And what is he to tell the others, who are turning to him now with frightened, questioning eyes? Where will he find the words? He looks to Sedou, and breathes a sigh of relief. The engaging black man whose shape Water has borrowed is already busy soothing and explaining, revealing little that might distress, without ever seeming to conceal, all this far more articulately than the Librarian could ever manage. At last, a dragon that can speak for itself.
Meanwhile, if Air will not see to the welfare of the humans she has dragged to this fatal place, he must do it himself. According to Luther, the Grove is currently a perilous location in its own right. But if Air insists on going there, the Librarian will not be able to stop her. Still, a little resistance is in order. He must put the dragon off long enough to prepare everyone for the journey. Then he must make sure that the portal stays open long enough for all to pass through it safely.
Most important, he must let them know that they’ll have to be ready to fight the minute they get there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The sultry heat is familiar, way more humid than the Citadel. The ruddy skies are what reminded Paia of home the first time she came here, but it’s the tired, dusty palm trees that tell her for sure she’s back in Africa. The smell of dead fish and carrion is strong even this high. As the dragon soars along the curving borderline of bleached sand and ocean, Paia is assailed by the memory of N’Doch closing his dead mother’s eyes. She’d weep for them if she could, tears of rage and guilt. But a dragon has no tears. Especially this dragon.
Fire materializes in man-form in a deserted hallway of a vast marble palace, in full dress uniform, his most stunning confection of red and gold. Paia finds herself beside him, corporeal, separate, as if her moment of despising him so totally has flung them apart. She lays her fingers to her cheeks in wonder. Her own skin, her own being. A sigh of relief escapes her so audibly that Fire stares down at her and scowls.
“You’re to be gorgeous, quiet, and submissive. This will indicate my high honor and status, as well as assuring your safety. Can you manage that?”
Paia nods, distracted by the joy of being herself again.
“All right, then. Two steps behind me always. So they’ll see you as a virtuous woman, not for sale, and belonging to me. Understand?”
She makes a face, gazing up at him impudently, and curtsies. “Yes, my Fire.”
“You used to call me ‘my lord.’”
“Yes, well . . .”
He turns on his booted heel and strides off down the hall. Paia hurries after him, but her surroundings are a distraction. Double ranks of polished marble columns support heavy gilt cornices and a long coffered vault stretching toward a distant pair of gilded doors. The marble is heavily veined in rich reds and blues, so gaudy that Paia wanders closer to see if it’s painted. This is architecture on a grandiose scale, built with one intention in mind: to impress. Paia has only seen its like in picture histories of ancient empires. Between the columns, arched panels of beveled mirror reflect the glimmer of crystal chandeliers. She’s reminded of old videos of Versailles, in her day half-submerged by the rising water. This is how it must have felt to walk its glittering corridors during the reign of the Sun King. But there’s also a lot that Louis would not have recognized. Surveillance cameras swivel to keep the intruders in sight as they pass. Hidden speakers fill the long arching hall with sound and music. Huge video screens are set into the mirrored panels between every other column, a different image playing on every screen. Paia lags behind. She hasn’t seen advertising since the earliest days of her youth, and the only actual programming she’s known is what’s archived in the House Computer’s library. Very little of it looks like this. She slows in front of a graphic battlefield scene. A cacophony of screams and explosions leaps at her in stereo from behind the columns.
“So real . . .” Paia stares, fascinated. Perhaps it’s actually a news report?
Down the hallway, Fire glances back, then stops, his tall silhouette perfectly reflected in the shine of the marble floor. He hisses at her to hurry. Paia trots dutifully after him. Along the way, she glimpses nude bodies intertwined on one screen, and some indescribable carnage involving small animals on another.
“Where are we?” she demands, catching up. Her whisper dances like soft light across the gilded coffering to join the bellows and moans of the mingled sound tracks.
Fire waves her back. “Two steps behind, remember! If anyone sees, I’ll lose face immediately!”
Paia complies, trying not to sulk. “What is this place?”
“You like it?”
“Not really. I think it’s creepy.”
“Get used to it. We’ll be staying a while.”
“But what is it? Did you see what’s on those screens?”
“What do you expect? We’re in the headquarters of the Media King.” Fire gestures grandly around. “A gallery of his current work, I assume. A new addition. And the decor is much improved since I was here last. My minion has obviously come up in the world. You see? There are still places where my favors can make a leader out of an ordinary man.” He pauses, irritably adjusting the high tight collar of his tunic. “It’s hot here.”
Paia stares at him. Is that sweat beading on his red-gold forehead? “What did you say?”
He looks amazed and vulnerable for about a nanosecond, then snaps, “I know, I know. Permit me the discovery of climatic discomfort, now that I’m actually embodied.”
She can’t keep the wonder from her face, and the hope from her eyes. “You actually feel the heat?”
“What’s so wonderful about that?”
“Well, it’s so . . . so human.”
“Damned inconvenient.”
Paia shakes her head, and then, very deliberately, she goes to him, slides her arm up around his neck and draws his head down to hers to kiss him deeply and lovingly. She feels his astonishment, his delight, the rising of his desire, and then his fury and resistance. He breaks the hold of her arm and pushes her roughly away. “Not here! You’ll ruin my image!”
Smiling to herself, Paia keeps pace with him as he turns away, following respectfully in his wake. She’s made her point, and she doesn’t want to be left behind in this salesman’s palace. Despite its luxury and scale and the omnipresent security cameras, it doesn’t feel safe.
Just short of the gilded doors at the end of the corridor, a wide crossing hall intersects. Fire wheels right, his sharp heels resounding with military precision. Paia represses a grin. How the dragon must be enjoying this new ability of his man-form to make sound in the material world! Another tool of intimidation added to his arsenal, to compensate for his sudden vulnerability to the heat. She follows him cheerfully around the corner.
A broad staircase rises ahead of them, its elaborately carved newels sporting twin logos in polished brass. The bottom step is flanked by two beefy guards, smartly dressed, despite the humidity, in close fitting black and gray. Their collective gaze is fixed on one of the nearby wall screens. Their jaws are slack with fascination. Paia cannot see the screen from her sidelong angle, but she hears cries and weeping, and a woman’s desperate begging. The sentries snap to quick attention as Fire cruises to a halt in front of them.
“General! Sir!” exclaims one, saluting so abruptly that Paia is surprised he hasn’t broken his wrist. “You are welcome! Sir!”
“I should hope so.” Fire breezes past to mount the stairs two at a time. Only at the top does he wait for Paia to trudge up after him, by which time the sentries have returned their attention to the screen. At the top of the stairs, more guards and more wall screens, this time offering a selection of programming: the battle scene again, and a young girl being beaten, then an elaborate costume drama where only the women go without clothing. Paia glances at the final screen and away again, shocked. Surely this is far too intimate to be viewed among strangers! Worst of all are the actress’ screams of pain. So convincing. The soldiers watch in avid silence, their eyes constantly flicking
from one screen to the other. Behind them, several doorways lead into other huge rooms and brightly lighted hallways, with other open doors beyond that.
Again, the uniformed sentries snap to with brisk salutes. They are boys, really. Sweating beneath their chic uniforms. While the rest stare openly at Paia and make whispered suggestions among themselves, the oldest steps forward.
“Welcome, General. Are you expected?”
“Expected?” Fire offers a lofty but complicit grin. “Mr. Baraga would soon grow bored, Lieutenant, if I showed up only when expected.”
The young man nods politely, but Paia can see he’s repressing a frown. He can’t bring himself to meet the man/dragon’s glance directly, so he stares intently at the middle button on Fire’s red tunic, taking another step forward to lean in and murmur, “Begging your pardon, General, but it’s His Excellency, the President, now.”
“Really? I’ll be sure to remember.” Fire turns to Paia with a sly wink. “Didn’t I tell you he’s come up in the world?” To the lieutenant, he says, “Yes, it’s been a while. Sorry I missed the coup, but I gather it all went as planned. Is His Excellency about?”
The frown mutates into a tight and awkward smile. “His Excellency is shooting live at the moment, sir.” The lieutenant waves vaguely at the screens, then slides his gaze past Fire’s chest to where Paia has stopped the prescribed two steps behind. “Perhaps you would care to join him.”
“Perhaps I will.”
The other guards have turned away from this mundane conversation, and the passing diversion of a merely live woman. And though the lieutenant steadfastly faces front, his concentration is faltering, drawn away by the bright, beckoning screens and the promise of drama. “Shall I accompany you to the studio, sir?” he asks unhappily.
“No need.” Fire moves past him, beckoning Paia to follow. “I know the way.”
A succession of gilt-ceilinged salons leads to a parquet-floored ballroom and rows of gold chairs with plush maroon velvet upholstery. A larger chair resembling a throne rests on a dais at the far end. The ubiquitous wall screens are even larger here, with each sound track trying to overwhelm its neighbors with excesses of volume and pitch.
Passing out of the ballroom into another corridor lined with doors, Fire gestures into the wedding cake of cornices and chandeliers. “There’s an entire wing down that way I’m sure he’ll be happy to give us.”
Paia smiles up at him. He’s looking damp and a bit disheveled. She’d like to wipe his forehead, and maybe nibble a little on his perfect, chiseled mouth. “Perhaps you can negotiate for air-conditioning.”
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“But why, my Fire?”
He looks away. “It clouds my thinking.”
Paia laughs delightedly.
Fire scowls, looming over her. “You don’t realize how limited our options are, do you?”
“Perhaps I don’t.”
“Then let me do what I must to find a place for us! There’s time for pleasure later.”
Paia damps her seductive grin. “Forgive me, my Fire. I will.”
More corridors and rooms, then, and finally, a large door, distinctive by being steel-plated and closed, and by the group of men who stand around outside it, drinking and smoking. A few of them watch the bank of screens that lights up the entire adjacent wall, but most of them are chatting, or playing cards or e-games. Above the door, a lighted panel reads: ON AIR.
The men glance up at the click of Fire’s boots across the polished marble. These are not spiffy, boyish soldiers. They are older, and casually dressed. Their pragmatic, world-weary expressions remind Paia of the Tinkers she has met. They observe Fire’s approach with mild disinterest, and yet ease imperceptibly aside so that a passage is cleared to the door without anyone actually greeting him or even acknowledging his presence.
“You see how they know me,” Fire murmurs, and though Paia is steps behind, she hears him as if his lips were at her ear. “Perhaps I should have made my kingdom here.”
He processes grandly through the crowd of men and stops at the metal door. By habit, Paia steps up to open it for him, as she has ever done when the God wished to pass through a closed door without the awkwardness of vanishing on one side and reappearing on the other. Then she hesitates. Perhaps he’d like the novelty of opening it for himself, now that he’s material enough? But he nods, as if granting her permission.
“Let it be as usual,” he says quietly. “That way, I can surprise him.”
The space inside is cavernous and cool and dark, filled with the bustle of men and machinery focused like bees around a central, brightly-lit hive. Paia actually shivers in the draft from the huge vents pumping in cold air. A mist of condensation rimes the trusswork below the ceiling.
Again, space clears magically as Fire moves among the rolling scaffolds and lighting instruments and the thick bundles of cable snaking across the smooth gray floor. But soft catcalls and laughter follow in their wake, dark male laughter that Paia does not like the sound of. Hands reach for her uninvited. Not like the soft touch of the Faithful of the Temple. These hands are rougher, grasping, and presumptuous. Paia closes the gap between herself and the man/dragon until she’s nearly treading on his heels.
“Don’t be concerned,” says his voice in her ear. “They will not harm what belongs to me.”
Paia twists away and into him with a cry of pain as a stray palm cups her breast and squeezes hard. Fire turns. It’s not hard to pick out the perpetrator. He’s guffawing and moving in for more. Fire glares at him, and instantly, the man yowls and doubles over to cradle his arm in pain and terror. The grabbing, rubbing hands withdraw.
I AM STILL YOUR PROTECTOR, AM I NOT, BELOVED?
Paia nods, knowing it would be unproductive to point out to him his penchant for putting her into situations where she will require a protector. “I don’t like it here,” she mutters instead. “But it is cooler.”
“Like I said: get used to it.” He continues onward, toward the center brightness.
Peering past him, Paia sees a short but powerfully built man in a crisp white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He’s talking to a man with a clipboard, describing something with impatient, expressive hands. The bright lights fall on him as if besotted by his hair, which is pure black and glossy and straighter than any Paia has ever seen. She knows instantly that this is Kenzo Baraga, once a big-time media baron, now (apparently) president of his country. And more significantly, once N’Doch’s hero and role model, now the scourge of his entire family. She studies him carefully as they approach. The man doesn’t look like a murderer of helpless old women, even though she knows he is. He’s neat and clean, and looks to be stylish within the standards of his era. Nor does he look insane, as is said of Fire’s other known henchman, the “hell-priest” of Erde’s time. Baraga looks like . . . a businessman. Paia’s father used to entertain such men—powerful and rich—at the Citadel in the days before the Final Collapse. But they were never his particular friends.
If Baraga senses the dampening of the bustle that Fire’s sudden punishing of the grabber has caused, he gives no sign. He continues his emphatic explanation to the man with the clipboard, who notes Fire’s advance with slightly widened eyes but keeps nodding at his boss as if nothing else was on his mind. Only when Fire has come to an august and expectant halt several paces away, does the Media King glance up.
“Well, look who’s here!” He offers a faint but genial bow. “El Fiero. It’s been a long time.”
Paia searches for fear in him, and finds not a hint.
“Kenzo.” Fire nods in greeting. “Congratulations on your recent . . . elevation. I hear you’re running the place now.”
Baraga laughs. “Somebody’s got to maintain order around here. Got so I couldn’t get any work done. And so, you see? Here I am, back in the traces.” He spreads his arms to embrace men, equipment, and studio, then brings his palms together to rub them jovially, looking Paia up and down
. “What have you brought me?”
“Ah, my old friend, this one is not for you. Personal property, I’m afraid.”
Baraga eyes him as if suspecting a joke. He laughs, but sees no answering gleam in Fire’s golden eyes. “But, your pardon, old boy . . . what will you do with her? A waste of a gorgeous woman, if she cannot feel your touch and thrust, eh?” He nudges the man with the clipboard, who’s frozen to the spot by the man/dragon’s proximity.
Paia’s distaste deepens. At least the rest of these creeps have the sense to be afraid of him!
“Kenzo,” says Fire. “You presume too much.”
Baraga laughs. “I do, I do! It’s your own fault, Fiero! What man could resist such beauty?” He elbows the clipboard man aside and steps past Fire to walk around Paia as if contemplating her purchase. Unlike his underlings, he keeps his hands to himself, though he does lift her chin with his thumb to appraise her face. He seems intrigued by the cool dislike in her gaze. “Hmmm. A live one! Surely you don’t really mean to keep all this to yourself!”
Fire says, “Kenzo, we need to talk.”
“Such perfect skin! Café au lait! My favorite! Looks marvelous on camera, you know.”
Appalling that a mere thumb can feel so possessive! Paia looks away, distracted by the sounds coming from behind Baraga, in the circle of bright light. Somewhere over there, a woman is sobbing.
“Kenzo, a word in private, if you please.”
“Let me guess: you’ve come to claim your piece of the action.”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“No problem.” Baraga shoves gently against Paia’s chin, simultaneously a gesture of challenge and dismissal. “But let’s talk over dinner, when I can concentrate. Okay by you, Fiero, old boy?” He gestures toward the light and the sobbing, screened from Paia’s glance by a barricade of men and equipment. “I’m right in the middle of the final sequence, the devil to get right, you know, under the circumstances. Stick around and watch, then we’ll talk. You’ll enjoy it. I’ve revived an old industry tradition to stir up those jaded pricks out there. It’s right down your alley. I’d have a chair brought for you, but . . .”
The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet Page 35
