“It wasn’t you who interrupted them. It was Lieutenant Rathe—Kyril. I tried to tell you I was still watching out for you.”
“With all that wonderfully clever talk about ‘taking responsibility,’ you mean? I was just supposed to hang onto that and not mind that you were treating Elazar and Zhad and even Merav as more worthy of your trust and consideration as me? Because you couldn’t trust me to act properly?”
“I don’t blame you for being angry, but you were just as much a part of our plan to escape as Senaatha was. Whether you knew it or not.”
For a moment, her wonder overcame her outrage. “But she was dead. I saw her die. The doctor said she was dead. Did you bribe him or something?”
“No. He really thought she was dead. That’s what dragons do when they transform. It’s not an instant process, but the Consortium has never seen it happen. Now you know why. It takes twenty-four hours for them to do it. During that time, they’re…Well, they’re a lot like a butterfly chrysalis. Tough, but incredibly vulnerable. That’s why we had to come up with that ‘vigil.’ If the doctor had stayed around much longer, he’d have seen her start to transform.”
He touched her wing. “It was our only chance to break out of there, and if we’d been caught Senaatha would have been killed for true. Or worse. The Consortium would very much like a live dragon to study. If they knew how slowly the people of the Throne transform, they’d know that we are far more vulnerable than we appear.”
“They were frightened of Senaatha,” Azriyqam remembered.
“They’ll be more frightened yet, after this.”
“Not frightened enough,” called Elazar. “My lady Senaatha. ‘Ware behind!”
They all looked where Elazar pointed. Behind them, two shapes like frozen birds swelled in the cool blue light of morning. Fire sparkled at their wingtips.
Senaatha had not flamed all the fighters.
She furled her wings and dropped, nearly flinging Azriyqam off. Zhad screamed and hung on for dear life. Above them, in the space where they had been, yellow-white tracers sliced through the sky.
Azriyqam watched in stunned disbelief as Avnai let go of the harness and latched his legs around Senaatha’s neck. “Climb!” he shouted above the roar of the wind. “You must not be forced down.”
Senaatha grunted assent. “Hold on.”
The tracers were coming closer.
Her wings snapped out. Azriyqam felt herself being dragged off the harness, felt her knuckles cracking. She dug in frantically with her claws as the great dragon zoomed skyward. She shot between the stuttering lines of light, twisting as she climbed, the roar of engines passing under them.
The dragon labored for height. Suddenly, a halfdragon wing covered her. “Off! Now!” Elazar shouted.
“What?” she cried out.
On the other side, she heard Merav repeating, “I can’t. I can’t!”
“She needs all her power!” shouted Elazar. “We must not overburden her. Now get off!”
Azriyqam let go and launched herself into the wide, blue sky. To her left, she saw Elazar and Merav rise off Senaatha’s back. They soared off in different directions, and she continued to climb, propelled by the dragon’s upward momentum.
The sky was so big.
She had never been so high up on her own. Thousands of feet, it must have been. She felt as if she could fall forever in the endless blue that was the ocean below and the sky above. Already, she had to strain to pick out the bronze and violet specks that were Elazar and Merav.
Senaatha aimed for the fighters, and they bored in, lines of death shooting from their wings. Suddenly, she seemed to stutter in the air, beating her wings irregularly. She dropped, climbed, and dropped again.
She’s throwing off their aim, Azriyqam realized. Consortium planes were fast, but they moved in long curves. They had no wings to beat—how do they turn? she wondered—and so they weren’t capable of the fast changes in direction a dragon could manage.
Or a halfdragon. The planes sliced through the air on either side of Senaatha, and she whipped her neck around, flaming, but her fiery breath fell short of her targets.
They must be going a hundred miles an hour, thought Azriyqam.
Her heart sank. It was obvious, even to her, that the weapons on the aircraft reached much farther than Senaatha’s flame could, and they could use them while going at full speed. Senaatha didn’t dare—she’d fly right into her own breath. Even worse, the planes would not get tired. Already, they were looping around for another pass. Senaatha labored for altitude, but the aircraft climbed higher still, nearly to her own height.
Height. She strained against the thin air, found a weak thermal, and rode it upward. The planes settled in for their attack run. Again, the deadly lines of gunfire lashed out.
Two tiny figures dove into them. Elazar slashed downward, Merav flying practically at his wingtip. They twisted between the lines of light and danced in front of the oncoming plane. It veered in the air, yawing and rolling to avoid a collision. Slowing.
Senaatha breathed flame as it passed by her at a distance of fifty feet. The airplane emerged from the stream of flame spinning wildly, a comet of fire trailing black smoke, every surface ablaze.
Then the second plane’s guns punched heavy bullets through Senaatha’s right wing.
Blood flew like mist from the wounds. The dragon screamed. Engine roaring, the plane broke off in a tight turn. Its pilot had seen what had happened to his companion, and he didn’t want to chance closing with the dragon, wounded or not.
He would come back to finish the job from farther away. Senaatha was in a flat glide. The bullets hadn’t cracked her wing spars or she’d be falling out of the sky, but there were ragged holes in the membranes of her wing. If she strained it too hard, she’d rip it apart by the sheer force of her passage through the air.
The plane turned. Merav and Elazar beat for altitude, but she could see they were on the wrong side. They couldn’t get between her and the plane, let alone be ready to dive. Then the pilot would unleash his deadly guns into Senaatha’s helpless body, sending her and her human passengers into the Endless Ocean below.
It was up to her.
Already, the plane was lining up.
Azriyqam winged over and dove.
The plane came in faster than she had thought possible.
She folded her wings tightly. Tighter yet.
It was coming too fast.
She was falling. And still she would not get there fast enough. The plane swelled in her vision, enormous now. She screamed in despair, spread her wings, and rolled.
The shock of the pain in her wings fought the lurching of her stomach as she pulled out of her dive and saw the plane’s broad wings stretch beneath her. The pilot was already firing as she landed on them, clawed toes punching through the stiffened, metallized fabric.
Her airswords were around her fingers; she scarcely remembered drawing them. The pilot had twisted around, his eyes wide with shock through his goggles.
Azriyqam thrust forward.
Twin spines of steel pierced the young man’s throat below his chin. He coughed blood and died on her swords, and the plane began to fall.
With no time to be horrified, Azriyqam tightened her grip and spread her wings. The wind flung her backward off the doomed plane, and she saw she’d been too late.
Face contorted with pain, Senaatha sank lower and lower. Her wings still held, but below them, her chest and belly ran with rivers of blood. Azriyqam soared closer. Zhad and Avnai clung on to her with white faces, absolutely still.
Elazar and Merav flew on either side of her head. As she glided closer, Azriyqam could hear Elazar shouting to the dragon in his great voice: “Hold, Lady Senaatha, for crown and throne. I say again to you, hold! It’s not much further!”
Not much further to what?
Azriyqam looked along their flight path and saw, in the distance, a smudge of white-and-green on the horizon.
Land.
Some land, in any case.
But could Senaatha hold out that long? The big dragon’s eyes were cloudy and wandering. She was losing so much blood, and if Senaatha tried to concentrate on anything but flying, she’d collapse. Azriyqam didn’t know any sorcery with that sort of power.
She glided closer to Merav. The girl stared, wide-eyed, at the horizon. She wasn’t really seeing anything. She was breathing in panicked gasps. “Merav. Merav!” Azriyqam shouted, but the young halfdragon didn’t seem to hear.
Azriyqam drifted left and poked Merav with her wing spar.
Merav bucked in the air, yelling. She glared at Azriyqam. If they hadn’t been airborne, Azriyqam was certain the girl would have hit her. But there was no time for that. “Heal her!”
“I don’t know that kind of sorcery!” Merav screamed.
“You know more than I do, and you know more than she can do. You’re the best sorceress for miles around. Now do something!”
“I can’t—there isn’t—it won’t—”
“Damn you, girl, say ‘yes, kyria’ or I’ll have you explaining it before the throne!”
Merav paled and stared at her. “Yes, kyria.”
As they descended, Azriyqam watched the girl reach for calm with an effort. Her eyes closed as she achieved Union. For long, silent seconds nothing happened. Then Senaatha gasped. Her eyes cleared. Elazar kept speaking to her, encouraging her, but his voice lost some of its panic.
After minutes that seemed like an eternity, the island in front of them took shape. Tall, dark trees formed a canopy well back from a broad, white beach.
“Slow,” commanded Elazar. “Slow as much as you can.”
“Can’t. Hold. Much. Longer.” They were a hundred feet up.
“You’re coming in too fast,” said Elazar. “Brake. Brake. Lower.”
Seventy-five feet.
“Be prepared to jump and roll if I tell you,” said Avnai to Zhad. He might have been saying that dinner was ready.
“Please don’t tell me that,” said Zhad.
“Just a little more. Dive. Dive and brake.”
Fifty.
“Backwing. Back!”
Twenty.
Senaatha screamed hoarsely and fell. The scream went on and on.
Azriyqam dropped lightly to the ground and ran back to the great dragon, who was vomiting up fluid. Elazar stood before her, chanting in a loud voice, and Senaatha went still.
“Is she dead?”
“No. Mercifully, she’s asleep.”
Azriyqam saw a white shape lying in the sun on the far side of Senaatha. Cursing, she dragged Zhad into the shade of the nearest tree. “We landed?” he gasped.
“Yes,” she said, her throat tight.
“You going to forgive me for beating up your officer?”
“He wasn’t my officer, and I don’t know,” she said.
“Look, I get that you’re pissed. None of us wanted to do that to you. Not Avnai, not me. Not even Merav. But it was the only way to get us off the ship.”
“You should have told me. You should have found a way to tell me. You have no right to treat me as though I’m some stupid child in my own family!”
Zhad rolled his sightless eyes. “Has it occurred to you that we weren’t treating you that way? We were treating you like someone who would know that we were on her side, contrary to appearances. Who would stay alert for a chance to escape when we came for her.” He sat down painfully against a tree.
“Oh.” Azriyqam’s legs folded under her. She wanted to say something, to scream back at Zhad, but his words had hit home like the sickening impacts of bullets in dragonflesh. Shame welled up in her. Zhad had seen it much better than she had, and he wasn’t even really a member of her family. Close on the heels of shame came fear. War. Open war with the Consortium, and the Crown and Throne did not even know.
And they were trapped on a deserted island, hundreds or thousands of miles away from home, where there was nothing they could do about it.
* * * * *
Part III: Grave Responsibility
Chapter 11
Azriyqam forced herself to swallow the last bite of raw shellfish. Most of her diet had come from the sea, one way or another, but even on Ekkaia, only the best of the fish was saved to eat raw. Here, on the beach there was no choice. Even though Senaatha was more than capable of starting a fire, Avnai had quashed that notion.
“We’re fortunate that it’s a cloudy night,” he’d said. “That means if the Talion can get its planes out to search for us, it’ll be a lot harder for them to locate us, but the human eye can see a candle flame at over a mile. And the Consortium trains its pilots well. They can see a campfire for miles, so we daren’t risk it. It’s bad enough we’re trapped here on the beach.”
Azriyqam looked over at Senaatha’s long, motionless bulk. She was too hurt to move herself, too large to be moved, and she didn’t have the energy reserves to transform. Feeding her was going to be a problem.
“Can they launch their planes?” she asked Avnai. “Senaatha started a fire when she broke out.”
“She caused a lot of damage,” Avnai admitted. “If we’re very lucky, it may have sunk her, but battlecarriers are loaded with gasoline and explosives, and so are very well-equipped to fight fires. The captain won’t stop looking for us until he’s forced to.”
“Why not?” asked Merav.
“He can’t afford to,” said Elazar. “Senaatha severely damaged one of the Consortium’s most powerful ships and then escaped with all of us. At the very least, this makes him appear an incompetent fool. He knows that if we escape we will be able to report to our own ambassador that the captain violated our diplomatic immunity, which is technically an act of war.”
“Can’t he say what we did is an act of war?” asked Azriyqam. “He could tell everyone that Senaatha attacked his ship for no reason.”
Elazar shook his head. “The Consortium would be widely doubted if it tried to press such a claim. Especially since everyone knows that Crown Prince Avnai was effectively a hostage there. Leading such a desperate attack, he’d likely have been killed. It’s not a realistic gamble for the kingdom to take.”
“More importantly,” said Avnai, “the success of the attack will bring an investigation down on Captain Eute. High Command will want to know how it could have succeeded, and even Commander Wiegand knew he was operating well outside his authority.”
“So did Lieutenant Rathe,” murmured Azriyqam.
“He can’t silence his whole command staff. More than that, did you notice who he had stomping into our quarters?”
“Do you mean those soldiers in the black uniforms?” asked Azriyqam.
“Yes, them. Those weren’t marines. They were Pax Security. I’d no idea they were aboard. Why would they be? This situation stinks of politics.”
“Politics?” asked Azriyqam.
“Internal Consortium politics, I mean. PaxSec is charged with protecting the interests of the Consortium above everything else. They and their commander, General Berian, hate the fact that Allied States exist at all. They’d much rather see the Consortium conquer everyone flat-out. Eute must be helping Berian out with something, but what?” His eyes narrowed. “Eute’s new to this post. Got it after Gaderan was dismissed for ‘losing’ me.”
“The ‘loss’ caused by an assassination attempt,” pointed out Elazar, “and he hates the Kingdom. I wonder if Berian recommended him?” He sighed. “In any case, Eute has the reputation of being too proud a man to risk disgrace and dismissal for being vulnerable to his own prisoners. Besides which, he and Berian may not have the backing of High Command in whatever they’re doing. So, unless his ship is damaged beyond his capacity to repair, he’ll stay in the area to look for us and admit only what he must. He’ll know we defeated his fighter planes when they don’t return, and he’ll send more.”
“Yes,” agreed Elazar.
“It’s just fortunate for us that Senaatha set his two flying boats afire
. Without them, he has to use his strike aircraft to search for us. They only have about a quarter of the range, and they can’t carry any troops, but that only buys us some time. If we’re spotted, he can send a ship after us. Unfortunately, he knows which way we went. He’ll probably spend some time searching in other directions, of course. He can’t know we were forced down or that Senaatha was wounded, but the Consortium knows this part of the Endless Ocean quite well. They’ll search every island for a thousand miles. He knows we’d be fools to try circling around and going the other way. So, he’ll look for us more or less in a straight line for home. It’s where we have to be going eventually, after all.”
“Do we have any chance of getting there?” Azriyqam asked.
“The longer we can stay alive and unfound, the better our chances are. Which means the first order of business is survival.” Avnai yawned. “Unfortunately, sleep is just as much a part of surviving as food and water are, and we’re not about to find either of those now.”
He was right. Under the overcast night sky, Azriyqam could discern no more of the others than dark blobs.
“We’ll have to stand watch in shifts. Two hours apiece. If you see or hear an aircraft, wake us all and we’ll get under cover. Be on the lookout for animals, too. We don’t know what’s here.”
“What about Senaatha?” Merav asked. “Do we just leave her?”
“We’ve done what we can for her,” Avnai said, his voice gentle. “She wouldn’t thank us for mounting a last stand over her body that couldn’t save her anyway. I’m sorry.”
Over the permanent background noise of the surf, Azriyqam could just hear the sound of Merav trying not to weep.
“All right,” continued Avnai. “Watches will be Elazar, myself, Azriyqam, and Merav.”
Zhad grunted. “Always knew being blind would turn out to be good for something. I’ll appoint myself water-carrier, then.” At least they had found a spring not far from the beach.
“Thanks, Zhad. Now, to sleep, everyone who can.”
* * *
Responsibility of the Crown Page 18
