Dragon Soul (50 page)

“Take your pick,” Kalim commanded, with none of the easy air he usually had about him. This was an order and we were meant to follow it. One day I’d have to take him to task for assuming he could boss me around like anyone else, but for now, going along with Kalim the leader suited my needs well enough. Let him be the one to deal with the horseshit, and let me be the one who took the final prize. “But be quick about it. Witch, you ride with me.”

I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d been some kind of master strategist. Maybe I wouldn’t have been half-bad at chess after all. I took up my piece—guessing anyone could’ve called that Rook—and prepared myself to ride fast and straight. A compass that half worked and a sneaky witch who
could
work.

We’d make it, all right.

For the first time in my life, I was riding a camel. At least it wasn’t bareback.

I couldn’t say I was particularly grateful for the experience, even despite the comfortable saddle. Of all the surprises I’d run across in the desert, finding myself face-to-face with one of the Esar’s infamous airmen definitely ranked up near the top. I certainly hadn’t expected to discover that he’d formed an alliance with one of the nomad tribes, either, which was how I’d wound up riding the camel in the first place. And, I suspected from his attitude, Airman Rook was threatened by me and therefore did not like me very much.

All in all, bouncing along on the sand, pressed up against a stranger with princely airs as I tried to pick up the scent of the dragonsoul above the odors of blood, sweat, and camel, I was quite ready to lose my temper. Indeed, I might have come to the edge of my patience at last had I not detected the one smell on earth guaranteed to quicken my pulse and set my blood to burning.

It wasn’t only the dragonmetal I could taste upon the wind.

The thief in question was the very man I’d been following across the mountains. More than that, he wasn’t alone.

I took the reins from Kalim, spurring us around in a sharp turn to
the right. I’d never ridden a camel—when would I have had the chance?—but I
was
practiced on horseback, and the basics were essentially the same. I even felt a slight kinship toward the beast, lumpy and ungainly as it appeared next to the sleek, more desirable form of a horse.

Next to us, the airman Rook kicked his own mount up to speed, matching our pace with his own. He wasn’t giving me an inch, which was a trait I normally liked in a man, but just now—so close to the conclusion of this saga, and my prize—his relentlessness was getting under my skin. Since Kalim was behind me, I couldn’t even check to see how Madoka was doing with one bad hand, but she had Badger to look out for her, and the other Volstovic was hardly a threat. In fact, I barely bothered to remember his name.

I had rather shamefully lost track of time somewhere between the sun’s set and our prize being stolen right out from under Madoka’s nose, but now I could tell that the sky was starting to lighten. The pure dark was lifting, and the moon had already passed above our heads long ago. We had a few hours left, I could only guess, but it was a clumsy assumption, based on nothing but my own hope and makeshift calculations.

It didn’t matter. I would ride through the day, if I had to. No one else could stop me.

At least the prince behind me was not foolish enough to try to make idle conversation with me. He did not trust me, same as Rook, which was why he kept me close—a little too close, perhaps. It was behavior that would not have passed even in an Arlemagne court, but his reasons were different. While Rook’s fur was ruffled by my power—the sort of man who did not appreciate the idea that a woman could do something he could not, nor the concept that women came in all shapes and varieties of beauty—Kalim was cautious of me, and wary, because he was respectful. Magic seemed to be a currency favored in the desert. And why not? It made absolute sense. No vein of Well water had been found here in the desert. The only magic one could observe was the tireless strength of constant riding. No one here seemed to grow weary of all the sand, the heat, the inability to feel like one’s skin or one’s belongings were ever truly clean.

In summation, Kalim respected me and I respected him, for the sole reason Rook did not respect me: because we were very different.

I was still breathing in deeply, a rhythmic pattern that suited the bump and jostle of the camel beneath me. After all, I had to adapt to my current surroundings, and what better way than this? An hour or so ago—it was difficult to keep track of time, and the sand had long since destroyed the mechanisms of my prized pocket watch—Madoka had told me the pain in her hand
was
growing substantially worse. This meant we were on the right track. The scent grew stronger. We approached our quarry, but his party was substantially smaller, and he was riding fast.

I wondered idly if they would stop to rest. We could draw up to them while they slept. In broad daylight, with no shade or shadow nearby but the ones our own bodies cast before us, we would put an end to this charade, once and for all.

And I did so want to meet the man I’d been following.

If
some of us more rational folk could keep him alive for long enough to squeeze a few answers out of him—questionable because of the dark, murderous rage I scented, among other less savory things, from Airman Rook—then he would prove just as valuable in mind as the dragon piece he carried.

It must have been something special, if so many were after it. Our numbers were almost humorous by this point, and I did have to wonder who would come out victorious in seizing the physical object, claiming “success” as their own. I also wondered what the Esar would do with this item if and when it was returned to him. No doubt he would destroy it—the grandest irony of all—so that no one else could ever possess it again, and he himself would see it only as a haunting specter in his darkest, most uncertain of dreams.

Indeed, it was enough to make a woman jealous that so many here chased the object in question for their own personal reasons, and were not merely envoys of another man. Madoka, Badger, and perhaps the quiet Volstovic were all pieces similar to pawns; I was a bishop, and Kalim and Rook were the knights. How quaint that we had made our chessboard the vast and inescapable planes of the desert.

“You think hard,” Kalim said behind me.

I paused in my task. Thinking and working came hand in hand for me. As I scented I thought, and both enhanced each other. I could more easily chase a thing the better I understood it, and the only way to understand was to analyze. Still, I had found the direction. I kept my
senses keen, but by the same token, I did not wish to be rude and alienate a potential ally.

“It is necessary for my work,” I explained.

“By which you mean your magic?” Kalim asked.

I glanced over at the other riders. Rook’s companion was having trouble with his camel, whose face was a pure, blissful expression of spite if ever I had seen it. Rook himself saw that Kalim and I were conversing, and his hawklike gaze was fixed upon us so unwaveringly that I had to wonder whether or not sand even got in his eyes or if it bypassed him completely, sensing another more violent storm. Madoka and Badger were still riding steadily just a few feet behind us, and I sighed, having to trust that they would do well enough on their own. If anything, Madoka was stubborn beyond the normal limits of strength.

She’d be all right. On top of that, she’d see Badger through, as well.

I smiled faintly and murmured my confirmation. “Indeed,” I said. “My magic.”

“You breathe in deep like a camel,” Kalim told me, laughing. “But you do not snort out again like one.”

“What a charming comparison,” I said. It was better than some comparisons I had received before, the most frequent of which were cur, hound,
mongrel
. “How very quaint.”

“Quaint,” Kalim repeated, rolling the word upon his tongue. “This means charming?”

“Something of the sort,” I replied. “It is more nuanced…Would you prefer we spoke your language?”

“No,” Kalim told me honestly. “I need practice.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “So you are using me?”

“In many ways I am,” Kalim said. He tightened his arm about my waist and, though he was not a man whose nature I could immediately guess—it was far too natural to be summed up so easily—I allowed myself to flutter a gasp of surprise. “No pretenses, please,” he said at that, and now I could tell he was scowling. “I am not lying to you. Why should you lie to me?”

“My apologies,” I said. “I mean no offense.”

“Perhaps lying is your nature now,” he told me, clipped and short. I was offended, but he was also quite right.

I spared a look at his face: I could only see one half of it, but it was hard and handsome and very dark, his nose straight, his chin sharp.
His brows were thick and there were many lines around his mouth; tanning from the sun and laughing at jokes and all manner of vibrancy collected in those little wrinkles. He was clearly a man who lived life every day—or every night—to the fullest, and the kind of man it was difficult to woo. I had my work cut out for me, but I needed a fourth ally for myself, Badger, and Madoka. It would turn the tables and the tides in our favor.

After that, it was every last man for himself, or so the saying went.

“Do we approach our man?” Kalim asked me. “How do you tell?”

“It isn’t something I can very easily explain,” I began, with the usual excuses. Then, because I could see the corner of Kalim’s mouth frowning, I went on, which was very unusual. “I smell him, one might say,” I explained. “And the piece he is carrying—I can smell both.”

“This is an admirable talent,” Kalim said. “How did you come by it? Or were you born this way?”

I thought back to my unimpressive and uninspiring youth. I was not one of the lucky creatures born into money and power, destined for intrigue and idle fame. Talent was by no means rare, but I had none of it, and it had been worth it to me at the time—and still was worth it—to trade away pieces of myself to enhance other pieces. Tit for tat, it might have seemed to anyone else, but I was clearly bargaining with fate to the point of cheating nature itself.

“I was not born this way,” I replied.

Kalim snorted—like a horse, himself. “No you were not,” he agreed.

I didn’t much appreciate
that
implication, as it came far too close to the truth of the matter for my own liking, but it would not do to clutter my impassioned thoughts by allowing my own fur to be ruffled. My clear head was one of my finest weapons, and I planned to use it to the fullest extent of its capabilities. “Now, Kalim,” I replied, as prettily as I could manage. “What
is
that supposed to mean?”

“You know well,” Kalim told me. “But it can be our little secret.”

He spurred his camel faster, and Rook drew up beside us, not giving me time to ponder that peculiar statement. “If you’re making plans between yourselves, then shit, Kalim,” Rook said, “how desperate are you? You come to Volstov with me and I’ll find you fifteen women prettier than this one.”

“I have no need of pretty women,” Kalim replied. “I prefer my companions to be beautiful.”

“This ain’t beauty,” Rook said, and spat savagely—grossly—downwind. “Just some nasty shadows masquerading.” Kalim smiled widely and Rook rolled his eyes. “Guess there’s no accounting for taste,” Rook snarled. “Just be careful she doesn’t cut your dick off. Snip snip, you got me?”

“This is universally understood,” Kalim agreed.

Rook fell back to confer on something with his companion, and I was left with a whirlwind of sand against my boots and thoughts ricocheting from my chest to my mind. I had lived with many secrets in my time, but Kalim himself was intimating he saw through the most deftly kept secret of all.

It was impossible. My showmanship was impeccable. Even Dmitri had never guessed, and we had known each other since childhood. I would not have said Dmitri knew me better than I knew myself—my particular nature required that I know myself better than I could ever allow anyone to know me—but I had always assumed it would be he who realized before anyone else.

This was confounding.

“Do not let it distract you, in any case,” Kalim suggested lightly. But there was something in his eyes that suddenly frightened me. “How close are we now to our prey?”

The wind picked up, and I scented something dark upon it. Magic, I realized all at once, and I grasped the camel’s reins, pulling him up short.

I couldn’t afford to be distracted now. Kalim was right about that, at least.

“Do you sense something?” he asked, his light air of a moment ago completely vanished.

“Magic,” I told him, quite honestly. I breathed in deeply, and nearly regretted it, so potent was the reek of spellcasting that washed over me. “Foreign, perhaps. But there’s something familiar about it, too.”

I wasn’t in the habit of thinking aloud—I’d rarely had the opportunity, since losing my tongue—but I felt almost compelled to do it now. Kalim didn’t trust me, and I needed him to. If honesty was the trade I had to peddle in order to win him over, then so be it. Old Nor would’ve been proud of me to see me in action.