Maren hadn’t bought that well-known fact, though. Even before Horace Dewn had shown him the evidence, he’d known dragons still lived. Horace knew it too. Raegon Gravendeer undoubtedly did, and the same could be said for Bastion Rook. Anyone privy to bountiful but confidential information understood that dragons as a collective had not dropped from the sky like a bag of bricks six centuries ago.
You couldn’t blame the commoners, though. The story they’d been fed over generations was that the brave warriors of that time had brought the menacing creatures to heel, and one by one they’d eradicated the beasts, driven them to extinction and utter annihilation. The truth was, as it almost always is, a bit more sobering.
The dragons had simply retreated. It was called a dragonflight—a great migration that saw every last one of the winged beasts set a course over the Glass Sea. Nothing that had crossed the Glass Sea ever returned. As far as Maren knew, its lands, if there were any, had remained uncharted since the beginning of time.
But suspicions remained among those in the know that dragons would one day return. Maren wondered if that day had come. He wondered if—
Another knock. “Yes?” he answered, irritation lining his voice. He wanted to be left alone for a while. Left alone with his thoughts and the young dragon. He opened the bag and prepared to dump the whelp inside.
“It’s Horace.”
Relief rushed through Maren. “Come in,” he said, happy to be leaving the whelp out. He enjoyed looking at it for… for some reason.
The spymaster walked in, held up a fat bag and threw it onto Maren’s desk. It landed with a dead thud.
“What’s this?” Maren asked.
Horace crossed his arms. “Another problem.” Heavy bags had formed under his eyes and his face seemed to hang, dragged down by a perpetual state of exhaustion.
Maren untied the drawstrings. He peered inside, then quickly looked away in the manner of someone wholly disgusted with what he saw.
“When did you receive this?”
“It arrived an hour ago,” Horace said. He edged a thumb up and down his broad nose, thinking, calculating. “They’re back, Maren.”
“It takes a while for the young ones to become big ones. We have time.”
Horace snorted. “Where the young ones are, big ones follow.”
“Have your spies seen them yet?”
“No.”
“Until they do, we’re operating under the assumption that a couple fledglings broke free from their nest, or roost, or den—wherever they’re born.” Maren scooted out away from his desk. He stood and stretched. “Best get some rest, Horace. I expect the seamstresses to finish with their project soon enough. We ride for Vivine Village as soon as they do.”
Horace sauntered over to the oil painting of a violet sea that hung on Maren’s wall. He stared at the explosive waves cresting with stormy passion. “If you follow through with your plan, you pit the West against the Rooks. Bastion will—”
“Do nothing,” Maren said. “We’ll take small holdings near the Gape, bitch and hoot and holler at one another for a while, then call for peace.”
“Sounds nice,” Horace said. “But let’s assume the worst. Imagine a world where Bastion Rook sails across the Gaped Sea with a massive fleet. Imagine a world where the West is embroiled in a bloody war, made even worse when the Wrokklens sense the opportunity to strike Valios. And with Bastion’s forces fighting in one theater, the Torbinens force him to fight in another.
“The point is, you could quickly find the entire damn world entangled in conflict. If dragons have returned, we cannot afford a divided Avestas. The only reason these lands are not scorched and the hills are not dotted with dragon eggs and the skies do not bleat with flapping wings—the only reason is because a unified Avestas drove those beasts out. We must write to the capital kingdoms and inform them.”
Maren O’Keefe ran his knotted fingers along the whelp’s emerald scales. They felt smooth, like rocks polished by a rippling creek. He looked up at Horace, who was now standing beside him imposingly.
“I suppose there’s no other choice, is there? I’ll vote with the Council to elect a new, temporary steward to the throne. And in the meantime, I’ll send crows to Haeglin, to the Roost, to anyone and everyone who can help. Thank you, Horace. You’re a voice of reason in a time of madness.”
Horace gave a slight bow of his head. “However I may help, Maren. I’ll inform you of any new developments. Try to sleep; you look tired.”
“And you look worse,” Maren said, smiling.
Horace chuckled. When the door shut behind him, Maren got up and locked it. He strolled over to his father’s portrait on the wall and looked at that grizzled face, those chewed-up cheeks and that scarred chin. His father had been a no-nonsense kind of guy, the sort who gets things done with whatever means he has at his disposal.
Maren had inherited that characteristic from his father. Sometimes he wished he hadn’t. Sometimes he wished he’d give in to emotions and feelings. Life was easier when you did that, but ultimately not as fulfilling. A great man, Maren held, made undesirable decisions. And Maren was about to make a very undesirable decision.
Horace Dewn needed to die. Maren liked Horace. But he couldn’t trust him any longer.
The thought made him angry. Made him bloody furious. Got him all hot in the face, good and red in the cheeks.
He slammed a sideways fist into the whelp, slinging the bastard creature into the wall. A sharp pain stung his knuckles, elicited a crisp gasp from his lips. Dragon scales, apparently, aren’t ideal punching bags.
His knuckles would be bruised come morning. He might’ve even broken a finger, but he didn’t care. He had not worked tirelessly for twenty years to finally—finally—put himself on the throne of Valios only to have these archaic, creationary mistakes return from wherever they had hidden themselves for six hundred years.
Chapter Fourteen
Oriana led her dragon out of the den and into the cool air of her estate. She’d dressed herself in an old, raggedy tunic whose scrappy hem fell to her knees. Today was not a day for nice clothes.
Today was a day to fly.
“Sarpella,” Oriana said, tying her auburn hair into a tight ponytail, “come.”
The creature poked her broad head out of the cave entrance. She sniffed the air, then ducked back inside.
Oriana laughed. “Sarpella, come! It’s okay. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Would I let anything hurt you?”
How much longer could she realistically say that? Not that she would let anything hurt her baby, but Sarpella was ten feet in length now and most of her adult teeth had come in. She could protect herself well enough.
Reassured, the dragon cautiously ambled out of the cave, the talons on her feet fully extended and digging deep into dirt and grass. Her thick tail slowly waved back and forth.
The sight of her little girl in the open, beneath a sunny sky—it took Oriana’s breath away. Her scales shined out here. They were as blue as a deep sea with thin channels of bright ice flowing across. Oriana could see her reflection in Sarpella’s tiny armor plates. She could see the grass wavering in the wind and the tall storage feeders behind her.
“Pretty girl,” Oriana said, stroking the dragon’s leathery snout. The blue flames of Sarpella’s eyes roared like an unwieldy bonfire as Oriana continued petting her. “We’re going to fly. Are you ready?”
Sarpella was not yet old enough to reply with words, but she had long understood Oriana’s language. It would be another year or two before she could hold a back-and-forth conversation. And when that time did come to pass, the dragon—like all dragons—would not vocalize her words, but rather communicate directly to Oriana’s mind.
With the signal of Oriana’s hand, the dragon lowered itself onto its belly. With a grimacing, red-hot face, Oriana hefted into her arms an enormous saddle that lay beside her feet. Her resident leather worker, Jeremiah, had crafted the saddle over two months and with over six full st
eer hides. It was not light.
Wobbling toward Sarpella, Oriana tossed the saddle over the dragon’s spine. With her brows creased and tongue flailing between her lips, she strained and stretched out on her tippy toes and straightened the seat. At least she tried to.
Turns out that attaching a saddle to a dragon when you’re only a few notches over five feet isn’t very simple. Or in the least feasible.
Oriana stood back, hands on her hips. “Huh,” she remarked. She’d figured getting on her dragon would prove difficult, but she at least had a plan for that: start from the windmill and run like she hadn’t ever run before, then vault onto her little girl’s scaly spine. That wouldn’t work well for straightening, attaching and fitting a saddle, though.
Sarpella craned her head around, gazing—maybe even ogling—at Oriana with a wet blue eye. She carefully lifted one of her front feet, pausing briefly as if to examine it. Then she turned it upside down, talons positioned like the prongs of a ring setting, and offered it to her master.
Oriana felt the breath in her chest flutter like tiny butterfly wings. She bit down on her smiling lip, hooked a hand around one talon and climbed on.
Being lifted by the foot, or paw if you will, of a dragon is not something many people on Avestas had ever experienced. And of those who had, few of them had indulged in the moment—mostly because in the process of being lifted, their heads were aimed at a very large mouth with very sharp teeth belonging to a beast with a very big appetite. This image is one of many responsible for the prevailing thought among the uneducated that dragons are terrible, despicable creatures who thirst for blood with the same indiscrimination as a wolf or a lion.
That, of course, is completely untrue. Oriana knew this, which was why she did not fear Sarpella. She allowed her big and bright-eyed girl to close those awesome talons snugly around her because the two of them shared a connection rare among all living things, including men and women: true, unselfish and unfettered love.
Oriana took a deep breath and puffed it out against her sweaty bangs. She looked up as a sense of weightlessness washed over her. Sarpella lifted her up and sat her gently on the saddle, then withdrew her claw.
Another puff of breath. A hushed wow accompanied this one. “Okay,” Oriana said, settling herself, “right. Let’s get this on you properly so I don’t fall off.”
She leveled the saddle with her eyes and pulled out two cinches that had gotten tangled beneath it. Normally, the next part in the saddling process involved the simple tightening of two girths. But when you are saddling a dragon for the first time—rather than a horse—you can throw out normal right along with simple.
Oriana clicked her tongue as she attempted to demystify the puzzle before her. She tried swinging the girths around Sarpella’s belly, but that only resulted in the steel buckles tinkling off her armored plates. If she had the gift of force sorcery, this would have been much easier. But while she was blessed with—or rather worked tirelessly to acquire—an immense power, it was not one steeped in the ability to move things.
“Need a hand or two?” The voice startled Oriana, her head jittering toward its point of origin.
Beneath an arched door of a grain silo stood a man who looked like he belonged in a traveling circus, not as a performer but as one of the animals. Lots of words would probably form in your mind if you saw him in the clarity and brightness of dawn as Oriana had. Words such as deplorable and homely. And if you caught a whiff of his odor at that particular moment, that list would be expanded to include repugnant, acrid, and, most poignantly, eww.
He had a thick, gangly-stranded beard, huge bushy eyebrows, and a mop of hair so oily it lay in one massive clump.
Also, he carried a chicken under his arm.
Oriana stuck her head forward and squinted. “Rol? You’re back?”
The grimy, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man pointed a finger at the silo. “Here, or”—he gestured at the expanse of Oriana’s estate—“here? Got back just a bit ago. Went rummaging around the coop for some eggs and I counted one less chickadee than should’ve been there.” He nodded his square chin at the chicken. “Mr. Stuffers, of course. Always escapin’ and making his way to the silo. Sarpella’s lookin’ mighty pretty this morning.”
Oriana felt a slight vibration course through the dragon’s belly. “I think she just growled at you.”
“I’ve known you since you were a wee whelp. If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it by now.”
Oriana shrugged. “She’s cautious. What are you doing back so soon?”
“Let’s just—” Rol paused as Mr. Stuffers squirmed in against his ribs. He tapped the chicken on its beak. “Stop that. Anyway. Let’s just say the family gathering didn’t go as planned. Let me put this fat bastard back in his house and I’ll help you get that saddle on her.”
Rol Pravin was Oriana’s deepest and most trusted friend. She’d hired him as a sellsword years ago, intending to pay him well and see him off after a brief escort. But he stuck around and it was more or less agreed that he was there for the long haul.
Rol had accompanied her to the Blue Coast, close to Torbinen, weeks ago to pick up the latest arrival of whelps. Their journey was marked with mudslides, torrential downpours, and an angry clan of savages who wore hollowed-out antlers over their penises. Oriana had told Rol to go be with his family for a few weeks after they returned; his mother had fallen ill, and his father had slowly been losing the battle against madness.
She hadn’t expected him back so soon.
“That rooster waddles like a ball with legs,” Rol said, clapping his hands clean of chicken grime and whatever exactly it is that chickens get into.
As he approached Sarpella, the dragon tracked his movements with curiosity and caution. Her guarded response came from a place not of leeriness and fear, but rather of a healthy suspicion for all living things. Only Oriana had managed to earn her implicit trust, and even that had taken over two years.
“You’re gettin’ bigger by the day, girl,” Rol said, patting Sarpella’s haunches. He grasped the rear girth, ducked under the dragon’s belly, and brought it around to the other side. Oriana took it from there, pulled it tight and threaded it through the buckle.
After attaching the second girth and the breast collar, Rol stood back and admired both the dragon and Oriana. And, because Rol Pravin had an ego the size of Haeglin’s earthen discs, he also admired his handiwork.
“If I ever retire from this sellsword business, I’d have no trouble finding work as a saddler. Don’t you agree?”
“That’s not a thing,” Oriana said.
“Saddlers? Not a thing? Then who saddles a horse?”
Oriana lifted a brow. “Uh, the person who rides a horse? Or a squire.”
Rol chewed on this revelation for a moment. “Seems like every rider should have his own saddler. It’s extra work, you know?”
“As you say.” Oriana grinned. She gently patted Sarpella. “Ready to command the skies?”
The dragon answered with her signature growling purr.
“Then fly,” Oriana said.
Oriana Gravendeer was twenty-six years old. That’s not ancient by any means, but it is an age where the thrill of the unknown and the allure of the exotic and foreign have been strangled and murdered. For many, it’s an age where you’ve seen what you can see and done what you can do; most new experiences are variations of old ones. That chest-clutching, nostril-flaring, heart-leaping-into-your-throat feeling that comes with the novelty of unspoiled sights and sounds and smells—those evocations are rare and sometimes never found again.
But as the frail, wispy clouds above surged closer and the ground below slipped farther away, Oriana rediscovered the beauty—and it is a beautiful thing—of pure joy and ecstasy; the kind of emotions newborns experience as they move their tiny hands over yours for the first time and come to understand there’s a whole undiscovered world out there.
Oriana white-knuckled the saddle horns as Sarpella
dipped and zipped and zagged. She tumbled downward in a tight spiral, then twirled upright and shot toward the clouds like an arrow racing for the sun’s heart. From the ground, she looked like a bolt of icy lightning dashing across the sky.
And then she slowed, gliding effortlessly, wings outstretched and talons flexing. Oriana breathed again, for the first time in what seemed like minutes. Her face felt windburnt and her eyes were watery. Her fingers were swollen, her jaw ached from being in the fixed position of an O, and she had to pee.
She put a hand between her legs, hoping that last part was still true and that she hadn’t already peed. Nope, she thought, still dry. For now.
“That,” she said aloud, pausing to swallow, “was exhilarating. That was amazing.” She patted Sarpella’s flanks heavily. “You did great, girl. First time in the open and—wow. You’re so fast. And nimble and—” She shook her head. She sounded like an impressionable girl blabbing to all her friends about meeting the most suave and handsome boy in all of Avestas.
She needed to collect herself. Steady her nerves. Act like she’d been there before, done it a hundred times. She did, after all, have a world to conquer.
“Sar,” she said, “do you see that target over there, near the forge?” She waited for the dragon to turn its head and aim its narrow blue eyes in the proper direction. “Yes, that one. Freeze it and shatter it.”
It’s important to note—well, perhaps not important unless you’re a dragon historian, but nonetheless interesting and good information to have—that not all dragons breathe ice. Or fire. Or, in the case of the Wryth Clutch, a plague of toxins. What a dragon breathes—or doesn’t breathe—depends on the clutch he belongs to. Hereditary things, basically.
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 14
