by G. A. Aiken
Kachka frowned. “I haven’t?”
“No.”
She gave a small wave of her hand. “Eh.”
Zoya walked off, shooting over her giant shoulder, “With so many daughters, you must understand that I have to find quality men wherever I can.”
“We should follow her, shouldn’t we?” Tatyana asked.
“Should we?” Kachka glanced around. “I’m quite comfortable.”
“And it’s not like we asked her here,” Marina tossed in. “She invited herself.”
“Cousin . . .”
“Fine!” Kachka stood. “We will follow the great beast.”
And they did. It wasn’t as if they had to try hard. Zoya moved through the trees like a herd of elephants.
“Excellent!” Zoya cheered when they reached the other party. “Slavers! With boys!”
“We really don’t have time for this, Zoya,” Kachka called out to her.
“Oh, come now!” Zoya cheered, making the slavers wince at the sound. They’d probably heard little but the sobs of the newer slaves for many days. “There are a few here who could be quite worthy of my daughters.”
“Doesn’t your human queen have problems with slavers?” Marina asked.
“Large problems.”
Ivan stood beside Kachka, looking over the slavers.
“You’re not going to let that boar burn, are you?” She was starving.
“No, no. It’s fine.” He seemed to be studying the group.
“What?” Kachka asked him.
“Seems an awful lot of armed protection for such weak-looking slaves, Kachka Shestakova.”
Putting her ravenous hunger aside, Kachka now studied the group herself.
And Ivan was right.
“You and your sister circle around,” she told Ivan softly while Zoya examined the wares and commented on them . . . loudly.
The Khoruzhaya siblings eased back into the surrounding trees as the rest of them moved closer to the slavers. Kachka just wanted to make sure there was nothing to worry about. She didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night, fighting for her life against slavers who thought the small group could be added to their purchases.
What Kachka noticed right away was that the slavers became more tense, hands straying to the hilts of their weapons, as her group approached.
“And look at this one!” Zoya went on in the common tongue, oblivious as always. “Why did you have to beat him so?”
Zoya was right. The boy was young and could easily be managed without beating him to a pulp, but men . . . they weren’t really thinkers, were they? Always basing their actions on emotion and their own delicate egos.
“Cousin?” Tatyana said softly as she pointed out some random slave that Kachka knew for a fact her cousin would have no interest in.
“Yes?”
“The slave wearing the full cloak, to the far left?”
Kachka glanced over, then away, but saw nothing of interest. “What about him?”
“The boots he wears. Those are the boots of the Praetorian Guard.”
“So?”
“The Praetorian Guard provides personal protection for the royal family of the Quintilian Provinces. If my information is correct,” and they both knew it was, “your Southlander queen has a very strong and fruitful alliance with the king of that region. I’m sure it would not hurt if you looked into the capture of one of the king’s personal guards.”
“Look into the capture of a guard so weak he is captured by slavers?”
Ignoring Marina’s smirk and soft laugh, Tatyana moved closer and said, “Do you really think a king’s personal guard would be so easy to capture?”
Kachka finally looked at her cousin and Tatyana lifted her brows.
“Watch my back,” Kachka told Marina, not really trusting her cousin to be able to do it, and slowly made her way down the line of slaves.
“Do not try to overcharge me, worthless male,” Zoya argued, her big hands on the shoulders of two boys who looked like they wanted anyone else in the world but this woman to take them.
Kachka moved toward the hooded man with the Praetorian Guard boots. He was sitting now, his hands shackled in front of him, his head bowed so that he was completely covered by the cloak he wore.
The guards near him grew tense, though none tried to stop her. But their grips did tighten on the hilt of their weapons.
She moved past them casually, her hands near none of her own weapons. Finally she stood in front of the male and, slowly, dropped to a crouch in front of him.
“How much for this one?” she asked.
“Sorry, Rider. That one has already been sold.”
“Ahh. I see. Can I look at him?”
“If you’d like, but we can’t sell him to you.”
“I might have a better offer,” Kachka said as she reached over and gently pulled the hood back.
“There is no offer you can make, Rider. But we greatly apologize.”
“You’re right, there is no offer I can make,” Kachka agreed upon seeing the face of the “slave” for the first time.
The man looked at her through the single steel-colored eye in his head and with a voice exhausted and raw, he said, “Kachka Shestakova. I see death has found you well.”
“Can’t say the same for you though, lizard.”
“No,” he replied with a weak but relieved smile, steel-colored hair falling into his face. “I guess you can’t.”
Kachka, sensing movement behind her, reached for the sword at her side, but it was too late. The man moving up behind her was now in the grip of Zoya Kolesova. An angry Zoya Kolesova.
“What is this?” Zoya demanded. “You strike at our back? Deceitful male!”
Another male came toward Zoya from her right, but she backhanded that one away, crushing his cheek and jaw in the process.
“None of you are to be trusted!” she bellowed. “None of you!”
Kachka watched Zoya batter the slaver’s face in with her fist. While, from the safety of the trees, the siblings killed more of the slavers with their arrows and Marina finished off two more slavers charging at her.
Tatyana, sadly, was still fussing with the blade at her side, so Kachka grabbed her arm and yanked her down beside her.
“My cousin,” she said to the dragon in human form. “Tatyana Shestakova of the Black Bear Riders of the Midnight Mountains of—”
“Yes,” he cut in. “I remember well.”
“This, cousin, is Gaius Lucius Domitus.”
Tatyana gasped. “The king himself.”
Kachka snorted as more slavers behind her died at the hands and arrows of her companions. “So impressed by rank is she, lizard. You two should get along well.”
He was still smiling, but then, slowly, it began to fade, as his eye moved from Kachka to whatever was behind her.
On instinct, she stood and turned, facing an eyeless woman in a simple white dress. Those eyes had been removed purposely, she’d guess, since there were no ugly scars. Her eyelids were simply sewn shut, so that the woman’s beauty was not lost.
With arms raised at her sides, the woman grinned at Kachka.
“Greetings, my—”
Kachka rammed her blade into the woman’s belly, not letting her finish whatever she’d been planning to say.
The woman’s mouth dropped open in shock and she discovered the blade and the blood pouring onto the ground.
“But . . .” she panted. “But . . . I am unarmed.”
“I am Rider,” Kachka said in return, yanking her blade from the woman, pulling it back and slashing it forward, removing the woman’s head in one swipe. “So I do not care that you are unarmed.”
Tatyana stood, eyes wide. “Cousin! What did you do?”
“She was enemy. I killed her. That is what we do.” It galled her she had to remind her cousin of that.
“Look at her,” Zoya said as she tossed away a man whose spine she’d snapped. “She has no eyes. She was suffering. You
r cousin did what she must.”
Tatyana, always so sensitive, growled and crouched by the woman’s body. She pulled her dress down in the front until she revealed a mark burned into the woman’s flesh.
“Horse gods,” Tatyana whispered. “She is Chramnesind.”
“What?” Marina asked. “She is what?”
“She is a priestess of the Chramnesind cult.”
“Is that a real thing?” Marina shrugged. “I thought that was made up.”
“It is not made up.” Tatyana stood. “We need to go.”
“But we have boar,” Zoya argued.
“We must release these slaves and we must go,” Tatyana said as she walked toward the weak ones who’d allowed themselves to be captured.
“I get to keep the boys, though, yes?”
“No!” Tatyana shot back. “You do not get to keep slaves!”
“Not slaves! Future husbands for my daughters!”
“Och!” Tatyana snarled with a wave of her hand before she began removing the slaves’ chains, Ivan at her side helping.
“And who is that one?” Marina asked, pointing at the Sovereign with her blood-wet sword.
“That,” Kachka said, “is Gaius Lucius Domitus. The One-Eyed Rebel King of the Quintilian Empire—”
“And Iron dragon,” Nina Chechneva finished, although to be honest, Kachka had forgotten all about the witch in the last ten minutes.
“He cannot be dragon,” Zoya argued. “A dragon would burn all these slavers to embers. Not sit around shackled like weak human male.”
“It is not the shackles that stop him from being dragon.” Nina crouched beside him and pulled the fur cape from his body, revealing the gold torc around his neck. “It is this thing.” She nodded at the headless corpse. “She placed this on him and now he cannot be dragon. He cannot fight. He can do nothing but wait.”
“Then take it off,” Kachka snapped. She desperately wanted to get back to that boar.
“I cannot.”
“I thought you were witch. With all your dark magicks and hip undulating.”
“This is dragon magicks, Kachka Shestakova. I have no gods in the dragon pantheon.”
“I do not know what that means, but I do know that you have disappointed me, Nina Chechneva.”
“That will keep me up nights,” she shot back.
Kachka was about to go to Nina and slap her, just to make a point, but her cousin pulled her back.
“We have to get this off him. I mean . . . unless he always looks like he is . . .”
“Dying.” Zoya shrugged. “He looks like he is dying.”
“He is dying,” Nina confirmed. “But a Dragonwitch will need to remove this. A powerful one.”
“Fine,” Kachka said. “Then we will take him back to the Dragon Queen. She is Dragonwitch.”
“He will never reach Southlands,” Nina said. “He will be dead by time we get there.”
Now they all looked down at him and stared. After a moment, the Dragon King looked up and his weak eye widened a bit. “What?” he asked.
“We should kill him here,” Zoya said. “Put him out of his misery.”
“I’d prefer you not,” he said simply.
“Quiet, penis-haver.”
He smirked. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“We cannot kill him,” Tatyana immediately argued.
“So we should let him die in agony?”
“He is weak, but I would not say he is in agony,” Ivan noted.
“No one speaks to you,” Zoya snapped. “Useless boy.”
“We are not killing him,” Kachka cut in. “I know where we can take him for help.”
“It must be someplace close. We have maybe . . .” She glanced down at the dragon. “. . . two days. Possibly three. But that is stretch.”
Kachka looked up at the sky, studied the stars. “Two days . . . we can do. But we need to leave now.”
Zoya rolled her eyes. “What about boar?” she demanded.
“We will eat on way! Do not irritate me, Zoya Kolesova!”
Zoya grinned and patted Kachka on the back, nearly breaking the bone where her neck and spine met. “Do not worry, little Kachka Shestakova! I will help you take dying dragon to his final resting place! And everyone will say you at least tried!”
Marina stood next to Kachka, rubbing her forehead and watching as Zoya took the time to gather whatever gold and silver the now-dead slavers had on them. “I am so very glad she volunteered for this job.”
Kachka, unable to deal with this anymore, crouched beside the dragon again.
“Because you helped my sister when she needed it most, lizard, I will try to help you now.”
“You’ve already helped so much, Kachka. Because trust me,” he said, glancing at the priestess Kachka had killed, “wherever she was taking me . . . I was going to be in for a very long, very bad time.”
Chapter Four
They rode for two more days as Kachka used the suns and her own memory to guide her. For a Rider, two days on horseback was nothing, but watching the Iron King waste away before her eyes made the trip seem interminable.
He could barely even sit on the horse they got him, and was sometimes forced to lie facedown across the beast. A few times, she feared the dragon had stopped breathing.
The evening before they arrived at their destination, they had stopped for a few hours’ rest before the suns rose. Zoya had carried the dragon in human form to a spot near the fire they built, unceremoniously dumping him onto the ground.
Tatyana had hissed at her before surrounding him with everyone’s travel furs and using her own pack to support his back. Kachka hadn’t been able to tell if Tatyana truly felt bad for him, however, or if she was just dazzled by his rank.
Once he’d been settled, Kachka had sat down beside him and given him some of her water, putting the flask to his lips.
“I need you to do something for me, Kachka Shestakova,” he’d said once he’d gotten his fill.
“And what is that, lizard?”
He’d smirked, seeming to appreciate that she wasn’t treating him like he would surely die.
“Because of the power of this torc, I cannot reach my sister.”
“Yes. That thing you dragons do with your mind.”
“Right. So when I die, I want you to tell my sister. No one else.”
“Zoya Kolesova may already be treating you like a corpse, lizard, but I have not given up hope on you yet. You royals have a way of surviving when everyone thinks you should have died off long ago.”
“I know. But my father always taught me to prepare for the worst. And I don’t want Annwyl or, even worse, Rhiannon telling my sister about my passing. I am almost positive that the alliance we have between our people would not last.”
“And you think sending me will help?”
He’d reached out then and looped one of her curls around his index finger, studying it.
“Help?” he’d asked. “No. Keep Annwyl and Rhiannon away from my sister? Yes. But you have to give me your word, Rider.”
“I swear on my honor. But I am surprised you have so little faith in me, lizard.”
He’d managed a small smile. “Oh?”
“That you think I would just let you die so easily. You know my sister. She does like to whine. Like big baby. But you helped her adjust to her missing eye, and now she has loyalty to you. So unless I want to hear that whine . . . and I do not . . . then I must at least attempt to keep your disgusting scales healthy.”
“You’ve never even seen my scales. They’re quite beautiful.”
Kachka had curled her lip. “I bet they are slimy. Like snake.”
“Snakes are not slimy and I am definitely not slimy.”
“I did not say you. I said your scales.”
“I am my scales.”
“You should stay human all the time. You look much better as human.”
“Now you’re trying to make me angry.”
Sh
e’d smiled at that. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
That had been last night, though. When she’d had more hope. Now . . . now he wheezed as he sat upon the horse Kachka had chosen for him. His body was so weak in the saddle, the only thing keeping him up was Zoya riding beside him, one hand gripping her own reins, the other gripping his shoulder.
They stopped outside the back entrance to the cave that Kachka sometimes saw in her nightmares and stared at it.
“You want us to go in there?” Tatyana had asked. Questioning, she called it. Always afraid, Kachka called it.
“Yes. We’re going in here.”
They dismounted and lit torches, making their way into the vast darkness.
They traveled for quite a bit in silence. Kachka could hear the sounds of small animals moving around in the dark but nothing else.
So it wasn’t a sound that alerted her to another’s presence. It was the way the air around them abruptly changed.
Kachka had always been fast with a weapon, but she didn’t even have it pulled from her scabbard when she felt a blade press the flesh under her chin.
“Ah-ah-ahhh. Let’s not be hasty,” a voice ordered.
Kachka released the hilt of her weapon and lifted her hand.
“What are Riders doing in this cave?”
“I am here to see—”
“She’s fine,” a male voice called out from the darkness.
A word she did not recognize was whispered and torches lining both sides of the cave walls burst to life, revealing that their small group was surrounded. And probably had been for quite some time.
Something that was not lost on her fellow tribeswomen.
Moving around a boulder, sliding his blade back into its sheath, a male walked to Kachka and smiled at her.
“Kachka Shestakova.” Bold eyes moved over her. “I have to admit, I never really thought I’d see you again.”
“Abomination,” she replied, recognizing the only son of Annwyl the Bloody, Talan. “I see death has found you quite well.”
“Why are you here? And stop calling me Abomination.”
“Apologies, Abomination. I do not mean to upset. I need help.”
“For the dragon?” he asked, nodding at the lizard slumped over his saddle.
“Yes.”
The Abomination moved closer. “You do not seem like the kind of Rider who would have many dragon friends, no matter who your sister is fucking. So who is this one?” he asked, gesturing with a gloved hand.
