Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (51 page)

“And he was meeting a dragon?”
 

“Yeah,” Alek said, dropping his head into his hands. “He kept it a secret for more than a year.”

He fell silent after that, and Oriole knew from the set of his shoulders he was trying not to cry. She went to sit next to him, leaning against his side and wrapping an arm around his waist. “It wasn't your fault, brother,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Alek scrubbed at his face with both hands before letting them fall back to his lap.
 

“Dom could do no wrong in my eyes. When I followed him into the forest, it was just to be with him. And of course the dragon caught me.” He laughed weakly, shaking his head. “Gods, I was terrified. Something like that sniffing you out and pinning you down? I thought I was dead for sure.”

“You couldn't have been more than five or six,” Oriole said. “I met you when we were eight.”
 

Alek made a broken hum of agreement, rubbing his hands together as if friction would steal away the worst of the memories. “You kept refusing to call me Sasha.” He smiled a very small smile, lopsided and sad. “It felt like being someone completely different, being Alek.”

Oriole nodded, her cheek against his shoulder, and waited for the rest.
 

“I still wasn't allowed to go with him. And I still snuck out to follow whenever I could. My brother's anger was easy to face, because at least it would be
his
. And being there made it mine, too. But our parents were worried, I suppose. Both of us were around less and less, until one day my father decided to follow the follower.”

“He turned your brother in?” Oriole stopped herself from pulling away, knowing that would hurt him far more than any of her startled questions.
 

“Something like that.” Alek laughed again, and it twisted her heart how heavy and broken the sound was. “He thought if he just kept Dom away from the dragon, neither of them would have to be hurt. And here's where I don't really … understand what happened. Because I was never allowed to be with Dom and Corinth, I don't know what they were to each other. But after two weeks of Dom being kept at home, Corinth came to find him.”

Oriole closed her eyes, remembering the angry questions from the square, the protective way the dragon had kept its wings out, as if to hide the lady from sight. “And then the guards came.”

Alek nodded. “Everyone knew, then. And the Accord wasn't a law you could just bend, or ignore. Especially not at the borders. Not long after that, we moved to Chillhorn.” Oriole nodded again, pulling him tighter into their not-quite-hug.
 

“I'm sorry for yelling at you,” she said after a while, though she wasn't. And Alek laughed just a little bit lighter than he had before.
 

“No you're not. But thanks anyway.” He leaned his head on top of hers, and Oriole smiled, just a little.
 

* * *

Oriole volunteered to go down and get some trays, to save Alek's 'fragile metal state.' She was a little worried when he agreed to the plan, but at least he now trusted her to be out of his sight for five minutes without plunging them into a deadly plot.
 

Even though that trust turned out to be horribly misplaced, it was a nice gesture.

She wouldn't have said much more than 'hi' to the woman in the gold vest if the lady hadn't been limping up the hall, pain clear on her face. Oriole paused to ask if she needed any help, wondering why the heavy skirt and white blouse looked so familiar. The thing about modern fashion was that there wasn't just one thing it could be. Everyone wore something as strange and off-beat as they were, which meant you could see anything from a short skirt and a thin shirt that covered shoulders and chest to a full-length robe and headscarf. It meant that individuals could be identified by what they were wearing as often as their faces, and Oriole definitely didn't know the woman's face.

But she recognized her outfit.
 

“I don't need help,” the woman said, trying to climb past Oriole. Oriole stuck a hand out anyway, and the lady froze.
 

“You sure?” Oriole asked, quieter than before. Because the last time she'd seen those colors and that cut of cloth, the person wearing it had been standing next to a dragon.
 

The woman in the gold vest just stared at her, and Oriole stared back, trying to convey what she was offering. Because Alek had been right, she couldn't deny that. Maybe it wasn't just the chance to help someone who needed it, or the risk she knew her friend would hate her for taking. Oriole knew she stood at the beginning of a story, something so great she couldn't bear to stand aside and watch it happen. And she also knew, with the certainty of the young, that this was the beginning, and not the end. She would make certain of it.

She didn't know how much of that certainty was visible, how much (if anything) the lady saw while they stood quiet on the stairs. But it must have been enough, because the dragon-lady nodded, just the tiniest bit, and when Oriole beckoned her back towards the room, she followed.
 

“Can you wait here?” Oriole asked, stopping outside their door. The dragon-lady had limped her way here without so much as a grunt of complaint, but she looked around nervously at the empty hallway before nodding. Oriole might have thought she
couldn't
speak, if she hadn't heard her shouting at the dragon in the square. Fear was coming off her in waves, though, and Oriole couldn't blame her for staying quiet. Some things bypass thought entirely and land on instinct instead.
 

Oriole hesitated long enough to take a deep breath and clear her throat before opening the door a little, not quite coming inside. Alek was leaning against the headboard of the bed, his knees curled to his chest and his eyes focused somewhere in the past. But he looked over at her and knew something was wrong the second he saw her. “What did you do?” Alek asked, his shoulders going tense.
 

Oriole cleared her throat again. “Alek,” she began, leaning on the doorknob a little too hard. “I want you to not freak out, okay?”

He just stared back at her, waiting.
 

“I want you to not freak out because that would scare her, and I think we've all been scared enough for today. Also I didn't get any food yet.”

“Who is it, exactly, I'm not scaring here?” Alek sounded suspiciously calm, and Oriole hesitated. This was such a bad idea. But Oriole could no more leave the dragon-lady on her own than she could return a book without finishing it. So she just stepped aside and nodded to the woman in the gold vest, who limped three steps into the room before stopping, watching Alek like he was a bomb about to explode.
 

And he didn't know who she was. He just glanced between her and Oriole, trying to understand why she thought he'd flip. But his gaze kept catching longer and longer on the dragon-lady, until he scrambled up from the bed and retreated to the wall farthest away from her, cursing under his breath. “Birdy, that's—”

“I know.”

“But you—”

“I
know
.”
 

“Oriole, you don't—”

“
I know,
Alek,” Oriole stopped his first few attempts at shocked babbling and closed the door behind her. She didn't want either of them running downstairs in this state. “It's all right.”

Alek laughed, the hysteria in his voice almost as terrible as the sadness had been earlier. “You think this is
all right
, Oriole? Perun help us!” He laughed again, rubbing a hand across his eyes, and she could see he was shaking. “You know, I should have expected it. I should have known you couldn't leave well enough alone. But
gods
, I didn't expect you to bring trouble back to us before you'd even got out the door.”

“I will go.” Neither of them had expected the dragon-lady to say anything; she'd been deadly silent up to now, so why change? Oriole took a step towards her, one hand extended in a soothing gesture.
 

“You don't have anywhere else
to
go,” she said. “And I won't let them kill you. Not for
talking
, by Éostre's crown.“

“You can't promise that.” Alek spoke before the dragon-lady could, though she'd opened her mouth to respond. “Oriole, believe me, you can't promise that.”

“He's right,” the lady added, and Oriole felt her whole chest pull tight. But not with sadness, or anything like resignation. Her fists clenched with the lashings of stubbornness that bound her ribs together, and she glared at both of them in turn.

“I promise it anyway,” she snapped, daring them to argue. “I swear on Éostre's Well. I will not let you die.”

Alek looked like he was going to argue, but the dragon-lady let herself fall with a sob. It wasn't a faint, or a collapse—it was a fall born of pain, exhaustion, and far too much anxiety. Oriole went to help her onto the unclaimed bed, careful to make certain the lady knew where Oriole was standing before she took her arm.
 

And she didn't flinch when Alek held her other arm, just took deep breaths and made an obvious effort to carry her own weight. Even once seated on the bed, she didn't so much as squeak in pain.
 

Oriole kept stealing glances in Alek's direction, which he ignored until the lady was settled. Then he stepped back and sighed, resting his hands on his hips. “We're going to get some food,” he said to the dragon-lady. “Is there anything you can't eat?”

She shook her head, even that motion small and inconspicuous. Both Oriole and Alek waited another half a second for her to say something, but she stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the foot of the bed. Alek just sighed again.
 

“Come on then, Birdy,” he said, waving her towards the door. “We'll both go this time, to make sure you don't find the dragon hiding under a plate or something.”
 

Oriole smiled, a little, and felt some of the anxiety unwind from inside her ribs. If he was joking and asking if the lady was all right, then he didn't mean to kick her out. Not that she had believed he would. “If it makes you feel any better,” she said, still speaking in a murmur even once they were out in the empty hall, “I didn't
mean
to find her.”

“Actually, that does help,” he said, bumping her shoulder with his, his own grin flashing bright in her direction before it vanished again. “What are we going to do, Birdy? We can't just walk around with her in tow.”

“I've got an idea,” Oriole said as they reached the stairs and started down. “But you're not going to like it.”

“Have I liked anything about today?” Alek groaned, turning his face skyward to ask the heavens.
 

“You liked the crèmes.”
 

“That happened today?”
 

Oriole nodded, resting one hand on the wall as they walked down. “I know how we can get her out of the city,” she continued, as if Alek's attempt at deflection hadn't even existed. “But I don't know how to get her to the airship harbor without getting caught.”

“The …” Alek cursed, the sound suddenly loud and echoing in the stone stairwell, and Oriole jumped.
 

“No need to be so loud,” she hissed at him, her heart still beating out of pace.
 

“You want to get her out on the
Maiden
,” he accused, but his voice returned to a reasonable level. They fell silent at the sound of feet on a landing below, but it was just another group of guests on their way to the dining hall, and the bubbling of conversation in front of them soon disguised their own words.
 

“Do you have a better idea?” Oriole said, her voice hovering just above a whisper.

“Sure. It starts with not hiding a fugitive from the Accord of the Sun in our hostel room.”
 

Oriole didn't even bother responding to that one. They descended several more flights in relative silence, absorbed in the echoing chatter coming from both below and above them.
 

“All right,” Alek said at last, just as they reached the first floor. “We'll need a convincing lie to get us out of the harbor. Some reason we're not going on to Perihelion City.”
 

“My mother's dying. We can go Wandering again later, but she needs me home right now.” Oriole recited the words with as much sincerity as she could muster, turning imploring eyes on her friend, who raised one eyebrow and a crooked smile in response.
 

“You really have thought this out, haven't you?”

“Would it work?”

“As long as no one looks too closely at your face,” Alek snorted, bumping her shoulder with his as the two of them reached the bottom of the stairs. The hall was more crowded than before, but the lines were moving in quick-step, and no one looked twice at the two Wanderers.

“Hey! I'm a good liar when I want to be,” Oriole protested, picking up one of the red-glazed plates. “Kept us out of plenty of scrapes at home.”

“And got us into plenty more,” Alek shot back. Oriole only smiled as they picked out servings of late strawberries, summer squash, and fried potatoes.
 

“Do you think we can do it?” she asked, after they'd taken seats at a table as far away from the rest of the hall's diners as possible. “Is it even possible?”

“If I said no, would that stop you from trying?”
 

Oriole's smile was crooked. He already knew the answer, but he was obviously waiting for her to say it. “Of course not,” she muttered, picking the tops off her strawberries. “I've always liked a challenge.”

* * *

They brought a plate upstairs for the dragon-lady, who hadn't moved from her spot on Oriole's bed. She'd curled her right leg up to her chest, but the left was still laid out in front of her, bent at the knee. Oriole sat at the foot of the bed to explain her plan while Alek pretended to pack. Since they hadn't even had a chance to untie their bags, the pretense was more transparent than the solar collectors that served as windows in Waterway, but Oriole didn't say anything about the make-work. The dragon-lady showed no reaction to Oriole's explanation, entirely focused on separating her food into distinct, non-touching piles.