I’d be useless doing anything that required more than the minimum of thought. So I guess it was time to translate some dairy contracts.
Chapter Fourteen
It took me the rest of the day to read through the second contract. I was still brooding over the news that Richard had used me as a scapegoat for his stupid plan. If the evidence had been any less straightforward, I wouldn’t have believed my own eyes.
And if anyone other than Myrna had filled me in on Richard’s return to Relobu’s good graces, I’d have called them a liar. But her pitying tone, the letters, and memories of Richard’s almost casual dismissal of my well-being after I’d woken at the hospital in Budapest made his actions sadly plausible.
I was furious. But I was also very, very hurt. It was one thing to simply decide a person wasn’t the one for you, it was quite another to realize they’d played you for a fool in a stunt that was as far from a game as you could possibly get. The last time I’d felt this lost and hopeless, I’d wanted Myrna with me. But now all I could think was how much I wanted Daniel to wrap his arms around me and remind me that there were good people still left in the world.
I’d wondered whether my repeated contact with ugly surprises—be they dragon attacks or unwanted haircuts—had somehow dulled my emotions. Two months ago, the news that my boyfriend wanted to break off our relationship would have left me in prime form for a gallon of ice cream and a sob-fest once I got back home. Richard had gone further than a simple break up: I’d just found out that he’d deliberately placed my life in danger to save his own.
I didn’t feel like bursting into tears. Or crying. Or even eating a gallon of ice cream.
Well, okay. I always felt like eating a gallon of ice cream, but that was beside the point.
No. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to hit something. Preferably Richard’s perfect face. Before I’d even found the letter, I’d already decided to break things off with him when I got back in the country. I still wanted to break things off, but now it was in a very literal sense. As in, break his limbs off his body. Especially when I thought back to all of my guilt-ridden regrets about leaving him to fend for himself in Budapest. Or for acting on my attraction to another man.
For once in my life, I felt like I might actually do the crazy ex-girlfriend thing and try to stab him to death with a shoe. Only this time I would not feel guilty about it the next morning.
I was guilt-free with regard to my relationship with Richard. But that didn’t mean I was off the hook regarding my behavior with Daniel the night before. I still halfway hoped the ground would swallow me so I could stop replaying his dumbfounded reaction.
I was becoming a little more anxious by the minute. I was still completely at a loss for what I would tell Daniel when I saw him. It was almost five in the afternoon, and I’d finished up the translation on the second contract for Krishnan’s review. I was walking it over to his office, mentally preparing the mother-of-all forgive-me speeches when the wide double doors at the far side of the room opened and an enormous dragon stepped through.
Based on the long beard of flesh that dangled from his chin, this dragon was male, and well past puberty. His scales were a dark red, nearly the color of rust, and I could tell from the way he entered the room that he both knew he was scary and enjoyed it. With his large bones and blunt snout—not to mention the ugly scar across the right side of his neck—he looked nothing like Lady Savitri, and everything like a dragon-sized gladiator.
I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Though no one screamed or passed out in fright, a hush fell over the entire office and all heads turned in the dragon’s direction, eyes watching warily as he stalked into the room.
The human-sized office equipment only made him look bigger, and I saw a couple of humans cower involuntarily as his head swung over the tops of their flimsy cubicle walls.
But other than the self-satisfied gleam in his eye, the dragon didn’t pay any attention to the silent work staff. After a scan of the room, he headed directly for the doors to Lady Savitri’s private work quarters.
One by one, my new colleagues returned to their previous tasks as he passed them with his lumbering gait. Conversation gradually returned to normal.
I let out a little squeak when a hand unexpectedly touched my arm.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle. Were you looking for me?” Krishnan gestured to the stack of papers I’d been unconsciously hugging to my chest.
I took a deep breath. My jumpiness around scary dragons hadn’t disappeared quite yet. “Yes. The dairy contract.” I handed him my notes. “I had a little trouble with some of the language in the middle. It wasn’t the dragonscript. I think you should have someone look at the terms, because it’s not really clear when delivery should occur in relation to when the payment is made.” I still hadn’t managed to look away from the door the dragon had walked through. The giant reptile had given me the shivers, just like the dragon who’d teased me in China. Both of should be required to wear a sign that read: DANGER: HALF-CRAZY DRAGON around their necks.
“Wonderful, thank you.”
“Who was that?” I nodded in the direction of Savitri’s office.
“Shal Benaki. One of Savitri’s generals. He was originally from Pontal’s territory, but migrated to Savitri’s territory with permission from the African dragon lord.” Krishnan frowned as he stared at the closed doors. “She keeps him around because he’s an excellent strategist. But he’s not exactly the friendly sort.”
“Has he ever hurt a human?” Benaki hadn’t touched anyone here, but when the entire office quietly retreated to their cubes at his arrival, the dragon’s eyes had held the same fierce amusement that I’d witnessed in the worst human-abusers of Hian-puo’s dragons. Specifically the dragons who’d taken great pleasure in tormenting two human slaves, Cai and Jia, who worked his castle. Myrna and Trian had eventually convinced Lord Relobu to offer the mother and daughter sanctuary in North America after they helped with the recovery of Relobu’s imprisoned team. But both seven-year-old Cai and her mother would wear physical and emotional scars from the experience for the rest of their lives.
Krishnan shook his head. “Once. He swore it was an accident, that the man tripped over his tail and fell into the desk, breaking his arm. But Savitri knows Benaki too well, and publicly punished him for the “accident.” Since then, he’s never been friendly, but he’s resisted the urge to cause mayhem.
“Usually Savitri is careful not to let Benaki near her human employees when she isn’t present. But it doesn’t stop him from making everyone uncomfortable.”
“I haven’t worked around dragons much, so excuse me if this is a stupid question, but how does Savitri keep her generals in line? Don’t get me wrong, if she were attacking me, I’d be suitably terrified. But Benaki is over twice her size. You said Pontal was Benaki’s original dragon lord. Doesn’t he owe allegiance only to the lord of his birth?”
“You’re thinking of the birthright custom?”
“I think so.”
Myrna had tried to explain the system of dragon rule before, but I admit I hadn’t paid that much attention. From what little I could remember, dragons were somehow predisposed to follow the lord of their birth territory. Some scientists speculated that it was built into their genetic make-up. The fluke medical procedure that had created dragons had been aimed at eradicating cancer, and each mixture had been created to combat specific forms of the disease. Each of the seven original dragon lords had been spawned from a different mixture.
The medical team’s main goal had been to ensure the cancer-curing cells replicated consistently within the body without mutation, to increase the odds that the injected DNA continued to attack the proper cancerous cells they’d been designed to eradicate. Because of this, when dragons had been accidentally created, all dragons had essentially been programmed to replicate the appearance and behavior of their parents as closely as possible. This caused the dragons to feel an almost overwhelming need to wo
rk with members of their birth family.
Of course, some of the older, original offspring of the dragon lords—the ones who had one of the petri-dish-created dragons for both mother and father—shared equal amounts of DNA from both parents and had more choice in which lord they more closely identified. But Benaki looked far too much like the African dragon lord to be anything other than the child of two Pontal-descended dragons.
“Some people speculate that Benaki’s distance from his birth dragon has caused...issues in his thought processes.”
That may be, but I was quickly learning that some people—and dragons too—simply chose to be a certain way, and no one would be able to persuade them differently.
Speaking of persuasion...
“You said Savitri punished him publicly for his ‘accident’ with the human. He allowed it? He seems like the type of dragon who would be humiliated by something like that.”
“Savitri might be small in size, but she is a skilled fighter. You forget she’s successfully maintained a border between Pakistan and China for many years. Even those under Savitri’s rule by birth are not mindless followers. She’s had a few subjects who made the mistake of thinking they could easily take her throne. Every one of them is dead. She holds her possessions like a true dragon lord. With a vicious temper and an absolute belief in the superiority of her claim.”
I thought back to the growing number of dragons on the Pakistani border. Dragons, especially dragon lords, were not only possessive of the things they already owned, but were historically greedy about things they did not.
I gave Krishnan a small smile. “I think I’m finished for the day. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Eyes already scanning my notes, he gave me a distracted wave and wished me a good evening.
Chapter Fifteen
I left the office as soon as I gathered my things, my head pounding from the hours I’d spent hunched over scribbles of dragonscript. I rubbed the back of my neck absently as I walked to the gate, my other hand holding the sack that held my newly completed cholis.
Someone yelled “Julie” several times before I remembered that was my name while at work, and I looked up to see Daniel waving at me as he approached from the street. My muscles tightened as he walked up the hill, his long legs and broad shoulders covered in a perfectly fitted pair of slacks and a short-sleeved polo. As always, he looked calm, professional, and incredibly hot.
I remembered being impressed with his sense of style when we first met in the hospital, and it appeared that it hadn’t just been a part of his “doctor” persona. Reminding myself that my attraction to men who dressed well hadn’t exactly worked out well for me in the past, I mustered a smile.
“Sorry. I forget I have a different name,” I told him when he was close enough for me to whisper.
“I figured. Sorry I missed you this morning. You didn’t have to go to the tailor on your own.”
I gave an uncomfortable chuckle, and then decided it would be easier for both of us if I went ahead and brought up the reason for my quick departure.
“Daniel. I just wanted to apologize for last night. I had a little too much to drink, and with the whole stitches thing—I guess the relief of it being over made me act a little crazy. I solemnly swear it will never, ever happen again.”
Because of his sunglasses, I couldn’t see his eyes, but I was glad to see the corner of his mouth lift into a brief smile.
“Don’t worry about it. Like I seem to remember mentioning to you earlier, I totally deserved it. Besides, what’s a little bit of drunken groping between husband and wife?”
I smiled, glad to see I hadn’t made our live-in arrangement unbearably awkward for both of us. Daniel succeeded in hailing an auto-rickshaw, and we climbed inside.
“How was your first day of work?”
I laughed, but without humor. “Work was good if you consider the fact that I found overwhelming evidence that Richard set me up to be the fall guy in his plans for the bioweapon.” I filled Daniel in on the details of Richard’s note.
“No. He didn’t. That bastard.”
I shook my head. “Oh, he did. And I share your sentiments on his parentage. I talked to Myrna, and she’s not sure whether he was truly planning on selling another bioweapon or whether it was a ploy to get the dragon lords all in one place so he could set one off and kill them all at once.”
“Good Lord. I’m speechless. I’ll admit I never saw that coming.”
“Heh. You and me both.” I looked out the opening in the auto. “I didn’t get a chance to dig around for anything specific on the troop movements today. Sorry.”
He put his arm around my shoulders. “Carol, it’s fine, really.” He waved away my apology. “Not a problem. I didn’t manage to track down my contact until this afternoon anyway.”
Daniel had told me about a source he had that might be able to narrow down the location of the things we were looking for on the possible invasion of China. “Did he know anything?”
“Yeah. He says all military correspondence is delivered directly to Savitri’s personal assistant, Nipa. She’s human, looks about a hundred years old, and guards the file cabinet we need access to like a hawk.”
“Of course she does. Why can’t anything be easy?”
“Why indeed?”
“I think I’ve seen this Nipa woman in the break room. I’ll see what I can do to make myself invaluable.”
“Well, no need to worry about it now, we’ll deal with that hurdle tomorrow. Tell me what else you managed to get your claws into.”
I told him about the cubicle full of paperwork, Savitri’s negotiations with Adelaida on behalf of India, and the unnerving visit from Benaki.
“Benaki...big dragon, maroon, with a scar about here?” Daniel ran his hand along his neck.
“That’s the one. Krishnan said he used to be Pontal’s dragon, until he requested a transfer to Lady Savitri’s service.”
Daniel grunted. “I’ll bet he regrets that now. Rumor is he got that scar when he tried to assume control of a dinner party Savitri was hosting. She told him to step down, he got surly, and she reacted.”
“Really? Wow.” Krishnan hadn’t been kidding when he said Savitri could take care of herself. I found myself wishing I’d been around to see the fight. Benaki’s scar was rough-edged, ragged. It had been clearly made by a sharp tooth or claw, not by any type of blade. Savitri didn’t seem big enough to cause that amount of damage.
“Yep. Every year or so there’s a young dragon who mistakenly assumes Savitri is an easy target because she’s small, and because she chose to settle down with a single mate instead of the usual dragon lord practice of multiple sex partners.” He gave me a playful smile. “Sexist assumptions aren’t restricted to only the human race.”
“I have to admit, it never occurred to me that she would have a single mate.” The idea of mating for life wasn’t unheard of in the dragon community, in fact one of Lord Relobu’s nieces life-mated last year. The two dragons were so obviously in love that the human newspapers had done a couple of stories on them. The public had been so fascinated by the pair that much of North America had been waiting for her to give birth to her “royal” twins for months now.
But marriage, if you could call it that, wasn’t the norm. With only seven original dragons, the lords generally did whatever it took to increase their territory’s dragon population to a size sufficient for defense of the homeland. The fact that Savitri had mated with a single male dragon meant she either felt confident in the size of her dragon armies, or decided to leave the churning out of dragonlings to someone else.
I wasn’t sure which option I preferred. The talk of dragon armies reminded me of my conversation with Myrna. “I called DRACIM Tulsa. I figured since the guy who used my office worked for the Bangalore branch, it wouldn’t seem completely out of the ordinary for the Tulsa number to pop up.”
I caught Daniel up on the recent Tulsa events, including the formation of human militias, Emory�
��s injuries, and Myrna’s frantic work schedule. By the time I was finished, we’d reached the apartment.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go upstairs, make a sandwich and try to seduce you. Only this time, we’re not stopping until we’re both so tired we can’t move.”
Daniel stopped and stared. I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked to the elevator, and moments later, I heard the crunch of his shoes on gravel as he followed me.
* * *
That elevator ride was the longest I’d had in my life.
Daniel had already managed to get the brooch holding up my pallu unpinned from my shoulder by the time we hit the apartment, and as soon as he’d keyed us in and the door was closed, I helped him free the sari from my waistband and drop the material to the floor. Daniel watched as it fell, and his hand went still against my hip.
Wearing only the cropped blouse and underskirt, I had a momentary urge to cover myself, afraid that Daniel’s initial enthusiasm stemmed from a need to give me a taste of the same medicine I’d fed him the night before, and that any second he’d back away, leaving my desire burning white hot with no way to quench it.
I’d known, intellectually, that my actions last night had been cruel. But now, with my hands practically itching to touch him somewhere, anywhere, I realized just how heartless I’d been.
I placed a tentative hand against his chest. “I’m sorry. For last night.”
Daniel pulled back, his eyes locked to mine as he considered my words. “You’re not planning on doing it again, are you?”
The horror in his voice caused me to choke back a laugh. “No. Absolutely not.”
The weight of his body pressed me back against the wall and he chuckled. “Then you’re forgiven.”
He grabbed my leg just above the knee and went to hook it around his waist, but the sari’s cotton underskirt severely hampered my movement, and the sudden shift in my center of gravity without full motion of my legs nearly knocked me—and him—to the floor. Daniel managed to steady us both with a palm to the wall, but by then, we’d both dissolved into laughter.
Dancing with Dragons Page 15
