Dragon Soul (52 page)

“But it’s powerful enough to bring something alive,” Rook said, and then added quickly, “to bring
someone
alive. Right?”

“Sarah Fleet seemed to indicate as much,” I reminded him. I wasn’t an expert on dragons, but I did at least know the answer to that. “And if the magicians in possession of the soul plan to resurrect her, then I’d assume they’re thinking along the same lines. Whether or not she would be the
same
as when you knew her, I couldn’t say. It’s complicated, but the basic principles…Well, it’s an animating force.”

“Real powerful,” Rook said.

“Mm,” I agreed.

I didn’t like the color of the sunrise now. It was bright and sunny at first, but the higher the dawn crept the less colorful it felt, as though there were some half-transparent substance between us and the horizon blocking off the full source of the light. The air itself felt thick—countless sand particles swirling up with the quickening wind—and I’d long since forgotten about the marginal discomforts of sand getting here, there, and everywhere now that I realized it was becoming more and more difficult to see.

“Hey,” Rook said. His voice was calm but a little urgent. “Whatever happens, I wanna—”

Then the wind picked up so ferociously that even Rook’s camel reared.

Mine tossed me from its back so easily that I wondered if it had even been trying, all those times before, or if it had simply been toying with me. My wrist yanked against the reins as sand flew in from every which way, forming a barrier between us and the sunlight. In my confusion and fear, I managed somehow to wonder if Rook had, with his impeccable instincts, sensed this coming. He might well have been trying to say his good-byes to me, or at least he was trying to impart some last piece of wisdom in hopes of keeping me alive. A fool’s hope, I thought wryly, and hit the sand in slow motion, with a solid
oomf
.

Either the men we were pursuing knew we were here for them, or they were just very lucky in dismantling our pursuit with their own private actions.

I heard my camel run off, and counted myself lucky that it did not trample my head as a parting gift before it went. It
did
, however, kick up sand into my eyes, and my wrist hurt very badly from where it had been wrapped within the reins. I could hear nothing else, only the sound of the sand whistling and howling all around me. At one point I called out for my brother, but the words barely left my lips before they were thrown back into my throat, along with so much sand I nearly choked. After that I learned not to open my mouth and pulled my arms over my head to keep the sand from clogging my ears and nose. I squeezed my eyes shut. It was possible this would last forever—or at least for long enough to bury us all here in the darkness. I tried to calm myself, repeating a few passages of my favorite books over and over to distract my mind from the certainty of death. Maybe, in a thousand years, someone would find my notebooks, and my writings would live on: the undiscovered works of a long-lost scholar. Or something like that. As of now, it was the only legacy for which I could reasonably hope.

And then someone touched my elbow.

“You just gonna lie there like that forever, or are you gonna do something about this shit?” Rook demanded, right next to my ear. He must have been close, since I could actually hear him, and felt his breath more than the cut of the sand.

I was as relieved as a little child, but also ashamed. Had I really given up? Why was it so easy for me and yet so difficult for him?

“Don’t open your mouth,” Rook continued, still shouting against my ear. “Just follow me.”

I searched out his hand, groping blindly through the sand with my own, and when I found it, I squeezed it, just to show him I understood. He grabbed it tight and pulled me forward, and I crawled after him. At least he felt guilty that he’d taken me all this way, only to land us smack in the middle of magic we barely understood and a storm we barely had the means of surviving.

All of it was for Havemercy. I’d hardly even known her. I certainly hadn’t loved her. In fact, I’d never had anyone to love—which perhaps was why I was incapable of understanding my brother’s determination right now.

I was jealous as well as baffled. I wondered, in a mean and angry rathole of my heart, if he would ever have fought this hard for me. Not back in Molly—when we were still really brothers—but
now
.

“Stop thinking!” Rook shouted, right up next to my head, so loud that it might well have shattered my eardrum. I didn’t know how he could tell what I was doing amidst all this mess, and in my own head, not to mention, but he was right. This more than anything was his area of expertise, and I’d do well to listen to him. The sand and the wind were so strong I could barely move, but I
was
trying, dragging myself forward and after my brother. I felt him move more than I could see him, and then the howling of the wind died down somewhat. He’d placed himself between me and the direction it was blowing from, and I would never be able to thank him for it. He’d simply never allow it.

A monumental ass
, I thought wonderingly, and tucked myself against his body, allowing him to rescue me in this small way.

“What about the others?” I asked, up against his jaw. Some sand made it into my mouth, but not much, now that he was between me and the source of it all.

I felt him shrug, and I knew well enough what his answer would have been, if he could speak.
Fuck ’em
.

He was probably right. There wasn’t much we could do in the middle of the storm to save ourselves, let alone four relative strangers. Kalim, I reasoned, could probably handle himself next best to Rook—he’d been born into this sort of climate, hadn’t he? And as to the others, I would have to harden my thoughts. Leaving them to fend for themselves didn’t sit well with me, but what else could I do? I was as useful as a eunuch in a whorehouse—I had my brother to thank for that comparison—clutching to Rook’s hand and following him as
he
followed only bastion knew what. His own innate sense of direction, or whatever extrasensory perception he had for the dragonsoul’s pulse, calling out to him even across the most deadly of manufactured storms. Or pure stubbornness, when all else failed him.

I held close, plugging my nose and mouth with my free hand. My eyes I kept slitted open—even that stung them, but Rook almost certainly had
his
eyes open, and I wouldn’t make myself any more of a burden than I absolutely had to.

Gradually, because I had nothing else to turn my attention toward, and because I
couldn’t
stop thinking, no matter what Rook had told me,
I noticed the ground was beginning to slope downward beneath our feet. It was a small thing, perhaps completely insignificant, but this mildest of changes gave me hope. At least I knew we weren’t simply wandering around in circles, which had probably been precisely our enemy’s intent.

They hadn’t counted on dealing with someone like my brother. With his particular set of skills, not to mention the formidable will he always exhibited, he certainly wasn’t the sort of man
I’d
have liked to imagine coming after me. My brother was exactly the kind of stubborn bastard Molly was so proud of churning out. He was more tenacious than most species of vermin, more terrifying than a childhood nightmare.

A fierce wind kicked up and I ducked my head behind Rook’s shoulder, holding him steady as the sand whipped around at our clothes and faces. He leaned back against me, taking my support as he tried to decide whether to head straight into the sudden gust or around it. Ke-Han wind magic had been a big part of Xi’An’s defense against the Dragon Corps; I remembered that. If anyone knew the best tactics for bypassing it, it was Rook. I stood as still as I could manage, trying to cultivate solidity where there hadn’t been much before. We were in this together, and even if he never thanked me for my help—what little there was of it—I was here to give him exactly that.

It was only a brief respite. Shortly, he began to move again, cutting a path through the rush of sand and throwing an arm up in front of his face to protect himself from the worst of it. There were a dozen things I wanted to ask him, but I wasn’t about to choke myself on sand just to speak. There was no space even to part my lips—it felt almost as though sand had replaced the very air around us.

Then, just as abruptly, we were through the worst of it. Rook stumbled forward, his momentum overcompensating in the sudden vacuum, and I fell straight into him, my bones turned to sand themselves. We must’ve come to the center of the storm—the relative eye of the cyclone, if it could be called that—and I breathed in painful, gasping gulps, taking the chance to fill my lungs while I still could. Rook coughed, and I brushed the sand from my eyes, taking great care not to rub it in. We were entirely covered in the stuff, I realized, now that I could see, and my brother looked more like an ancient statue rising from the dunes than a man of flesh and blood. He shook the sand off
like a dog, then he was Rook again, if a little dustier than usual, all the sand crusted in the corners of his mouth and eyes, clinging heavily to his hair.

“See?” he croaked, licking his lips and spitting out sand into more sand. “Nothing to it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t quite say
that,”
said a not-unfamiliar voice, causing me and Rook both to whirl around almost in tandem. “Selling yourself short is such a mistake, after all.”

There was a slender, dark-cut figure standing against the backdrop of the swirling maelstrom. His face was thin and clever, and I immediately knew that I’d seen it before. It seemed like ages now, but it had only been a few weeks, less even than a month, since we’d last exchanged unpleasantries. Afanasiy. Fan. But what in bastion’s name was he doing here, and now?

Rook snarled, starting forward immediately, and I only just managed to catch him by the arm before it was too late. With some atavistic strength I’d never exhibited before, I hauled him back, keeping him from attacking out of anger, without thinking and, worse than that, without planning things through. Fan
seemed
to be alone, but if he was responsible for conjuring up a sandstorm like this one, then there was no telling what other tricks he had up his sleeve. Also, and this was more to the point, I couldn’t see the dragonsoul anywhere. Either he had an accomplice, or he’d stashed it somewhere he thought safe for the time being. None of this made any sense with the information I currently had, and that made me wary. Neither of us could afford to throw ourselves senselessly into the center of action.

My brother, however, had evidently considered none of this, and the look he shot me when I held him back was akin to a blow.

“Get the
fuck
off me,” Rook said, trying to shake me off like deadweight, which, at that moment, I supposed I was.

“Easy there,” Fan said, his tone light and breezy, the same as it had been that night at the countryside camp. “I’d take your brother’s counsel if I were you. He seems like the smarter one. No offense, of course. Just an observation.”

“Yeah, well I’d start observing a little more about your own situation if
I
were
you,”
Rook said, fighting against me less than he had been before. Never one to listen to counsel, of course, but never one to let anyone outsmart him, either. “Two against one doesn’t exactly scream
‘you’re a winner,’ and even if you are a fast little motherfucker, I’m willing to bet I could put you down.”

“Please,” Fan said, almost entreating. The condescension in his tone offended me, but that was beside the point. He was wearing a heavy coat in direct contradiction of the early-morning sun that now beat down overhead, and there was a curious light in his eyes that gave me less offense and more fear. “You don’t truly believe me to be that stupid, do you? By now, your little party is scattered across the desert, and the odds are entirely in my favor. This sandstorm was a neat trick, you must admit. Appears entirely natural to the untrained eye.”

“What have you done with it?” I asked, feeling like an intruder on the conversation. My voice didn’t sound nearly so sure as Rook’s or Fan’s, but I would have to make do. “Where’s the dragonsoul?”

Fan smiled in reply, a sickly grimace that looked like it’d been carved by a sculptor with a crude knife. I recognized it on the statues in the desert: a smug certainty, that air of immortality portrait artists often captured, which later generations come to understand as deeply ironic. Fan, however, did not seem to be one such deep thinker. “Do you know, I almost feel sorry for you?” he said, putting his hands behind his back. His stare was intent and malicious, but I couldn’t allow myself to look away. “You want this thing, this
dragonsoul
, for sentimental purposes. Because you can’t let go of the glory days, or you long for a memento. Something to stick up on your mantelpiece so you can look at it and remember a time when you were actually of use to the world around you, when you were more than relevant—when you were
necessary
. But you’ve got no imagination, no
idea
of the power contained in something like that. You can only see what it was: a part of an antique, as useless and outdated as the broken statues you passed along your way. But
we…we
have true vision. We’re the ones who will take the potential nearly
destroyed
by the likes of you, nearly lost to the desert or even shattered by your own hand, and put it to a better use.”

“That’s real nice,” Rook said. I could practically feel his pulse racing, and I held tight to his arm. I didn’t have any illusions about my strength compared to his if he
really
lost his temper, but I certainly wasn’t about to let go without a struggle. “You sound just like old Jonas down by the Mollydocks, reading fortunes for a ha’penny and spewing all kinds of shit-nonsense to anyone dumb enough to listen. Don’t think you’ve got an audience here. I don’t care what your stars said
when you were a fucking tyke; I don’t care what you think you’re going to do with her. She’s mine, and that’s the way of things. I’d give you a chance—fight it and die or some better option—but you lost that a long time ago. You’ve only got one fucking choice now and I don’t give a flying shit what ace you’ve got tucked up your sleeve.”