She looked away after that, but the sounds persisted. Even after she plugged her ears, she still heard the faraway snaps of bone. The crackles, the dead thuds—sounds that make you wince and grit your teeth.
It took a while for the plateau to empty out. Looked like a killing field below. A scrapyard of flesh and fractured bone. Elaya had vomited once, and when she chanced a second look, she puked again.
She felt a hand caress her back. No, not caressing, patting. Actually, on third thought, less a pat and more a frantic hey-look-here-right-now slapping.
“Either my brain’s goin’ mushy,” Adom said, “or—what is that?”
With digested, soggy bits of that morning’s bread dripping off her chin, Elaya followed Adom’s finger as he pointed to the newly formed graveyard. Two of the Daughters had risen, whole once more. Their short rugs of hair had become long, luxurious strands of hair the color of ink, and their noses were big and pointed, their chins square. They were taller than any woman Elaya could recall seeing, slender too. They wore black sleeveless dresses and bloodstone circlets.
“They’re gods!” Elaya heard. She turned to see Laythe and Lavery and an army of cadaverous things racing toward the gate. “Gods, I said,” roared Laythe. “Get out of there!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Under a crescent moon, the walls of Torbinen welcomed Oriana’s return not with flames and puddles of plague but rather the wholesomeness of a still-intact city. That was good. The fact that half the clutches had already departed was not so good. But as her mother always said, better to focus on circumstances you can change and not those you can’t.
Okay, her mother had never said that—she’d died just before Oriana’s fourth birthday—but if she’d had one saying, Oriana liked to think it’d be that. Or maybe Be careful of sleeping on white sheets after you turn thirteen. That would have been helpful and saved her a terribly embarrassing walk to the savant, proclaiming she was bleeding to death.
The scene set by the approach of Oriana’s envoy of sorcerers, tamers, farmhands, custodians, laborers, and—most spectacularly—dragons was one that resembled a royal march to showcase the strength and obliteration that a queen’s army was capable of.
Six adolescent dragons, Sarpella among them, walked beside their masters, who’d trained them since they were whelps. Two belonged to the Crimson Clutch, their deep red scales glowing like infernos in the face of hot torchlight.
Another two, with summer-green scales, belonged to the Wryth Clutch, their bodies more squashed and lower to the ground than their brethren.
Bringing up the rear, with heavy, punishing steps that shook the dusty layers of sand from the cobbles, came Yorn—a five-year-old dragon from the Iron Clutch.
At the head of them all, and by far the most confident, stood Sarpella. She’d established herself as the alpha not because she was Oriana’s favorite, or because her clutch was near-extinct, but rather because she’d beat the ever-loving hell out of the other five when they’d challenged her. Those challenges came frequently enough in the den on Oriana’s estate, but since they’d left, all six had been on their best behavior.
Or maybe they suffered from sensory overload and total shock. That was quite possible, given they’d spent nearly all their life inside the den. Oriana was worried they would spook and turn violent out of fear during passage over the Crags, but they obediently remained beside their masters’ sides.
The hundreds of whelps that were too young to walk and not well-trained enough to flutter freely were kept in tiny cages hauled in by farmhands and laborers. They squawked and chirped and cried, scared of the new smells and sounds they could not identify.
Central Torbinen and the West Shore—the proper name of what most simply called the western part of the city—lay empty, as they should have. Windows had been boarded up (as if that would help), and balconies cleared of chairs and tables and objects that don’t play nicely with warring dragons overhead.
Every Torbinen citizen had been escorted to the East Shore, where fire pits raged, providing light for the Tridents, who heaved and hoed, winding a winch and hauling equipment up to the parapet.
“Catapults,” Brynn said, “very nice. Those’ll be of some help.”
“Some,” Oriana said with weariness.
Her people were tired, dragons fatigued. Ideally, everyone could have rested their eyes for a few hours, but these weren’t ideal conditions. With a potential strike at any time, she had to gather up her sorcerers and explain to them the finer details of a plan she’d briefly rehearsed during their ride here.
She turned and faced droopy eyes and long faces, horses with frothy chests and dragons who blinked sleepily. “I want all sorcerers to follow me; we’re going to the citadel. Those of you with whelps will come as well. All others, cut through these alleys to my left until you come upon the East Shore. Tell the Tridents you’ll help with whatever they need.”
“What about the dragons?” asked Estelia, a sorceress who held the reins of the often fussy and aptly named Querulous, of the Crimson Clutch. “They won’t fit inside the citadel.”
“You five already know your part. Have one of the farmhands get some meat and water pails; feed them and rest up. You’ll be leaving soon.”
Estelia opened her mouth to say something but paused as she heard the same ragged breath and raspy coughing as Oriana. A pair of boots slapped across the cobbles of an alley, coming from the East Shore’s direction.
“Woo, my,” Rol said, emerging from a hidden passage between wall-to-wall buildings. “Long run from over there. Thought you weren’t gonna arrive in time.”
“I told you shortly after midnight,” Oriana said.
“Feels like a lot after midnight, but I digress—Brynn, how are ya?”
“Well,” Brynn said, “I’m standing in a city that a hundred dragons are about to attack. I’ve been better, Rol.”
“A hundred? Did the other hundred fall and sink into the ocean?”
“They’ve left,” Oriana said. “The clutches are presumably splitting their attacks.”
Rol crossed his arms; he seemed pleased with that news. “That’s promising for us, innit? You give me the choice between a hundred dragons and two hundred, and you can bet your hide I’ll pick the former every time. ’Less I’m fancyin’ an early grave.”
You’re right, Rol, Oriana thought, you’re not a general. Rol had a tendency to view life as the six feet in front of his face and nothing more. He didn’t even bother taking life one day at a time, but rather one hour at a time.
Rol aimed his thumb at the citadel. “The queen asked me to come retrieve her soon as you got back.”
Brynn chuckled. “You’ve been here all of one day and already you’re suckin’ up to the queen, huh? Good for you. Bet she pays well.”
“Sod off, you ugly prick.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“At least I’ve got hair. Yours has been running away from your ugly mug for half a decade now.”
“Boys,” Oriana snapped. “Do you really think this is the time to be trading barbs? Mouths shut, eyes forward. Let’s go.”
Rol fell into position beside her. “You can be a real thorn when you’ve got your commander hat on, you know that?” She glared at him. “I’m just—”
“Well, don’t,” she said, redirecting Sarpella away from a scuttling crab. “Is everything on schedule? Bows being made, catapults positioned properly, conscription—are we good?”
He twirled a finger inside his ear, flicking out crust. “Haven’t heard a word on the bows. Conscription’s going better than expected, I’d say. You’ve got nearly every damn woman wanting to take up arms and half the kids as well. They’re lettin’ anyone with a bit of fightin’ desire join in.”
“The women and children were supposed to be taken to the citadel.”
Rol shrugged. “Not your city, not your decision.”
Oriana tongued her cheek, kept straight toward the citadel.
“Of all people,” he said, “you should be cheerin’ them on. You wanna change the world and make everyone reconsider what normal is, don’t ya? Women can fight, ’less you think their only purpose is to be bent over, filled up and—”
She threw a finger into his face and in a stern voice said, “Don’t you ever insinuate that again.”
“Look, all I’m sayin’ to you is that if you want all this change, you should embrace it when it happens. Yeah?”
She kept her focus ahead, at the looming citadel. Finally, with a firm nod, she said, “Yeah. I guess so.”
Once inside the spiraling equivalent of a keep, Oriana had her sorcerers form a circle on the bottommost floor. They stood shoulder to shoulder and in some cases head to head; there was barely enough room to fit them all.
Oriana slowly paced the middle, explaining the strategy and pausing for questions and to clarify any ambiguity. She divided everyone into five groups, or chains as she called them, each led by a commanding sorcerer.
Lots of fingernails were bitten and cheeks chewed during this discussion. Plenty of lip licking and audible swallowing. But at the end, when Oriana asked if every single one of them understood the plan, she received a resounding yes in return.
“Okay,” she said, with a big breath in and an even bigger one out. “Go get into position. I’ll see you all again after we emerge under a new sun and begin a new day.”
She watched twenty-five sorcerers scuttle out of the citadel.
Farris Torbinen rose to her feet. She wore a lived-in silk robe that covered all but her chubby face and stubby toes. Oriana didn’t know how long she’d been sitting on the ramp.
“I must say, you’re not one for rah-rah speeches, are you?”
Oriana frowned. “I guess I’m not, no.”
“Oh, lighten up,” Farris said, pinching Oriana’s arm. “Tomorrow will come no matter what, and it will arrive with us either alive or not.”
Oriana digested that implication with a wildly twisting and confused expression. “That, uh, doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It should,” Farris said happily. “Dimwits and dunces puke up the same tired bits about life and death being the greatest stakes. Nonsense. They’re the simplest stakes. If you’re still kicking around come morning, wonderful. If you’re dead, it won’t bother you, will it?
“Now, contrast that with lying to your husband. Or your wife; I don’t judge and I most certainly don’t care. Those are big stakes. If you’re caught, he might leave you. If he’s rotten, he might beat you. Your life will be in shambles. Maybe you’ll go poor. And if you’re not caught”—she shook her head—“mm-mm. Then you’ve got to remember the lie. Keep it up. That’s pressure, there. The kind that’ll kill you, in the end.”
Oriana understood the message, she did. And maybe if she was a few days away from potential apocalypse, she would have turned up a smile and seen it Farris’s way. Sadly, she wasn’t a few days away. She was a couple hours at most.
“I really don’t want to die,” Oriana said, choked up.
“No one wants to die, dear,” Farris said, stroking her arm as a grandmother would her grandchild. “It happens to us all, though.”
Oriana pinched her eyes. That’s how you keep pesky tears from sliding out, she’d learned. Only works half the time sometimes, and this was neither of those times. “When I die,” she said, sniffing, “I want to be gray like you. I want to be wrinkly like you. I want to be old.”
“Three insults in a row, hmm?” Stuffy-nosed and red-eyed, Oriana laughed. Tears slid down her plump dimples. “Having them throw you six feet under after your face has sagged and your hair’s gone gray, that’s all well and good. But counting the years is the wrong approach, dear. Years don’t give you satisfaction. Do you understand?”
Oriana nodded. “I just… I can’t imagine dying, Farris. Not being a part of this world any longer—it seems so unthinkable.”
Farris clapped her hand over Oriana’s. “For what it’s worth, I think you’ll be a part of this world for a long time to come. Dragons failed once before, and I never bet my money on failures. But if I happen to live and you don’t, I’ll take very good care of your toy over there.”
Rol found himself the recipient of seductive eyes. “M—me?” he stammered.
“He saw me naked,” Farris claimed. “Just now. I was in my bath—I enjoy my baths—and he barged in.”
“That’s not true!” Rol cried. “You told me to—” Farris and Oriana were both laughing. He crossed his arms. “Funny women, I see.”
“You had best believe it, General Rol,” Farris said. “I had better visit General Hastings. Good man, but he becomes feisty when pushed to his limits. Good luck, Oriana Gravendeer, and may we both walk these streets tomorrow and have enough cooked dragon meat to last us the rest of our lives.”
Farris departed the citadel without bothering to close the doors. She probably figured they wouldn’t be there in a few hours.
With a sheathed sword swinging from around his belt, Rol sauntered over to Oriana. He put one hand around her waist and with his other he rooted around in his pocket. “Here we are,” he said, holding up a tiny piece of bark that’d been whittled into a hollowed-out circle.
Oriana sniffed, trying to clear her stuffy nose. Blood vessels streaked her eyes. “What is that?”
He raked the nail of his thumb across his brow, and again. “You royal girls get married off to lords and princes and pricks like that all the time, I know how it works. Arranged weddings, political this and that. A muddy-faced, dirt-’neath-his-nails guy like me would never have a chance. But, uh, well—I figure you’re not like most royal girls, and you like to change things, so… yeah, what the hell, right?”
That was possibly one of the most rambling, meandering explanations Oriana had ever heard for such a simple question. And it was such a Rol thing to say. With a smile sneaking up on her, she said, “Rol, what are you doing?”
He ran his fingers through his hair, freeing up oily strands to stick up this way and that. “I’m not askin’ ya to marry me. Yeah, not that. It’s not a ring for marriage, see, but—er, rather one to say… y’know.” He looked at his feet, mouth open, silent words tumbling out. “I s’pose what I’m tryin’ to say is that I think I damn well love you, Oriana Gravendeer of Liosis, or whatever the piss your proper title is. So, I guess the ring is, uh, symbol o’ sorts.”
She stopped his nervous, borderline incoherent rambling by placing her hand flat against his chest. “Rol. Are—”
“I just wanna be with you,” he said, hand massaging the back of his neck. “Ah. I’m not good at these things. Never really been one to, you know.” He looked up at her. “I just lost track of what I was saying.”
Oriana took the bark ring and fit it on her finger. It was a bit too snug, but she said, “A perfect match.”
“Placeholder, honest,” Rol said, as if embarrassed.
She opened her hand and matched his fingers to hers, sliding them between one another. “It’s lovely. What do you say we hunt some dragons?”
“Some? How ’bouts a hundred or so?”
She grinned and walked hand in hand out of the citadel with Rol. They separated shortly after; he went to deliver General Hastings a message and assist the Tridents with assembling another catapult, and she convened with Brynn and four others who would serve as the catalysts for her plan.
A short while later, after General Hastings sent over a handful of soldiers, five dragons departed from Torbinen. The men wouldn’t return, Oriana knew. But she prayed her sorcerers and dragons would.
Brynn had been schooled in sorcery from at least the time of his first memories. He was born the son of a sorcerer and a Wraith Walker, both of whom shared ancestors who had fled Avestas after the Twin Sisters had hunted down all forms of sorcery.
Like Oriana, he tapped into the illusionary realm, though not as deeply as she could. His illusionary loci were often smaller and timed out after several hours, and he had ne
ver been able to cast figments like her. But none of that mattered for this particular mission.
“Not far now,” Davok said, swerving his dragon close to Brynn’s. They were high above the Glass Sea. The water churned unusually, the normally gentle tides ripped apart by sloshing whitecaps. “Maybe ten minutes at most.”
A man of the Tridents sat on Davok’s saddle, wearing the yellow Torbinen eel proudly on his chest. Three others shared seats with Estelia, Haran, and Nyla.
“We can press for another five,” Brynn said. “Plenty of fog tonight.”
“Also plenty of moonlight. I wouldn’t risk it.”
“Good thing you’re not me and you don’t get to make that call.” Brynn felt the eyes of both Davok and a nearby Estelia burning into him. His no-nonsense personality bristled the others, but Oriana named him second-in-command for a reason: he got things done. Always.
Sometimes his means were neither moral nor ethical, but they were justified. And frankly on this night, none of them—not Davok, or Estelia, Haran or Nyla—had a fidget’s worth of room to bitch about integrity and ideals. They were sending men to their death tonight.
“Turtle Rock,” Davok said. “Named it myself.”
“That’s great,” Brynn remarked. “What about it?”
“Puts us five minutes out. We need to swing around and drop them.”
“You went farther than this to scout them.”
“On my own. We’ve got two loci, mine and yours, covering five dragons and nine people. Evanescence is gonna sniff that out from half a mile away.”
Brynn regarded the sloppy ocean below with distaste. He looked at a Trident. “Hope you boys can swim well.”
The soldier gave him a reaffirming nod.
“Swing out,” Brynn hollered. Five dragons rolled right, their wings stretched and motionless. “Curve it. Straighten it up. Soon as we skim the water,” he screamed as loudly as he could manage, a strong wind watering his eyes and wisping away his words, “you four jump.”
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 37
