Drinking Destiny

by Pippa Amberwine

  He gracefully inclined his head to Katie who muttered a “Hello” in his direction.

  “I wanted you to come here to see the depths to which I have been forced to inhabit since leaving your mother’s employment, Jevyn.”

  “You’re not trying to make me feel sorry for you, surely.” I shook my head in astonishment at Truth’s shenanigans.

  “Absolutely not. I have a pretty good life, Jevyn. I live in a much nicer house in a nicer part of the city than I would ever have done working for your mother. What happened in many ways set me free to choose my own path, something I note you too seem to be doing.” His eyes slid over to Katie and then back to mine. “The reason I wanted to speak to you and to bring you here is so you can see that despite what happened, and despite my unresolved antagonism toward you and your family, I still know when to do the right thing for the people around me. That involves having to speak to you, despite really not wanting anything to do with you or your family ever again. I need to impress the seriousness of what I have to say upon you. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.” I did, too. If he was going to this much trouble and was willing to talk, the least he deserved was for me to listen. As I stood watching him, it actually struck me, from what he was saying about looking out for the people around him, that he and Nindock, although going about things in different ways, were both pursuing a similar track in life.

  They might have seemed self-centered and in it for what they could get, but they made sure they looked after the people who came with them, generating a great deal of loyalty along the way.

  I couldn’t help but feel that if my mother had been so inclined, she wouldn’t be such a hard-hearted woman, but it was too late to change any of that.

  “So, what did you have to tell me?” I decided not to antagonize him with any more jibes about his surroundings.

  “You want to sit?” he asked, pointing at the two chairs opposite him.

  Katie stepped forward and took one of the seats. Reluctantly, I took the other, although I was still feeling more than a little wary about the situation.

  “We have a problem in Pathya, Jevyn.” It had taken a few moments of him leaning his mouth into his clasped hands to come up with the words.

  “Well, I guessed I wasn’t here for you to pass on decorating tips,” I replied. Then I jumped when Katie elbowed me in the ribs. “Sorry. Instinctive reaction.” I held up both hands by way of apology.

  “No matter, Jevyn. It’s what I expect from you, and I don’t blame you. My instinct is to have nothing to do with you or your family—or worse—so I’m glad to see Katie understands the importance of what’s happening.”

  “I do too. It was a momentary slip and won’t happen again.” I put on my best serious face. “What’s the problem?”

  Truth glared at me for a second, probably searching my face for any sign that I wasn’t taking the situation seriously. I assumed he didn’t find any.

  “Dragons are disappearing from Pathya, and not the dragons that idiot Nindock persuaded to go to Earth with him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Reports. Many, many reports, and all exactly the same. Dragons who are here one day and gone the next with no reason to disappear and leaving no trace.”

  “Any clue as to where they’re going to—or being taken to?” I had to acknowledge that these dragons might not be disappearing of their own free will.

  “No. None at all. When they disappear, they are leaving everything behind and just vanishing as if they never existed.”

  “So, what can I do to help?” I had no reason to believe that Truth was making any of this up. Clearly he wanted something from me, or what was the point of the meeting?

  “I need to know if Lalnu is behind this.”

  I frowned. “Why would my mother be behind it? All she has talked about recently is closing down the rifts and getting dragons back here. Why would she want to make even more dragons disappear?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve talked to the other dragon tribes, and they suspect that she might have made a deal with someone in one of the other dimensions. To use dragons for something or to start a new civilization somewhere else. I wondered if she had seen Nindock’s place and thought it might be a good idea to spread dragonkind to even more dimensions.”

  I thought about it for a few moments. I knew my mother was aware of Nindock and his town, but all of the pressure had been to close it down and bring the dragons back, not to expand the idea into other dimensions.

  “I can’t tell you with absolute certainty, but everything I know about my mother tells me she’s only interested in closing down the rifts and getting dragons back here. I genuinely don’t think she would be involved in making even more dragons disappear.”

  Truth looked thoughtful for a moment and then met my gaze.

  “Okay. I believe you, Jevyn. Even though the idea made no sense to me either, I had to ask you.”

  “I understand. What happens next?”

  “I don’t know. The other tribes are in an uproar, and there have even been threats to overthrow your mother as the ruling dragon. People don’t feel she’s doing enough to protect them. At least I’ll be able to tell them she isn’t actively doing anything to harm them, which should take the pressure off for a while. For what it’s worth, I’d suggest telling your mother that the quicker she gets those rifts closed, the less likely she is to get the blame for this. If there are no rifts, she can prove she has nothing to do with it.”

  I slid back my chair and stood. There seemed little point hanging around there making small talk after Truth had posed his suspicions and worries. I had no definitive answers, but as I had said to him, I couldn’t see my mother being involved.

  We left without further delay, receiving the same puzzled looks, indeed hostile looks, from the people hanging around.

  All I wanted to do was get away from there.

  The higher we walked up the market, back toward the end closest to the palace, the happier I was.

  Chapter Ten

  Katie

  Pathya marketplace, Dracos

  “SO, WHAT DO you think?” I asked as we finally slowed our retreat from Truth’s territory. What had started as a sad moment between the two of us had quickly degenerated into a tense encounter where all I had felt able to do was stay quiet and allow the two men to discuss Pathya issues, feeling unable to add anything. I had my own idea about what might have been happening to the dragons, but I wanted to know what Jevyn thought first, away from the imposing presence of Truth and that awful office of his.

  “About what?” he asked as he kept walking.

  I leaned in and pulled on his arm to turn him around. “About what just happened.”

  He paused for a moment, and I could see the worry in the lines on his face. “I’m not sure. I don’t think my mother is involved, though. It goes against everything she says and stands for. She might be a lot of things, but keeping dragonkind together is one of her themes that’s never wavered.”

  “Okay,” I said. “If Lalnu isn’t responsible, who do you think might be?”

  He shook his head grimly. “I don’t know, but I need to find out.”

  “Of course. Do you think Cole might be involved?” It was something that occurred to me as soon as Truth mentioned dragons disappearing. My feelings about Cole were mixed to say the least. I couldn’t compute that someone whose concern for dragons was so clear and obvious, especially the way he was providing for them back in Nindock’s town, might actually be the bad guy. But I knew Jevyn had serious issues with the guy.

  “Cole? I hadn’t even thought about the possibility of him being involved. Why? Do you think he is?”

  “I don’t, but I was just wondering aloud about the possibility,” I said. “I know you don’t like him.”

  “Hang on, it was you who just suggested it.”

  “No, I asked if you had considered it,” I pointed out.

  “No, I hadn’t. But I am now. Drag
ons disappearing is what happened at Nindock’s.”

  “But that was Chemosys,” I said. “They were responsible for that.”

  Jevyn scratched his head for a few moments. “True, but if they’re capable of it, and Cole himself said he was trying to get a leg up against them, then maybe he has found a way of coming across the dimensions and is taking dragons from here rather than using the dragons at Nindock’s, while at the same time keeping Nindock and his cohorts on his side by splashing a bit of cash around the camp. In fact, think about what Famil said. She said his company had set up in Grayfair. If the company has set up there, it’s fair to assume that somehow he is managing to cross the dimensions to oversee things there.”

  I had to admit I hadn’t thought of that. Cole didn’t seem to have any magical powers, so if he was crossing dimensions, how was he doing it?

  As that thought wormed its way into my consciousness, I suddenly felt very down and sensed the first prickling of tears at the back of my eyes.

  “Katie? What is it?”

  Jevyn took my arm and led me farther out of the market where there were fewer people around to see the meltdown I could feel coming on.

  “It’s this,” I said, throwing an arm around angrily.

  “Pathya?”

  “No. Everything. It’s all gotten so complicated. Before all this, I just wanted to find a way of controlling the hunger. I found it. Dragon blood.” I saw Jevyn’s face darken at the words. “Then you came along, and the prospect of a cure came onto the horizon, and I realized then that was all I wanted. A cure so we could get back to something as close to a normal life as we had.”

  “So . . . this is my fault?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. You brought me hope. You showed me a way of going about things that might work, might actually bring an end to the nightmare.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” He tried to reassure me with a smile.

  “It is, but it’s thrown me into a whole other nightmare now.”

  “How so? Come, sit down.” He gestured to a stone wall, and I went and sat on it.

  “All this is just distracting me. Who is Cole? Is he a good guy on our side trying to help or just another money grabber like the people who started all this? Is he going to help us find a cure or just use us and then disappear with it? Then there’s Carol. I don’t know for sure if she’s on our side or still got her Chemosys hat on. Famil doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere here. All I wanted was a cure, and all I’ve got are questions I can’t find answers to.” I took a breath.

  Jevyn stretched his arm around my shoulders as he sat down and then pulled me gently in toward him.

  “I thought you meant I was the nightmare.” He spoke quietly.

  I pulled back and snapped around to look at him. “God, no. You’ve been fantastic. We’ve been fantastic. I wouldn’t swap that for the world but . . .”

  “But?”

  I dropped my head, looking at my hands crossed together in my lap. “It all just feels like it’s coming to an end.”

  “How so?”

  “Your mother talking about closing all of the rips.”

  “Hasn’t happened. Somehow, they’re still open. She hasn’t found a way to close them yet.”

  “Yet,” I said to make the point that it was just a matter of time.

  “She can’t stop me from making my own rifts.”

  “She can, Jevyn. Maybe not physically, but she can stop you. The threat was there in her proclamation, remember?”

  It was his turn to look down, and after a few seconds of introspection, he nodded in agreement.

  “You’re right. She can stop me if she wanted to, if she couldn’t see that what I was doing was what I wanted, what was right for me.”

  “Jevyn. You’re a prince. Be sensible. Who’s more important to you? The entire dragonkind, or me, some raggedy girl from a different dimension with a virus that might end up killing you? Or me for that matter if we never find that cure.”

  He pulled me tighter again.

  “Katie, that’s a question I don’t have to face just yet, but remember one thing. Even if my mother does find a way of permanently closing the rifts, whatever happens, she cannot force me to go back. That is a choice I’m going to have to make if and when the moment comes, and right now, that moment isn’t here. In the meantime, all we can do is make the most of our time together. Do you agree?”

  I nodded. He was right. Dreading the moment he had to make a choice was one thing. Letting it override everything we had done, and could still do, in whatever time we had left, was something else entirely. I wiped my hands across my face to clear away the tears that had sprung from my eyes and then turned to look up to him.

  “You’re right. I’ve been living in the moment ever since finding out I had the virus. I just have to keep on doing that.”

  “We both do. Now, I want to head back to Eastborn to see if Famil has managed to find out anything else with the fresh blood you left behind.”

  “But we’ve only been gone a couple of hours.”

  “I know, but there’s nothing else to do here. We might as well get any last information we can before heading back to Earth and trying to find that cure.”

  “I’m not sure we’ll ever find it. I’m not even sure I want to if—”

  “Don’t,” he said. “We’ll find it. You will be cured. After that, we take things one step at a time. Okay?”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  He was trying to perk me up, but the prospect of him having to go back was on my mind, and I couldn’t drop it entirely, but I decided that it was ultimately out of my control. All I could do was what I could do. I stood.

  “Come on then. If nothing else, I get another flight out of it.” I forced a grin.

  Jevyn stood and smiled, and we headed away from the city, although my heart was still heavy.

  Chapter Eleven

  Katie

  Famil’s laboratory

  Dracos

  “YOU TWO HAVE only been gone a couple of hours,” Famil said as Jevyn and I strolled back into the lab. “I thought I’d said goodbye, and here you both are.” She was smiling broadly as she spoke, so I assumed she wasn’t too put out to see us again.

  “We found out something in Pathya, and I wanted to ask your opinion about it before we went back,” Jevyn said.

  “Well, I’m glad you did, because I just found out something too, but you give me what you’ve got first,” Famil said.

  “Okay. We had a little meeting with our old friend Truth while we were there.”

  Famil pulled a face. “I’ve heard he’s a bit of an iffy character. How would he have known you were there?”

  I hadn’t actually stopped to think about that.

  “He runs that part of Pathya like it’s his own private kingdom,” Jevyn said. “I bet we hadn’t made it fifty yards into the market before someone told him we were there.”

  “Oooh, spies, how exciting,” Famil said, rubbing her hands together and bouncing from foot to foot.

  Jevyn grimaced. “Not really, Famil. Just grubby people doing their boss’s bidding because they know they have to.”

  Famil looked deflated. “Oh. Not how I pictured it at all.”

  “Nothing very glamorous about it, I’m afraid.”

  I shook my head in agreement with Jevyn’s assessment of the world of Truth.

  “Okay. So, what did you guys find out?” Famil asked, hitching herself up to sit on one of the workstations.

  “Truth told us that dragons are going missing from Pathya,” Jevyn said.

  “Really?” Famil’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “Uh huh.”

  “How?” she asked. “I mean, how does he know that?”

  “Reports from his people I guess,” I said, hopping up on the workstation to sit next to Famil.

  “Do you think they’re going to Nindock’s town?” Famil asked.

  Jevyn shrugged. “I don’t think
so. We keep a pretty close eye on the place and on Nindock. I think we’d know if he was bringing in even more dragons. If nothing else, there would be reports of more injuries from Nindock’s half-assed rift creations. Only he and I, among the dragons frequently on Earth, can create rifts, and I haven’t been dragging more dragons there. A human must be doing it. But the only human we know who can create a rift is Derek, and he has other things on his mind.”

  Jevyn glanced at me with a half-smile. The last few days, the budding romance between Derek and Sparks had matured into some hot-and-heavy stuff. Derek had been seen away from a computer screen, and Sparks didn’t have her head stuck in a game, so it was obviously getting serious. I couldn’t resist a gentle smile. If ever two people were meant for each other, it was those two.

  “That you know of?” Famil said.

  “Huh?” Jevyn said.

  “Derek is the only human you know of who can create rifts. Maybe there are others,” she suggested.

  Jevyn’s gaze lifted, and he looked thoughtful. “Maybe.”

  “I had a theory,” I said. “I wondered if Cole had something to do with it.”

  Famil thought about it for a second or two, staring at her hands. “I suppose it might make sense. If he can open a rift, it might explain why his company set up in Grayfair. It’s a young and secretive nation.”

  “The question is, how do we stop it?” Jevyn asked. “Right now, the last thing we need is more dragons heading to Earth so someone can experiment on them. That’s assuming that’s what Cole has in mind for them. If they’re just deserting Pathya and Dracos for a new life on Earth, it means just another load of problems for us to sort out before the rifts finally do close.” He ran his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes for a few moments.

  He looked tired. Maybe all the pressure from his mother’s instructions, the conflicts he was facing about the dragons already on Earth who clearly had no intention of returning, and possibly inner turmoil about our situation were starting to catch up with him. They were affecting me, but I’d had my meltdown, and Jevyn had talked me through it. I hoped I’d be able to do the same if and when the time came.