Dragon Soul (41 page)

“I think I’ll tell Kalim my little comparison,” I said, seeing if it’d get a rise out of him.

“Oh please, you’ve already tried to kill him,” Thom replied. “Now you’re just adding insult to injury.”

I grinned and clucked my camel into a faster trot, sending her forward over the sand. “So, Kalim,” I said, feeling Thom staring at the back of my head. What’d he think he could do, I wondered, if we really did
start fighting again? He’d better stand back if it came to that. I wasn’t letting him get himself between two people who knew how to use a blade when their blood was up like ours could get.

“We will ride through the morning,” Kalim told me curtly. There was a light in his eyes I recognized, and it was an emotion I could pretty well get behind. “If we do this, we will come to my camp.”

“That kinda like your home?” I asked, just trying to be friendly-like.

“We are already at my home,” Kalim replied. “You are already in it.”

“Oh, well, thanks for the hospitality,” I replied, just to show Thom I knew how to be polite after all. “You’ve done wonders with the place.”

It wasn’t exactly my style, but it was a sight better than being cooped up in Thremedon. Even without sticking around to wait for it to get small I could feel it shrinking; with every letter Thom got from Balfour or whatever, letting us know what everything was “becoming” or what everyone was “doing” I felt the dread chill of people going back to being too fucking tiny to look in the eye, and I was glad I’d hauled ass outta there before people started offering
me
guest-lecturing positions or places in their hat shops. But then, I’d never been one of the boys who talked about “after” the war. “After the war’s over” was a favorite game they’d all played and it was one I’d always laughed at. Personally, for most of us, I didn’t think there was gonna be an after. Sure, we all wanted to win, and sure, we had the means to do so. I chalked it up to being a little bit smarter than the rest and let it go at that; they’d all found out eventually, hadn’t they? And the few of them that did get a word in after were happy enough with sticking to their plans, ’cept for me, since I hadn’t made any.

The desert looked real nice in the very early morning, just like a lady before she woke up. It wasn’t so hot I was pissing boiled water yet, and the sunlight was even glittering or whatever—you know, a right nice scene. Kalim was proud of it, and I had to admit it was more real than anything you could get back Volstov-way. Up ahead of us we were drawing back into the thick of buried statues and monuments, so it kinda looked like we were about to start knocking on some giant’s door. But if there was ever a place to stop, this was probably it; you could use somebody’s big toe for shade, cool skeins of water underneath the palm of a giant stone hand, that kinda thing. And on top of that, it’d hide everybody’s camping gear pretty well, if not all the
camels. We’d also passed a few nearby watering holes, so the situation, as they liked to say, was fucking ideal.

And I was starting to think like an honest-to-bastion desert rider.

But like I’d said before, that shit wasn’t going to pull it for me, at least not for the rest of my life, anyway. I still wanted to see those Hanging Gardens, whether or not we’d suddenly gone off trail. We could still make it before summer ended. And maybe in Eklesias there wouldn’t be any camels or sand or things Thom could complain about; I’d seen some of Compagnon’s collection,
Ladies of the East
, and some of
them
came from Eklesias. A few prints had naked ladies doing all kinds of things to grapes that were also emotions I could get behind, just a different kind of getting behind was required. I was also willing to bet they could teach anyone, including my own brother, which end was up—if he was a willing student himself, of course—some things that Kalim and I
coulda
taught him, except it just wouldn’t’ve been natural.

At that moment Kalim cupped his hands over his mouth and called out into a valley created by a lopsided foot with a stone bangle ’round its severed ankle, and somebody’s long-lost wrist. Out of the shadows a scout scrambled to his feet, saluted, then shot off quick as a rat deeper ahead of us, on foot. I guess Kalim expected a hero’s welcome.

I personally could’ve done just fine with some water and maybe some desert women to fan me while I took a nap.

I’d seen
those
in Compagnon’s collection too. They were real good.

“You have to wonder at a civilization,” Thom whispered to me, showing he was back to his old self through some mean trick of fate, “that could create such incredible monuments literally in the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, it ain’t nowhere,” I reasoned.

“Yes, but natural resources are slim,” Thom explained, “and the stones for such endeavors must have come from all over the world. It’s simply not indigenous.”

“You got me there,” I told him, because I didn’t want a lecture on what
indigenous
meant. “If you ask me, the whole thing’s more funny than anything.”

Thom stared at me. “Funny?” he repeated.

Some people had to have it all spelled out for them. “Yeah, funny,” I said. “Bet when whoever built all this was building it they were thinking
about how great they were. Wanted everyone to come and look at their big statues and think they had a big—yeah, I know you know what I mean. Well, here we are. Looking. Just not how they wanted things to turn out at all, right?”

“Oh,” Thom said, and I saw him shiver even though it was getting pretty warm. “I suppose you’re right.”

At least he recognized
that
straight off, so maybe we were gonna be all right, after all.

Kalim’d slowed his camel down to an easy trot, so I did the same, patting my girl on the neck and telling her she’d been real good today. If she’d had a little more brainpower, she might’ve wondered what the fuck we thought we were doing, putting on that kind of speed and riding through the day. Couldn’t explain to a camel why all of a sudden she needed to ride faster, so I guess my brother had one up on them now.

Thom drew even with me as we passed deeper into the valley of broken things, Kalim up ahead just so we knew who was boss. The statues actually made for some real good shade, though I got this feeling like it wouldn’t make much of a difference once the temperature really kicked it up a notch.

“Excellent location for a camp,” Thom murmured to me, and I saw someone moving in the distance, just a little ways off. Probably getting set to roll out the welcome mat, or whatever customs of their own the nomads had. The professor probably could’ve told me, but I wasn’t about to ask. More fun to wait and see.

“Guess it’s not so bad for the guys who built it, if it’s still being useful to someone,” I added, and I could tell that wasn’t the kind of answer he’d been expecting.

“Rook,” he began, then stopped himself, because that was how they did things in the ’Versity: taught you how to start things you didn’t have the balls to finish.

“Spit it out,” I told him. “Soon as we get to Kalim’s camp I’m taking a nap and letting some beautiful women feed me dates. With any luck, they’ll have traded Bless for some faster camels, and we can ride them to wherever the dragonsoul is without deadweight holding us back.”

“That isn’t funny,” Thom told me, but I could tell even
he
was sort of hoping to get a new camel. “I was just going to ask you whether we
were really about to involve ourselves in a conflict between warring tribes, but then I realized the question was probably irrelevant.”

“Probably indigenous,” I agreed, pretty sure I was using that word wrong, and even more sure it’d rile Thom up. He made a choking noise, and we passed into the shadow of a giant stone hand, this one held palm down, like it’d been waving at someone. Truth was, it got me to wondering what’d happen to the statues built of the airmen, a couple hundred years down the line. Thremedon wasn’t the desert, but that didn’t mean that someday, some poor bastard might not be walking through some ruins when he came across
my
giant bronzed head, half-buried in the dirt. Maybe only my eyeballs’d be left or something. He’d probably shit his pants. “Anyway, it’s not about the tribes, it’s about what the tribes
got.”

“Have,” Thom said, like he couldn’t quite help himself.

“That’s right,” I said, grinning like a real jerk. “They’ve got Have.”

He made a face like he’d stepped in it, and I wanted to ask him how it was that a ’Versity genius like him kept falling for the traps I set. Up ahead of us was a crooked stone forearm with a crooked stone bangle around it, and it was here that Kalim stopped.

He let out another shout, hands cupped around his mouth, and
this
time a whole mess of other voices answered his call.

We rode on, passing under the archway made by the arm. Now I could see the white tents, same style as Kalim rode with, tucked into the shadier pockets of the makeshift valley. There was a fire pit in the center for when night fell and the air got real cold again, and Kalim’s men were all gathered in front of it, smack in the center of their camp. That scout’d probably told everyone to get their asses up and welcome their prince home; I could tell when a man’d been woken from good dreams, and these men had that look about them.

Still, not too bad of a system Kalim had here, all things considered.

“Welcome to my summer camp,” Kalim said, dismounting like a desert breeze. Two of his men rushed up, one of them taking off the camel’s extra bags and one of them leading the animal herself off somewhere to cool her down. “No man from the north has ever set foot here.”

I knew what that meant, easy enough.
This is a big fucking honor, so don’t fuck it up, Mollyrat Rook
. I got off my own camel easy enough,
though no one rushed up to
me
to ask me what I wanted, guest of honor or not. The dulcet scrabbling of my brother making an ass of himself followed, and Thom landed with the dull thump of his feet against the sand. At least he’d landed on his feet. It was good progress; he wasn’t shaming me in front of anybody, or shaming himself.

Kalim barked something in desert tongue and his men hopped to, springing forward to take our camels like the sand they’d been standing on had turned into red-hot coals.

“The animals must drink and rest,” Kalim explained. “They have done good work, but soon we will have to ask more of them.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, stretching my arms out. I was used to riding. It didn’t bother me the way it bothered some people, but even
I
was glad to get a minute to spend some time on my own two feet. “Nice setup you’ve got yourself here, Kalim.”

Someone in the crowd made a noise like a camel right before it spits, and a scuffle broke out in the crowd. Kalim’s attention whipped around at once, and I took a step in front of Thom, putting a hand on Kalim’s knife in my belt.

“Is that—is that Rook?” someone asked in a weedy little voice that was all too familiar to me by now. “I say, this is highly inappropriate. I’ve already
told
you I don’t plan to escape. Where would I go? I haven’t the slightest idea where we
are!
I merely wished to investigate whether—
Oof.”

The scuffling died down, and I could only hope it was because someone’d seen fit to wind that little weasel with an elbow to the gut.

“Geoffrey,” Thom said, though he didn’t sound particularly happy to see him.

Kalim’s face darkened like he’d passed under one of the shadows from the statue.
“Rakhman,”
he said, spitting into the sand. “Your trial will have to wait a little longer. For now, we have men’s business to discuss.” Kalim raised his voice and started yelling at his other men, all of whom straightened up quick and stopped picking their ears or muttering to each other.

It was the same trick Adamo’d had. Raise your voice loud enough, and even the meanest sons of bitches couldn’t pretend to have cloth ears.

“I wish I understood what he was saying,” Thom confessed, standing at my elbow.

“Probably just getting ’em all pumped up to go and take back what’s rightfully theirs, all that good stuff,” I reasoned. “You hear one speech like that, you’ve heard ’em all. ’Sides, you majored in enough useless shit for one person. Gotta leave some for the rest of the idiots.”

“Well,” Thom said, with a look on his face like he knew something I didn’t. “It wasn’t
entirely
useless.”

I didn’t have time to ask him what he meant by that, since the desert riders were cheering again. Same as in Volstov—same as everywhere—that meant the proclamation was over and it was time to get to work.

Kalim turned back to us with a sheen of sweat covering his face. He was grinning like a mad dog.

“We will take the day to formulate a plan,” he told us. “Then, when night falls, we will hunt down the man who has stolen my right to succession. We will fight like honest men, even though he has forsaken that right, and there I will win. Then we will take from him this…what the witch named
dragonsoul.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” I told him. “You got any ideas of where to start looking?”

Kalim nodded, the smile slipping from his face. “The leader of this tribe does not live off the desert, as we do. He finds it too taxing, perhaps, or the rewards too small. Much
easier
to take from those who are weaker than he, I believe is the philosophy he’s undertaken. He has become a lazy man who steals what he needs from others instead of earning it for himself. Therefore, he spends much of his time on our land’s borders, near the mountains, where the terrain is not so rough and there are many little villages.”

“Bandits, huh?” I asked, rubbing at the handle of my new knife again. Thremedon was too well protected to ever have a problem with bandits, but there were always men
like
that. Their attitudes were the same, no matter what you called them.

“That is not a word I recognize,” Kalim admitted, scratching his chin in thought. “But I can tell by the look on your face that it is a just perception.”

The other nomads had started to clear out of the center of camp—probably because it was in an area less protected from the sun. One of them had been charged with the responsibility of keeping Bless trussed up like a holiday goose, I saw, and I felt nothing but sympathy for that poor son-of-a. They could’ve at
least
taped Bless’s giant gob shut for
him. Though maybe it was easier to tune that noise out when you didn’t understand what the fuck he was saying. Bless had a peeling sunburn on his nose and sand stuck to his cheeks. He looked worse than Thom
ever
had, and the desert was supposed to be his thing. Fucking rat bastard didn’t know what he was doing, and it was a good thing Thom and I hadn’t let him fuck us two ways the way he’d fucked himself.