by James Maxey
Rachale nodded slowly. "We're placing a great deal of faith that you've gotten this right."
"This requires no faith" said Bazanel. "This is chemistry. If you follow the formulas I've provided you, you will manufacture gunpowder by the barrelful. I stake my reputation as a scholar upon it."
"It isn't your reputation as a scholar that causes our concern," said Rachale. "It's your reputation for carelessness."
"I see," said Bazanel. Her use of the word "our" was of interest to him. Was this an opinion of the matriarch?
"Over the course of the last three decades, you've gutted four towers, caused structural damage to six others, killed two students, seventeen human slaves, and injured countless more. You're lucky to be alive. Luckier still, I think, that Chapelion has allowed you to retain your position. At the Nest, such carelessness wouldn't be tolerated."
Bazanel drew his shoulders back and tilted his chin upward. Rachale's words displayed such staggering ignorance that, if all females were this limited in their intellect, he was grateful he'd never been invited to breed.
"Chapelion understands that mine is the work of a pioneer. I've expanded the frontiers of knowledge. My scars are badges of honor, not marks of shame. I believe this meeting is over. Return to Chapelion with my report. He will have the intellect to appreciate the treasure I'm giving him."
Without waiting for her reply, he turned and limped toward the staircase that spiraled down the outer rim of the tower. Rachale's accusation festered in his mind. Carelessness? Carelessness? In his indignity, a previously unthinkable course of action formed in his mind.
The action he contemplated violated the most fundamental moral code of the sky-dragons, but they had pushed him to this. It was time for him to draft the most scathing letter any dragon had ever crafted, a letter that would make the matriarch weep with shame when confronted with the tremendous injustice she'd perpetrated.
His rage was still burning by the time he limped his way into his laboratory in the cellar. The cool, musty air calmed him somewhat. The familiar smell of his lab soothed him further. He did note, however that the atmosphere reeked of lamp-oil.
When he pushed open the door, he found his laboratory in complete darkness. Why had Festidian allowed the lanterns to burn out? The young biologian was normally much more diligent.
"Festidian?" he asked. No one answered.
Bazanel stepped into the room slowly, groping his way forward until he bumped into his lab table. He carefully swept his scarred claws across it until he found the beaker he was looking for. He had a nugget of phosphorous within, stored under a two-inch layer of oil to keep if from contact with the air. He found a glass dish and poured the contents of the beaker onto it. In the shallow dish, the phosphorous, now exposed to air, took on a faint green glow. Seconds later it began to spit sparks, setting the oil in the dish on fire. The nugget now blazed like a shard of the sun. Stark shadows were cast on the wall. The phosphorous hissed as it burned. The smell brought to mind toasted garlic.
"Festidian?" he called out, more forcefully. No answer.
Bazanel shrugged. Perhaps, Festidian had slipped back to his chambers to catch a nap. He'd worked the young dragon to the point of exhaustion. Ever since the shotgun and the ammo belt had been brought to the College of Spires, Bazanel had heard the ticking of a clock in the back of his mind. He instantly recognized the importance of the compound and knew it was vital to the survival of all dragons to match the humans' sudden advantage in power.
He walked to one of the wall lanterns to light it, so that he might have a softer, steadier light than the overly energetic phosphorous and the flickering oil. He slipped as he neared the wall. A sharp pain sliced into his left hind-talon.
Oil covered the floor. A shard of glass jutted from the outer pad of his talon. The lantern was broken-a polished steel tomahawk was buried into the tin well that held the oil. The glass globe was gone. The stark, flickering shadows had hid the damage from him until he was right on top of it.
"Oh no," he whispered, understanding the full implications of what he saw.
He spun around, slipping again in the oil, reaching out to the table edge to steady himself.
"Festidian?" he whispered again, though now he knew there would be no answer.
He looked across the table, toward the locked cabinet where he kept the rarer substances he studied, including the recently delivered shotgun. The lock was gone, the wood where it had once hung was splintered.
His eyes searched the dancing shadows. "Sh-show yourself," he said. "I know who you are." His pounding heart drowned out the sizzle of the phosphorus.
"Y-your name is Andzanuto," he said, addressing his unseen visitor. "It's the Cherokee word for heart. Thor Nightingale tells me you father calls you Anza. He… your father… he's now called Burke. Twenty years ago, he was better known as Kanati the Machinist. He was once my friend."
Again, his words were met with silence. He edged his way around the table, his fore-talon gripping the thick oak to maintain his balance. Where was she?
"There's no point in hiding," he said. "Kanati wouldn't have sent you to only recover the gun. The weapon was unmistakably of his design. Who else would have bothered with the decorative scale pattern? No doubt, he wants you to destroy all records of my research. You're too late. I've given a scroll with the formula to a valkyrie who even now carries it back to Chapelion. The secret cannot be contained."
He reached the cabinet. The padlock lay in the floor, still intact. She'd simply torn the metal braces that held it from the wood. That security flaw would have to be remedied, obviously. He opened the cabinet and peered inside. The shotgun was gone.
Bazanel took a deep breath. His heart rate slowed. She could have killed him by now. Did she know of his relationship with her father?
"Years ago, while I was still a student-five years before the failed rebellion at Conyers-I heard the legend of the Anudahdeesdee. I wasn't blind to the fact that dragons thrived among the ruins of a once dominant human culture. It was said that your people were dedicated to preserving secrets from the Human Age. I traveled through the southern foothills to find them-only to be almost killed when I did so. I fled, grievously wounded, taking refuge in the City of Skeletons. Your father found me there. He nursed my wounds. He said he'd long wanted to talk to a biologian. Much of the knowledge his people preserved had been corrupted or lost. Kanati knew that biologians were dedicated to scholarship, and thought that by sharing our research, we might improve the knowledge of both species. We began a long correspondence. Of course, the rebellion at Conyers put an end to this."
Bazanel sighed, shaking his head. "Such a waste. Humans accomplished so much in their time as the only intelligent species. With the rise of dragons, species equal, if not superior, to human intellects, the mind power available to solve the world's problems doubled. The world should have entered a golden age. Instead, wars and plagues and hatred have reduced both men and dragons to shadows of their possible greatness."
He shut the cabinet and leaned against it, weary. He hadn't slept in two days.
"Several years after the fall of Conyers, I learned of a clever inventor named Burke. There was no mistaking that this was, in truth, Kanati. I sent Thorny to find him. Over the years, he's served as my spy, sending me news of Burke's inventions. I've paid him well for his efforts, though from what I've heard, he gives all his money to your father in exchange for alcohol."
Bazanel paused, listening for a response. Still nothing. Was it possible he was talking only to his imagination?
"Thorny told me about you, Anza. He says you're an unsurpassed warrior. You are your father's ultimate invention… a killing machine, crafted from muscle and bone instead of cogs and springs."
This time, when there was no reply, the last of the fear drained from Bazanel. She must have taken the shotgun and fled, thinking her mission was over. He was reminded of Kanati's clockwork-driven beasts. They could give the impression of intelligence in a limited series of tasks, suc
h as moving a chess piece, or playing an instrument. But beyond this narrow range of abilities they had no awareness at all, no capacity for independent thought. Perhaps this was true of Anza as well. In raising her with a single-minded focus on killing, no doubt other aspects of her intelligence had been allowed to wither.
Now that he no longer feared for his life, the pain in his talon took dominance in his mind. He snaked his long neck down to better examine the sliver of glass. As his head lowered below the lip of the table, he discovered most of Festidian's corpse beneath, his wings neatly folded. "Oh dear," he said, rising.
Anza stood on the other side of the table. The tomahawk was gone from the ruined lantern behind her left shoulder. Sheaths filled with blades of various sizes ran along her arms and legs. Her hands hung down by her side, hidden by the edge of the table.
Bazanel whispered, in a dry, trembling voice: "What did you do with his head?"
Anza lifted up her grisly trophy, a scaly blue head with a pale gray tongue hanging loosely from the jaws. Festidian's eyes were open slightly, gleaming like polished amber in the phosphor luminance.
Anza tossed the head toward Bazanel. Reflexively, he caught it. He looked down at the severed head, at the high crown of Festidian's fine skull. Such a magnificent specimen. He hoped that the matriarch wouldn't hold a prejudice against Festidian's mating simply because of his association with Bazanel.
Not that it mattered, he realized.
When he looked back to Anza, she held a long, razor-edged sword. He instantly recognized the work as Kanati's.
"Before you kill me, there's one last thing I'd like to point out," he said.
She cocked her head.
"You're the one standing in lamp oil." He hurled his former assistant's head at the oil-filled plate sitting in the center of the table. The flaming oil splashed toward Anza. Rather than leaping away, however, she leapt up, springing onto the table as the blazing fluid splattered across her torso. She paid no heed to a fist-sized gob of fire that flickered at the top of her left breast as she somersaulted to land on the table before Bazanel.
With a motion smooth and certain as clockwork, she ran the blade across his throat in a precision that brought pressure but no pain. Bazanel raised his fore-talons and found blood gushing from his neck. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a bubbling wheeze. He fell to the floor, fighting to breathe.
Above him, Anza sucked in air as the gob of flaming oil burned through her buckskin. She placed her gloved fingers over the flame to squelch it.
On the far side of the table, the oil in the floor erupted. Anza strode toward it. Seconds later, a stack of Bazanel's notes fell into the center of the flames. Spots danced before his eyes as she tore a second lantern from the wall and poured its oil over the fire, trailing away to lead the flames to bookcases and shelves full of chemicals.
She ended near the bench where he'd been testing the gunpowder he'd already made. He could no longer keep his eyes open. He drifted into darkness as his blood pumped away. He heard the soft pad of Anza's moccasins walk through the blood that pooled before him.
Bazanel's greatest regret was that he wasn't going to be alive a moment from now. He was going to miss the grandest explosion ever to come from his laboratory.
ANZA WAS WELL into the woods when the third explosion shook the earth. Ahead in the darkness, her horse whinnied loudly. The Golden Tower was simply gone, with only a cloud of reddish smoke billowing into the evening sky to give evidence that it had ever been there. Seconds later, chunks of gravel began to rain down. She took shelter behind the trunk of a large pine.
She looked down at the red and blistered skin a few inches below her left collarbone. The oil had burned through her buckskin in an almost perfect circle, though the edges of the buckskin were curled up like little teeth.
The teeth and the circle combined in the dim light to look like one of the toothy wheels in her father's clockwork animals. The burn would leave a scar in the shape of a cog right above her heart.
Her machine heart.
Were Bazanel's word's true? Had her father raised her only as a machine for killing? Growing up in the tavern, listening to the ceaseless, mindless chatter of the patrons, she'd realized that their heads must be full of words. While she understood words, she didn't often think with them. Instead, her thoughts were formed by movements. She lived in a world of ceaseless motion, and understood intimately her relationship to that motion. She was swift and sure enough to pluck an arrow from the air. Other people moved as if their bodies were puppets being pulled by the strings of their graceless thoughts. Her body and mind functioned as a single mechanism.
As the rain of gravel ceased, she headed deeper into the woods. She wanted to return to Dragon Forge, to warn her father that Thorny was a spy. However, it sounded as if the secret of gunpowder was carried by a lone messenger. A single scroll carried the formula. Perhaps there was still hope of protecting the secret. Her next destination would be the Dragon Palace. She grimaced as she thought of the hard ride before her, back to the very place she'd just left. Her butt was already sore enough.
She smiled. No machine would ever complain of the work before it. There was a human heart within her after all.
JEREMIAH WAS TOO terrified to scream as the wind buffeted his body. He was wrapped up tightly inside a scratchy blanket that smelled like stale pee, tied securely with ropes. The sky-dragon who carried him, Vulpine, grunted from time to time as they flew. It sounded as if he were straining to remain in the air with Jeremiah's weight. With his face covered by the blanket, Jeremiah had no way of knowing how high they were. Having been raised in the mountains, he was used to high places, and had no fear of standing at the edge of a cliff to stare out over a valley. This was something far different, though. He imagined they must be high enough to touch the moon.
All his life, Jeremiah had heard that winged dragons could snatch up children. He used to have nightmares about it. Now, his nightmare was coming true. The dragon's long wings beat the air, carrying them ever higher. Despite being completely enwrapped, the cold air stabbed through the thin blanket, turning his skin to ice.
He had no way of measuring time, save for a slight brightening and darkening of the threadbare fabric before him as day passed into night, then brightened into day again. Three times, Vulpine stopped to rest for what felt like hours, but never once offered Jeremiah any food or water. Jeremiah remained still as a corpse the entire time, afraid that any movement might cause the dragon to attack him.
The fourth time they landed, something was different. Jeremiah was dropped to the ground roughly, but he paid little attention to the impact. He could hear voices. There was a delicious smell heavy in the air, like fish being cooked over coals.
"Sir," someone said. "Welcome back. How was your journey?"
"As delightful as I thought it would be, Sagen." Vulpine chuckled, a low sound that made Jeremiah shiver. "Rorg, as ever, is a font of invigorating conversation."
"Did he give you what you wanted?"
The blanket that held him was lifted by the ropes around his shoulders. He was set to his feet. Vulpine's claw snagged the rope for a second. With a grunt he jerked his claw free. The rope suddenly felt slack.
"He doesn't look like much," said Sagen.
"We'll fatten him up," said Vulpine. "He'll make a fine meal."
Jeremiah bit his lower lip to keep from crying out. Why would they want to eat him? He was nothing but bones!
Vulpine said, "Throw him in my tent for now. We'll clean him up later and put him in the meat pens."
Jeremiah thought he might faint.
"Sir?" said Sagen, sounding skeptical. "Your tent isn't terribly secure. What if he slipped free of his ropes? He might crawl out the back."
"Bah," Vulpine said dismissively. "Those ropes have held so far. He won't be going anywhere."
"I hope not, sir. Dragon Forge is only a few miles away. It's the stronghold of the human rebellion. If he reached it, we'd nev
er get him back."
Jeremiah caught his breath. What human rebellion? If he could wriggle free… but, almost the instant he felt hope flickering, it was squashed again by Vulpine's voice.
"Even if this future meal did escape, how could he find the fortress? He doesn't even know where he is."
Jeremiah sagged as he contemplated this reality.
"But, sir," protested Sagen. "At night the foundries glow like a beacon. And by day, anyone could follow the smoke from the smokestacks."
Vulpine laughed. "You act like this is a dragon we're talking about. This is a muck-slave, not clever enough to slip out of his ropes, crawl under the tent flaps in the back, then search the sky for clues as to which direction he should run. You worry too much."
"Of course, sir," said the other dragon.
Jeremiah was lifted up by the rope around his hips. He was carried a few dozen yards, then tossed unceremoniously into a place where the sounds of voices and the smell of cooking were more muted. The ropes around his shoulder snapped completely as he hit the ground. He wriggled, freeing his head. He was inside a tent. It was dark, with only a few faint rays of light seeping through the flap that covered the door. He wriggled more. He was suddenly grateful he was skinny. He started kicking, and was free of the blanket in no time.
He looked around. The place was sparsely furnished; only a few cushions piled in the corner to serve as a bed. A small crate sat next to the cushions, and atop it sat a long knife in a sheath. He grabbed it and pulled the weapon out. He stood quietly and listened to the dragons just outside the tent. He crouched as they passed, and grabbed the blanket. It was so cold he could see his breath in front of him; despite the stench, he draped the blanket over his shoulders like a cloak.
He dropped to his knees beside the back wall of the tent and peeked under a gap he found there. He could see no dragons in this direction, only bushes. Off in the distance, beyond some low hills, there was a red smear of smoke and clouds in the sky.
Clutching the knife tightly, he rolled beneath the tent flap and scurried for the bushes.
