Dragon Soul (32 page)

The Badger man huffed, a noise that made him sound like a badger indeed, and I was reminded to be as quick about my actions as possible. The standing screen would serve its purpose, but as someone who normally bathed with at
least
two locked doors between herself and the outside world, it was safe to say that I was feeling ever so slightly vulnerable.

“Don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what’s got
you
tramping through the desert like a camel in a dress?” Madoka called. “I mean, what’s so special about this dragonmetal anyway? What was good about it is all torn up and destroyed now, isn’t it?”

“Well, I can’t speak for myself,” I said, wringing out the washcloth before resubmersing it. “You may not believe this, but I am at heart a rather simple girl.”

Madoka snorted, and I liked her even more.

“Just seems to me like trying to gather up stones after the castle’s been blown apart,” she said, and I somehow knew that she was examining the compass in her hand. Cursing it, no doubt, and I didn’t entirely blame her. “Doesn’t make any damn sense to me.”

“You have to think further along than that,” I said gently. It was a bit like leading a horse by the nose, but I wanted to give her some feeling of control in this matter. I could detect the beginnings of defeat in her voice—the fever talking, and doubtless the constant pain in her hand—and it would do her some good to sort out a problem or two
with my guidance now rather than let it all overwhelm her a second time.

I’d told her that I could just as easily carry on without her, and that remained the truth. My personal preference, however, was to carry on
with
her, and that I kept to myself.

“You’re going to have to give me more to go on than that, Malahide,” Madoka said. “I’m no visionary, just a Seon sow with incredibly bad luck.”

“Indeed,” I said, enjoying some private amusement at the colorful language she chose to employ. It distracted me from the chill of the water, which was refreshing but somehow didn’t leave me feeling as satisfactorily clean as a good, hot bath would have managed. “Here, then. What is the likeliest thing someone would build with old castle stones?”

“’Nother castle?” Madoka asked, after she’d taken some time to think about it. She didn’t sound entirely certain of the answer, which was darling. I bent myself practically in two in order to submerse my hair under the water, taking care that every inch of me remained behind the shadowy protection of the screen.

“Quite so,” I replied, and Badger huffed again. “Did you suspect that yourself, my soldier friend? How clever you are.”

“War’s over,” said Badger, simply. “Man’d have to be a fool to try to build himself a dragon now. They’re outlawed. Part of the treaty. Was there when it got signed.”

I wondered how much of that he believed.

“And yet the race carries on,” I said, twisting my wet hair over one shoulder, wringing it out. One couldn’t be too rough during this process—that would split the ends—but I wished for my hair to dry quickly, and so these precautions were necessary. “I imagine there are some among your ranks for whom creating a replica of Volstov’s dragons became something of an obsession. Understandable, since they were such a visible force in the war, not to mention the considerable damage they were able to accomplish, visited upon your very capital. I myself, were I to see such things firsthand, might fall prey to the same obsession. You mentioned that only a fool would take it into his head to reconstruct a dragon. Have you considered a madman?”

“Watch it,” Badger said, and I heard him moving to take up his guard post by the door. He was constantly on the alert, a quality I admired deeply. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

“My apologies,” I offered, stepping carefully out of the basin. The towel I’d brought for traveling was a small and scratchy piece of work, but it did the trick well enough, even if it did leave my skin redder than usual and splotchy with the cold. “I spoke impartially, without any particular bias toward one side or the other. I did not fight in the war per se—as you can see, I am
no
soldier—so it is not a matter of any real meaning to me, one way or the other.”

“Sure,” said Badger, but I could tell that it bothered him. The only consolation I could award myself was that he already didn’t like me very much; nothing I did now would lower me too drastically in his esteem. “Don’t worry about it.”

I dressed myself quickly, in the spare set of clothes I carried with me for just these emergencies, then bundled my dress away for washing later. My hair would dry quickly in the hot desert air, and that was as much as I could wish for, at the moment. Already I felt better, if not completely presentable, and my senses were clearer and sharper than they’d been in days.

I knew exactly what path we would take to follow those nomads, and in following them, we would find my man once more. Now I had an extra weapon on my side; he stood no chance of evading me a second time.

When I emerged from behind the screen, Madoka was holding her hand above her face like she was staring into the sun. The hands on the compass had remained locked into place ever since she’d fainted, which was for the best. It meant that the nomads were keeping to a straight course for the time being, which would make following them considerably easier. And as long as they did not pull too far away from us, the mechanism should still continue to prove beneficial to our team.

I was no expert on the desert, and I highly doubted my Ke-Han companions were, either. We would simply have to be cautious, and pace ourselves according to the whims of the sun and sand.

When I sat down next to Madoka on the bed, she was too tired even to pull away.

“I’m helping this bastard,” she said instead, staring up at her hand. “I think he’s totally insane. What’s he going to do after he’s built a dragon? Send it on a rampage? Try and attack Volstov? Best thing I can think of is he gets caught and the emperor makes him take his life for treason, but then everyone involved with him’d have to go down too.
And that includes me and Badger. Doubt Volstov’d really appreciate the excuses, would it? ‘I’m innocent, but I did all this shit anyway…’ Don’t think it’ll really fly, will it?”

“You have a fever,” I told her, laying my cool hand over her forehead. “And you’re babbling. It’s my fault for bringing up such a polarizing topic in the first place; I merely thought it might do you some good to have something else to think about.”

“I’ve got too much to think about in the first place,” Madoka said.

“We’ll leave at nightfall tomorrow,” I told her, smoothing the sweaty hair back from her forehead. I had no reason for being so kind, only that people responded to it better than anything else. “Then you’ll have to concentrate on keeping your body upright, and you won’t have the time to think at all.”

Madoka laughed like a barking dog. “You’re a real comfort, Malahide. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Rarely,” I confessed, which was the complete truth, for once. “Get some rest.”

Truth be told, I was having some difficulty at present with following my own advice. I could not coax myself, however hard I tried, to sleep while the sun was up, and it seemed that the Badger man couldn’t either—though whether or not that was because of his natural predilections or his refusal to take his eyes off me was unclear. He would regret it later, though conversely
my
Talent would shield me from feeling the effects of missing a good night’s sleep. We sat on opposite ends of the small room, Madoka stretched out and snoring on the bed between us and Badger with his back to the door. He was evidently a vigilant soldier, and a man of some honor, since when first I’d met him he’d been using his skills to help that boy. If only, he might have been thinking, he could stay and help the child further. But now we had our own mission, and we would leave him to the hands of fate rather than the hands of soldiers. Whatever happened would happen. It was none of our concern.

Neither of Badger’s traits, unfortunately, was one I could use to my advantage. Men of honor disliked a spy on principle, and that he was having difficulty in pinning me down clearly made him anxious.

These were not ideal traveling companions. As fascinating as Madoka was, she had no Talent to speak of; all her importance rested in
the palm of her hand, and keeping her alive would be more difficult than anything else. Likewise, Badger would be good for brute strength, but as he was no magician and no mastermind, I needed to hope that he would serve as an arm of strength and justice…and serve
me
, while we were at it.

By the time true night fell, I’d been pretending to sleep for hours, and it was only when Badger himself began to stir that I felt safe enough to do the same. Still, I held my position a moment longer, eyes slit open in the dark to watch him as he bent to wake Madoka. He was gentle with her in the same way he’d been with the boy, which could easily have had to do with her injury—or it might not; in which case, it was something I could use to my advantage.

He cared for her, at least to the point where he felt she was his responsibility.

I held still until Madoka began to stir, then I sat up myself, rubbing the arm I’d been lying on. It was stiff, the elbow sore.

“Time to go already?” Madoka muttered, though to her credit, she didn’t complain any further than that.

We were all up and outside in a matter of minutes, and I drew in a grateful breath of the desert air. The wind was picking up again, and it blew the scent of our quarry into my nostrils. Interesting. His scent had changed since I’d last picked it up. Or rather, someone had joined him.

It was a small detail—one that I didn’t find necessary to share with my companions just yet—but I resolved to watch it closely. If my man was really one of a pair, that was all the more reason to be extravigilant.

Madoka studied her hand with an air of disgust, then shook out her shoulders and stood up straight. “This way,” she said, and strode off with a purpose in her step, leaving Badger and me in her wake.

“I was just about to say that,” I informed him, and hurried along after her.

Months of traveling with my brother, chipping away at him like a sculptor using a mere toothpick to carve a solid block of marble, had done nothing for Rook in comparison to what half an hour with the
magician Sarah Fleet had managed. He was like a different person, like a child coming home to his mother, and had I not felt utterly different about her, I would have said she
was
his mother.

It was just that she was not
mine
.

I was wary of her, and, truth be told, a little jealous, though at least she had warmed to me somewhat. The verbal abuse with which she gifted me, I had come to understand, was of the same tonal quality as that which my brother employed. It was affectionate teasing—I hoped, or at last had learned to assume—and it didn’t mean I was as loathed as it first appeared.

Still, it was difficult to abide.

“Stay put,” Sarah Fleet told us, shuffling into the back of the house. From beyond the dividing screen, I could see a very homey kitchen. “I’ll get you boys some coffee and we can talk.”

Rook took that opportunity to flop down on her lone settee, which groaned in agony at the sudden, violent application of weight. It was moments away from collapsing, and I didn’t want to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were. I pulled up a chair and watched my brother’s face keenly.

He had changed—he was relaxed now, easy, a little eager. Like a child, I thought, with the same pleasurable giddiness I’d seen him exhibit only once—the first and last time I’d accompanied him in the air.

My knowledge of the dragons was limited; my knowledge of Havemercy herself fleeting and very personal. I’d been terrified to death at the time, and so the trouble was I couldn’t remember her nearly as well as Rook did. Still, I thought, this woman was quite reminiscent of the dragon in question—or, I supposed, the dragon in question was reminiscent of this woman.

Magic could be as personal as a memory. The dragons had exhibited their individual quirks and flaws, inspired by their creators. This was only to be expected, but Rook, I realized, searching to replace what had been lost, was far too close at present to putting Sarah Fleet on his camel and eloping with her.

All physical logistics aside, it simply couldn’t be done.

“Here you are, boys,” Sarah Fleet said, shuffling slowly back into the room and offering each of us wooden cups filled with a brew so strong just the smell of it made me jittery. I let it warm my hands but didn’t drink yet, not wanting to burn my tongue. Besides—though I would
never mention this for fear of being murdered by Rook—I preferred my coffee somewhat sweeter than this.

Conversely, Rook took a gulp and sighed deeply while Sarah Fleet levered herself down on the other end of the settee from him.

“Well,” she said. “Where were we?”

“Looking for Havemercy,” Rook said. The word came easier to his lips, but I saw him hesitate just after he said it; he looked around, then took another deep swig of his coffee. I blew gently on mine, wishing I was not so far removed from the center of the conversation. I couldn’t ignore the imagery present in the very way we were sitting: Sarah Fleet and Rook upon the settee, while I was perched opposite them. I might just as well have been on the other side of the world for all I was necessary to proceedings.

“Never thought she’d go down that way,” Sarah Fleet said, with a sigh. “Guess it always stood to reason. Wouldn’t want her dusting up in a museum somewhere. Better to go this way, when you think about it.” She turned to level a fearsome gaze on my brother, and I was grateful not to be between them at this moment, much less on the receiving end of an expression as ferocious as that. One of her eyes was slightly lazy, but she managed an intensity that was only magnified by the fact that the crossed eye made her seem marginally unhinged. “So,” she said flatly. “What’re you looking to gain by getting her? You just wanna stop someone else from rebuilding her, right?”