Revelations

  What does that mean? Jaxi demanded.

  Women are frail creatures that should be protected. If they have magic, they should become healers, not warriors.

  I assure you there’s nothing frail about me. My fireballs may not be that effective against dragons, but in all other circumstances, they are most excellent. Much better than your unimpressive little lightning.

  A woman’s place is at a man’s side, or behind him, not in front of him.

  What benighted century are you from, you arrogant pig poker?

  Azarwrath sighed. A long-past one.

  Trip closed his eyes, not having the energy to join in the argument, and not sure what he would say if he did.

  “Is it hard to feel manly when you’re resting on your knees while three women hack a dragon to death on the other side of the ship?” Leftie asked, walking up and looking curiously down at Trip.

  “Extremely hard.” Trip wasn’t sure how much of a role he’d played in the battle, so he didn’t try to defend himself. His weary body promised he’d done something. Even if all it had been was buying a couple of seconds here and there for the sword wielders, it had been worth it.

  “If it makes you feel better,” Duck said, coming up from behind them, his flier now parked next to Leftie’s and Blazer’s, “all I got to do was shoot a couple of pigeons.”

  “That’s better than I managed,” Trip said.

  A ragged cheer went up at the front of the ship as the three women raised their bloody blades. The dragon’s huge body lay unmoving on the deck, one wing dangling over a broken railing. Unfortunately, several people were unmoving as well.

  Kiadarsa met Trip’s eyes across the deck and across the neck of the dragon.

  Can you heal? she asked. Some of my people will die without a healer, and I haven’t the training.

  Trip gulped. He’d been afraid something bad would happen if he let people think he was a sorcerer. And now it had. Kiadarsa believed he had power that he didn’t have, and all the Cofah would frown at him in disappointment as people died at his feet.

  No, Azarwrath said. Go to them. I have some knack for healing, despite it being a woman’s art.

  A woman’s art? Jaxi asked. Just so you know, I can make fire hot enough to melt a soulblade.

  You can heal? Trip asked, hoping to stop the argument before it started again. I wouldn’t have thought those who specialized in hurling lightning bolts at people could then heal them.

  In my day, sorcerers learned a rudimentary level of skill in all the fundamentals. You were considered poorly educated if you didn’t. Healing isn’t an easy art to master, and many say it takes the patience of a woman, but I’ll be shocked if you can’t pick it up easily, Telryn.

  Trip wouldn’t be shocked at all if he couldn’t pick it up, but he pushed himself to his feet and forced his wobbly legs to stride across the deck. Those people needed whatever help he—or the soulblade—could offer.

  He met Rysha’s eyes as he approached. He would have liked to hug her, but his gaze flicked toward the bloody blade she held, the glow it still held, and he only gave her a quick smile.

  She smiled back, but it appeared strained. Because she was injured and in pain? Or because she was fighting the blade again?

  “Who’s worst off?” Trip looked at those sitting or lying on the deck, wincing when he saw right away that one of the researchers was dead. Yarokk, had that been his name?

  “Many are injured,” Dreyak said, frowning. “They should not have been on the deck when they had no way to harm the dragons.” He turned his frown toward Jylea.

  She frowned back at him. “You would have had us cower belowdecks? While our ship was destroyed around us?”

  “Better than to die needlessly when there were those here who could harm them.”

  “Iskandians.”

  “Iskandians with dragon-slaying swords,” Dreyak said.

  “You did not go belowdecks, Mr. Dreyak.” Jylea gave the honorific an odd emphasis. “You had no weapon with which to harm the dragons.”

  Dreyak glanced at the Cofah soulblade hanging from Trip’s hip. “No, but I am a soldier, sworn to protect my people. I have training. Few of your team have any manner of combat training.”

  “Your training and your sword were useless against the dragon. Though I see you managed to avoid getting hurt.”

  Dreyak’s eyes narrowed. “’Ware the tone you use with me.”

  Go to the man over there first, Telryn, Azarwrath said, and ignore this bickering. Politics. A disgusted noise sounded in Trip’s mind, something between a grunt and a harrumph. People have changed so little over the centuries. It is a pity.

  Trip headed toward the wounded man the soulblade indicated.

  I may need to draw upon some of your power, Azarwrath warned him.

  Just as long as I won’t need to walk any time soon.

  You are young. You will recover swiftly.

  This new soulblade is awfully chatty, now that he’s chatting, Jaxi said.

  Trip knelt beside the soldier and rested a hand on his shoulder while trying not to look at all the blood pooled on the deck underneath him. Or the way he’d been half eviscerated by tiger claws.

  Azarwrath’s blade grew warm at his side.

  “Jaxi can heal?” Kaika asked, watching him. Dreyak and Jylea had moved away to continue their argument without onlookers. “I’m not complaining, but I didn’t think that was in her repertoire.”

  “It’s the other one,” Trip said. “He’s decided to talk to me. And these are his people, so I guess he’s interested in helping them out.”

  “It must be getting busy inside your head, Trip,” Rysha said, giving him a sympathetic look.

  Leftie, who had followed him over to the group, gave him a bewildered look.

  Trip, growing aware of a strange feeling in his body, as if his energy was seeping out of him, let his head droop to his chest and closed his eyes. After that battle, he didn’t feel like he had much energy left. He assumed Azarwrath wouldn’t draw so much from him that he would be in danger. At least he hoped that was the case.

  Well, you are just an Iskandian, Jaxi said. And he’s healing Cofah. He might prioritize them.

  Thanks, Jaxi. Now I’m afraid to close my eyes, lest I won’t wake up.

  I’ll keep an eye on him and let you know if things start looking shifty.

  I’m deeply heartened.

  As I knew you would be.

  10

  Rysha knew she should be cleaning off her blade—and perhaps herself—but she found herself watching Trip. He wasn’t doing anything mesmerizing, other than moving from person to person, healing wounds. He’d said the Cofah soulblade was doing the healing, but she wasn’t sure she believed that he was merely a holder for the sword. An odd weariness marked his posture as he knelt beside the injured people, resting a hand on them and closing his eyes. Clearly, it was taking something out of him.

  When she’d leaped from Duck’s flier, Trip had been down on a knee, looking like he needed saving. But as she ran toward the dragon, that fire had come out of nowhere. Jaxi’s work? Whoever had been responsible, the dragon had been delayed. Instead of leaping away from her attack, as she had expected, it had frozen for several seconds, staring at Trip, and she’d gotten a chance to sink her blade in. Then she remembered Trip’s warning, the cry to look out, and the compulsion to drop to the deck. Everything had happened so fast that she couldn’t say for sure, but she was fairly certain that cry had been into her mind and not aloud. And that he’d been the reason she had been flattened to the deck in time.

  How much credit could Rysha, Kaika, and Blazer take for the dead dragons, and how much had Trip and the soulblades done?

  The Cofah sorceress came back up on deck—she’d escorted Jylea to one of the cabins below—and walked toward the wounded people. Toward Trip.

  Leftie’s words from the night before came to mind, his claims that Kiadarsa had been trying to seduce Trip. Only trying and not succ
eeding, Rysha trusted, but seeing the woman walk toward him made her uneasy.

  Kiadarsa crouched, resting a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at her. She murmured something, closed her eyes, and dropped her gaze demurely. The day before, Rysha wouldn’t have guessed she would ever have used that word to describe the woman, but even though she stood and he knelt, there was something… subservient about the gesture, about her whole demeanor. Maybe Rysha was imagining things, but there seemed to be an unspoken offer there too. Of herself?

  Rysha wondered if Trip had also saved Kiadarsa’s life during the battle. And if she was now grateful.

  Her fingers curled into a fist. Even though she logically knew that she hadn’t said anything to Trip to imply she wanted a relationship with him, she felt indignation and anger that another woman was touching his shoulder and giving him looks. Offers. It didn’t help that the Cofah sorceress was beautiful, even with her hair tangled and blood dried on her jaw.

  “What exactly are we supposed to do with two dead dragons?” Leftie asked, waving at the closest one.

  “Roll them over the railing and let them plop down into the water?” Blazer asked.

  Trip nodded at something the sorceress said, then returned to his chin-to-chest position, one hand on the person he knelt beside, and one hand on the hilt of the Cofah soulblade. Kiadarsa rose and walked away. Disappointed? Pleased? Rysha couldn’t tell.

  “That seems wasteful, ma’am,” Duck said. “They’re fresh meat. Anyone know how dragon tastes? Maybe we could find out.”

  Blazer made a disgusted noise.

  “They might be real fine,” Duck said. “Slip some chunks on a skewer, and we can build a nice fire in the cook stove and roast ’em up.”

  “That does seem fair,” Leftie said. “They were contemplating eating us, after all. At least one of the ones we’ve met was.”

  “And these dragons called us prey and themselves predators.” Duck waved to the fallen creatures.

  “It seems wrong to eat something intelligent,” Rysha said.

  The dragons were beautiful, too, when they soared through the skies. Even if they were enemies, it seemed a crime to contemplate turning them into kebab.

  More than that, the words the dragons had spoken during the battle bothered her. Rysha knew from her research that dragons were believed to have evolved here on Linora, the same as humans. And, even though she hadn’t chanced across texts that verified it, Sardelle had told her the dragons had been tricked into leaving through that portal a thousand years ago. Not by humans, but by some of their own kind, bronze dragons that had been tired of being on the bottom of their hierarchy. If the dragons had been trying all this time to return and had finally found a way, destroying the portal did seem questionable. But what choice did humanity have? What choice did she have? She was a soldier, obeying orders. And, with her grandmother’s death fresh in her mind, it was hard to see the dragons as rightful inhabitants of the world rather than invaders. Cruel invaders.

  “We should see if we can collect some of the blood,” Blazer said. “I’m not sure if anything special has to be done to keep it alive, but our mad scientist, Tolemek, can make weapons out of the stuff. Weapons that can hurt dragons.”

  “Collect? Like in vials?” Leftie wrinkled his nose. “Who gets that job?”

  “Sounds like a task for a lieutenant,” Blazer said.

  “It sounds like a task for a butcher.” Leftie looked at Duck. “Or someone already making kebabs.”

  Now Duck wrinkled his nose.

  “What are we doing?” Kaika asked, limping up to join the group. “Contemplating if we have the strength to roll these huge bodies over the railing?” She peered over the side of the ship. They had sailed past the inland sea and flew over the ice and snow again.

  “Duck is contemplating turning that one into our dinner,” Blazer said.

  “Gross.”

  “How do you know, Captain?” Duck asked. “We’ve had nothing but rehydrated dehydrated rations since we left Iskandia. A little fresh meat would taste good.”

  “I don’t eat anything that talks to me before it dies.”

  “All sorts of animals talk to you when they’re dying, crying out and the like. Haven’t you heard a rabbit squealing as the wolves tear it to bits? That’s the way of nature.”

  Kaika grimaced. “I don’t think the rabbit tells the wolves that it’s told its buddies to avenge its death.”

  “You caught that, eh?” Blazer asked.

  “That this one promised it had warned the other dragons that we were coming? Yes.”

  “Do we need to make some plans for that, ma’am?” Duck asked. “Seems like flying straightforward into this portal place might not be the wisest course.”

  “Too bad we can’t turn into pigeons,” Leftie said.

  “That didn’t turn out well for some of the pigeons.” Kaika waved at the deck. More than a few dead birds had splatted onto the wood planks.

  Blazer looked thoughtfully around their group. Aside from Trip, who was healing the last of the prone researchers, their entire team had gathered together around the slain dragon. Kiadarsa was overseeing the removal of one of her people who had died, the man gutted by the dragon’s talons. If the Iskandians wanted to talk in private, this was a good time.

  Perhaps thinking the same thing, Blazer tilted her head toward a less bloody spot on the deck and said, “Let’s chat.”

  “I’ll see if Trip will finish soon and can join us,” Rysha said.

  “We don’t need him right now,” Blazer said. “We can fill him in later.”

  Rysha didn’t think it was right to exclude him from the decision-making, but she couched her objection in terms more likely to sway the major. “We’ll want the soulblades with us on any decisions we make. They may have advice.”

  “They?” Kaika asked. “Are we sure we want both of them with us? I trust Sardelle’s sword, but the Cofah one? Didn’t Trip say it was helping now because it wanted to heal its people?” She waved toward the Cofah research team.

  “Unless we’re going to talk about something that would put the Cofah in danger, does it matter?” Rysha asked.

  Kaika and Blazer exchanged looks, making her think she might have missed a briefing.

  “Let’s just have a quick discussion without magical allies being involved,” Blazer said, tilting her head toward her chosen spot again.

  Though Rysha didn’t like the idea of excluding Trip, she followed the others.

  “We leaving Dreyak out of this too?” Duck asked, nodding toward the door leading belowdecks.

  Rysha wasn’t sure when he’d left or what he’d gone to do, but he wasn’t around now.

  “Yes,” Blazer said. “We’ll make this a magic-free and a Cofah-free meeting.”

  “Are we plotting nefarious things?” Rysha asked.

  “Just figuring out the best way to ensure we complete our mission.” Blazer put her back to the railing and fished out her cigar tin. “I don’t think we can survive a battle against more than two dragons at a time.”

  “With all due respect to our team,” Rysha said, “I’m not sure we should even count on surviving a battle against one at a time. Those two almost turned us into fools by circumventing the fliers and the swords. If Trip and the soulblades hadn’t been on deck to delay them, they could have killed everyone and destroyed the airship before we managed to get our fliers back down here.”

  Blazer looked like she might object, but then she nodded. “You’re right. That’s true. Let’s be glad we have the soulblades with us. I never would have guessed that Sardelle’s sword would be so useful, and it seems to be quite a boon that we acquired another one.” She extended a hand toward Rysha.

  Giving her credit for that?

  Rysha might have defeated the sorceress, but Trip had picked up the soulblade. So far, the magical sword hadn’t let anyone else touch it, and she highly doubted it would have let her take it after she’d slain its handler. If not for Trip, the
y might not have the weapon at all. Rysha didn’t like the way Blazer wasn’t giving him any credit for helping with the dragons. She wanted to come to his defense; she suspected he’d done much more than simply yelling that warning into her mind.

  But what could she say without implying that he had magical powers? Nothing. And if he’d wanted that known, he would have told Blazer already. Of course, Kaika had already guessed at it. Maybe Blazer had too. Or maybe Kaika had told Blazer. Could that be why Blazer was excluding him now? Did she not trust Trip now because they’d figured out he had dragon blood?

  Rysha didn’t see how that mattered, not when it came to trust. She could understand someone who was afraid of magic being uncomfortable around him if they found out, but he was an army officer sworn to obey the king. He wouldn’t do anything to endanger the mission or any of them, not intentionally. General Zirkander must have trusted him, and Sardelle too. Sardelle wouldn’t have lent him Jaxi, otherwise, right? Unless Jaxi was along to keep an eye on him.

  Rysha scratched her jaw, contemplating that. The idea of others in his chain of command not trusting Trip made her sad. She trusted him, and she barely knew him.

  “My point is that we struggled with two dragons,” Blazer said, addressing the group again. “And if that silver truly warned all of its kin, there could be more of them waiting at the portal. A lot more.”

  Everyone nodded grimly.

  “Ravenwood, you have any idea about the number of dragons that are in the world now?” Kaika asked.

  “No, ma’am. They were never as fecund as humans, with the females only going into heat once every few decades, so their birthrates are low, but they lived a long time.”

  “Decades?” Duck asked.

  “They have the potential to live for millennia,” Rysha pointed out.

  “Must be nice,” Kaika said wistfully.

  “Living for thousands of years?” Blazer asked. “Or only going into heat once every ten years?”

  Kaika snorted. “Both.”

  Leftie leaned close to Duck and whispered, “They’re not going to start talking about female problems, are they?”