Up In Smoke (18 page)

“Chuan Ren is not pertinent to this discussion,” Bao said dismissively, turning away from Fiat and moving out of my range of vision. “
I
rule the red dragons now, and they will follow
my
commands. If you wish for our aid in restoring your sept to you, then you will release the Marcella Phylactery and cease wasting my time.”

“And place myself in a weaker position than I currently occupy?” Fiat shook his head. “I see little sense in that.”

“You see little because you are shortsighted and ignorant,” Bao snapped at him.

Fiat jerked as if he was holding himself back from striking her, forcibly relaxing his hands as he tried for a lazy smile. He raised an eyebrow at the mysterious man who still leaned casually against the wall, calmly observing the scene. “And what of you, my old friend? What do you say to this change in plans the red wyvern demands of us?”

“I have never sought the dragon heart, not even when it was within my grasp,” the man answered slowly, his voice deep and slightly roughened, as if he wasn't used to speaking. “So long as my own plans are not affected, then I have no opinion on the subject.”

Annoyance flashed in Fiat's eyes. “Such an attitude is admirable, but lacking in foresight. Your plans may well be affected should the red wyvern achieve her goal and reassemble the heart.”

The dark-haired man shrugged. “It remains to be seen whether or not the heart wishes to be used.”

“Bah,” Fiat snorted. “The heart is there to be used. It has no will of its own. You have lived too long in the past, my friend. Times have changed, and with them, so have the dragonkin. We no longer cling to superstitious beliefs.”

“Yes,” the man agreed in a mild voice, but there was an undertone that sent a little skitter of fear down my back. “Time has changed.”

“But you remain steadfast, eh?” Fiat asked, his voice and posture aggressive. “That will not do. You must make a stand, right here and now. Will you support the red wyvern's plan or our original one?”

“It matters not to me,” he answered, waving a languid hand at Fiat as he straightened up. “Give her the shard, or do not. But think twice about summoning me again without due cause. I may be antiquated in your eyes, but I do not suffer fools gladly.”

At that moment the same copper-haired woman who had been in the square appeared at the far doorway. She glanced around the room quickly, causing Maata, Cyrene, and me to freeze, but apparently she did not notice our door was ever so slightly ajar. Her gaze settled on the mysterious man, and it was to him that she spoke.

“I have made the arrangements. We should leave soon, though.”

“This is finished; we leave now,” he answered, strolling past a silently fuming Fiat, pausing to eye the blue wyvern for a moment. “You aided me when I sought succor, and it is for that reason I will offer you a piece of advice: the natural flow of power should always be to a wyvern, never away.”

Fiat said nothing but watched as the man and woman left the room, leaving him alone with the red wyvern.

“He is an old one, too old,” Bao said with a curl of her lip. “He does not understand the power there is to be had in adapting.”

“He is steadfast in all things,” Fiat agreed, wandering over to stand just barely in view, in front of a marble fireplace. Over the mantelpiece a pair of authentic-looking swords hung, crossed in the traditional manner of weapon enthusiasts. Fiat touched one of the swords, adding in a thoughtful tone, “But much of that comes from experience, and if there's one thing I've learned over time, it's to never underestimate experience.”

“It is not advice that will regain your position in the weyr,” she responded with acid frankness.

“Perhaps not, but I have found a nugget of gold in that advice.”

“Power flows to the wyvern, not away,” she said in a mocking voice. “How . . . mundane.”

“Oh, it's not what he said that I find valuable,” Fiat answered, his lips curled in a friendly smile as he tidied a small vase on the mantelpiece. “It's the memory of when I first heard it that has provided me with a resolution to the current problem.”

“Enough talk,” Bao said, boredom evident in her voice. “I grow weary of this.”

“Then let me tell you a little story, something that will relieve the tedium of your mind,” Fiat said, turning to face her. “Once upon a time, as the mortals so dearly love to say, there lived a wyvern by the name of Baltic. He was a peaceful man, but forced into war by the stupidity and greed of others, dragons who wanted to see his sept disbanded. One day he found his friends departed, his sept all but eliminated, and his very own heir determined to see him dead.”

“I have no time for this,” Bao said, but was interrupted before she could continue.

“With death and the destruction of everything he worked so hard for staring him in the face, Baltic did the only thing he could do.”

“Die,” Bao said. “At the hands of his heir. Baltic was not a brilliant wyvern any more than this is a brilliant anecdote, although perhaps, given your situation, it is apropos.”

“More so than you can possibly imagine,” Fiat said with a smile that chilled my blood.

Bao snorted again and started to say something, but her words were cut short when Fiat, moving so fast he was just a blur, snatched the sword from behind him and leaped out of view, toward Bao.

There was a horrible sucking noise, followed by a wet gurgle, and a thump as something heavy hit the floor.

Fiat backed into view again, wiping a now bloodied blade on a piece of cloth. “As my good friend says, power flows to the wyvern, not away from him.”

He smiled contentedly as he replaced the sword on the wall.

Chapter Seventeen

I clapped a hand over Cyrene's mouth even before she could draw breath to scream.

“Don't make a sound,” I whispered, my mouth close to her ear.

Her eyes widened, and she struggled as if she was going to pull away from me and scream her lungs out.

“There is a madman with a very lethal sword just a few feet away,” I pointed out.

She stopped struggling and nodded. I released her and reapplied my eye to the narrow space in the doorway.

Fiat stood at the opened door opposite, calling to someone. A couple of his bodyguards and two others trooped into the room.

“Remove that,” he said nonchalantly, waving toward the area where Bao had stood.

The stark expressions of disbelief on his men's faces had to match the one I wore; they certainly mirrored Cyrene's.

“What are you waiting for?” Fiat demanded, raising his voice as his dragons just stood there, clearly too astounded to do anything. “I want that removed, and this place cleaned up. There is much I must attend to, and little time in which to ensure there will be no trouble from the red dragons.”

One of the bodyguards grabbed a blanket that was draped over a chair and moved out of view. He returned hauling what I could only assume was Bao's body, thankfully covered with the blanket. Another man followed with another object, also wrapped.

“Clean up the blood,” Fiat barked, waving an authoritative hand. “And remove all signs that she was here. Stephano, go upstairs and take care of her guards.”

A handsome blond man lifted his eyebrows in silent question.

Fiat growled, “Just get rid of them. I won't have them interfering.”

Stephano hesitated for a moment, but eventually nodded and left. I closed the door carefully, my heart beating wildly as I turned to look at a shaken Cyrene. Maata stood with an impassive look on her face, but her eyes were bright with emotion.

“We have to get out of here,” I told them softly. “I really do not want Fiat to know we're here, or what we've seen.”

“We will go out the way we came in,” Maata agreed.

She waited until Cyrene and I hurried through the door to the tunnel before following us.

“That means we'll have to go back out through the lake,” I pointed out, flipping on the tiny flashlight.

She grimaced. “It can't be helped. We must report this news to Gabriel.”

Our trip out of the depths of Fiat's tunnels was fraught with tension, but no real danger. It was a bit of a battle to get Maata out, since she refused when Cyrene offered to deck her, but in the end we managed by dint of yet another sleeper hold.

Maata and I both ended up swallowing water in the struggle to get her out, however, and I swore, as I crawled onto the banks of the lake and collapsed, hacking and wheezing as I tried to replace the water in my lungs with air, that I heard her mutter something about never again accepting watchdog duty.

I had to admit I didn't blame her.

Gabriel, however, had another opinion, one that was made all too clear when, several hours later, we straggled into the Paris suite.

“You did
what
?” he asked Maata as she stood before him, his lovely smooth voice going a bit gravelly around the edges. His fingers flexed, a sign that I was coming to know also meant he was upset.

“You can yell all you want. I'm going to find Kostya,” Cyrene said, dark smudges beneath her eyes. She didn't even say good-bye, just turned around and walked out of the room.

“May wished to follow the man she thought was Baltic, so we did. I did not leave her side at any time, and we were in no actual danger—” I heard Maata say as I went to the bedroom to drop off my overnight bag, but she was interrupted when Gabriel growled out a word I didn't recognize.

Maata's face, when I emerged from the bedroom, had adopted a stony look that spoke volumes. “I'm sorry, Gabriel. I thought—”

“Well, I'm not sorry, not one little bit,” I said, stopping her before she could apologize further.

Tipene sat at a table beyond, silently tapping away at a laptop, but glancing between his wyvern and fellow bodyguard.

“Little bird,” Gabriel started to say, but I held up a hand.

“Don't even think of telling me this is none of my business. Maata didn't want me to go after the mysterious dragon, but I weighed the options and decided that the chance to find out who he was made it worth the risk. So if you want to vent your spleen on someone, do it on me and not her.”

Gabriel looked for a moment like he was going to explode, but suddenly relaxed and managed a wry smile. “Drake told me you were going to drive me insane. I thought he was basing his opinion on the fact that Aisling often puts him in that state of mind, but now I begin to see the true wisdom of his words.”

“Except you are much more flexible and not nearly so stodgy as Drake is.” I answered him with a smile of my own, drawn as if by magnetism across the room until I stood in front of him. I put my hands on his chest, stroking the soft material of his shirt, my fingers leaving little trails of fire. “Which means that once you realize that we were in no danger at all, you will stop feeling the need to do the protective male thing, and will sit down and listen to what we have to say. Am I right?”

“Grrr,” he said, his fingers still flexing.

“Am I right?” I cooed, rubbing my nose against his and biting his lower lip.

“If you're going to attempt to seduce me into a good mood, it'll take quite a bit more effort than that,” he answered, his eyes lighting with renewed interest.

Inside me, love, lust, desire, need . . . a whole swirling mass of emotion flared to immediate life, powered by the dragon shard.

I stepped back, dropping my hands, not wanting to lose any more of myself. “Perhaps later. We have some important news to tell you, and I really don't think it can wait.”

A curious look passed over his face but was gone before I could try to figure it out. “I have news for you as well, but by all means, tell me about the dragon you followed.”

Maata murmured a few words and slipped out to change her clothes.

“She's been through a lot, you know,” I told Gabriel as he led me over to a couch. “The only way we could get into Fiat's underground area was via the lake.”

He refrained from shuddering, but I suspected it was a close thing.

“We'll skip over the part detailing how we got her through to the tunnel's entrance,” I said, smiling as she emerged from her room, pulling on a dark sweater.

She made a face and took up a second laptop, sitting next to Tipene at the table.

I went over our actions that led us to the underground chambers, reporting most of the conversation between Fiat and the other dragons.

“You saw the man fully this time?” Gabriel asked.

“The dark-haired one? Not his face. He had his back to me in the room underground, and when we saw him earlier, in the square, he was partially in shadows.”

“Interesting. Describe him to me,” Gabriel said, one hand resting on my knee as he closed his eyes in thought.

I went over a description of the man, pausing as something occurred to me. “Something doesn't mesh. I think I'm wrong. He can't be Baltic.”

One of Gabriel's eyes opened to consider me. “Why not?”

I sorted over the conversation again, picking out pertinent points. “Fiat made the comment to Bao about hearing the power-flowing-to-wyverns advice before, from Baltic. If the man was Baltic, then why would he say that?”

Gabriel shrugged, his fingers gently stroking my knee. I fought hard to stifle the fire that wanted to burst into being within me. “He also called him old friend, and the dragon made reference to Fiat providing him with succor. That fits with what Drake found a few months ago, when he and Aisling made an attack on Fiat's lair.”

“That doesn't explain how Baltic could be, period, given that Kostya swears he killed him.”