Dragon Soul (26 page)

I began my descent down the path toward the desert, warm wind swirling angrily around my hair and face. It was as though the very air around me was as agitated as I. As I surveyed the horizon once more, I realized that fate hadn’t entirely consigned itself to my quarry. The sun would be setting soon, which meant that I could keep going without fear of how I’d hold up under the unforgiving heat of the desert. I had no idea whether my Talent extended to protect me from something like this—a climate of the severest nature—and in my current mood, I was in no hurry to find out.

As I reached the level of the desert, I saw that there was a little village set into the foothills of the mountains. That was the source of the burning smell
and
the blood; one did not require a nose like mine to suss that one out. I’d just made up my mind to bypass the place entirely—my business had nothing to do with desert villages and their troubles—when the wind blew something strange and wonderful to my nose.

It was the unmistakable tang of dragonmetal once more. Different, I thought, from the dragonmetal I’d been chasing all this time; there was a wilder, fleshier spice to it, like blood and Talent. The combination was a perfume whose peculiarity I could not resist. I had to discover the source.

The man I’d been following was still beyond my reach, but this smell was instantly recognizable. I didn’t have time to wonder whether he’d led me here on purpose. More likely was the explanation that he’d had some dealings here, possibly either to sell or buy, which meant that whoever he’d been dealing with was now in the village. A beautiful combination of events.

Fate
was
on my side after all.

Without a second thought, I switched my course, making for the village at once. I already knew that the nomads had ridden off with whatever their quarry was; with them gone, the village was safer, if still in turmoil. My heart all but skipped a beat as I picked up the pace, drawing closer to the smell of burned things, death and injury and fear alike. I pulled a handkerchief from my sleeve and tied it firmly over my nose. There were
some
disadvantages to the gift I’d received, the main one being that I smelled even the things I didn’t need nor particularly wished to. Still, it was worth it. It had always been worth it to me to have a purpose in life that I could call my own.

As I came up to the village outskirts, I noticed a man crouching by the tent nearest to me. He held something in his arms, but neither man nor object smelled of the dragonmetal I sought. I was about to ignore them so that they might ignore
me
and delve farther into the village in pursuit of what my nose dangled tantalizingly in front of me when the man called out. His senses were keener than a simple villager’s ought to have been; I had missed my mark on that account.

“Hey!” he said, in a soldier’s unmistakable bark. “You, over there. Give me a hand with this!”

I made a cursory effort in looking around, but I was already quite certain that it was me to whom he was speaking. No one else native to this wreckage remained in sight. It was also uncertain whether or not they remained at all. Reluctantly, I strode over to him, determined to at least see what it was he needed before I made my way along. As I came closer, I noticed two things: one, that the soldier was clearly of Ke-Han descent; and two, what he was holding was not an object at all but a very small boy.

“I just need someone to hold his arm while I set it,” the soldier explained, not giving me a second look. Trained as I was for the Esar’s current purposes, I spoke his language fluently; it took me a moment to realize I needed to translate, but this had as much to do with the time I’d spent alone, away from language of any sort, as it had to do with the differences in our native tongues. With my handkerchief covering my face, it was also possible that he thought I was local to these parts; my hair was black, like his, and the confusion might serve me well. “Can you do that?”

The boy made a pitiful sound, more like a wounded dog than a human child, and I crouched in the sand beside him. I supposed I could do as he asked.

“Thanks,” the soldier said. He reached over to show me where I was to hold, and I caught the faintest trace of a familiar scent on his hands. My pulse quickened. It couldn’t possibly be. And yet my nose had never led me astray.

My interest was suddenly renewed in this man—though the scent was not as strong here, it nonetheless lingered on his hands, strong enough that I could smell it as he reached across to me.

I held the boy’s arm; the sight of pain and injury did not perturb me as it did some, though I felt a distant pity for the mewling creature. The soldier was staring at me, and I supposed I should do something to help the child; with one gloved hand, I patted him faintly on the head. The other I kept to the soldier’s instructions.

Together, we reset the bone. The boy lost consciousness some way through, which I supposed was for the best; whatever dreams he was host to now could not possibly be worse than the pain he would have experienced were he conscious.

The soldier sat back, sweat damp on his face. It only heightened the scent of the metal on his hands, however, and I glanced at them, allowing a moment of contemplation to overtake me.

His eyes narrowed as he observed me, and I knew the moment he realized I was
not
a local occupant.

Of course, it was only natural for him to wonder what I was doing here, my face hidden from view, my clothes foreign, and my eyes very green. But I had been friendly from the first, and that initial kindness would go a long way toward helping the informal peace talks that were about to take place between us.

“I mean no harm at all,” I told him, holding up my hands.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What’re you doing here?”

The truth, or a complicated lie? Both had their benefits; both, their drawbacks. He had a keen kind of face, marred only by one nasty scar, and though he was young, it was obvious he was a soldier of some experience. Ash made my eyes water and I looked away—a wile that might influence his inclinations somewhat. If he thought that I was troubled by the destruction wrought around us, he might just soften.
After all, he’d paused to look after a little child in the midst of what was, essentially, a battlefield. He had a streak of human gentleness that I could manipulate to my needs.

“I’m a mapmaker,” I said finally. When in doubt, giving away truths was never the best plan. “Part of Volstov’s plan to chart these mountains, now that they are peaceful. Yet it seems they are not as peaceful as all that.”

“You’re not alone,” the soldier said. He doubted my lie.

“No,” I said, and turned to him with a frightened expression on my face like a mask. “My company—I was separated from them. Do you think that they have been taken by the madmen who did this?”

My fear seemed to assuage
his
fears, though he was still wary of me. “Too many people here that shouldn’t be,” he said, and then, as if that reminded him of something he’d forgotten, his eyes widened. “Madoka—”

That was a word I did not recognize. After a moment’s consideration, I knew it must be a name.

You’re not alone either
, I thought. And whoever he and his companion were I knew they were relevant to my search.

The wind picked up; though it blew more burning my way, I also caught the tantalizing scent of dragonmetal—that distinctive burst of blood pulsing against steel, making the magic more immediate than I’d ever sensed it before. This was something special.

I rose to my feet. I couldn’t allow some fire, some unhappy accident, to take away my lead.

“Where are you—” the soldier asked, but I was already following it. Past houses, burning, and the smell of death all around me, I picked up my pace—running now, and lucky there was no one here from my old life to mark me. Such excitement was not an emotion I often exhibited. But I was among wild things now, and that was the element that had been added to the dragonmetal: wildness. Blood, foreign Talents, brutal flesh.

The scent led me to a woman on the verge of collapse. I caught her as she fell, and so cradled her to my chest, waiting for the soldier to come and find us both.

Though we’d started out on our travels presumably to learn more of the world, and I had already seen a great deal—sights unimaginable to any common Mollyrat—I was now confronted with a sight I’d never expected to see, watching my brother fight blade to blade with, as Geoffrey came to tell me later, a nomad prince.

I wasn’t much inclined to listen to what Geoffrey had to say, but that piece of information, at least, was useful to me. The contempt that the native peoples of the desert showed for my old friend confirmed my suspicions; he was a cad and something of a monster, not at all the shy studying companion I had remembered, and my decision to involve him in Rook’s and my life was exceedingly ill-advised. Whatever scolding I received from Rook afterward would be one I thoroughly deserved; I was prepared to take it like a man, unflinching and stolid.

I never got the chance, as Kalim al’Mhed of the Khevir al’Mheds had offered my brother something even I couldn’t.

“You know where
who
is?” Rook demanded—he was going to ruin the uncommon truce he’d managed to form in a matter of seconds if he wasn’t careful. Risking his anger, I stepped forward to lay my hand on his arm.

Kalim took note of me for the second time; I tried to explain to him with my eyes that my brother was, in some senses, very mad, but there were too many cultural differences between my expressions and his. He looked away from me, the point not taken, and back to Rook.

“You speak of a troublesome woman; you have come looking for her here,” Kalim explained. “I know of one woman in the Khevir dunes who lives by herself. She is the only woman I can imagine who might give
you
troubles.”

“This woman,” I interceded, on all of our behalf. “Is she a native to this place?”

“Under heaven! No,” Kalim replied. “She came some years ago—four now by my count. Like a storm she came too.” He shuddered for a moment, lost in some memory, then laughed out loud while slapping his thigh, once more in good humor. “She has…a similar look about the face as Mollyrat Rook. He is like a storm, himself.”

Very apt, I thought. I looked to Rook, whose face was a dangerously unreadable mask, like one of the beheaded statues we’d passed on our
travels. I shuddered, but did him the honor of refusing to turn away from him.

“One of the magicians,” I said. “It’s possible—”

“All right,” Rook said in a hard voice. “I’m calling in the favor you owe me, right now.”

Kalim’s eyes glinted. “What do you ask?”

“Take me to her,” Rook said. “I’m going to the Khevir dunes.”

“Aha,” said Kalim, and he got a hesitant sort of look on his face. I could have told him it was the sort of thing Rook would pounce on instantly—he had an impossibly keen sense for hesitance in others—and indeed, Rook took a step forward, fists bunched, bracing for a confrontation.

“There a problem?” he asked, like things hadn’t just calmed down by the grace of the desert gods, and we weren’t all trying
very
hard to keep matters from erupting once again.

The men behind us, Kalim’s men, had begun to whisper in their language—a soft, fleeting speech that sounded like wind moving over the sand. Geoffrey, in the first sensible act he’d taken since our capture, had lost consciousness; his captor now carried him over one shoulder like a sack of grain except worth considerably less.

“My men will not follow me there,” Kalim explained, face suddenly absent of the good humor it had worn a moment ago. “They believe, perhaps not without reason, that the woman carries a curse with her.”

“I’m
gonna do a lot worse than curse ’em if we don’t get moving,” Rook said.

Kalim shook his head. “I cannot ask them to come with us. It would be…What is the word?”

“Reckless?” I asked, unable to help myself when someone was struggling for a word. “Or possibly negligent?”

“Bad,” Kalim agreed.

“Come with
us?”
Rook asked, already having taken the most valuable part of the sentence to heart. “Does that mean you’re sticking around for the ride?”

“It is the duty of a ruler to honor his people as he would honor himself,” Kalim explained. “To ignore their fear of the desert woman would be a great dishonor. But as for myself, I am not afraid.”

Rook snorted. “You should talk to th’Esar sometime.” He looked around for a moment, taking stock of matters, and I noticed him touch
the handle of his new knife consciously, rubbing it with his thumb as though he could feel the difference. “We leaving now? Still plenty of hours of night left ahead of us.”

“There is the matter of your…Not your friend. The
rakhman,”
Kalim explained. “If you would not protest, I will have him sent back to camp with my men.”

I felt a small but insistent anxiety rise in me. I was not feeling particularly kindly disposed toward Geoffrey, and I was fairly certain I would no longer call him friend after the trouble he’d gotten us into, but I still didn’t feel entirely comfortable abandoning him to a host of men who wanted nothing more than his death. Kalim had proclaimed himself a man of honor, but none of his host had done the same.

“Fine by me,” Rook said. “Tell them they can cut his throat if he tries to escape.”

I winced and made up my mind to say something, but before I could do it Kalim was laughing.

“They will not kill him before I return,” he said, sounding quite sure of himself. “Knowing I travel alone, with two men of Volstov, one of whom has proven himself in combat, they will not do anything to provoke you. For fear of my safety, do you see?”

“Wouldn’t put
me
out any.” Rook shrugged, with a glance back in my direction. He made a face, as though this was somehow all my fault
and
I was ruining his fun by trying to keep someone I’d once known and liked from being murdered in front of me. I’d had more than one such experience during my childhood, though that—alongside everything else I’d picked up in Molly—was something I’d done everything in my power to forget. Simply put, I was not in the mood to see the experience repeated, when Molly was so far behind me.