Dragon Soul (14 page)

There was a scuttling sound from behind me, like an animal losing its balance on the rocks, and I whirled around.

Of course there was no one there. Just me and the dim evening light—someone’s idea of a joke that they hadn’t quite seen fit to let me in on.

Enough of waiting. I’d have the upper hand—barely—if I just called the sucker out. Which, worn down by impatience, annoyance, and being so damn tired, I was brave enough and crazy enough to do right there.

“Can’t you find something better to do?” I called. I didn’t even care if anyone from the nearby camp heard me. Maybe it was better if they did.
Nothing to look at here, folks
, I thought,
just an altered freak having a temper tantrum in the badlands
. If I’d done it earlier, called the bastard out in woodsier climes, I might’ve heard a telltale rustle in the bushes or the snap of a too-dry twig as he tried to disappear. Out here there wasn’t much in the way of vegetation, just sandy red dirt and scrabbly rocks that meant if a man wanted to get away unnoticed, all he had to do was hold still.

“Hey!” I shouted, picking up one of the stones lying around my feet and throwing it as hard as I could into the darkness. It wouldn’t hit its mark, but I wanted to make it clear that I wasn’t messing around. “I’m talking to
you
, my unwanted shadow! Didn’t your mother ever tell you to speak when spoken to?”

Silence met my cries, and for a minute I
did
feel as foolish as a child pitching a fit. Then I gritted my teeth and started picking up handfuls of stones, hurling them down the narrow path between rock formations—the same one I’d followed to get here. The scrabbling sound that I’d heard before started again, and I paused to get a handle on where it was coming from before I threw my next-to-last stone. It was a good one, heavy and round, and when it landed it made a
thump
instead of a
crack
.

“Fuck!” someone howled, in a voice that mingled disbelief with pain.

“Are you planning on coming out now?” I shouted, adrenaline making me a little cockier than I had any right to be. I sure as shit
hoped no strangers were watching. This was top-notch crazy behavior. “I’ve got good aim, and in case you haven’t noticed, there’s an unlimited supply of rocks around these parts. Anyway, you’re pretty fucking
bad
at following someone without them knowing, so you might as well give up now.”

I waited, turning the last stone over in my hand.

Finally I heard footfalls on the rocky overpass above my head, hesitant at first, then growing more sure of themselves. Someone dropped to the ground next to where I’d set up camp and stood, clutching his forehead. It was hard to make him out in the shadows, but then he moved his hand and everything became clear.

“Well blow me down,” I said, hand clenching around the compass stuck into one palm, the other still holding tight to my last good throwing rock.

And here he was: my friend the soldier with the ugly scar. I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty, since it wasn’t like his face needed any more markings on it. For now, though, anger was still outweighing my guilt. Maybe this was how he’d gotten scratched up in the first place, skulking around in the shadows and creeping people out.

“So what,” I said, “you’re following me now? I should’ve known it was you. Soldiers can’t sneak around worth a damn.” I didn’t put the rock down and I still had my good knife hidden at the small of my back, in case things went south fast. Not that I thought I was on a level with an army man—’cause as cocky as I was, I wasn’t
stupid
—but maybe I’d stunned him a little when I cast the first stone and could use his headache to my advantage. “It’s ’cause you all think you have a
right
to be anywhere you’re going, so you’ve never had to practice it. You’re getting a little purple up there, by the way.”

“Shocking,” he said, reaching up with tentative fingers to poke at his forehead. He was going to have one hell of a goose’s egg in a couple hours.

Bastard deserved it.

“That’s all you have to say for yourself?” I asked. “It’s not enough you shit-eating weasels made me into some kind of walking divining stick, you have to have me looking over my shoulder every other second too?” I hadn’t realized just how down-in-the-gut pissed I was until I’d started yelling, and now I couldn’t quite remember how to stop. What made it worse was that Goose Egg didn’t seem to be getting
worked up at all. He just looked like his head hurt, and like he wanted to be sleeping at home somewhere and not out on some rocks in the middle of the desert. And like the sound of my voice was a little bit annoying—but no more out of sorts than that.

“Our…mutual associate,” he began.

“You mean that bat-shit storage cellar rat?” I corrected, just to make sure we were on the same page.

He touched his forehead and grimaced. “If you must use such language, then yes, I suppose that’s who I’m referring to. He thought it prudent that I…ensure you don’t get any funny ideas.”

“Yeah?” I snorted. “How’s that plan working out for you?”

“I did try to tell him that, considering your reaction when he mentioned your family, you didn’t seem the type to do anything foolish,” he said.

I clenched my hands so tight they ached, and the compass pressed into my fingers, making me
feel
my pulse a little too keenly. It was racing pretty fast. “Don’t. You. Say. A
word
about my family.”

“Yes, that’s the one,” he said, easing down into a sitting position. “I don’t imagine he has much family himself, or else he’d have appreciated it.”

I took a step toward him, then halted. Much as I hated to admit it, my anger was bleeding off into confusion real fast. We weren’t trying to kill each other. He was a damn soldier, and he’d sat down instead of going for the throat. If he wanted to do away with me, then he wouldn’t have been beating around the bush about it. None of it made much sense from my experience, and I didn’t like it.

He lifted his head, arrogant enough to look fucking tired and not in the least bit scared.

“I don’t imagine you’d have heard of me, coming from such an out-of-the-way little mudhole, but I’m known in the ranks as the Ke-Han’s Wild Badger,” he said.

“Can I call you Badger?” I asked, crossing my arms. I wasn’t impressed.

The Wild Badger shrugged as though it didn’t make much of a difference to
him
one way or another. He looked different out of his uniform—annoyed not to be wearing it, mostly, and not any smaller, unfortunately—even if it was still blazingly clear he was a fighting man through and through.

“I only thought I should introduce myself, since it seems we’ve landed in the same boat, so to speak,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, in a tone of voice that made it perfectly clear what I thought of
that
. “How d’you figure?”

“You don’t imagine I
volunteered
for this assignment,” he pointed out. “Following a sow in woman’s clothing while she tramps across the desert is hardly
my
idea of fulfilling.”

“A sow?” I said.

“It is what it is,” he replied tersely, holding tight to his head.

“A sow and a badger,” I said. “Lovely image we’ve got there.”

“I’ll leave it to you to decide who’s painted in a more flattering light.”

I didn’t much hate him in particular—I should have, because of that pig comment, but I guess I did look like a crazy farm animal at that moment. And I’d been giving him the runaround, and we
both
had the same person to blame for it.

“What’s his name?” I asked finally. “You know who I mean, so don’t play dumb.”

“A soldier never
plays
dumb,” the Badger replied. “He either is dumb, or he isn’t.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out which one you are. So what’s he got on you that’s keeping you from answering my question?”

The Badger finally, tentatively, lifted his hand from his head, and I could see in the dim light the color his bruise was turning, as well as the dark, ugly scar twisting half of his face into a pantomime mask. “A soldier still follows orders,” he pointed out. “Personal feelings about those who outrank you don’t necessarily come into play.”

“I guess there isn’t much work in the capital for soldiers these days,” I muttered, flopping down across the fire from him. After a moment of thinking things through, I took off my glove to rub at the angry skin encircling the compass. I was having some kind of weird reaction to the metal, and it felt, at times, like my whole hand was on fire. Mostly at night—so there was more than one reason lately why I hadn’t been able to sleep. “Guess you’re not enjoying your early retirement.”

The Badger crossed his arms over his broad chest and stared at me, sitting with the same precise confidence all trained members of our illustrious army did.

“After he sent you off, his attention turned toward me,” he said, in a clipped tone. “It didn’t take him very long to decide that you needed an escort. I was just lucky enough to be the only bastard left standing in the room when the thought occurred to him.”

I felt a thin tendril of sympathy curling up inside me and quickly snuffed it out. It was strange seeing him out of place, though. When soldiers sat like that, they were usually flanked by their brothers-in-arms, or whatever they were, looking like an army of dolls, all set up perfectly by someone who was real crazy about being precise. No hair out of order, no uniform mussed; that kind of thing.

“So this,” I said, waving my hand, “isn’t enough reassurance that I’m not going anywhere? Fuck, man, I want this off of me. I haven’t been keeping up with the fashions in the capital, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t going to become the latest craze anytime soon.”

“Precautions,” Badger said. At least he didn’t look very happy about it, but I was really scraping the bottom of the silver lining barrel on that one.

Things got quiet the closer you got to the desert. On our left—I guess you could call it the west, though my compass didn’t offer those kinds of useful directions—the Cobalt Range rose up, imposing and spooky as hell in the night. The moon just crested them, half-full and hidden by smoky clouds. Yeah, we were one hell of a pair all right.

“Guess we’d better work together, then,” I said. It didn’t even stick in my craw the way I’d thought it might. The way he talked, that creepy magician had
his
family under the same watch as mine. And besides, I’d seen the look on Badger’s face when we’d both been down in that cellar. If he was going to double-cross me, it wouldn’t be for a madman’s favor. “You know how to catch fish?” As far as I knew, it’d be the last time I ate fish in a good, long while.

Unless there was some kind of desert oasis-fish I didn’t have any idea about. I didn’t know much about the desert, so I wasn’t going to rule it out.

A couple of hours later and we were both pretty wet, but the Badger’d managed to both spear us some dinner and cook it. I couldn’t risk putting my hand too close to the fire in case the metal melted or something—a fucked-up thought, but one of the ones I’d been having lately. I didn’t know anything about this thing that was a part of me now, and the last thing I needed was to ruin my one clue.

“This is good,” I said. “Hope it’s not poisonous.”

“Only time will tell,” Badger said, chewing contentedly.

There wasn’t much a good, solid meal couldn’t solve—which was part of the reason poor people like me were so angry all the time. I was even feeling in a more charitable mood now myself, since I wasn’t deep-down hungry for the first time in days.
You try catching fish with a stick when you can’t move your good hand
, I thought darkly, but the crispy skin was delicious, and my dark mood had lifted. We ate in silence. He had two fish and I had three, but that was only fair, because I was the one who had the compass and I was the one who hadn’t volunteered to serve my country in the first place. And also, the three fish
I
ate were smaller than his two.

“That’s good stuff,” I said at last, wiping something off my cheek and checking to make sure nothing had flaked off on my palm. “You’re gonna make some dumb woman real happy one day.”

“Intriguing assessment,” Badger replied.

“Now, isn’t this better than lurking around in the shadows and sleeping all cramped up?” I asked. “Don’t you feel happier about yourself? A little less embarrassed?”

“Depends,” Badger said, “on how often you compliment my cooking.”

I laughed, near to clapping my hand on my thigh, when I realized what the action would have meant and stopped myself.

“You know, under different circumstances my situation right now would’ve made an old woman
very
happy,” I said. There wasn’t any good reason for my suddenly being in a sharing mood, but I guessed having a full stomach made more of a difference than I’d thought.

At least Badger had the decency to look surprised.

“Your mother?” he asked.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “She was
way
too old to be my mother. I mean, probably. Had a face like a dried-up old persimmon. Same color too, now that I think about it. Met her while we were scavenging in the capital together.”

“Charming,” said Badger.

“Isn’t it just?” I said, enjoying the fact that I was getting in under his skin. “All
her
kids up and died in that war you’re all trying to forget, so I guess she didn’t have anyone to look after her. Took things into her own hands after the capital got all burned up, just like everyone else
who saw an advantage to get while the getting was good. Not bad for an old broad, really. She even had a tiger-skin rug she
said
came from one of the menagerie tigers, but I wasn’t buying that one.”

“She sounds like a fascinating character,” Badger said, which could’ve been something I agreed with if he hadn’t had that edge in his voice.

I shrugged. I didn’t have to explain anything to him. Least of all the old woman and me. “We were traveling together until
you
showed up,” I said. “Made her feel good to have someone to boss around.”