Dragon Soul (40 page)

Shouty got to his feet at once, not bothering to drag me up along with him, which was fine by me since I wasn’t all that sure I could get my legs to work right now. My knees felt like they were made out of water and my blood felt like it was made out of fire, and put those two together and you got something that didn’t know what the hell it was anymore: me. He said something to Malahide, who answered in turn, and whatever magic she’d been trying to work on me and the Badger seemed to work
really
nicely on desert riders, since he nodded, then gestured toward me.

“Hello, my dear,” said Malahide, crouching down at my side while Badger stood over the both of us like a papa bear. “I’ve just explained that you were having a fit, so do feel free to continue lying on the ground foaming at the mouth.”

“You’re a little late,” I hissed through my teeth, the pain in my hand flaring up all over again with every movement Shouty made.

“Well, you can thank your stalwart protector for our timely arrival,” Malahide informed me, carefully taking my bad hand in both of hers. “I would’ve been much more comfortable with a chance to observe the situation further.”

From above us, Shouty said something that didn’t sound
entirely
rude.

“He says that you are working a magic on his prize,” Malahide informed me. “Or…that your prize is affecting the magic. I’m not entirely sure,” she confessed. “There are so many different dialects for the different nomad tribes, and I admit I only studied the main four branches…which leaves me at a loss presently, although I am able to communicate on a very basic level.”

“I don’t
want
to affect it,” I told her, swallowing against the suspicion that I was about to lose the battle waging in my stomach. Whatever feelings I’d had for that beautiful thing in Shouty’s hand, however much it’d entranced me before, I didn’t want anything to do with it now. I could barely look at it without wanting to throw up. “I don’t mean to. See what it’s doing to my hand? I’m not
doing
it on purpose. If I could control it…If I could just
control
it…!”

“I can see very well,” Malahide told me, hushing me kindly before I made an even bigger ass of myself. “But—well—perhaps the pain has dulled your instincts somewhat.” She leaned her face very close to my own, dropping her voice to a whisper. “The perfume of dragonmetal here is unmistakable. The device in your hand has led us to an unimaginable prize.”

I wished she wouldn’t say crazy things like that while my hand felt like it was about to fall off. Then it hit me all at once: It was possible that this thing the desert rider was holding in his hand could very well be my key to freedom. It was what I’d been sent questing for in the first place, set free like a rat in a maze, only now I’d found my way right to the hunk of cheese at the end. So long as no one changed the rules on me in the middle of the game, I could be a free woman.

“You sure?” I asked her.

Malahide barked something in the desert tongue. Shouty hesitated, clearly not wanting to let go of his prize, and she grabbed my wrist, holding my hand up to Shouty’s merry band like a proclamation to onlookers, a general holding up his enemy’s head so his army would feel real good after battle.

Slowly, Shouty lowered himself to the ground, kneeling next to my pathetic body and across from Malahide. He spoke a few short sentences, and Malahide replied in her effortlessly levelheaded tones, though I could tell she was having a bit more trouble with
this
language than she had with mine and Badger’s. At least there was something in this world she
wasn’t
perfect at.

Shouty, clearly satisfied with whatever she’d told him, held out his prize, but it didn’t look like he was about to let go of it, either. He clearly didn’t trust us enough to even let us hold the thing for a minute, but I guess I couldn’t really blame him.

Above our heads, Badger let out a soft
tsk
, but his sour mood seemed to have more to do with the desert rider than with our situation, or with Malahide and her method of operating.

Malahide didn’t seem to mind—about whether Badger approved or not
or
Shouty’s lack of trust. She reached over to examine what he was holding—what she’d called
dragonmetal
, though it was a cobbling of words I’d never heard before, and led me to believe something was being lost in translation—but it didn’t look like any kind of metal I’d ever seen before.

It was
almost
like a ship in a bottle. At least, that was the only comparison my fevered mind could come up with at the minute, distracted as I was by the throbbing in my hand. My problems got worse whenever it came near, and it wasn’t like I could begin to explain why. The object in question was made out of what looked like glass, with two bands around its body like the hoops around a barrel to hold it all together. When Malahide held it up to the firelight, I could see its insides—all sorts of finicky gold pieces that didn’t quite look like jewelry. I could’ve priced it based on its materials, but something told me I wouldn’t’ve come too close to the
actual
price. The insides were what was vibrating, I realized, and they weren’t shaking but dancing, very weakly, like they’d been at the dance for a long time and were starting to slow down.

By contrast, the compass in my hand whirred like crazy and I was starting to feel like I might bite through my lip if the pain didn’t get any better soon. I could be as tough as the next girl who’d grown up on the Seon border, but I wasn’t too proud to pass out in front of my enemies if it came to that.

A body knew what it could and couldn’t take. Too much more of this, and I’d go mad.

Shouty began muttering some further information, and Malahide looked up quickly, her entire attention on him while he spoke. When he’d finished, she chirped something that sounded like a question, and he shook his head, gesturing toward the capsule.

Malahide made a soft
tut
in her throat and shifted her grip on this dragonmetal thing so that Shouty would have to do the same. It was when he moved his hand that I saw it, a concave groove set into the topside of the whole contraption, like someone’d taken a loose part clean off of it. The imprint was about the size of a woman’s palm, only shaped in a perfect circle, and just looking at it gave me a bad feeling.

“Aha,” said Malahide, with triumph in her eyes.

“Uh-uh,” I said, not caring that Shouty was staring at my hand with something that was more like desire than fear, but nevertheless a pretty good approximation of both. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I don’t want anything to do with it. I’m not…I can’t get any closer, Malahide. I can’t do it.”

“Nonsense,” Malahide chided me. “Don’t be so suspicious! I was merely feeling
extremely
gratified that my hunch turned out to be correct.”

“What hunch?” I asked, not paying one bit of attention to that horseshit about not feeling suspicious. I’d stop feeling suspicious when she stopped giving me reason to. We both knew that much.

“Oh, merely my instinct that traveling with you would prove incredibly profitable,” she said, batting her eyelashes at me, then shooting the same treatment in Shouty’s direction, probably just for the hell of it. She added something in desert-speak that sounded like a solicitation if I’d ever heard one—I’d heard plenty in my time—and for the first time since I’d been taken captive, Shouty broke into a sharp smile.

Too many teeth for my taste, but Malahide didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Badger cleared his throat, and I drew in a deep breath, trying to ignore the twisting feeling I was getting in my hand, like the entire compass was set to start turning on its own axis, also known as my palm. In fact, it felt like it was about to wrench out of my skin, and as much as I’d wanted exactly that to happen countless times before, now that I was faced with the physical prospect of it, I was pretty afraid of what it’d leave behind.

“What’d you say?” I demanded.

“Just that it seems as if we might be useful to one another for longer than I’d anticipated,” Malahide said innocently. “Do you know he told me—back when I’d just convinced him to show us the thing, of course—that this little beauty is already quite notorious among the desert tribes? Quite a lot to accomplish in such a short time, isn’t it? He seems to feel it’s quite important.”

“Guess he’s not just going to hand it over, then,” I said, gritting my teeth as Shouty drew the dragonmetal back, tucking it carefully away in some hidden pocket in his robes.

“No,” said Malahide, looking forlorn. She brightened almost immediately though, the force of it nearly knocking me over. “But I
did
manage to convince him that you were an expert in such magic, which is why you carry that piece with you at all times. I told him that if you got a better look at the device, you might be able to teach him how to unleash its secrets and aid him and his sons and his grandsons and so forth in ruling the deserts for a thousand years hence.”

“Oh,” I said, tentatively flexing my hand out. The pain was still bad, but not as severe as it’d been a few moments ago. I was glad Shorty’d put the damned thing away. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t ever need to see it again, not as long as I lived. “So,” I asked shakily, trying to ease the pounding in my chest somewhat, “what happens when he realizes I’m
not
an expert, and he cuts all our throats and leaves our bodies for the vultures to pick at?”

“I do wish you used a little bit more of that imagination toward
constructive
purposes,” Malahide lamented, smoothing the hair back from my face like a sister might. “We’re going to steal it long before that becomes a problem.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.”

I didn’t—but even if I didn’t have faith in Malahide, I did have faith in her methods. Shouty stared at me, and I lifted my hand—half as a promise, half as a salute.

“Good,” Malahide said, and nodded once. “Let us get ready.”

Maybe Sarah Fleet had worked some of her old-bag magic on Thom’s camel, or maybe up until now he’d just been too damn stubborn to get
better at riding, but for whatever reason, when Kalim had told us to ride like the wind, my brother actually did.

We
all
did, of course, but it was Thom’s sudden change that took me by surprise. It was almost like the desert gods had decided to stop punishing him for bringing a piss-pants like Bless over their borders, which would’ve gotten my goat like nothing else if it’d been me.

I’d’ve flown back to Kalim’s camp if I could, especially now that we had only half the night left for riding. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep through anything until we were heading after this enemy of his who had the dragonsoul in his possession—but if I’d spoken to Thom about it, I knew what he’d say.
Better to rest and get ready
or
Don’t be too hasty
or
Do these petunias go with my tulips or not
, and I didn’t have the time or the energy to consider any of that.

Except when I looked over my shoulder at him his face was about as determined as I felt—and it wasn’t the same angry determination you could usually pick out on him, trying his best to keep his legs tight around the saddle and not get dislodged by the camel’s hump. I’d have to ask him sometime if he’d
ever
rode a woman before—because if so, and she’d said she was satisfied at the end of it, then I could tell already by his technique that it was an outright lie, and he needed more pointers than Kalim
or
I could ever give him.

Guess he didn’t have much time, what with all that studying, to get some real, hands-on experience.

“I’m fine,” he called up to me breathlessly, the words jostled with the camel’s ungainly ride. “Ride…like the wind…Kalim said…riding very fast…I’ll manage!”

“Save your breath,” I snapped back at him, like I would’ve told my girl if she started chatting during a fight, and I whipped my mount harder to catch up with Kalim.

At least we were covering a lot more ground. I’d refrain from being the pussy who kept asking “Are we there yet”—and uncharacteristically Thom hadn’t volunteered to be the pussy, either—so it was anybody’s guess. ’Cept for Kalim, who probably knew already when we’d meet up with his men.

I’d never staged some kind of combative strategy on ground level before, but there was a first time for everything. Maybe I’d turn out to be good at it. I could live in the desert—maybe—if it didn’t mean I’d have to live with Thom’s whining the whole time.

And, I guessed, I was kind of saddled with him now. I didn’t trust him to be able to take care of himself, not while he was making friends with people like
Geoffrey Fucking Bighead Bless
. That just went to show you how poor Thom’s decision-making actually was. He needed somebody like me, who could see right through people and all their horseshit and tell him when to say yes and when to say no.

At least until he learned how to say it himself.

I was filling my head with all kinds of thoughts about Thom because I couldn’t let myself think about my girl anymore, and I didn’t know any word puzzles or the things Thom explained that he used to help him get to bed, like listing ancient methods of agricultural farming from one hundred years ago until the present. Just the thought of doing that put me to sleep, so I guessed it was a good way to go about things, but describing it wasn’t doing him any real favors.

Don’t know what our mother’d done while she was carrying him, but
that
hadn’t done him any real favors, either.

The problem with riding like this was that it didn’t require any thinking. It was mindless, just staring at the camel’s ass in front of you and making sure you didn’t fall asleep and fall off your ride. And you’d be okay, riding until the sun rose, which eventually it did, all pale and blushing, with the dunes in front of us peeking out like a lady’s behind.

“You know what that looks like?” I told Thom, when Kalim slowed his pace.

“I think I have some idea, yes,” Thom replied. He looked tired but he looked like he wasn’t gonna let that bother him, either, and I was pretty grateful he’d finally decided to grow a pair. And all it took was one fast slap between the eyes by Sarah Fleet’s hand, bastion bless the woman. She was just like Havemercy in that respect too—’cause I’d always thought, kinda privately, that a few more flights with Have and Thom’d be fixed like new, or at least like somebody who could be of use to the world instead of a beauty mark on a high-end whore’s rear end.