Dragon Soul (37 page)

That was the dragonmetal, and it was going to be
mine
.

Of course, I
had
promised Madoka certain things, and I had no intention of going back on my word. The Esar had sent me on my mission
because he’d sensed trickery afoot, and his instincts had proven themselves to be correct. He expected me to bring back what he’d sent me for, of course, but how much more
highly
would I be held in his esteem if I managed to capture not only the soul but the Esar’s enemy as well?

Madoka had no uses for the dragonmetal herself. She’d as good as told me so by the look on her face whenever it was mentioned. I had my own private concerns about the true nature of her mission, which were in part due to the man I’d followed over the mountains. There was no reason for me to be so suspicious of course, but I’d made my life’s work out of seeing connections where others did not. It didn’t entirely make sense to me, that Madoka’s magician would require her simply for retrieval and nothing else.

There was a piece missing to the puzzle. I couldn’t allow myself to become so distracted by the proximity of my goal that I forgot it.

I hadn’t yet broached this subject with Madoka herself, of course, or her stolid companion. Her moods varied with the fever, and I feared that she would not rightly be able to understand the intricacies of what I was planning. Her mistrust of magicians did me no favors, and I couldn’t be certain that what small kindnesses I’d offered up until now would be enough to tilt the scales in my favor if I shared my concerns with her. She might simply suspect I was trying to trick her in some way, and the careful trust I’d been working hard to establish between us would be as good as destroyed. This was a job that required the utmost circumspection. Fortunately, that was a trait I had in spades.

“How far along to the oasis?” Badger asked me, coming up at my side while I’d been thinking. He moved with curious silence for a soldier, though the wind and the sand did a great deal to hide everyone’s footsteps, and my particular senses had always been stronger elsewhere. I was not entirely surprised.

I pointed to the next dune, obscuring our view of the horizon as we strode across the little valley. It obscured what might have been a clear view of the oasis grove, but I didn’t need to see it to know it was there.

“I see,” he said, judging the distance and perhaps calculating how long it would take us to reach it by the speed of our current pace. I glanced over my shoulder and, sure as anything, Madoka was still tramping along behind us. She was a good girl, and remarkably
sturdy—certainly more hardy than some Volstovic stock. Badger seemed to follow my gaze, and he lowered his voice before speaking again. “I believe the fever is getting worse,” he confided.

How wonderful at last to become a confidant. If I had worked trust on Badger, then I could do anything at all.

“Oh?” I said, trying not to betray my surprise at this sudden confidence. It was unlike him to speak to me at all, let alone of Madoka. Perhaps he’d come to realize that my concern for her was genuine—or at least as genuine as a person like myself could maintain.

“She tosses in her sleep,” he continued. “And the hand grows worse.”

“Now,
that
I
have
noticed. I can’t say as to her sleeping patterns,” I added, a little too slyly. If it hadn’t been dark, or if his coloring had been fairer, I might have squeezed a blush out of him like water from a stone. But being a soldier on top of being Ke-Han meant there wasn’t much success to be found in squeezing. Badger frowned and turned away, which was as good as any cue to continue. “Whoever did that to her clearly didn’t have a handle on what he was doing,” I told him frankly. “It seems desperate, like an experiment as much as anything else. Decidedly
not
the work of someone who’s an expert in the field—but then, this is highly experimental magic to begin with. Dealing in prosthetic limbs is one thing, but inserting something once enchanted into a working body part is…well, opportunistic at best. Monstrous at worst. You see for yourself the consequences; I myself would never engage in such beastly hack-and-slash.”

“I would agree with the second of those two choices, I think,” Badger said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with my own self-assessment.

“The quicker we work, the more likely it is that whatever has been done to her will be able to be undone. If my hunch about your magician is right, then I will simply have to take her to Volstov,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t necessarily feel. I wasn’t on good terms with the magicians of the Basquiat—wasn’t on
any
terms, if it came to that—but the simple fact of the matter was that some of the greatest minds for research, magical or otherwise, resided there. If anyone could reverse the damage done to Madoka by an inexpert magician, it would be one of them. And I did have ties to the Esar: Whether or not the Basquiat was feeling friendly or wary of him, they were his for better or worse, and he could be very convincing. Some magicians, leaving the
matter of the Esar aside, would leap at the chance to experiment in such a specialized way; I knew a few who would rise to the challenge without even needing to be convinced. So I was confident about that much.

Badger glanced back toward the topic of our conversation as we crested the dune, and I pulled him hurriedly just past the hilltop. Having the element of surprise would do us no good if we were to pause at the highest point nearest the oasis and stand there like bull’s-eyes. Better just to broadcast our presence to the skies with electric lights and a marching band, if it came to that, and at least give ourselves away with a little bit of personal flair.

Madoka scurried up behind us, and had the blessed sense to drop low on my other side. She had wonderfully fine instincts, and I felt quite warmly toward her because of them.

“You two trying to ditch me?” she asked.

“Not at all, my dear,” I said lightly. “Badger and I were just attempting to survey the area for your safety, that sort of thing. You are, after all, our little treasure.” A quick wind picked up, and the scent emanating from the suffering flesh around the compass nearly overwhelmed me. I covered my nose with one hand as discreetly as I could. I did not wish to offend her.

“Any sign of ’em?” she wanted to know, arching her neck to peer down into the valley basin.

“None yet,” Badger said. “We should be on guard. Don’t know how many of them are down there, but it was enough to hit that village, so we can’t be too careful.”

“Don’t remind me,” Madoka muttered.

“Well,” I murmured, lowering my voice as I rose to my feet, “no sense in waiting to find out.”

“I’ll come with you,” Badger said at once, though I knew better than to be touched by this sudden display of concern for my safety. “Madoka, stay here,” he added, confirming my suspicions.

“What? All of a sudden I don’t get to play with the big kids?” she said, clearly affronted. In this as in all things, she was endearingly quaint.

“You
are
our most valuable asset,” I told her, with what I hoped was an apologetic tone. Badger had already started down the dune’s slope
in the direction of the oasis, keeping low against the sand, and I turned to follow after him. “Don’t worry; we’ll be sure to come back and collect you once all the kicking and screaming has finished.”

“Yeah, well,” Madoka muttered.

I reached out to clasp her warmly upon the shoulder. “Stay low,” I suggested, “keep your head down, and remember this: Even if I were to abandon you, our mutual acquaintance, the Badger, would never. He’ll be back for you, even if I am not.”

“That’s great,” Madoka said, but she did seem somewhat comforted by my assessment. Then we left her behind us, scurrying down the dune in a flurry of sand, hoping the wind would cover us.

It was neither of our areas of expertise; we were both better accustomed to different terrains on our individual battlefields, and there was sand up my skirts and inside my boots in no time. I kept a kerchief held against my nose and mouth, which seemed thus far to be the best way to keep the tools of my trade safe. At least Badger was quick, quiet, and efficient. A very solid man, if not the most quick-witted.

“We’ll split up and survey the perimeter,” Badger mouthed, blocking out our path with his hands. “And don’t make any sound.”

“Silent as death,” I promised, my own voice barely above a whisper. For whatever reason the phrase seemed to give him the chills, then we parted, keeping shadows between us and the main camp.

Close up, the stink of dragonmetal was drowned out by the stench of flesh, sweat, and human blood. Fire was also thrown into the pot, and whatever spices were being included in dinner. I breathed shallowly through my mouth, using trees and low-level scrub brush for cover. Silence was one of my specialties, and the nomads in question—tall, bluff men, most of them stripped down and bathing in the fading daylight—were drinking and laughing, completely oblivious. Naturally, this was their terrain. They had every confidence it would never betray them.

So, I told myself, it was obvious that they did not know anything about the chase that was currently being waged. If they had any idea of it, then I would never have been able to get so close. That was interesting to note; my first prey had been running from or to something, but these men were not a part of it at all.

And yet I could smell dragonmetal on them.

I crept closer, the sound of their laughter and stories in the language of the desert—one I’d only just begun to study and did not have nearly so much fluency in as the many Ke-Han dialects—obscuring all possible noise that either the Badger or I would make. They were gathered around a single man, half-dressed, who appeared to be their leader; at least, they treated him differently than they treated the rest, with a sort of awed deference. And, I noted as I drew closer to the scene, nestled behind a tree and with a very good view of the proceedings, he was holding something in both hands. He lifted it high, and his men let out a loud cheer.

What was it? It was
vital
that I manage to get closer. It was about the size of an infant, though the way the nomad was holding it was
vastly
inappropriate for that to be the case. Also, it positively stank of dragonmetal, and when it caught the light it shone like liquid.

It was like nothing I’d ever seen. When I got closer I could see that there
was
liquid inside of it—clear, and very alike to something I had seen before in my lifetime. Water from Volstov’s Well, from which all magicians could trace their powers, though slightly less translucent. And it smelled of fire.

After spending so long on the hunt, one grew to nurture certain instincts. I knew without having to breathe in any deeper that the heady, giddy scent it gave me was because it was something more powerful than even I could fully comprehend. This was a prize to end all prizes. My man from the mountains seemed dwarfed by comparison.

I could have gazed at that strange piece all day.

Unfortunately, I was not given the time.

A shout went up from the far end of the camp, and at first I could only assume that Badger had done something careless, like getting himself caught. Perhaps he too had been lured like a fish by the sight of that beautiful little vial—for those not accustomed to magic, the very sight of it was singing like a siren. It had even caused me to draw a little closer than I might have otherwise. Temptation and Talent were too alike at times, and I cursed all soldiers. But I cursed too soon.

The leader quickly passed the beautiful thing—it must’ve been the soul, I could imagine nothing so fitting—to a lackey, who tucked it under his shirt and spirited it out of my sight. All members of the camp, who’d been as transfixed as I was, jumped to attention.

From somewhere deep in the bushes, a guard appeared, dragging someone behind him. We
were
found out, I realized, but it was not Badger who’d been caught. It was Madoka.

I drew back from the trees at once—it would do none of us any good if I was caught as well. Badger and I had planned to meet where we’d left her, and I could only hope he was soldier enough to stick to the plan rather than barge into the middle of a very tense situation and try to rescue her right away. The soul momentarily unimportant, but not altogether forgotten, I hurried back to meet him, hoping I would find him waiting for me where last we’d all been together.

He was, face mottled with anger, hands braced in fists.

“Calm down,” I told him, first and foremost. “Your anger will do her no good.”

“She’s been captured by those…” he said, searching for a word. Apparently he was unable to find it, and he spat into the sand, looking startled by his own vehemence. “You saw what they have done—”

“I have seen it,” I told him, and grasped one of his large hands in both of mine. “Don’t worry. We
will
save her.”

I wished I’d had a plan to back up my words, but one would come soon enough. With Madoka as our distraction, we would take my prize from their leader, as well. We had our trump card. Now we needed only to play it.

In the end, it was Sarah Fleet who kept Rook from attacking Kalim.

“Look,” she said, standing and speaking in a voice far louder than I ever would have expected from such a short, stout woman. “You kill that desert rider, you feel good for a little while, sure, but you don’t learn anything. Get your hands off his throat and let him say something. Just might turn out to be interesting.”

I would have been the first to admit that I was worried—I did not want Rook to continue manhandling our guide, of course, but neither did I want him to release him and be attacked himself. It was an awkward situation, no other way of looking at it, and I was feeling somewhat trapped by everything when Rook unclenched his hands from where they were holding on to Kalim’s cowl and whirled away.

My brother, of course, was ready to be attacked. When Kalim made no move to go after him, he straightened halfway, still poised like an alley cat ready to jump.