Morishtomaric looked to the side, and Sardelle couldn’t help but look too. The voice had come from that direction.
Phelistoth, a gray arrow as he streaked down from the clouds, aimed straight at the gold dragon.
No, Tylie cried with her mind, he’ll kill you.
Stay, Phelistoth ordered. Neither was bothering to pinpoint their communications to each other.
Morishtomaric did not appear worried by the silver dragon plummeting toward him, gravity and momentum adding speed. He blew fire at Duck’s flier again. Sardelle threw up her hand, creating her barrier once again, though she worried the distance and her growing fatigue would make it ineffective.
Ridge fired his machine guns. He had to be careful of the angle—anything that bounced off could hit them. Sardelle didn’t know why he bothered when the bullets did nothing. Because there was nothing else to do and he felt helpless, she supposed. As flames slammed into her barrier, she groaned in pain, understanding perfectly that helplessness. The fire chewed into her barrier like an incinerator melting an ice cube.
Duck dipped down toward the trees, clearly aware of the inferno trying to swallow them from behind. Tylie looked back at the dragons, one of her legs still dangling over the side.
Get back in, Sardelle warned her, tempted to nudge her mentally to force her to do so, but she was too busy keeping that barrier up. She could feel Jaxi channeling her energy into it, as well, making the ice cube last a little longer.
Phelistoth, the silver arrow from the gray skies, slammed into Morishtomaric’s side. Claws sank into scale, and the two dragons rolled side over side, raking and biting like alley cats in a fray. A fray two hundred feet above the ground.
The stream of flames disappeared, but Duck continued whipping evasively through the treetops. He hadn’t seen the dragons engage behind him. Ridge lifted the nose of his flier, taking them over the battle, where the dragons were starting to fall as they clawed and bit, their tails thrashing at each other. For a few seconds, Sardelle didn’t have Duck’s flier within view.
Phel! Tylie’s anguished cry sounded in everyone’s minds.
Ridge cursed again, tilting his flier toward the trees. Tylie was falling. He would never make it in time.
Almost dropping Jaxi, Sardelle gripped the edge of her seat with both hands, closed her eyes, and found Tylie with her mind. With her waning energy, she gathered air beneath her flailing target, forcing herself to remain calm, to take her time and do it right. That was easier thought than done as Tylie plummeted toward the ground, smacking leaves and being clawed by branches on the way down. Sardelle thickened the air under her into a dense column. Tylie slowed, then stopped five feet from the ground. Carefully, Sardelle set her down.
When she released her magic, she slumped back in her seat. She was panting, her breaths sounding loud and hoarse in her own ears. Her collar and shirt stuck to her skin, as wet from her own sweat as from the rain.
Ridge might not want to cloister himself with you tonight, Jaxi observed.
Sardelle was too exhausted to do more than glare at her.
Sorry. You did well. It’s hard keeping teenagers alive, I hear.
“Sardelle?” Ridge asked. They were still flying, and Sardelle tried to rouse herself enough to pay attention to the situation. “Is there any chance…” He looked back at her, his face grim. “I can’t see anything or get down there. Too tight. Did she—”
“She’s alive,” Sardelle said. Her head hurt too much for telepathy.
I’ll tell her to run to a clearing where we can get her. The dragon fight isn’t going to last for long. Phelistoth is getting clawed to pieces.
Sardelle relayed Jaxi’s message to Ridge, both of them. For a moment, he’d worn an expression of relief, at hearing that Tylie lived, but the grimness soon returned.
“Understood,” was all he said.
Chapter 5
Tolemek left a couple of dragon-blood experiments running in the laboratory that he had set up on the airship and walked out onto the deck to get some air. In truth, it wasn’t the air that interested him. He hadn’t seen much of Cas since they left, and he hoped to find her. To ask her what in all the levels of hell she had been thinking in volunteering to carry that cursed sword again. She hadn’t yet recovered from what it had made her do the last time she had held it. Maybe she never would. Yes, it was nestled in its special box, the box he and Zirkander had found under Colonel Therrik’s bed the night they had been spying, but Tolemek did not trust that to dull its influence completely.
He must have been grumbling his thoughts aloud as he walked, because several of the soldiers—artillery and airship crew—glanced at him when they passed by. He forced himself to wipe away his glower. Few of them knew him as anything other than Deathmaker, the ex-Cofah soldier and ex-pirate who had been responsible for far more deaths than Cas would ever claim. Even though everyone knew he now researched for King Angulus, he’d run into quite a few Iskandians who would happily help him accidentally fall over the railing of the airship.
Tolemek slowed his pace as he neared the open section of deck that held two fliers, the bronze dragon-inspired craft with their painted fang-filled “snouts” quite laughable now that he’d seen a real dragon. He hoped he might find Cas working near them, loading the machine guns or helping with some bit of maintenance. He had glimpsed her in the area earlier, back in her military uniform, albeit with the rank removed. Her hair had been freshly cut, and she had carried her Mark 500 sniper rifle on her back. It had seemed right for her, reminding him of when they had first met. Oh, she hadn’t been wearing her uniform or weapons then, not as a prisoner of war in a Cofah dungeon, but she had been every bit the confident and competent soldier, the woman with whom he had, against all wisdom, fallen in love.
Unfortunately, he didn’t see her by the fliers now. A pimple-faced young man was doing maintenance there instead, painting scratches near the nose of one of the craft. Tolemek did not know him, but he wore the Wolf Squadron wolf-head pin on his uniform, along with flier wings and a lieutenant’s rank on his collar. Tolemek frowned slightly at the man’s youth, imagining him flying Cas up to fight the dragon if Zirkander did not return in time. How much experience could this pup have? As much as Zirkander rubbed Tolemek’s fur the wrong way at times, he couldn’t deny the general’s skill. If Cas had to go out for an air battle with a dragon, Tolemek wanted Zirkander to be the one flying her.
He walked up behind the young officer, about to ask if he knew where Cas was, but two mechanics strolled past the front of the fliers, and one of them addressed him first.
“You missed a few spots, Pimples.” A sergeant carrying a toolbox pointed a wrench at a scratch on the nose. “The flier’s not supposed to look like your face.”
The young man flushed red. “That’s Lieutenant Pimples, Sergeant.”
The sergeant had at least ten years on the lieutenant and waved the wrench dismissively as he and his comrade continued past. The lieutenant’s shoulders slumped. He must have been in his early twenties, but he seemed barely older than Tylie. Tolemek wondered why he had been chosen for the mission.
The lieutenant walked toward the railing. Tolemek followed him, but paused when he saw him approaching General Ort. Unless visiting his kitchen in the middle of the night counted, Tolemek had not interacted with the officer, and he hesitated to walk up unannounced. For all he knew, Ort shared some of Colonel Therrik’s prejudices about magic—and those who could wield it.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Pimples asked, “should I do something when they disrespect… an officer?”
General Ort had been staring pensively over the railing at the farmlands plodding past below and might not have heard the “disrespect,” but he faced the younger man now. “You have to earn their respect.”
“But they don’t even know me. The dirigibles have their own hangars, and I’ve barely seen them before. It’s one thing when Wolf Squadron harasses me—I’m used to that—but…” He shrugged his shoulder
s helplessly.
Tolemek supposed he should back up. He shouldn’t be eavesdropping on the conversation, and he didn’t care that much about the lieutenant’s problems. He just wanted to find Cas.
“I don’t know why we have to get such embarrassing nicknames,” Pimples said. “Not everybody does. Ahn gets to be Raptor. And what about Blazer? And Crash? Well, Crash probably isn’t that flattering, but I don’t get why we all can’t get respectful names when we’re up there risking our lives.”
Tolemek’s resolve to back away faded at the mention of Cas’s name, his curiosity roused as he wondered if they would speak about her and what they might say.
“It’s part of being accepted into the squadron,” Ort said. “You should know that. There are more embarrassing nicknames than not, I believe. I don’t think anyone dared peg Raptor with anything too unflattering, given who her father is. Also, she was one of the rare ones who performed admirably—more than admirably—on her first mission. She utterly destroyed four gunners on a pirate airship by herself, as I recall. Most people flub things early on, when their nerves get the best of them. Takes a while to grow out of that. Just be pleased you survived your early missions. Not everybody does.”
“I suppose. I’ve always wondered… how come General Zirkander doesn’t have a nickname, sir? Was he like Raptor? Too good to mock?”
General Ort snorted.
Tolemek leaned his shoulder against the flier. It might have been Cas’s name that had kept him here eavesdropping, but he wouldn’t mind some ammo to use against Zirkander at an appropriate moment.
“Let’s just say,” Ort said, “that he’s relieved that everyone who knew it has retired, passed away, or transferred out of a flight unit.”
“Oh, let’s say more than that, sir. Please? You know it.”
“Yes, and it’s a shame he doesn’t go by it anymore.” General Ort had struck Tolemek as a serious officer, not someone who made jokes or found much amusing in life, but he sounded like his eyes were gleaming now.
“What is it?”
“Don’t you have some paint left to apply, Lieutenant?”
Tolemek frowned, almost as disappointed as Pimples, no doubt. Sardelle had tried to teach him a few techniques for telepathic communication and sensing other people’s thoughts, but he didn’t know enough to try and read whatever Ort was thinking about yet. The king kept him too busy with his other research, the work where his talents flowed out naturally without conscious thought.
“Aw, sir. If you tell me, I won’t tell anyone else. And I’ll paint the scratches on your flier too. And oil the seat. And wipe down the control panel. And I’ll bring you lunch.”
“Weren’t you going to do that anyway?” Ort asked.
“Uhm. Maybe not the lunch part.”
“I see. Since you’ve made such a magnanimous offer, it would be rude of me not to accept it.” Ort lowered his voice and leaned close to Pimples.
Tolemek leaned around the nose of the plane, afraid he wouldn’t hear. He needn’t have worried. Pimples repeated the whispered word loudly and incredulously.
“Puddles?”
“Yes. I wasn’t stationed anywhere near the capital back then, but it’s in his records. Apparently, he was more scared than a dog in a thunderstorm when he took off on his first real assignment, and it was a killer. Cofah military disguising themselves as a ragtag band of pirates harassing the northern coast. They had four times the numbers and weapons than intel had led our men to believe. Half the squadron didn’t make it back. Ridge was probably hoping nobody would notice that he’d had a small accident at some point during the sheer terror of that battle, but we had khaki uniforms back then. Dark spots were quite noticeable.”
“He peed on himself?” Pimple asked.
“Puddles stuck for a long time afterward. It wasn’t until he took command of Wolf Squadron that he managed to stamp it out.”
“Sir, that is the most wonderful thing I’ve heard.”
“Good. I’ll expect extra pickles on my sandwich. And coffee. Black.”
“Yes, sir.”
A finger poked Tolemek in the back, and he jumped, whirling.
“Looking for someone?” Cas asked, lowering her arm.
Even though she was a foot shorter than he and looked more curious than stern, he couldn’t help but feel guilty. He was fairly certain that fearsome ex-pirates and research scientists appointed by the crown were supposed to be above eavesdropping.
“Yes.” He leaned a hand casually against the flier. “You.”
Lieutenant Pimples jogged past on his lunch-acquisition errand, pausing to look at them. And to wonder how long Tolemek had been standing there? No, he barely glanced at Tolemek. Instead, he gave Cas a quick, shy smile.
“Pimples,” Cas said by way of greeting, her tone neutral.
“Good to have you back, Raptor.” Pimples saluted her, his smile broadening, then he ran off.
An admirer, was he? Tolemek hoped he had nothing to worry about from a gangly insecure kid named after the pockmarks on his face.
“I was hoping to talk to you today,” Tolemek said. About the sword, he almost said, but there was a tenseness about her eyes, an expression that had grown familiar of late, and he doubted she wanted to be questioned on her decision. “About coming up with a weapon that might work against dragons,” he said instead. He would be happy to talk to her about his experiments, thus making the statement not quite a lie. And maybe he would bring up the sword at the end.
“Oh. All right.”
Aware of the general standing by the railing, Tolemek asked, “Do you want to see my new lab?” He believed he would get more honesty from her if they spoke in private. Then he doubted the decision, wondering if she would think he wanted to get her back there for sex. The lab did have a bunk in the corner, but he’d gotten the message from their recent encounters that she didn’t want anything to do with anyone, physically or emotionally. “The king must expect miracles, because he gave me some fancy new equipment.” There, that addition should make the request seem innocent.
And it was. He didn’t want to trick her into anything, except explaining her reasoning with the sword. It was probably too late to change her mind about being the one to wield it, but it might not be. Captain Kaika was on the airship, too, and she’d said she would accept the responsibility if the king wished it. Tolemek didn’t want anyone to wield that monster, but he hated the idea of Cas doing it again. What if she did lose control, magical phrases notwithstanding, and the sword made her kill Sardelle? Or slice Zirkander’s head off while he was flying her? That would destroy her even more surely than killing Apex had.
Cas smiled faintly. “Have you been making ice cream again?”
“Not yet, but I could.”
She waved toward the nearest hatchway that led below decks, and he took the lead. They passed soldiers lugging up shells for the big artillery weapons mounted at intervals around the deck. Tolemek doubted they would bring down a dragon. He had more hope for his own work. If he came up with something—and he was trying to, based on the same acid he had created to destroy the dragon blood powering the Cofah fortress—Cas wouldn’t need to risk herself with the sword. Besides, he found the idea of fighting a dragon with a sword ludicrous. Even with a flier, how would a person ever get close enough to hit it?
Tolemek ducked through the low hatchway and invited Cas inside. She wrinkled her nose at the chemical scent, or maybe she was noticing that there weren’t any chairs. He usually stood up when he worked, so he had barely noticed that the bed was the only place to sit. Maybe if he moved some of the gels he had running, they could sit on the counters. He eyed the low ceiling. If he hunched.
Cas did not comment on the lack of seating. She walked past the counters to the inner bulkhead that held the built-in bed and sat on it. She leaned her elbows on her thighs, clasped her hands together, and looked up at him. Her expression made his heart ache. Usually, she seemed older than her twenty-three years, seriou
s rather than playful, confident rather than uncertain. For the first time, she appeared younger than her age, small and lost.
“What is it?” he asked quietly, sitting and mirroring her position on the opposite end of the bed.
“I thought I wanted to be alone, that it would be torment being on the airship and surrounded by so many people again, but with that sword here… I’m afraid of being alone. It’s like I can feel it, the way Sardelle says she can feel magic. It makes my skin crawl, and I can’t stop thinking about everything, reliving that day. Over and over. If I close my eyes, I see it, the queen, the explosion, the floor falling away. Apex’s death.”
“Cas.” Tolemek wanted to reach out and pull her into his arms, but she still had her hands clasped, her shoulders hunched, as she stared at the floor between her boots. “Why did you volunteer to deal with it again?”
“If something happens…” She flexed her hands, her gaze shifting to her palms. “I didn’t want anyone else to have to have anyone’s blood on their hands. Not a friend’s blood.”
“So you’re going to sacrifice yourself?” he asked, feeling incredulous. That was what had prompted her decision?
“You can’t sacrifice someone who’s already dead.”
“You’re not dead.”
“Part of me is,” she whispered. “And the rest… it’s not fair, is it? When fate spares one life and takes another without any weight given to who might deserve life more?”
Tolemek scowled, both at the idea that she believed she was condemning herself to more blood on her hands and at the idea that Apex’s life might have been worth more than hers. “It’s not fair, but you can’t blame yourself for being the one who survived.”
“No? Not even when the person who died did so by my hand?”
“Not when a magical blade guided that hand, no.”
“I picked that sword up. I knew it was… strange, but I didn’t hurl it into the sea, like I should have.”
“You didn’t know. You should blame the asshole who made such an idiotic weapon in the first place. Some thousand-year-old version of me who didn’t think through what he was creating and ended up making something that could kill friends as well as enemies.”
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