I couldn’t help but grin as I leapt off the cliff, spreading my wings and quickly turning my dive into a glide, then climbing out across the sea before beginning my turn.
The lady justice Sempralia, one of the senior Councillors of Karakan, had asked, almost timidly, if she could touch me. I’d let her. There had been a child-like glee in her eyes, a smile splitting her face as she’d carefully touched my nose, then run her hand over the scales of my neck and the leathery membranes of my wings. Her bodyguard Kalder had looked the closest to nervous I’d seen him during the whole meeting, like he might explode into violence at any moment. I’d sat very still and patient until Sempralia backed off, a little flush of what I could only imagine to be embarrassment on her face as she thanked me.
It was so easy to forget what I was, sometimes. Or rather, what I was to everyone else. While I always knew that I was an amazing, marvelous creature, powerful, beautiful, and deadly, to them I was truly fantastical. Most humans in history would have never seen a dragon in their lives, and many would probably have wondered if we even existed. Even if they saw one, judging by how dragons were described I imagined that most humans would count themselves lucky if it was only at a very great distance. So to have a friendly conversation with one, to have one willing to sit still as you gently, almost reverently put your fingers on it… I couldn’t fault the lady justice for asking when she had the chance. Neither of us knew if we’d meet again. I hoped that we would, ideally in the forum or some other similarly public place, but it wasn’t for sure.
Maybe she was being a crafty old politician, trying to flatter me. Job well done, if she was. But there had been a casual honesty about her when she asked that made me sure that she truly just wanted to be able to say that she had touched a dragon.
I finished my turn, coming about a full 180 degrees and heading back towards Sempralia’s part, a hundred feet above them. The lady Justice, her bodyguard, and her scribe had rejoined the larger contingent of guards that she’d brought with her. I saw several of the guards pointing at me, and lady justice turned to look just as I got close enough to see some detail on her face.
She was grinning as I passed above her, and I had the sudden impulse to show off. I was going fast enough, so I whipped out one of my favorite aerobatic moves. It was one which I really should be higher up to try, just in case I messed it up, but I decided to throw caution to the wind. Twisting my wings in opposite directions I pulled myself into a series of tight rolls. Once, twice, three—
I felt a burning sensation in the membrane of my right wing, like the worst papercut imaginable, in the middle of my third roll. With a hiss I stabilized and looked at it, and saw a ragged tear in the middle of the membrane between the second and third fingers, for lack of a better word. That wasn’t something that just happened!
The adrenaline that had spiked at the pain flooded my brain as I looked around, searching the ground. And there, among the ripe grain of a nearby field, I saw a shimmer of gold.
That fucking archer!
I turned towards them. They’d made a serious mistake, and judging by the distance I had about five seconds to decide if they should die for it. There were no trees to hide in now. They’d gotten careless. Greedy. A field full of grain may be excellent cover from anything on the ground, but from an enemy that could fly? You may as well be on open ground. Hell, the field was probably worse, since it would slow them down.
I dodged a second arrow, then a third. As long as the archer kept using their magic, I could see clearly how the golden glow went from their body to the arrow the moment they loosed, making it almost trivial to avoid as long as I was paying attention. Ironically they would have had a better chance to hit without the magic. Of course, the arrows might not do anything in that case. The best solution was to not try and put an arrow in a dragon at all, but it was far too late for that.
After the third arrow they realized that I was too close, moving too fast, and they turned to run.
Yeah, nah. Not happening.
My talons closed on air as they threw themself to the ground at the last moment, but I threw my wings up, beat hard, and stopped dead in the air, flipping myself around to face them before hitting the ground.
Thirty feet away, my nemesis was getting up from the ground. He — and now that I had a second to really look at him, I could see the light stubble, the boyish rather than feminine features — stared me in the eye. His expression was eloquent, telling me that he was fully aware of just how well and truly he had fucked himself.
There was a standoff, lasting all of a fraction of a second, in which I had time to realize just how damned pretty he was. He had the androgynous beauty of a runway model, and while Instinct straight up did not care what any human looked like, Conscience was intrigued, to the point where I actually started second guessing myself. Should I really hurt him? It would be a damn shame to destroy something so beautiful, after all. Sure, halo effect and pretty privilege and all that crap, but damn!
Thank the gods that Instinct was in charge right then, because the stalemate was broken as he lit up like a bonfire. He didn’t even have his arrow fully nocked when my wing-assisted leap bore me into him, one foot catching him square in the chest and bringing him down hard, pinned under my full weight. Even then he drew a knife from somewhere, but I caught him by the wrist and squeezed until I felt bones break and he spent the last of his air on a wheezing scream, dropping the blade.
“Lie still!” I growled, my face two inches from his. When he squirmed and tried to grab at my leg with his uninjured right hand I took a firm grip on his vest, then with the help of my foot lifted and slammed him down. “Why? Why are you doing this? I was having a perfectly nice morning!” I slammed him again, a high-pitched wheeze exploding out of him. He stared up at me groggily, looking dazed from the impacts. “I had a nice conversation. The weather is shaping up to be great for flying—”
I heard voices and the sound of grain being trampled, and looking up I saw some of the guards approaching. “Back off!” I warned them. “This bastard’s been trying to kill me for weeks! Mine!”
“Lady Draka!” The voice was unfamiliar, but as he approached I recognised Kalder the bodyguard. “Whoever you have there, please release them to me.”
“Oh, so you speak? And what are you going to do with them? Let them go? No law against trying to kill a dragon, is there?” I looked down at the archer, who looked mildly concussed. “No, I think I’ll be keeping this guy! We have a score to settle.”
“Lady Draka, he fired several arrows over the head of a councilor. We have to take him in for questioning.” He looked back over his shoulder and nodded, then continued. “I can promise you, on behalf of the lady I serve, that he will not be released without consulting you first. Is that acceptable?”
I looked again at the bastard beneath me. Instinct told me to kill him, but I held back and really thought about it. How angry was I? How badly had he injured me? He’d poisoned me, but that had healed. My wing smarted, but I could handle that, and the cut didn’t seem to cause any real problems with flying. He’d made me worry about Herald and Kira, but neither had been hurt. Same with Mak, a few nights ago.
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He’d been trying to kill me. He’d failed. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to kill him. But mostly I wanted to know why, if anyone was backing him, and how the hell he kept finding me.
“Will my friends be able to question him? Can you promise me that?”
“Easily and without hesitation, yes. Anyone we know to be associated with you will be given access.”
I looked at Kalder. He looked at me. Mercies damn it, perhaps it was time to cultivate some goodwill.
I threw the bastard towards the guards with a snort of disgust, sending him rolling among the stalks. “I’ll trust you on this, Kalder. You and your lady. Don’t make me regret it.”
As I was about to leave I saw the bow lying there among the trampled grain, where he’d dropped it while dodging my strike. I picked it up. It looked nice. Expensive. Looking back, the knife also lay where it had fallen after I crushed his wrist. It looked completely ordinary, but I grabbed that, too. I wasn’t going back empty-handed, and there was something satisfying about taking my enemy’s weapons. Like a little consolation prize.
“You’ll hear from us soon,” I told Kalder, and took off.
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My first impulse was to give the bow to Herald. I didn’t know much about bows, but it had something about it, a luster that just screamed “high-quality,” as well as some decorative swirly patterns on it. Basically, it looked really nice. There were some problems with that idea, though. The first was that I’d need to carry the bow into the city. I couldn’t bring it with me through the sewers, so I’d need to fly in at night and then sneak along the streets, or stash it somewhere and have someone fetch it. Which, admittedly, wasn’t insurmountable, but it was a hassle. Second, I knew that Herald liked her current bow. It wasn’t a masterpiece, sure, but she’d had it made to order so that the length, the grip, and the draw were all just right for her. Lastly, I just kinda wanted to keep the bow for myself. The archer had been trying to kill me. I had taken it. It was mine. I could do anything I wanted with it. I wouldn’t mind giving it to Herald. I was sure that she’d be happy and touched that I was giving her a present. I just didn’t see her loving it, or even using it. It would end up as a back-up somewhere, and only used when, for whatever reason, she couldn’t use her real bow.
At least those were the reasons I gave myself as I added the bow to my hoard, carefully unstringing it and wrapping the string around one end the way Herald had shown me. And when I did, it felt right. It belonged there, beautiful and meaningful and valuable all at once. I left the knife as well. It was just a tool, but it might come in handy someday.
With plenty of morning left I decided to visit my little village. It had been a couple of days since I’d seen my people, but they worked hard and fast, and I was curious what they might have accomplished. I didn’t want to arrive empty handed, though. While I was supposed to be the mighty protector and ideally the one receiving tribute in this relationship, I felt a responsibility towards these people. Besides, I was starting to feel hungry.
Hunting down a boar took me a bit over an hour, but it was ridiculously easy compared to my first attempts. I knew what scents to look for now, I knew my own body, and I could stay Shifted for far longer than it took to sneak up on a sleeping pig, so close that I could tear its throat out before it knew what was happening.
When I arrived at the village I did so with my customary caution. I was dragging a bled and gutted boar, which wasn’t ideal for stealth, but I was sneaky enough that it shouldn’t be a problem. When I got close, though, something felt off. There was a pen of those super-sized turkeys that a lot of forest communities raised, and those were new, but that wasn’t it. The houses were coming along nicely, though it didn’t look like any new ones had been finished lately. Fair enough. They couldn’t spend all their time building, after all. But…
I realized what the problem was. Where were they? Where were my villagers? There was no one sitting around talking and making crafts. There was no one working in the gardens, and no sound of trees being felled and cut. The kids weren’t playing and screaming. It was halfway through the morning, yet there was no one outside to be seen or heard at all.
Not until someone stepped out of the finished cabin. A tall, rough-looking guy with long, wavy hair and several days’ worth of stubble, he was completely unfamiliar to me. As he stretched in the late morning sun I saw an axe strapped to his belt. He was followed by a woman, another stranger, who was nearly as tall as he was. She finished buckling on her sword belt, then ran her hand up into his hair. He turned around and kissed her, then groped her, which got him a light slap, a sultry grin, and a kiss back.
I started getting excited. Not because of anything they did. I wasn’t a voyeur. I didn’t care what they got up to. But other base instincts and desires were getting all fired up. There was a good chance that those two wouldn’t live much longer, unless I got some very satisfying answers to some very important questions. Such as, who the fuck were they? Why were they in my village, and where were my people?
I dropped my catch and Shifted, bringing the shadows of the forest with me as I stalked forward. Around the corner of the longhouse I Shifted back and sniffed. I smelled smoke on the air. Standing still and listening I heard murmuring from inside the longhouse, low voices that made no sense during the late morning. It didn’t make sense that they’d be cooped up in there at all.
The two strangers were still necking — and by the look of it, considering doing a whole lot more — by the cold fireplace that had become the center of the village, not paying any attention at all to the world around them. They were armed, but their weapons were at their belts, and their hands were very, very busy.
I struck.
I didn’t kill them. I took them completely by surprise, but I hit them with my claws in; I wanted answers, after all. I could have used my shadows, but I didn’t need them, and in case there was a perfectly innocent explanation I didn’t want to accidentally make another couple of Jekries. I didn’t even hurt them too badly. But I did slam into them at high speed, and I was getting to be a big girl after months on a solid diet of meat and hoarding precious things. Entwined as they were they went down in a screaming heap, and I quickly tore their weapons away, then pinned first the man, who’d been slower to react, then the woman, who almost scrambled away before I wrapped a hand around her ankle and reeled her back in. They were strong — fighters, both of them, no doubt about it — but I was stronger, and they were not lifting several hundred pounds of me off them, not in the position I had them.
I had the man pinned pretty well with just my weight, though he was still trying to hit me. The woman was snarling and kicking as I pulled her closer. I felt the punches and the kicks, but they didn’t really hurt. As long as they were unarmed and didn’t have any crazy magic, they couldn’t really harm me. There was no point in maiming or killing them unless they became useless or too annoying, or found another weapon somewhere. But there was a question of pride, and of putting them in their proper place, that place being beneath me, silent and cooperative.
The man was at an awkward angle under me, but I had my foot on his belly and flexed my claws. I wasn’t sure if I drew blood, but I could tell by how he jerked that he felt it. “Stop!” I growled, but they didn’t seem to be listening, punching, kicking and screaming. They both finally froze when I wrapped my hand around the woman’s throat, letting my claws prick her a bit. They were both dead if I so chose, and they knew it. “Lie still and be silent, or die!”
I heard a door slam open behind me. I whipped my head around, ready to face this new threat, ready to finish off these two and turn on—
“Dar, Elem, Mercies so help me, if you don’t—!”
Tinir stood in the door, her infant daughter in her arms. Her voice cut off as she saw me, then the two humans under me.
Tinir was not one to stand paralyzed and speechless in a crisis. After taking in the scene for all of a second, a sickly, almost desperate smile swept over her face. She either couldn’t or didn’t try to stop her voice from trembling as she spoke. “Great lady! What a— a lovely surprise! May I introduce my cousin, Darvellan, and his wife, Elem?”