by James Maxey
“Agreed!” shouted Arifiel. “Follow me!”
Again they wheeled in a tight formation, darting back toward the open windows. Only now, to her horror, two of the three torches had fallen to the floor. There was a single sky-dragon standing below the bell rope, facing a lone human girl. The other two humans lay on the ground, gutted. With dazzling speed, the sky-dragon leapt up and kicked out with her sharp hind-talons, cutting a vicious slash across the throat of the remaining girl. She collapsed in agony, her torch and sword clattering on the floor.
They were now only a few dozen yards away from the open window. A shout rose in Arifiel’s throat.
“Don’t!”
But it was too late. The sky-dragon had already reached for the bell rope. Arifiel’s shout was drowned by the peal of the magnificent iron bell. Arifiel whirled to the left of the tower, avoiding the window, as the night filled with the rumble of a thousand gears and chains kicking into motion. In half a moment, the fortress would be sealed, leaving all the dragons inside to the mercies of the Sisters of the Serpent.
She glanced back over her shoulder, to see if she could identify this lone valkyrie who had just unwittingly doomed her sisters. Her heart sank as a familiar face looked out the window toward her.
Sparrow.
The brute rewiring of Jandra’s brain had reached the peak of pain several minutes after the initial jolt, leaving her with the worst headache of her life, a skull-ripper that left her too weak to stand. Colorful explosions of light danced across her vision. Jandra had been unable to think during this time. She’d simply collapsed to her back and closed her eyes as she waited out the worst of it.
Jazz had been mostly quiet for the last few hours. Occasionally, Jandra thought she’d gone, but then she’d catch a whiff of cigarette smoke or hear a scratching sound a few feet away. Jandra willed one eye open. Jazz had produced a pad of paper and a pencil from somewhere, and crafted a granite park bench out of moon dust. She sat on the bench, making sketches as she studied Jandra. The stars above burned with unearthly clarity.
“You hang out with some very rude friends,” Jazz said, aware that Jandra was awake.
Jandra licked her lips. “Wh-what have you done to them?”
“I’m just holding them for now. They seemed to have some pent-up aggression. A rather violent need to break things.”
“They can’t be happy that you’ve kidnapped me,” Jandra said.
“There are more important goals in life than making people happy,” said Jazz. “You feeling any better?”
“No.”
“Really? Your nanites should be getting the swelling under control by now and boosting your endorphins to offset the pain. If you’re feeling bad it might be because you want to feel bad.”
“Why would I want to feel bad?”
“Low self-esteem. You were probably feeling pretty powerful before you met me.”
“My self-esteem is fine, thank you,” Jandra said. Self-esteem? It wasn’t a concept that had been in her vocabulary before now. Her knowledge of it came from Jazz’s brain blast. In addition to understanding the idea of self-esteem, she now knew what ice cream was, had a clear mental picture of an airplane, knew that penguins only lived in the southern hemisphere, and remembered that the first man on the moon had been Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969. The new information in her brain seemed useless and trivial, devoid of the proper connections. It was like the loose pages from a million random books had been shoved into her head in no particular order. She suddenly knew how to make a coconut mojito despite not being certain what, exactly, a coconut was.
Jazz sketched her some more, then held the drawing up for Jandra to see.
“Like it?”’ she asked.
Jandra tilted her head. Surprisingly, the motion didn’t cause her wrenching pain. The explosions of color had died off. The crisp white paper Jazz held showed a pencil sketch of Jandra as she lay in the moon dust, one arm over her head, one upon her breast, her hair spreading out in a dark yet radiant halo. She’d been sketched with her eyes closed. Her face looked peaceful; her lips seemed a little too full in the sketch, however.
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not enthusiastic about being your model.”
“I know. I probably seem like a monster to you. But I’m not a monster. I’m just a human being like you. I get lonely. I have worshippers, but not much in the way of friends. I think, with a few modifications, you and I can get along fine.”
“You mean modifications to me, I presume,” said Jandra, sitting up. She realized as she did so that Jazz was right. The worst of the pain was gone. There was only a the memory of the pain still haunting her, causing her to move slowly and carefully as she stood up and wiped the dust from her clothing.
“You have more to gain from being changed than I do,” said Jazz. “And, you’ve a lot to gain from being my friend. I’ve been sorting through your memories as you rested.”
“You’ve been… you can read my mind?”
“Something like that. As my nanites mapped your brain connections they sent me back your existing data. You’re a confused little girl. You’ve been raised by a talking lizard who didn’t train you on how to handle human emotions. You’re like Tarzan of the thirty-second century.”
Jandra nodded. She hadn’t known who Tarzan was when she first arrived on the moon. It felt wrong that she did now. But Jazz was right. Tarzan had been trapped between two worlds, neither civilized man nor jungle beast. Jandra sympathized.
“That Pet fellow was really coming on to you,” said Jazz. “Turning him down for being a jerk is something I can respect. But you were also turning him down because you’re afraid of your own sexuality. You really haven’t had any girlfriends to talk about this stuff with. I can help with that.”
“I didn’t know you’d brought me up here to be psychoanalyzed.” Psychoanalyzed? Was that really a word? A synapse fired and she suddenly knew that sometimes a cigar was just a cigar. She also knew that Bitterwood had been right when he’d pointed out that she dressed herself in dragon scales. She’d always subconsciously thought of herself as ugly for being scaleless, wingless, and tailless. She’d grown into a human woman’s body without any preparation for thinking of it as a worthwhile thing to possess.
“Okay,” said Jandra. “Maybe we don’t have to be enemies. Maybe there are things I could learn from you. How to use my nanotech better, for one thing. You’re obviously operating on a very different level than I am.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Jazz.
“So, I’ll stay and be your friend,” said Jandra. “But only if you let Bitterwood, Hex, and Zeeky go.”
“Hmm. A deal with the devil, huh? Well—” Jazz tilted her head, like a dog hearing some far off sound.
“Oh great,” she muttered.
“What?” asked Jandra.
“The central bell at the Nest just sounded,” sighed Jazz. “This time it’s not just some horny sky-dragon that’s the problem.” She shook her head and mumbled, mostly to herself, “Wish you hadn’t done this, Blasphet. I sort of liked you.”
Jazz stood up. The park bench crumbled back to dust. The pad of paper she carried disintegrated, leaving the graphite lines of the drawing hovering in the air. She reached out, wound the lines up into a little ball of thread, and shoved them into the pocket of her blue jeans. She flicked away the cigarette she’d been smoking. It cut a long glowing arc before her, which opened like an eyelid into twin rainbows framing a narrow slit of perfect nothingness.
“Follow me,” said Jazz. “Let’s give your friends something useful to do to work off their aggression.”
Ahead, the cries of dying gleaners fell silent. Frost and his men had moved on. Pet trotted toward the direction he’d last heard them, hoping he might still catch up. The bright moon cut the junkscape surrounding him into spooky, surreal shadows. Pet felt lost and alone. He stared up at the white orb, trying to get his bearings. He wished Jandra were present. She was always so quick to tell him the
right thing to do, even if he was always so slow in doing it. As he stood silently, he heard men’s voices, and a woman crying. He hurried toward the sound.
“Hold her,” a man gruffly commanded.
“Filthy gleaner scratched me,” another said, his voice trailing off into nervous laughter.
The crying woman screamed, then her voice was cut short by a loud slap.
Pet ran around a junk hill and found three men holding down the woman. Her clothes were torn to shreds. Her face was dirty with rust, and blood was flowing from her nose and lips; she looked a few years older than Jandra. One of the three men was kneeling over her head, his knees pressing down on her shoulders, pinning her with his weight. A second man was fighting to pin down her pale, thin legs, which were kicking wildly. The third man watched with a leering grin, his fingers probing a set of long parallel scratches on his left cheek.
The scratched man giggled again. “Don’t hit her so hard she blacks out. She won’t learn her lesson if she’s unconscious.”
Pet drew up to his full height and marched forward. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “This isn’t the mission. Let her go!”
Scratch-cheek giggled again. “Oh, it’s the dragon-slayer. Funny how you disappeared at the first sign of danger.”
“I’ve killed more men tonight than I have in years,” Pet said in his best leadership voice. “Let her go and get back to your mission.”
“We’re just having a little fun,” said the one at her feet. He’d finally managed to pin her legs down. The woman was crying hard now, barely able to inhale.
The one at her head said, “We’re doing the mission. We’ll kill her once we’re done.”
“Come on, dragon-slayer,” said Scratch-cheek. “We’ll give you first turn.”
Pet placed an arrow against his bowstring and raised it, taking aim at Scratch-cheek.
“I can kill all three of you before you blink,” he said, hoping they’d buy the bluff.
“Don’t start believing your own lies, boy,” said Scratch-cheek, still dabbing gently at his wounds. He seemed not the least bit afraid of Pet. “It’s three of us against one of you.”
Pet let the arrow fly. He imagined the shaft burying itself in Scratch-cheek’s face. To his amazement, it did so, lopping off the man’s middle finger before sinking into his skull just beneath the eye. Scratch-cheek dropped to his knees and fell over the crying woman, completely still. The two men who’d held her rose and drew their swords. Pet tried to pull another arrow from his quiver, but the men were charging him faster than he expected. Pet gave up on the arrow and drew his sword, raising it in time to parry a chop from the head-man. He jumped backwards as the foot-man gave a rapid jab that terminated directly in the space his belly had occupied a half second before. Pet had no skills at actual combat, only stage combat, but instinct took over. He dodged and parried, drawing on his acrobatic training as the pair pressed their attack. Unfortunately, he could see no opening for a counterstrike.
A loud metallic zang rang out behind him, followed by a whistle as a razor sharp disk big as a dinner plate flashed past his eyes. The head-man was suddenly headless. Pet’s remaining opponent turned white as a ghost as he gazed at something behind Pet. Pet almost turned around to see why, but he was opportunistic enough to know he might never get a better chance to strike. He buried his sword into the right side of the man’s ribcage, driving the blade in as deep as he could. The man staggered backward, a curse on his lips. Pet tried to free his sword but it was stuck, trapped by the man’s ribs, and the hilt was twisted from his fingers as the man fell backward.
Ten feet away, Pet saw the gleaner woman kick herself free from the dead man who had fallen on her. She rose, clutching her torn clothes to her body. A black-haired woman no older than the gleaner leapt from the shadows with a sword and buried it in the woman’s back. The gleaner fell lifeless to the dirt. Her assailant stared at Pet. She was dressed in black buckskin, nearly invisible in the shadows. A Sister of the Serpent? No. She didn’t have any tattoos, and she still had hair, even eyebrows.
“Good job,” said a voice behind Pet. Pet whirled around. The tall dark-skinned man stood behind him. He’d caught glimpses of this man earlier and knew his name was Burke. Burke was wearing a huge gauntlet that covered his left arm from shoulder to wrist. The gauntlet forced his arm to be held perfectly straight, and on his shoulder and back there was a tall cartridge full of the razor disks that had decapitated the first swordsman.
“Good job?” Pet asked. “Are you talking to me or her?”
“Both of you,” said Burke. “Anza for fulfilling the mission. You for having the moral fiber to stand up to these thugs. What’s your name, boy?”
“Pe—Bitterwood,” Pet said. He cringed internally, wondering why he’d fallen back to the lie. There was something about this man’s eyes, however, that made Pet feel especially ashamed of his true identity.
“Bitterwood? Oh! You’re that fellow from the Free City. Are you Bant’s son or something?”
“Bant?”
“Ah,” said Burke. “You’re just a nobody using his name.”
“I prefer to think I’m somebody putting his name to better use than he is,” said Pet. “I’ve met the real Bitterwood. He’s not as heroic as you might think.”
“I’ve fought beside the real Bitterwood,” said Burke. “You’re right. He’s a psychopath. All he had going for him was his obsessive hatred of dragons. He wouldn’t have been out here doing this clean-up work. Nothing would have stopped him from being inside Dragon Forge killing every dragon he laid eyes on.”
“That’s where I should be,” said Pet. “I don’t belong out here killing innocent people.”
“Gleaners aren’t innocent,” said Burke. “They’re a part of the infrastructure that has kept the sun-dragons in power for centuries. I don’t like it either, but it helps to think that we’re not simply killing people, we’re breaking cogs in a vast machine of death and oppression.”
Pet nodded. He felt tears welling in his eyes. “It makes sense. But I can’t do it. It was bad enough to kill a grown man. I could never kill a woman or child.”
“Then don’t,” said Burke. “Dragon Forge is back that way. It’s where I’d be right now, except Ragnar thinks I’m too valuable to risk in the assault. If I die, capturing the foundry loses some of its strategic advantage.”
Pet wiped his cheek, ashamed of his weakness. He desperately wanted to change the subject. “That’s some fancy hardware,” said Pet. “Are you going to build those for everyone?”
“This?” said Burke, running his hands along the gauntlet. “This is just a gadget I’m tuning for Big Chief. The disks are lethal at close range, and I can get off about thirty a minute if the damn thing doesn’t jam, but after about fifteen yards the accuracy falls off at a laughable rate. No, when we get our hands on the forge, I have a much more fruitful item to mass produce.”
“What?” Pet asked.
Burke reached for his thick leather belt, which was studded with countless tools in specialized pockets, from hammers to tweezers to wrenches to screwdrivers. He flipped open a large pouch on the side and produced two palm-sized flat ovals of polished steel with deep grooves cut into the edges. “These wheels aren’t much to look at now,” said Burke, “but a hundred of these things are going to kill more sun-dragons than if I built a thousand Big Chiefs.”
Pet couldn’t even imagine how that was possible. The wheels weren’t sharp at all, and they didn’t look heavy enough to do any real damage if you threw them at something. Still, he’d heard that Burke was a genius. Pet took it on faith that these wheels were important.
“Get to the forge,” said Burke, walking over to the man Pet had stabbed. With a grunt, he pulled Pet’s sword free. “The battle’s still going on. Kill as many dragons as you can. Anza and I will be heading into the city come dawn. For now, we’ll help clean up the remaining gleaners.”
“Yes sir,” said Pet.
“Befor
e you run off, what’s your real name, boy?”
“Petar Gondwell,” he said. Feeling a sudden need for full disclosure, he said, “Pet.”
“Don’t get yourself killed tonight if you can help it,” said Burke. “The world still needs a few men like you, with the courage to stand up to thugs and the moral fiber to at least feel some remorse at the thought of killing a fellow man. There aren’t many like you left in the world.”
Pet felt mildly disoriented; had the world truly turned so topsy-turvy that he was now being praised for his morality?
Burke tossed the sword toward Pet. An image quickly flashed through Pet’s mind of the sword slicing off his fingers as he caught it, but then his years of practice as a juggler took over and he casually snatched it from the air by its hilt. He placed it in its scabbard and ran back toward Dragon Forge to discover who he was. A moral man, a coward, or just another cog in a vast machine.
Chapter Twenty-Three:
Click Click Clang
“Interesting,” said Blasphet, leaning close to Graxen. Unlike the dead-meat breath possessed by other sun-dragons, Blasphet’s breath smelled almost medicinal, a not unpleasant mingling of camphor and cloves. “Your pupils are barely dilated, and your respiration is only mildly labored. The first time I used my paralyzing smoke on Metron, I drew a sample of his blood. I altered the formula to make him immune. It’s fortunate he has no other relatives here. Apparently his blood kin share the resistance.”
“Wh-why?” said Metron, still curled in a ball on the floor. “Why would you spare me?”
“I find your inner torments delightful,” said Blasphet, turning from Graxen to address Metron. “Knowing that your old lusts have brought doom to your species must feel like a knife in your brain. Any brute could cause you physical agony. Only a god could flay you from the inside.”
“Why do you hate him so,” asked Graxen. “Why would you attack the Nest? What grudge do you bear against sky-dragons?” The anger in the voice prompted the score of armed women who remained in the room to form a wall between Graxen and Blasphet. Graxen felt too lightheaded to overpower them. If he did defeat them, then what? Blasphet was twice Graxen’s size and his claws were no doubt poisoned. All Graxen could do for now was stand over Nadala’s unconscious form. If anyone approached, he would fight to his last breath to defend her.
