Time passed, and the sky overhead changed into true night, a dark inky blue above our heads. The troops—I had no other word for them save for a Volstovic approximation—had become precisely spread out along the sand, so that no rider was crowding up on another, and I could barely make out the twin dots that were Kalim riding alongside my brother. For all I knew, they were using this opportunity to race again. I felt a little left out, perhaps missing the days when it had simply been the three of us riding toward Sarah Fleet’s ramshackle little house in the middle of nowhere—or even just Rook and me traipsing through the Volstov countryside—but there was nothing to be done about that now. I studied the constellations without knowing their names, and kept a sharp eye on Geoffrey as my duties dictated. I didn’t think there was much he could do with his hands tied to the camel, but he’d always been a mean kind of resourceful in school, avoiding bullies with methods I could never quite divine. At the time, I’d found his willingness to bend the rules in the name of learning rather admirable, but needless to say, my attitude since then had found reason to change considerably.
I settled into the rhythm of riding after a time, accepting the fact that we would reach our destination whenever we came to it, and nothing I could do would speed things along, one way or another, nor ease the aching in my rear end as the saddle jostled against it. In fact, I’d accepted it so completely that it startled me when Geoffrey began to speak, and I privately cursed myself for not paying better attention.
“…coming up on an oasis,” he was in the midst of saying, voice bouncing along with his mount. “Do you see it, just up there? Well, it’s partially obscured by the dune, but it’s tucked all neat into the basin, a little pocket of greenery. Do you think that’s where they’ve made their camp, Thomas? It seems the likeliest place, to me.”
“You’re the expert,” I said, in a tone not at all meant to flatter his ego.
The riders around us quickened their pace. I quickly switched my attention to keeping up with them, and even reached a hand across to speed Geoffrey’s mount along as well. We bounced violently alongside one another, and I prayed to the unnamed gods of the desert that I wouldn’t fall off and shame my name any further than I’d already done. I wound my hand more tightly in the reins, as Rook had taught me, and I allowed the others to draw ahead of us somewhat.
“Guess it doesn’t make sense for us to stick our necks out, now does it?” Geoffrey murmured, a little bit slyly, as he followed suit. “Let them ride in. They can take the sweat and blood alongside the glory if that makes them happy, then afterward, we come along and take all the rest.”
“A very tidy outlook on life,” I told him, horrified.
“You’ve always been such a prude,” Geoffrey replied.
I didn’t have much time to be offended. The first riders had crested the hill and sound erupted from within the oasis valley.
If we hadn’t found our targets, then we’d found someone, and I didn’t much envy their current position.
Kalim’s riders had already encircled the camp, camels cresting the dunes and disappearing just beyond them. There were no smoky blasts, only individual battle cries rising up together on the air in a single uncoordinated chorus. It chilled my bones. I couldn’t see how the men down below would have any hopes of defending against such a swift and unexpected attack; the advantage was strictly on Kalim’s side—our side rather—and if he’d managed to catch the other tribe off guard as it seemed he had, then there was no hope for them whatsoever. The best they could wish for, if their honor provided for it, was a swift surrender.
I was so caught up in the sounds and the sights of the battle—my camel now close enough to the dune’s edge to witness the carnage down below—that when I next glanced to my riding companion, perhaps to make some manner of commentary on the scene, Geoffrey and his camel were no longer beside me.
My heart plummeted from my chest to my gut as swiftly as an anchor tossed off a ship.
“Geoffrey,” I said, as though that would do any good. The sound of my own voice, small and childishly begging, offended even me.
It had been my job to see to it that the prisoner didn’t escape, and I had fucked it up most royally.
I turned all around to scan the horizon, but Geoffrey had at least not ridden off in any of those directions. I couldn’t have hoped to chase him down if he’d had a head start; he was far more accustomed to riding than I was, and begging my camel to work for me rather than against me had never worked before. Why should it start now? The camels, unlike their riders, had no reason to hate Geoffrey.
But if he had not ridden off, hoping to escape the punishment of the rakhman with his life, then he must have gone straight into the midst of battle.
I peered down into the oasis valley—so much fighting was enough to turn my stomach, and I wished there had been call for a surrender to avoid such unnecessary bloodshed. And all over an item that wasn’t theirs to begin with, I thought, honestly saddened by the events.
Then I saw him—the only man avoiding the skirmish—no longer on his mount, but sneaking through the trees toward what appeared to be the largest central tent. Somehow he’d slipped free of his bonds.
I was off my camel at once, and I only almost fell. Scuffling desperately through the sand, I stumbled after him. This was incredibly foolish, but looking away from him in the first place had been foolish, and now I had to risk my own life in order to remedy what my own carelessness had done. I had to hope no one saw me creeping after Geoffrey—both of us hopping like shadows from one rock to the next, through the tents, as real men fought all around us, blade against blade.
I was so busy focusing on not losing sight of Geoffrey while still maintaining my cover that, in the end, I wasn’t paying attention to much else. I lost sight of Geoffrey all at once as he disappeared behind the large tent, which appeared now to be his goal all along. A camel charged past, without a rider, and I was just standing to head after Geoffrey into the tent when someone barreled straight into me.
I heard a cry of outrage—a woman’s voice—right in my ear, and we both went down, her on top of me, hitting the sand hard. There went my cover, I thought dizzily, and also, there went Geoffrey.
Then someone grabbed me one-handed by the collar and I made a move for my knife, only to discover it was gone. I’d lost it somewhere, maybe when I was creeping like a thief through the brush after Geoffrey. I was probably going to die here, I thought, as my captor demanded something of me in a language that wasn’t Volstovic.
Neither was it Kalim’s language, I realized a moment after that.
In fact—from my studies back in the ’Versity—I actually recognized this one. The person shaking me by the throat was speaking to me in the Ke-Han tongue—words that I could even translate from my elementary studies.
I lifted my eyes to a woman’s face. It was strong-boned and dirty; there was ash streaked over her nose and a cut on her cheek, and in the moonlight she was as pale as a ghost, her lips cracked and white. She looked ill—but beyond that, I could only wonder what in bastion’s name a Ke-Han woman was doing all the way out here.
“What have you done with it?” she shouted. “What have you done with it?”
I could understand the words, if not the question. I was about to formulate my reply—a resounding Please repeat—when I felt the point of a knife against the small of my back.
“You smell of dragonmetal,” another woman’s voice said, this one curiously tinny. “I do wonder how you’re going to account for that.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MADOKA
Everything was going fine. Well, as fine as could be, given the circumstances. So everything was going to shit but I wasn’t dead, just on my way toward dying—captive and presumed to be some kind of witch, currently standing inside some bandit’s tent, all the while staring straight at the very thing that was giving me all this trouble in the first place, about to light some explosives and duck for cover.
Everythin
g was going fine. That was what I would’ve written home to Mother, if I’d known anyone who could write and if there had been anyone who could read it.
The thing in front of me sure was a beautiful piece of work. Too incredible to price, probably worth ten times my weight in gold—the sort of piece master thieves fell in love with and dreamed about the rest of their lives, and never got up the nerve to steal. And here I was, about to steal it.
But stealing it required touching it—something I really didn’t have the nerve to do. Even as I stood there next to it, watching the weird white liquid inside of it swirl, my whole arm was throbbing—and I was keeping a good, safe distance.
I took a deep breath and inched myself closer.
Fuck all, but it hurt like devils gnawing on my arm. I kinda wished I could just lose all feeling in it so I could get this over and done with. Pass the piece out under the tent to Badger, who was waiting outside, then strike the flint Malahide’d given me, run like hell, and hope these nomads feared magic more than they trusted their instincts. We just needed some time.
But man, I really didn’t know if we were gonna pull ourselves out of this in one piece.
Outside, there was a whole lot of shouting. Figured, I guess, since this was an important ceremony and all. Big magic. Praise the gods. Maybe Malahide was whooping them up into a fine frenzy so, when the explosion did go off, they’d all pass out from excitement and buy us some more much-needed time.
Meanwhile, I was sweating like a beast and stinking the whole place up, and with every step I took, the blood in my arm twisted and pounded and burned, and the murky liquid inside the glass case twirled like a summer storm.
Part of me—the bad part, the crazy part, but weirdly enough not the part wracked by the fever—wanted to put my palm flat against the space made for that compass. It was the perfect fit, but I had no idea what’d happen if I did it, and the smart part of me didn’t ever want to know.
Malahide had friends back in Volstov. She was gonna have them look at me. She hadn’t stuck a knife in anyone’s back yet and that was a start. Maybe I didn’t trust her as much as I trusted Badger, but at the same time she was doing all this so she could get the three of us out of the shit we’d stepped in. In other words, she still had good use for me, and she was keeping me alive—definitely not to slit my throat in the desert.
Honestly, I didn’t know anymore. And knowing whatever was going on in her brain on top of having to know everything that was going on in mine would’ve been the final nail in my coffin.
I edged closer to the glass and the liquid and the swirling and the dull light glinting off the metal. Looked like gold, and I knew gold. There were also some metals I didn’t recognize—they sure as hell weren’t local—laced all up the side, as delicate as the patterns on a butterfly.
Then I got too close.
White pain flashed behind my eyelids, not quite so delicate. I made a sound I really wasn’t proud of, grateful as hell to be alone while making it, and dropped down to my knees, putting my back between myself and the liquid. The pain died down, slowly, ebbing like the tide.
If I couldn’t even get close enough to touch it, how the hell was I supposed to hand it over to Badger? I was gonna fuck us over on this one. I could feel it.
The shouting outside was getting louder. Sounded like it was coming from all sides now. Either I was hallucinating or some kind of fight had broken out—maybe it was all part of Malahide’s plan.
I couldn’t be the broken wheel on this caravan, I told myself. I was gonna do this if it was the last thing I did, which it damn well was shaping up toward being. See it through to the end, do something important for a change, and even if no one else was around to see it or know about it, Badger would remember. It was more than some people got in their lives: just somebody to talk about them for long enough to make a difference.
I turned around to face the piece, determined to finish what I’d started. Even if it had been by accident, a foul bit of luck.
But the piece was gone, and the tent flap was waving in the wind like someone’d just run through it.
Well, I thought. Fuck me.
At least the pain was less now that I could actually hear the sound of my own brain and the thoughts bottled up inside. I scrambled to my feet and started after the culprit—it was the only thing I could think of doing. I couldn’t let my only ticket to freedom run out on me like that. The ceremony was fucked—but everyone else would probably know that when they saw a thief making off with their treasure.
Outside, it was cold, the way all nighttimes were in the desert. And things definitely weren’t the way I’d been expecting them. Not even a little bit.
Where were my fawning admirers, hanging tight like Malahide’d told them to, concentrating on making the magic work, all wills turned to one and all that? It’d sounded good even to me, and they’d definitely bought it hook, line, and sinker, so what the hell’d happened here?
A second later, I had my answer. It was a common enough scene for any country girl.
Raid.
Sure was a neat piece of luck they’d pick now, of all times, to make the hit. Since everybody’d been gathered around the tent for the ceremony, it’d probably been like stabbing fish in a barrel. That explained all the shouting. Now things were a little too quiet at the center of camp, meaning all the fighting had fanned off, people chasing their enemies down while others just plain tried to escape. I was alone here—I wondered briefly where Malahide and Badger were, before telling myself they could both take care of themselves and I was the one they were probably worried about—and then I saw him, a thief if I’d ever laid eyes on one. And I had. A whole bunch of them, as a matter of fact. He was skulking through the mangy scrub brushes that speckled the place and I wasn’t gonna let him get away with stealing what I’d been planning on stealing before he’d ever clapped eyes on it.
Hell, he didn’t even see me coming, and I definitely wasn’t at my best that day. He ran straight fucking into me, on top of all that, and we both went down.
It took me less time to get myself together after falling like that. Maybe he was a little slow—even more reason why I shouldn’t let him put one over on me. When I grabbed him by the collar I half expected him to fight back, but he just stared up at me with these big green eyes, full of total confusion, like I was doing him a wrong and not the other way around.
“What have you done with it?” I shouted, more than a few times, probably more than was strictly necessary. I could’ve asked him a few other choice questions too, but right now this was what my brain seemed to have focused on. I wasn’t doing too well. It was a miracle I’d managed to get one up on him at all.
Still, he just stared back at me like he didn’t know what the fuck I was saying—and then maybe he started to get it, but didn’t know how to reply.
His face was too pale for him to be desert people, I realized, but it wasn’t pale enough for him to be Ke-Han. He wasn’t from around these parts; the green eyes were what cinched it for me. Maybe he didn’t look exactly like Malahide, but there were enough similarities for me to figure this guy was probably from Volstov.
I just hoped he wasn’t as nuts as the other person from Volstov I knew.
And then, like I’d conjured her up just by thinking about her, Malahide appeared over the Volstov thief’s shoulder.
He went stiff, and I realized Malahide’d pulled a real nice number in thinking to pick up a knife somewhere.
She said something to him in Volstovic, looking pretty pleased with herself, like a cat in the fisherman’s house when he was off cheating on his wife. The thief stiffened, then replied to her.
“What’re you talking about?” I demanded. The last thing I needed was to listen to a conversation I couldn’t understand and waste more time not knowing what was going on.
“He says he is not the culprit we seek,” Malahide translated. “I suppose you know something about that?”
“Someone took it,” I said. �
��I must’ve blacked out for a moment—it hurt too bad to see when I got too close to it—and the next thing I knew, the tent was flapping and the piece was gone.” I glanced at my captive. No dragon-thing on him, and we would’ve seen it. “He was the only one out here,” I added, angry and sheepish at the same time. “Fuck this, where the hell’d it go?”
“What’s happened?” Badger asked, coming up on my side and nearly getting himself a punch square in the jaw for his troubles. I pulled back just in time, and I’d’ve apologized, except it was already clear I was a little on edge. Badger’d forgive me. “I waited, but the sounds of fighting…”
“It’s a raid,” I said, my jaw tight. “And someone stole the thing right out from under me. Guess we aren’t the only ones who wanted it, after all.”
“Let’s not lose our heads,” Malahide said, still holding on to the Volstovic with one hand, the knife pressed against his side with the other. She was looking around in the dark with her sharp eyes, like maybe she had a mind toward hunting the real culprit down and frying him for her supper. If I weren’t so furious with whoever’d gone and stolen the dragon piece from me, I’d have almost felt sorry for him. Having Malahide as an enemy was probably a fate worse than death.
Distantly, I could hear the clash of weapons, and the bandits shouting to defend their camp. Good, I found myself thinking. Let them see what it was like to be totally defenseless against an attack. They might not learn anything from it, but at least it was well deserved.
The Volstovic piped up with something that sounded like a question, and Malahide shook him like a mama dog shaking one of her puppies.
“What is that?” Badger asked, apparently noticing him for the first time.
“Thought he was the one with the sticky fingers, but he doesn’t have anything on him,” I explained. “That kind of thing’s pretty hard to hide. Plus, I’d know if it was here.” I glanced down at my hand, just to check.
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