Dragon-Ridden (9 page)

Danny finally released Tate and she
cradled her arm against her chest. “What was that?” Though it hadn’t hurt, with
the exception of that sting, it had thoroughly unsettled her. She didn’t like
it, not at all.

Danny dumped the gems back into
their bag and held them out to her. Tate didn’t immediately reach for them and
stared at the bag. Danny shook it at her in exasperation.

“These are barrier stones,” he
finally told her. He grabbed her hand and dropped the bag into it. It was
either catch them or let them fall. She caught them. It was more reflex than
choice.

“Is that supposed to be an
explanation?”

“For most people, yes, it would be
an explanation,” he said, striving for patience. Usually he didn’t have to
explain things like this. People just knew. In some ways Tate understood things
few only vaguely grasped. At times though, it was as if she was a child
discovering the world for the first time. “They can create a barrier which
prevents others from entering.”

“Like magic?” Tate asked
incredulous. “You gave me magic stones.” Something in her voice must have
hinted at her disbelief.

“Tate, magic exists.”

“Really? Because Trent’s experience
would suggest otherwise.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “All that
suggests is that he has poor judgment and should never be let off the ship
un-chaperoned. I don’t know what it was like where you were, but magic is real.
I’ve seen it. Furthermore, Aurelia has an academy of mages. So you’d best start
believing before you inadvertently insult one and end up an experiment.”

Tate eyed the stones doubtfully.
Magic? She’d heard the crew talk about it before. She’d even been accused a
witch. She’d thought it was just superstition, though.

“This is the part where you say ‘oh
thank you Danny, how thoughtful.’ Those are expensive, you know.”

“Ah. Right. Thank you ever so
much,” she said in a sugary sweet voice. More sincerely she said, “Really,
thank you, but if I get that weird creepy crawly feeling every time I use them,
I probably won’t get much use out of them.”

Danny gave her a strange look. She
thought it might be because she’d appeared ungrateful for the crew’s gift, but
touching the stones had been unpleasant. It felt like it’d left a fine coating
of gunk on her hand. She wiped her hand against the bedspread again.

“I’m told that once keyed to the
stones you shouldn’t feel anything when you pass through the barrier,” he said,
choosing his words carefully.

“You’re told? You haven’t used them
before?”

“I have, but I’ve never felt what
you just described.” Seeing her quizzical look, he explained, “Most people
don’t feel anything when keyed to the stones. Only people who are sensitive to
magic would.”

Tate frowned up at him, tilting her
head carefully to the side. Preposterous. Before this morning, she hadn’t even
fully believed in the possibility of magic. There was no way she could sense
it.

Seeing that he wasn’t going to be
able to convince her, he rolled his eyes and kissed her on the forehead. She
was startled when he wrapped his arms around her in a hug. Hesitant at first
she hugged him back. Her throat tightened, and so did her arms.

“Thanks, Danny, for everything,”
she whispered.

He pulled back and stepped away.
For a moment she thought she saw tears, but then the moment passed, and he
cleared his throat gruffly.

“Anyways use those from now on. At
least you’ll be able to feel safe when you sleep.”

That had been a few hours ago. Now
she wrestled with what she needed to do and what she wanted to do. The attack
had made one thing abundantly clear. Staying on the Marauder was not an option.

Her heart broke a little bit.
Leaving would be tough, but there was no other way.

Tate rolled onto her side and
watched as light slowly trickled into the world. No matter how much pain she
was in she could always count on the sun rising to bring in a new day. There
was a strange comfort in that. She sighed and threw her arm over her eyes.

The Marauder would leave this
morning.

In her mind’s eye, she could see
the midshipmen slithering up ropes and tying off sails, preparing the ship for
voyage while the rest of the crew stored cargo down in the hold. Jost would be
at his customary place on the fore deck observing his domain as a king would
his subjects. The engineers would be preparing the sun engine for use should
the ship need a quick burst of speed in case of attack.

Tate sighed and rolled onto her
back. She held her arm above her head and examined her tattoo. She traced the
body with one fingertip. It was so lifelike she could almost imagine she felt
scales under her finger pad. It really was a beautiful piece of art. It had to
have been painful to get. She’d watched others on the ship get rougher, simpler
versions of tattoos, nothing as intricate as hers. The whole business had
looked uncomfortable, being jabbed with a needle over and over to work the ink
into the skin. She couldn’t imagine sitting still for the hours it would take
to do all the intricate detailing required for her tattoo. It just wasn’t in
her personality.

As she traced the tattoo, the skin
rippled and the feet of the dragon flexed against her arm, its nails pricking
her.

She gasped and sat straight up in
bed. Either she’d drunk bad alcohol and was now hallucinating or the damn dragon
had moved.

She ran her fingers along its
flank. Nothing.

She had felt it move, though. She
could have sworn she had. It wasn’t possible. It simply wasn’t.

She dismissed the stray thought of
the dragon-ridden. Women couldn’t become one, and she had no real idea what one
was anyway. Granted, she’d heard tales in her journey about mages and magic and
things unexplainable in the normal sense of the word, but she’d never credited
them as real. She had seen the magic pushers in the markets, the ones who sold
elixirs guaranteed to win a person their true love and bring bad luck to ones
worst enemy. It wasn’t real though.

Trent had bought a love potion once
and given it to his crush of the moment. She’d slapped him so hard when he
tried to kiss her that he lost a tooth, and then she’d called for her brothers.
Three strong lads with limbs the size of trees. They’d picked Trent up and
taught him the hard way never to trust a magic man selling potions.

The dragon failed to move even when
Tate slapped and pinched at it, twisting the skin. It was as still as a
portrait.

Arg. She didn’t have time for this
nonsense. It was time to go. She’d waited until the others had slipped off to
sleep, but with dawn’s fingers already spreading across the sky she needed to
move.

Tate rolled to her feet and
gathered the few belongings she had. Her hand hesitated over the gift Danny had
given her last night. She shook her head firmly. Now wasn’t the time for
weakness or flights of fancy.

Already she could hear the others
as they stirred in the room next to her. The inn had thin walls separating each
room so it wasn’t difficult to hear what others were doing.

On catlike feet she moved to the
window. Her satchel slung over her back, she swung her legs out and wedged her
fingers in a slight dip in the wall. It was a simple task to scale the wall. It
was more difficult when she had to reach up and back to grab the eave of the
roof. Her heart was in her throat the entire time she worked on getting up and
over.

Not a moment too soon. Jost and a
couple of his men came out of the inn moments later. Tate ducked and then
chanced a peek over the edge. He was already striding off towards the harbor
and his ship.

She breathed a sigh of relief and
ran over the roof in the opposite direction, leaping easily to the next
building. The roofs were close enough to create a road over the city if one was
limber enough.

The sky was a deep blue, just one
shade lighter than the black that usually preceded dawn. The air was light and
crisp against Tate’s face and she shivered, grateful for her long sleeves.
Though fall wasn’t fully here, the temperature was significantly lower in the
early morning hours.

The city was peaceful now. The
rumble and movement of the previous afternoon was a forgotten dream on the empty
slate roofs. Even the birds were asleep in their nests.

Tate’s sky path came to an end when
the next roof proved too far to jump. She back tracked to one of the taller
buildings and climbed up its walls using man made handholds such as pipes,
bricks and ledges.

By this time the sun had peeked
over the horizon, reaching its arms out to the world.

Tate crouched on the roof and
shaded her eyes from the morning sun. She could just make out the sleek shape
of the Marauder as its crew scurried about on its decks. Her legs swung back
and forth over nothingness while she sat on the edge of the building.

Gulls screamed a greeting to the
new day as she watched the anchor being raised. Slowly, the ship turned towards
the mouth of the harbor. The sails unfurled and billowed out as they caught the
slight breeze coming off the water. Tate heaved a sigh as she watched it go,
her heart aching as one chapter in her life closed.

When the Marauder had faded from
the horizon, Tate leaned back and watched the sky.

What should she do now? It felt odd
not to have a purpose in the day. On ship, there were so many tasks that needed
to be done that you never ran out of things to do. There was always someone
telling you what needed to be done and how to do it.

She hadn’t been this rudderless
since living alone on her beach.

Sleep tugged at her. She’d gotten
little of it in the past few nights. Although she could go for long periods
with little to no sleep, even Tate had her limits. Now that the tension of her
decision had drained away with the sailing of the Marauder, her eyes slid
closed with a will of their own. She barely had the strength to find a flat
service away from the roof’s edge before she was spiraling down into her
dreams.

The sun hot on her face woke her.
The shade she’d found had long since disappeared. Her skin felt hot and her
throat dry; sweat collected under her clothes. She estimated she’d been
sleeping for no more than two hours.

Tate stretched and groaned.
Sleeping on a hard roof did not make for a comfortable rest. A pair of pigeons
cooed next to her. At least they hadn’t pooped on her or attacked her in her
sleep.

Her stomach rumbled reminding her
she hadn’t eaten breakfast. She put one hand against it and grimaced. When was
the last time she’d eaten? Last night? Before the drinking. Maybe. Throwing up
later probably hadn’t helped. With reluctance to give up her safe spot amid the
birds, Tate climbed down to the street level.

It was time to face the city.

She looked around. None of this was
familiar. Great. She was lost. She hadn’t really been paying attention to where
she was going while running across the rooftops and had no idea where she was.
Her stomach growled again. Though she’d hoped to find her way back to
yesterday’s marketplace, she’d settle for any food seller.

If she walked long enough she’d
find something to eat eventually, she told herself. Might as well get moving
and see what she could find. She started by heading back to the harbor. It was
the easiest place in the city to find because you just had to walk down hill
until you reached the docks. She hoped if she started from a place she
recognized, she’d be able to retrace some of her steps.

Distracted by hunger, she didn’t
notice that she’d picked up a shadow until it was almost too late. Her first
thought was Jost had found her. She wrinkled her nose. That couldn’t be. She’d
watched him and his crew leave on the Marauder.

Ryu was still here, though. Perhaps
he’d managed to follow her from the inn. That didn’t seem right either. He
could have attacked when she was vulnerable and sleeping.

Nobody else in the city knew her
well enough to care who she was. Jost was the only person she could think of
who could mean her harm.

A quick touch to the knives at her
side reassured her she was still armed. She rounded a corner and found herself
on the docks. Pretending to admire the view, she used peripheral vision to
monitor her shadows.

She’d picked up a few more.

Coming to the waterfront had been a
mistake. With it at her back there were only so many routes she could take to
escape, and all of them could be easily blocked. If she’d noticed them sooner
she never would have brought them here.

The decision to move to a better
location was taken out of her hands when a pair of footsteps pounded down the
dock towards her.

Tate waited until they were almost
upon her before sliding out of the way, helping their owners into the ocean
with a tiny little push. Dewdrop hit the water face first after Tate tangled
her feet with his. Bones fell in backwards when Tate planted her fist in his
chest.

She surveyed them with her hands on
her hips as they sputtered after surfacing. Of all the people she’d been
expecting, these two babies weren’t them. She felt like laughing over how
anxious she’d been when she’d noticed she was being followed.

Relief swept over her. Jost
wouldn’t send babies to tangle with her. No, he’d send hardened men capable of
killing her. She frowned. Hm, not a comforting thought after all.

The two babies thrashed about
attempting to tread water. Tate’s grim mood lightened as she watched Dewdrop go
under for a third time. Really, he was kind of pathetic.

Relenting, she knelt down grabbing
an arm and hoisting him up. He landed in a wet puddle, gasping for air. Bones
had had the sense to grab the dock and hauled himself out.

“What is it you were trying to
accomplish?” Tate asked.