by Tara Janzen
Standing on the deck, Avallyn looked green. Aja looked abashed.
“York and me had to clean the beasts out,” the boy offered by way of explanation for the thoroughly disgusting smell and the mess of goods broken and tossed all over the place. Wires hung out of broken panels. The overhead lighting had been smashed. Burn marks seared part of the bulkhead. “Didn’t have much time to tidy up.”
Morgan nodded curtly. It was still a job well done, no matter how foul the rover smelled.
“York!” he called. “Take us around front. See if we can give the Third Guard something to think about besides Ferrar’s.”
With the mercenary at the controls, the rover powered up and rolled smoothly through the alley. Morgan strode across the deck and onto the small bridge.
“Use a half-blast to disperse them, then head east to the Pathian Quarter and see how many we can draw off with us,” he ordered.
“Can’t go east.” York passed his hand over the console and a gridded screen lit up. He planted his finger on a red line. “The local City Guard has put up a blockade with your name on it. They’re pretty rankled about the mess ye left in Racht.”
Morgan swore; not for the first time since last night, he wondered about their odds of escaping. They’d been running for nigh onto eight hours and had gotten no farther than Pan-shei. The damned Third Guard was still hot on their trail, and now the slags had the damned City Guard to back them up.
“Then go south, toward Magh Dun.”
West, into the desert, was out of the question under the circumstances, and traveling deeper into the Old Dominion through the northern provinces was too risky. It was a hell of a long way to the northern border, and even though the City Guard patrols thinned out the farther one got from the Central Quarter, it was too easy for the enemy to call in support troops while they remained in the city.
“Isn’t that a bit like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?” York asked, giving him a sideways glance. The man’s beefy face was smudged with dirt and cut in a couple of places. His short-cropped brown hair was dusted with some kind of powder from a busted-open bag that hung off the back of his pilot’s seat. The other seat had been ripped from its moorings and jammed under the console. Shards of glass littered the floor, and a rank-smelling, greenish-blue fluid was leaking from a severed hose sticking out of the wall.
It must have been one hell of a fight, Morgan thought.
“Nay,” he said. “I think it’s time I dealt with the Warmonger, gave him the friggin’ dragon, and got him off our backs.”
“More ‘n likely, he’ll just take the damn dragon, skin us alive, and give us to Vishab to boil,” York countered grimly.
“Vishab?” Morgan asked.
“Corvus Gei’s necromancer,” Avallyn said, coming up from behind them and stopping next to him on the bridge.
He turned to face her, intrigued. “Necromancer? As in mage?”
“The witch of Magh Dun will not set you free,” she said, discerning his thoughts with damnable ease. “Your man has the way of it. She’s ever one to boil and burn, especially Claerwen priestesses. My life would be forfeit in the witch’s tower, and the death she would give me would make the endless rot of a sewer snake bite look like a blessing.”
The last was added with a chilling solemnity that gave Morgan pause. No fear marred the clear depths of the princess-priestess’s eyes, but neither did subterfuge. She was telling him the simple truth.
Mayhaps he needed to rethink his plan.
“Skraelings on the starboard,” York announced.
Morgan looked through a side window, then moved to the front. More than one skraelpack had joined the group they’d encountered in Racht. The beasts were swarming everywhere. The Third Guard was farther up the alley, readying a cannon.
“Take out the gun,” he said. “Let them know we’re here.”
York lit up another screen with his hand and started setting the coordinates for his shot.
“Morgan!” Aja came running up from the aft deck. “The Second Guard is moving in behind us.”
He spun around, his eyebrows furrowed. The Second Guard? Impossible.
“Are you sure?” he asked, and prayed no one else could detect the edge in his voice. It was panic, pure and simple.
“Aye.” Aja’s eyes reflected the same panic. The Third Guard were truly as Ferrar had said, only a chromosome or two up on the genetic scale from skraelings, a well-organized group of nasty errand boys for the Warmonger. Morgan had been outrunning them since he’d first stepped foot in the Old Dominion. The Second Guard were the Warmonger’s elite troops, second only to the First Guard, the Home Guard that never left Corvus Gei’s side.
“The Warmonger wouldn’t send the Second Guard to pick up a lousy forty-thousand-mark bounty,” he said, not sure who he was trying to reassure.
Aja agreed with a vigorous shaking of his head.
“So it’s got to be the friggin’ dragon,” Morgan decided, holding out his hand for the statue, “and pure gold or nay, it’s not big enough to warrant the Second Guard’s involvement.”
“Aye, not nearly big enough,” the boy echoed, fumbling to untie the leather bag from his belt. When it fell loose, he tossed it to Morgan.
“I’ve got their gun in my sights,” York said.
“Fire!” Morgan caught the bag and steadied himself against the bulkhead for the rover’s recoil as York released their first shot.
There was no recoil.
He looked at Avallyn, impressed. “Nice ship.” Shifting his attention to Aja, he slipped the golden statue free of its covering and hefted it in his hand. “What do you think? Is it hollow? And what do you think could be in here that is worth sending the Second Guard after?”
“A clean hit,” York announced.
“Give them a half-blast forward. We’re going to have to go through them and Ferrar’s fence, unless you can get some lift out of this thing.” Though he gave the order, Morgan’s attention didn’t leave Aja.
“Chrystaalt,” the boy answered.
Morgan had heard of the strange stuff and its even stranger attributes. ’Twas a salt mined in the Waste, a mineral used by the Psilords of the last dynasty to put genetically superior life-forms into states of suspended animation. Since the Trelawney Rebellion, when the galaxy-wide government had been overthrown, the chrystaalt trade had gone underground, becoming strictly black market. Ten grams could make a man’s fortune.
He looked at the dragon, a lustrous reddish-gold beast with long fangs and intricately wrought wings sleeping on a bed of writhing gold snakes.
Or worms. The thought came to him as it had so many times since Sonnpur-Dzon. Golden worms. Time worms from the weir.
He lifted his gaze to Avallyn and found her staring at the dragon, transfixed with awe, her eyes alight with desire. Her hand was half lifted toward the thing, though he doubted if she realized it.
Christe, if she would ever look at him in such a way, he would probably go up in flames from the fire it would start.
“It’s yours for another kiss,” he said softly, giving into insanity and meaning every word. He would give her the dragon, the months of searching to find it, the battle to steal it, and the endless days of drunkenness trying to deal with it, anything to have her mouth beneath his again, sweetly hot and open for his kiss.
Her eyes flashed up to meet his, and a shadow of longing darkened the gray depths.
Satisfaction surged through him. She would be his, the price uncounted. He started toward her, only to be stopped by the slow shake of her head.
“It’s not meant to be mine,” she said with obvious reluctance, her hand falling back to her side.
“Then whose?” Frustration sharpened his voice.
“The priestesses in Claerwen.”
He felt the first stirrings of anger returning. Despite the way she’d kissed him, she would still incarcerate him in a temple of bones. The fact damned him as surely as he’d been damned in the weir.
“They won’t get me or the dragon,” he said.
“I’ll get you both to Claerwen,” she corrected him. “Have no doubt. But in the end, you are mine. You were sent here to be mine, dread lord.”
Of all the things she could have said, that was the last he had expected. He stared at her, dumbfounded, until a niggling suspicion helped him find his tongue.
“To what end?” he demanded, bracing himself for the worst. Slavery, mayhaps, or some godforsaken priestess sacrifice.
But her blush and the casting aside of her gaze told him otherwise. He would be hers in the way of a man and a woman.
“Half-blast loaded and locked,” York apprised him.
“Fire.” His response to the mercenary was automatic. His response to the princess’s statement was a confusing mix of anticipation and fear. He hadn’t been “sent” to the future. The whole thing had been an accident of battle, one sword against another, and he had lost.
But the chance to have her, to know her, was not one he would put aside lightly.
Priestesses. Christe? He must be losing his mind. Mayhaps she was working some spell on him. Madron, the witch of Wydehaw, had done a brisk business in love potions.
The half-blast shot out of the forward gun, and Morgan heard York swear.
“They’re dispersin’, all right,” the mercenary said, his voice rising, “with most of them headed this way. Aja! What the hell is going on back there?”
“Second Guard closing in aft!”
“Morgan?” York yelled. “What in the hell are we gonna do here?”
The options had been narrowed down to one, and he swore it wasn’t desire making it. He was too old and had been through too much to make his decisions based on a woman’s face, even if it was a face that had haunted him for ten long years; or on a woman’s kiss, even if her kiss had shaken him to his core.
“Take us west, into the desert,” he commanded—and may God have mercy on our souls.
Dragonfire
Chapter 9
Morgan had to concede that Avallyn had been right. The desert had been the right place to come. She’d insisted on the northwest route, so he’d given York orders to use the southwest route, but either way they’d landed in the middle of nowhere. A full moon shone above them, its light silvering the surrounding dunes and the sheer rock wall at their back. The Medain of Craig Tagen, she called it, part of a stony ridge that stretched for hundreds of miles north to south. Beyond the dunes, the land disappeared into the darkness of an eerily silent night. The rover was parked in the sand at the base of the towering rocks, looking like part of the formation.
Aye, she’d picked a good place. ’Twas a damn good place to die and leave one’s bones to bleach. He had his hollow in the rock all picked out for when the time came.
“Friggin’ skraelings,” he muttered, pushing himself out from under the rover, a welding rod in his hand. His breath made puffs of vapor in the frigid air. “All right then, York, try her again!”
The fusion block had been mangled during their escape from Pan-shei, giving out about a day from the city and leaving them to limp along on auxiliary power until they’d reached what passed for an oasis in the Deseillign Waste—a half-dozen thrawn shrubs clustered around a narrow crack in a rock wall. Inside the crack was a sinkhole.
Avallyn and Aja were there, hauling water to bring back to the rover, refilling the reserve tanks which the skraelings had fouled during their brief term of ownership.
He should have questioned her by now. Instead, he’d been avoiding her like the plague—at least as much as the tracking bracelet allowed him to avoid her. As for the boy, he owed Aja an apology and probably a debt of gratitude for not letting him drown in wine or self-pity these last weeks—though in truth he preferred either demise to the one he now faced.
Ferrar’s small bottle of wine had been broken, the fragile glass of his salvation shattered by a cannon blast they’d taken on the western edge of the market.
He was doomed.
“Fire her up!” he called again to York.
A loud clank coupled with a blast of steam billowing up from beneath the transport sufficed as the mercenary’s reply.
Morgan swore and dragged his hand back through his hair, then glanced over his shoulder at the rock wall.
You were sent here to be mine, dread lord—her words echoed in his mind.
He looked back at the rover. Nothing had been simple since the battle for Balor, when he’d fallen into the weir. He’d not had one simple moment since then, and stealing the dragon from Sonnpur-Dzon had only complicated his life more.
Aye, and what he wouldn’t give to have one simple moment of peace.
He started toward the hold door, but was stopped by a stab of pain across his rib cage. Gritting his teeth, he flattened his hand on his chest to case the ache and continued on into the rover. Ferrar’s salves and pills were wearing off. His headache couldn’t be too far behind the muscle spasm, and neither could the detox wine fever that had been threatening to engulf him all day.
“Well?” York grumbled.
“The impulse meridians are functional, but without a new fusion block, we can’t get more than auxiliary power out of the generator.”
“So we’re stuck here.”
“Aye.”
Again he looked to the rock wall, through the starboard window, and this time she was there, a slight figure shrouded against the cold in her tattered black cloak.
You were sent here to be mine, dread lord.
“But at what price?” he murmured, watching her descend the path to the rover.
“What, hey?” York asked.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Get ready to lock us down for the night. The temperature is dropping toward zero and it’s not going to stop there.”
~ ~ ~
Dinner in the rover’s galley was a subdued affair, with everyone, Avallyn included, too exhausted to do much more than eat. The transport’s comcell had been damaged beyond repair, like almost everything else, and there had been no sign of the Night Watchers. If they hadn’t been killed—and she didn’t think the Third Guard, or even the Second, could kill Dray of Deseillign—they would be searching for her. She had no doubt of that. Her only doubt was whether they would find her. Drunken thief or not, the Prince of Time was blessed with uncanny survival skills and the luck of the stars for making narrow escapes. Elusive didn’t begin to describe the path they’d taken since she’d banded him. For all practical purposes, she was on her own in getting him to Claerwen, with or without his consent, and with or without the rover.
Stilling a curse, she took another bite of honeyed seedcake. The fusion block had been half torn from its rigging and crushed on one side. Morgan and Aja had worked on it for hours before even Morgan had given up.
She hazarded a quick glance in his direction. He looked done in and in pain. His face was drawn, his hair raked through. A sheen of sweat dampened his brow. ’Twas more than his fight with the Lyran he was feeling. ’Twas the wine, she knew. The wretched stuff was addictive, and he was without.
She could help him, if she dared. Her fingers went to the pouch on her belt and the crystal vial within.
His hand trembled as he reached for his food, and with a soft sound of disgust he pushed his plate aside and rose to his feet. He stopped next to the wild boy, bending his head down close and saying something that made Aja nod and grip his arm.
The bond there was deep, and knowing of the boy’s oath to the priestesses, Avallyn had to wonder at it. She wondered, too, if his sept knew how far he’d strayed in the company he’d been set to keep. After the way he’d drawn on her at Ferrar’s, she knew there was more to the boy than she or Dray had thought in Racht. All the wild boys were fast, but she’d never seen one faster than herself, never seen one with tlas buen, the ability to “quickety-split.” He was fey, for certes, and he’d been making her ears twitch all day.
After giving the boy’s hair a quick tousle, Morgan walked awa
y, heading toward the sick bay, and for the first time Avallyn saw pained awkwardness rather than grace in his limping stride. Aja rose as well, but York motioned for him to stay put, and looked at her as if he expected her to do something.
The mercenary was right, of course. She did have to do something. The Prince of Time was hers.
~ ~ ~
Morgan felt more than heard someone enter the sick bay behind him, the light step telling him it was Aja.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked, staring at the array of drugs he’d laid out on the counter. His hands were splayed on either side of the materia medica, both of them trembling with the god-rotting d.t.’s. He’d stopped sweating and started growing hot, a bad sign for certes, the beginning of the wine fever. “Which one is more likely to heal me than kill me?”
He lifted a likely bottle, a drug Ferrar had once given him to counteract an overindulgence in Carillion wine. Would it work for the reverse as well? he wondered.
“ ’Tis not more synthetics you need, but an easing of your mind, lord.” Avallyn’s scent reached him at the same time as her hand touched his arm.
He tensed and made to pull away—he was in no mood and no condition to deal with her—but she held him firm.
“I can help you at least as much as the chai wallah,” she told him, “and probably a good deal more.”
“Do you have wine, then?” he asked, summoning his last ounce of composure and deigning to give her a glance. As always, the sight of her so near startled him with an odd sense of déjà vu, but he didn’t turn away.
She shook her head.
Without the daze of the wine in his eyes, he could see she was not so perfectly formed as he’d thought. Senseless sot that he was, though, he found her imperfections even more intriguing.
Freckles—a fair maid’s bane—lay like faerie dust across the bridge of her nose, a gift from the desert sun. A scar nicked a bit of hair out of her right eyebrow and lifted it higher than the left one, making her more the mischievous sprite than the golden princess. Another scar marred one of her pointed ears. Her two front teeth were somewhat crooked, one overlapping the other, but that in no way made him want to kiss her less. And thoughts of kissing were bound to be his undoing. He’d offered her the dragon for a kiss and been turned down. Had he no sense left at all?
