Dragon Thief (23 page)

Grand-shell-mother,
X’atior called in telepathic Dragonish,
we have a situation. Attend.

I burned a few things out here,
said Aranya.

Never was Dragon fire better employed.
Returning to Island Standard, X’atior said to Riika, “Just a moment while my ancestor finishes putting out a few fires. Tazithiel and I are relatives, see? I’m the seventh generation descendant of a woman who looks young enough to be my daughter. Keeping the Academy’s leadership tradition alive, I am also a Brown Dragon Shapeshifter and you, young lady, should’ve come to us Dragons with this information.”

“You Dragons seem to have problems with selective amounts of ear wax,” said Riika.

Kal sucked in his breath, but Tazi added, “At least, my mother has been making herself utterly unapproachable. She’s a nuisance.”

“She’s passionate about her family,” X’atior blazed.

“That I am,” said Aranya, re-entering the office. Her formal slippers smoked upon X’atior’s extremely expensive, tan pile carpet. “And I’m fiercely protective of my shell-daughter.”

Kal fielded her comment with a cool, “You don’t say.”

The Indigo Dragoness was less cool. “You can just grit your fangs and put up, mother, because I am not letting that man go! If you envisage any kind of relationship with me–honestly! Can we please just interview Riika? And stop complicating her life with stupid family shenanigans?”

Riika jutted out her chin in a way that Kal knew meant trouble. She stormed, “Well, I’m fierce and protective too! And I have to tolerate you adults and your insane games! While my dad’s off chasing the woman he loves by burgling an Academy stuffed full of supposedly friendly Dragons, noble defenders of the free Islands and all that windroc tripe, I’m having to stalk Dragon Riders with the power of
Ernulla-kul-Exarkin!
”

Aranya was in front of Riika in a flash, gripping the chair’s armrests so hard, the wood groaned in protest. “Say that again?”

In terse sentences, the Pygmy girl retold her story for the third time. Kal found the process fascinating, for the Human mind usually modified, misremembered and interpreted details, but Riika’s recall was word-for-word what it had been before.

Aranya and X’atior shared grave glances. “I assure you, we will act on this information,” said the Queen. “Riika, I thank you for your service to the Dragonkind and to every soul present in this Academy. You do us honour.”

Kal nodded slowly. Despite his antipathy, he found Aranya had awesome presence and true majesty when she chose to exhibit it. When had she become so bitter? So … desperate?

Riika bowed. “Thank you, o Queen.”

The Master narrowed his eyes. “So, back to our interview. Finally. Anything else I should know about you, Riika? A guild affiliation which may thwart entry to the Academy, perhaps?”

“What guild?” Aranya demanded.

“The Guild of Assassins,” said Riika, in a small voice.

“What the hells–”

“Grandmother!” X’atior silenced the Queen. “This is my interview and my student. I’ll thank you to let me do my job.”

Riika’s jaw worked. “I’m a retired member of the Guild of Assassins. I have the brand to prove it.”

There was a silence of speechless revulsion. Although Master X’atior and Queen Aranya schooled their expressions with identical skill, the girl had to feel like a snake in clothing.

Kal reached out to squeeze her shoulder gently. “She does not practise any more, but the Guild’s long shadow stretches over the Islands of her life.”

“No, no,” said Riika. “I have not killed anyone since … oh no.” Tremors shook her body, lending her appearance an aspect which combined the fragility of a fresh bud with whetted steel. “Since five days ago. But I won’t kill any students, I promise, Master. Dad has been very hard on me. Laid down the law. I’m really trying to reform myself. I
promise
.”

Aranya’s snort conveyed what she thought of Kal’s relationship with the law.

“Master, what you need to know is that even if you give me a chance, I’m unlikely to survive my time here at the Academy. The Guild ensures compliance with a long-acting poison. There’s no antidote.”

“
Yi’tx’txi’taxnayt’x?
” asked Aranya.

“Aye.”

“Oh, Riika!” The Queen stooped low, her long hair flowing over them both like a multi-hued waterfall. “You speak of death so … so … let me touch you. Please.”

“Don’t you touch our Riika!” snapped Tazithiel.

“You’d withhold healing?”

“I’d withhold your interference in our family! We’ve enough troubles already, thanks to you!”

Aranya raised a perfect eyebrow at Tazi. “You know my terms, shell-daughter.”

“Terms?” Kal inquired.

Bitterly, Tazithiel said, “In exchange for annulling the death-warrant on your life, Kal, I have to agree to let her train me.”

“She’s bargaining with my life?”

Her face set like stone, the Immadian Queen said, “I’m used to getting what I want, Kal. You could try a grain of honesty. Tell me, what species of two-legged snake has ensnared my daughter with his oh-so-charming ways?”

Before he could react, Tazi sprang out of her seat, fists clenched, her Dragoness suddenly looming malevolent in the aether, although none of the others appeared to notice. “You’re the most hateful mother ever! How did you manage to raise a single hatchling?”

“We accept your terms,” said Kal, desperate to broker peace. That much fire? Tazi was on the edge … “Not for the sake of my life, but for hers.”

Aranya’s hand-gesture brushed him off.

“Enough!” With a scream, Tazithiel sprang at her mother’s throat.

Aranya and Tazithiel tumbled over the desk and through a low stone planter just beyond it.
Boom!
The seventy-foot Indigo Dragoness materialised with a concussion of displaced air, followed a fraction of a second later by the gigantic Amethyst Dragoness.
Keraaaack!
The crysglass panels shattered as Aranya’s torso, hindquarters and tail blasted through the windows onto the wide balcony beyond, spraying shards of glass hundreds of feet across the caldera. The two Dragonesses ripped into each other with the ferocity of feral beasts, snapping and snarling in a fury Kal could only imagine existed between mortal enemies–or mother and daughter. X’atior threw himself aside as Tazi’s tail lashed his desk into a polished pile of kindling. A scything paw swatted Kal against the office wall behind him. Wheezing, he clutched his chest.

Aranya, five times larger than Tazithiel, nonetheless streamed blood from a bite on her muzzle. She drove the smaller Dragoness inside the office with a series of stunning blows of her paws, before flipping her onto her back. Lightning blinded everyone, but somehow the bolt missed and expired in the open air. The Amethyst Dragoness’ huge paws forced Tazithiel’s head backward, exerting her monstrous strength to expose her shell-daughter’s vulnerable neck. Fangs flashed …

“Stop!”

Kal had not seen her move, but suddenly Riika was there, so much in the thick of the fight that she stood in the ‘V’ of Aranya’s jaw as it gaped against Tazithiel’s neck, four feet and eight inches of taut muscle straining to prevent the largest Dragoness in existence from executing a killing bite. For a startling sliver of time, it appeared that a Pygmy girl held a hundred tonnes of Dragonflesh apart by the sheer strength of her tiny arms.

Mother and daughter froze, panting. Kal decided the word ‘freeze’ was ridiculous when applied to Dragons, being nothing less than ambulatory volcanoes.

Gripping one of Aranya’s fangs in her hands and kicking Tazithiel in the eye with one small foot, Riika shouted, “Now will you two just hold off expressing your lethal love for each other, long enough to listen? This is my interview! Mine! Tazi, remove your talons from your mother’s ear canals! Aranya, you may kiss her neck, but we do not bite in this family, understood?”

“She attacked me,” Aranya grumbled, but relaxed her jaw.

“Honestly, you Shapeshifters! Do you resolve all disputes with claw and fang?” Riika aimed a madcap grin at Master X’atior. “Apparently, I also possess skills in Dragon-wrangling. Can we add that to my application?”

GGRRRAAARRGGGH!

Amethyst and Indigo roared identically. But Aranya plucked Riika away from her jaw in a nick of time as she reduced X’atior’s carpet to a smouldering ruin, while Tazithiel’s effort incinerated the Master’s priceless collection of botanical marvels from around the Island-World. Riika was far from cowed; Kal was in awe. Great Islands, what had he set off now? Give her a chance? That pocket Dragoness had the very Empress of Dragons by the scruff of her spine spikes!

“How’s about I set the terms?” Riika suggested, diamond-hard of expression and tone. Of course, she did not wait for even the most perfunctory of nods from Kal and X’atior. “I need my dad alive, Aranya. So you will annul that ridiculous warrant. He has already returned your scale–”

“My grandmother’s scale–that’s Istariela, the Star Dragoness,” Aranya put in.

“Shut the fumarole, lizard-breath!” The Amethyst Dragoness’ paw trembled as though she fought an urge to crush the half-Pygmy teenager as if she were a mosquito, but Riika stormed on, “Secondly, you will retract that preposterous reward. In exchange, Kal, you will kindly fund the refurbishment of our roost.”

“Aye? I agree.”

“To the tune of ten thousand gold drals.”

“
What?
Rip my heart out and–”

“Shut the trap, Dad. With respect, you have the means. And you told me the Academy needs the money.”

“You looked into my books?” yelped X’atior.

Aranya rasped, “He’s
how
rich? That’s more than the entire Kingdom of Immadia–”

Kal scowled up a thunderstorm. “With due respect, Master X’atior, you run this place like a free Sylakian brothel. You’re an academic, not a businessman. And you put my daughter down, Dragoness. I don’t like her dangling up there. I refuse to pay up without bringing in some real–”

“Details, details,” sniffed the irrepressible Pygmy girl, turning the full power of her dubious charms on Tazithiel. “You, Indigo-eyes, will cease your sulking and go suck on the big Dragoness’ brains until they hurt. We need to find a way to strap Endurion and his Rider to a handy Island and toss them into the Cloudlands.”

Had her shell-mother’s burning eye not been fixed upon her, Kal suspected his Shapeshifter Dragoness might just have pruned a few of Riika’s toes for her insults. As it was, she growled with simmering menace, “Very well, little one.”

“Is she always like this?” Master X’atior complained, evidently having second thoughts about his prospective student.

“Short life. Big plans,” said Riika. “Master, I’ve made all the arrangements. Now, I would like my chance. What say you?”

Kal put in, “Right now, I strongly advise everyone to run for the hills.”

To his surprise, Master X’atior bowed deeply to Riika, with multiple Fra’aniorian hand-twirls of the highest respect. “We would be honoured to knock a few rough edges off a juvenile Dragon-wrangler, student Riika. Welcome to Dragon Rider Academy.”

N
othing, of Course,
was straightforward about inserting a former assassin into a school system. Truth be told, Kal remained terrified. But with Riika skipping down the path from their roost and Tazithiel smiling and radiant upon his arm, he could not exactly complain. Not officially, anyhow. He glared daggers at Riika’s choice of outfit for her testing with the Masters. Those trousers! Heavens, he was tempted to take his own daggers to the material just to stop her from wearing them. That body armour! Indecent. That walk! So full of spunk, he wanted to run down the mountain ahead of her, whooping and hollering with gladness.

Today was Riika’s testing with the Weapons Masters, intended to assess her skills and place her in the correct training groups.

Kal stretched his long legs to catch up. “Now, Riika, no lethal techniques, alright? Give your Masters due respect, don’t just wade in there with your typical brash aggression. They might surprise you.”

She said, “They might, Dad. And if they do, they’ll have my respect.”

“Those are your blunted training blades?”

“Sized, checked and balanced by the Head Armourer himself–honestly, you were there. I have my arrows, throwing knives and a lightweight hammer for pint-sized parakeets, according to that Armourer–where did you say he was from?”

“Remoy,” said Kal.

“He has three wives and fourteen children,” said Riika.

Kal favoured this with a grunt. One Shapeshifter Dragoness was quite enough trouble for any man, he fancied.

They walked across the huge field to a sandy training ring where generations of students had been beaten bloody by their Masters and Journeymen, moulding them into that elite fighting force called the Dragon Riders of Jeradia. Kal checked surreptitiously for bleached bones and bloodstains. Bah. All clean. But here came Master X’atior himself, and Aranya approached in the company of a Jeradian who could only be the Master of Hammers, because he had to be eight feet tall if he was an inch, and was built like a cross between a muscular blacksmith and a hulking Red Dragon. Great Islands, he’d chew Riika up for breakfast!

Taking place on a rest day from the school’s usual programme, Riika’s testing had drawn a crowd, ranging from Dragon Riders clad in black leather flying jackets, idling about on the sunny terraces, to a contingent of kitchen staff who had never obeyed Aranya’s orders. The fulsome Jeradian twins were present, tossing their blonde locks about and eyeing up the Dragon Riders as though picking the tastiest steaks from a rack of meat. They waved at Riika, hollering, “Kick those rajals in the teeth, girl! Make us proud!”

Tazi took his arm again. “I’m determined to be cheerful today. No fighting with my mother. She’s actually a brilliant teacher, Kal.”

“Hence the bruises?”

“I love it when you get all protective of your Dragoness.” Tazi swung him into a brief but passionate kiss, at least partly aimed at Aranya, Kal felt, but he refused to let an audience stop him from doing what he did best. Between Kal’s lips, the Shapeshifter growled, “Riika, no killing the Masters, alright?”

Riika stuck out her tongue. “Lighten up.”

Kal cast his eye over the warriors. Muscles popped, leather squeaked, armour gleamed and heavens above, whatever was the Mistress of Knives not wearing? Mmm, he could picture Tazi in that scanty wisp of Helyon silk … “Ouch!”

“Eyeballs back in their sockets before I hack them off their stalks,” murmured the Dragoness, all sweetness and fire.

“Just picturing you in silken undress,” Kal confessed, not entirely truthfully.

Obsidian sand glinted against a background of low terraces, then he saw verdant fields and beyond, the rambling brick buildings of the Academy climbing the dark volcanic cliffs for at least three-quarters of a mile of vertical height, yet still a mile and a quarter of rock separated the buildings from the volcanic rim outlined like a jawbone packed with jagged teeth against the cloudless welkin. Such would be the Rim-Wall Mountains, Kal imagined, only they soared thirty-five times higher, according to the legends. His Indigo had not flown since Endurion had opened her belly. How would they ever hope to scale those peaks?

The crowd’s murmuring quietened as a dozen-strong Dragonwing emerged from the slim roost-cone and winged across the open field at a terrific speed, led by Jisellia upon her Jalfyrion.
Hot oil baths,
Tazithiel explained as Kal openly wondered at their gleaming splendour. He recognised many of the group they had encountered at the edge of the Island-Desert, hunting drakes. Supporters? He certainly hoped so!

Master X’atior, in Human guise, paused mid-gesture to watch the incoming Dragons. “The Dragonkind honour you, Riika.”

She gulped visibly and tightened her razor-ribbons holding tumbling black curls away from her face and eyes. Next to the Master, she seemed but a slim reed. Her armour consisted of forearm guards that left the arm bare from elbow to shoulder, Western Isles upper-body armour sized for a child, and greaves of an unfamiliar design. Two mid-length training swords crossed in a double-sheath upon her back. A quintet of throwing knives adorned the belt of her tight, flexible trousers. Kal knew she kept knives concealed in her armour–none of them poisoned, he hoped. He had forgotten to check.

As the Dragons back-winged to land nearby, raising a brief storm of dust, Tazi pulled him up to a seat. “Come on. You’re more nervous than she is.”

As if the crowd were not enough, now they had a dozen Dragons blocking out the light! Yet, Riika could be an odd combination of introvert and crowd-pleaser, as though public life were a skin she donned for chosen occasions.

Master X’atior introduced the opening combat, swords with Master Haxu, a dapper Eastern nobleman who moved like a hunting rajal and was dressed entirely in black silk. He wielded a traditional Eastern Archipelago
kuhiko
sword, a three-foot, slightly curved blade with a tang suitable for either a single or double-handed grip. A Kaolili round shield adorned his left forearm, a weapon in its own right with sharpened edges–hopefully, a blunted training version.

Great Islands! Master Haxu barely waited for X’atior’s brief speech to end before launching himself across the arena in an all-out assault! The crowd gasped. Kal gripped the edge of his terrace seat as Riika whispered away from the attack. The Dragons towering above the seated Humans stopped their chatting and preening to watch with blazing orange eyes, evidently engrossed in the clash and flow of battle. A minute of furious energy later, Haxu had yet to touch the girl, making the battle an oddly silent affair, just hisses of concentrated breath and the patter of feet against hard-packed sand. Then, touch her he did. Sweeping forth like a tide of dark oil, Master Haxu executed a blindingly fast series of blows that ended with Riika on the ground, clutching her ankle.

“First blood to Master Haxu,” intoned X’atior.

“Riika, stop toying with him and fight!” yelled Aranya.

Everyone stared. Several of the Dragons snorted with laughter. A student toying with a Master of Swords? The rose-cheeked Queen vaulting off of her seat? Aranya sat down with a puff of dust.

Metal scraped against sword-sheaths. Riika crossed her swords in front of her heart and bowed to the Master. She changed, making Kal blink in surprise. There was that curious Pygmy sprung-steel quality that infused her physique, as though her muscle was somehow more Dragon than Human, her core strength incomparable in the Island-World. Pygmy? Or Riika? She stalked the Master as if she had become a sylvan huntress, at once beguiling and deadly, and from the way the Master tensed, Kal knew he sensed the transformation in his opponent.

Silence gripped the arena. Tazithiel gripped his arm so hard, she stopped the blood.

Watch this,
said Kal.

With a sharp scream, Riika fell upon the Master and mauled him. Simply mauled him. All Kal could see was flying ribbons, the brown blur of her arms somehow carried above the iron foundation of her stance, and Haxu’s incredulous grimace as the shield went spinning one way and his sword another. The crossed blades touched either side of his neck, the ‘killing’ scissors-blow at once serenely beautiful and pulled enough to only bruise the skin, and not break his vertebrae.

Master Haxu wrung his fingers, and then pulled himself into a painful-looking formal bow. “Seventeen bloods to the student. She is a master.”

He limped off the sand to the sound of cheering, finger-clicking and approving rumbles from the Dragons.

Schooling the disbelief from his expression, X’atior announced, “Jandubior, Master of Hammers!”

Beside him, Tazithiel caught her breath. “Oh, my … I can’t watch this one.”

Jandubior was a true Jeradian giant. Hefting his war-hammer as if it were a straw or toy, the eight-foot giant took his massive stance upon the arena floor. He did not lumber. His ease of movement was like a mountain dancing, at once inexorable and unexpected. Kal clenched his jaw. Riika barely measured up to the giant’s belt-buckle!

No mind, for the half-Pygmy was already in motion and Kal could not pause even to blink. They clashed in a blur.
Crack!
Riika spun twenty feet backward and slammed down on her face, eating sand. The Master switched his hammer to his left hand, cradling his right. Broken fingers? Roaring rajals, had he kneed her in the chest? Or chin? And how had she struck his hand? Kal had not even seen the blow.

Riika picked herself up groggily, spitting blood. Split lip–Kal knew exactly how she felt. But there was more blood than there should have been. Then, to the accompaniment of swelling roars from the Dragons, the former assassin rounded on Master Jandubior. She shot across the sand as though launched from a war catapult. As his front foot planted forward, anchoring a scything blow that promised to launch her to the next Island, Riika leaped to meet him. Kal, half-rising from his seat, felt Tazithiel crush his fingers in anticipation. He saw what she perceived. A bird’s peck of a footstep upon the whirling hammer-head, then a toe touched down upon the haft. Riika’s momentum carried her onto Jandubior’s massive thigh, the flexion of her legs bringing her into perfect balance despite the force of her impact. As his torso twisted, the girl stutter-stepped up his lower back to his shoulders with the deftness of a Pygmy warrior scaling a vine-covered tree, and the suppleness of an acrobat. Poised atop his lumpen shoulders as the Master completed his stroke and began to recover his balance, the girl whirled, raising her dinky war-hammer until it winked in the suns-light.

Riika rapped the giant’s skull with the skill and power of a tent-maker driving home a stake.
Ding!
The hammer pealed a bell-like note.

Jandubior’s eyes rolled up. He toppled like a felled tree.

The artistry of her conquest left the audience stunned. Riika rode the giant into the dirt. She began to strike a victorious-hunter pose upon his back before evidently thinking the better of a prideful display. She offered the Master her hand. He was clearly in no shape to accept it. Master X’atior gestured for the stretcher-bearers to move the fallen Master.

Pandemonium! Dragons bugled and roared at the skies, none louder than Jalfyrion. The Humans shouted excitedly, ‘Did you see that?’ ‘She just … wow!’ ‘I wouldn’t want to wake with his headache.’

Meantime, X’atior had four students heaving an archery target into the training arena. Riika, flushed and chattering happily, returned to Kal and Tazithiel to retrieve her Pygmy bow and a quiver of arrows.

“That was inspirational,” said Kal.

“You were awesome,” Tazi agreed. She received a quick nod of appreciation from Riika.

A few yards away, Aranya clapped her knees slowly, eyes bright with unshed tears. Kal eyed her curiously. What was it about the half-Pygmy warrior that moved the Empress of Dragons so?

“Ready!” called Master X’atior.

Observing his ward closely, Kal saw her fingers select a particular arrow from the quiver.

“Oh no,” he gasped, torn between horror and hilarity. Watching Riika was akin to watching an avalanche sweeping down an Island cliff. Inevitable destruction. Irresistible theatre.

Riika whirled, drew and fired in one fluid motion.

Forty paces away, the target exploded in a fountain of wood, straw and canvas.
KABOOM!

“Dragon’s eye,” crowed Riika, surveying the obliteration with evident zest.

“You! What the volcanic hells was that?” Master X’atior had lost the entire Island now. His Dragon’s jaw, wavering behind him, sagged rather appropriately to his knees.

“I’m sure my dad won’t mind paying for a new target,” said the half-Pygmy. “That was an exploding arrow. My invention.”

X’atior eyed the scroll in his hand, palpably ignoring Aranya, who was clutching her stomach as she cried with laughter on the steps nearby. “Ahem. That’ll be a pass on the archery. Zaethiell, Mistress of Knives! Teach this insolent scholar a lesson, would you?”

The beautiful woman–a Helyon Islander, Kal thought–practically poured from her seat onto the arena floor. No, she had Fra’aniorian ears! Watching her familiar style as she set herself, Kal realised that she must be one of the rare, famous warriors from Ya’arriol Island, where he too had spent two years under magical lock and key. Ya’arriol Islanders were said to be the greatest hand-to-hand fighters north of the Rift. Kal had never beaten one of the monks in a fair fight, and he was no slouch in the martial arts. This woman moved as though she owned the arena’s very air.