When Kaz arrived at the healer’s hut, he found Raff, the chiefs, and their guards waiting for him. Raff gave him a helpless shrug, and Kaz offered a little yip in return. He knew it was unlikely that he would be able to escape for long, which was why he’d gone to find the Magmablades first.
As he approached, Idla glared at him, but it was less angry than he would have expected. Perhaps that was explained by the presence of Dett, who almost seemed to glow as he stood just behind Avli, in the guard position. In contrast, Berin was scowling, while Senge wasn’t even trying to conceal her grin. If Dat and Brez weren’t next to them, Kaz might well have gotten them mixed up, given how thoroughly their aspects had switched.
“Your concern for your companion speaks well of you, young Woodblade,” Tisdi said in her gentle voice, throwing a quelling glance at Idla. “We were, however, somewhat concerned when we realized you left.”
Avli’s eyes twinkled. “Tezne was somewhat concerned about the hole in her hut, as well.”
Kaz grimaced. Hut walls were usually created by sewing together many small sections of leather, but the Goldcoats had somehow managed to find and cure two pieces large enough to wrap around the entire meeting hut by sewing them end to end. While a talented enough kobold might be able to repair the cut he made, it would never be the same.
The Goldcoat chief looked pained, but didn’t respond, and Kaz said, “I am sorry about that. After everything that was said earlier, I wasn’t certain I would be allowed to do what I needed to do.”
Idla’s jaw flexed, and her eyes flicked behind him. Kaz didn’t turn, but he smelled the female Goldblade who had been guarding the Magmablades. He had noticed her following them, of course, and it must be obvious to everyone that he hadn’t come directly here. He was checking on Idla’s honesty, and she knew it.
“Well,” the Goldblade chief gritted out, “your companion is waiting for you. Make it brief.” She hesitated, then managed to add, “Please.”
Instead of answering, Kaz ducked into the hut, practically shutting the door in the chiefs’ faces. The last thing he wanted was for all of them to crowd in after him. Not only was the healer’s hut much smaller than the meeting hut, it wouldn’t help Ratre and Minc to have a bunch of strange females so close.
Three pairs of eyes watched Kaz make his way across the small space. The healer, Jul, looked less than pleased, while Ratre seemed worried and uncertain. Minc’s brown eyes were open as well, though they were still glazed with fever, and he looked even more confused than Ratre.
“You riled up the hoyi nest, pup,” Jul grumbled, shifting a few of the little pots on the table in front of him. “These two are recovering well, but all the excitement isn’t good for them. Idla just barged in here and woke them both up, you know.”
Grimacing, Kaz sat down beside Ratre, unbuckling and pulling off his pack. His pouch was still hidden in its depths, so he reached into it and then into the pouch. First, he took out Ratre’s bone support, which he hadn’t found a private moment to work on. Next, he laid two blue ki-stones beside it. Finally, he pulled out the Woodblade, and set it on the ground with a click.
“Pup… No, Kaz, is that what I think it is?” Jul asked, half-standing.
Kaz chuffed a small laugh, gently pushing Li away from the two ki-stones. He hadn’t given her any of the blue ones yet, since they were so rare, and her eyes spun hungrily as she stared at them.
“If you think it’s the missing Woodblade, then you’re right,” he said absently, amazed at how easy it was to admit it. “No, Li, you can’t eat these. Here, how about a red one?”
He offered the dragon a bright red ki stone, larger than most of the others. At first, she turned up her nose, still eyeing the blue crystals, but when Kaz sent her silent encouragement, she let out a sigh and accepted, holding the stone in her small paws as she attempted to shove it into her mouth.
When Kaz looked up again, he found that even Minc’s eyes had sharpened to comprehension, and all of the males had been shocked into silence as they stared at Li. Apparently, news of the dragon’s transformation hadn’t yet reached the private little world inside the healer’s hut.
Taking advantage of their surprise, Kaz picked up the larger of the two blue crystals, holding it beside the piece of worn bone. It looked to be about the right size, so he set it down again, picking up the knife and bone instead.
Leveling a look at Li as she began to edge toward the blue crystals again, he said firmly, “No. We only have a few of those, but I promise I’ll give you the largest one we have left as soon as you’re hungry again.”
Li immediately rested her paws on her belly, which was much more rounded than it was before she began eating crystals in the mosui city, and made a low rumbling sound like an empty stomach. She sent him an image of herself, so hungry that she simply fell over, and he promptly replied with what he saw in her core. It was churning happily, working at absorbing the red ki from the crystal she just ate, and not at all the empty pit she claimed. With a sigh, she settled back on her haunches, scratching absently at an itchy spot on her side, and Kaz got to work.
Quickly, Kaz hollowed out a space at the top of the bone, where it touched Ratre’s stump. Kaz, like everyone else in his tribe, had turned his hand to almost everything at one point, so he knew that the trickiest thing about working with bone was how easily it could chip or crack. With the adamantium blade, however, it was almost too easy to cut away the excess, and he was actually more worried that he would slip and take too much.
Once he had the hole big enough, he looked up at Jul. “Do you have any yanchong slime?”
Wordlessly, the healer nodded, and passed a small pot to Kaz. Kaz used a clump of moss to remove a small amount, careful not to get any on his skin or fur, and tucked the clump into the bottom of the hole. That done, he carefully pressed the larger ki-crystal into the remaining gap, then pinched the bone, passing red ki through it from his thumb to forefinger.
As he’d hoped, a small amount of smoke trickled out around the crystal, showing that the moss had at least started to burn away, which should leave a bit of ash and the slime, which would be rendered rock hard by heat. Yanchong slime was incredibly useful, but the creatures themselves could destroy an entire den simply by passing through it, and not even notice they’d done so. For good or ill, they were rare, in part because they reproduced only when something managed to cut the end off of one, leaving two giant worms when both pieces healed.
Kaz prodded the ki-stone, making sure that it was now set firmly in place, then picked up the second stone and eyed it. He’d seen broken crystals in the mid-levels, but they’d all either been burned out by overuse, or had so many flaws that they cracked as soon as someone tried to remove them from the walls.
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But he knew for sure that these crystals could be cut, just like gemstones, without losing their power. If anything, being cut seemed to make them stronger. Kaz wasn’t sure if what he was about to do would work, but even if it didn’t, the first ki-stone was in place, and he was confident that just having blue ki near an injury would help it heal better and stay healthier.
This stone was flatter than the first, and when he drew in a deep breath and sliced a thin layer off the top with the Woodblade, it continued to radiate blue ki. Kaz smiled in relief and leaned down to touch it against Ratre’s stump. Carefully, piece by piece, he whittled it away, and Li gleefully ate the little bits that fell down around her.
Only when he had a surface that matched the stump as well as he thought he could get it did he stop, running his thumb over the smooth surface. Flipping it over, he cut away one more slice, leaving it flat on the bottom. Then he did the same to the top of the first stone, so when they were pressed against each other, they formed a perfect whole.
At last, he took the Woodblade in his hand, pinching its blade with exquisite care so he held just the tip. Stroke by careful stroke, he cut the symbol for ‘Wood’ into the top of the larger crystal. When he was done, he gratefully set the knife down, just glad that he still had all of his fingers. He had no idea if that would help, but he’d seen such symbols carved into the stones the mosui used, and he didn’t think it would hurt.
A bit more yanchong slime around the edges, and the second stone was glued in place atop the first. This time Kaz was able to see the moss embedded in the slime burn away to ash, leaving the hardened slime with just a few black specks visible inside it.
Closing his eyes, Kaz concentrated on the rune in between the two crystals now firmly embedded in the carved bone. Slowly, he filled it with blue ki, adding to it until he felt that the stones couldn’t hold any more without bursting.
That done, Kaz turned the adamantium blade on his fuulong silk loincloth. For the first time, he had to exert more effort to get the knife to cut than to keep it from going too far. With great reluctance, two long strips separated from the larger whole, and he tucked the unfinished edge beneath his belt, hiding it.
As he did so, he wondered how the Copperstriker leatherworker had managed to cut and embroider the loincloth in the first place. It must have taken a great deal of skill, power, and effort. No wonder she’d looked so odd when she brought it to him.
The worst was done, so Kaz simply cut away the old, poorly tanned leather that had been serving as straps to hold the bone onto Ratre’s stump, and replaced them with the strips of silk. Ratre would have to adjust them himself, but Kaz settled the bone in place, urging a little of the blue ki to move into the still-irritated flesh, making Ratre give a relieved sigh, in spite of the mixture of bafflement, awe, and mild horror that suffused his face.
“There,” Kaz said, watching as blue ki continued to trickle out of the stones. Most of it turned into mana fairly quickly, but at least some of it vanished into Ratre’s flesh, and would hopefully help the stump heal fully. The smooth, rounded shape of it should reduce a lot of the irritation, at the very least.
“If you can find a Woodblade to give it power every now and then, that would be good,” he told Ratre. “Just tell them to be careful, because too much power will make it crack. It won’t last forever, even then, but by the time it breaks, hopefully you’ll have a better solution.”
Ratre was sitting up, staring at Kaz. “You-” His voice broke, and he whimpered like a pup. “You are a Woodblade. How-?”
Kaz sighed. “Idla says some of the Woodblade chiefs were males. Is that true?” He was well aware that Idla was right outside, and could undoubtedly hear the question, but he didn’t care.
Ratre swallowed hard. “It was supposed to be a secret, but when a Woodblade male had the strongest power, sometimes he became the chief, not one of his sisters. His mate would pretend to be the chief when they interacted with other tribes, but he made the final decisions. I only know because Ghazt was supposed to be chief after his mother, and I was going to be one of his guards.”
He shook his head. “That’s why he could never have accepted Oda, even if he wanted to. Rega was willing to join the Woodblades after they became mates, but Oda was supposed to be the next Magmablade chief. Neither of them could abandon their tribes.”
Kaz looked from Ratre to Jul. The old healer didn’t look particularly surprised by this ‘secret’, so Kaz included him in his next questions.
“Why are the Woodblades different? Or are they? Can any tribe produce a male with power, and they just don’t tell us, so-” He choked on the rest of it. So what? So the females could continue controlling the males by making them believe that only females could keep the tribe safe in their deadly home?
But both Jul and Ratre were shaking their heads vigorously. “Only Woodblade males have cores,” Jul said. “And most of them die when they’re young, growing weaker and weaker until their bodies simply give up.”
“Ghazt had two brothers,” Ratre confirmed. “One younger, and one older. Both died from the withering. As if to balance the loss, he had as much power as any two of his sisters.”
Kaz blinked, trying to reconcile this information with his memories of his father. Never once, not even in the battle where he died, had Ghazt used power. Kaz was sure now that Ghazt must have produced the ki orb in the memory of his first meeting with Nucai, so why wouldn’t he have used ki-bolts and a shield, at the very least?
Unless he was still protecting his mate and pups. Given what he now knew, Kaz suspected that any tribe that realized who and what Ghazt was would have declared luegat in an attempt to claim him. Worse, they might well have gone straight to vara, and as powerful females related to the defeated chief, both Rega and Katri could well have been killed to prevent dissension, even if they didn’t die in the initial assault. A mate bond couldn’t be dissolved except under extraordinary circumstances, but once one of the pair died, the remaining kobold could take a new mate, though it was rarely done.
That was probably the same reason Rega had never taught Kaz how to use his power, even though she clearly knew he had it. She must not have realized how hard it was to keep it from spilling over, and assumed that if he didn’t know how to use it, he wouldn’t be tempted to do so.
Kaz closed his eyes, feeling Li crawl into his lap, any remaining chips of crystal now forgotten. Once again, Kaz mourned what could have been, if Oda and Vega hadn’t been twisted by the cores passed down from ancient Magmablades. If Rega had simply been allowed to offer for Ghazt herself, so Oda never met Ghazt until the agreement was made. If Vega hadn’t destroyed the Woodblades, and Ghazt and Rega had been allowed to live in peace.
A soft purr rose up from his chest, and Kaz looked down to see Li’s whirling golden eyes staring up at him. She sent him an image of a too-small egg, abandoned and forgotten, the hatchling inside left to die when the rest of its family flew away. Without Kaz, there would be no Li.
“And without Li, there would be no Kaz,” he murmured, leaning forward to touch his nose to hers, a deeply intimate gesture used only between family or mates. He sent back his memory of himself, core shattered, lying helpless in the nest of a woshi. He certainly would have died there if Li hadn’t used her own ki to keep him alive, and he could think of a half dozen times since that could have ended him without her.
A soft knock sounded from the door, then it swung partway open as Lianhua peered in. She grimaced apologetically, but said, “Idla is getting very restless, and Tisdi isn’t much better. If you’re sure you want to go with them, then we should get moving.”
Kaz nodded and stood, lifting Li to his shoulder. The dragon settled into place, her weight as reassuring as Lianhua’s simple words. ‘If you’re sure you want to go’ implied many things, not least of which being that it was his choice, and if he changed his mind, she would help him leave.
With a last look at Ratre, Kaz asked the male, “You said you’d be willing to help me. If that meant helping the Woodblade chief, would you do that, too?”
Silently, Ratre pressed his fist to his chest, bowing as deeply as he could. “I swear it on my life,” he choked out, and Kaz returned the salute before ducking out of the hut.