Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1)

by Lindsay Buroker

  * * *

  Ridge stifled a yawn as he followed Captain Bosmont, the engineer responsible for keeping the mine machinery in working order, to the bottom of yet another tram line. The officer hopped out of the cage and pointed at the pulley system at the bottom. “This is the last one, sir. Let me get the part number for you.”

  The captain rolled up his sleeves, dug a wrench and pliers out of the coveralls he wore over his uniform, and clanked and tugged at bolts the size of apples. The burly officer had shoulders and forearms that would have impressed a smith, along with tattoos that covered most of the skin Ridge could see, including one of the schematic of a dragon flier. That had been what had convinced Ridge to work past his office hours, following the man around and writing down his parts requests. A private could have handled the job, but on the off chance Sardelle found the location of the downed flier, it wouldn’t hurt to make friends with the fort engineer.

  “Need a hand?” Ridge asked.

  “Nah, I got it. You make yourself comfortable, sir. This’ll just take a minute.”

  Ridge eyed the open chamber, with its six mineshafts shooting off at irregular intervals, and wondered where one might find comfort. Perhaps he could sit on one of the rusty ore carts lined up on the rail. He yawned again, not bothering to hide it this time. Though he and Sardelle must have been stuck in that cave for twelve hours, he didn’t remember getting all that much sleep. How odd.

  The captain glanced over, and Ridge wiped the smug expression off his face. “I appreciate you coming down here, sir. And ordering the parts. The general always said there wasn’t any money in the budget, and he expected me to make do. Well, you can only make do for so long before things start busting, and when stuff breaks down here, people get hurt or killed.”

  “There wasn’t money in the budget because he had no idea how many people were actually working here, so he had to overestimate on his supply orders. That’s been fixed now, so we’ll only be ordering what’s needed and nothing extra.”

  Bosmont nodded and pulled out a torso-sized part that must have weighed a hundred pounds. His voice wasn’t at all strained when he said, “Number’s on the back, sir, if you want to write it down. ’Preciate it, thanks.”

  Ridge hurried to do so, so the captain could return the clunky piece before he threw his back out. After he refastened his bolts, they headed for a cage up to the top.

  “You ever work on fliers?” Ridge waved toward the man’s tattoo.

  “My first duty station, sir. Love them babies. Got to fly a couple times, too, but nothing like what you do of course.” Bosmont threw the lever to start them up the tramline.

  “Did.” Ridge sighed.

  “Yeah… was wondering about that. Seems a waste, them sending you here when you could be blowing up enemy airships. How, ah, did that come to be, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I threatened to rip off the wrong diplomat’s cock.”

  It was hard to tell in the dark cage, but Ridge thought the man looked at him in shocked silence. It was silent for a moment, anyway, with nothing except the clank and grind of the cage rolling up the rails. Then Bosmont laughed.

  “Something similar happened to me, sir.”

  “With a diplomat?”

  “Nah, with a commanding officer.”

  “Well, I trust now that we’ve bonded like this, I won’t have to worry about such threats from you.”

  “No, sir. Glad to have you here.”

  They stepped out of the cage up top, and Bosmont shook his hand before walking off, whistling a tune. Ridge wished all men were so easily pleased.

  He turned, intending to make sure nothing important had been left on his desk before finding his rack, and almost tripped over someone in the dark.

  “Sorry, Colonel,” came Sardelle’s voice from beneath the hood of a parka. Did she have it pulled up because of the cold, or because she was skulking about and didn’t want anyone to see her? Or maybe she wanted to secret him off to some dark corner for a repeat of the previous night’s activities? That would be scandalous, completely inappropriate and… appealing. “I’ve been trying to meet with you all day,” she said, “but your captain wouldn’t let me in the admin building to see you.”

  “He wouldn’t?” Ridge squashed irritation at the captain. Heriton was just doing his job, however annoying certain aspects of that job were at the moment. “I apologize for that. What did you want to see me about?”

  “I believe I’ve found the location of your flier, and I think I can help you find something else too.” She glanced toward a pair of miners heading out of a tram cage and toward the mess hall. “You might wish to discuss it in private. And I need some light to show you on the map.” She held up the atlas he had sent her.

  “The furnace should still be warm in my office.”

  “I’ll follow you. I’m fairly certain the captain won’t deny you entrance.”

  “I should hope not.”

  Heriton had left for the day, so nobody charged out to deny anything. Ridge was relieved. He knew he would get more concerned looks if the captain saw him taking Sardelle up to his office. Ridge had been too busy working and watching the skies for returning Cofar ships to worry about rumors and gossip during the day, but he didn’t doubt that word of his night spent alone in the cave with Sardelle would have gotten around and that Heriton would have heard. The captain had made it clear that while he respected Ridge very much, yes, sir, he suspected Sardelle was a witch who had put a hex on him, something to make him sympathetic to her cause. Whatever that was. Maybe he was about to find out. He doubted she had spent the whole day researching flier crashes.

  Ridge stepped inside the office and turned up a couple of lamps. He thought about inviting her to sit with him on the couch—perhaps doing more than sitting—but she went straight to business, laying the atlas out on his desk and opening it to a page she had dog-eared. She had circled and X-ed a spot on the southern side of the mountain. “It’s been exposed to the elements on the top of a cliff for ten years, so I don’t know if there’s hope for making it flight-worthy again, but you can check at least.”

  “Yes, I’ll send out a team.” And hope there were no owls haunting that side of the mountain. “Thank you. And there was something else?”

  “Yes.” Sardelle had pushed back the hood of her parka, and her black hair tumbled around the silvery fox fur rim, making for an eye-catching contrast. She looked around the office. “May I see the mine map again?”

  Ridge pulled it out from behind the bookcase. While he spread it out, Sardelle grabbed a pen out of a drawer.

  “You’re going to mark up the official copy?” he asked.

  “With likely locations of crystals, if that’s all right?”

  His breath caught. She couldn’t possibly know, could she? With the mine producing so few of them, getting them back from crashed fliers was always paramount, and every time one went missing meant a reprimand on someone’s record, even if the pilot had been facing overwhelming odds. Ridge had heard rumors that there weren’t any left in the king’s vaults. He couldn’t let that information out, though, not to Sardelle, not to anyone who might repeat it.

  “So long as it’s not graffiti,” Ridge said, making his voice casual.

  “I’ll try to restrain my doodling tendencies.”

  Sardelle bent, one hand on the map and one holding the pen. Ridge held his breath. She marked an X, then another, and a few more. “These are approximate, of course, based on my studies of the Referatu. The maps I’ve seen were from before the mountain was bombed.”

  Ridge, noticing his mouth was dangling open, snapped it shut. “Where and when did you study these people so closely?” And how could she know so much about the history of an area owned and operated by the government when he had known so little? Though he supposed the military had only been mining here for fifty years or so. Before that, perhaps someone else had been doing research? He had no idea, in truth. Maybe he needed to spend
some time in the library. “I can’t imagine it was during your days as a pirate.”

  “No.”

  “I only mention this because Heriton found your record.” Ridge pulled the folder out of a drawer. “It actually confirms the story you were telling the other day, if you can imagine that.”

  Sardelle didn’t appear surprised or uncertain in the least. She gave him that serene smile and said, “I must be more honest than I sound.”

  “I… think not.” Ridge suspected she had planted the record. If she could sneak in and out of the guarded fort and the guarded mines, the archives room wouldn’t present that much of a challenge.

  She spread her hands. “There are a lot more crystals off the edge here. I can point more out to you if you have another map of the other half of the mountain, but maybe you want to see if you can verify these first.”

  Ridge tossed the folder back into the drawer and studied all the Xs she had made. Eight. If he found crystals in half of those locations, he would probably get an award when he got back home.

  “I would have told you sooner, if I had known what you were looking for,” Sardelle said. “It was only when I was digging around in the library that I came across the information.”

  “And what are you looking for?” Ridge gazed into her eyes. “While I appreciate all this assistance, especially if something comes of it, I’m quite certain you didn’t come here for me.”

  “What brought me here… was largely an accident.”

  “But you’re searching for something. Nobody stays here without a purpose.”

  “No,” she murmured, gazing at the dark night beyond the window.

  Ridge thought about taking her hand, but clasped his hands behind his back instead. This was a professional discussion, not… anything else. Though maybe she could be teased into sharing more if he confessed the times he had considered finding creative ways to extract information from her. “I knew I should have tried my seduction plan.”

  That pulled her attention back to him. She raised an elegant eyebrow and murmured, “Hm?”

  “At one point, it crossed my mind that you might be here to seduce me. Then I decided you weren’t and thought perhaps I should attempt to seduce you, so I could learn your innermost secrets. But I was afraid I lacked the sexual allure and charisma for the task.”

  Her lips curved upward. “The deceit required for the task, more likely.”

  “So my allure is fine?” Ridge wiggled his eyebrows.

  “It’s quite nice.”

  “Good to know.” He tapped a finger on the freshly marked map. “I am going to keep trying to wheedle the information out of you until you relent. I hope that fact won’t damage my allure overmuch.”

  “So long as you keep delivering me coffee in the mornings.”

  “Any particular care over which of these Xs we mine toward first?”

  Sardelle pointed at two in close proximity. Interesting. They were down deep and not particularly close to the shaft where she had supposedly been discovered wandering.

  “If you tell me what you’re looking for… ” Ridge started, though he wasn’t quite sure where he was going with the offer.

  “You’ll help me find it?” she asked, her tone dry. She must understand that the military considered all of this their property and anything found within the mountain theirs.

  Ridge licked his lips. He had to be careful. To promise anything that hinted of treason… he couldn’t do that. But if she could truly help him find crystals, and what she wanted lacked in military significance, then what would it matter if he never mentioned it in his reports? He closed his eyes. The thought of withholding information from his superiors made him uncomfortable. But maybe he didn’t have to withhold it. The crystals were of paramount importance. He would be justified in trading something valuable for them.

  “Though I fully acknowledge that what’s in that mountain isn’t mine to trade, I think I could… make it work for my reports if I received crystals in exchange for… something else. So long as it’s not some huge ancient weapon that will be used to destroy the continent.”

  “This is my homeland too. I wouldn’t do anything to harm it.”

  He believed her. And it sent a wave of relief through him. “Good.”

  Sardelle studied the map, or maybe the floor at her feet, or maybe nothing. Ridge felt her debating with herself and didn’t say anything. He had already pushed enough. If she didn’t—couldn’t—trust him, he understood. He had suspected from the beginning that they were on conflicting sides.

  Finally, she looked up, meeting his eyes. “It’s a sword.”

  “A sword?”

  “A six-hundred-year-old Referatu soulblade.”

  Part II