by Jodi Meadows
Fallen Gods. He could die.
Just then, Gerel and Chenda ran up, sagging backpacks on their shoulders, and noorestones lighting their way. Above, LaLa and Crystal twisted between the trees before they settled on a fat branch.
“What happened?” Gerel removed her backpack and tore it open.
“H—Hurrok.” I drew my friend closer and kissed the top of his head. He tasted like dirt and sweat, and everything here—absolutely everything—smelled of blood. “Hurrok found us. Hristo protected me, but—”
“Seven gods.” Gerel pulled a medical kit from her bag, finding bandages and ointments. “I need a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Mira, get his belt. Chenda, hold him steady in case he faints.”
Though sweat gleamed over his face, Hristo rasped, “I don’t faint.” In the light of two noorestones on the ground, it seemed that all the blood had drained from his skin, leaving a washed-out version of my protector.
“Call it passing out or falling unconscious. I don’t care.” Gerel tore a pad of cotton from its bag and pressed it against the side of his hand. “As long as later you remember to thank me for saving your neck.”
When Chenda had Hristo’s shoulders, I felt around for his belt, fumbling with the mechanism for a moment before I managed to pull the strip of leather free. Ilina had arrived by then, and while Gerel moved Hurrok’s body out of the way, we bored a new hole into the leather.
Within minutes, Gerel had the tourniquet tight around his wrist, and finally, the flow of blood began to slacken. Still, she placed pad after pad over the soft, muscled side of his hand, and he endured the whole thing with teeth-grinding stoicism.
“Put a jacket on him.” Gerel glanced at me. “Then we’ll need to cauterize the area to make sure it doesn’t get infected, otherwise he’ll lose the hand.”
“Cauterize?” I could barely speak the word.
She nodded. “Get your dragon to heat up a knife blade. Either you or your friend. Then hold him down, because it’s going to hurt.”
The last thing I wanted was to help burn my best friend, but I had to trust her. I did trust her.
I stood and clicked for LaLa, who landed on my hand with a thump. We’d never taught the dragons to breathe fire on command, but when I showed her the knife, she seemed to understand what I wanted.
Carefully, she turned around so the fire end faced away from me, and when we were clear of everyone, she inhaled into her second lungs. The moment her breath hit her spark gland on the way out, a rush of orange fire followed, licking across the steel blade.
After two more breaths, the metal glowed a dull red.
“That’s perfect.” Gerel took the knife and approached Hristo, whose eyes were wide with horror. “You’re going to live, protector.”
“Have you ever done this before?” Ilina knelt at Hristo’s right side, keeping his hand aloft.
Gerel peeled off the cotton pads to inspect the wound. “I’ve had more than adequate training for field medicine.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Ilina said. “Have you ever done this before?”
“Do you want to summon a real doctor, then?” Gerel tossed the bloody pads aside. “I would be happy to assist someone with more experience if you can produce them. Until then, I’ll do my best to keep your friend alive.”
Ilina bit her lip.
“Put a jacket sleeve in his mouth and hold him still.”
Chenda did as she was ordered, and braced herself against Hristo’s left side. Noorestone light made the maze of her copper tattoos gleam as she whispered something in Hristo’s ear.
Then Gerel pressed the flat of the knife on the injury until Hristo’s flesh began to sizzle, and he screamed into the sleeve.
LaLa took off toward the trees, while Ilina buried her face in Hristo’s shoulder. Chenda never stopped her whispering, though if it brought any comfort, I couldn’t see it. My protector cried out again and again, and all I could do was stand there, shaking, as the odor of burning flesh completely enveloped the scent of blood.
My stomach turned, but there was nothing in me to lose. Instead, I reached around and touched the cut on the back of my shoulder. My dress was shredded, and the cut bled freely, but this wasn’t the time to bother anyone with it.
::Mira.::
Aaru.
Any other time, someone tapping my arm might have made me jump, but even before the first letter of my name was finished, I knew Aaru was behind me.
I almost turned to face him.
I almost threw my arms around him.
I almost pressed my chest against his and hid my face in the curve where his neck met his shoulder.
But I didn’t do any of those things, because this was Aaru, and even an embrace of relief might feel like impropriety.
Plus, I was covered in Hristo’s blood.
::Sorry,:: Aaru tapped, and stood at my side as Hristo’s muffled screams finally ceased.
My protector slumped, unconscious at last. I hoped he found some relief in dreams.
Gerel tossed the hot knife on the ground and placed a fresh bandage over the wound. “We need to go now. I saw warriors working through the city, searching for escaped prisoners. In the woods, too. They’ll have heard all this noise.” She looked up to find Aaru standing beside me. “When did you get here?”
::Moments ago. Didn’t want to distract.::
When I interpreted, she just nodded. “Fine. Everyone, carry what you can. I’ll get Hristo. We’re leaving now.” She scooped my protector into her arms as though he weighed no more than a kitten, but that was the strength Khulan gave his people. I didn’t doubt she could carry all five of us, plus dragons, if she wanted.
Quickly, we gathered up the rest of our supplies and started through the woods once more. It was fully dark by now; only noorestone light and dappled moonslight illuminated our path. Eyes peered at us from dark trees, nocturnal mice and bats, suspicious of a group of clumsy humans tripping through their forest. Bugs whined and night birds called, and the heat of the day was finally fading. Still, the trek wasn’t any easier. Gerel instructed everyone where to step, how to cover tracks, and refused to slow when Chenda stumbled over a rock.
Conversation was not permitted; when I tried to ask Ilina if she was all right, Gerel shushed me.
I gritted my teeth against the pain in my shoulder. It wasn’t life-threatening, and she was right. We had to get moving. We couldn’t slow down for a torn dress.
“No tapping, either.” She shot a narrow-eyed look at Aaru and me. “I’m trying to focus on getting Hristo to the safe house and I can’t do that when it sounds like you two are auditioning for a spot in the Warriors’ Drum Corps.”
I glanced at Aaru just in time to catch the way his jaw tightened. It was probably highly insulting to tell an Idrisi they made too much noise.
But we obeyed, because more than anything, we didn’t want to go back to the Pit.
CHAPTER FOUR
BY THE TIME WE REACHED THE CABIN, I WAS STICKY with sweat and blood, and I couldn’t stop the shivers that racked through me every few minutes. My dress clung to me like an ill-fitting second skin.
We’d been walking for hours—at least it seemed like hours. My thoughts felt like they were slipping, unable to gain enough purchase in my head to fully form, and every piece of my body ached. Especially my shoulder. But how could I complain when Hristo’s hand had been cut wide open? It seemed amazing he still had all his fingers.
I breathed through the pain. One, two, three, four. It helped, but I needed to collapse. I needed to not move.
Gerel called a halt when we were in sight of the safe house.
It wasn’t much, just a cabin closely surrounded by rain trees and broad-leafed ferns. A small shelter—perhaps an outhouse?—stood off to one side. Our haven almost looked like another part of the forest, except for the two windows. Neither had glass, just tattered curtains half-covering the openings.
“You”—Gerel nodded at Aaru—“go peek inside
to make sure no one’s there. Be quiet about it.”
He frowned, but he slipped between the trees without rustling so much as a twig. At the wall, he held absolutely still, his head cocked while he listened. His eyes closed, and his lips parted just so, but after several long moments, he seemed satisfied enough to move the curtain. So carefully I might have thought him mocking Gerel if I didn’t know better, he peered inside.
Finally, he waved us into the cabin.
There were two rooms inside. One main area, with a fireplace, fourteen glowing noorestones scattered on the floor, and a pile of rodent-nibbled blankets. No food. The second space was a washroom, and miraculously it had a water pump with a faucet that curved over the lip of a huge iron tub. It was practically a boat, it was so big.
“We could have baths,” I whispered.
“And wash our clothes.” Chenda plucked at the filthy copper shirt she’d been wearing since arriving in the Pit.
“I wish the facilities were inside.” Ilina’s tone held just a hint of moping. “Did you see the outhouse?”
“We need to wash Hristo’s wound before baths or complaints.” In the main room, Gerel lowered my protector to the floor next to the dark fireplace, arranging his injury so that it was slightly elevated. “We need to boil water.”
She was right, of course. Hristo needed everyone’s help. “So we need firewood?” I started toward the door, but Gerel’s frown stopped me.
“There won’t be dry wood out there.”
“It will dry off in a fire,” I said.
“It will smoke in a fire. It’ll send a signal out for leagues and we won’t be safe here.”
Ilina emerged from the washroom. “The water pump doesn’t work.”
I wanted to slouch to the floor and cry.
Aaru abandoned the backpack he’d been unpacking and went to the washroom. Metal squealed and clanked as he began to dismantle the offending pump.
Vaguely, I wondered if I could use any of these noorestones to heat water, but that would involve knowing how to control my strange gift. Besides, I’d already used it twice today—or maybe that was yesterday now—and I wasn’t sure I could stand up for much longer, let alone channel noorestone fire.
“Then we have nothing,” Chenda said. “No food, no water, no heat.”
“I thought you’d gone to find supplies.” The floor seemed like it was slipping, and fog crept around the corners of my vision. This wasn’t a panic attack—at least, it didn’t feel like one—but it certainly wasn’t good. As casually as I could manage, I leaned on a wall. Pain spiked in my shoulder, so I tilted myself to take pressure off the cut.
“We have dragons,” Ilina said. “Crystal and LaLa can hunt food.”
At the sound of their names, the two Drakontos raptuses appeared in the window, their talons digging into the rotting wood. LaLa squawked and rustled her wings.
“How will we cook?” Chenda said. “No dry wood for a fire, remember?”
“Dragons breathe fire.” Ilina shook her head. “It’s not a perfect solution, but we don’t have a lot of options. Unless you want all of us to sit around being miserable and useless.”
Chenda scowled and crossed her arms. “Go, if that’s what you want to do.”
“You’ll thank us when you have a full stomach.” Ilina grabbed a noorestone and the two spare fire-resistant jackets, and then took my arm. “Let’s go. Put this on.”
Staggering after her, I shrugged on the jacket, struggling to hide my wince as the fabric fell over my injured shoulder. The material wasn’t as thick as the hunting gauntlets we wore at the sanctuary, but it would do for now. I clicked for LaLa, who glided over and perched on my forearm, rather than my hand like she normally would.
Inside the cabin, Gerel said, “Chenda, I need you to find a few things. . . .”
There wasn’t time to hear what Gerel wanted, or Chenda’s reaction to being given orders, because Ilina led me into the forest and soon we were out of earshot.
It was dark, but that didn’t matter to the dragons; they had excellent night vision. The sisters flew into the trees to begin their hunt.
For our part, Ilina and I stepped carefully over roots and around brush, trying to maintain the same level of caution Hristo and Gerel had insisted upon, but my dress snagged on twigs, and sharp leaves scraped my legs. Anyone who knew anything about tracking would be able to tell we’d been through here.
When we reached a small clearing, Ilina and I watched Crystal and LaLa hop from branch to branch, their scales shimmering in the cool noorestone light.
“Your friends were definitely worth coming back here for.” As we passed beneath the low branches of a mango tree, she reached up and grabbed a fruit. “One is ready to complain about everything. One thinks she’s in charge.”
Gerel was good at being in charge, though.
“One betrayed you.”
She had a point about Tirta, who’d only pretended to be my friend as part of her assignment from the Luminary Council. Apparently.
“And one won’t speak.”
“That’s not even on the same level as betraying me,” I said. “Besides, it’s not his fault. Altan did that to him.”
“He’s not very useful.”
“He saved my life.” Twice, though I hadn’t told her about the second time, when he’d helped keep my noorestone power from exploding. I’d promised Aaru I wouldn’t reveal his secret of silence.
She sighed, peeling the skin off the mango. “And I’m grateful he saved you. I just keep thinking about how much trouble we’re in now. I wish we’d sneaked out of the inn back in the Shadowed City.”
There was nothing I could say to that. Everything would be different if we’d left when they’d come to rescue me: Hristo wouldn’t be fighting for his life, and we’d be off doing our best to help save the dragons from a dark fate in the Algotti Empire. But Aaru, Gerel, and Chenda would still be in the Pit, and despite Ilina’s criticisms, I liked them. Besides, our gods urged us to think of our neighbors, to be compassionate and helpful. I couldn’t have left them in the Pit.
“Here.” Ilina cut a slice of mango and offered it to me. “You look like you could use a bite.”
“Thanks.” The fruit helped, and I considered telling her about the cut on my shoulder, but if I did, she’d take me back into the cabin without letting Crystal and LaLa hunt.
Still, when she offered a few more slices, I didn’t refuse them.
Slowly, we walked after the dragons, ready to take their kills. We’d been hunting with these two for years—they were efficient and never let their prey suffer, but they couldn’t always carry the game to us. Drakontos raptuses were only the size of weasels, and like most dragon species, their bones were hollow. While they could kill prey larger than them—honestly, most prey was larger than raptuses—carrying it could be a challenge.
So we followed, watching gold and silver dart down from the trees. Every now and then, a bright flame lit the path ahead: one of the dragons signaling a kill.
“I’m just worried about Hristo.” She took a limp-necked quail from Crystal, rewarding the dragon with a mango slice.
“Me too.” I scanned the trees for LaLa, then watched as she dived toward the ground, completely silent. A second later, a rabbit screamed. We’d have a good meal tonight—assuming we could light a fire.
I wanted to say something about Hristo’s hand. There was no telling when he’d be able to use it again, and it seemed like there must be an incredible sense of loss already building inside of him, haunting his dreams. But I wasn’t sure how to vocalize those feelings, or if I even should.
While Hristo had always been more than sensitive to others’ feelings, he wasn’t fond of talking about his own. If this had happened to Ilina or me, Hristo would have known exactly how to help us.
“I wish we had Doctor Chilikoba,” I said at last.
Ilina looked sharply at me. “Do you think Gerel did something wrong?”
I started to shake m
y head, but the dizziness swarmed in, clouding my sight. “I think Gerel did everything she could. Hristo owes his life to her. Neither of us could have done what she did.”
Ilina nodded. “I agree.”
“Doctor Chilikoba is a doctor, though. And she would have medicine to help him through the pain, medicine to keep his hand from becoming infected, medicine to help with all the bad feelings he might have.” I wished she were here for me, too. For the last eight years, she’d been giving me small amber bottles of twenty pills that numbed the panic. They’d saved me so many times since that first dose.
The pills had been taken from me when I was jailed, so in the Pit, I’d lived on the knife edge of panic. I’d had more attacks in the last two months than I had in the last two years.
“We’ll have to be the ones to help him,” Ilina said. “Just because his life might change doesn’t mean our love for him will. We’ll be here for him no matter what.”
Together, we gathered up five more kills before summoning LaLa and Crystal to us. They rode on our forearms, talons digging into the heavy wool jackets. “It’s too hot to wear these during the day. We’ll have to figure out a way to make hunting gauntlets if we’re going to do this again,” I said.
“I can try cutting the sleeves off these, but then we won’t have the jackets.”
We didn’t have a Drakontos ignitus on our hands anymore, so flame-resistant jackets weren’t as much of an issue as they had been when I’d taken them from the armory. At that point, I’d been terrified that Kelsine would burn my friends. And me as well. But mostly my friends.
Now Kelsine was gone, and Crystal and LaLa would never hurt us.
Ilina picked more mangoes as we walked back to the cabin, noorestone light guiding us. As glad as I was to be heading indoors again, my thoughts grew sluggish. The cut on my shoulder blade burned, and it was all I could do to keep placing one foot in front of the other.
LaLa trilled and licked my face. I wished I could reassure her, but it was unwise to lie to dragons.
The cabin’s bright noorestones drew me the rest of the way in.
