by James Maxey
Bitterwood didn’t look shocked by this confession. Somehow, this caused Burke’s guilt to well up even faster. “I’ve raised her with a single-minded focus on combat. I’ve taught her to think of her body as a weapon, precise and tireless. She fights like nothing you’ve ever seen, Bant. She’s my ultimate weapon. But there are times when I look into her eyes, and there’s something cold and mechanical staring back at me. Fate gave me a daughter. I turned her into a machine.”
Bitterwood winced as Burke’s words triggered memories. “I had daughters once,” he said, softly.
“I remember your story. Albekizan killed your wife and children and burned your village. It was the spark that brought flame to that time of drought.”
“I was wrong,” said Bitterwood.
“About what?”
“My family hadn’t been killed. They were taken captive and sold as slaves. They lived another twenty years, beyond the day I believed they’d died.”
“Oh,” said Burke.
“They were executed the day after I killed Bodiel, Albekizan’s beloved son. The king ordered all the palace slaves slain in retribution.”
“Oh,” Burke said again. What else was there to say?
“It’ll be light soon. I should leave.”
“I hope you find Jandra,” said Burke. “Do you… do you need anything before you go? I’ve made a new type of bow that’s going to be far superior to whatever you’re using.”
Bitterwood grinned. It was an unsettling expression. “I doubt that.”
“How about fresh horses?” asked Burke. “We don’t have many to spare, but I…” He let his voice trail off. Bitterwood was still grinning.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“I was thinking of what you would say if you saw my ride. I won’t be needing a horse.”
Burke lay back on his pillow. The movement made his brains slosh. He closed his eyes, fighting back a wave of nausea. A cold draft washed over him. He welcomed its cool touch. “If you don’t need anything from me, I guess you should be on your way.”
Bitterwood didn’t answer. Burke opened his eyes. He was alone in the room. For a moment he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole encounter, a phantom companion to match his phantom toes. But he could still smell Bitterwood’s distinctive smell, a mixture of stale sweat and dried blood. Not for the first time in his life, Burke wondered if he’d done the right thing. He hadn’t known Jandra long, but he liked her, and judged her to be competent and sane. Had he done her any favors by putting this strange ghost onto her trail?
CHAPTER FIVE:
SLAVERY AS AN EVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY
THE CHILL OF night yielded as the winter sun climbed in a flawless blue sky. Shay unbuttoned the collar of his coat as they stopped by a stream to allow the horses to rest. The cool fresh air felt good against his throat. The tiny puncture wounds from Zernex’s claws were scabbed up and puffy beneath his fingers. He wished he had a mirror. The grooves on the underside of a sky-dragon’s claws collected a foul-smelling goop that harbored disease. Shay hoped he hadn’t survived the encounter with the slavecatchers only to perish of some horrible illness.
Shay was exhausted but didn’t complain when the others voted to keep going. As the day wore on they passed through three villages, all destroyed, the severed heads gathered into mounds. The tracks of earth-dragons were everywhere. They all rode in silence. Anza looked especially withdrawn, her face an emotionless mask. She had to be wondering if her home had also suffered this fate.
Shay was also worried about the town. Had Burke’s hidden library been destroyed? He felt guilty that the fate of the books weighed so heavily on his mind, when Anza no doubt faced the loss of friends and family. He could still feel the empty hole that had opened in his gut when he saw The Origin of Species crumble to ash. How could he have been so wrong about Ragnar? The prophet had been delivering firebrand sermons calling for human rebellion for years. His words traveled throughout the kingdom as hushed whispers from slave to slave. Burke may have been the strategist who supplied the rebels with a worthy arsenal, but it was Ragnar’s vision that the rebels followed. How could such a great leader despise books?
It was late in the evening when the dragon tracks they followed suddenly veered south, leaving the Forge Road. Ruts from a convoy of supply wagons led up the sloping hill of a field gone fallow. Shay looked toward the top of the ridge, wondering if an army was on the other side.
“Where to you think they’ve gone?” Vance asked, pulling his horse beside Shay.
Anza snapped her fingers and traced a wavy line in the air. Shay was puzzled by what she was attempting to convey. Anza looked frustrated, and repeated the motion.
“A river?” Jandra asked.
Anza nodded.
“I’d noticed we hadn’t passed any good drinking water in several miles. They must have gone to the river to camp. How far south is the water?”
Anza held up two fingers.
“Two miles?” asked Jandra.
Anza nodded.
They all stared at the hill. The trampled ground was reasonably fresh, but whether the army had turned south an hour ago or a day ago was beyond Shay’s guess.
Lizard stood up on Jandra’s shoulder, his head held high. He sniffed, then crouched down and assumed a brown shade that matched Jandra’s hair.
“Bad bosses,” he whispered.
“If they’re close enough for Lizard to smell, we should get going,” said Shay.
“Or we should spy on them,” said Vance. “Find out how many there are. See if they’re settled in for a long stay, or just resting for a night.”
“No,” said Jandra. “We should press on to Burke’s Tavern. Warn any towns along the way that the dragon armies are on the march and they should run.”
“Run where?” asked Vance. “If they head toward Dragon Forge, they might run into the army.”
“Then east,” said Jandra. “Toward Richmond. Shandrazel may be dead, but Androkom, the High Biologian, will maintain law and order around the palace. The High Biologian can command the aerial guard in the event of the king’s absence. He’ll keep the peace in his immediate vicinity, at least.”
“You have a lot of faith in Androkom,” said Shay. “He was somewhat infamous at the College of Spires. He was a prominent abolitionist, and made a lot of enemies among the biologians. I’m not certain the other sky-dragons will obey him.”
“I didn’t like him either,” said Jandra. “He had a snooty air that made it clear he didn’t think anyone else in the world was as smart as he was. Still, while I have every reason to hate dragons”—Lizard whined; Jandra stroked his arm—“I trust Androkom. If anyone is smart enough to keep the kingdom from spinning into chaos, it’s him.”
“Don’t we want the kingdom to be spinning into chaos?” asked Vance. “Order and peace haven’t been all that great for humans. That’s the whole reason I joined up with the rebellion. If peace means that dragons are in charge, count me as friend of war.”
Before they could debate this any further, Anza gave a silent sigh, rolled her eyes, and turned her horse in the direction of Burke’s Tavern. She dug her heels into the flanks of her steed and trotted off.
“I guess we’re following her,” said Jandra, shaking the reins of her mount.
“For someone who can’t talk, Anza always manages to win arguments,” said Vance.
IT WAS LONG past dark when they reached Burke’s Tavern. Jandra was exhausted. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to be truly weary. When she’d worn her genie, the device had constantly monitored her physical state, negating the fatigue poisons that built up her blood. She resolved not to complain about her discomfort. She knew she was experiencing nothing worse than the others.
Burke’s Tavern, the town, wasn’t much more than a cluttered spot on the Forge Road, a few dozen houses clumped together. In the center of all this was a two-story building with a large porch and a painted wooden sign that read, “Burke’s Tavern.” T
he town was silent and still, but it was the quietness of sleep, not death. There were no signs of violence; the retreating dragon armies hadn’t reached this far. It was quite possible no one here knew anything about the events from further down the road. The size of a dragon’s world and a man’s world were quite different. Sky-dragon messengers could cover two hundred miles a day, spreading news quickly. Humans lived much more insular lives—it could take many days for information to spread a hundred miles among humans. For a winged dragon, a town ninety miles distant was part of the neighborhood. For a human, a town ninety miles distant was out of sight and out of mind. Vendevorex had told her that most men never traveled more than fifty miles from their birthplace, though Jandra wondered if this was true or merely a myth believed by dragons. Many of the men she knew, like Bitterwood and Burke, had traveled through more of the world than she could imagine.
Lizard was asleep, his limbs draped over the horse’s neck like it was a tree branch. The swaying motion didn’t disturb him. In sleep, his coloration had taken on a drab, dark shade of green—a shade she remembered well. It had been the color of the earth-dragon that had slit her throat during the battle of Chakthalla’s castle. Though that had happened only a few months before, it felt like some impossibly distant past. So much had unfolded in her life in the intervening weeks, she felt as if her adventures could fill a book, perhaps an entire trilogy of books, one that any biologian worth his salt would salivate over.
It was difficult to accept that this tiny dragon-child would one day grow up to be a fierce warrior. All the earth-dragons she’d ever known had led violent lives as soldier and guards. Was this the result of their biology or their upbringing? Earth-dragon children were treated with abuse and neglect their whole lives until they became big enough and strong enough to be the abusers. Yet, Lizard responded to her affection. Could raising an earth-dragon with compassion, teaching it reason instead of rage, result in a new kind of dragon? Or only a weaker one, fated to never fit in with his peers? Would her act of kindness leave Lizard as much an outcast as she was?
Anza dismounted on the steps of Burke’s Tavern. She walked onto the broad porch, stood next to a chess board atop a large barrel. A sculpted monkey sat on the far side of the board, a grinning beast crafted from tin and copper, with large glass eyes. Though immobile, its hand was held in such a way that it looked ready to reach out and grab a chess piece, had there been any on the board. Vance and Shay got off their horses, stretching their backs.
“I need brandy,” said Shay.
“What’s brandy?” asked Vance.
Shay looked puzzled by the question. “It’s a liqueur. You drink it. It warms you.”
“Like moonshine?” asked Vance.
“I think brandy is only going to be found in the dens of sky-dragons,” said Jandra, getting off her horse to join the others on the porch. Lizard remained sound asleep, breathing peacefully. “I’m not sure human palettes are refined enough to distinguish between the various liqueurs.”
As she said the words “human palettes” she realized she was still thinking like the daughter of a dragon. The others didn’t react to her words—were they avoiding her gaze because they recognized how alien she was? A voice within her thought, “Not alien. Superior.”
A chill ran down her spine. It wasn’t her own voice in her head—it was the voice of Jasmine Robertson. Before Jazz had died, she’d “gifted” Jandra with a thousand years' worth of her memories. Jazz had told Jandra she’d done this as a time saving device to help Jandra understand why Jazz had aided in the fall of mankind and the rise of dragons. Jazz was dead now, but her memories lived on inside Jandra. This is why Hex had stolen the genie. He’d been worried that Jazz was still alive inside Jandra, since what was a person but the sum of their memories? Jandra knew she was still in control of her own personality, but these stray recollections worried her. Ironically, Hex had robbed her of the very tool she needed to fix her brain—she was certain she could have commanded the genie to erase the alien thoughts.
“I can’t think of the last time I was this tired,” said Vance, addressing Anza. “Can we get some sleep before we find the person your father wants you to see? What’s his name? Thorny?”
Anza nodded, though since Vance had asked three different questions, Jandra wasn’t certain which one she was answering.
Shay looked even more exhausted than Vance, but he said, “Before we go to sleep can I see the library? The thought of it will keep me awake all night if I don’t see it.”
Anza motioned with her head for the others to follow. She pressed a board beside the door to the tavern. The panel of wood looked like any of the countless shingles that covered the place, but there was a click from inside the wall. Anza pushed the door open and slipped into the dark room beyond.
The others followed into the large room that was the heart of Burke’s tavern. There was a huge stone fireplace, with a faint orange flame still flickering over a mound of red coals. The room was warm, and the air was rich with the sweet aroma of ale. Jandra held her breath when she realized they weren’t alone. An old man sat beside the fireplace in a wooden rocking chair, his head tilted back, softly snoring. His open mouth sported the most snaggled collection of teeth Jandra had ever seen—it was as if the old man had lost every other tooth in his mouth. His face was framed by an ill-groomed salt-and-pepper beard. The old man’s hair jutted out from his head in all directions, composed of a hundred shades of gray, in every hue from charcoal black to cotton white.
Anza walked up to the sleeping man. She carefully reached out and touched his shoulder.
His head slowly lifted as his eyes opened.
“Anza?” he whispered. He rubbed his eyes. Jandra noted that his fingers were horribly knotted and twisted by arthritis. He lowered his hands and stared at Anza with bloodshot eyes. His breath was absolutely rotten, a stench that carried all the way to Jandra, nearly fifteen feet away, as he said, “It is you.”
The old man rocked forward, looking at Jandra, Vance, and Shay. “Where’s Burke?” he asked. Anza held out the folded letter. He grasped the paper awkwardly in his bony fingers.
“You must be Thorny,” said Shay.
“That’s what my friends call me,” the old man acknowledged. His speech was slightly slurred. “Thor Nightingale is my birth name.” He sounded quite proud of this fact. He looked around the empty tavern as he unfolded the letter, slowly, awkwardly, wincing as he moved his fingers in delicate motions for which they were ill formed. “I guess I fell asleep again.” He grinned sheepishly. “Drank a few too many celebrating a birthday.”
“Whose birthday?” asked Shay.
“It’s always someone’s birthday,” said Thorny. He rose, swaying, his unbuttoned, threadbare coat hanging loosely on his frame.
Anza went to the fireplace to stir the ashes. The light brightened as the flames leapt back to life. A large clock beside the fireplace ticked rhythmically as she worked. Suddenly, the ticking was overpowered by the sound of gears within the wooden framework of the clock. A door opened near the floor and a brass frog hopped out. It released a series of croaks, a loud, metallic sound somewhere between a washboard’s rasp and a bell’s chime. The frog hopped in a circle back into the clock. The gears sounded again as the door closed.
“That was odd,” said Vance.
“You get used to it,” said Thorny, looking down at the unfolded letter. “Just another of Burke’s gizmos, like the chess monkey. Burke’s always tinkering on something.” He squinted as his eyes flickered over the letter. “Looks like he’s got more than tinkering in mind. I gather he’s taken control of the foundries?”
“Yes,” said Jandra. “But there’ve been unanticipated ramifications. The defeated dragon armies are taking revenge on human villages in the area, killing everyone.”
Thorny shook his head. “That’s not unanticipated, girl. Burke knew. He’s spent the last twenty years plotting to overthrow the dragons, but he was like a chess player thinking ten m
oves ahead. He could imagine a hundred gambits that would produce quick and satisfying victories against the dragons. But any victory he imagined was followed by chaos and slaughter throughout the kingdom. He could have launched a war at any time, a war he thought he could win, but he didn’t because he didn’t want the blood of innocents on his hands. He would have lived out the rest of his life here in peace if Ragnar hadn’t forced him to battle.”
Anza frowned as Thorny spoke. She glared at him and made a few rapid hand signals. Thorny looked embarrassed.
“You’re right,” he said. “Ragnar couldn’t have forced Burke to do something that wasn’t already in his heart. I was here when Ragnar confronted Burke. Burke could have killed the prophet where he stood. We both know that. But, no matter what Burke’s gut feelings were toward dragons, I think his head was in charge of his emotions. Ragnar is nothing but emotions—he’s like Burke’s hidden anger given human form. Ragnar needed Burke, but maybe Burke needed Ragnar as well.”
Jandra was surprised by Thorny’s analysis. On the surface, he looked like nothing more than an old farmer, and a drunken one at that. But his words hinted at a level of education and thoughtfulness she didn’t often encounter in her fellow humans.
Anza gave a few more hand signals. Thorny nodded. “You’re right,” he said, heading for the bar. “Let’s get packing. We might not have much time.” He led them through a door behind the bar into a kitchen, then through a second door that opened onto a set of stairs heading down. The stairs descended at least thirty feet, until they reached a third door that opened onto darkness. Anza bounded ahead, moving confidently in the gloom. There was a series of clicks and suddenly a score of lanterns leapt to life, illuminating a large cellar with a high ceiling. The walls were made of red brick and the floor was crafted from huge flagstones. The rafters were full of gears and rods and wires, including a grid of long metal shafts that looked as if they were holding up the floor of the bar above. Jandra couldn’t even begin to guess at their purpose. Chains draped around the room in all directions, like the web of some unseen iron spider.
