Dragon Soul (48 page)

I had half a mind to throw myself off the camel just to even up the odds a little bit, prolong the fight as much as I could, but I wasn’t that stupid. Getting cocky was one thing, but giving up your advantage because of it was just plain suicidal. Besides, I wasn’t the kind of guy to yield high ground to anyone.

The one rule we had to follow was to spare the leader—probably so Kalim could do the honors with his own hand—and I could respect that. Didn’t know how I was going to recognize the guy if or when I saw him, but I stuck to Kalim and I cut down anyone who got in my way, and yeah, it made me feel pretty good about myself. Probably lucky that Thom was somewhere else and didn’t see me get into the thick of it—not because he didn’t know what I was capable of already, since he did, but because he would’ve given me hell if he saw it with his own two eyes, and I didn’t need to be lectured.

I grabbed one of the ones who’d had time enough to mount up and cut his throat while I was dragging him off the camel. Sure, it probably did say something piss-poor about me as a person—that I could feel more alive while other people were dying—but there wasn’t much I could do about it, let alone anyone else. It was what it was. No arguments there, and no amount of talking about it would make anyone feel better. In fact, it’d probably make everyone feel worse, and it was my job to make sure we didn’t come to that. Contrary to popular bastion-damned belief, I thought about that kind of thing; you could do it
and
be particularly good at cutting up your fellow man, which was something some people had a real hard time understanding.

There was blood all the way up to my elbows and spattering the front of my shirt when we finally found him, Kalim’s enemy, the leader of the rival tribe. Kalim grabbed him by the hair and held him up and everybody started cheering, myself included, despite me not knowing what the fuck I was actually cheering for. Kalim might’ve had what he wanted, but I didn’t. And I wasn’t about to sit through a cross-examination in a language I didn’t even know. That wasn’t why I was here.

“Do not worry,” Kalim said to me; it clearly made his captive piss his pants that a stranger was here and that Kalim was talking to him in a strange language, so the kindness for me was probably a tactical maneuver. It was a good one. “Go find your brother. I will take care of this—I will get the information that I need.”

“That we need, you mean,” I said.

“Hm,” Kalim said, a little wickedly. We both had that same dead man’s humor—not when we were dying ourselves, mind, but when we were looking straight at somebody we’d have no problem killing—so I let him have his moment and I headed off to look for Thom.

First thing was first: He wasn’t where I left him.

This wasn’t a new feeling for me.

There were plenty of things that could happen to Thom in between me leaving him and me coming back to him; he’d started doing that a whole lot of years ago, probably kept on doing it to somebody else when I wasn’t there to be a part of it, and once we’d started traveling together he’d picked it right back up with me again.
Wait right here by this bush
would always mean you’d never come back to find him waiting by that bush; there was always an excuse for why he hadn’t waited—always a long speech about what’d made him wind up standing next to a tree in the next glade over or lying in a ditch a few feet away, or ass deep in some spring staring at all the little fishies wondering if they were flesh-eating or not. Yeah, flesh-eating fish, in a stream in Volstov. That made fucking sense. Made sense to get into the water too, if that’s what you thought they might be.

He was a real piece of work, my brother.

But that wasn’t the point, anyway. The point was, Thom wasn’t where I’d told him to stay, and this time it was a place where it actually counted. Sure, in the barren wasteland that was the Volstovic countryside it might’ve been a little dangerous. Might’ve been wolves or a bear or something, and trust Thom to get into an argument with a cub about honey when the mama bear was right nearby.

This wasn’t “might’ve been dangerous.” This
was
dangerous. And Thom’d pranced off somewhere with his camel he didn’t know how to ride and his friend I didn’t trust and a whole resting hole full of angry fucking desert riders who’d probably kill first and find out who they’d killed later. Just like me.

When I found him I was gonna clap a collar and a leash on him. That way, he couldn’t ever wander off, and if he found it offensive to his pride or whatever, then he might as well complain to the dogs, ’cause they were all that was gonna listen to him after this.

Yeah, I guess I was a little angrier than I should’ve been. But Thom wasn’t anywhere in sight, and since I’d told him to stay out of the fighting, I could guess that he’d gone and done the one thing he always did: He hadn’t fucking listened. I got off my camel, since I wasn’t about to go charging into an enemy base
looking
like I was charging into an enemy base. Kalim had their attention, we’d all but wiped out their forces, and I stalked straight into the heart of the rival camp, listening
with both ears for anything that sounded like someone trying to kill my brother before I got the chance to.

It was quieter in the center of camp—a real deceptive kind of quiet that made it seem like the fight hadn’t only died down, but like it’d never happened in the first place. And I hated that sound—silence like nothing’d ever happened. Like no matter where you were, dirt or sand or wind or time or
whatever
was gonna come and bury everything sooner or later, everything I’d done and everything Thom’d said buried along with it. Kalim’s men’d already rounded up the survivors, and I stepped neatly over a body without batting an eye, the kind of thing Thom’d never be able to do.

“Thom!” I shouted, not giving a fuck who heard me. I could handle myself. Bastion, I was mad enough to
want
someone to have a go at me. “Hilary, you little shit! If you make me track you down instead of coming out on your own, you’ll think everything that happened up until now was just a real pleasant dream, you hear me?”

I heard a scuffling sound from behind and I whirled around quick, putting my knife up even if—and maybe especially if—it was my dimwitted brother.

It wasn’t him, though, and it wasn’t even a desert rider. It was a fucking
Ke-Han
bastard, and of all the things I needed to see right now, a face like that definitely wasn’t one of them. He said something angry in that language of theirs that sounded like river murmurs, and all of a sudden I was remembering all kinds of things I didn’t particularly want or need to. The scars on my back itched like fire, and I did my best to remember what was important—because I was pretty sure it wasn’t starting up another hundred years’ war in the middle of the fucking desert.

“Go fuck yourself,” I told him. He had a long, ugly scar down half his face, the kind you got from real mean fighting, war battles and not sitting up on your horse for most of them, either, and I was pretty sure he wanted to talk to me about as much as I wanted to talk to him. I could just count myself lucky that he didn’t know what I really was: not just your typical Volstovic to hate but probably one of the people he had reason to hate most. And I had my reasons to hate him. So everything was fair and square.

He shouted something again—the same thing, I was pretty sure, even without good ’Versity learning—and I snapped a little this time,
making damn sure my knife was visible. Maybe the idiot hadn’t seen it before. Maybe he was looking for a fight. Maybe I was gonna have to kill him.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying,” I told him, calm as I could when I felt like all my nerve endings were going off like homemade firecrackers. “But I’m pretty fucking sure it’s got nothing to do with me though, so
like I said:
Go fuck yourself. Have a great fucking day.”

He stared at me like I was speaking a completely crazy fucking language—which I guess I was. I was about to pop him one for getting in my way while I was already pissed off when someone came crashing through the bushes behind us, followed by a couple of other someones, all making as much noise as they could. Just like that, my Ke-Han barrier up and melted away, avoiding me to move sharply across the sand and toward the intrusion. I had more than half a mind to just continue where I’d left off, but a relieved, strained little voice pulled me up short.

“Rook?” it said, all happy and terrified at once.

I stormed right after that Ke-Han bastard and straight up to my brother, who’d—judging by the looks of things—apparently gotten himself taken prisoner by two women. Sure, one of them was kind of beefy and the other one looked suspiciously like a skinny man in a big dress, but it was still a pretty fucking embarrassing situation. I grabbed Thom up by his collar and dragged him forward, spitting mad twice over now, if such a thing was even possible.

“What in bastion’s fucking name is wrong with that head of yours?” I demanded, one fist inches away from his face, so he knew I meant business. He cringed. “You can tell me all about Kara-fucking-khum and whether or not the rainfall this year’s been up to snuff or what the national flower is, but when it comes to staying in
one damn place
, that’s too hard for you? Common sense just too much to process on top of all those cindy lessons of yours?”

“Geoffrey’s dead,” Thom choked out, which wasn’t a fucking apology, but it
did
bring me up short.

“Dead?” I repeated. Not my finest fucking moment, but I was surrounded by a bunch of strangers in the desert; two of ’em were Ke-Han and one of ’em, the boyish-looking woman, might’ve been Volstovic. Nothing was making sense, so as far as I was concerned, I was holding my own pretty nicely.

“Indeed,” mused one of the women—the smaller one, whose face just wasn’t quite right. I didn’t like it. She looked like the kind of woman who’d have a few surprises waiting if you took her to the mattress, but fortunately, taking anybody anywhere was the last thing on my mind. “He stole something of mine, then quite unfortunately turned up with his throat slit. I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

“I’m not,” I said, and meant it. “He was a thief. Got him into trouble out here more than once, and if that wasn’t enough to stop him, then he got what he deserved. Pity I didn’t do it myself.”

I was half expecting to get myself chastised for that one, but I guess even my brother knew how to keep his trap shut once in a while.

“I take it this one belongs to you?” the woman went on, not looking at all fazed by what I’d said.

“Yeah,” I told her. “Something like that. Unfortunately.”

“I think he stole…what we were looking for,” Thom said uneasily, as I lowered him back to the ground. He leaned closer to me, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “The Ke-Han woman has a compass embedded in her hand. I’ve seen it. And…I heard them use the Ke-Han word for
dragon
more than once. Its etymology is different from that of the creature in their myths; the word even sounds like ours. And it’s not entirely out of the question that they would be here for the same reasons we are. Otherwise, how do you explain their presence? They clearly aren’t native to the desert.”

“Huh,” I said, looking at them again.

Thom was pretty close to pretty fucking right. Even I had to admit it. What in bastion’s name were these three freaks doing working together? A Ke-Han soldier, a Ke-Han woman—who would’ve been real pretty, not my type but still good to look at, if she hadn’t been drenched in sweat and sand—and then this Volstovic bitch who made me fucking uncomfortable and no mistake, staring at me with her big eyes and smiling at me with her thin little mouth.

“Whisper, whisper,” she said, tilting her head. “I recognize you.”

“Who doesn’t?” I muttered, not in the mood. “I don’t sign autographs and I don’t tell stories, so don’t even try it.”

“I’d never dream of insulting you so,” she replied. “My name is Malahide. I believe we’ve both worked for the same man.”

Everything was starting to click. Not that I wanted to stand around and contemplate or theorize or even put two and two together to make
four, but sometimes I guessed I had to do the bare amount of thinking in order to get shit done—and the problem was, what we’d come here for was still missing.

If this bitch was telling me we’d worked for the same person, then I could wager a good solid guess as to who it was, and it probably wasn’t Charlie the Grinder down on Hapenny, because she wouldn’t’ve turned enough coin and he wouldn’t’ve bothered with her. It was th’Esar she was talking about, and anyone who worked for him and was going after my prize wasn’t on my side at all.

I fingered my knife—Kalim’s knife—and the Ke-Han soldier stiffened.

“Don’t work for him anymore,” I said. I didn’t want things to get too real too fast, but I didn’t want to be the last one to draw my knife out, either. And the nice thing was, of these three idiots, I was the only one armed. Even the soldier wasn’t carrying a sword, or at least he wasn’t wielding a weapon big enough for me to see from where I was. He was a mean-looking bastard but I wasn’t being delusional when I thought, just looking at him, that I could take him. “So what’s this I hear about a compass?”

The bitch’s face changed; I could practically see her thinking. She was a Mollyrat at heart if ever I saw one, with one of those mean narrow faces you couldn’t trust long enough to let them look at you, and I stared her down while the cogs in her head were turning. She was trying to figure out a way to get one up on us, but she sure as bastion wasn’t going to on my watch.

“Whatever you’re planning, don’t fucking bother,” I said. “I’ll know when you’re lying too, so don’t fucking try it.”

“You have me there, Rook,” she replied, holding up her hands. It was a typical tactic—pretend to surrender when you still had all your weapons—and I took my knife out, real slow, just to examine it. The soldier stepped in front of the bigger woman and the Volstovic “lady” didn’t do anything except for rearranging some of the lace at her collar. Thom swallowed, too loud, beside me.

“Rook, I really think…” he said, then shook his head. “No, never mind. They’re dangerous. I don’t like it.”