“Leanne? Leanne?” The sound of his voice snapped her mind abruptly out of wandering.
“Yes?” she said, blinking.
“Where were you just now?” he asked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t get distracted very easily or very often. I guess it was because you brought up Sir Hagen.” She felt a little guilty inside for the little lie she’d just told and for using Sir Hagen to tell it.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” said Coram. “When you have a higher purpose in your life, there’s always a first inspiration somewhere.”
Fascinated now, Leanne asked, “And what was yours? What inspired you?”
“I grew up not far from here,” said Coram. “And when I was a very young dragon, I would look up over my house and see the Knights in training, flying over. I would watch them learn how to fly in formation for demonstrations and ceremonies. Have you ever seen the Knights fly in formation?”
Leanne pondered, searching her memory. “I must have, at some time, a long time ago, I think. I’m sure I saw a holo of it once, when I was a cadet training for the Fleet.”
“It’s something you should see in person, the way they fly in groups of twelve in a V formation, seven in front, five behind, making a chevron shape in the air, and keeping themselves in perfect sync through every swoop and every turn. It may sound somewhat pompous to say, but as a little dragon, I found them majestic.”
“No, it doesn’t sound pompous at all,” said Leanne. “I remember now, watching that holo. I’d never paid much attention to the Knights before…,” she trailed off for a moment, remembering, then resumed, “…before the day I met Sir Hagen.” She fell silent again from all the memories attached to that day. “Then, I wanted to know everything about them. And you’re right, when they fly in formation, majestic is exactly what it is.”
The tone of approval in her voice and the approving look in her eyes encouraged Coram. He definitely liked seeing her that way. “Yes,” he went on, “I wanted to know everything about them as well. And when I was old enough that my parents would let me fly by myself, I started trying to fly as they did, pretending I was the lead dragon in the chevron of twelve. I would try to copy their maneuvers, the way they banked and turned, and I pretended another eleven were flying with me in sync. I think that was when I first knew that I wanted to be one of them. Except…”
Now Coram trailed off with a different feeling than Leanne had had. She could have sworn he seemed…embarrassed. What could possibly make him feel that way?
“Except what?” she asked.
With a smile more sheepish than dragon-like, Coram answered, “Except that trying to fly that way at that age, I sometimes had a difficult time avoiding the treetops.”
Leanne’s eyes widened, understanding. In spite of all her earlier attempts at keeping things formal, she smiled, her largest smile yet. “Oh no! You don’t mean…”
“More than once, my parents would have to come and get me. They’d have to untangle my wings and tail from the branches. I wasn’t exactly the picture of Knightly dignity at that age, as you can guess.”
Leanne looked off, unable to stifle her smile, another reaction welling up inside her.
“What is this?” Coram asked teasingly. “Don’t tell me the very proper, by-the-book Lieutenant Commander is tempted to laugh at an awkward little dragon boy’s plight.”
She looked back at him, forcing the smile to leave her face but leaving behind it a telltale glow in her expression that said she could not completely contain her amusement. “Of course not,” she protested.
“Yes,” Coram teased further, “that was almost a laugh at my expense.”
Leanne cleared her throat and straightened up in her seat, almost succeeding in putting on her serious look again, but her eyes still gave her away. “Finish your story,” she said.
“The end of my story is that I would tell my parents what I was doing, out flying that way, and they would warn me that I was neither Knight nor Corps, that I was still a little dragon and I should be more careful. But every time, I went out to pretend again, and I got better—mostly.”
“Mostly?” she asked.
“One more time, I flew into a tree—and this time, it actually was a member of the Knighthood and not my father or mother who came to untangle me. And the Knight flew with me back home and introduced himself to my parents. He told them how he had found me, and he said to them, ‘As you can’t have his wings cut off, you may want to consider enrolling him at the Spires.’ My parents were properly mortified, as you can guess…”
“Yes, I can guess very well,” said Leanne.
“…but a few years later, when I was a little older, they did not object when I actually did enroll at the Spires. They took me there themselves and handed me off to the Mentors. And my father actually told my trainer, ‘Try to keep my son out of the trees.’”
And at this, Leanne could not help herself. She sputtered out a laugh that she simply could not maintain; this last part was just too rich. She caught the laugh as soon as it started, and forced it back, struggling to restore her composure, but it was too late.
“There,” said Coram. “Now I know what it takes to break you out of your shell: abject humiliation.”
“It’s not the way I’m used to thinking about Knights, that’s all,” said Leanne.
“But it was worth it,” Coram said. “Now we know where each other started.”
A wistful look came over Leanne, now that she’d relaxed a little. “It seems we were both rescued by Knights when we were younger. Except what I was rescued from…was very different.”
Coram frowned slightly. This was not what he had wanted. He had inadvertently taken her back to her parents’ death, and the feelings from that day that he could see had never left her in spite of how far she had come since then. “I know it was, Leanne,” he offered. “I didn’t mean to remind you…”
She raised a hand to stop him. “You don’t have to apologize. It’s where I come from and how I got here. I don’t deny it. I try to use it. I try to make it my…motivation, I guess.”
“I understand,” said Coram. “We won’t talk of this anymore. Are you ready to order food now?”
“I think I’d like to, yes.”
So, they ordered dinner, which was quick in coming, and as they ate, they kept the mood light by talking about planets they had visited and things they had seen there. And sometime between the end of their meal and the prospect of dessert, they both snapped to attention at a
resounding female voice from across the tavern:
“Coram! What cave have you been hiding yourself in?”
From the direction of the voice, three Knights came striding over, and Coram smiled a beaming smile and beckoned to them. From their greeting and Coram’s reaction to them, it was obvious to Leanne that these were the friends that Coram said they could expect. There was a black-haired female of about Leanne’s height, with very cut muscles; she looked as if she could snap a human over her knee like kindling.
At one side of her walked a muscular, dark-haired Knight of swoon-inducing handsomeness to match Coram’s. At her other side, a short-bearded male Knight with curly black hair and swarthy complexion appeared to be a descendant of different Asian groups from old Earth.
The trio came up to Leanne and Coram’s table, and the swoon-inducer warmly clapped Coram’s bare back in greeting. “We haven’t seen skin or scale of you the last few days, Mate. Where have you been keeping yourself?”
“I’ve been about,” said Coram. “I just had a friendly spar this afternoon; I’m surprised I didn’t see you there.”
“And this,” said the swarthy Knight, eyeing Leanne, “must be the Lieutenant Commander we’re assisting.”
“We’re…?” Leanne wondered aloud.
“These three and I keep up with each other,” said Coram. “When my friends learned I was going to be your primary contact for the Chimerian Protocols project, they volunteered t
o help. They’ll be assisting with the installations around Silverwing.” Indicating the female, he said, “Leanne Shire, I’d like you to meet Dame Kesta.” Of the heartbreaker to Kesta’s right: “This is Sir Willem.” And the swarthy one: “And Sir Tarik.” And back to Leanne: “The three of us were initiated into the Knighthood and trained together. We would trust each other with our lives, and have done so more than once.”
“That’s a fact,” said Kesta.
“Why have you tucked yourselves away over here?” asked Tarik. “This is hardly the place to plan the downfall of the Chimerians.”
“This is the place,” said Coram, “for new comrades to get acquainted, which is all we’re about right now. We’ll bring down the Chimerians or stop them in their tracks soon enough.”
“We absolutely will,” said Kesta. “We’d never let you undertake anything so important without us.”
“I never do anything important without you,” Coram grinned.
“Oh, I think there are at least some important things you do on your own,” said Willem wickedly, his eyes darting suggestively between Coram and Leanne in a way that made Leanne sit back with an uncomfortable tingle down her spine.
“That’ll be enough from you,” Coram said in mock irritation. Willem just chuckled.
To Leanne, Kesta said, “The best place to get to know this one is with his comrades. Come out from this stuffy booth; let’s get a table.”
Before Leanne could say anything, Coram cut her off: “And no, they’re not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. Remember, we’re Knights.”
“As if I could forget,” said Leanne with a shake of her head and a shrug. Outnumbered by dragons, she resigned herself to coming out of her booth. In a shake of a reptilian tail, Kesta commandeered a table out on the main floor of the tavern, and the five of them were sitting around it with drinks.
And in the way of warriors and comrades since the days when paladins rode horseback and Vikings sailed the seas on ancient Earth, the four Knights of Lacerta regaled the Earth woman with stories. They told of adventures they’d had and the worlds on which they’d had them, villains they had bested, monsters they had battled, dangers they had survived together.
They discreetly did not speak of lovers and partners they had bedded, but some of the looks that passed between them told those stories without a word being said. Leanne listened to their tales, and in listening, her mood subtly changed. Her sense of duty, her purpose for being here, was still as present in her mind as ever. But now, having taken the oath of her new rank and satisfied herself that her mission was taking shape as planned, Leanne allowed herself the small luxury of living in this moment, of just being in the presence of these people she had so admired since she was a girl.
The Knights of Lacerta were without question among the most admired beings in known space. Many sought to know them in one way or another. Many sought their company in bed, and those who knew the pleasure of a Knight’s body were never disappointed. But a thing like this was special: to be in their company, in one of their places, and to hear them talk as they were doing with her now, as if she were one of them, as if she were accepted. Though she had only one shape in which she had neither wings, scales, talons, nor tail, it was at times like this when Leanne felt almost as if she were a dragon herself.
Through all the stories and amid all the Knightly laughter, time and time again, Leanne returned to watching Coram, seeing him laugh or nod or frown, seeing him wink or give a pretense of scolding or mockery at one of his friends. On occasion, he would nudge her and point to one of them to bring up something that he knew about one of them, whether it be brave or noble or scandalous, and Leanne would bask in their laughter and their camaraderie as if she were a dragon sunning herself on a warm afternoon.
Times like these were one reason she so often requested to be assigned to missions in which she would be with them. The Fleet was as respected as the Knighthood and had a similar esprit du corps. But even the Fleet were not dragons. There was no one else in the galaxy like the Knights of Lacerta. Leanne knew that very well. Being with them—listening to them, talking with them, drinking with them, sleeping with them—was to her the most special thing in the galaxy.
At length, Kesta fixed Leanne with a look as if to drill her eyes right into her and said, “So, Leanne. You’ve heard plenty about us. I’d like to know something about you.”
A leaden silence followed the question. Leanne stared at the four armor-skinned weredragons sitting around the table with her, passing her eyes from one to the other. She lingered on the
subtly smiling features of Coram. She felt distinctly challenged and wondered exactly what kind of challenge she might now be facing. She found no hint of it in Coram’s face.
Deciding that the dragons, whatever their motives just now, had no reason to try to intimidate her, Leanne steadied her nerves and asked, “What is it you’d like to know?”
Kesta answered, “As a member of the Fleet, you’ve been trained to handle yourself in all kinds of situations in all kinds of places with all kinds of beings, haven’t you?”
Now, Leanne was actually curious to see where the Dame across the table from her was going with all this. “Of course, I have,” she replied.
“And you’ve been on missions with members of the Knighthood. You’ve traveled alongside us, battled alongside us when called upon, correct?”
“That’s right,” Leanne said.
“And I presume you’ve spent time with us the way you are now—outside of a mission, outside of duty, not in battle or combat. You’ve known us when we’re in our own company and camaraderie, seen the way we are and the things we do. You’ve shown yourself to be fit company for dragons, have you not?”
Oh, here it was. Here was that challenge she was looking for. Leanne met Kesta’s eyes with an eye-drilling look of her own and turned up the corner of her mouth. “Yes,” she said. “I definitely have.”
“Well, then, show me what you have, Lieutenant Commander. Show me your steel—right here on this table.” And Kesta put forth her arm and bent her elbow, planting it on the surface of the table with palm open in one of the clearest gestures of challenge that one humanoid could offer another. “Show us—and show Coram—what a worthy ally you are. Hand in hand, muscle against muscle, right now.”
Leanne drew a breath and again moved her eyes among Coram and his male comrades, then back to the smiling Kesta, then back to Coram. “Really?” she asked.
Coram replied, “Really. Go ahead.”
Kesta said, “Your hand, Leanne. Try to put me down.”
Leanne pondered the nature of the challenge and the nature of her opponent. She considered again the tight and well-defined muscles etched lean and hard on the dragon Dame’s body. This female was Coram’s friend; they were all his friends, and they were taking the measure of the human female with whom Coram would possibly be entrusting his life.
She could not refuse the challenge -- and in her heart, she did not want to refuse it. Called upon to show her worthiness to walk among dragons and stand beside their friend, she would do
exactly that. She bent her elbow and planted it on the table, presenting her hand. “You try to put me down,” she said, returning the challenge.
The human woman and the Lacertan female slapped hands together and locked their grips. And the test of mettle began. Their arms vibrated with the first strain of muscles against muscles. Coram, Willem, and Tarik hunched over the table, watching raptly, smiling in anticipation of who the victor would be, none of them naming a favorite. This would be anyone’s bout.
Leanne narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. Kesta clenched her teeth. And each of them pressed hard against the other until the skin on Leanne’s face and on the features and bare sinews of Kesta turned red with the effort. Leanne watched the muscles bulge on Kesta’s arm and half-believed they might pop the Dame’s armband. Their hands, clenched together, trembled and shuddered with the effort that the two females exerte
d against each other.
The three males with them stayed silent and looked on as if this competition were the only thing happening in the galaxy. All of them were only dimly aware that the wrestling match of the two females had started to attract attention. From across the tavern, people in both human and
dragon form were beginning to watch. Dragon necks rose up from tables. Bodies leaned, and eyes turned in their direction.
Some people actually got up and left their tables or booths to have a look at the human woman arm wrestling with the Lacertan dame. Even the bartenders had paused in serving patrons to watch, as did the people at the bar. The only sound in the place was the music coming from the glowing drone orbs.
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