A Storm in the Desert: Dragonlinked Chronicles Voume 3 (52 page)

“Those chains are really thick,” Polandra pointed out. “I’m not sure how long it will take to cut through them hacking with an ax.”

“Could we melt them,” Renata said, “with Safisha’s Flame?”

Willem rubbed his chin. “Do you think we could use a sort of reverse compression spell?”

“A what?” Aeron turned to him.

“Take the compression spell, set the anchors together through the shackle, front to back, but have the vectors point
away
from each other.”

Aeron stared at him while going over the spell. “Right. That should pull the shackle apart along the anchor-line!” He nodded at Willem, impressed. “Golden. Let’s give it a try.”

When the spell completed, a sound similar to what the sword made preceded the shackle snapping open and falling off. The cut ends were mirror-smooth.

Anaya let out an excited bark as everyone cheered.
The rest! Do the rest!

Aeron laughed. “I will, dear-heart, I will.”

When the last manacle fell off, Anaya roared, pushed off the the platform, and jumped to the ground, wings lifted high.
I am free!

Balam ran to her side, barking and chirping and rubbing his cheek against hers.

Aeron took the steps down dangerously fast, but he wanted to check her legs where the shackles had been.

“Balam, let me see if she’s been hurt.”

The green dragon stepped back and watched as Aeron examined Anaya’s legs.

It was good that he did so. Her hide was scraped raw where the shackles had been on her forelegs and was badly scratched on her hind legs. “Those bastards took no care putting them on, it seems.” Aeron used a healing spell on each to ward against infection.

“Let’s go home,” he said. “Anaya needs those cleaned and bandaged, and I need a shower to wash off this sand. Then, I want to talk to the Guildmaster.”

When they arrived, several people left the buildings for the courtyard. The dragonlinked who’d stayed behind and their dragons, Master Canneth, Master Doronal, Guildmaster Millinith—even Lord Baronel was there.

Aeron hopped off Anaya. “Lord Baronel.” He bowed his head. “I–I didn’t expect to see you here, my lord.”

“Dragonlinked you may be, my boy, but you’re still one of my people. As is Anaya. How is she, lad?” He turned to Anaya.

“She’s fine,” Aeron said, “though scraped up a bit.” He touched his forehead. “We both are, I guess.”

Guildmaster Millinith glanced at them. “At least you two are safe, now. Once you’ve both been cared for, I’d like you all to meet us in the investigation office. Masters? Lord Baronel? I’m not sure about you, but I could use some tea.” She led them away to the office.

“I’ll grab a kit,” Gregor said, running off to his stable.

Sharrah examined Anaya’s left foreleg. “Those jackasses! How could they do this to someone?”

“Actually,” Renata said, “some of that is my fault.”

Aeron turned to her. “Renata. I told you, forget about it. You got us away from Bataan-Mok.”

“That’s true, but—”

“Here,” Gregor, a little out of breath, handed Sharrah the healer’s kit. “You,” he looked at Aeron’s forehead, “I will take care of.” He began tending to the cut.

Sharrah, a cleaning cloth in her hand, poured some antiseptic on Anaya’s raw flesh and began gently wiping.

Anaya let out a yelp and twitched.

“I’m sorry,” Sharrah said. “I’ll try to be careful, but these need to cleaned.”

Anaya chirped at her.

“The agitator and the fire seemed to have done the trick,” Willem said. “There was a lot of confusion in the plaza.”

“Yeah,” Aeron said as Gregor scrubbed the cut. Every now and then the healer adept scrubbed a little too hard, making Aeron wince. “There was another distraction, too, tainted wine that made people vomit.”

“Eww.” Liara grimaced.

“Speaking of the fire . . .” Aeron glanced at Renata. “Those banners had an insect depicted on them.”

Renata nodded. “Yeah. A sand wasp.”

“What are those?” Jessip looked up from watching Sharrah tend to Anaya.

“Well, they aren’t wasps,” Renata said. “Not true wasps, anyway.”

“They look like a wasp, a cricket, and a scorpion got drunk one night and had a child.” Polandra grinned at Aeron.

He chuckled. “A fair description.”

Renata rolled her eyes at Polandra. “They’re the symbol of the Corpus Order. The things are very slow to anger, but if you do get one upset, it will attack. If you’re stung, as long as you get the antidote within an hour or two, you’ll be fine.”

“If not?” Fillion looked from Renata to Polandra.

“Their poison does progressive nerve damage,” Renata explained. “You’ll start to feel as if your skin is warm, then as if it is on fire. Eventually the pain is excruciating. It is a long and torturous death.”

“Death?” Gregor had stopped cleaning and stared at her.

“Yeah.” Renata looked grim. “Some even give those too-long-gone a tea made from groundsel to hasten their departure.”

“They . . . kill them?” Liara’s eyes were wide.

“At that point,” Polandra shook her head, “there’s no saving them. Death is a blessing.”

“That’s weird, then.” Aeron twisted his lips.

Renata looked at him. “What’s weird?”

“Anaya and I flew Nesch Takatin’s dreams to see if we could find out what his plans were. At any rate, one dream was more like a nightmare. There was an enormous creature in it with the torso of a woman and the body of a sand wasp attached to her waist. There were dragon wings on her back, too. She attacked Bataan-Mok, the sand wasp body stinging the building over and over.”

“That is definitely weird.” Willem stared at him, brows raised.

“Toward the end of the dream, Takatin appeared, yelling that he would save them.” Aeron frowned. Why had the man said he would save them? He wasn’t doing anything but watching the creature attack over and over. And why had he been crying?

Aeron set that mystery aside and turned to Anaya. Sharrah was still cleaning Anaya’s wounds. Oddly, her body began to tremble and a tear fell from her cheek.

“Sharrah?” Aeron pushed Gregor’s hand aside and stepped closer to her. “What is it?” Had he missed something in his cursory examination at the dunes? Was Anaya hurt worse than he’d seen?

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” Cheddar asked the question Aeron was thinking.

Sharrah’s voice was quiet. “For the longest time, I was worried that dragons were not natural, were not . . . like us. They’re so different, so . . . perfect.” She looked up at Anaya. “But just look at her. She feels pain.” Sharrah looked back the the wound. “She bleeds like we do, can be hurt like we can. Dragons
are
like us.” She looked up again. “I’m sorry I didn’t think so before.”

Anaya tilted her head and then licked Sharrah’s cheek.

Aeron said, “I think she accepts your apology.”

Anaya chirped in agreement.

Lips twisted in a half smile, Sharrah said, “Okay.” She wiped her cheeks then returned to tending the raw scrapes.

Once Gregor was satisfied that Aeron’s forehead was clean enough, it didn’t take long for him and Sharrah to finish dressing Anaya’s wounds.

“There,” Sharrah said. “Anaya should be right as rain in no time.”

Feel better, dear-heart?

I do, though there is still pain.

It will fade as the scrapes heal.

Balam moved next to her and the two dragons began chirping at each other.

Tonight, or maybe in the morning, I’m going to give you a nice brushing, dear-heart.

That will be good.

“While they get caught up,” Aeron said, watching the two dragons, “let’s get to the office.” His shower would have to wait.

Guildmaster Millinith stood once everyone had been seated. “Aside from minor injuries,” she glanced at Aeron’s forehead, “the rescue effort seems to have gone as planned.”

“Not exactly,” Aeron said. “For some reason, Nesch Takatin was going to execute her himself.”

Millinith frowned. “But as far as anyone has been able to determine, Nesch Takatin is not working with the old guard, so why is he so bent on killing Anaya? A dragon he knows is part of the Dragon Craft Guild. Why would Nesch Takatin want to draw that kind of attention?”

“I don’t know,” Aeron replied. “It was weird. He kept trying to say it was the umeri, that it was the Order who wanted her dead. But if that was the case, the executioner would have been there.”

“It’s almost as if he’s deliberately trying to provoke us.”

Aeron turned to Fillion. It did seem as if Takatin was going out of his way to incite the ire of the Dragon Craft Guild. But why—

“Why would Nesch Takatin want to do that?” Gregor asked. “You’d think he would want as little attention as possible on them due to their ties to National Transportation. Especially with what those people are doing in the flats.”

Fillion twisted his lips. “That camp was pretty secure. It was very hard to get anywhere within it.”

“Isandath told me that Nesch Takatin had a visitor from National Transportation drop by several times,” Polandra said. “As often as those visits were, I’m guessing the person came from the camp.”

“The Nesch having visitors isn’t too unusual, though,” Renata noted. “He’s usually the one important guests or visitors first meet. The Capu is the ideological leader of the Order, so to speak, but the Nesch handles most of the day-to-day things, including meeting with important outsiders.”

“So Nesch Takatin is likely the one that worked out the land purchase deal with National Transportation,” Gregor said.

Renata nodded. “Probably.”

“Nesch Takatin,” Fillion murmured, “and National Transportation.” He frowned.

“None of this explains Nesch Takatin’s actions,” Guildmaster Millinith said. “What are his plans?”

“What if—” Fillion sat up. “What if the special investigator got the grit from Nesch Takatin?”

The Guildmaster turned to him. “
He’s
NT?”

“Maybe.” Fillion’s brows drew together. “It seems completely at odds with what someone in his position would want to do, but . . . everything he’s been doing is off.”

“Why, though?” Cheddar shook his head. “It beggars belief.”

Aeron agreed. With all the things Nesch Takatin had been doing, it almost seemed as if the man wanted to—

Eyes wide, Aeron said, “Groundsel tea.”

“Tea?” Lord Baronel looked confused.

Aeron looked at Fillion. “By the gods, Fillion’s right. NT is Nesch Takatin.”

“What makes you so sure?” Master Doronal looked at Cheddar. “Like he said, it beggars belief.”

Aeron looked from Master Doronal to Guildmaster Millinith and then to Lord Baronel. “In a nightmare Anaya and I witnessed while flying his dreams, Nesch Takatin screamed out that he would save Bataan-Mok from the monster stinging it.”

“The monster with the body of a sand wasp?” Willem asked.

“Exactly,” Aeron said. He stared down at the table, thinking out loud. “On the face of it, everything this man has done seems ridiculous. Why draw so much attention to the Order? Why anger an entire craft guild? The thing is, what if he considers the First Principle to be sand wasp poison eating away at the Corpus Order?” He looked at Renata. “Tell me, what is the only way to help someone when that poison has pulsed through their heart for over a century?”

Renata raised a hand to her mouth and whispered, “Groundsel tea.”

Polandra sat forward. “He means to
destroy
the Order?”

“What is groundsel tea?” Lord Baronel looked from Renata to Aeron.

“A brew made from a poisonous plant, Lord Uncle.” Gregor’s voice was quiet. “It’s used for euthanasia.”

Lord Baronel raised his brows. “I see.”

“If that is his purpose,” Guildmaster Millinith said, “then all his actions make sense.”

“We cannot let him succeed.” Renata stared at Aeron. “As flawed as it is, the Order is too important to the region.”

“Yeah,” Aeron nodded. “We want the Order changed, not destroyed.”

“We have to stop him,” Fillion said. “It’ll be the equine flu all over again, but instead of the East, it’ll be the villages that suffer.”

“Because we know his true plans,” Master Canneth said, “it should be easy to thwart them.”

“There are two major issues we’ll have to address,” Master Doronal said. “First, we need to prove that all or most of the illicit activities the Order undertook were Nesch Takatin’s or were at his urging. Second, and this is just a continuation of your previous efforts, the people of the Order need to be shown that killing dragons is not their purpose, killing nahual is.”

“And they need to accept it.” Polandra stared at him.

“Exactly,” Lord Baronel said. “Any organization is its people. If you win their hearts over, the Order will follow.”

“As far as the first issue,” Guildmaster Millinith said, “I think I know someone who would be interested in finding out exactly who was assisting National Transportation at the flats.”