Dragon Soul (49 page)

“My name is Malahide,” the bitch said, when she saw we were done conferencing. “These…friends of mine are named Badger and Madoka, respectively. We are, it would seem, after the same treasure.”

“Imagine that,” I said. “Small fucking world.”

“Hmm, eloquent as one might expect,” Malahide said. “That does put us in a bit of a pickle, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” I told her. “Way I see it is, I’ve got an army of desert men on my side. All I gotta do is say the magic words and they’ll be on your tail, so…Not really a pickle for me. You guys, maybe. Us? Nah.” Maybe it wasn’t the whole truth—I was embellishing a little—but it was kinda close to the way things were. If I told Kalim these three idiots were
rakhmans
or whatever, no doubt he’d come down on them the same way he’d come down on the rival tribe. Especially if I pointed out these knuckleheads were after the dragonsoul. Sure as hell didn’t jibe with Kalim’s plans—not mine, either, but a good way to convince Kalim he didn’t like somebody was to give him a reason why that somebody didn’t like him.

I just had to hope none of them had any power that was useful. Didn’t think so. If they did, they’d probably have called it out on us already.

Malahide turned to talk to her friends, and of course they were speaking in Ke-Han. It was quiet but I could still hear them, a foreign word here and there, so I looked at Thom—maybe, for once, he’d have something to say that was actually useful.

“She’s trying to convince the other—Madoka, her name is Madoka—to show you her hand,” Thom said tensely. “The soldier doesn’t want her to. Maybe you should put your knife away.”

“Here,” I said, shoving the knife into my belt before stepping forward. “See?” I said, holding up my hands for everyone to get a real good look and know for themselves that I was disarmed. “Nothing up my sleeves, no trick weapons, not even a pocketknife. I’m clean and you can pat me down if you want. Show me that bitch’s hand.”

“Really, Rook,” Malahide said,
tsk
ing and trying too hard to be a sweet little buttercup—but I saw right through that act and, personally, it made me sick. “Your reputation is something of a bother to everyone—his highness included, as I’m sure you already know—but that kind of language is uncalled for. I doubt sincerely you would be able to do the things ‘this bitch’ has proven herself capable of.”

“In other words, hold my fucking tongue and show the fairer sex some well-deserved respect?” I offered, parroting some words that Thom probably recognized well enough.

“Somehow it sounds so dirty when you say it,” Malahide said. “Show me the fucking compass,” I replied.

Malahide turned to the Ke-Han woman—Madoka—and put a hand on her shoulder. In response, Madoka flinched, and I thought,
Attagirl
. Badger, the soldier, wasn’t having any of it; he gave me a look like he wanted to tear my throat out, and I grinned back at him until he looked away, back to his friend.

Her face was nice and strong, and she was clenching her jaw real tight, like something somewhere was hurting her. There wasn’t much I could do to
not
look threatening, so I just stood there, waiting for them to make up their minds. They could do this easy or they could do this hard, but it looked like everyone was gonna forgo pride and go for option number one, which was a real nice change from the way things usually shook down.

Then Madoka stepped forward, holding her hand out.

It looked bad. I’d seen wounds festering in my time—mostly while I was still in Molly, actually, since if a man got hurt in the corps he kept it between him and the meds—but this was one of the worst. Even the smell was bad, and when I made a face like I was gonna puke, Madoka laughed. Not at me, but at herself. I liked that. Of our three new acquaintances she was the only one I didn’t want to punch in the face. It reminded me a little of how the boys acted when they’d been injured, back in the old days at the Airman. This was a woman who knew how to take a hit and go on standing. I could respect that, if nothing else.

“What is it?” I asked Malahide.

“A part of a dragon,” Malahide replied. “It was placed in her hand by a third party—someone it has not yet been my
pleasure
to meet—for reasons that are becoming increasingly murky.”

My jaw clenched, and I looked Madoka in the eye. “That hurt?” I asked.

Malahide translated, and Madoka laughed again, then nodded.

“So let me work this out,” I said, turning my focus to Malahide. I’d rather have spoken to Madoka, but we didn’t exactly speak the same language, so I’d have to go through a go-between or not talk it through at all. “You’re here ’cause th’Esar sent you after
my
dragon, since he’s under some big fucking delusion that she belongs to him. And
she’s
here ’cause someone—probably to do with the Ke-Han—is under some big fucking delusion that they can make her belong to them.”

“And you’re here because you’re under some big fucking delusion that you can turn back the hands of time,” Malahide concluded, smoothing her hair back from her face and looking proud of herself for getting a good one in, past all my armor.

Behind me, Thom stiffened, but I ignored the words for the bullshit they were. Only thing you could do to prove a liar right was start arguing with ’em. “So what the fuck’s he doing here?” I asked, nodding at the soldier. He scowled.

Malahide shrugged. “Backup, I suppose,” she answered. “As you can see, he’s very protective of her.”

I shrugged too, but it was because I was done talking with
her
. My attention back to Madoka, I held out my hand, palm up. “Show it to me,” I said, hoping she could understand that much.

She hesitated, giving me a look, and I tried to explain with my fucking eyes that I wasn’t gonna pull a fast one on her. In her hand was a piece of my girl—I just knew it—and even if it wasn’t the dragonsoul I’d come here for, it was something.

It was also the biggest clue we had for where the dragonsoul’d gone, and I needed it to tell me where I was heading next.

Slowly, Madoka put her hand palm up on top of my own palm. It was kind of like I was holding hands with my girl, and I swallowed, staring down at it. Sunken into all the peeling, miserable flesh, I could see it, ticking away like an awkward heart, the hands whirling around over the surface and pointing everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“Doesn’t make sense,” I said, once I could speak again. “What’s it supposed to be pointing out?”

“The dragon piece is still too close for it to do anything other than that, unfortunately,” Malahide said. She smiled so much like a fox that if Thom hadn’t come forward at that moment, I would’ve actually gone after her, just to wipe that expression off her face. There was just something about her that rubbed me all the wrong ways, and I didn’t want to look at her any more than I absolutely had to.

“It’s close,” Thom said, repeating things the way he liked to when he was about to come up with some kinda hypothesis or thesis or whatever applied out here in the desert. “But we don’t know what direction to take, and if we choose the wrong one…Well. It won’t stay close very long.”

“Thanks for that, Professor,” I told him, antsy for a whole lot of reasons,
the most important of which being what fucking direction we were supposed to head in now. “Real helpful.”

I caught Madoka giving me a look like maybe she wanted to get her hand back, but I couldn’t stop staring at the compass. Even if it wasn’t pointing toward what I needed, it was still a real part of my girl. It felt weirdly too private, like I was looking at her insides or something, which I guess I was. I had a feeling she wouldn’t’ve liked it—she wouldn’t’ve liked any of it—but then, there wasn’t much I could do about it now.

“That
would
be our dilemma, if the compass was the only tool at our disposal,” Malahide admitted, smiling at Thom like a woman about to reveal she wasn’t just getting fat on account of eating too much. She’d get a lot further with that act on Thom than she would on me, but I was still gonna have to knock her one if she took it too far. If
this
turned out to be the kind of woman Thom fell for, then we were done. Family was family, but in-laws were a fucking life sentence.

“Lucky you,” I said flatly. If they thought they were going anywhere without me, they had another think coming. “What’s that?”

“Now, now,” Malahide trilled, in her arch little voice. “A lady never reveals
all
her secrets at once. Far too wanton, don’t you think, Rook?”

“A
real
lady, maybe,” I countered. Madoka said something I didn’t understand. It sounded like a question, though, and then right on cue like I’d asked him, Thom translated.

“She wants to know if we can get going,” he said, standing at my side like a living, breathing dictionary with too much personality for everyone’s good. “The fighting’s all but stopped, and she believes we are wasting our time by just standing here. Though the words she used weren’t half so polite.”

I snorted, and Madoka shot me a funny little smile. I didn’t usually like women smiling at me unless I knew the reason for it, but I figured I could make an exception at least once. A sudden flurry of hoofbeats on the sand gave me enough time to drop her hand and grab my knife, whirling around ready to finish whatever some bastard had decided to start up again.

Except it wasn’t some bastard. It was Kalim.

“My enemy is dead,” he said, sliding off his camel as everyone fell silent. I guess a desert prince was enough to shut up even as weird a group as I’d managed to gather. Even the way he walked made it obvious
he was somebody important, as compared to the rest of us, and that kind of attitude could sew all kinds of mouths shut. “Before I killed him, he told me that the magic was in the possession of a witch, and that she planned to unleash it for him. Now I see that he did not lead me astray. He would not let strangers into his camp lightly, and yet here I see three of them.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Malahide said smoothly, dipping low into a Volstovic curtsy. She really did have a move for every situation. I was starting to think she might even’ve outmaneuvered Adamo in a chess match, but she’d’ve won by being sneaky, not by being clever. Probably the way I’d’ve won at chess, if I ever wanted to play chess—which I didn’t. Too fucking boring. “I must admit, it’s something of a shock to hear my native tongue spoken out here, as far from home as possible.”

“Are you the witch he spoke of?” Kalim asked, striding right up to her the way I might’ve done if she didn’t creep me right out. He hadn’t washed the blood off his face yet—hadn’t had the time, or maybe this stuff was fresh—and the look on his face would’ve sent any
real
noblewoman from Volstov into a dead faint.

Madoka hid her hand behind her back, and I didn’t exactly blame her. If I was on anyone’s side at the minute, I guess I’d have to say I stood with Kalim, but more than anything else I was always on my own side. I’d wait, same as Madoka, to see which way this shook down.

“I am a witch,” admitted Malahide. Not only didn’t she bat a single dark eyelash, but I could practically see the hen feathers in her fox’s mouth. “And
so
many other things besides that. I am called Malahide.”

“And I am Kalim,” Kalim said, one hand still on his knife. He had to stoop a little to look her in the eye. “You are the witch he spoke of, but you do not have what I am looking for.”

“Regrettably, no,” Malahide said. “It was stolen from us.”

Next to me, Thom was watching with both eyes peeled wide open. Even in books, he’d probably never read about a scene like this. We made a pretty odd group: the prince of the desert; Madoka with a dragon compass buried in her hand and her Ke-Han bodyguard; Malahide, the penny-fee freak show; my brother the professor; and me, whatever that was. We were all after the same bastion-damn thing, and someone’d up and stolen it from
all
of us, which meant there was one
more person in our little gang who had yet to show his face and be counted. It wasn’t nice of him not to introduce himself politely like everyone else.

“Stolen,”
Kalim repeated, savoring the sound of the
l
on his tongue a little too long. He turned to me. “Is this true?”

“Yeah,” I piped in, seeing my chance to remind everyone that I was still here and this was my bounty before it was anybody else’s. “But there’s good news, too. This one here says she’s got a way to track him,” I said, nodding toward Malahide behind her back. Given the right motivation—my motivation this time being to tie that bitch’s hands behind her back for the good of my cause and to the
detriment
of hers—I could be as helpful as a schoolboy. “A real trump card. She’s the only one who knows how to do it, too. Being a witch and all, guess that makes sense.”

Malahide’s head snapped around like a snake’s and I grinned. I didn’t know what she’d been planning, but I’d just done a real good job of ensuring the odds were three-on-three. A fair enough fight for a Mollyrat.

“I see,” Kalim nodded, thinking over what I’d told him. “My men are heading back to camp now. I have killed the man who stole from me, and the rest is personal.” He looked at Malahide a moment longer, giving her a real once-over, like a man looking to buy an expensive horse. Then he seemed to come to some kind of decision, so whatever he’d been looking for, I guess he’d seen it. “For my part, I will accompany you to find this thief. To think that my home should allow so many
rakhman
past its borders of late…I must be the one to carry out this duty. Magic is well and good, and gifts from the gods do recognize a true leader. But I am a man as well, and do not wish to have other people prove my worth for me. I will go.”

“Truly,” Malahide began, “that isn’t necessary—”

“He has started out ahead of us,” Kalim said, cutting her off. Another thing I liked about him: Once he’d made a decision, things happened real quick. “We will need to ride swiftly after him. I will not have my progress impeded by witches who walk.”

He whistled sharply, a strange little trill that cut off just as quickly as it’d started. I heard a strange, scuffling kind of sound, and out of the dark came a string of seven or so camels, all fully kitted out for battle, though their masters were conspicuously absent.