They had a standing lunch date every day, and Geffrey had settled into a routine of sorts. They switched between lunching in Darubai, the Elven District, and the Dwarven District. Today was the Elven District.
Josef had to admire what the elves were attempting to do with their chunk of the city. The stone houses sported clay pots of plants, medians had been formed in the streets, and it looked like they were attempting to get some kind of greenery growing there, too. Elves were, by nature, very attuned to the magic of the earth. Josef had no doubt the medians would soon be festooned with flowers and foliage to delight anyone who came to the Elven District. Already the great tree they’d brought back from the brink of death in their square was a tourist spot of sorts. Josef couldn’t deny the happiness that swelled through him when he gazed at the towering pine.
All of the buildings had been washed, and under the years of neglect and grime, Josef was surprised to see they glowed orange in the sunlight. If the elves could get their greenery to grow, it would be a beautiful section of the city.
“So what did you find?” Josef asked Geffrey, setting down his mug of wine. He’d already finished his portion of dragon flank, but Geffrey was still chewing.
The boy shook his head, swallowed a huge mouthful, and chased it with water. “Nothing, just like Crespit said.”
Drex harrumphed. He’d refused to take any food, saying he’d already ate, but Josef knew that was a lie, the council meeting had lasted for hours, and he hadn’t seen Drex slip away in the middle of it. It was likely that dwarves couldn’t stomach some of the spices that the elves used. Or Drex wanted to be on his way and smashing skulls of those that killed the dragons.
Do dwarves smash skulls? Josef found himself wondering. Certainly they did in the stories he’d read. And certainly Drex seemed like he could smash skulls. Even now, the look he was shooting at Josef seemed to be trying to smash his skull. Josef shivered, and wished he had more dragon flank to pick at just to irritate the dwarf further.
“Nothing at all?” Josef said.
“Have you seen the area yet?” Geffrey asked. “There’s not much left.”
“And that stops you from finding anything?” Drex asked.
“Kinda,” Geffrey shrugged. “In order to locate anything, mentally, yellows need something to lock onto. If there’s nothing left to lock onto…”
Drex harrumphed again and turned his head to glare at something else.
“If you had more power, do you think you could?” Josef asked.
“What are you thinking?” Drex wondered. “A wand?”
Josef shook his head. The wands were made of the bones of dragons, and retained much of the dragon’s powers. If they could get their hands on a yellow wand, they could likely delve deeper into the mystery, push past whatever restrictions someone might have magically placed on the site. If it hadn’t been magic that erased the psychic imprint, a yellow wand might allow them to sense trace energies left at the scene. He wondered what would happen if they used a yellow wand on a site where fire fruit had been used to impede the power of a yellow.
“No,” Josef said. “I was thinking we might be able to get a dragon to help us.”
Drex snorted at that. “Good luck getting those beasts to help you.”
Geffrey nodded knowingly, chewing on another mouthful. Josef feared that Drex might burst at the seams any moment and force the kid to take his lunch on the road.
Josef had to agree with them. The dragons had done their part in defending the city from the draconian forces, but they’d done little else to help the humans out. But still, he thought there might be some way to appeal to them. This was also in their best interest. If someone truly was killing dragons, then finding the source would help all the citizens of Darubai rest easier.
As Geffrey finished gulping down his last mouthful, a trumpet sounded from the parapets surrounding the imperial castle. The castle sat to the west side of the city, and the trumpets played from the peak of the parapets where the three districts merged. At the base of the wall, people were already gathering.
“I forgot the empress was making a speech today,” Geffrey said.
Drex grumped.
Josef scoffed. “More nonsense about the good dragons trying to kill us all. I don’t wanna hear this shit, let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” Geffrey asked, hopping down out of his chair that was even slightly too high for Josef.
“To question Cassandra.”
Cassandra lived in an apartment complex on the other side of the corner from Josef’s. In fact, he figured if he were standing on his balcony, her apartment would be on eye level with his. Apartment complexes in Darubai weren’t as fancy as the name indicated. Most of them had been partially broken during the various attacks on the city and had been condemned as unsafe to live in. Some were even unsafe to walk too close to. Since the dwarves had arrived, they’d started demolishing those that were unsafe, and Josef heard there were plans to build new complexes in their spots.
Cassandra’s complex had a domed roof that was mostly destroyed in a previous attack several years before. As a result, the weather and the wind could be felt through most of the complex. A partial reed roof had been used to patch up the dome, but it did little good to ward off wind and sand.
“Glad we don’t live in this one,” Geffrey said gazing up at part of a collapsed wall.
“Have you ever been to Lady Death’s house?” Drex asked.
Josef cocked his head at the dwarf. Drex was fidgeting with absentmindedly fidgeting with his axe. “Why do you call her Lady Death?”
“All the dwarves do. An old legend.”
“Care to elaborate?” Josef wondered.
Drex grunted, and for a time Josef thought the dwarf wasn’t going to respond. When he finally did, his voice was quiet to the point Josef had to lean a bit closer to hear him. “Baba Yaga,” the dwarf said, and Josef recoiled. He’d had a run in with the hag before, and it wasn’t something he cared to repeat. He glanced around the quiet street, feeling the wind against his legs and the way it stirred his messy blond hair as if finger from beyond the grave. He shivered. “We have many legends of Baba Yaga,” Josef cringed at the name, “we call her Lady Death. She’s a woman that was once human, but has been so far removed from people that her heart has turned cold and ceased to exist. She feels herself dead, and she is more comfortable among the dead. Her lack of a beating heart has called many malignant spirits to her, and it is in that she draws her power.”
“And you think Cassandra is your Lady Death?” Josef asked. He couldn’t help but feel his spirits lift. Baba Yaga wasn’t anyone he wanted to tangle with again, and he was certain that Cassandra wasn’t Baba Yaga.
Drex nodded.
“I’ve met…Lady Death a couple times. Cassandra is not her.”
Drex eyed Josef. “And you’ve lived to talk about it?”
“Barely. If Wylan hadn’t had a black wand to help us, we wouldn’t have made it.”
“Then you know she can take many forms, and be in many places,” Drex said. “Don’t be so sure that because you’ve met a shadow of Baba Yaga that you know all of her incarnations.”
“But she has children,” Josef argued. “How can someone who’s dead have children?”
“Have you seen her spawn?” Drex asked. “Like creatures from the grave.”
Geffrey nodded. “I agree. They terrify me. I hate having to play with them.”
“Enough,” Josef said. “This isn’t getting us any closer to talking to her.”
“And what are you going to say when you go up there?” Drex wondered. “Ask her outright if she killed the green dragon? Do you think she will be honest if she had?”
Josef shrugged. “She’s a good friend of Garrett. I trust that she is worthy of that title.”
Drex opened his mouth to speak again, but Josef pushed open the door to the complex, and stepped inside. The apartment complex had been one of the more upscale ones back when Darubai ra
n as a city instead of a haven against dragons. Now that money wasn’t a thing to exchange, and housing was wherever there was space, many kinds of people were crammed into the complex.
The entrance hall was cleaner than Josef would have expected from how the outside looked. He knew there were several people in this complex that took care of the ground floor, keeping it clean and welcoming. He wished there were those kinds of people in his.
The ground floor was open, with many salvaged couches and chairs that lined the walls. The windows that had been broken were covered with boards, and the ones that hadn’t been broken were largely those in the back of the hall that faced busier, smaller streets. It wasn’t much of a view, but in the evening it let in the soft glow of the setting sun.
To the right of the door, an enclosed stairway circled up to the first floor, which was more communal than the upper floors. Walking down the shabby soapstone hallway of the first floor, Josef wasn’t surprised to see most of the doors open, and neighbors talking back and forth from their apartments. It was the same way with his complex. It seemed friends and larger families inhabited the first floor, and there was little need for closed doors.
The second floor was much the same, but with more closed doors, smaller families, and more quiet.
The third floor, where Cassandra lived, was largely comprised of closed, weathered doors, and a bit more of a draft. There could have been large families that lived on the third floor, but part of the reason for the closed doors was a chunk of the roof that had been covered with reeds. The fourth floor, Josef knew, was missing the outer wall, and when it had crumbled, part of the third floor ceiling had gone with it.
He stopped outside of Cassandra’s weathered, wooden door and knocked. The dusty, dried flowers that hung upside down on the door jumped around under his knocking. Moments later, the door opened, as if someone had been waiting for them. That someone happened to be Cassandra herself.
“Josef,” she said with a warm tone, even if her face lacked the same welcome. “I’ve been expecting you.”
That’s not at all creepy, he thought. What he said was, “Hi Cassandra, do you have a moment to talk?”
She opened the door wider, and they stepped into the kitchen. It was a small room with a wooden cooking stove sitting to the right, and counters and a sink on the left. In the center sat a small soapstone table that was covered with a moth-eaten, gray cloth. Despite the home looking nearly as shabby as Cassandra, it smelled of a sweet, acidic smell.
Fire fruit.
Josef’s eyes wandered to Cassandra’s orange stained fingers.
“You said you were expecting me?” Josef asked as Drex and Geffrey stepped in the door. Geffrey lingered behind Drex, trying to stay out of sight. But it didn’t help. As if her ghastly children had sensed the young yellow’s entrance to their house, they almost materialized in the wide, arched doorway that led into a shadowy living room.
Drex let out a startled yip when they appeared, and Josef tried not to smile at him. The dwarf frowned.
“Geffrey,” the children welcomed him together. Birch and Elm is what Cassandra had named them, and Josef could never figure out which name belonged to which child. They were identical twins, a boy and a girl. Their hair was as white as their mother’s, and their skin just as pale. Their eyes were icy blue, and seemed to freeze Josef’s blood whenever they looked on him. They were only more terrifying for the fact that they were both yellow wyverns, and spent most of their time talking to the dead. “Come play,” they said together.
Geffrey tried not to let his anxiety show, straightened his shoulders, and strode across the cramped kitchen as if going to his death.
Cassandra watched the kids go, then motioned for Josef and Drex to take a seat. Josef sat with his back toward the house, facing the door. To the right of the door were several hooks that held weapons. Cassandra’s long sword hung on one hook, and Josef was relieved to see that her husband’s weapons were gone. They’d had the luck to arrive when he was on duty. Unlike Cassandra, he wasn’t part of the dragon guard, but the imperial guard that kept watch over the palace and its grounds.
“I assume you’ve come to talk to me about the green dragon’s death,” Cassandra said. She took a seat across from Josef where she must have been sitting when they arrived because there was a steaming cup of tea waiting for her. She cupped her hands around the chipped mug, and stared at Josef.
“Yes,” Josef said.
“Wondering if I was the one to attack the dragon?” Cassandra wondered. “There are many reasons I can think of that I’d be the perfect suspect.”
Josef glanced at Drex, who stood behind Cassandra watching the back of her head. He was muttering something under his breath, and his eyes lacked focus. Was he praying? Josef frowned and looked back at Cassandra.
“And what are those?” Josef wondered.
“Well, forgetting the fact that I refuse a mithril weapon,” Cassandra said, “I have a connection to the old mental ward, so it would make sense that I would be there, isn’t that correct?”
Josef nodded. “I found rinds of the fire fruit on the rooftop, and noticed that your fingers are stained.”
Cassandra smiled.
“I know that you don’t wish the dragons any ill will,” he told her. He truly believed that, Cassandra refused to carry a mithril weapon because she didn’t like to associate herself that fully with the killing of dragons. She sought more to heal, rather than to maim and only truly joined in guarding the city when she was absolutely required to do so. It also didn’t add up that she would have used a mithril arrow to down the green dragon when she refused to use a dragon saber when facing the draconians in the air. “But I wondered if you have visited the roof lately, maybe you might have seen something.”
“But what makes you disregard me as the killer?” Cassandra wondered. “Is it because I’m a wing leader, like you? Or is it that Garrett and I are such close friends?”
“I don’t think Garrett would be likely to choose friends who were secret murderers,” Josef said.
“But the best murderers are those that can hide their true nature so completely that they fool those around them.”
“This is true,” Josef said, sitting back and wondering who was interrogating who.
“So, my entire family was destroyed in the attack that claimed the mental ward. You’ve found rinds of the fire fruit on the roof, and you see that my fingers are stained orange. It’s a very good case against me. Why don’t you think it’s me?”
“At this point, Cassandra, I’m starting with what I can see, hoping more is uncovered.”
Cassandra nodded.
“And I never expected a confession from you, but I was hoping, that if it was you who visited the rooftop, that you might have seen something you’d like to share with me.”
Cassandra shook her head. “Josef, I don’t visit the rooftop. I haven’t been back to the ward since my family burned there. I have no need to visit the place where they died, because within my heart exists a place where they will live forever.”
She held up her hands to show Josef her fingertips. “As for the stain, I’ve found that fire fruit not only smells wonderful, but it’s great for cleaning as well.” She blushed, the first bit of color Josef could ever remember seeing on her face. “I don’t take much, so please don’t rat me out.”
Josef smiled at that, hoping she was being honest with him. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“But I will help you in any way that I can. If I hear of anything, I will pass along what I know.”
Josef nodded.
“Now, who do you think it is?” Cassandra asked, her mug poised at her lips. She took a deep swallow despite the fact that the tea still steamed.
“I honestly don’t have a clue, but if you’re not the one who visited the rooftop, I would say the person has a love for fruit.”
“Fresh fruit is rare,” Cassandra confirmed.
“Do you know if someone were to eat fruit empowe
red by a yellow dragon if they could mask themselves from scrying?”
Cassandra nodded. “The fire fruit not only allows us some control of powers when used on us, but it affords us a bit of protection against those powers as well. I imagine if the murderer was actually able to determine what fruit was empowered by a yellow dragon that they’d be able to at least muddle up the psychic imprint enough that yellows wouldn’t be able to trace them.”
Josef frowned. It was something at least, but it didn’t get him any closer to figuring out who the murderer was.
They visited for a little while longer, and when Josef finally decided to leave, Drex and Geffrey shared a similar expression of relief. It wasn’t until they were down on the street that they heard the warning bleat from the dragon guard on the city wall that dragons were coming.
They were being chased by drakes.
The last time Wylan had been chased by the creatures, she’d viewed their attack from the safety of the sky. In fact, she’d led a hunting troop of scale wraiths right into battle with the drakes in order to escape both. The magical drakes had then taken to battle with the wraiths, and ignored the wyverns overhead.
But this time, she was the focus of their magic attack. The drakes were a strange mix of human and lizard. They appeared human enough, but their bodies were covered in shining, hard scales. Their heads bore three wide ridges, and were devoid of hair. The interesting thing about drakes, other than their somewhat human appearance, is the entire race was magical.
Lightning streaked across the sky in blinding streaks of blue and purple. Thunder rumbled against her scales, making Wylan jump. She’d already been struck by a bolt of lightning, but it was a glancing blow. Thanks to her heightened strength in wyvern form, it had done little more than numb her tail.
On the horizon, Wylan could see a great wall of sand eating across the long desert, coming straight for them. It roiled and folded over itself, eating away at whatever livestock or vegetation was in its path. It looked less like earth kicked up into the air by the force of wind, and more like water rolling toward them.
Dragon Forged: Chronicles of Dragon Aerie Young Adult Fantasy Fiction (Plague Born Book 3) Page 4
