Dragon Soul (27 page)

“He will be safe,” Kalim promised, looking at me this time. I knew then I must have been doing a very poor job of keeping my feelings to myself for even a stranger to pick up on them. He turned to give a sharp command to one of his men, and there was a flurry of activity as they moved like trained soldiers changing formation. They were wonderfully organized, I thought privately. They clearly knew the desert intimately. It was no wonder they’d been able to sneak up on us so easily.

The man Kalim had spoken to came forward with our camels, alongside another one that must have belonged to the nomad prince himself.

Rook looked up sharply, a hunting dog scenting something he liked in the air.

“This mean we’re traveling tonight after all?” he asked.

“Tonight, and the next night,” Kalim said, checking the bags strapped to the camel. We were all well provisioned, at least. “You are closer perhaps than you thought, but we cannot cover the distance in what remains of this night. Tomorrow night…Perhaps. It depends upon how well you Volstovs ride.”

Rook swore, and swung up onto his camel in a practiced motion that made me ache just looking at it. I was none so graceful, and being conscious of my own awkwardness didn’t make it any less evident. Kalim no doubt was laughing at me as I scrambled onto my mount’s lumpy, ungraceful back, losing my footing more than once as I did so, nearly falling squarely upon my backside in the sand. At least I managed it without taking a full tumble. That would have been shame of the highest order, and I might never have been able to recover Kalim’s esteem after that.

Privately, I was not at all looking forward to getting back on a camel, especially at this hour of the night. I didn’t know how Rook had managed to adjust so quickly to a schedule of sleeping during the day and riding all night, but as always it seemed to me to speak of some discrepancy between us. We shared the same blood, and yet Rook was able to accomplish all manner of feats I could not. I had my education, yes, but that was an earned skill, not something I’d been born with at all.

Perhaps, if Rook had gone to the ’Versity, he would have had no need for me at all. It was a question I held deeply hidden in my heart, so I could examine it only when I was feeling particularly disheartened.

It was merely difficult being so useless when all I wanted to do was help.

“You are sure that this is the path you wish to take?” Kalim asked, so that for a minute I thought he was asking us about directions. “The Volstov woman has a fearsome temper, they say, and I have never known her to accept a visitor.”

“I’m sure,” Rook said, his face set as stone. It was clear to anyone with eyes what he was thinking:
She’ll damn well accept
me.

Anyone who didn’t know Rook might have thought this was born of hubris, but his arrogance was always based on some truth. If anyone could convince her, it would be he.

Kalim shrugged, as if to say it was our funeral, then turned atop his mount to address his men. With some difficulty I adjusted my perch upon my own camel, hoping that since everyone was currently listening to Kalim speak, there would be no one left to notice me. From somewhere to my left, Rook sniggered, and I felt at once both ashamed and resigned. It was a strange mingling of emotions, with neither battling the other for dominance, and I wondered if it meant I was finally reaching some level of comfort with my brother. At the very least, now that we seemed to be closer than ever to our goal, he’d forgotten to be as cantankerous as possible to me at every interval.

At least Geoffrey had been good for taking the brunt of Rook’s scorn for a short while. I had to grant him that.

Rook tutted at his camel, twitching the reins and bringing her up next to mine. I still didn’t understand how he could be so violent with his fellow man and so easy when it came to dealing with four-legged creatures. It was a fascinating inconsistency, and one I was quite keen to study when all this was over. For now, however, I had more important tasks to put my mind to—like trying to get
my
camel to turn at all.

“You gonna stay on that thing, or do I have to tie you on?” Rook asked.

“I,” I began, pausing to smother an inconveniently timed yawn. “I’ll manage.”

“Uh-huh,” Rook said, not looking at all convinced. “Just keep your wrist looped into that bridle and maybe you won’t fall off this time.”

I did as I was told, hoping that I wouldn’t break my wrist—probably better than breaking my neck, in the long run.

“We’ll travel faster without all that shit weighing us down too,” Rook said, and for a minute I honestly couldn’t tell whether he meant Geoffrey or all the supplies and workers he’d needed for the dig.

“I agree,” I said softly. I wasn’t as worried for my former friend now that it appeared we were taking a nomad prince with us as collateral. It seemed a highly inequitable trade to me, but I wasn’t about to spoil things by commenting. Kalim was clearly a man of honor; if he said Geoffrey would not be harmed in his absence, then I believed him.

A shout rose from the crowd, and Kalim raised a hand to silence them. I thought for a moment that we were in trouble again, but as no one moved to attack anyone, I realized it was no more than a very enthusiastic farewell from Kalim’s people. Rook seemed to like it, in any case, since he pumped his fist into the air too.

Then, with a look over his shoulder just to make sure we were paying attention, Kalim took off across the desert. His camel moved like nothing I’d ever seen before, like it was an entirely different breed of animal, which it might well have been. It made sense for a nomadic people to breed their animals for speed more so than for anything else, as covering a great deal of space in a short amount of time would be vital to their success and survival.

Unfortunately, while I was thinking about this, my brother had already taken off, kicking up clouds of sand and dust in his wake. I was left in the undesirable position of bringing up the rear. As always.

It hadn’t been as difficult before, because back when we had been on foot, I hadn’t been staring into a camel’s ass the entire time. Now that was the only view I had; we were riding too quickly, and my attention was too focused on not falling off to observe the other desert sights.

I was also sore everywhere, and the uncomfortable pace the animal kept was magnified only by the unshapely angles of its ridiculous body. We were not friends. We would never be friends. Riding more quickly meant we would reach the end of this torment sooner, but it also heightened the pain I felt with each jolt and jostle. On top of that, my nerves were frayed to bastion and back, as the beast preferred to test my attention at random intervals.

The damn thing was
trying
to buck me.

It was a contest of wills, and I did not intend to lose against a camel—no matter how damned this particular creature was. I could be stubborn, too, I thought, and I refused to let Rook down again.

We rode this way for the rest of the night, without pause or rest, until at last the camel was too tired to try his games and I was too tired to hate him. We were both in the same boat—and by the time we stopped when the sun rose, cresting the far-off dunes, we’d made an uneasy peace with each other. Neither I nor the camel appreciated our current lots in life. Both miserable creatures, we could agree not to make each other’s lives worse. We would just have to accept our differences for the sake of our similarities and try to get along.

“Here!” Kalim said, drawing his mount up short and leaping from its back with such exquisite grace that I was, momentarily, breathless. “We rest!”

“There’s still an hour before the sun’s too hot,” Rook pointed out, but he dismounted too. It wasn’t with the same fluidity as Kalim, but it
was with its own steely grace. Meanwhile, I clambered down from my camel like an old painter off his rickety ladder.

“That is not how you do it,” Kalim said.

“I am aware of that,” I agreed.

“Don’t be rude to our guide, Thom,” Rook said.

I hadn’t been trying to be, but I was ashamed nonetheless. “I
am
sorry,” I said. “Please, Kalim; I hope you will forgive me.”

“I have no room for more grudge-bearing in my heart,” Kalim said, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Do not worry, Mollyrat Thom. You are given my forgiveness.”

Relieved, I fumbled around in my pack for my tent while Rook finished setting his up against the side of his compliant camel.

“If you would like, I will teach you how to mount when we next ride,” Kalim offered. “And how to dismount. You would not last moments here with such technique.”

“My brother has more aptitude than I,” I explained wearily. The exact technique of tent-building was also eluding me, and Kalim did me the great honor of pretending he didn’t see me fumble. I was grateful for that.

Rook had already disappeared inside his tent; knowing him, he was also probably already asleep. I rubbed sand out of my nose—this happened when the wind was up, and it was one of the most disgusting facts of desert life I had yet to accept—and managed to get the tent up at least enough to keep the sun, if not the sand, out of my eyes. Kalim shook his head, very clearly pitying me, and gave me one last shoulder clap before he created, with impossible speed, a tent out of his riding stick and cape, disappearing underneath it at once.

At least, I told myself as I crawled into the dark space, which smelled of sunlight on camel, Rook might be able to find the answers he thought he was looking for, somewhere in the Khevir dunes.

I only hoped they’d make him happy.

When I woke up there was somebody holding something cold and wet against my head. It made me cranky as shit from the beginning, because what I’d really wanted was to wake up and be dead.

“Hey,” I said, my voice cracking with disuse. I sounded like an angry frog. “That you, Badger?”

I didn’t know who else I thought it could possibly be, but a creaking female voice answered me instead.

“Your Badger has taken a short rest,” it said. “He needed it, and I was finally able to convince him of the practicality. Once I am assured you will be all right on your own, I will go get him.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Sounds good. Who are you?”

As I looked at her, her face resolved itself in the darkness. It was nighttime, and we were outside, and the air was cold against the wet spots at my temple. I shifted uncomfortably, but at least the dizziness and the headache that’d overtaken me were gone.

The woman who was sitting next to me looked strange as anything, like a ghost out of one of the stories the old lady used to tell late at night to scare the kids into bed. Never scared me; I was too practical for that. But seeing her here, in this desert town, with all my memories slowly starting to come back to me…I definitely felt a chill. For a moment, anyway. Then it was gone.

Her nose was too sharp for the rest of her delicate face, and her skin was very pale—the kind of white that all the court ladies
wished
they had. No wonder she looked like a ghost. If I squinted, I could see that her eyes were green, so all that meant she had to be foreign. Her lips twitched when she saw I was watching her and she looked away, but I knew she was just playing at being shy. I’d lived with a lot of people, and I always knew when someone was being truthful or when they were playacting.

“Any guesses?” she asked softly. There was something
wrong
about her voice; my hand started throbbing all at once, and I closed my eyes with a groan, curling up around it.

She said nothing at that—maybe, if she’d been looking after me, she was used to this. I didn’t know. She moved the compress to the side of my throat, easing the racing pulse there, and it
did
make things feel better after a little while.

“My name,” she said, like a peace offering I guessed, “is Malahide.”

“Strange name,” I said. “You raised around here? How do you know Ke-Han?”

“Hm,” she murmured. “You’re very sharp. I’ve had to learn a great many things that are not natural to me.”

“Your voice sounds off,” I told her.

She blinked down at me, her green eyes going wide, but I
still
wasn’t fooled by the show. “Does it?” she asked, and pressed one dainty little gloved hand against her throat.

“Yeah,” I said. I was still kind of out of it, and feeling pretty woozy to boot, so I wasn’t too sure what I was saying. “Like wind chimes, or a music box, or something. Tinny. Pretty, though.”

“Oh, dear,” Malahide said, putting her gloved hand against my forehead. I wanted to tell her that it was a good way to lose a glove, since my face was smeared with soot and sweat and who knew what else, but I couldn’t quite get the words out of my mouth. “I see you’re still a little disoriented.”

“That’s a good word for it,” I muttered. Didn’t get the chance to see many foreigners where I came from. Xi’An kept to itself, for the most part, and the people did the same in some kind of twisted show of patriotism. Nobody from other lands bothered to try our borders anymore, and I’d gotten out before the Volstovic diplomats arrived. So I was more than a little interested in this woman, with her skin like parchment and her strange green eyes.

I wanted to ask Badger what
he
thought of her, but according to Malahide, he was taking a little snooze. He sure had great timing. I guess I felt a little guilty, since I hadn’t been able to tell that he needed to stop and rest, but then it was his own damn fault for not speaking up in the first place. I wasn’t his mother, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to start acting like it. Where I came from, people always told you when they needed something. You sure as hell couldn’t trust anyone else to look after you.

Malahide
, I repeated to myself. It was still a weird name, no two ways about it, but then again she
was
a foreigner. Maybe everyone where she came from had a name like that, and mine was the weird one. She took her neat little hand off my forehead, and
my
hand gave a sudden, insistent throb just to remind me it was still in business. I flinched, curling my fingers around my palm. Never thought there’d be a day when I’d miss it itching like fire all through my skin, but now I kind of did. This pain was definitely worse.