As I reached the level of the desert, I saw that there was a little village set into the foothills of the mountains. That was the source of the burning smell and the blood; one did not require a nose like mine to suss that one out. I’d just made up my mind to bypass the place entirely—my business had nothing to do with desert villages and their troubles—when the wind blew something strange and wonderful to my nose.
It was the unmistakable tang of dragonmetal once more. Different, I thought, from the dragonmetal I’d been chasing all this time; there was a wilder, fleshier spice to it, like blood and Talent. The combination was a perfume whose peculiarity I could not resist. I had to discover the source.
The man I’d been following was still beyond my reach, but this smell was instantly recognizable. I didn’t have time to wonder whether he’d led me here on purpose. More likely was the explanation that he’d had some dealings here, possibly either to sell or buy, which meant that whoever he’d been dealing with was now in the village. A beautiful combination of events.
Fate was on my side after all.
Without a second thought, I switched my course, making for the village at once. I already knew that the nomads had ridden off with whatever their quarry was; with them gone, the village was safer, if still in turmoil. My heart all but skipped a beat as I picked up the pace, drawing closer to the smell of burned things, death and injury and fear alike. I pulled a handkerchief from my sleeve and tied it firmly over my nose. There were some disadvantages to the gift I’d received, the main one being that I smelled even the things I didn’t need nor particularly wished to. Still, it was worth it. It had always been worth it to me to have a purpose in life that I could call my own.
As I came up to the village outskirts, I noticed a man crouching by the tent nearest to me. He held something in his arms, but neither man nor object smelled of the dragonmetal I sought. I was about to ignore them so that they might ignore me and delve farther into the village in pursuit of what my nose dangled tantalizingly in front of me when the man called out. His senses were keener than a simple villager’s ought to have been; I had missed my mark on that account.
“Hey!” he said, in a soldier’s unmistakable bark. “You, over there. Give me a hand with this!”
I made a cursory effort in looking around, but I was already quite certain that it was me to whom he was speaking. No one else native to this wreckage remained in sight. It was also uncertain whether or not they remained at all. Reluctantly, I strode over to him, determined to at least see what it was he needed before I made my way along. As I came closer, I noticed two things: one, that the soldier was clearly of Ke-Han descent; and two, what he was holding was not an object at all but a very small boy.
“I just need someone to hold his arm while I set it,” the soldier explained, not giving me a second look. Trained as I was for the Esar’s current purposes, I spoke his language fluently; it took me a moment to realize I needed to translate, but this had as much to do with the time I’d spent alone, away from language of any sort, as it had to do with the differences in our native tongues. With my handkerchief covering my face, it was also possible that he thought I was local to these parts; my hair was black, like his, and the confusion might serve me well. “Can you do that?”
The boy made a pitiful sound, more like a wounded dog than a human child, and I crouched in the sand beside him. I supposed I could do as he asked.
“Thanks,” the soldier said. He reached over to show me where I was to hold, and I caught the faintest trace of a familiar scent on his hands. My pulse quickened. It couldn’t possibly be. And yet my nose had never led me astray.
My interest was suddenly renewed in this man—though the scent was not as strong here, it nonetheless lingered on his hands, strong enough that I could smell it as he reached across to me.
I held the boy’s arm; the sight of pain and injury did not perturb me as it did some, though I felt a distant pity for the mewling creature. The soldier was staring at me, and I supposed I should do something to help the child; with one gloved hand, I patted him faintly on the head. The other I kept to the soldier’s instructions.
Together, we reset the bone. The boy lost consciousness some way through, which I supposed was for the best; whatever dreams he was host to now could not possibly be worse than the pain he would have experienced were he conscious.
The soldier sat back, sweat damp on his face. It only heightened the scent of the metal on his hands, however, and I glanced at them, allowing a moment of contemplation to overtake me.
His eyes narrowed as he observed me, and I knew the moment he realized I was not a local occupant.
Of course, it was only natural for him to wonder what I was doing here, my face hidden from view, my clothes foreign, and my eyes very green. But I had been friendly from the first, and that initial kindness would go a long way toward helping the informal peace talks that were about to take place between us.
“I mean no harm at all,” I told him, holding up my hands.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What’re you doing here?”
The truth, or a complicated lie? Both had their benefits; both, their drawbacks. He had a keen kind of face, marred only by one nasty scar, and though he was young, it was obvious he was a soldier of some experience. Ash made my eyes water and I looked away—a wile that might influence his inclinations somewhat. If he thought that I was troubled by the destruction wrought around us, he might just soften. After all, he’d paused to look after a little child in the midst of what was, essentially, a battlefield. He had a streak of human gentleness that I could manipulate to my needs.
“I’m a mapmaker,” I said finally. When in doubt, giving away truths was never the best plan. “Part of Volstov’s plan to chart these mountains, now that they are peaceful. Yet it seems they are not as peaceful as all that.”
“You’re not alone,” the soldier said. He doubted my lie.
“No,” I said, and turned to him with a frightened expression on my face like a mask. “My company—I was separated from them. Do you think that they have been taken by the madmen who did this?”
My fear seemed to assuage his fears, though he was still wary of me. “Too many people here that shouldn’t be,” he said, and then, as if that reminded him of something he’d forgotten, his eyes widened. “Madoka—”
That was a word I did not recognize. After a moment’s consideration, I knew it must be a name.
You’re not alone either, I thought. And whoever he and his companion were I knew they were relevant to my search.
The wind picked up; though it blew more burning my way, I also caught the tantalizing scent of dragonmetal—that distinctive burst of blood pulsing against steel, making the magic more immediate than I’d ever sensed it before. This was something special.
I rose to my feet. I couldn’t allow some fire, some unhappy accident, to take away my lead.
“Where are you—” the soldier asked, but I was already following it. Past houses, burning, and the smell of death all around me, I picked up my pace—running now, and lucky there was no one here from my old life to mark me. Such excitement was not an emotion I often exhibited. But I was among wild things now, and that was the element that had been added to the dragonmetal: wildness. Blood, foreign Talents, brutal flesh.
The scent led me to a woman on the verge of collapse. I caught her as she fell, and so cradled her to my chest, waiting for the soldier to come and find us both.
THOM
Though we’d started out on our travels presumably to learn more of the world, and I had already seen a great deal—sights unimaginable to any common Mollyrat—I was now confronted with a sight I’d never expected to see, watching my brother fight blade to blade with, as Geoffrey came to tell me later, a nomad prince.
I wasn’t much inclined to listen to what Geoffrey had to say, but that piece of information, at least, was useful to me. The contempt that the native peoples of the desert showed for my old friend confirmed my su
spicions; he was a cad and something of a monster, not at all the shy studying companion I had remembered, and my decision to involve him in Rook’s and my life was exceedingly ill-advised. Whatever scolding I received from Rook afterward would be one I thoroughly deserved; I was prepared to take it like a man, unflinching and stolid.
I never got the chance, as Kalim al’Mhed of the Khevir al’Mheds had offered my brother something even I couldn’t.
“You know where who is?” Rook demanded—he was going to ruin the uncommon truce he’d managed to form in a matter of seconds if he wasn’t careful. Risking his anger, I stepped forward to lay my hand on his arm.
Kalim took note of me for the second time; I tried to explain to him with my eyes that my brother was, in some senses, very mad, but there were too many cultural differences between my expressions and his. He looked away from me, the point not taken, and back to Rook.
“You speak of a troublesome woman; you have come looking for her here,” Kalim explained. “I know of one woman in the Khevir dunes who lives by herself. She is the only woman I can imagine who might give you troubles.”
“This woman,” I interceded, on all of our behalf. “Is she a native to this place?”
“Under heaven! No,” Kalim replied. “She came some years ago—four now by my count. Like a storm she came too.” He shuddered for a moment, lost in some memory, then laughed out loud while slapping his thigh, once more in good humor. “She has…a similar look about the face as Mollyrat Rook. He is like a storm, himself.”
Very apt, I thought. I looked to Rook, whose face was a dangerously unreadable mask, like one of the beheaded statues we’d passed on our travels. I shuddered, but did him the honor of refusing to turn away from him.
“One of the magicians,” I said. “It’s possible—”
“All right,” Rook said in a hard voice. “I’m calling in the favor you owe me, right now.”
Kalim’s eyes glinted. “What do you ask?”
“Take me to her,” Rook said. “I’m going to the Khevir dunes.”
“Aha,” said Kalim, and he got a hesitant sort of look on his face. I could have told him it was the sort of thing Rook would pounce on instantly—he had an impossibly keen sense for hesitance in others—and indeed, Rook took a step forward, fists bunched, bracing for a confrontation.
“There a problem?” he asked, like things hadn’t just calmed down by the grace of the desert gods, and we weren’t all trying very hard to keep matters from erupting once again.
The men behind us, Kalim’s men, had begun to whisper in their language—a soft, fleeting speech that sounded like wind moving over the sand. Geoffrey, in the first sensible act he’d taken since our capture, had lost consciousness; his captor now carried him over one shoulder like a sack of grain except worth considerably less.
“My men will not follow me there,” Kalim explained, face suddenly absent of the good humor it had worn a moment ago. “They believe, perhaps not without reason, that the woman carries a curse with her.”
“I’m gonna do a lot worse than curse ’em if we don’t get moving,” Rook said.
Kalim shook his head. “I cannot ask them to come with us. It would be…What is the word?”
“Reckless?” I asked, unable to help myself when someone was struggling for a word. “Or possibly negligent?”
“Bad,” Kalim agreed.
“Come with us?” Rook asked, already having taken the most valuable part of the sentence to heart. “Does that mean you’re sticking around for the ride?”
“It is the duty of a ruler to honor his people as he would honor himself,” Kalim explained. “To ignore their fear of the desert woman would be a great dishonor. But as for myself, I am not afraid.”
Rook snorted. “You should talk to th’Esar sometime.” He looked around for a moment, taking stock of matters, and I noticed him touch the handle of his new knife consciously, rubbing it with his thumb as though he could feel the difference. “We leaving now? Still plenty of hours of night left ahead of us.”
“There is the matter of your…Not your friend. The rakhman,” Kalim explained. “If you would not protest, I will have him sent back to camp with my men.”
I felt a small but insistent anxiety rise in me. I was not feeling particularly kindly disposed toward Geoffrey, and I was fairly certain I would no longer call him friend after the trouble he’d gotten us into, but I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable abandoning him to a host of men who wanted nothing more than his death. Kalim had proclaimed himself a man of honor, but none of his host had done the same.
“Fine by me,” Rook said. “Tell them they can cut his throat if he tries to escape.”
I winced and made up my mind to say something, but before I could do it Kalim was laughing.
“They will not kill him before I return,” he said, sounding quite sure of himself. “Knowing I travel alone, with two men of Volstov, one of whom has proven himself in combat, they will not do anything to provoke you. For fear of my safety, do you see?”
“Wouldn’t put me out any.” Rook shrugged, with a glance back in my direction. He made a face, as though this was somehow all my fault and I was ruining his fun by trying to keep someone I’d once known and liked from being murdered in front of me. I’d had more than one such experience during my childhood, though that—alongside everything else I’d picked up in Molly—was something I’d done everything in my power to forget. Simply put, I was not in the mood to see the experience repeated, when Molly was so far behind me.
“He will be safe,” Kalim promised, looking at me this time. I knew then I must have been doing a very poor job of keeping my feelings to myself for even a stranger to pick up on them. He turned to give a sharp command to one of his men, and there was a flurry of activity as they moved like trained soldiers changing formation. They were wonderfully organized, I thought privately. They clearly knew the desert intimately. It was no wonder they’d been able to sneak up on us so easily.
The man Kalim had spoken to came forward with our camels, alongside another one that must have belonged to the nomad prince himself.
Rook looked up sharply, a hunting dog scenting something he liked in the air.
“This mean we’re traveling tonight after all?” he asked.
“Tonight, and the next night,” Kalim said, checking the bags strapped to the camel. We were all well provisioned, at least. “You are closer perhaps than you thought, but we cannot cover the distance in what remains of this night. Tomorrow night…Perhaps. It depends upon how well you Volstovs ride.”
Rook swore, and swung up onto his camel in a practiced motion that made me ache just looking at it. I was none so graceful, and being conscious of my own awkwardness didn’t make it any less evident. Kalim no doubt was laughing at me as I scrambled onto my mount’s lumpy, ungraceful back, losing my footing more than once as I did so, nearly falling squarely upon my backside in the sand. At least I managed it without taking a full tumble. That would have been shame of the highest order, and I might never have been able to recover Kalim’s esteem after that.
Privately, I was not at all looking forward to getting back on a camel, especially at this hour of the night. I didn’t know how Rook had managed to adjust so quickly to a schedule of sleeping during the day and riding all night, but as always it seemed to me to speak of some discrepancy between us. We shared the same blood, and yet Rook was able to accomplish all manner of feats I could not. I had my education, yes, but that was an earned skill, not something I’d been born with at all.
Perhaps, if Rook had gone to the ’Versity, he would have had no need for me at all. It was a question I held deeply hidden in my heart, so I could examine it only when I was feeling particularly disheartened.
It was merely difficult being so useless when all I wanted to do was help.
“You are sure that this is the path you wish to take?” Kalim asked, so that for a minute I thought he was asking us about directions. “The Volstov woman has a fear
some temper, they say, and I have never known her to accept a visitor.”
“I’m sure,” Rook said, his face set as stone. It was clear to anyone with eyes what he was thinking: She’ll damn well accept me.
Anyone who didn’t know Rook might have thought this was born of hubris, but his arrogance was always based on some truth. If anyone could convince her, it would be he.
Kalim shrugged, as if to say it was our funeral, then turned atop his mount to address his men. With some difficulty I adjusted my perch upon my own camel, hoping that since everyone was currently listening to Kalim speak, there would be no one left to notice me. From somewhere to my left, Rook sniggered, and I felt at once both ashamed and resigned. It was a strange mingling of emotions, with neither battling the other for dominance, and I wondered if it meant I was finally reaching some level of comfort with my brother. At the very least, now that we seemed to be closer than ever to our goal, he’d forgotten to be as cantankerous as possible to me at every interval.
At least Geoffrey had been good for taking the brunt of Rook’s scorn for a short while. I had to grant him that.
Rook tutted at his camel, twitching the reins and bringing her up next to mine. I still didn’t understand how he could be so violent with his fellow man and so easy when it came to dealing with four-legged creatures. It was a fascinating inconsistency, and one I was quite keen to study when all this was over. For now, however, I had more important tasks to put my mind to—like trying to get my camel to turn at all.
“You gonna stay on that thing, or do I have to tie you on?” Rook asked.
“I,” I began, pausing to smother an inconveniently timed yawn. “I’ll manage.”
“Uh-huh,” Rook said, not looking at all convinced. “Just keep your wrist looped into that bridle and maybe you won’t fall off this time.”
I did as I was told, hoping that I wouldn’t break my wrist—probably better than breaking my neck, in the long run.
“We’ll travel faster without all that shit weighing us down too,” Rook said, and for a minute I honestly couldn’t tell whether he meant Geoffrey or all the supplies and workers he’d needed for the dig.
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