Forged by Fire (19 page)
“What about the overland route to Fwendar ki Bol?” I asked as I sawed at the rope. “Has anything been done about it?”
“The bitch sent runners out,” he croaked. “Armed.”
Good. No heralds would get through overland. I could only hope that no dragonfliers from elsewhere had flown into Xxamer Zu during the interval between my stealing the escoas and the myazedo’s impending attack.
“And the escoas? Their wounds?” I asked.
“I dealt with them. They’ll survive. One’s lame.”
The dragonmaster’s bonds fell away, and he slowly eased his hands forward, onto his lap. He regarded them for sev eral moments in silence. Then he spoke in a tone that I’d not heard before, low and hoarse, and it rasped against my nerves like a serrated blade against a block of limestone.
“She’ll pay for this, hey-o. Oh, yes.”
He meant Tansan. A chill shivered down my spine.
“You won’t lay a finger on Tansan, you hear? She prob ably had no recourse but to tie you up.”
“No one ties me up without suffering for it.” His eyes were bloody and sharded with unholy stars.
I stood up and pointed the knife Tansan had left for me at him. It quivered a little. “You hurt Tansan and I’ll finish the job that garrote started on your throat. Understand? I’m going out to the dragons now. When you’re ready, you can join me.”
Outside, I fussed with the saddles while I waited for the dragonmaster. Twice I had to wipe sweat from my palms. Each time I transferred the knife I held from one hand to the other before drying my palm on my bitoo. I didn’t put the blade down, though. No.
I should kill him, once he’s flown me back to Xxamer Zu.
I recoiled from the thought. Cutting the throat of one of my own—even the dragonmaster—was the work of a traitor. A despicable, unprincipled act. Something Temple would do, not me.
The dragonmaster appeared at the doorway of the hut.
He stood there a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust. He looked smaller, his legs more bowed, than when I’d last seen him in daylight. The skin on his thighs and torso hung in loose folds. His chest had sunken in. The glass bead at the end of his chin braid was missing and the plait had be gun unraveling in a frizzy mass.
I’d alert Tansan to the dragonmaster’s vow of vengeance. That would suffice.
“Tell me about the myazedo,” I asked as he came stifflegged toward me. He looked as if he were walking on ra zors. It must have been painful, the return of his circulation. “Their numbers, their ages, how well armed they are, how disciplined.”
“They’re warriors,” he said. “Some of ’em have lived in these hills for years, training, fighting, planning, waiting. Two of them could kill every komikonpu in my stables in one night.”
Clutch Re isn’t your stables anymore, I thought, but the message he’d wanted to convey was clear:The myazedo had muscle and wit sharper than the most experienced of the dragonmaster’s apprentices. That was impressive, indeed.
“They know the layout of Xxamer Zu like the back of their hands,” he continued. “They’ll take the place with ease.” “How many of them are there?”
He was breathing heavily, and I wondered if he’d be able to stay atop his mount. My doubt must have shown, for he scowled and spat at my feet.
“You’re no sight, either, girl. You look like the slightest wind will knock you over.”
“Their numbers,” I said, ignoring him.
He ran a hand over Toadhunter’s neck and scratched around one of her ear slits in the manner that all dragons love. He murmured to her, and she nuzzled him with her wounded, riddled snout.
“Thirty-two of them, with five out on the Fwendar ki Bol road. There’s more within the Clutch. Upward of sixty, so the bitch says, though how much use they’ll be is question able. Count on the thirty-two to do the job.”
“Thirty-two?” I cried in dismay.
He looked at me contemptuously. I saw Longstride in him. “Thirty-two warriors with surprise and stealth and a good plan on their side can easily take Xxamer Zu. I doubt a one of them’ll be fatally injured in the process.”
“If they’re the warriors you say they are.”
“They are,” he said, eyes raking over me, comparing me and finding me far lacking.
“Then we’d best join them,” I said curtly. “Quickly. I’ve got information I have to tell them before they go in. Now, d’you need help mounting?”
If not for the knife I held, he would have struck me for my insolence.
Instead, he struggled aboard Toadhunter.
We flew steadily, and as inky darkness enfolded us, we left behind the loamy, crushed-leaf smell of jungle below. Gradually the smells of savanna began wafting up to us through the pitch-black: the scent of parched soil, of sunbleached grass, of termite hills and heat-cracked stone and the expansive smell of endless rolling miles. And, too, we left rainfall behind. On the plains, wind and black, depleted clouds taunted the dry land below. No thunder rumbled. No stars were visible through the mantle of cloud.
The flight seemed both long and condensed, like a enor mous snake curled tightly around itself. Every nerve in my body thrummed; we
had
to get to the myazedo before they attacked. The escoas weren’t making progress; we were suspended in darkness, held motionless in ebon wind. My hands locked tight around the wooden rungs of the saddle and I ground my molars anxiously.
Then ahead of us, in the black: a splotch of gray bobbing in the darkness. Xxamer Zu’s temple domes.
“The Clutch!” I cried.
“I’m not blind,” the dragonmaster growled against my ear. We were both astride Toadhunter, with Warthog teth ered behind. Neither of us would risk having me ride Wart hog alone, in case she broke free of her tether and flew straight on to the byre.
Moments later we landed on a grassy hill, several miles from the Clutch. The myazedo was gathered on the lee of the hill, dark shapes lying upon dry grass, blending with crushed weeds, poised to slip over the hill and lope across the prairie miles to the Clutch that was visible as a patch work of various blacks in the near distance. Xxamer Zu’s temple domes leered in the dark.
The escoas were with the myazedo, four shadows of musky animal bulk that snorted and clawed the earth with impatience. In the darkness, their folded and bolted wings looked like great spiked parasites quivering on their backs.
I slid from Toadhunter’s back as a small body came hur tling toward me, legs pumping.
My heart constricted painfully as I scooped Savga up and held her close. She smelled good, like trust and small, grubby hands. I wanted to hold her forever . . . but I put her down. I had no time to spare.
“Where’s your mother, Savga? I have to speak with her
now
. It’s very, very important.”
She turned and gestured; Tansan was walking toward us, all dusky curves accented by the spear she held. She came to a stop several feet away from me, calm, balanced, the straight, strong flare of her shoulders squared perfectly with her hips. The gruesome scar that ran along her chin glistened in the dark.
“Savga told me how you influenced the Wai Vaneshor to free those he’d poached for slavery,” she said, tone neutral.
I waited. Her eyes were opaque, her face inscrutable.
“You are more than you seem, debu Secondgirl.”
“The boulder calls the pebble hard,” the dragonmaster acidly said beside me.
Tansan’s eyes flicked toward him and her lips thinned. She didn’t address him, but looked back at me. “Who are you, Kazonvia?”
“The story’s a long one, and this isn’t the time or place. But I’m with you. Know that.
I’m with you.
”
She studied me. I met her gaze and tried not to champ my jaws in impatience; she had to decide herself whether I was to be trusted; otherwise nothing I said afterward would matter.
After a long pause she nodded once, curtly. “I believe this. You are with us.”
I released a held breath and opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off.
“We’re ready to move. The two runners that we sent ahead of us entered the Clutch last night and sent word to our myazedo within. The runners returned to us today, af ter dusk. The myazedo within is prepared. Two brands will soon be waved from atop a tenement: our signal to move.
“We each belong to a group, and each group will com plete its set of tasks. Some of us will surround and infiltrate the daronpuis’ stockade, seal exits and entrances, while oth ers kill the daronpuis within. As for the soldiers, we know where they’re posted, how many of them there are, how they are armed, and who amongst them is disciplined and skilled. Maybe some will join us. Maybe not. We’ll learn soon enough. A few of them will most likely be loyal to the new overseer and not lay down arms. These, we will kill.
“Some of us will sweep through the bayen thorough fare. Weapons will be gathered and chancellors and bayen lordlings will be killed. Women and children will be spared—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “The Clutch overseer can’t be killed. We need him alive.”
She raised an eyebrow in question.
“His name is Rutgar Re Ghepp, and he’s half brother to Waikar Re Kratt, Lupini of Clutch Re,” I explained. I kept one eye on Xxamer Zu; if those brands were waved before I’d explained all this to Tansan, and if her warriors entered Xxamer Zu and killed Ghepp before I could pre vent them, everything I’d learned from Longstride’s rite would be for nothing.
“Several days ago,” I rapidly continued, “Kratt appropri ated Clutch Cuhan under the auspices of Temple, on the grounds that the overseer there was hiding me. Kratt knew I wasn’t on Cuhan; he was merely flexing his muscle and using that excuse to become overseer of one of Malacar’s largest Clutches. The next Clutch he’ll strike will be here, where I
am
located . . . unless his brother can keep him at bay by parleying with him. We need Ghepp alive, to stave off Kratt’s attack for at least the next eight weeks.”
Every muscle in Tansan’s body went intensely still. “You are someone important indeed. But I fail to see what ad vantage eight weeks will be to us.”
“If Ghepp can keep his brother and Temple off our backs for eight weeks, I can guarantee us power, wealth, and innumerable allies. I can do this, Tansan. But I need eight weeks.”
Beside me, the dragonmaster let out a hiss. “You
know
. You
know
.”
I didn’t look away from Tansan’s obsidian eyes. “Yes. I know the secret to breeding bulls. And I need eight weeks to prove it.”
Tansan’s eyes raked over me, and they were no longer opaque; they were lambent, alive with fiery radiance. They were the eyes of a feisty dragon.
“The overseer
must
be taken hostage alive and un harmed,” I insisted. “And there are children in the daron puis’ compound, young boys indentured to Temple: You can’t kill them.”
“Those under a certain age will be spared, and those with rishi parents will be freed. We are not barbaric, Kazonvia.”
I inclined my head a small way, as acceptance of her words.
The dark outlines of the myazedo along the hilltop were waiting with palpable tension for the burning signal in the distance. Wind soughed over the grass. A cur barked in the Clutch down below. Several other dogs joined the one barking in the Clutch.
And then: Thin flame-fish leapt into the air in the dis tance, and the black outlines along the hill began flowing down toward Xxamer Zu.
“Take my children and mother to the arbiyesku,” Tansan said, turning away from me. “Guard the escoas. We’ll cap ture Lupini Xxamer Zu unharmed.”
“Wait!” I called after her as she turned and started down the hill. “Where’s Ryn?”
“Here!” a thin voice cried out, and I saw three shadows some way down the hill come to a straggling halt and strug gle with each other.
“Let the boy go,” I ordered Tansan.
“We need a guide in the daronpuis’ compound—”
“He told you all he knows. I promised no harm would come to him. Let him go. He’s only a child.”
Tansan pursed her lips, turned, and gestured at the strug gling shadows. Shadows everywhere, pouring down the hill, across the plains, merging with the dark, drawn to the fiery beacon in the distance.
Then Tansan was a black outline loping steadily, easily into that dark, toward that fiery beacon, and Ryn was be fore me, shivering, and Savga’s small hand was prying open one of my clenched fists and slipping, like a frightened ani mal into a burrow, into the shelter of my palm.
We stood on that hill and watched the brands in the dis tance flicker and dance. They looked harmless. Like silk ribbons of red and orange fluttering from a caparisoned dragon on parade. Then the two brands winked out.
Wind blew. Grass rustled. The escoas snorted. Saddle leather creaked.
It seemed impossible that we couldn’t hear the metallic clang of the tin moon doors in the daronpuis’ compound being shoved open by shoulders, nor the screams or pleas or gurgles of the holy wardens being swiftly, methodically murdered in their cells. We could hear no grunts of men in combat, no blades biting into bone or slicing through bed sheets. We heard no wailing of women or sobbing of chil dren as bayen mansions were stormed and the lords within murdered.
Perhaps the invasion wasn’t happening.
“Agawan has been weaned,” a voice said, and for the first time I turned to look at Fwipi, who’d been present all along, but hidden by darkness. She came closer; she looked insubstantial, as if the last few days had whittled her into a nub of what she’d once been. “That was one of the ways Tansan prepared for this night. She weaned her son. If she dies, he won’t sicken for want of her milk.”
“Tansan won’t die,” I said, looking back at the dark out line of the Clutch.
“You have dragonsight too, now? It’s contagious, then, like the coughing sickness.”
I glanced down at Savga. Her hand was still in mine.
“You don’t think Savga can see through the One Drag on’s eyes.” I stated it as fact.
Fwipi looked down at Agawan, asleep in the sling Fwipi wore across a shoulder and breast. A pudgy brown leg dan gled free, tiny toes motionless and perfect and all but in visible in the dark. Fwipi’s withered fingers gently touched those toes.
“After Tansan was conceived,” she said quietly, and her words sounded sister and mother to the wind, “my greatmother took me out in the plains at night, while the other women were asleep. She did things to me. Old things. What I remember most is how I could not breathe. I could not breathe because of what was in my mouth, and I was gag ging, and the pain in my belly was like fire. I expelled the child in my womb, or so I thought, and then my greatmother died. She fell with a thud at my bloody feet. I stag gered back to the women’s barracks. I babbled. No one could make sense of what I said, and the blood scared them. Eventually my mother followed my blood back into the fields. She did this alone, at night, a foolish thing. She was angry at her mother, and she was frightened for her. See? By the time others realized my mother had gone, the carrion wolves had gutted both her and my greatmother. The next day my belly started swelling. It swelled fast and stayed swollen for eleven long months and my eyes turned milky. Tansan was born with a great caul over her that was as thick as a dragon cocoon and dulled the midwife’s knife as she cut it off. And I was old.”
A whirlwind briefly swirled about us, cool and smell ing of unseen starlight. Fwipi looked up at me from where she’d been gazing steadily at Agawan, stroking his small, perfect toes.
“Maybe I remember that night wrongly, or maybe, like some say, I was raped again two months after I shed the first fetus. Truth is like wind: It blows one way; it blows an other. It’s never still, yet it touches everything. So maybe Savga has dragonsight and maybe she doesn’t. Maybe Tansan will die tonight and maybe she’ll live. Don’t ask me what I believe anymore, Kazonvia. There is only death and hope and uncertainty.”
The dragonmaster had been listening intently to Fwipi; he made a sound in his throat and, muttering to himself, stomped toward the dragons. He bent and started remov ing their hobbles.
I turned and brusquely gestured at Ryn, who was now dressed in a simple tunic. “Go help. We’re leaving.”
I knelt beside Savga, my back toward Fwipi. Savga was staring intently into the darkness with nostrils flared and quivering.
“Come on, Busy Ant,” I said softly. “We’re going home.”