Dragon's Hope (The Dragon Corps Book 3)

by Natalie Grey

  In fact, why had she not looked on the computer before? All of the Warlord’s plans were probably on there in some form or other. Cursing herself for her stupidity, she swiped sideways on the message, and only then realized that she was likely going to be asked for a password.

  No password required; the Warlord, like other powerful people, did not seem to believe that anyone could have gotten to his computer. Aryn waved her fingers to the left to scroll through the desktop items, and frowned. Where should she even start?

  The message. As good a place as any. Something coming in now had more likelihood of being relevant, surely, than any file she picked at random. Aryn scrolled back until she found the messages, and opened this one, notification glowing a jarring blue in this room of golds and reds.

  It was from Ellian. Aryn frowned, then shook her head. So he’d used a pseudonym; she supposed that was to be expected. She recognized the signoff, however: ENP. The message, unfortunately, was uninformative: Release Aryn first, it read. Touching, but unhelpful. And Ellian had to know that there was no chance his request would be honored.

  But what was he responding to? Aryn searched for a button that would bring her to the message thread. Nothing under the pseudonym. Sent messages… And there it was. Schematics. She looked through them, uncomprehending, wishing she’d studied engineering instead of piloting. That was a valve there. That was a…what were they called…

  Dammit. She scrolled, trying to find any hint of a description, and there, at the bottom, found a map with thirty-one districts all marked, and multiple locations inside each mine and city.

  It was simple, she realized. Whatever this thing was it had to be a weapon or the Warlord wouldn’t be asking Ellian for it. And the man had admitted to her face that he intended to crush the rebellion. Aryn scrolled back up and memorized as much of the schematic as she could. It was small, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, and faintly domed on top. Two tiny release valves stuck out one side of it.

  It would have to be enough. And she needed to tell the rebellion. How to get out?

  Think, think!

  Aryn looked around herself at the doors, listened for any sound outside, and then kicked off her shoes and stood, pulling the hem of her gown up and tucking it into her bodice. Too dangerous to try the door—she’d seen soldiers waiting in the hallway outside. And if she remembered her view of the palace correctly, this domed roof was far from the tallest thing around, so she wouldn’t be stranded on the outside of a spire and plummet to her death if she climbed out here.

  So far, so good. Aryn marched over to the bookshelves, wiped her palms on her gown, and took a deep breath. Then she launched herself up, placing hands and feet carefully as she scrambled up the makeshift ladder, thanking her past self for the daily workouts. Her eyes caught sight of a few volumes as she climbed: an embossed Bible, the leather crumbling with age, and an old, heavy encyclopedia set.

  She saw the alarm system a scant half-second before she set her hand down on the final ledge. She yanked her hand back, gasp echoing around the room, and nearly fell. Her grip slid along the shelves and then held, fingers aching, and Aryn shook as she curled her body close. She gave a second look at the alarm system, lasers glowing a baleful red. It was enclosed in a metal shell, and the goldwork of her necklace would be too soft to serve as a tool. Why couldn’t the Warlord have been as confident here as he was with his computer?

  More importantly, how was she going to get over the ledge without tripping the alarm? Aryn craned her head to look around. There had to be a way. There had to be.

  Don’t spend time clinging to plans that won’t work, Samara’s voice said in her mind, a constant refrain as they tried to harry the Warlord’s soldiers in the villages. How many times do I have to tell you?

  “Never again,” Aryn promised, as she always did. She tried not to wonder if she would see Samara again; at any rate, that should hinge on whether or not she could get out. She climbed back down carefully and kicked her way free, landing on the carpet with a sigh.

  Maybe there was another door, a secret door. She looked around at the desk and wandered over to it. She spent a moment to remember the arrangement of the papers on its surface and then began to shift each carefully, looking below it for a lever, and inlaid panel, anything that might be pressed, or respond to a palm print… But it would be pressure, she was sure of it. The Warlord always wore gloves, and secret doors were for emergencies and subtlety. He wouldn’t want to stop to bare his fingers.

  No buttons. Aryn ran her hands around the carved patterns at the edge of the desk and swore when she found nothing there, either. She looked behind herself at the painting, and along the sides of the bookshelves. Maybe the lever was one of the books, like it so often was in films.

  …there had to be thousands of books in here, and without knowing where the door was, she could hardly limit the search to which books would be conveniently placed. Aryn chewed her lip and crossed her arms.

  Her head jerked up a moment later. Pulling at the drawers on the desk, Aryn found sheaves of paper, notebooks, computers…and, buried deep in one drawer, a gun. She checked, her fingers shaking. Loaded. She didn’t have to warn anyone. She just had to stop this at the source: the Warlord.

  She didn’t stop to think. She knew that if she paused to consider this, even for a moment, she would lose her nerve. Leaving the gun on the desk, she ran lightly across the carpet and rapped on the inside of the door. When it opened a crack to reveal a soldier’s unfriendly face, Aryn did her best to look chastened.

  “Would you ask the Warlord to come back, please?”

  “No.” He shut the door in her face.

  “But it’s important!” Aryn called. “Please, it’s important.”

  Silence. She bit her lip, trying to come up with something.

  “I feel too guilty not to tell him. I can’t just let him walk into a trap.”

  The door opened again, and the man glared at her suspiciously.

  “The weapons he wanted from Mr. Pallas,” Aryn said. “I think I know where they are. Please tell the Warlord to get out of his meeting. It’s not safe there. And the rest—look, just tell him to come back.”

  It was enough.

  “Wait here,” the soldier told her curtly. He shut the door in her face before she could ask what else he expected her to do, and she heard his footsteps pounding down the corridor at a run.

  It would be soon. One way or another. Aryn took a deep breath, heart racing, and then she walked slowly back across the carpet to pick up the gun and kneel behind the desk. She fixed her eyes on the door and tried to empty her mind.

  The Warlord must have been closer than she thought, for it was not long after that footsteps sounded in the hall. As the door creaked open, Aryn gripped the gun and slid her finger onto the trigger, struggling to draw breath. It was now or never.

  20

  The first thing that occurred to Cade when he woke up was that he was clearly somewhere near the lower end of purgatory. The rock beneath him was hot enough that he was sweating, and the smells of soot and explosives wafted heavy in the air. The ground was shaking somewhat, and he could hear the low murmur of hopeless voices. Not hell, filled with fire and the screams of the damned, but close.

  Funny. He’d always figured he’d end up in hell.

  All was explained, however, when he tried to sit up and blacked out. When he came to, he was shuddering, a silent scream on his lips. He took a deep breath and winced. No dead person ever hurt this much.

  Or maybe it was hell. After all, Ellian’s comments hadn’t left much room for interpretation.

  “Hey.” Someone nudged him with their foot. “You alive?”

  Cade cracked his eyes open and froze. The faces staring down at him were unhealthily pale, with lank hair and reddened eyes. Their coveralls were filthy; a cautious glance showed his body clothed in the same.

  “Where is this?” The words came out in a voice that cracked and broke in a dry throat. “
What is this place?”

  With a mechanical shriek and a groan, the ground shuddered and went still.

  “You have to get up.” Hands pulled at him and Cade gritted his teeth on the pain as they hauled him upright.

  “Where…” His lip cracked.

  No one paid attention to him. He could pick out rock behind them in the flicker of headlamps, and he was carried out into a low hallway by a tide of people. Boots tramped on metal and stone, the roof reached down for him, and two of his cohort looped his arms over their shoulders to haul him along. Their whispers seemed to be coming from far away.

  We’ll still be held to quota.

  He doesn’t even know where he is.

  Came to the elevator and he was already in there.

  Cade’s lips moved and he could hear his voice, but they did not bother to look at him. Yelling was coming from ahead, the sounds of machinery growing louder, and presently the party emerged into a low, dark chamber filled with the hiss and groan of machinery. Cade’s impaired vision managed to pick up the regular motion of assembly lines. Mechanical bells buzzed, sending pain shooting through his skull, and the rows of hunched workers ceded their places in line to the new group.

  “Stand here.” They deposited Cade at the middle of one row as a series of commands were yelled from one side of the room. “You know what you’re supposed to do? They trained you, right?”

  “What is this place?” They were already reaching out for the machinery on the lines, taking one piece from the buckets at their side and twisting it onto the hot metal that emerged from the tunnels at the end of the room.

  “Assembly line,” one of them said impatiently. “Move. We’ve still got quota to make. Which district are you from?”

  “I’m from Gendir.” The words came out of his mouth while his mind, still working at what felt like one-quarter speed, caught up too late for him to suggest that this was all the wrong set of questions.

  There was a moment of silence among those still close enough to hear.

  “The planet?” one of them asked at last.

  “Yes.” He looked around at them. This was a mistake, all of it. “I’m…” Caution took hold of him at last, and he leaned close to one of them, marking the man’s eyes. No deception there. “I’m not supposed to be here,” Cade said, his voice low. “I have to get out.” Aryn. He had to get to Aryn.

  God alone knew where he was now, though. He closed his eyes. What godforsaken corner of space had Ellian sent him to? Somewhere close, or more of him would have healed, but if they’d put him in stasis…

  No way to know. He just had to get to a spaceport and back to Ymir.

  “Hey!” The call came from behind him and a blow drove Cade forward toward the moving belt. “Get moving!”

  He didn’t think. His muscles hurt, but instinct didn’t care about that. He shoved himself back, already turning, an elbow catching the man behind him in the temple. The guy went down like a sack of bricks and Cade staggered sideways, trying to keep his balance as his head spun. His motions were too slow. How much blood had he lost?

  Pain exploded through him the next moment, a buzz in his ears as his body hit the floor. He could taste metal and dust and his muscles were seizing. Boots appeared in his vision and a kick was directed at his midsection. Blows rained down, and he managed to take a deep breath, sinking away and down. This was just pain. This was pain for the sake of pain. That, he’d been trained to leave behind him.

  Yelling caught his ears. The unique tenor of threats, and the pleading of the ones next to him. Hands picked him up and Cade wanted to tell them not to bother. He was on the edge, his head spinning and his heart slowing. He was supposed to be dead, anyway. He could just lie here… But either the words didn’t make it out of his mouth, or no one listened. He was propped back up on the edge of the machine.

  “You have to move,” one of them whispered. “They’ve increased quota.”

  “Tell him to hurry it up,” one voice said, unfriendly. “We can’t do his work, too.”

  “Shut up.” The voice was female and young, but the others fell silent at the authority in it. Small hands reached into Cade’s view. “Watch me. You take the cap here, and screw it on like this, then drop the piece into the hole by your feet. Got it?”

  Cade looked up at her, and her grey eyes were so urgent that his request for them just to let him die froze on his lips. He found it in him to nod and picked up a piece of metal, hissing as the hot metal seared at the cuts on his skin. His right wrist, poking out of a too-short sleeve, was red and raw where he had yanked it free of the ropes.

  “There you go,” the woman said. “As quickly as you can. They’re still watching.”

  Cade nodded, keeping the motion as small as he could. Pick up, twist, drop. Pick up, twist, drop. Steam hissing and dust heavy in the air. His eyes were burning.

  “What happened to you?” the woman asked finally. There was genuine sympathy in her tone. When Cade looked up, her look said that he had very bad luck, indeed, to end up in whatever this place was.

  Cade spent a moment trying to decide how to answer that. His hands were moving automatically now, but his knees were shaking and he could taste blood in his mouth.

  “Tortured,” he said finally.

  “And then they sold you here? Someone must really hate you.”

  The shapes around him nodded.

  “You could say that.” Cade allowed a bitter smile to touch his lips. His fingers fumbled on one of the pieces and it dropped to the ground. He hissed with pain as he tried to kneel and find it in the dark.

  “You! You.” The overseer again.

  “Oh, just let him be.” The woman’s voice was suddenly sharp. “We’re running ahead on this line.”

  There was a tense silence while Cade’s useless fingers scrabbled for the piece and the people around him waited for the guard’s response.

  “Fine,” the man said at last. “But one more bit of trouble out of him—”

  “There won’t be any more trouble,” the woman promised. Her voice was shaking a little, but she stood her ground.

  “Good.” The voice retreated.

  The piece was wedged between two support struts. Cade scrabbled for it and yanked it free, examining it as he pulled it out. Domed, small, it had two tiny openings on the side for…something. When he flipped it over, there was a tiny place that looked like it would hold a bottle.

  “Hey, you.” The woman ducked under the table. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” Cade pulled himself back up on the other side of the belt. “Look, where the hell am I?”

  “The mines.” She shook her head impatiently. “Ymir.”

  “What?” His head swam. “I’m on Ymir? I’m still on Ymir?” Hope flared, contradictory.

  “What do you mean, still on—” She broke off. “You said you were from Gendir.”

  “Originally. I’m—I came here with…” He shook his head. “Listen to me, I need to get out. There’s someone I need to get away from the Warlord.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice was suddenly unfriendly. “All of us need to get someone away from—”

  “No. Her name is Aryn, she’s married to a man named Ellian Pallas.” He leaned close to hiss the words. “The Warlord took her. That’s part of what happened to me, I was her bodyguard.”

  “Ellian Pallas is the warlord’s armorer,” a voice said. “We’re not helping his wife.”

  “You don’t understand, she’s from here.”

  Their looks said that this was even worse, and Cade scrambled to recover.

  “Listen to me, she persuaded her husband to stop selling weapons to the Warlord, do you understand? And the Warlord took her hostage to persuade him to start again.” He had the sense, at least, not to mention that Ellian was not particularly likely to be influenced by this. Whatever the man was planning, getting Aryn out was Cade’s first priority. “I have to get to her. Do you have any passageways, any way to contact the resistance?” Ca
de asked them urgently.

  At once, they all looked away. They could not have been more obvious if they tried, but their eyes were flat.

  “We know nothing,” the woman said flatly.

  “I know I’m unknown to you, but I swear I mean you no harm. I am here to help.”

  None of them actually snorted in disbelief, but they might as well have.

  “It looks like you know something about hand to hand combat,” the woman across from him said quietly, at last. Her hands had not stopped moving, but he had read the flare of tension in the tremor of her arms, the set of her face. The others shot her terrified looks, but she ignored them. When she raised her head at last, there was both terror and hatred in her eyes. “Never seen someone fight like that. Where’d you get that training?”

  Ms. Beranek, kindly tell Williams what every citizen on Ymir knew before the Dragons did…

  They knew. They suspected.

  “Listen to me,” Cade said urgently. “You have to believe me. Find Samara. She’s in Io, she knows who I am, she can get you weapons, you have to—”

  The blow, when it came, was several bodies crashing into his. Fingers were at his neck, over his mouth and nose, a rag soaked in something that made his throat burn, and the world faded to a blur, and then to blackness as Cade struggled desperately for breath.

  21

  The door creaked faintly and Aryn tightened her grip on the gun. She was going to die. She could feel tears starting in her eyes and she needed to have her vision clear, she needed to be quick and move without hesitation. She was going to die, and that was all right, she told herself. Taking down a man like the Warlord was a perfectly good way to go, all things considered.

  But no one came in the door. Aryn narrowed her eyes, her heart thudding wildly. Was the Warlord wearing some sort of invisibility cloak? Could he actually become invisible, himself? Was he modified somehow, like all those rumors claimed? The back of her neck was prickling. He could be behind her, she could hear scuffling—