by Leslie Chase
"They were already looking for trouble," Zardan said, wincing as he tried to pull himself up. "You heard him, that wasn't the attitude of a man looking for money. I stayed out of it until he threatened you, anyway. That is something I won't allow anyone to do."
The pure, angry sincerity in that statement gave her pause. She couldn't doubt that he meant it, especially when he'd forced himself from his sickbed to face down Danforth. If only he hadn't done it so forcefully. God dammit, what am I supposed to do now?
It was hard to keep her anger up when she was facing him like this. Sighing, she threw up her hands.
"Okay, fine, you were trying to help. That doesn't make this any less stupid," she told him, pulling some cushions from the sofa and trying to make him more comfortable. There was no way that she was going to move him until he'd recovered some strength. "Now what the hell did you mean, this is your land?"
8
Zardan
Gillian's touch made everything better. Her gentle hands guided him down onto the sofa and as she tried to make him comfortable, Zardan let his eyes close. He needed to think about how to answer her question, and right now that wasn't easy. Gillian didn't need to know just how far he'd pushed himself there, nor how much pain he was actually in. Getting up from his bed had hurt, and he could barely feel his wings now.
"I meant just what I said," he told her, deciding on the simple truth. He focused on keeping his breathing even and his voice steady. "You are on my family's land. My land now, since I must assume I am the last survivor of my family."
Saying that aloud stung worse than the wound in his side did, and he had to resist the urge to lash out, to break something. Everyone he'd known was dead, every plan he'd had for the future was now buried in the distant past. All of it was gone, long gone, in the dust and ice.
The cold grip of the centuries that had swallowed his family closed around him, and he stared towards the wall of the human habitation he sat in. I'm sorry, he thought. Mother, father, I've failed you both.
Gillian's finger poked into his arm, a warm touch that jarred him out of his introspection, and he snapped around to look at her again. She'd said something while he was lost in the past, but he had no idea what it was, and he could see the annoyed look in her eyes. His lip twitched with dark humor — while he'd worried about how he failed his family, he'd also managed to fail her. Great.
"I said, this is my family's land now," she repeated herself. "You can't just come back after a thousand years and say it's yours again. It was empty when we got here."
"If it's yours now, it's the bank's in a week," he snapped, regretting his tone instantly. But the pain made it hard to control his temper. "I don't know much about human law, but I don't think that you're in a position to win that argument, are you? If I own the land, on the other hand, then I can help you."
"Oh, and you think you can beat the bank in court?" Gillian put her hands on her hips and glowered down at him.
"I think I have a better chance than you do," Zardan said. Gillian was stubborn and unwilling to give in, and that was going to be a problem. But even though right now she was standing in his way, Zardan had to admire the way she would stand up to anyone and everyone. This wasn't the time for that, though. Not if she wanted to win this fight with the bank and keep her family's ice farm.
"You can't fight everyone and win, Gillian," he tried again. "Let me help you. If they try to take the land from me the fight will be in the Imperial Court, not wherever you humans settle legal disputes."
His knowledge of human laws and how they were enforced was vague at best. A thousand years ago, the humans he'd dealt with had appealed to kings and lords for their rulings, but that had clearly changed. He wasn't yet sure whether it had changed for the better or not, though he was confident that Gillian wouldn't prevail. She has to see sense, to let me help. She can't be stubborn enough to refuse... can she?
Gillian threw herself down on a seat opposite the sofa and the two of them glared at each other in silence. Eventually, reluctantly, she nodded.
"I'm not agreeing with your claim," she said, running a hand through her damp hair and leaving it a distractingly appealing tangle.
"I know that."
"This is my family's farm, we built it up and made it worth something. It's ours."
"Agreed."
"But if you're able to keep the bank off my back while I sort this out, then I guess I won't argue with you about it. Not until I've sorted out this mess and know what's going on."
He sighed with relief. At least I'll get to do one thing right while I'm here.
"Thank you," he said, feeling a shadow of a smile touch his lips. It was infuriating to have to push so hard to be allowed to help, but it was funny too. At least a little bit.
"I will need to recover faster if I'm going to be ready when they arrive," he continued. The pain and exhaustion were fading, but he could feel how weak he was. The injuries were deep in his bones, and he didn't know how much healing he could expect in a week. If the bank even waited that long before arriving to kick the Willis's out. Zardan didn't trust that Danforth character as far he could throw him, and right now that wasn't very far at all.
Gillian looked him over cautiously, and his smile broadened. The way her eyes widened as she looked at him made him feel better straight away, though he knew that was an illusion. He'd be willing to throw himself into a fight for her, but that didn't mean he'd be able to win.
"Let's get you back to bed, then," Gillian said, and her cheeks flushed as she heard what she'd said. She coughed, recovering her poise a little. "I mean, yes. You'll need to rest."
"And eat," he said. "Your human portions are too small."
"I've been giving you twice as much food as anyone else!"
"Half as much as I need," he said, grinning at the expression on her face. It was a mix of awe and horror at his appetite. "My body will need a lot of fuel if I'm going to recover. Aside from the fact that your cooking is delicious."
That last was true, but he said it mostly to see Gillian's blush deepen. She caught his amused look and glared helplessly before offering him her hand. "Fine. Okay. I'll feed you up, you heal, and then we deal with the bank. Together."
"Together." Zardan took her small hand in his, squeezing gently as they shook on the deal.
The stumble back to the guest room was undignified, and Zardan was glad he'd decided to make his way back alone. He could almost hear his mother scolding him for that — 'What if you fall? What if you hurt yourself?' — but no consequence he could think of would hurt as much as being seen struggling by Gillian.
It shouldn't matter, he told himself as he collapsed back onto the bed, the flimsy human construction creaking under his weight. It doesn't matter, not really. I won't be here long, and it makes no difference what she thinks of me.
But telling himself that changed nothing about his feelings. He would protect Gillian and her family, and he would not show weakness in front of her.
Staring up at the ceiling, he wondered why he was bothering to hide it. Boasting of his strength came easily in front of Gillian, and he knew that he would be a match for any humans who challenged him. Surviving might not be easy, but victory would be assured.
What worried him wasn't the humans, though. The bank might send thugs to help with the eviction process, but they wouldn't be any threat to a dragon shifter. Even if they thought they could win a fight against him, would they risk drawing the wrath of the Emperor? It seemed unlikely they'd be paid enough for that.
But there were the other dragons to worry about. The ones who'd threatened Gillian when he first saw her. Were they simply hunting humans out on the ice? It wasn't impossible, several dragons had traveled to Earth to fight and hunt humans back before they'd gone into hibernation. Some of the revived Dragon Guard might be bringing back that tradition, despite the Emperor's alliance with the humans. This was far enough away from the capital that Imperial law was weak anyway.
Zardan's w
orry was that there was more to it than that. No one had reported ice farmers going missing, after all. Could he have been lucky enough to intervene in their first attack? That seemed unlikely. Karaos and his friends were more likely to have some specific scheme in mind, but he couldn't work out what it might be.
I can't even be sure that it was Karaos that attacked, he reminded himself, frustrated at his lack of information. There could be another group of dragons out here, hunting.
He shook his head. That simply wasn't plausible, not really. He'd seen two dragons in Fuller Station, Karaos and his companion. Two dragons had followed him north. Given the small number of dragon shifters on Mars, they had to be the same ones. Didn't they?
The third attacker had already been in the area, though. Zardan didn't know what to make of that. What was there out here in the desolate, icy waste that could draw in a trio of dragons?
Punching the metal wall beside his bed hard enough to leave a dent, Zardan tried to stop thinking about that. It wouldn't help anyway, and he didn't have any answers. It was more important to rest and keep his strength up so that he'd be able to meet whatever challenge came his way.
That was easier said than done, though. The rooms were too small, and he was too used to being able to stretch out. Not to mention the fact that he'd never had to rest like this to recover from an injury before. The medical technology common in the Empire would have fixed him up in no time at all. Unfortunately, there wasn't any within a thousand miles and he was in no condition to go to it even if there was.
On the second day of Zardan's enforced rest, Harry noticed the dent in the wall. The human boy had kept delivering Zardan's meals to him — though now Gillian was cooking them, and the results were a good deal more pleasant to eat. It seemed that Gillian still wanted to keep out of his way.
That was frustrating, but it made things easier in some ways too. If she'd spent time with him, Zardan knew his ability to focus would vanish. Even knowing she was nearby was a distraction that he could barely cope with.
Harry looked at the damaged wall and, very cautiously, pressed his fist into the dent. It looked almost as though he expected the metal to be hot, and if would have been amusing if it hadn't been so embarrassing.
"I'm sorry about that," Zardan said awkwardly. Losing control like that was shameful, but the human didn't seem to mind.
"Wow, you're strong," he said, awestruck. "I doubt any human could leave a mark on that."
Zardan shrugged, unsure how to respond to that.
"I shouldn't take out my frustration on your home," he said eventually. "I'm a guest here, and that was unworthy of me. It's just so frustrating being stuck in this tiny space."
Harry's eyes lit up at that. "Oh, I can help with that," he said, putting down the tray piled high with Zardan's midday meal. "You eat up and I'll be back in a moment, okay?"
Before Zardan could say anything, the boy was gone, running off towards the vehicle bay. Zardan shook his head at the youngling's enthusiastic energy. I remember being that young. Barely.
'A moment' turned out to mean several hours, but then Harry returned along with Gillian. He had a huge grin spread across his face and she carried a strange contraption in her arms.
"Ta-da!" he said, gesturing at the armful of gear. Zardan looked at it dubiously. It consisted of a clear glass facemask and a couple of small pressure tanks., connected by straps.
"Harry said that you're feeling cooped up," Gillian said. "I guess that makes sense. So we made you this out of some spare parts we had lying around. It'll let you breathe outside — if you can cope with the cold? Harry tells me that you can, but I'm not so sure."
Zardan felt a grin spread over his face as he lifted the mask and turned it over. There was an airtight seal around the edges, and when he tried it on it seemed to fit well enough. It might work.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you both. These tiny rooms are torture for me, I need to be out under the sky."
"Alright then, big guy, want to try it out?" Gillian looked at him dubiously. "If we help you outside, we'll be there to drag you back in if something goes wrong."
He could feel the weight of her doubts and shook his head. Humans were so fragile. The fires that burned in the heart of a dragon shifter would protect him from the cold, and the low pressure wouldn't bother him either. It was only the need for air that kept him trapped inside.
And the humans had answered that problem for him. If this contraption worked, anyway, which remained to be seen.
He heaved himself up out of the bed, Gillian helping lift him. Harry tried to assist as well, but despite his efforts he was too small to add more than enthusiastic encouragement. Nonetheless he held onto Zardan's arm as though supporting him as the trio made their way to the airlock.
Gillian and Harry stepped into their spacesuits and Zardan fastened the mask around his head. The air pumped into it smelled of oil and plastic, but it was breathable. And then Gillian hit the cycle button, pumping the air out of the airlock.
"If there's any problem, tell me right away, okay?" Gillian's voice crackled out of a speaker inside the mask, startling Zardan. Of course she fitted a radio into it, we have to be able to talk, he told himself, trying not show his surprise. Harry's little laugh told Zardan that he hadn't succeeded entirely.
"I will come straight back inside if there is any difficulty," he replied, keeping as much of his dignity as he could. To his surprise, his heart was pounding. What is this, a dragon warrior excited at the thought of seeing the sky? He snorted in amused disgust at himself. I spend a few days in confinement and I lose all sense of proportion.
But when the outer door of the airlock slid open, he couldn't stop himself from laughing at the sight of the stars above. The sky was dark, the sun hanging low at the southern horizon and the twin moons of Mars shooting past in their tight orbits. It was a glorious sight.
All the more glorious that he shared it with his mate. Gillian stood by his side, arm around him ready to support him if he fell. A quick glance aside told him that she, too, was staring up at the beauty of the sky above them.
Together they stepped out of the airlock, and Zardan felt the sense of space around him like a physical relief. Finally, he could straighten up, could stretch, could breathe. Cautiously he extended his wings and hissed in pain at the movement. But he could manage it, and that was the main thing.
Harry dashed past the pair of them, scrambling up a frozen wave beside the farm's landing pad and out of sight over the top. Zardan envied him his mobility — he knew that if he tried to follow he'd fail. But his strength would come back with time and exercise. For now, Zardan made the effort not to worry about the future. It would bring what troubles it held whether he enjoyed this moment or not.
9
Gillian
Such moments of peace and quiet were fleeting for Gillian. Too many worries pressed on her for her to spare the time to relax, no matter how good sharing a moment under the stars with Zardan felt. In fact, in some ways that made her feel worse.
It doesn't matter how good being around him feels, she insisted to herself, trying to put away the thoughts that his presence raised in her mind. He's another man trying to take the farm away from us, no matter what he says. No matter how good he looks, or feels.
Focusing on her other worries wasn't any better. There was still no word from her father, or sign of him. Or of the money he'd taken with him, wherever he'd gone. Gillian and Harry wracked their brains trying to think of any other way to find him, but nothing helped. They'd called every hotel, every port that he might have gone through, and nothing helped.
It was as though he'd reached Fuller Station, sold the ice, and then vanished into thin air. And as unreliable as he'd been the last couple of years, that wasn't like him. Especially as the days passed without any sign of him, and the bank's deadline drew closer.
"Maybe we should hire a private investigator?" Harry asked hopefully, after another day's futile work. Gillian restrained an
urge to throw her coffee cup at him from across the room, settling for flipping her pen at the dartboard. It hit with a solid thunk and this time it stuck. I'm getting too much practice at that.
"With what money?" she asked Harry, forcing herself to appear calm for his sake. It wasn't easy. "We can't afford to pay a reasonable fee and anyone who'd take the job for what we can afford to pay... well, I wouldn't trust them to do a good job. More likely they'd just sit on their asses and take our money for nothing."
"There has to be something we can do," her brother complained. "I'm not just going to abandon Dad out there."
"Neither am I, but what do you suggest? All we know is that he arrived at Fuller Station on schedule and sold his ice to Maxine." At least they'd been able to get that much — Maxine Rogers was an old friend of the family, and she'd done her best to help track down their father. Not that it had helped any, but at least they knew for sure that he'd arrived. No one could even confirm that he'd left Fuller.
Where are you, Dad? At the bottom of a bottle in some dive, drinking the farm's profits? That was perhaps the best possible outcome, bad as it would be. At least he'd be alive. Gillian had a hard time thinking about the alternative.
"He's not in the hospital," Harry added. "That's something, right?"
Gillian pursed her lips and nodded, not wanting to point out that the hospital would be good news. But I don't want my little brother thinking that way, it's not a happy thought.
"I can't think of anywhere else he could be," she said aloud. "Whatever happened, he has to have been staying somewhere."
She'd called every hotel in Olympus Colony. There weren't many, people on Mars didn't tend to travel much, but Olympus was big enough to have a few. None of them would admit to having seen their father, though. There were only a couple of places to stay in Fuller Station, and she'd checked there too.
