Prairie Fire (14 page)

Technically that was still my only real job, but since I had yet to have any reason to use them, I'd kind of fallen by the wayside, and had instead taken to following Owen around while he learned all the things that made prairie dragon slaying unique.

“Dismissed,” Amery said, holding Constantinople's head as still as she could while Owen tried for the saddle a fourth time. Her professionalism was pushing through her general dislike of him. Maybe Sadie's work-until-you-drop approach would serve better at winning the American lieutenant over. In any case, Owen's fourth try was his best yet.

I straightened to attention and then turned smartly away. I retrieved my bugle case from under my bed, where it had accumulated a rather appalling amount of dust, and wondered where I was going to practice. The idea of playing where people could hear me was still unnerving, especially since all the bugle calls meant something, and I didn't want anyone to think they were getting actual signals. After a moment's hesitation, I made for one of the small indoor practice courts, assuming that everyone would be outside.

“Siobhan!” Nick said as soon as I entered the court. He was carrying his bow, and there were a bunch of supremely ugly-looking arrows next to him.

“Hi, Nick,” I said. “Sorry, I didn't realize anyone would be here.”

“Wait,” he said before I could make my departure. “There's plenty of room. Are you shooting?”

The Oil Watch fired live rounds outside, mostly, in one of the numerous grey courtyards that dotted what passed for landscape inside Fort Calgary. When anyone else talked about shooting, that's what they meant. Nick always meant bow and arrow.

“No.” I held up the hand that wasn't locked on the bugle case. “I don't think I can. I can barely manage a gun.”

“It might be possible,” he said, looking at my ruined fingers. “I mean, you wouldn't be fast at it, but as long as you're accurate, that doesn't matter so much.”

“You're not one of those types who can have three arrows in the air at the same time?” I asked.

“Not in here,” he said, pointing at the target. “It's not far enough away.”

“Is it harder than using a sword?” I asked, moving closer to him. “Slaying dragons with arrows, I mean.”

“Well, you can do it from a more comfortable distance, which is nice,” Nick said, with a grin. He scratched under his arm guard and fiddled with the fletching of the arrow that was closest to him. “But you still have to hit it properly, or you'll run out of arrows and have a very angry dragon breathing down your neck.”

I looked closely at the points on the arrows. The largest was about the size of my hand, but I still didn't think it was big enough to get to the hearts of a
siligoinis
, let alone one of the bigger species. Nick followed my line of thought, apparently.

“We have small dragons in New York City,” he said. “Not as small as Lieutenant Porter's Cornish Game Hens, mind you, but still small enough that you can slay them with these.”

“And you just run around the city like Robin Hood?” I asked. I stood beside him a bit awkwardly, but his easy manner made it difficult to be uncomfortable for very long.

“I use parkour,” Nick said, a bit defensively. “That's much easier with a bow than with a sword, but I usually carry both, just in case. Basically, I'm Spider-Man.”

“Hawkeye,” I corrected without thinking.

“Nerd,” Nick said, but he was grinning again. “Anyway, I know I have all this stuff to learn, but I want to keep in practice.”

“You're going to go home?” I asked. “After?”

It wasn't something we talked about, generally speaking, what we were going to do when our tours were up. Courtney was going to find a job, and Davis was going to get his own medical practice, but the dragon slayers didn't really talk about it, even though both Owen and Sadie knew their plans. I'd asked the question without thinking, and before I could apologize, Nick waved me off.

“Yes,” he said. Again, his manner was easy, decided. I realized that he had a plan too. “My family has been with the New York Police Dragon Slayers since the force was formed in 1845.”

“Oh,” I said. If there was one thing I understood, it was family legacy. Well, legacy and the desire to go back home. Nick was tied to New York just as Owen and I were tied to Trondheim. There was no reason to start something when you could already see that the ending went in different directions.

“What are you here to practice, if you don't mind me asking?” Nick said, just as the silence was about to become awkward. I wondered if he had figured it out, as I had.

“Bugle,” I told him. “Technically, the bard serves as comm officer, which means bugle calls. It'll be more useful in the forest, because radios don't always work there. There's not much use for it here, but I don't want to get rusty either.”

“So play me something.” He leaned against the table expectantly.

I did my best to quell the panic that welled up in my chest. I could play for my family, of course, by which I meant I played in my bedroom, and often with the mute, but that led to bad habits, and I needed to practice full volume. Lottie had heard me play all the calls, because she wanted to be sure before she expended all her favours getting me into the Oil Watch, and I kept very few things from Owen. But Nick … he was practically a stranger.

Just like that, the weight in my chest lifted. Nick had never heard me play. He'd never heard me play
anything
. He had no idea that I was this great musical prodigy from a small town with too few heroes to latch on to. He didn't know the hours I'd spent, from the time I was old enough to sit at the piano bench, mastering song after song. He only knew that I was Owen's bard, that my hands were burned, and that I let him steal food off my plate without punching him.

“Okay,” I said. “Just give me a second.”

I fumbled with the latches. A bit of that was my usual awkwardness, but some of it was that my hands were shaking with excitement. I pulled out the bugle and checked it over, rubbing out imaginary fingerprints. I took out the mouthpiece and attached it.

When I looked up, Nick was still smiling at me, patient as you can imagine. I guess he understood. He had his bow after all, and it was as much a part of who he was as my music was a part of me.

“It's going to take me a few moments to warm up,” I told him. “So don't expect greatness right away.”

“Noted,” he said.

I took a deep breath and launched into reveille, probably the second-most recognizable of all horn calls. When that didn't fall apart on me, I switched to the long reveille. Next was mail, then meals one and two, and then the calls for all the different ranks. They were easy to switch between, and I found the up and down of the melodies reassuring after only hearing it inside my head for so long.

Nick took up his bow when I played the fire alarm, and began to shoot at the target. He only hit the bull's-eye on his first shot. After that, his shots all went wide of the centre mark. It took me half of warning for parade to realize that he was doing it on purpose. He couldn't fit all his arrows in the middle of the target, so he spaced them out intentionally all the way around.

At last, I played the dragon call, and Nick fired the last of his arrows into the target, making a pretty pattern of circles on the painted marks. He went down to pull them out—some of them had gone in so far he had to brace himself with his foot—while I played taps, the American version of the last post, which the Oil Watch used to signal end of day. It was my favourite, those long, sad notes hanging in the air like hope and sorrow all at the same time.

Buglers had fallen by the wayside as technology developed to replace them. The calls could be prerecorded and played with the touch of one button. Radios covered distances that before only those golden notes could pierce. Even at funerals a ceremonial bugle-shaped broadcasting device could be used in place of the real thing. It sounded fine, but there was no air, no artistry to the music. Nick might have heard bugle music before, but I was pretty sure this was the first time he'd ever heard an actual bugle.

“That was amazing,” he said when I was finished. He was still smiling that easy smile, leaning on his bow with a rakish air that made me want to roll my eyes and laugh too.

I could have kissed him, I think. But then I would have lost the bet.

THE GENERAL

Owen did not sit well through dinner. Lunch had been fine, because he'd only just come in and his muscles hadn't stiffened yet, but by the time we were through our afternoon lecture on the forests of Northern Alberta, where we would likely be spending some quality time in the future, he looked profoundly uncomfortable.

“I was told that after a few days, the pain is less,” said Kaori, who had begun her horse training that afternoon, though she seemed to be adapting better than Owen was.

Nick looked at both of them with some concern. “Well, until my mentor gets back from Red Deer, I am just happy to leave you to it.”

“Your turn will come,” Owen said, shifting again, even though I judged from his face that it didn't help. He looked at me. “What did you do after you disappeared this morning?”

I opened my mouth to explain, but Nick jumped in before I could get a word in.

“She came down the practice court I was using for archery and played me some of her bugle calls,” he said. I couldn't help but notice that Laura was suddenly paying a great deal of attention to our conversation, though her eyes were fixed on her plate.

“I needed to practice,” I said. “If we end up in the forest, you don't want me to sound like a duck.”

“She's really good,” Nick said, and I managed not to wince.

“She's the best,” Owen said quietly.

Laura gave up trying to look disinterested, and I realized that if there was a bet on Nick and me, there was almost certainly a bet on Owen and me as well, and that Owen would rather chew out his own liver than tell me about it. I certainly had no intention of providing the entire base with drama.

“I'm getting better,” I said. “At the bugle, I mean. I've only just started to play it.”

“I never would have guessed that,” Nick said. Now it was my turn to shift uncomfortably, and I didn't even have saddle sores to blame. I thought I had figured everything out while we were practicing, but in a room full of people, with everyone watching, somehow it was all up in the air again.

Thankfully, Kaori could read a room, and she smoothly changed the subject to the weight of the lances she and Owen had been using.

“I realize that archery requires no small amount of upper body strength,” she said directly to Nick, “but perhaps you should join Owen and me for weights. I think we are all going to need it.”

Nick agreed, and they fell to talking about the variety of training exercises they all used. I wished that Sadie were here. Not only would she, as Owen's girlfriend, put to rest any doubts about his fidelity, she'd also be a person I could talk to about Nick, and how in all hell I was going to get him to keep his distance without losing his friendship altogether. She'd probably die of glee to finally talk about boys with me, even if it was only through e-mail. I made a note to send her a message about it the next time we had Internet access time, assuming I could type without someone looking over my shoulder.

A ruckus at the front of the room drew our attention. Usually, the table closest to the doors was reserved for senior officers, namely the dragon slayers who weren't in their first year of tour. Since so many of them were out in the field, Lieutenant Porter ate alone most of the time, but as we looked up, a man in a decorated uniform was taking a seat across from him.

Porter didn't stand, but he did manage to come to attention while remaining in his chair. I fought down the urge to straighten my collar, and I was halfway across the room from the newcomer. He absolutely exuded authority. It was very disconcerting.

Over the chatter in the mess hall, I couldn't hear what they were talking about, but it was pretty clear that Porter was not happy. Maybe he was getting a new support squad. I hoped he wasn't getting reassigned. He was odd and more than a little bit rude, but he was familiar, and that meant a lot. Also, I knew that Owen liked him, and that meant even more.

Porter was gesturing with his fork, arguing his point, but at a single word from the other man, he stopped. I saw his shoulders stoop, just a little bit, as he conceded whatever point had just been lost. Then he must have asked to be dismissed, because he stood and stalked out of the mess hall, leaving his plate half-full on his tray.

“What do you think that was about?” Owen whispered.

“I have no idea,” I replied. “But I don't think it was because Porter's request for sticky toffee pudding to be added to the commissary menu was turned down again.”

“What are you talking about?” Nick said, reaching for the rest of my green beans with his fork.