Fire In The Blood (Shards Of A Broken Sword Book 2) (3 page)

“To prevent her escape,” nodded Prince Akish.

“How did you guess, your highness?”

“It’s a clever ruse,” said Akish, his chest expanding slightly. Obviously, thought Rafiq, he hadn’t noticed the sarcasm in Kako’s congratulatory tones. “But fairly obvious when one thinks about it.”

“Oh yes,” murmured Kako. “Very obvious!”

“The Keep, it’s sentient?”

Kako hesitated. “No one really knows. We think it
may
be sentient, but it’s only responded to three of the experiments we’ve performed over the years. We still don’t know if it’s playing with us or if the magic that made it is simply so good that it presents as sentient.”

“But it’s familiar with you? It recognises you?”

“As much as a building can recognise anything, your highness: yes.”

The prince nodded. “Very well. We’ll take you with us.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Kako, with a light frosting of sarcasm. And yet, Rafiq was almost certain that the prince’s declaration had pleased her.

“Bivouac for the night,” said Prince Akish. “We shall proceed in the morning.”

              Sunlight was streaming through the windows when Rafiq awoke the next morning. He rose, stretching, and prowled closer to the golden warmth of it, a purr beginning deep in his chest but unable to roll properly in his human throat. Kako was curled up on a settee in the skewed square of light from one window, a twist of pink silk against the dark green of her chosen bed. A faint marking of lines on the marble floor showed where she’d dragged the couch in order to catch the light.

Rafiq frowned down at her, his thoughts troubling him. There was still something so
familiar
about her. Yet, as far as it went, there was no reason why she should be familiar. A human, a female, a Shinpoan; he had certainly never met her before. He would have remembered her, he was sure, for in the bright sunlight he could see what he hadn’t seen yesterday: Kako was covered in myriad mismatching scars and scrapes. There was quite a large one along her right arm that showed soft, newly stretchy skin almost an inch wide at its widest. It made a long, tapering ‘v’ from her rounded shoulder to the inside of her elbow. There were a multitude of tiny cross-hatched scars across her knuckles and fingers, and the one scar that Rafiq
had
noticed yesterday was not the simple thing that it seemed. It ran across one foot, and with Kako curled as she was on the settee he could see the pad of her foot, where it made a darkened divot in the skin. Had someone tortured the girl?

Rafiq’s eyes went to her face, and saw that even Kako’s slightly lop-sided smile was due to a small scar that pulled at her upper lip. He thought he saw the pinkening of new scar toward the edge of Kako’s neck scarf and reached out curiously to pull the scarf away.

“Marred little thing, isn’t she?” said Prince Akish’s voice. “Careful! Take her scarf and you’ll find yourself wedded to the chit: Shinpoans are very traditional when it comes to the neck-scarf.”

Rafiq’s hand dropped. “
Wedded?
”

“Only a bridegroom can uncover his bride’s neck,” said the prince. “Shinpoan ladies are only permitted to cease wearing the scarf after they’re married.”

To Rafiq, this seemed nonsensical: he could see the girl’s navel, after all! Her bodice, such as it was, covered what Illisrians would consider only to be the bare essentials, and no Illisrian woman would wander her house or grounds with her midriff bare. Nor would they be seen in a pair of trousers, no matter how light and graceful they were.

Dragons, now: things were much simpler with dragons. No fuss about scarves or midriffs or lengthy wedding settlements. No even lengthier schism settlements. There was a drake and his she-dragon, and they wedded for life.

              Rafiq settled back onto his rug cross-legged, where he could see both the sleeping Kako and Prince Akish, who had gone into the hall to begin his morning stretches. Akish always looked distinctly peeled of a morning: stripped of his chainmail and leg armour, his bulk was considerably lessened. This morning he was stretching in preparation for his sword drill, his shadow rippling smoothly over the blood-red floor. Before long the prince would be lunging and setting, practising his strokes: a routine as familiar as it was unvarying.

Rafiq turned his attention back to the sleeping Kako. Here was an uneasiness that was tugging uncomfortably at the back of his mind– what was it about her that was so instinctively familiar? Human women were even harder to read than human men, perhaps because he saw so few of them. What was it about Kako that made her so easy to read?

He was still frowningly observing Kako when her eyes opened and met his, sleepy and then sharp. She looked cautious and a little bit speculative.

Rafiq said: “You sleep very late for a serving maid.”

“You’re a strange little construct,” she said, yawning and stretching. “It’s not polite to watch people while they sleep: didn’t your prince tell you that? It borders on disturbing, actually.”

Rafiq was goaded into retorting: “My usual form isn’t this
little
.”

“Speaking of your usual form, what is it? More importantly, why do you have fire running through the magic around you–” Kako’s mouth remained open, but her words died away. She leaped from her settee and crouched in front of Rafiq, who submitted without blinking to a wide-eyed and animated scrutiny that lasted for many minutes.

When at last she was done, Kako looked at him with slightly dazed eyes and said: “Rafiq, where did your dragon go?”

Rafiq crossed his arms.

“That dragon, the one who killed the Keep’s dragon. Where is it?”

“It went away.” It didn’t sound convincing even to his own ears.

“
You’re
the dragon!”

“I’m a man,” said Rafiq. His voice sounded even less convincing.

Kako, her eyes shining, said: “You’re the
dragon!
You’re a dragon-human construct! How are you doing that?”

“He told me to be man,” said Rafiq, with bitterness in his soul. “I became man.”

“Yes, you’re under Thrall: I understand that. But even a dragon in Thrall can’t change into a man at will.”

Rafiq, who knew of several ancient draconian lines whose descendants could and did change to man (or woman) at will, shrugged. When it came to consciousness, humans and dragons were not so far apart. That fact more than magical talent made the change between species possible.

Kako drew in a deep breath, questions blossoming in her eyes, but before she could speak even one of them Prince Akish strode into the room in all his sweat and said: “Up, lizard! The day has well begun. We shall seek food, and then the way forward.”

“There is no food,” said Kako, accepting Rafiq’s offered hand to rise from the rug. “It’s not part of the paradigm. Unless you’d like to eat books, of course.”

Of course, thought Rafiq sourly, Prince Akish still had his rations pack: a small, half-empty skin of water and two days’ worth of marching rations. Those rations, he was well aware, wouldn’t be offered to him. He could go for longer than Akish without food—or water, if it came to that—but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Water, then? How will I wash?”

“You won’t. Your highness. Water isn’t part of the paradigm either.”

“Rafiq, seize the serving maid. Menace her with your dagger or some such thing.”

Rafiq obeyed with murder in his thoughts. Kako squeaked when he folded one arm around her swiftly, pinning her arms to her sides and her back to his chest, but though she was startled she didn’t seem to be frightened. She didn’t even wriggle when Rafiq’s dagger caught in the folds of her neck scarf.

He said, through his teeth: “I object to menacing females.”

“Your objection is heard and disregarded,” said Akish. “Now, maiden: inform the Keep that if it doesn’t co-operate, I will slaughter you where you stand.”

“You can tell it yourself, if you like,” said Kako, but she nevertheless called out: “The prince says he’ll kill me if you don’t co-operate.”

There was the kind of awkward silence that suggested everybody knew somebody had been made a fool of, but nobody quite liked to say so.

Prince Akish clicked his tongue impatiently. “Ho there! Open the third Circle to us or your serving maid dies!”

Rafiq felt Kako sigh slightly. “It’s not a person, your highness. It doesn’t understand death. The Circles can’t be cheated: threatening me will only waste time we could be using to find the way ourselves.”

“Let her feel the point of the dagger,” said Akish softly.

Rafiq didn’t try to resist the order: his hands were less controlled when he was resisting, and he would much rather prick Kako’s neck on purpose than cut her throat by accident. He heard a small, sudden intake of breath from Kako, then something liquid and hot burned his thumb and forefinger. Rafiq stiffened and looked down to find that the blade of his knife was gone. No, not gone: melted, the steel of it dripping on his fingers and burning the flesh. He took in a silent breath through his teeth and quickly wiped the burning liquid away on the shoulder of Kako’s bodice, prompting the scent of scorched silk to rise faintly in the air. Her head turned as he looked down, and her eyes met his, faintly challenging.

Fortunately, Prince Akish hadn’t noticed the melted blade. He was glaring around the room as if expecting attackers to leap from behind the curtains and under the books, and by the time his gaze fell on Rafiq and Kako again, Rafiq had angled the handle of the dagger so that the prince wouldn’t have been able to see the blade if it
was
there.

“There’s no one to save me,” Kako said. Once again, her words had the ring of universally known truth.

Was that, Rafiq wondered privately, because she really had no one to look after her, or because she didn’t
need
anyone to look after her?

“Enough of this foolery,” said Prince Akish impatiently, interrupting his thoughts. “Let the wench go, Rafiq. We’ve wasted enough time on this trial.”

Rafiq released Kako in relief. It was bad enough that he’d killed a she-dragon. To kill a human female as well would have been a hard thing to live with, as impossible as it would have been for him to do anything about it.

Kako adjusted her neck scarf with a great dignity that was only slightly ruined by the tiny, still-smoking holes Rafiq’s melted blade made in the light fabric and the smell of burnt silk that still permeated the air.

“What are your instructions?” Rafiq asked the prince. In general he made it a rule not to ask for Commands: he far preferred misinterpreting those orders given him and dodging the ones that he could conveniently not hear. In this case, however, it seemed safer to direct Prince Akish’s thoughts toward anything but threatening the female servants of the Keep.

“We shall search for secret passages,” said Prince Akish. “A keep as big as this one must surely be bristling with hidden nooks and crannies. I’ll search in the main hall: you can have the library. Don’t leave any corner of the room unsearched.”

As far as it went, thought Rafiq as the prince removed himself to the hall; the command was both comfortable and easy to follow.

He very precisely searched the corners of the room first, while Kako watched with narrowed eyes, then investigated the corners where book-cases met walls for good measure. That did away with his Burden and left him to search in comfort and with just as much vigour as he chose to exert.

He was carelessly tipping books on their spines with the rather nebulous idea that any secret passage in the Keep would likely be activated by a bookish lever when it occurred to him to ask: “Why a library?”

“Why not?” said Kako, with her elegant half-shrug.

“I’m a dragon.”

“Yes, we established that.”

“Libraries don’t adjoin grand halls. Or foyers.”

“I see. You’re saying that on your authority as a dragon.”

Her voice was so reasonable. Rafiq was certain she was laughing at him.

By way of explanation, he said: “If even a dragon knows it, everybody must. Why a library?”

“Well, the foyer out there isn’t always
the
foyer, if you know what I mean. Sometimes the Keep likes to put another hall or foyer there instead.”

“Mm,” murmured Rafiq, to give himself time to think. She was only telling half of the truth. “What’s written on the lintel?”

“That? It’s Shinpoan.
Books are the door, but Knowledge is the key.
It’s an old saying that means a well-informed mind will learn more from a book than an ignorant one.”

“Mm.”

Kako’s almond eyes flicked over to him and away again. “You’re unusually talkative today.”

Rafiq only grunted at her this time. He wasn’t exactly talkative at the best of times, but he distinctly disliked being lied to, and he was certain that Kako’s entire conversation with him had consisted of half-truths and misdirections. As little as Prince Akish liked being made a fool of did Rafiq like it.

              Prince Akish called for a halt when the natural light faded. Neither he nor Rafiq had found a single secret passage or hidden door: just the same grand flight of stairs and the same two rooms, hall and library. Rafiq, supposedly searching the library with Kako, heard the enraged stomping of feet on the stairs as Akish’s temper got the best of him and he sought determinedly to climb through as many iterations of the hall and stairs as it took for the scenery to change. It hadn’t changed, of course, and the prince had eventually tired himself out enough to declare an end to the day’s struggles. None of them were in a particularly good mood by then: Akish was tired and hungry, Rafiq was hungry and puzzled, and Kako’s pinched face said that she was hungry too. It was rather a relief when they each turned to their own favoured sleeping spots and ignored the others in favour of sleep.