The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

by Katie MacAlister

  “You are welcome to my house, Ysolde,” Kostya said, his intentions clear as he greeted me, taking my hands in his and kissing them before turning to Baltic. “I wish I could say the same for your mate.”

  “Sins of the saints, Kostya,” I said, socking him on the arm. “Do you have to bait Baltic every time?”

  “No, but it relieves my spleen if I do.”

  I glared at him until he snapped. “Very well. Your mate is welcome here as well.”

  I smiled and put a restraining hand on Baltic’s arm, which was tense, as if his muscles were poised for attack. “Thank you. We appreciate it, despite the fact that this is really our house.”

  “Is it?” He gave a little smirk. “I believe it is held by the wyvern of the black dragons, and that is me.”

  “Only so long as I allow you to remain so,” Baltic growled.

  Kostya’s eyes narrowed, a little smoke emerging from his nose. “Do you wish to challenge me for the sept?”

  “I do not need to. If I wanted it, I would take it,” Baltic answered.

  “Oh, lord, please tell me I don’t have to let you two boys break each other’s noses again,” I said, sighing heavily.

  Both men turned identical glares on me. “Boys!” Kostya snorted. “We are wyverns!”

  “That may be, but you’re acting like twits dancing around each other with your hackles up.”

  “Twit!” Baltic repeated, outraged.

  “Hackles! We do not have hackles!” Kostya said, just as outraged. “Dogs have hackles. Dragons do not!”

  “Then stop acting like you do,” I told him with a look that I reserve for Brom at his most fractious. I turned to Baltic, giving his arm another squeeze. “And you can cease muttering rude things under your breath. We can all hear them, and even though they’re in Zilant, I can tell what it is you’re saying.”

  He shot me another outraged look, but stopped swearing to himself.

  Kostya’s expression turned martyred. “You are far too outspoken for your own good, Ysolde, but it does not surprise me. It will be a cold day in Abaddon before I ever meet a mate who displays the respect proper to wyverns.”

  I looked at Baltic, expecting him to take offense at Kostya’s speaking to me that way, but he said nothing, just glared. I threw my own good intentions to the wind. “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

  “With speaking the truth?” He shrugged. “I have not seen the red wyvern’s mate in centuries, but from what I remember of him, he was the only mate who knew how to behave.”

  “And speaking of errant mates, where’s Cyrene?” May cut in as I was about to argue the point with Baltic.

  Kostya, who had been matching Baltic’s glare with one of his own, transferred it to May. “That is a very good question. You would have to ask her that for an answer, however, since she has apparently left.”

  “Left? Left for where?” May asked, not looking at all surprised.

  “I am evidently not to be privy to such information. She simply hurled all sorts of insults at me, packed up her things—and several that weren’t hers—and stormed out of here promising all sorts of watery vengeance if I tried, and these are her words, to follow her, woo her back to my arms in order to have my lustful way with her pristine body, or notify you that she had abandoned me for a god who evidently knows how to treat a naiad. Despite that, consider yourself duly notified.”

  “Oh, no, she hasn’t . . . not Neptune?” May asked, groaning. “A god who knows how to treat her? He took her stream away from her until she made me help get it back. She’s absolutely . . . I’m sorry, Kostya, I really am. There’s no excuse for what she’s done to you.”

  “She said she loved me! She made me name her as mate in front of the weyr!”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.” May put an arm around Kostya and gave him a little hug. “She swore that this time it was different, and I believed her. I thought she really was going to stay in love with you.”

  His martyred look returned. “I should have known she was trouble. She was always demanding I let her meddle in sept business. I told her no, that was not the bailiwick of a mate, but she would not listen. My mother said it would come to a bad end, but I didn’t listen to her.”

  “Yes, well, Catalina isn’t who I’d really go to for relationship advice,” May said with a little smile as she returned to Gabriel’s side. “Is she still dating Magoth?”

  “No, thank god.” Kostya’s shoulders slumped in a manner that indicated a morose sort of pleasure. “Your former demon lord dumped her for some Hollywood starlet. Mother is currently living with a trio of bodybuilders in Rio, and only comes to plague us when she remembers that Drake has children.”

  “She sounds like a delightful person,” I said dryly. Baltic looked bored, glancing at his watch. I estimated I had about ten minutes before he would demand we either get to business or leave. “Perhaps we could get started without Drake and Aisling?”

  “I would prefer that we wait, but since your mate appears to be anxious to leave, I’m agreeable to begin the discussion. Kostya?”

  “We might as well. No good will come of it whether we do it now or later,” he said with dark foreboding, gesturing toward a door.

  I looked at the door, glanced at Baltic, and spun on my heel to march in the opposite direction, throwing open the double doors that led to a room filled with tall, glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling bookcases, warmed by amber pools of sunlight that poured in through the mullioned windows. “Our library.” I sighed with happiness. The furniture wasn’t, of course, the same as I remembered, but the way the light streamed in through the windows, the peculiar quality of it as it filled the room, swamped me with the sweetest of memories.

  “My library now, I believe,” Kostya said with unnecessary emphasis on the pronoun. “I will allow the meeting to be held here, since you seem to desire it.” His gaze shifted to Baltic. “It is a courtesy I am happy to extend to you, Ysolde, despite the fact that you and your murderous mate are at war with the weyr.”

  “Oh, for the love of the virgin . . . will you please stop trying to bait Baltic?” I snapped, tired of all the posturing the wyverns felt it necessary to adopt. “He’s not so uncontrolled that he’s going to fall for that.”

  Baltic lunged forward so fast he was just a blur. The resounding thud of the two men going down in the middle of the hardwood floor, accompanied by the tinkle of a couple of glass knickknacks sent flying as they crashed into two occasional tables, left me with the intense desire to do a little smiting, but I managed to hold on to my temper.

  “You make it very difficult to convince everyone that you’re not the barbarian they call you,” I told Baltic as he punched Kostya in the face while trying to throttle him with his other hand.

  Kostya shifted into dragon form, Baltic following suit.

  Another occasional table, this one a pretty octagonal inlaid with rosewood, slammed into the wall. “No dragon form!” I yelled, looking with dismay at the remains of the table. “Human form only, and if you break anything nice, I’ll have more than a few things to say to both of you.”

  “You’re going to let them fight?” May asked, jumping aside when both men, now back in human form, rolled around beating the tar out of each other. “Is that wise? Mightn’t things get out of hand?”

  “I don’t think so. I figure it’ll clear the air a bit.”

  May looked like she was going to say something, but to my surprise, Gabriel spoke first. “I’m sorry, Mayling. I would like to say I’m above such things, but the opportunity is one I really don’t wish to miss.”

  After a moment of surprise, she gave him a lopsided smile and gestured toward the combatants. “If you really must.”

  “I must,” he said, giving her a swift kiss before flinging himself into the fray. May and I moved over to the door, out of the way of the whirlwind of three men who were accompanied by oaths, snarls, grunts of pain, and language that would make a sailor blush.

  “I’ve n
ever seen the dragons come to physical blows so much as when Baltic is around,” May commented, wincing in sympathy when Baltic, overjoyed that Gabriel was now on his list of people to beat up, landed a solid right to Gabriel’s jaw.

  “He’s a very primal sort of dragon,” I said, watching dispassionately but cheering to myself when Kostya crashed to the floor with a fine spray of blood. “No ganging up on Baltic, now, boys,” I told them sharply when it looked like Kostya and Gabriel, who had a history of animosity, had decided to forge a truce in order to tromp Baltic.

  “What on earth . . . are they fighting again?”

  May and I turned as the doors behind us were opened. Aisling and Drake stood staring in amazement.

  “They seem to like it,” I told her. “I suppose it releases pent-up emotions. Now that you’re here, I’ll stop them.”

  “Not yet,” Drake said, peeling off his jacket and handing it to Aisling, his green eyes glinting like a cat’s.

  We all watched with utter astonishment as Drake, with a battle cry that would have done a warrior proud, leaped over the couch and launched himself onto Baltic’s back.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake . . . have you ever met such pigheaded men?” Aisling asked, her hands on her hips. “Ouch. That’s got to sting. Oh, now there’s blood on Drake’s pretty shirt. Our housekeeper will have my head for that.”

  “You have to admit, there’s something—oh, good one, Baltic!—strangely attractive about men fighting each other in this manner. Hey! I said no ganging up on Baltic! I see that, Drake and Kostya! If you boys can’t fight fairly, you can just sit in the hallway!”

  Aisling giggled. “You’re probably the only person in the world who can get away with saying that, Ysolde. Well, ladies, it looks like the menfolk are busy with their show of masculinity. Shall we move to an atmosphere that’s a little less testosterone filled?”

  I cast an assessing glance at the battle. Baltic’s left eye was swelling shut, and blood dripped out of his nose, but he looked in fine fettle nonetheless. The other three wyverns all seemed to fare similarly, and to my surprise, they all seemed to realize that there were limits to their fighting, and no one attempted to use weapons, makeshift or otherwise, but confined themselves to their fists.

  “I don’t see why not. I suppose when they get tired of beating each other up, they’ll come to find us and have their injuries tended. Let us go to the solar.”

  I led the way up the stairs to a room that sat above the library, designed so that it, too, caught the afternoon sunlight. It was furnished now in an atrocious manner, but I did my best to ignore the hideous bloated tea roses that adorned all the furniture, imagining how beautiful the room could be given the chance.

  We chatted for a few minutes about commonplace things, May explaining to Aisling what had happened to her twin.

  “Oh, man. Cyrene’s given him the brush-off?” Aisling shook her head. “He’s going to be hell to live with.”

  “I’d like to say that it’s just a phase, but . . . well, you know Cy. She’s always been fickle when it comes to matters of the heart,” May answered.

  “The question is . . .” Aisling paused in thought. “What impact is that going to have on the weyr?”

  “What do you mean? Why would there be an impact?” I asked.

  “This was before you were awake, Ysolde—or rather, before you went into your fugue—but Kostya named Cyrene as his mate in front of the weyr.”

  “That’s what he said. I don’t see what the problem is. Can’t he just unname her?”

  “I don’t think so, no. Dragons mate for life, you see. All but reeve dragons, but those are few and far between.” She must have seen my look of confusion because she continued. “Reeves are special dragons. They have an unusually pure bloodline, and they are the only ones who can mate more than once. That is, if they have a mate and she or he dies, the dragon continues to live and can take another mate. Drake’s grandmother was a reeve. She had two mates, one a black dragon and one a green dragon. That’s why Drake is a green dragon, and Kostya is black. But we were talking about Cyrene.”

  “There must be some sort of policy for the unnaming of a mate,” May said.

  “I don’t think so. Drake has never mentioned anything of the sort, and I think he would have when Kostya named Cyrene as one.” She sat in a horribly overstuffed chair while May and I took an adjacent love seat. “I don’t think the situation has ever come up before, which means there may be some trouble at the weyr when all the mates are present.”

  “Why would that be? Mates don’t do much, do they?” I asked, thinking back to the sárkány I’d witnessed a few months before. “Aren’t you just there as support?”

  “Yes, but it’s vital support. Mates are excused from weyr functions for only very limited reasons—childbirth being one of them, and illness or physical inability to attend another. Mates can also attend a sárkány in place of the wyvern.”

  May’s eyes widened.

  “Exactly,” Aisling said, nodding. “Can you imagine what would happen if something kept Kostya away from a sárkány, and Cyrene had the right to take his place?”

  “Agathos daimon,” May muttered, running a hand over her eyes. “I don’t even want to—”

  She was cut off as the door was flung open. Baltic stood in the doorway, blood dripping from his nose and eyebrow.

  “Mate! You left me!”

  “Of course we left,” I said calmly, quickly eyeing him for signs of injuries. He seemed to be favoring his left side, in addition to his other hurts. “You were all acting like idiots. You didn’t honestly expect us to stand there and watch you beat each other up, did you?”

  “A proper mate knows that her place is at her wyvern’s side,” Drake said, pushing past Baltic into the room. He limped slightly, and appeared to be missing a tooth.

  Aisling tsked and hurried over to him, wiping at the blood on his mouth.

  May raised her eyebrows as Gabriel, also limping, followed Drake, a little groan escaping him when he sat in the spot I vacated. “ ‘Physician, heal thyself’ has a particularly fitting ring to it right now, but I suppose you don’t want to hear that, do you?”

  “No,” he said, wincing as he flexed the fingers of one hand.

  Kostya staggered in last, striking a pose at the door that lasted for three seconds before he crumpled and collapsed.

  I looked at Baltic again. “I imagine you’re proud of yourself.”

  “I have nothing to be ashamed of, if that is what you are implying.” He nodded to where both Aisling and May (who had evidently given in to Gabriel’s pathetic appearance) were murmuring softly as they tended their men. “Aren’t you going to cosset me as the other mates are doing?”

  “I don’t think you deserve any cosseting, since it was you who started the whole thing by jumping Kostya.”

  A groan came from the direction of the floor. “It was completely his fault. He’s wholly to blame for everything. Oh, god, I think I’m going to puke.”

  Baltic looked at me out of his one good eye, the sadness in it sufficient that I pulled out a tissue and dabbed gently at the blood from his nose. “Sit down,” I said, pushing him into the overstuffed chair Aisling had been sitting in.

  “Careful,” he warned, easing himself into the seat. “A couple of my ribs are broken.”

  “They are?” I whirled around, suddenly furious. “All right, which one of you broke Baltic’s ribs?”

  Drake and Gabriel pointed to the floor.

  “He dislocated my shoulder and broke my collarbone, if that makes you feel any better,” Kostya said in a pained voice.

  “Tough noogies. You and I are going to have a little talk later on, Konstantin Fekete,” I said, glaring at him.

  “If I survive, you’re welcome to try,” he said in between groans.

  It took us a few minutes to get everyone patched up and relatively hale, although all four men had to be provided with dragon’s blood, an extremely potent spicy sort of wine that o
nly dragons and their mates could drink, before their regenerative powers kicked in and healed the worst of their hurts.

  “Now perhaps we can get down to business and talk about this ridiculous war,” I said after everyone was comfortably situated. “I want to discuss the death of all those blue dragons, and what actual proof you have against Baltic regarding them.”

  Drake’s phone buzzed. With a cross between an oath and a groan, he got to his feet and moved stiffly to the far end of the room to take the call.

  “The proof was laid before you at the last sárkány,” Gabriel said wearily, sipping carefully from his glass. “Baltic was in the area at the time of the murders. He was seen by one of the survivors. He is known to have been working with Fiat, who we know also had a hand in the murders.”

  “Really? Then why haven’t you put a death sentence on his head the way you did mine?” I asked, more than a little riled at the thought of the way the entire weyr had jumped to erroneous conclusions.

  “Fiat is . . .” Gabriel glanced across the room at Drake.

  “Nutso.” Aisling finished the sentence. “Mad as a hatter, or so Drake and Bastian say. Jim would say he’s cracked, and for once, I agree with it. Drake tried to talk to Fiat last month, but he went off about a woman plotting his downfall, and how she’s arranged to have him killed after using him for her own purposes.”

  “Chuan Ren? I can see her wanting him dead after he stole her sept, but how has she used him? He has to be mad if he’s making paranoid claims like that. But perhaps he’s not so far gone that we can’t reason with him. Maybe we should talk to him again,” I suggested. “Maybe someone could get through to the rational part of his mind.”

  “That’s doubtful,” Drake said, returning to us with only the slightest hint of a limp.

  “You think he’s that mad?” I asked him.

  “No.” He stood before Baltic, giving him a long, cold look. “You can’t question Fiat because he’s gone.”

  His words dropped like anvils in the silence of the room.

  “Dead?” Gabriel asked, his eyes watching Drake carefully.

  “No. Disappeared. That was Bastian on the phone. He called to tell me that Fiat has been extricated from his prison.”