tapped his chest where it been pierced. “My path is with you.”
The boat gave her the height she needed to simply lean forward and press her lips against his. Their arms entwined around each other. Pulling them into each other. From this position, Yaki knew a dozen ways to hurt a man. Knee him in the groan, break his nose with a head butt, drive the knuckle of her thumb into his kidney, or simply break the kiss and critique it as being inexpertly performed. Any one of those things would stun him enough that she could take Dancing Fly and leave. She did none of these things. She tightened her grip, the kiss deepened, and she pulled him onto the boat.
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