City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (19 page)

Leech nodded thoughtfully. “That’s why you scowl when you say his name.”

Bayang was surprised at Leech’s sympathy. “Do I?”

Kles had taught Scirye enough for her to comprehend Bayang’s revelation from a Kushan perspective. “So you’re in a blood feud to the death,” she said. “I don’t think you have anything to do with the Pinkertons. It was the dragons who sent you, didn’t they?”

To her dismay, Bayang saw how the lies kept piling up. The more she told, the more likely they were to trip her up eventually. “Yes. My people have been hunting for him all these many years. I stayed in disguise because I needed to see who his accomplices were before I revealed myself. I had no idea it would be Roland.”

Scirye straightened. “Then it wouldn’t be Tumarg for me to leave when you’re about to fight such a dangerous enemy. Kles and I are going with you.”

Bayang cursed herself for trying to be too clever as she made one last desperate attempt to spare the girl. “Yes. I think the best aid you can give me is contacting the Kushan embassy in Honolulu once we land.”

“I’ll do both,” Scirye insisted. “I think you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

Bayang felt as helpless to change things as one of the dragons in the ancient dramas, impaled like a worm upon Fate’s hook. “All right then.” She sighed. “I suggest that it would be safer to hold
off the attack until we’ve landed. We’ll still be able to surprise them.”

And at least on that much, they were willing to listen to her. So she settled back against the crates to rest. She’d tried to protect the hatchlings, but there was no helping young humans.

Scirye

It was impossible to escape Bayang in the narrow hold, but Scirye scooted as far away as she could into a corner where she could hug Kles. She was still a little shaken by her own decision to go on, but she had resented how Bayang was still treating her like a “little girl.” It didn’t matter that Bayang’s doubts were close to hers. Scirye was determined to prove to the dragon that she was no pampered rich girl.

As she stole a glance at Bayang, she noticed that Leech had gone back to the window.

Leaning on one elbow, Scirye thought she had never seen him look happier. His forehead was smooth and unworried and his smile was broad and open. “You really like flying, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, fiddling with his iron rings before he asked shyly, “Is … is flying always like this?”

“This is my first flight, too,” Scirye explained. “Mother and I used trains to travel to her postings in Turkey and Paris, and we took an ocean liner here.”

“Ooh,” Koko said, rubbing his hands together. “All the food you can eat and people waiting on you hand and paw.” He was still nursing a chip on his shoulder. “It must be nice to have someone else taking care of everything.”

Scirye shrugged. “It must be nice to be free.”

“Sure, it’s great never knowing how we’re going to get our next meal,” he said sarcastically. “We’re free to go hungry.”

Scirye decided that it had been a mistake to try to sympathize. “I wouldn’t like that part,” she admitted. “But at least you don’t have everyone telling you what to do.”

Kles fluttered his feathers, annoyed. “I consider it constructive criticism, Lady.”

“Everyone expecting you to live up to your name,” Bayang agreed sympathetically.

“Is it that way among dragons, too?” Scirye asked.

Bayang, though, seemed uncomfortable about revealing that much. “I’ve already said more than I should about my people.”

Wrapping a blanket around himself, Koko looked as if he were in a cocoon. “So you got a castle to go with that title?” he asked Scirye.

Kles looked down his beak contemptuously at the boy. “The
Lady’s
clan”—he emphasized the second word—”has estates, yes. And they have a castle on each.”

Leech smirked. “I knew it. Born with a silver spoon.”

His superior attitude annoyed Scirye, but it wouldn’t have been Tumarg to lie. “They don’t belong to me.”

“You
are
in line of succession to the title,” Kles reminded her.

“Far down the line, very far.” Scirye made a face. “But even if I was next, I don’t know that I’d want any of it.”

Leech sat back in surprise. “You’d give up a cushy setup like that?”

“Lady Scirye, you shouldn’t say any more.” Kles fluttered his wings to emphasize his disapproval.

Scirye might have listened, but Koko twirled his index finger in circles by his temple to indicate she was crazy, and that made the girl lose her temper. “That shows what you know. I left home when I was small to be with my mother when she was assigned to the embassy in Istanbul. After that, we kept moving every few years each time Mother got reassigned. So the Kushan Empire is almost as strange to me as it is to you. My father works in the capital, but he always visits us. We never go back there.”

“Nonsense,” Kles insisted to the others. “The Lady knows an immense amount.”

“I only know what you’ve taught me.” Scirye hunched her shoulders. “Face it, Kles. I don’t belong to the Empire anymore than I do in the consulate. The staff call me ‘The Barbarian’ behind my back.” She added ruefully, “So do my schoolmates. I’m too Kushan to fit in with them, and too American to fit in with the Kushans. No, I’m not even American. I’m a little bit from a bunch of countries so I’m more like patchwork.”

Leech stretched. “Do any of us fit in anywhere?”

“Speak for yourself,” Koko warned in a low voice.

Leech stared at his feet as he waggled them from side to side. “That’s what I’m doing. All I remember at the orphanage was getting bullied a lot.”

Scirye couldn’t help smiling. “I guess we have something in common after all.”

“At least on this,” Leech nodded.

Koko sighed. “Well, I wish we were in one of your castles now,” he said to Scirye. “I could use a big steak right now.” When his belly began to rumble at such a thought, he patted it. “Down, boy.”

Leech reached for the sack and opened it. “Let’s see what’s on our menu then.”

Mugwort had given them several canteens of water, packets of crackers, half a wheel of cheese, and six candy bars.

“How can a guy keep up his strength on just this?” Koko complained. “It’s a snack, not a meal.”

When a gong sounded below to announce dinner, Scirye instinctively looked down at the floor like the others, but from the corner of her eye she saw Koko palming the extra candy bar.

“On the other hand,” Scirye muttered to Kles, “I wouldn’t mind owning a dungeon for a little while. I can think of a certain person who might learn something after a week there.”

Bayang

In the unheated hold, it was growing cold even though they had kept on their other clothes underneath the coveralls. Gratefully, they wrapped themselves in the blankets that Mugwort had provided.

With nothing else to do, they ate and then dozed off and on during the long hours of the flight. Even Leech fell asleep, slumped beneath the window, his head leaning against the wall.

Bayang was grateful to be left alone, surprised by what she had blurted out to the children. Her motives had seemed so clear to her when she was young: protect her people in any way she could. When she had been ordered to become an assassin, she put aside her reluctance and threw herself into her training. She had told herself that she was sacrificing her own life for the sake of her own clan.

Talking with the hatchlings had made Bayang wonder if she
was as much of an outcast among her own kind. Oh, when she went home between assignments her kin were always polite, and yet the compliments were excessive, the service fawning, until it was almost a relief to leave.

Well, she smiled ruefully, if you were a normal person, would you want to make an assassin angry?

Long suppressed doubts bubbled up in her mind. She carried out her duties in the shadows, and it was as if her people sensed the darkness that tainted her. They needed her, but they didn’t want her. She didn’t fit in with the dragons any more than the hatchlings did with humans—
which made them a match for one another
. She shook her head in amazement. It seemed so strange that she had more in common with an enemy than she did with her own people.

She had no hatchlings—there had never been any time for them, assuming that she could have found a mate willing to partner with a killer—but as she watched Leech, she suddenly felt the strangest emotion. It was a tenderness she had never experienced before.

Bayang shrugged off her blanket and then opened her coveralls to the waist so she could take off her coat. Folding it into a pillow, she put it down on the floor next to Leech and eased his head onto it. When she turned, she saw Koko watching her as he lay on his side. He gave her a grudging nod and then closed his eyes again.

Sleep,
though, brought
Bayang little rest, for she kept having terrible nightmares in which she was a hatchling again and Badik was chasing her. When she woke the next morning, she was sweating, and she found herself staring about wildly for Badik.

“Are you all right?” Leech asked when he heard her stirring. He was already back at his station by the window.

She became aware of her coat, which had been folded up neatly beside her. “Yes,” she said shakily as she sat up.

“Sometimes I have bad dreams, too,” he said sympathetically. “I’m back in the orphanage again and the bullies are after me.”

Strange that she should have something else in common with Leech. “Bullies come in all sizes and shapes,” she agreed.

When the others got up, they finished off their remaining food. Koko made a point of grumbling again about the portions.

A few hours later, they heard the pilot’s voice dimly through the bulwark. “Aloha, folks. I thought you’d want to know that in just a few minutes, we will be coming up on the newest addition to the Kingdom of Hawaii, the island of Houlani.”

By Bayang’s watch, it was nearing eleven
A.M.
by San Francisco time. She thought that would be about nine
A.M.
by Honolulu time.

Everyone crowded around the window, trying to see. The sky outside was now a vivid blue, lit by the morning sun.