A Memory of Fire (The Dragon War, Book 3) (6 page)

Eighteen years old, Miya had
been only a whisper in her mother's womb when Frey Cadigus had burned
their kingdom. She had been born in the shallow waters of this very
cove, shaded by cliffs and palms, and grown wild along the beaches
and among the trees. Today she stood before him as a golden-skinned,
scabby-kneed island girl with fiery blue eyes, long platinum hair,
and a shark-tooth necklace. While the older folk Sila led still wore
the traditional robes of the desert, Miya was a wild thing, dressed
in leaves and caked in sand, a primordial child who'd never known
civilization. In her left hand, she held a spear with a stone head,
and across her shoulders she wore the bow she had carved herself and
stringed with vine.

"This ship will be yours
when I'm dead," Sila said to her. "And I plan on living as
long as your grandfather."

She stomped up closer. "Father,
how long do you plan to keep this up?"

He turned away from her, leaned
across the railing, and stared at the cliffs that ringed the cove.
Gulls and herons flew among the trees above. Somewhere between those
trees the two sat chained.

Sun
God bless us,
he thought with a chill.
Two
living Vir Requis. Two demons from the past—here, chained on my
island.

"Father, don't ignore me."
Miya came to stand beside him and glared. "You cannot simply
keep them chained up like that, like... beasts."

He raised his eyebrow. "I
seem to have been doing a good job of it."

She groaned. "They're not
here to hurt us. They could have burned us all from the air. They
didn't blow fire. They let themselves be caught rather than kill us.
And now you will keep them chained and—"

"Miya!" He spun
toward her. "For years, I've let you nurse baby birds that
fell from nests, toss back fish you pitied, and collect your baskets
of caterpillars. But these are no poor animals for you to tend to.
These are dragons. These are—"

"They are not dragons,"
she said, eyes flashing. "Not anymore. They are humans now—a
man and a woman—and you chained them to a tree."

"Shapeshifters," he
said and spat overboard. "Demons. You weren't there, Miya.
You weren't in Tiranor when they burned us."

She looked up into his eyes.
"Did they burn us—those two? Valien and Kaelyn?"

"Oh, so they have names
now?"

"Yes! They do. I've
talked to them, and they have names, and they have stories of their
own. They are good Vir Requis, Father. They're... different from
the ones you fought."

He snorted.

The
ones I fought.

No, Sila had not fought the
dragons eighteen years ago. His brothers had. His friends had.
They had all burned. But Sila... he was either wiser or he was a
coward. Sila had fled. He had loaded his ships with survivors and
sailed away. And he left the others behind. He left the millions to
burn.

He looked down at the hull of
his ship. He could still see those fingernails clawing at the wood,
still hear the people begging to be saved.

"The ships are full!"
he had shouted that day. "I will return for you. I will
return!"

They had wept. They had tried
to swim after him. He had loaded his fleet with men, women, and
children, cramming them like cargo, a weight nearly too great to
bear. He brought them to these islands. And when he sailed back to
Tiranor for the others... they were all gone. He found only bones
and ash and lingering screams over the water.

"They are all demons,"
he said, voice barely more than a whisper. "And you should not
have talked to them, daughter. I forbid you to speak with them
again."

It was her turn to snort. "I
speak to whoever I like. Remember what you used to call me when I
was a child?"

"You are still a child."

She shook her head. "I am
eighteen."

He nodded. "A child."

She growled and stamped her
feet. "What did you always call me?"

He groaned and felt his pain
melt. "An insufferable, pigheaded, scrawny-legged pest?"

"Father!" She gave a
sound like an enraged hippo. "No! You know what you called me.
Princess of the Islands. That was your name for me. I was born
here, the daughter of our leader. Not born in Tiranor like the rest,
but born wild and free, an islander. A princess." She swept
her arm through the air, gesturing at the cove. "This is my
kingdom, and I go where I like, and I speak to whom I please. So I
spoke to your prisoners. And they told me stories. And they want to
speak to you too. Will you listen to them?"

He sighed.

He had led merchant fleets
through storms. He had battled pirates and kraken. He had led
thousands of refugees from inferno into safety. His arms were thick
and tattooed with serpents, his shoulders were wide, and his stare,
he knew, caused even the strongest sailors to mutter and look away.
Yet Miya, it seemed, never saw him as a hero. To her, he was not the
burly captain with the withering stare, only her lumbering,
old-fashioned father.

Perhaps
no man is a hero to his eighteen-year-old daughter,
he thought and grumbled.

"I will speak with them
once, Miya," he said. "I will let them tell their story.
And if I am not satisfied... they will suffer my justice."

Miya sucked in her breath and
narrowed her eyes. She began to object, but he hushed her with a
glare. Sila had not condemned a man to death in ten years, not since
one sailor had slain another after losing a game of dice. He had
turned Maiden Island into a land of order, of harsh discipline, and
of harsh justice.

If
more of those beasts follow,
he thought,
all
this will end. The new life I built for my people will burn too.
He closed his eyes and saw the dying again, thousands in the water,
screaming for him, thrashing like flies in blood, scratching at his
hull as he sailed away.
If
Requiem flies against us again, Maiden Island too will burn.

They took a rowboat to the
beach, then walked the hidden paths up the maiden's waist. Mint
bushes rose around them, bustling with mice. Cedars grew like dark
columns. Carob, olive, and pear trees rustled, heavy with fruit.
Vines crawled over boulders and the branches of oaks. Frogs and
crickets trilled in the grass, herons and jays flew overhead, and
turtles sunbathed upon rocks.

I
gave Miya a good home here,
he thought, looking at her walking beside him, her face tanned deep
gold, her blue eyes bright.
I
will not let this place burn too.

A mile from the cove, they
reached the maiden's neck, a declivity between the hills of her head
and shoulder. The waterfall crashed down ahead, the maiden's hair,
and between the trees, their village sprawled.

Sila wasn't sure when he'd
stopped calling this place a "camp" and started calling it
a "village." They had landed here eighteen years ago as
refugees, shivering and afraid and famished. Today were they still
refugees or simply islanders?

Four
thousand souls lived upon Maiden Island, survivors of the slaughter
and those born upon the island. Their huts spread between the trees.
Some elders still bore the white, woolen tunics of Tiranor, sturdy
garments that had lasted the years. Most now wore clothes of
maidenspun
,
a fabric they wove from local leaves and wild cotton. Some,
especially the children, simply wore clothes of grass, leaves, and
fur.

Looking at the children who ran
around, near naked and laughing and wild, Sila sighed.

"We came from a land of
golden obelisks, temples that kissed the sky, libraries with a
million books, and statues of such beauty that grown men wept to
behold them. We fled a beautiful, wise civilization that had ruled
the desert for thousands of years." He shook his head ruefully.
"And eighteen years later, we're running around half-naked in
the mud."

His daughter, her own legs muddy
up to the knees, flashed him a grin. "And we thank you for it."

Walking across a grassy plateau
dotted with gopher holes, he saw a squad of arquebusers drilling a
volley. They stood in five lines, ten men in each, holding their
guns to their chests. Across the plateau rose a dragon effigy,
life-sized and built of wood, grass, and wicker. Sila paused from
walking and placed a hand on his daughter's shoulder.

"Watch," he told her.

The
first five men stepped forward, standing in profile to Sila. They
raised their arquebuses, masterworks of oak and iron, and pointed the
muzzles toward the wicker effigy. They pulled the triggers, and
booms
crashed
over the island, so loud that even Miya, who had seen these drills
before, jumped and winced. Smoke blasted. The smell of gunpowder
flared. Rounds crashed into the wicker dragon, tearing holes through
it.

"Good," Sila said. He
raised his voice to a shout. "Next line—faster!"

The five shooters, their
arquebuses still smoking, marched behind the formation and formed a
new line. There they began to reload their guns. As they worked,
the next line of men stepped forward. They pulled their triggers.
Five more arquebuses fired, roaring across the island, loud as
cannons. More holes tore through the wicker dragon.

Sila nodded in approval. For a
long time, he had insisted his men drill with empty guns. Iron and
gunpowder were rare upon these islands. But yesterday two dragons
had flown here, speaking of three thousand more.

"Today we drill with live
fire," he said softly.

After each line of gunmen fired,
they stepped behind the formation to reload. It was a slow, tedious
process. Damn too slow. Sila watched, grumbling.

First the men pulled gunpowder
from pouches and refilled their barrels. New rounds—balls of iron
the size of marbles—followed, pushed down with ramrods. Some rounds
were the wrong size; they had to be wrapped in leaves to snugly fit.
Once the barrels were loaded, the men filled the guns' flashpans with
more gunpowder. These small, iron receptacles stuck out from the
guns like ears; when ignited, they would deliver a spark into the
barrel, lighting the main charge. Once barrel and flashpan were
ready, the men strung fuses through their matchlocks like tailors
stringing thread through a needle. When finally ready to fire,
they'd light their fuses, pulling the triggers to bring matchlocks to
flashpans.

"It's still too damn slow
to reload," Sila said and spat. The whole process took a full
minute, even for the fastest fingers.

By the time the first five
arquebusers had reloaded, their comrades had all fired their guns.
This formation—ten lines of gunners, the front line firing while the
others reloaded—meant Sila could maintain gunfire throughout a
battle without pause. But it also meant that, at any given moment,
most of his men were reloading rather than fighting.

"Grandpapa will find a way
to make the guns faster," Miya said.

Sila grumbled. "Your
grandfather is a dangerous man. He nearly blew himself up—and half
this island—with his inventions."

"And he invented these guns
you now use!" she said. "And he invented the scope, which
you're always looking through. And he invented the canals to bring
water from the spring to our camp. And—"

"Yes, yes, I know all about
his inventions," Sila said. "Half the time they work.
Half the time they nearly sink the island. We should send him back
to his rock."

Miya stamped her feet. "No!
You cannot send him back. He's your father. When you're that old,
would you like me to banish you to deserted rock?"

"I don't blast huts apart
when trying to invent an ice-making machine."

He sighed. He didn't know how
he—a burly, laconic captain—had been born to a scrawny, wild-eyed
inventor like Bantis. Sometimes Sila wondered if the man had simply
swapped his true babe with another, too consumed with a new invention
to notice.

"Keep drilling!" he
called out to his men. "I want you to double your speed. When
the dragons fly here, it will save your life."

They nodded and Sila kept
walking, crossing the grassy plateau toward a hill thick with mint
bushes, brambles, and trees. These men drilled to slay dragons, but
today Sila had two dragons he needed very much alive.

When he reached the hill, he
turned to Miya.

"Stay here," he said.
"I'll speak to them alone."

Her eyes flashed and she raised
her fists. "I will go with—"

"You will do as I say,"
Sila said. He sighed and softened his voice. "Miya, you are
young and fiery and proud. You grew up in peace, in sunlight, wild
among the trees and upon the beach. I gave you a good life here. Or
at least, I tried to."

She lowered her head, then
looked up again, stood on tiptoes, and kissed his cheek. "You
did."

"I gave you a life most of
our people never knew. They burned, Miya. I watched them burn. I
watched the Vir Requis burn them and laugh. I saw flesh peeling from
bones, and I saw the proud palaces and temples of Tiranor fall. I
saw women and children swimming after my ships, begging for room I
did not have. I will speak to these shapeshifters now. I will ask
them why they did this to us. I won't hurt them, but I will demand
answers. Stay here, Miya. Stay in this valley in sunlight, grass
and trees and water around you. I will step back into the fire."

Tears gleamed in her eyes, and
she nodded. He left her there and turned toward the hill.

He began to climb. A natural
path led up the hillside, carved by eighteen years of footsteps.
Alongside the pebbly trail, mint bushes, olive trees, and brambles
bustled with birds and mice. Ant hives and groundhog holes rose from
wild grass. Boulders of chalk and granite speckled the hillside like
white clouds upon a green sky.