War of the Princes 02: Dragoon (16 page)

The subject was
clear. The painting featured a male Dragoon, sitting astride a fearsome black warhorse, rearing up on its hind legs, over a field that bleakly insinuated mud. The Dragoon was unarmed. Splashes of white paint, matching the floor of the hall, unfurled behind the rider, ensuring that he and his horse would draw the eye of anyone in the room. Despite its grand scale, the painting was blotted with broad strokes, each perfectly implying the depth of the subject matter, without crowding the shapes with excessive detail. It must have been painted quickly. Drips slid down from the horse’s nose, neck and tail.

Two
features were more striking than any other, a great red 'X' spattered on the Dragoon’s head, blocking his face entirely, and a script stretched across the bottom that read, “...no one's slave.” Other words may have joined the phrase, but the rest of the sentence was illegible. Judging by the messy smears left behind, someone had begun scrubbing them away in a hurry. I had a feeling that by tomorrow, nothing would be left of the painting.

As I looked up at it,
I decided the style was undeniably familiar.

“
Well,” Dylan said, gaping at it while a crowd of Dragoons stopped to stare. “I can see why they covered it up.”

Chapter 28:
An Awakening

“So much for dinner,” Dylan said flippantly.

Amidst the
bedlam that followed the explosion somewhere in the installment, we slipped down a hall pointed in the direction of the Silver Palace.

I felt it strongly, the knowledge that I was on the right path to find
Paperglass. I hoped she liked her code name when I found her, because I sure wasn't going to be calling her 'mom.' Still, I wanted to see her, to speak with her. She must have had her reasons for abandoning my dad and me. In rescuing her, she'd finally see my value. Maybe she'd even apologize.

With Dylan beside me, and the brooch secured to my chest, no
Dragoon or Commander stopped us. They had larger problems on their hands than a wandering lord and Historian. Dylan's ability to look unimpressed made us seem like we took similar tours of besieged fortresses on a regular basis.

“
...sabotage,” I heard a Dragoon say.

“
...inner city rebels or army defectors,” someone else said.

“
Fires are spreading to sleeping quarters.”

“
Varion's spies have broken in, I know it.”

“
...I'd love to drain the bastards that did this.”

“
Move faster! Go!”

A group pushed past us, but one
Dragoon broke off from the rest, gripping us each by the shoulders and shoving us into a dimly lit storage room. The door clicked behind us, and we whirled around to see Rune removing his helm.

“
Oh,” I let out an airy bark of laughter. “You scared me for a second there.”

“
You've got to be joking!” Dylan cried out in outrage. “Aren't you dead yet, Thayer?”

“
Not yet,” Rune said darkly, the scar on his face illuminated by the dull flickering bulb hanging off center in the room.

“
If you give up her identity, Dragoon, I'll see you put down!” Dylan threatened in a biting tone.

Rune held his palms out and tilted his head down, obligingly.
“You're welcome to try,” he answered, blue eyes shining.

“
Calm down. Both of you!” I interrupted. “We all have plenty to lose if anyone finds us out, and if I have one more reason to be stressed I'm going to have a heart attack.”

Dylan spun on me.
“What do you think you're doing?”

“
He's helping us,” I told him.

“
You're employing the assistance of a half-witted thug who's spent his life smashing things to death? Have you forgotten? He's been brainwashed to kill people who do
exactly
what we're doing now. You can't honestly tell me that you trust...”

I trust him more than I trust you.

“I do, so get used to it,” I said with more diplomacy than I wanted to use.

Dylan was furious.
Redness had crept up his neck. “This tired infatuation of yours makes me sick. Really, Katelyn, it's pathetic.” He paced a moment and I wondered if he'd leave. “Well, puppet, what have you got for us? Or are your strings stretched too far just standing here?”

The look I gave Rune
read,
“Please don't kill him.”

“
If you've finished wasting our time,” Rune growled, sliding his gaze over to me. “I went looking for prisoners today.”

“
Did you find her?” I asked hopefully, leaning up on my toes.

“
No,” Rune replied.

Dylan scoffed.
“Worthless.”

“
But I found something else. Something just as important, if not more.”

What could be more important than my mother and the protection of Haven's location?

“Let me guess! Let me guess. Your virginity,” Dylan sniped. “Oh, wait. You've
certainly
never lost that.”

I flushed.
“Dylan!” My voice cracked like a whip. He was staring Rune down with a combination of hatred and arrogance, wound tightly as a trip wire.

Rune loomed like a dark mountain.
“Tell me, little Axton, how was the view from your prison cell?”

A string of
expletives flew from Dylan and I had to shove my shoulder into his chest to stop him from charging Rune. Skipping backwards between them, I pulled a string of lightning between my hands and snapped it. The weak light bulb buzzed and brightened in response.

“
That's enough!” I snarled.

“
Give me a reason not to cut you down,” Rune growled. His sword was in his hands.

“
Ruby!” I reminded him.

“
Law,” Dylan answered, almost laughing. He paced away, rolling his shoulders. The tension in the room crumbled. “Only for you,
my dear
.” The last two words were rich with malice.

“
Please put that away,” I asked Rune calmly.

In a smooth motion, the sword was sheathed on his belt. I pressed my palms together and the electricity was gone. Instinctively, I gave them a minute to breathe.
“Rune? What did you find?”

“
It better be good,” Dylan grumbled.

He exhaled through his nose, and his eyes softened as they found me.
“I'll show you.”

*   *   *

The place Rune brought us to was unlike anything I'd imagined. It was a storehouse, built into the side of the installment. Even at half the size of the great hall, it was big. Big and dark, with the kind of stagnant, hollow air that eats words.

We had to create our own light, and for Rune
and I, it was a simple matter. A lick of blue flame shot up from his palm, and a ball of white energy circulated in mine.

“
Where'd you learn to do that?” Rune asked appraisingly.

“
I took what you taught me and started practicing shapes,” I told him, grateful that I didn't mess up this time. Focusing the energy into a particular pattern didn't always work out.

“
Good for you,” Dylan said, sour. “But we should turn around. I need a light.”

“
There's no time,” Rune said.

“
Yes, and I feel so comfortable knowing that you are responsible for my ability to see. Thank you, but I'd rather not fall into a hole in the floor and die.”

“
Wait,” I said, and bit my lip in concentration. “I have an idea. Hold out your hand.”

He did. Carefully, I used a finger to trace a crescent with an unbalanced arrow pointing to its center in his palm. A lazy Shadow Chaser crawled from the gathered darkness of his hand. Like a pudgy salamander, it looked up at us with perfectly round, white eyes.

“The Shadow Chaser won't shock you. He wants all of it for himself,” I assured him, and eased a small flick of electricity onto the inky animal's back. With a brilliant flash, the Shadow Chaser let the energy move over the top half of his body, shaping it to decorate him in thorny spines and frills. Twisting its tail, it burped contentedly.

Dylan frowned at his hand.
“I feel stupid using a creature as a lantern.”

Rune seemed amused, but refrained from commenting. I was glad. There were only so many fights I could break up.

“It works, doesn't it?” I said, turning my attention to our surroundings.

Our combined lights crawled across the broad room and up the walls... if that's what they were. Copper pipes, dull and rusty,
climbed the sides of the rooms from floor to rafters. There wasn't a single space between them, not so much as a window. The floor was damp metal grating that dripped moisture into fathomless darkness. Something was disgusting about the place, like we'd been swallowed by a great beast… a mechanical one.

Piles of metal scraps, parts and tools were crowding the floor and
the few tabletops in the room. Something even more curious lay ahead.

Rune strode
deeper into the warehouse. “I heard a few rumors about this place and had to trade a couple shifts to check it out. Normally it’s guarded.
Heavily.
”

“
We shouldn't have come here,” Dylan said, wary.

“
What
is
this?” I asked, not understanding anything I was seeing.

A massive contraption that looked
to be one-third automobile, one-third house, and one-third insect, was propped up by posts, partially on its side. I'd seen an eagle eating a rabbit once. This thing reminded me of the rabbit, with tubes and wires pouring from its underside like guts from a torn belly.

“
Is this...” Dylan began to say, seeming to lose his breath. He was terrified, the Shadow Chaser lighting up his haunted face. “It can't be.”

“
It is,” Rune confirmed soberly. They weren't concerned about each other anymore. A greater foe had arisen in the form of huge, ugly broken down car thing. “The Monarch.”

“
Monarch, like, a ruler or a butterfly? Why are you guys so freaked out? It's not like its alive,” I said, trying to smother the fact that they were scaring the pants off me.

They both looked at me like I'd crossed some sacred taboo. I was clearly missing something. In a show of bravery, I hefted my skirt with one hand and strolled over to the thing to get a closer look. Twelve feet above me, around the middle of the thing, there were wide slots of exposed black coils, and short steel platforms, curving out like scales.

“Wait,” Rune hissed after me.

I'd already stepped around to the side that tilted closer to the ground. The shadows fled from my light, and I screamed.

A corpse hung from a tangle of coils that looked like worms in black mud. It was a man withered, but not rotten. There wasn't even a smell. Every bit of him was sickly grey, his flesh, his limp hair, just like Commander Fallux had looked when I saw him drained, but this was worse, much worse. His bones were visible beneath his skin like silverware beneath a thin napkin. That, and his eyes were gone, shriveled away.

In tests with regular subjects, the eyes are the first to dry up.
It was something that Commander Stakes had said to me as he insisted that draining and killing me would be a mercy. He said dying like this would be slow, take a year. Now, I knew he'd lied about some things to frighten me... if only the rest of this wasn't real.

I skittered backwa
rds until I hit Rune. He grabbed me gently by the shoulder, and tried to turn me away.

“
N-no, no,” I muttered, covering my eyes with my one free hand. I was fighting for the courage to look at the body again, and I was shaking, hard. I broke away from Rune. “W-wait. Wait. I need to see.”

Seizing control of my fears and emotions, I pulled myself together
and looked at the dead man.

His clothes drooped from his body, far too large now, and a single brown boot was hitched feebly on the metal scale. Something about that struck me as particularly heart breaking
, like he'd been struggling to the last moment.

I wondered if I'd recognize a person so thoroughly sapped, even if I did know them. He wasn't familiar to me, not in any way, but his clothes were
, every piece. The shirt and pants were from Boiler Market in Pinebrook, they even had the wavy logo embroidered on the hem. The boots were made by hand, a product of old Margaret Mayer on Pear Street in Rivermarch.

And the jacket.

I saw it with a vivid flash of memory, an identical twin to the blue coat with polished silver buttons that Officer Loring had worn when she'd tried to recruit me.

“
He's from Haven,” I said, feeling empty. I'd gone on this crusade on the word of a stranger and a suicidal maniac. I'd done all of it for a mother who never loved me, and for a country I loved more than myself. But until that moment, there was no actual proof beyond the Pull, that what I was chasing was real. I wasn't afraid anymore, I was sad. Who was this man? It hardly mattered, he was one of my own, and I mourned him.

I forgot about the ball of lightning in my hand and wiped the wetness from my cheeks. Enlivened by a conducting element, the tendrils of electricity slipped over my face like a hundred baby snakes. I noticed what I'd done and wiped my eyes with the back of my other hand.

“Sorry,” I said to Rune who was watching me. “It's just so real now.”

“
There's nothing to be sorry for,” his tone was soft and reassuring.

I took a deep,
shuddering breath. “Before... Stakes told me that a war machine would use us like batteries, drain all of the liquid from our bodies. He said it would happen slow, and take a year to kill us. I don't think there's any way this man was here for a year.”