Daybreak (12 page)

Uncle Martin’s mouth fell open for a moment before he snapped it shut. “Well, I still think you’re making a mistaking, taking off like this. Just stay here and —”

“I can’t stay here, Martin. I can’t
stay
anywhere. Don’t you understand?” Her hammer came down all the more furiously. “I can’t pause — not even for a breath. Wherever I go, I’ll bring all of Midlan with me.”

She slid whatever white-hot object she held between her tongs into a vat of water. The cloud of steam that billowed up from it was enough to stagger Uncle Martin backwards. Still, he kept on: “If you won’t stay, then at least let our healers stitch you up.”

Kyleigh shook her head. Though she wore her boots and breeches, she’d replaced her jerkin with a white tunic. Even from a distance, Kael could see the thin red line weeping through it.

“It’ll mend on its own. A healer will take too long, and I haven’t got time to waste. I’ve got to leave here before —”

“Before what?” Kael demanded.

Uncle Martin whirled around at the sound of his voice. “
There
you are, Sir Wright! So good to —”

“Before what, Kyleigh?” Kael said again, never taking his eyes from hers. “Before I find you?”

He knew by how the flames wavered beneath his stare that he’d guessed her plan. Still, she didn’t blink. “You aren’t coming with me.”

“Like Death, I’m not.”

A heavy silence followed his words. Kyleigh glowered from the forge and Kael glared back, fists clenched at his sides.

“Ah, I think I heard the cook calling for me a moment ago,” Uncle Martin said. He backed away from them slowly. “What was that, Bimply? I’m needed in the kitchens?”

Kyleigh waited until Uncle Martin had gone before she snarled: “No. Not a chance.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I won’t have to — you can’t follow me.”

She went to drag the cooled object from the vat, but Kael grabbed her arm. He slid his hand beneath her shirt and found where she was wounded. It was a deep gash — one that cut almost to the bone of her rib.
 

The mark of a mage’s spell.

He tried to be gentle, but she still flinched when he traced its length. She bit her lip while he worked and raised her chin to the dusty arches above them. Kael kept his hand against her waist even after he’d sealed the wound shut. He pulled her close and whispered:

“I’ll walk the whole blasted Kingdom on foot, if I have to. I’ll follow your shadow from one end of the realm to the next.”

Kyleigh said nothing. She twisted her arm from his grasp and pulled the object from the cooling vat. It slapped wetly onto the table beside them.
 

It was her jerkin. There was a large gash in its side — one that matched the wound on her ribs. Where the tear cut through, all of the scales were gone and those that remained were charred on their ends, as if they’d been burned away.

Kael had seen this happen once before, when Titus had managed to hit her with dragonsbane arrows — gold forged with mage blood capable of holding onto its magic for eternity. Charred holes had appeared in her armor where the arrows struck. Though he’d managed to stretch them closed, it left the scales weakened in three shining spots.
 

“You aren’t coming with me,” Kyleigh said firmly. “It’s far too dangerous.”

She pulled away before he could reply. Her tongs went into the fire again and returned with a small, white-hot plate about the size of a man’s thumb. She drew more plates from the fire and laid them down the tear in her jerkin. The hammer fell viciously upon the line of plates. She forced them into the blackened scales, lashing until they’d completely flattened out. Then she took her hammer away.

Kael watched the heat leave the plates. As they cooled, they shrank. They dragged the black scales together until the tear was sealed. Her jerkin had a scar’s line of white where the gash had been before, but at least it was whole.
 

“I don’t have time to blacken it. But I don’t suppose it matters, does it?”

Kael ran a hand across the finished edge. “Were those … scales?”

“Yes. I have to keep them in the fire once they fall. Otherwise, they melt to ash. I kept a few of my scales here from the last time,” Kyleigh said as she lowered the trough’s lid, leaving only a thin line of yellow light behind. 

“The last time, what?”

“The last time I molted. Dragons shed their scales once every hundred years. Those were the last of the ones I’d saved, and I’ve still got quite a few years left to go,” she added with a sigh, glaring down at her armor. “I suppose I’ll just have to be more careful.”

She stripped the tunic away and slid into her jerkin. Kael went to help with the clasps, but she pulled out of his reach.

“I can’t risk setting a whisperer’s strength loose on my armor.” Her lips bent into a smirk as her fingers ran expertly up the buckles and clasps. “You’ve already proven yourself to be rather … impatient.”

He was only impatient when he was trying to work things the
other
way. But before he could say as much, she’d swept past him — clasping Harbinger on as she went. “What will we do, now?”

“I’ve already said that I can’t stay here.”

“Yes, but you haven’t mentioned where we’re going.”

“Kael …” His name faded into a frustrated growl as she climbed up the ladder.

He followed, his mind whirring with thought. “We have to do something to get the King’s attention. As long as Crevan’s eyes are on us, the Kingdom will be safe.”

“You aren’t coming with me.”

She climbed out into the main room and took off quickly down one of the long, winding halls. Kael had to trot to keep her pace. “If what you said is true, then Crevan will send his army the moment he spots us. They’ll be more vulnerable, easier to pick off. I’ll bet we could even lead them into tra —”

“You aren’t coming with me!”

All at once, the world spun and Kael’s back slammed hard against the wall. Kyleigh’s arm held him pinned in an iron bar; her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. Her eyes blazed with such fury that he almost forgot to breathe.
 

When she spoke again, her words were even — and dangerously quiet. “I brought this trouble upon myself. This is
my
task, mine alone. And while I’m away, you’re going to stay here with the pirates. You’re going to stay safe. Do you understand?”

Kael matched her glare. “You aren’t alone anymore, Kyleigh. You can’t just wing off whenever you please and expect me not to follow. I will always follow you,” he said, pushing against her hold. “I will always find you.”

“Not this time.”

“Why is it when I don’t want you following me, we’re
tied together
—”

“That’s completely different.”

“— and when you don’t want me following you, it’s all fire and threats.”

“I can’t protect you!” Kyleigh roared. The wall groaned as she crushed his body against it, as if the pressure would somehow drive reason into his skull. “I can’t protect you, up there. If I fall, you’ll fall with me. Don’t you understand?”

He
did
understand. He understood her perfectly. But it wasn’t her words that jolted him so much as her eyes: though the fires shone, their blaze was sharp and desperate — the eyes of a wolf caught inside a trap.

If he kept arguing with her, she would only growl at him. He tried to think of something else. “If I let you go, I’ll never see you again.”

Her brows rose in surprise. She took a step back. “That isn’t —”

“It’s
exactly
what would happen. You can’t fight Midlan on your own, and you won’t risk dragging them back here. It doesn’t matter if I’m standing in your shadow — there’ll be miles between us. I still won’t be able to reach you. We’ll never see each other again, if you leave me now. So if that’s what you want …”

“No.”

“Then trust me,” Kael said. He peeled her arm from his chest and took her hands in his. “Trust that I’ll be able to hold my own … and I’ll trust
you
not to drop me.”

Her smile was reluctant and fleet. “This is it. Once we leave, there’ll be no turning back.”

“Until we sack Midlan and knock Crevan off his throne, you mean.”

“What if we can’t?” Her voice was hardly a whisper. When he rolled his eyes, she grabbed him under the chin. “I mean it, Kael. There’s a very good chance that we’ll be on the run for years. I need you to plan for the day when things go horribly wrong.”

There was something in her stare that made him hesitate — the flicker of a warning in the dark, the starlight glancing off a dagger’s blade. It made him wonder if perhaps there was something she wasn’t telling him. He thought there might be something else to fear.

But the moment passed in a glint, and the darkness covered his worries. “Nothing’s going to go wrong. We’ll cross that river when we come to it,” he said shortly, when he saw the argument in her glare. “Is there anything else?”

“Yes, and it’s very important.” Her grip tightened as her voice dropped to a growl: “I need you to swear, on everything you hold dear, that you’ll stow your pig’s head and blasted well listen to me — especially while we’re in the air. Will you do as I say?”

“As much as I ever have,” he said with a nod.

She groaned, half-laughing. Then she kissed him gently. “Come on, then. Let’s find you something other than a pair of rumpled trousers to wear — the world’s much cooler above the clouds.”

After weeks of enduring the stuffy weather of the seas, he was looking forward to it.

Kyleigh led him down the hall to one of the empty chambers. There was a small dresser crammed beside one of the windows. They were looking through it for something that might fit when a slight cough drew their eyes back to the door.

 
It was so faint and unremarkable a sound that it took them several moments to turn. A man stood near the doorway. He wore a full set of black, salt-stained clothes and kept his hands clamped firmly behind his back. Between the length of his face and the way his stare dragged across them, Kael began to feel as if they were boring him …

Kyleigh groaned loudly. “Hello, Crumfeld.”

And at the same moment, Kael said: “Geist!”

“Geist?” Kyleigh passed a look between them. “Who’s Geist?”

“I am.” He peeled the mold off his face, revealing the plain, bored set of eyes that’d once focused long enough to map every square inch of the Duke’s castle. “
Crumfeld
is little more than a character I devised to gain access to your Roost. I hope you aren’t too terribly upset by it.”

The drone of his voice made it sound as if he didn’t care one way or the other. Kyleigh’s lips parted for a moment. She squinted at him as if he was a rude message scrawled at the bottom of a page, and she was trying to decide whether or not to be offended. “What?”

It took a painful amount of seconds for Geist to turn to Kael — revealing the raw burn on the side of his neck.

All at once, he understood. “
You
were the servant! I knew there was someone else.”

“Yes, it was me,” he said, in what was possibly the least-exciting exclamation Kael had ever heard. “With the Duke toppled, I’d intended to make Roost my permanent home. I was rather taken with butlering, and the Dragongirl provided no end of entertainment. But,” his expression stayed fixed as he sighed, “I knew the moment you arrived that
Crumfeld
was in very serious danger — I knew you would recognize me the moment you saw me. A fascinating talent, to be sure.”

The flatness with which he spoke made Kael wonder if he actually knew the meaning of the word
fascinating
, or if he’d accidentally confused it with
ordinary
.

“I’d planned to tell you the truth, eventually. I suppose now is as good a time as any. I’d like you to heal me before you leave,” he added, dragging a finger to point at his neck. “I can’t have anything memorable about me, and a wound will always draw the eye.”

Kyleigh frowned at him. “How did you know we were leaving?”

“Don’t bother asking,” Kael mumbled as he went to work. “He’s full of secrets.”

When he was finished, Geist straightened his coat hems. “Splendid. My ship leaves in an hour.”

“You can’t go sailing now — you’ll be burned!” Kael said.

Geist’s eyes slid dully over to Kyleigh. “Not as long as Midlan’s sights are fixed elsewhere. Now that Roost is gone, I shall have to find a new castle to call home … a rather taxing thought, to be sure. And the process itself is even more taxing. Good day.”

He moved so slowly that it took Kael a moment to realize that he’d inched out the door. “Wait — where are you …?”

The hallway was empty. Or at least it certainly
seemed
empty, but there was never any telling with Geist. Kael kicked the legs of a suspicious-looking armchair, just in case.

“I’ll never understand him,” he grumbled as he stepped back into the room.

Kyleigh pursed her lips. “I can’t believe he actually made me miss Crumfeld. Here, put this on.”
 

She flung a tunic at him and, in the second he was blinded, shoved him onto the bed. While he struggled to find the sleeves, she slid a pair of boots onto his feet. They were a bit too big, but it was better than having to go barefoot.

He’d gone to tuck his shirt in when he thought to check his pockets … and found them horribly empty.

“Why are you pawing around like a —?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid,” Kael said shortly, even as his stomach burned.
 

He’d left the rings inside the pocket of his other trousers — the ones that’d been torn nearly in half by Kyleigh’s attack. They were probably melted together somewhere in the ruins of Roost … along with the bow she’d given him, and the dragonscale gauntlets she’d made …

Though it stung him to think about all he’d lost, he knew it would do him no good to fret over it.
They were only things
, he reminded himself.
You still have what’s most important
.

“Where are we off to?”

“The kitchens. We won’t be landing for a while, and I can’t have your stomach growling in my ears all the way to Midlan. What if we get hit because I can’t hear the spells over the rumbling?” Kyleigh’s eyes slid up from the laces. “I’m sure you’d feel awful about it the whole fall down.”