The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (32 page)

All eyes turn to her, even the bartender’s.

“There’s me to negotiate with,” Paia continues resolutely. “I offer myself in return for the release of your sister Air.”

“No, girl, you don’t. . . .”

Paia shakes her head. “I do. He’s right. We have nothing else.”

“It just seems that . . .”

“If we’re to accomplish anything at all, we must work with what we’re sure of.”

Fire’s languid gaze flares. Probably he’s searching out the way he can take the offer without delivering the goods, which makes sense to N’Doch, since he’s doing exactly the same. But meanwhile, he also sees how stirred up the big dude is, as revved as a lover. See him that way and he begins to make sense: as a proud, obsessive, jilted lover who can’t imagine why any woman wouldn’t want him, and
who lives in the belief that it’s only a matter of time or the right words before he has her back. So Paia’s heated dreaming wasn’t some one-way fantasy. N’Doch is ashamed he’d given this thought even a moment’s notice. And it’s faintly slimy to be hoping to use the bad guy’s only good intention against him. Or if not exactly a good intention, then a true passion, at least. Like a junkie who craves his fix, Fire’s need for Paia might render him willing to bargain.

At least that’s what the dragon Water has in mind.

“Maybe you’re right,” N’Doch is unable, though Paia is a coconspirator, to quite look her in the eye. The apparently oblivious bartender has moved on to polishing glassware, but N’Doch senses Water’s quick and absolute assent to Paia’s offer. This spooks him as little else so far has. Not a moment’s consideration for the sentimental gesture, now that the game is in the final innings. Not even the pretense that another solution should be sought. Even Papa Djawara does not speak up in protest.

Are we all expendable then?

HUSH, NOW! LATER!

Despite his initial resistance to his dragon destiny, whatever it may turn out to be, N’Doch has assumed since his miraculous resurrection that a protected status comes with being a dragon guide. But what if the dragons prove willing to sacrifice whomever it takes to achieve their Purpose? What if the only privilege of being a guide is being saved to be sacrificed last? Or maybe he’s got it all wrong. Maybe Water is a better bluffer than he’s realized.

“Of course,” he continues, since no one else seems willing to, “we won’t deliver Paia until you’ve given up Air.”

Fire focuses on him directly, advancing a few steps in his direction as if just now noticing he’s there. It’s like being drilled with a laser. The dragon’s gaze is contemptuous and bleak, the sort of look that says because you are such an idiot, there is no hope left for the world. “Not that it matters, really, but . . . why do you do their dirty work for them?”

“Who’s what?” N’Doch blurts.

“My oh-so-innocent siblings. You’ve bought their entire line, haven’t you. Surely your wise old shaman of a grandfather could have advised you otherwise.”

“Hey, mother-killer, you’re the one who’s. . . .”

Fire glides another step closer, dropping his voice to a more intimate range. “I mean, you seem like a likely fellow. What’s in it for you, being at their beck and call?”

N’Doch glances helplessly at Djawara. This is too close to his own former thinking for comfort.

“The satisfaction of a destiny fulfilled,” offers the old man gracefully.

The man/dragon laughs.

Djawara crosses one knee over the other and peers up at the red-jacketed figure looming over him like the shadow of death. “If you have another idea, perhaps you might care to enlighten us.”

“What?” Fire spins away with a toss of his head. “And spoil the fun?”

For once, N’Doch misses having Erde around to act as the mouthpiece for the dragons’ Purpose. No one speaks of it as earnestly and eloquently as she does. The fact that the goal of the Quest is not yet entirely understood by human or dragon makes him queasy about trying to sell it to the main dude standing in its way. But what better way to pump the Fire-breather for his implied superior knowledge than to throw down a few cards he can’t resist the pleasure of trumping?

Fire strolls among the chairs and tables, chuckling gleefully to himself, but N’Doch sees no real joy in him. His laugh is just a release of nervous energy. N’Doch looks for that vast underlying calm he’s come to expect from dragons, even his own busy meddler, Water. He sees none of it in Fire’s restless meandering, only frustration gathering like a storm. He should be more scared of the Fire-breather. He knows that out on the sidewalk, he’d be cooked mincemeat before he could even think to run. He knows that the situation in the Rive is artificial, and the dragon’s man-form only a temporary limitation. Still . . .

STILL WHAT?

Is there something you haven’t told us?

“You humans,” Fire sneers. “Wave a few big words around, like Duty or Destiny, and you come running like sheep. You lose all common sense.”

“What’s sensible by your definition?” N’Doch retorts. “Murder and intimidation? Despotism?”

“Survival is sensible.” Fire stops by the window, gazing outward again. “It’s the only thing that does make sense.”

Erde would have a heroic comeback for that remark, but N’Doch can’t make his mouth say the words.

“But you’re tired of mere survival, aren’t you?” Paia asks suddenly. “And of the price you have to pay for it.”

Fire laughs. “Price? What price? I’ve had everything I want.”

“Except me.”

A warning rises in N’Doch’s throat, hovering stillborn. What is she up to? She moves toward the Fire-breather, her gait slow and sensual. She’s become the seductress. Is it to lure him into divulging information, or because she can’t help herself? N’Doch thinks this is a very dangerous game to be playing here and now. He considers whether to intervene. Fire is still turned away at the window, but he senses Paia’s approach and turns to meet her just as she stops in front of him. They stare at each other, and Paia crosses her arms beneath her breasts so that they are presented to him roundly, a sweet and teasing gift.

“Isn’t that so, my lord?”

“Yes, beloved. Except you.” Fire looks down at her. With a faint but knowing smile, he lifts one gilt-scaled hand and places it gently against her cheek. “Until now.”

Paia gasps and recoils, her own hand flying to her face. “How did you . . .!”

Fire says nothing. He holds himself utterly still, his hand poised in the air where her cheek has been. By the bar, the others start up on instant alert.

“What’d he do?” demands N’Doch.

“He . . . 
touched
me.”

It takes him a moment, then he gets it. “You mean, actually touched?”

The bartender calmly lays aside his towel.

Paia stares at Fire. “How did you do that?”

“Because you wanted me to.” Fire lets his hand drop slowly. “You did want it, do want it, don’t you, beloved? You always have before.”

“No!” Paia steps back, but wavers in mid-stride and stalls in confusion.

“Why are you frightened? You wish to speak of Destiny?
Then admit we are bound by it. You and I. I only want what’s best for us. All I’ve done has been for your sake.” Fire holds out both hands to her, like a father to a child. “See? Let me show you.”

Paia’s body sways toward him, though her feet do not move.

“Come, a joining of hands at least. You owe me that much, after all these years.”

Paia shakes her head, but her hand floats toward his.

“Don’t do it, girl!” N’Doch is only guessing that touching will give the dragon power over her. But he can’t bear the longing in her eyes, and in Fire’s. They are a matched set of long-frustrated passion. Köthen should never have let this woman out of his sight. But, then, he didn’t. He wouldn’t have.

It’s all my fault, even if it was by accident
.

THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS.

As Paia’s hand lifts to meet Fire’s, the bartender vaults up and over the bar. Chairs and tables whirl aside. In a dizzying blur and sprint, Sedou is a large black mountain between the Fire-breather and his guide.

“No!” He shoves Paia behind him. “You shall not take her from here!”

“You!” Fire’s yearning gaze cracks into a mask of fury and hatred. His outstretched hand lashes back, then forward, his gilt nails lengthening into claws. Sedou grabs that wrist, and then the other, as it swings up to join the attack. Fire snarls, held by both arms. He doesn’t struggle, but the tang of hot metal invades the rich coffee aroma of the café.

“Not too practiced at the hand-to-hand stuff yet, brother?” Sedou grins. “It’s a man-thing, you know? Yet I congratulate you. This new manifesting must be exhausting. Careful, or you’ll wear yourself out utterly.”

“You cannot prevent her if she wishes to go!”

“If she wishes, and only if. Or else . . .”

Fire’s snarl deepens. “I am as safe here from you as you are from me.”

“True enough.” Sedou releases him abruptly and steps back. “So, brother. Let’s talk instead of fight.”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

“Oh, but there is.” Sedou reaches behind him to draw
two chairs out from the nearest table. “Shall we sit down? You can sit, right? A chair is a marvelous mechanism. You should try it.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

N’Doch slides over to urge Paia away to the rear of the café. She shakes him off silently.

Sedou sits, kicking the second chair closer to Fire. “For instance, let’s discuss these lies you accuse me of, or the information you claim your brother Earth and I are withholding.”

Fire folds his arms across his broad red chest. “So confident of human loyalty? Very rash. It’s not too late, you know, for them to see the wisdom of my way.”

“Then tell us what your way is, as you see it.”

“You know what it is.”

“No. Truly. Tell me. It’s what I came to hear.”

Fire frowns, furious to have been trapped into any sort of discussion at all. “I have said it plainly enough: survival.”

Sedou nods, easing back in his chair. “All right. None of us would take issue with that.”

“Oh, come now.”

“What? Why would we?”

Fire looks away contemptuously.

“Well, then I will amend that slightly. Given that anything worth doing inevitably bears some risk, I’ll say we seek survival
as well as
the accomplishment of our Purpose. Which is yours also, since you are one of us. So, explain it to me again. Why have you set yourself against us?”

“Such endearing earnestness!” Fire bends a satirically pleading gaze toward Paia. “Release me, my priestess, I beg you. Don’t ask me to sit still for this mawkish spectacle!”

“You are free to go any time, my lord, but without me.”

“Why so impatient?” Sedou asks.

Fire flings both fists into the air. “Because this is so
boring
!” He paces away from the window, then stops, arms and fingers spread. “Do you really suppose that because Paia is here, I’ll be a party to your lies and deceptions simply to spare her? Well, you suppose wrong! If I’m tired of anything, I’m tired of the hypocrisy that lurks at the heart of your so-called Quest! It’s time she knew the truth. It’s time they all knew!”

“Lies, brother? Deceptions? A dragon cannot lie.”

“Ah, granted, a dragon cannot lie. But we can manipulate the truth to the same effect.”

“I assume you are speaking from personal experience,” retorts Sedou sharply.

“What truth?” asks Paia, and N’Doch is grateful. He senses a drawn-out dragon debate in the offing, and he’d rather they just got on with business. “What truth?” she asks again. “If I should know it, tell me.”

Fire gives her a long, tragic look over his shoulder. N’Doch can’t decide if it reflects the Fire-breather’s true mood or the aura of high drama he prefers to surround himself with. “If I’d thought you should know it, beloved, I’d have told you long ago.”

Whatever its intent, this performance brings Sedou angrily to his feet. “Oh, please! Has all this sabotage and destruction been merely for your own amusement, brother? You have a big secret, but you can’t tell anyone what it is? It’s a childish game, and a waste of your talents! I believe there is no secret at all!”

Fire smirks. “If it were our poor innocent brother Earth saying this to me, I could almost believe he doesn’t know. But you? The clever, meddling one? No wonder you’re so at ease in man-form. You should have been created human to begin with.”

“Enough!” bellows Sedou. “What is it you have to tell us?”

“Whoa. Easy, bro,” chides N’Doch. He sees his dragon/brother’s shape wavering in the heat of rage. If both dragons take their own form in this confined space, the humans will be done for. “He’s the one supposed to be the hothead, not you.”

Sedou’s eyes show green and golden against his ebony skin. He collects himself and subsides, but not before kicking one of the café chairs the full width of the room, sending it smashing against the wall. As the shattered pieces rattle across the tiles, N’Doch laughs softly, his heart aching. So much, so very much like his real brother.

In the impasse that follows, Djawara breaks his long silence and steps forward, hands clasped peaceably at his waist. “May I make a suggestion?”

Fire rolls his eyes. Sedou grunts and throws himself into the nearest chair.

“Go for it, Papa,” says N’Doch, fed up with both dragons now.

“I propose that there is no deception. I propose that you both believe the truth of what you’re saying.”

“Huh,” says Sedou sulkily.

Fire sighs theatrically, but his gaze drifts back to the big man slouched in a chair much too small for him. His stillness expresses his doubt better than any words could, or his constant avid reckoning of whether what he has to say will win him new friends or further enemies. “Proof, old man?”

“A dragon cannot lie.”

“I told you what . . .”

“Listen to him, my lord,” puts in Paia. “I beg you.”

Fire laughs soundlessly. “Ah, beloved. You hope for me to redeem myself with reasonableness? Me?”

“In my eyes, if in no one else’s.”

“Then what choice have I?” He flashes her a sultry, resentful grin. “Let me then entertain the possibility that I silenced my sister Air before she was able to pass her knowledge on to my other siblings.” He stalks to Sedou’s table, pulls up a chair, and seats himself with elaborate formality. He rests his chin on steepled fingers, arch and condescending, and faces his fellow dragon. “Look into my eyes and swear you do not know.”