“Ysolde, I don’t—” Maura started to say, but I lifted a hand to interrupt her. I knew she wouldn’t betray her tribe unless I gave her a very good reason to do so.
“Let me just add that I am well aware that there is a price on your head, and that if something doesn’t change very soon, thief-takers the world over will be looking for you and the rest of your tribe of ouroboros dragons because you guys broke into the L’au-dela vault in Paris.”
She blinked in surprise. “You know about that? How—oh, Emile.”
I nodded. “Actually, it was your mother who mentioned it, but your grandfather was very angry with her for telling me about it. She had to, though, in order to bring me up to speed if I wanted to help you.” I looked thoughtfully at her. “Which I failed to do, but loyalty to Violet prompts me to again make the offer of assistance I made two months ago in Ziema: I will help you return to your family, and I can just about guarantee that if you promise to leave Thala and the tribe, Dr. Kostich will remove the bounty for your capture that he swore he was going to put into place if you didn’t return the things your tribe stole.”
“Ysolde, I think you—yeouch!” Maura’s arm was jerked painfully against the windowsill, causing her to glare at the window, the privacy glass making it impossible to see in. She slapped a hand on the glass. “Hey!”
“Sorry,” came the reply. “I normally use that hand to—never mind.”
“Thank the saints you can heal bruises quickly,” I commented when she rubbed the abused part of her arm.
“If he thinks he can get anywhere with that sort of treatment—what? Oh yes.” She stopped grumbling to herself and gave me a long look. “What I was going to say is that you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick.”
“I do?” I stopped considering her and Savian as a couple and wondered where the flaw in my reasoning lay. “How so?”
“I am not beholden to Thala. I do not feel a sense of obligation to her, or loyalty, or, in fact, any of those things you mentioned.” My disbelief must have been obvious because she gave me a weak smile. “I’ve split from the tribe. I’m no longer a part of their plans—at least not in the sense you think—and have nothing to do with whatever it is Thala is now up to. And no, I don’t know where she is right now, although I suspect…” She hesitated a moment, her expression thoughtful as her gaze drifted over my shoulder.
“You suspect what?”
“I suspect she’s going to Russia.”
“You said that earlier.” That was uncomfortably close to Latvia, and Dauva. “Whereabouts in Russia? Moscow?”
Maura shrugged. “I don’t know. Wherever the sepulcher is.”
“The light sword,” I said softly, my mind whirling with a thousand things to say to Baltic. Part of me wanted to demand we leave the country immediately and go somewhere safe, but I knew that if I did get him to take Brom and me elsewhere, he’d return to oversee the building of Dauva. Not even the pain of temporary separation would keep him from that. And that would only leave him exposed to whatever foul plans Thala had for us. “Far better for us to stay together,” I murmured.
“Safety in numbers,” Maura agreed.
My gaze slid back to her. “If you’re no longer working for Thala, then why were you in the Spanish castillo with her tribe of dragons?”
She glanced at the window, slapping her hand on the glass again.
“What?” Savian responded with annoyance.
“How much longer are you going to be in there?”
“I’m trying to shave. Stop moving your arm or I’ll cut my throat. And don’t say what you’re going to say, and yes, I know you’re thinking it.”
Maura gave me another considering look, then made a short nod, as if she’d come to a decision. “Mum said you were her friend for many decades, so I’ll trust you. When I returned to Spain from Ziema two months ago, I was appalled and shocked at Thala’s plans for you. I told her so. I objected to the fact that she had undermined my authority with men who were placed in my charge, but more, I objected to her plan of violence. Thala told me I had no voice in the matter, and my job was simply to get the location of the sepulcher from Emile, and that she’d had her plans in place for too long for them to be messed up by the likes of me, and…and…oh, just buckets more of that sort of thing. I was never comfortable having to use my family like that, but the violence against you and Baltic was the final straw. The end result was that I renounced the tribe and prepared to leave them.”
She stopped, the fingers of her free hand playing with the belt loops on her jeans.
“I’m glad to know you weren’t a part of the plan to harm us,” I said somewhat dryly. “And I’m sure Dr. Kostich will be relieved to know you won’t be pumping him for information that he surely would not tell you.”
Pain flashed across her face as she leaned against the house. “That’s just the trouble—he’s got to tell me where it is.”
“So you can tell Thala?”
She nodded, her eyes closed, her face weary.
I studied her for a moment, trying to piece together the bits of what was puzzling me. “Is Thala blackmailing you for it?”
She nodded again.
“What, exactly, is she—”
“Ysolde!”
The roar that carried my name from the other side of the house was a familiar one, the fury in it warning me that it would be folly to remain where I was in order to pin down Maura for more information.
“My beloved! Do not heed the traitorous one. He is weak, as he has always been.”
“Traitorous!” Birds squawked like crazy as they flew out of the nearby trees in protest of Baltic’s bellow. It was amazing how well the sound carried. I imagined the people in town some four miles away could hear him. “I am not the traitor here!”
“You stole the black sept from me!”
“I challenged you and won it from you! You lost!”
“Because you cheated!”
“Sadly, that voice is also familiar,” I said, sighing.
“You shouldn’t have had me summon him, then,” Maura said with a wry smile.
“Hindsight, twenty-twenty, and all that,” I told her, heading off to interrupt what was sounding like a huge fight between Baltic and Constantine. “We’ll continue this discussion later.”
Unfortunately, that hindsight didn’t just fail me when it came to the subject of resurrecting spirits—it also let me down with regard to Maura.
It took a good hour to get Constantine out of our hair, and by then, Savian had taken off for parts unknown with Maura in tow. Pavel left shortly after that to return to England in order to gather up our belongings, leaving Holland to complete his recovery with us.
Duty-bound, I tried calling Maura’s mother, but for the third time in a week, I wasn’t able to reach her. After some thought, I decided that I owed it to Violet to contact her father. Again. “He’d just better not try to turn me into anything this—hello?”
“Yes,” a sharp voice snapped into the phone. “What do you want?”
“Good morning, Dr. Kostich. It’s Ysolde de Bouchier, again. I haven’t been able to get a hold of Violet, but I wanted to tell her that Maura is with us, in case she’s worried about Maura running around in Spain with a bunch of nutball ouroboros dragons.”
“I still have nothing to say to you, dragon.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt whatever it is you’re doing, but I thought—”
The phone clicked in my ear.
I sighed and hung up. “Evidently you don’t want to know how your own granddaughter is. You rotter.”
Between getting the monstrous house into a habitable state, doing copious amounts of shopping in town with Brom firmly at my side—much to his disgust, until Baltic and I took him into Riga to buy equipment for his new lab—keeping Baltic and Constantine separated (not to mention focusing the latter on locating Kostya’s lair), and generally trying to settle into a new home, two days passed during which I didn’t have time to do
much beyond collapsing exhaustedly into bed each night.
“You are working too hard,” Baltic told me the morning of the third day, watching me chop basil for the bacon and goat cheese frittata I was making for breakfast. “You have dark circles under your eyes. I do not like this. You will take more naps.”
I glanced up at him, startled for a second. “More naps?”
“Yes. The ones you are taking are too short, and you are restless at night, and not sleeping well.” He frowned. “Are you still worried about the safety of our son? The electronic security system put into place yesterday is more than adequate, mate, and I will engage a firm of Guardians to place wards on the house every few days. Thala will not be able to do us any harm here.”
“I’m not worried about that any longer. At least, I am worried, but not to the point I was. You’ll notice that last night I didn’t get up once to check on Brom.”
“I noticed. You still did not sleep well. You are doing too much.”
“Not since you hired a veritable platoon of cleaning ladies to scrub down this mausoleum. But as we’re on the subject of things I should do, I’ve been thinking about what you told me.” I cut a quarter of the frittata and placed it on a waiting plate, alongside some fresh berries, chicken apple sausage made locally, and two croissants. Baltic accepted the plate with a murmur of thanks. I picked up a small walkie-talkie. “Moonbase one to Brom. Breakfast is ready, and your attendance is required pronto.”
His response, somewhat crackly, was immediate. “I’m just setting up my draining table. I’ll eat later.”
“You’ll eat now, and thank you very much for putting the image of a draining table in my mind when I’m about to have breakfast. I expect you to be washed up and in here in five minutes.”
“Aw, Sullivan…” Luckily, he stopped transmitting before continuing. I yelled up the stairs to Nico and Holland that breakfast was ready, and started on the second frittata when Baltic, his attention now happily diverted to breakfast, asked, “Where is the thief-taker?”
“He and Maura went into town to get some clothing. They should be back soon.”
“Ah. What is it you believe you should do?”
I listened for a moment but didn’t hear anyone coming down the stairs. “It’s about that last vision, when your mother was being sepultured.”
“Sepulture is not a verb,” was all he said before he slathered his croissant with grapefruit marmalade. I grimaced at the action—Baltic had an insatiable sweet tooth, but that was no reason to ruin a perfectly lovely croissant.
“I know it’s not; I was just being quirky. You love it when I’m quirky. But that’s beside the point. The other night you said that the First Dragon blamed you for your mother’s death. That’s got to be the death of the innocent that he was referring to when he told me I had to redeem your honor.”
Baltic sighed, just as I knew he would. “Still you insist on listening to that foolishness. I have told you many times that my honor does not need your attentions, despite what the First Dragon would have you believe. I grow tired of repeating myself, and if you continue to make me do so, I will be forced to take action.”
“What sort of action?” I was unable to resist asking.
“Perhaps I will punish you as I did a week ago.”
I thought for a few seconds. “That wasn’t punishment! That was you being bossy as usual, and making incredibly hot love to me outside when everyone in the pub was asleep. And don’t you even think you can distract me with thoughts of just how wonderful that outdoor interlude was, because it won’t work.”
Baltic set down his fork and raised one eyebrow.
“All right, it’s working a little bit, in so much as I think I’ll take a couple of blankets out to the north ruins, but that’s as far as I’ll go. Baltic, whether you want to or not, I’m going to restore your honor to such a state as will make your father happy, and by the saints, you will help me!”
He frowned as he took the last bite of frittata. “I do not care what the First Dragon thinks of me.”
“He’s your father!”
“And about this, he is wrong. I have explained that to you.” His black eyes glittered dangerously at me, but I knew that underneath his anger, a little morsel of pain existed.
I pulled the second frittata off the stove and went over to sit on Baltic’s lap, gently kissing his face and smoothing back his hair as I said, “My love, I do not doubt that you are right. The First Dragon is wrong to blame you, but he is the First Dragon. He is the ancestor of us all, and he has placed a task upon my shoulders. Would you have me fail when he has done so much for us?”
“He has done nothing but give us grief all our lives.” Baltic’s fingers tightened on my legs as he turned his face into my neck, kissing all those spots that made me shiver with delight.
“He resurrected me twice, and for that I will be eternally thankful, because it meant that you and Brom are in my life. I can’t refuse to do what he asks, not when it concerns you. I know you think this is nothing but folly, and I don’t blame you in the least for being offended that you’re in this position, but please, my love, my most adorable love, do it for me.”
His sigh ruffled my hair, but dragon fire wrapped around us. “What is it you wish for me to do?”
“I think the First Dragon wants you to pay penance for your mother’s death. No, don’t say it. I know you weren’t responsible, and you shouldn’t have to do it, but if it will make him happy and fulfill the task he’s bound to me, then you’re just going to have to do it.”
“Bah,” he snorted, gently pushing me from his lap and giving my behind a swift pat in the process. “If I do what you ask of me, you will understand that it is for your sake alone that I do so.”
“I understand.” I smiled up at him as he stood and stretched, enjoying, as I always did, the sight of his shirt pulled tight across his impressive chest. I fought the need to stroke that chest, reminding myself that this was more important.
“What must I do in order to fulfill this penance?”
“Well…” I thought for a moment. “I’d say in this case it was to make reparation for the damage done. When your mother died, you killed Chuan Ren’s guards, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
I kissed his chin and returned to finish the frittata. “Which prompted her to attack the black dragons?”
“In a way. She declared war against us and the green dragons, and within six months, the entire weyr was at war with one another.”
“Right, so really, I think the First Dragon wants you to pay for that, for causing the Endless War.”
“I didn’t cause it!”
“Of course you didn’t! As much as I hate to speak ill of the dead, Chuan Ren was a vindictive woman, and one, I suspect, who loved to be at war. I have no doubt she set you up to provide her ample reason to declare a weyr-wide war. But your father obviously views things differently, and thus, you’re going to have to make reparations for that.”
He thinned his lips and stood with his hands on his hips. “How do you expect me to do that?”
“A good start would be to lift the curse off the silver dragons.”
“No.”
“It would show everyone—the First Dragon included—that you were sorry for how things turned out.”
“I will not lift it. I have no reason to do so.”
“But—”
“No!” He marched over to the door, obviously about to leave, but paused and sent me a scathing look. “If that is all you have to suggest, then I will go into town and meet the builders. They are arriving today, and I must take them to Dauva.”
“Wait a second. I’m not done talking about this.” I yanked the frittata off the burner again and ran after him as he left the house and started for the car. “If you won’t lift the curse, then what about the light dragons joining the weyr? Then you can formally apologize to everyone for the events of the past, and maybe even, I don’t know, set up some sort of a fund for nee
dy dragons whose families were decimated by the war. I think that might placate the First Dragon.”
“We do not need to join the weyr. They have nothing to do with us.”
“Because you won’t let them. Baltic, I really would like for us to be a part of the weyr.”
He stopped at the car, gave me a swift, hard kiss, and yet another pat on the behind, and said simply, “We do not need them,” before hopping in the car and leaving.
“Gah!” I yelled, wishing for a moment that I knew some sort of spell to make dragons less stubborn.
“Are you going to yell at me because it’s been six minutes instead of five?” a voice asked behind me.
I gave my own little sigh and turned to usher Brom into the house. “No, as long as you washed your hands.”
“I did.”
I looked at his hands. “They don’t look any too clean to me. What did you do—hold them near water but not actually in it?”
He sighed the put-upon sigh common to those under the age of ten. “I found some owl pellets out back and had to collect them so I can dissect them later. You can’t do that without getting a little dirty, but I washed off most of it at the faucet outside.”
I stared in horror at the child I had borne. “You did…No, Brom, just no! It’s bad enough that you make mummies from whatever dead things you can find. That, I suppose, has some sort of scientific value, although just what escapes me at the moment. But I draw the line at your collecting owl poop!”
“Owl pellets, not poop,” Brom said, and with blithe disregard to my reaction, he took his plate and started shoveling eggs into his mouth before nodding toward the two men who entered the kitchen. “Nico, Sullivan thinks an owl pellet is poop. It’s not, though.”
“No, it’s not,” Nico said with a bright smile. He accepted the plate of food I handed him with an appreciative sniff. “Owl pellets contain the undigested food that owls regurgitate once they are done consuming their prey. Brom has long wished to study them, but I wanted to wait until we were settled to find a local source for them.”
“Uh-huh.” I gave Holland a swift, assessing glance, but he appeared to be wholly healed. He thanked me as I gave him a plate, taking his place at the table with the others.