The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (24 page)

N’Doch stares at her through the web of his fingers.

“I mean, of course it should be Dolph, but he’s not here and . . .”

Her gaze lifts to meet his, veiled by shining hair and luxurious lashes, sultry with promise. N’Doch drops his hands, struck breathless by the hot flush of desire racing through him, searing away his will. Then he sees the bright tongues of flame leap in her eyes. He’s not so stupid after all. He understands who he’s really staring at. Like a dry wind in the desert, the presence resonates in all the hollow spaces his own dragon left behind.

“Whoa,” he says. “No way.”

Her face twists. The flames flare defiantly and die. He knows he’s had a close call, but there’s no struggle. N’Doch senses the shadow departing, like a whiff of smoke, and understands another, more puzzling thing. The bleakness in Paia is not her own. It’s Fire’s.

Paia shakes her head as if she’s just dropped off to sleep again and waked with a start. “What?”

“You’re asking me?” Suddenly he’s glad that his friend, his hero the good baron, is a time warp away from this woman. She could eat the man alive. She carries a dragon within her. N’Doch should know. So does he. At least, he hopes to, soon again. But there’s a difference. Paia’s dragon feels he has nothing left to lose. “Didn’t quite leave him behind, did you.”

She flicks a wary glance around the café. She doesn’t ask who. “Why? What happened?”

“An interesting little sleight of hand. Well, sleight of body’s more like it. He tried to woo us both at once.”

“He?”

“The Fire dude.”

She starts, convincingly. “He was here?”

“Don’t you remember?” He’s sure she does, but he humors her, to spare her pride. “Seems he convinced you it might be a bright idea to seduce me.” He sees her whole body recoil. With shame, he hopes, not with horror. Maybe she really doesn’t remember. “Hey, don’t worry. It didn’t go far. He gave himself away too easily.”

She looks like she’s afraid to ask. “How?”

“He was in your eyes. Did you know he could do that? I mean, you know . . . use you that way?”

“I, ah . . . he never has before. At least, not that I . . .”

N’Doch watches what’s left of her self-possession collapse. Body, face, her entire being goes limp. All her actions, past and present, are suddenly up for question.

“How . . . how will I ever know?”

How will any of us know, he wonders. Not just about Paia. About ourselves. Four people bonded to mythical creatures driven by alien agendas and protocols. He recalls the exact instant he let his dragon into his soul. The song he sang then wasn’t an act of love or selflessness, though he did it to lend her his strength. It was more like surrendering to an inevitability. “You’ll know ’cause I’ll tell you,” he says. “That’s why there’s four of us, I guess. So we can keep each other honest.”

He’s grasping at straws, but Paia seems grateful for the effort. She stops shuddering uncontrollably. “I can never be alone, then.”

N’Doch has a leap of intuition that skews his take on things abruptly enough to leave him faintly dizzy. And hating it that once more he has to buy into all this mystical symmetry of events. “And that’s why Dolph came along. So you don’t have to be.”

She smiles wanly. “I wish he was here now.”

“He probably does, too.” He says it to reassure her, but it makes him nervous again for Köthen, who has no dragon to protect him. Then he takes another leap. It’s like a lyric writing itself in his head. Part of the epic he could sing about the dragon renegade and his beautiful priestess. Colorful.
Dramatic. Even, in a perverse sort of way, romantic. Villains have been some of his most inspiring subjects. “He’s not real happy, your man Fire.” It sounds silly, now that he’s said it, talking that way about a devious, inhuman, fire-breathing murderer. “I mean . . .”

“I know.” Paia seems eager to talk about her dragon. She hasn’t had much of a chance, N’Doch realizes, to download how she feels about all of this. “He’s never been reasonable. He’s angry all the time. I just took it for granted.” She looks up, caught in an insight of her own. Her tears reflect the gray daylight. “An angry god. I guess it just seemed fitting, after all the horrors of the Collapse. What other kind of god could you believe in, after that?”

“He’s like the black sheep younger son, maybe?” A little like me, N’Doch admits privately. “The one who’s sure the older ones got something he didn’t get, so he figures he’s got a right to go out and take what he wants to make up for it.”

Paia tilts her head. “What an interesting notion.” She grasps the fat arm of the sofa and levers herself up onto the seat. On a side table is a crystalline glass of iced water that N’Doch is sure wasn’t there a moment ago. Neither was the table. Neither was the gleaming acoustic guitar that’s leaning against it, like it’s been listening in on the conversation. N’Doch stops breathing. Paia drinks deeply, collecting herself. When she sets aside the empty glass, N’Doch lets his lungs fill, and waits for it to vanish. He waits for the guitar to vanish, too. But both just sit there. This magic, he decides, won’t happen while anyone’s watching. So as long as I keep this baby in my sight . . .

He grasps the guitar casually by the neck, then drags it into his lap and thumbs the strings. It’s real and sleek, and in perfect tune. He nearly hollers for joy, but he’s wary of upsetting Paia’s delicate state of balance.

But maybe she’s not so delicate. She allows the sudden instrument into their universe without batting an eyelash. “You must think I live my life entirely at the whim of my handlers,” she says.

“No, I . . .” But of course, this is exactly what he’s thought. Petted, spoiled, but ultimately the dragon’s and the Temple’s tool. He picks out a quiet little riff to let
himself off the hook. Cocktail music. He glances at the deserted bar.
Wonder if I could sing myself up a drink
.

“To some extent, that’s been true. But I feel like I’ve been waiting for the moment when it didn’t have to be.”

“This could be it, girl,” he says lightly, the same tone as his fingers on the singing strings. He hopes he’ll never have to choose between holding a woman and holding a guitar. He’s pretty sure he knows which way he’d go.

Paia’s on her own sort of roll. “With all that’s happened, so much and so fast, there’s a lot I haven’t had time to really take in. Like, the existence of the other . . . dragons.” She laughs softly. “I was never allowed to say that word, you know. He was ‘the God.’ Only ‘the God.’ When he spoke of his enemies, he never hinted at them being his own kind, especially not his own . . .”

“Family.”

“Yes. Do they have something he doesn’t?”

Besides a sense of decency? N’Doch shrugs, damping the guitar with his palm. “Young Erde and her dragon would say he lacks belief in the rightness of their Destiny. He’s sure made it clear he wants none of that, even if no one knows exactly what it is.”

Paia says, “He’s always given me the impression he knows what it is. Otherwise why would he be so against it?”

N’Doch peers at her. The café is growing shadowed, as if dusk has fallen. But on the other side of the windows, the light is as harsh and bright as ever. Best as he can, he replays the confrontation on the mountaintop in his mind. “Didn’t he yell something about humans not being worth the sacrifice? What’d he mean by that? The way he’s been living, it doesn’t look to me like he’s sacrificed much.” He shifts his lanky body within the velvety grip of the chair. Not room enough in here for himself and the guitar, plus the song that’s taking shape, even the first few bars. Or maybe it’s the notion he’s hatching that’s making him so uncomfortable. “I think we gotta find out what’s bugging him.”

Paia laughs, eyeing him sidelong.

“No, really.” The edge on her laugh surprises him. Bleak, like Fire. He hikes himself forward on the puffy cushion, elbows draped over the sinuous curves of the instrument.

He’s amazed to hear his own voice sounding so earnest. He has to keep himself from turning the words into a lyric right on the spot. “Whatever’s this Big Fix the dragons are supposed to pull off, they’re convinced they can’t do it without Fire. So we got to bring him over to our side. And you know they’re looking to you to do it.”

Paia shakes her head hopelessly. He guesses she doesn’t hear the music.

“Well, of course you can’t do it alone. You’re too close to him. Too much of an insider. The problem is, who else is there?” His fingers go to work on the accompaniment. “Gerrasch is too busy finding his own dragon, even though we gotta have him. Earth and Erde don’t really give a shit about the whys. Their gig is doing what’s right and proper according to the Big Rule Book. And we need that, too, I guess. But nobody’s gonna get Fire to mend his ways by quoting him chapter and verse.” The ending chord is harsher than he’d intended. “You agree with that?”

“Of course. His only real motive is self-interest.”

“Right. So we find out what he wants, and if there’s any way we can give it to him, we do. At least enough so’s he’ll play ball.”

“We.”

“Yeah. You and me.” Now the background line is ticklish. He’s thrilled by the subtle complexities of his improvisations. “You’re connected to him ’cause you’re his guide. But I might be able to help figure him out. ’Cause of my own history, I mean. I had all these grandiose plans, like he does. And I haven’t done so well by my family either, have I? Ever since that blue dragon showed up, I’ve asked myself, why’d she pick me? If it was just to bodyguard young Erde into the future, she’d have better chosen someone like Dolph, or your cousin Leif. So maybe this is why.” N’Doch grins at her. “’Your mission, if you choose to accept it . . .’”

She gazes at him blankly.

“From an old vid series.” He tosses off a few notes of the theme song. “Way, way before your time. Before mine, even. Anyhow, what do you say?”

“I’d say what he wants is power, luxury, and me, probably in that order. It’s not all that complicated.”

“But you’re back into whats, not whys. Even a dragon’s
got to have his whys. And when you know a person’s whys, then you’ve got power over him.” He stops, shakes his head, then throws both hands in the air and flops backward into the chair. The guitar lies prone on his stomach like a resting limb. “I can’t fuckin’ believe this! I’m talking about making deals with my mama’s murderer.”

Near the front, a chair leg rasps against the tile. “What sort of deals?”

N’Doch jerks upright, cradling the instrument. “Hey, Papa! Sleep well?”

“Not a chance.” The old man walks toward them stiffly and pulls up a straight chair from a nearby table. “There’s too many voices in the air here to get any rest. What sort of deals?”

N’Doch just knows he means voices other than his and Paia’s. But he’ll elaborate when he’s ready. There’s never any rushing Papa Dja. “I’m telling Paia here how it’s likely our job to try to turn Fire.”

Djawara nods gravely, approving. “Was a time, lad, that I’d have had to point out that sort of duty to you. Then grab you before you had a chance to escape.”

N’Doch cackles. Just like Papa Dja. Always knowing better. He plays the up-tempo intro to a traditional folk tune. “So how we gonna pull it off, O Great Shaman of the Tribe?”

Djawara crosses one knee over the other and nests his hands in front of him. “In my day, when two sides had irreconcilable differences, they met to discuss them in neutral territory, where neither could do harm to the other. Some place like the beach or the market square . . . or here.”

“Here? How we gonna bring him here?”

Paia clears her throat delicately. “You just told me I did.”

“Almost. Papa, why you so sure this is neutral territory?”

“Instinct, my boy. Intuition. Trust me.”

The old man’s gone woo-woo on him, just like the old days. To punish him, N’Doch turns away to Paia. “So you dream him here, and
afterward
 . . .” He leans on the word and wishes it was light enough to see if she’s blushing. The guitar is growing warm in his arms. “Afterward, I offer him that beer and say, hey, dude, just what is your problem?”

“I don’t think I’d have to dream him here,” Paia replies steadily. “I think he would just come if I called him.”

N’Doch looks to his grandfather. “Is this insane or what? I’d sort of had in mind sneaking up on him.”

“And how were you planning to do that?”

He bends low over the strings, picking delicately. “Dunno. Hadn’t got that far yet.” He moves into a more familiar melody, his own this time.

“If nothing else,” Paia adds, “we could keep him distracted while Cousin Leif takes back the Citadel.”

“And the others go looking for Air. Oooh, he’s just gonna love that idea.” N’Doch can smell the Rive burning already. His thumb pats out the rhythm of the flames on the guitar’s polished box.

“Negotiating with him was your idea in the first place,” she reminds him.

“Hey, are we arguing? Ain’t gonna get nowhere if we’re arguing.” But he’s encouraged to see a flash of spirit out of her.

“Were you thinking of attempting this on your own, without the others?” Djawara asks.

N’Doch spreads his hands, balancing the guitar on his knee. “If we put them together with him, there’ll just be another big fight. End of discussion. You know how families are.” But it occurs to him how good it would be to have his brother Sedou at this debate. The old political hand. If the blue dragon were here, he could sing her into that uncanny transformation: half Water, half Sedou. A winning combination. N’Doch hums the tune wistfully. He can’t believe he’s about to do something this drastic without her pushing him into it. “Are you both really up for this gig?”

Dread and eager anticipation chase each other across Paia’s face. She’s wringing her hands again.

“There’s a time and a place to be proactive.” Djawara uncrosses his legs and places one hand carefully on each knee. “And there’s no time like the present, I suppose.”

Paia says faintly, “This may take me a few moments.”

N’Doch’s hum grows into a song.