“Oh man, if that isn’t jinxing us, I don’t know what is,” Jim said, flopping down on the floor, coughing loudly when a cloud of dust rose around him.
“Don’t be silly. I don’t believe in jinxes,” Aisling said firmly. “I do, however, believe in accidents, and derailments of best laid plans, etc. So you’ll be sure to tell us if something goes awry, won’t you, Ysolde?”
“Of course.”
“What, exactly, is this object?” Drake asked, his fingers now tangled in Aisling’s hair. She kept sending him little glances that should have steamed his eyebrows.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that I would like to hold off on telling you about that until I have it in hand.”
“And I would prefer to know now.”
I sat up a little straighter at the tone in Drake’s voice. “I’m sure you would, but I am not comfortable with explaining the whys and hows of the object to you just yet.”
“Not comfortable?” he asked, his green-eyed gaze sharpening on me. “What about it makes you uncomfortable?”
“That’s really none of your business,” I said, growing rather annoyed. While I was willing to admit he had a right to know what he was bartering his services for, he also had to know I wasn’t going to try to cheat him. “I will tell you tomorrow, once I have the item in my possession.”
Drake was silent for a moment, then said in a drawling voice, “You forget my consequence, Ysolde. I must insist on knowing what object you use to barter with before I risk myself and my men. You will tell me what it is now, or I will not go forward with this agreement.”
“Drake Fekete,” I said, deliberately using his original name in an attempt to remind him of his place, “I am well aware of your consequence, your history, and the terms of our agreement. It is you who have forgotten that you agreed to do the job based on my word alone. I have said I will describe the object tomorrow, and so I shall. Either you will honor our agreement, or you will renege on it.” I rose while making an imperious gesture. “But I will waste no more time on this. Decide now.”
My heart was beating like crazy as I basically bluffed Drake, part of me worried sick what I’d do if he called that bluff, and left me without a thief, but the other part, the one who had absorbed much from Baltic’s dealings with other dragons, told me that there were times when arrogance had its place, and that time was now.
“Oooh,” Jim said on a big breath, its expression watchful as it turned to see how Drake would respond.
Drake’s eyes flashed molten green fire, his body tense, as if he was going to storm out of the room. Aisling opened her mouth to say something but evidently thought better of it, for she just put her hand on Drake’s and raised her eyebrows at him.
After a moment’s silence that seemed to last a thousand years, Drake gave a sharp nod. “Very well. I will wait until tomorrow. But that is as long as I will wait.”
“You won’t regret that decision,” I assured him. “You may think I’m trying to blow smoke up your…er…but I’m not. You’ll see that tomorrow—”
A sudden crash from the hallway came at the perfect moment…perfect for lessening the tension so rampant in the room, that is. On every other front, it caused me no end of worry. I fretted, as I leaped up and ran for the door, over whether a wall had caved in, or the stairway collapsed, or any of the million other forms of destruction that seemed to hang like a particularly brooding miasma over the house.
“By the rood!” I yelled, charging out to the hall. “What is going on—really, Constantine? You have to do this now? It’s almost time for dinner!”
Two dragons, identical expressions of chagrin on their faces, stood before me, one covered in shiny black scales, the other in glittering silver. The silver of Constantine’s chest was splattered crimson, blood from the three slashes dripping down onto the floor.
Constantine’s nostrils flared. “We are conducting a challenge for the black sept, Ysolde. This is a sacred fight, one honored by all dragonkin since the First Dragon set forth the laws of the weyr, and it will not be stopped by something so mundane as a mere meal.”
“You clearly haven’t tasted Pavel’s cooking,” I told him with a glare, pointing to the floor. “And you’re dripping all over the tile. I just hope you plan on cleaning that up, because it took the cleaning ladies three hours yesterday to scrub off all the muck and dirt, and I’m not having the tile stained again.”
Constantine straightened his shoulders and looked down his long dragon snout. “I am wyvern! I do not clean floors! Now, stand aside so that I might beat my godson into submission and reclaim that which should have been mine in the first place.”
“I grow weary of hearing you make such ridiculous claims about the black dragons,” Kostya said, whipping his tail around in an annoyed manner. It caught the edge of a small occasional table, knocking it against the wall, and sending a small, ugly ceramic vase to the floor.
“Now you know how we feel,” Aisling said, sotto voce. Jim snickered. Drake shot her a long-suffering look.
I transferred my glare from Constantine to the vase where it lay smashed on the tile floor. “Konstantin Fekete!” I bellowed, marching over to him.
“Uh-oh, someone’s in trouble with Mom,” Jim said. “Again, since the last time you did something to piss her off, she had exactly that same look on her face.”
Kostya backed up a couple of steps before he obviously remembered he was a wyvern. “My apologies, Ysolde, but it is only a small vase.”
“One that I particularly liked!”
“I thought you said it looked like something a donkey pooped,” Brom said from the safety of the doorway to the small, damp sitting room.
“That is beside the point.” I took a deep breath and couldn’t keep from adding, “I really don’t think a challenge is suitable for you to witness. If you’re through mucking about in your lab, you can go wash your hands and face. Dinner will be ready shortly.”
“Boy, I didn’t think it was possible, but she out-bosses even you,” Jim told Aisling.
“Quiet, demon, or I’ll dump you on her for a week and see if she can’t arrange for an attitude adjustment.”
Jim’s eyes grew large as it backed up a few steps, but it kept silent.
“Aww, Sullivan. I want to watch the challenge. Nico says it’s an important part of dragon stuff, and I should know about it even if I won’t ever be a wyvern.”
I looked around the hall. Everyone was there, Brom (with Nico standing protectively behind him) next to Savian, who leaned against the wall with a grin on his face. Beyond them, Pavel and Holland were at the head of the hallway that led back toward the kitchen. Behind Constantine, Cyrene sat on the stairs, texting someone while chewing gum with blithe unconcern for anything that was happening. My gaze settled on Baltic as he stood to the rear of Kostya, his arms crossed, and a bored expression on his adorable face. Despite that, I could tell he was aching for a chance at Constantine. “I don’t think seeing two men beat each other up is particularly vital to your well-being, even if one of those men is incorporeal some of the time.”
“Please, Sullivan?” Brom came perilously close to a whine, which he knew annoyed me. I tipped my head in question to Baltic. He looked consideringly at Constantine for a few seconds, then nodded.
“All right, you can stay, but if you have nightmares about shades bleeding all over the place—not that I knew shades could do that in the first place—then I don’t want to hear any complaints.”
“My corporeal form is exactly the same as yours,” Constantine pointed out haughtily.
Jim snickered again.
Constantine set it on fire.
Kostya apparently just noticed that his brother and Aisling were present. “What are you doing in Latvia?” he asked them.
“Housewarming,” Aisling said after a moment’s pregnant silence. She waved a hand at the hall. “Ysolde invited us to see the new place.”
Kostya snorted his disgust.
“Will you sto
p setting Aisling’s demon on fire,” I told Constantine. “It’s just rude, and besides, this house hasn’t been fireproofed yet. Jim, are you all right?”
Aisling had beaten out the fire by the time I was done speaking. “It’s fine, no thanks to Casper the Not-so-friendly Ghost over there.”
Brom covered his mouth to stifle a giggle.
“You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel the whole idea of a challenge is stupid.”
Around me, five dragons simultaneously sucked in outraged breaths. “Stupid?” Kostya asked with equal amounts of disbelief and indignation.
“Yes, it’s archaic and sexist, to boot. What if I were wyvern, and you challenged me to a physical fight? I wouldn’t stand a chance against a strong male.”
“Which is why females should not be wyverns,” Constantine said.
“Oh, you do not want to go there,” Aisling said at the same time I snapped, “Get over yourself, Constantine.”
Cyrene looked up from her phone and inquired, “Would you like me to fill the room with water, Ysolde? I’ve found nothing brings reason to pigheaded dragons like the act of nearly drowning.”
Kostya wanted to argue the statement, but I intervened. “No, I think we’ll forgo that, but Constantine won’t find himself invited to dinner if he keeps up that sort of crap.” I thought for a moment. “Do shades eat?”
“Yes, we eat! We’re just like non-shades, other than we sometimes lose power and fade into the beyond until we regain enough energy to join the mortal world again.”
“That’s fascinating, but it doesn’t negate the point that I think these challenges are idiotic. Even Baltic, who loves nothing more than a reason to fight, looks bored to tears by it.”
“That is only because I’m waiting for Kostya to fail, so that I can take over,” my love said, cracking his knuckles.
“I am not going to fail. You’re my second only because I must have one,” Kostya snarled at him, “and because the only other choice was that watery twit.”
“Oh!”
I held up a hand to stop Cyrene as she leaped to her feet. “My original statement stands, and to it, I add a new rule—no more dragon form. It’s too destructive.”
“Aw, man,” Jim started to complain.
I set its toes briefly on fire. Jim yelped.
“Oh, it’s all right if you set it on fire?” Constantine asked in an arch voice.
“Yes, it is,” I said, examining my fingertips. “I’m a mother. It’s part of our arsenal of behavior management.”
Aisling grinned.
“Baltic!” Constantine swaggered toward me (dragon form is very prone to swaggering), stopping in front of me with a peeved expression on his face. “Inform Ysolde that she cannot interfere in a challenge, and that by the terms of this challenge, we must fight body to body. That requires dragon form.”
I raised an eyebrow at Baltic. He was silent for a moment, then made a short, annoyed gesture. “It pains me greatly to say the words, but about this, Constantine is correct. You may not interfere in the challenge, mate.”
“I will not have this house destroyed because you boys don’t want to play nice!” I said loudly, turning back to glare at Constantine.
“I really hate it when she refers to us as boys,” Kostya said in an aside to Baltic. “We’re older than she is, after all.”
Baltic nodded. “She was always that way, though.” He smiled suddenly. “Do you remember the time when she dragged you out of Dauva by your ear for swiving that milkmaid in the main hall?”
Kostya rubbed his ear and shot me a surly look. “I haven’t forgotten. My ear has never been the same since.”
Aisling laughed openly. I ignored them to address Constantine. “Either you beat the crap out of each other while you’re in human form—and without breaking anything but each other—or you can just take it outside.”
“Ysolde—” Constantine started to say, but I interrupted him with brutal disregard.
“Out!” I flung open the two front doors and made a grand gesture. “You go outside with your challenge, or you call it off.”
“Are you going to allow her to speak this way to us?” Constantine asked Baltic, clearly expecting him to do something.
Baltic looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then shrugged. “She is my mate. If she does not wish for the challenge to take place in our home, then it will not. I do not desire her to be unhappy. You will conduct the challenge outside.”
Constantine was obviously about to explode, but in the end, he stomped his way out the door, down the verandah, and out into the yard, grumbling the entire way. “I have never been so treated, and I have been abused by the very best! To speak that way to me, the wyvern of her own sept, is unthinkable. Were she my mate—”
“If I had been your mate, I would have been insane a long time ago,” I called out after him as Kostya, with a martyred sigh, trundled after him. The others followed, Baltic bringing up the rear with a slight twitch to his lips that told me he found the situation as amusing as I did.
As I walked down the steps to the yard, faint sounds caught my attention. I paused for a moment, trying to pinpoint where the yelling was coming from, but it was too distant, almost on the edge of my awareness.
“Do you hear that?” I asked Baltic as I approached him, counting on his exceptional hearing to locate what I couldn’t.
Baltic stood with the others in a loose circle around Constantine and Kostya as they pounced, tails whipping through the air, claws flashing, grunts and oaths rising upward on a reddish cloud of dust from the disturbed ground.
“Hear what?” he asked without turning toward me.
“That noise. It sounds like…” I paused and closed my eyes in order to focus my attention. “It sounds like someone is doing bodywork on a car. I can hear metallic pounding and yelling.”
“I hear nothing.” Baltic stepped backward as Constantine and Kostya, now fully engaged in battle, rolled toward us. He grabbed my arm to pull me back, but the second he did so, a familiar feeling washed over me.
“Oh no, not now,” I said as the afternoon light shimmered, dimming into that of predawn.
“Ysolde—”
I held up my hand to stop the complaint I was sure was to follow. “Don’t tell me to stop the vision, Baltic. I’ve told you repeatedly I can’t. And besides, I don’t want to. They are the only way I ever find out anything, since you refuse to tell me things I evidently need to know.”
“Ooh, another vision,” Cyrene said, looking around us with bright, interested eyes.
“I’m beginning to enjoy them, I have to admit,” Savian told her.
“They do bring back some fun memories of times long past,” she agreed. “Although Ysolde never has visions about anyone I knew.”
“You’re not going to get hurt, are you?” Brom asked, moving over to stand next to me. “Pavel told Nico you had dreams of when someone killed you a long time ago.”
I pulled him between Baltic and me, smiling at him when Baltic put his arm around us both. “No, I’m not going to be hurt, and you don’t have to worry, lovey—I would never let you see that vision. This one looks like…” I looked around us at the images of the past. “I—I don’t know where this is. Baltic?”
“It’s Latoka, isn’t it?” Drake asked, sidestepping when his brother, still fully engaged in fighting with Constantine, was thrown backward. “Baltic, is this Staraya Latoka?”
“What’s Latoka?” I asked Baltic, nudging him when he was obviously reluctant to answer.
“It was the holding of Alexei.” He glared around him at the vision people as they fought in an oddly ironic mimicry of Constantine and Kostya. Only the dragons in the vision all belonged to the black sept, and they were armed with swords. “It was destroyed.”
I looked at the two squat round towers that towered over us, noting the men running along the ramparts of the stone wall. It wasn’t a very big fortress, nor did it look to my unknowledgeable eyes as being nearly a
s protective as Dauva was, but clearly this stronghold was built centuries before the latter.
“It looks fine to me now. When was it destroyed? And why are all the dragons fighting one another?”
Baltic’s expression grew grim, and, much to my surprise, he took my hand and led me toward the nearest tower. I grabbed Brom with my other hand, pulling him after us. “For once, you have chosen a fitting vision. No, do not bring my son. He may stay out here with his tutor.”
I caught his eye and read a warning in it. I turned back, expecting to see everyone still watching Constantine and Kostya despite the vision, but they had all fallen into place behind us. “Nico, would you mind?”
“Not at all,” he said, obviously lying, but his dedication to Brom won out over his interest to see whatever event Baltic wanted to keep Brom from seeing. He held out his hand for Brom.
“Why can’t I stay with you?” Brom asked.
“Because there are some things that even I, a mother who allows you to help firebomb negrets, have issues with your seeing, and this is obviously one of those things.”
“But you don’t know what it is,” he pointed out.
“Go!” I said firmly, pinning him back with my best annoyed-mom look. He walked slowly over to Nico, muttering under his breath about no one letting him have any fun.
“Jim will stay with you, won’t you, Jim?” Aisling said, nudging her demon.
Its eyes grew big with an obvious plea in them.
“You can talk, but only because I want you to keep Brom and Nico entertained.”
“Seriously, Ash, you’ve got to stop taking mean lessons from Soldy.” Jim walked just as slowly as Nico, casting plaintive looks over its shoulder as we all moved toward the tower. “We never get to see any of the really good stuff.”
“What about them?” Cyrene asked, pointing to where Constantine was in the process of head butting Kostya, while the latter was trying desperately to pull Constantine’s legs out from under him.
Sparks Fly: A Novel of the Light Dragons Page 21
