How much more miserable, then, is dragonflight when one is bruised, battle-battered, bone-broken, and ill with hunger and exhaustion.
Our escape from Arena went on so long that by twilight I was beyond fear of pursuit. My fingers felt soft as aloe gel around the wooden hand rungs jutting fore of the saddle, either side of the escoa’s neck. I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer.
I feared for Dono. He hadn’t stirred once from where he was lashed across the rump of Sword Holder’s escoa, and the leather bindings holding him in place looked to have loosened, for he slewed back and forth like loose cargo in a storm-gripped trawler.
“We have to land!” I yelled into the wind. “Look at Dono.”
No answer from Gen. At least, not one audible. I
felt
his body tense, though.
“Damn it, Gen, we can’t let him fall!”
“A little farther and we’ll reach Clutch Xxamer Zu.”
“
How
much farther?”
His silence was answer enough: a lot farther.
“Dono won’t last,” I shouted into the wind. “
I
won’t. We have to find somewhere to land for the night.”
Below us, only mountainous jungle. I waited for a re sponse from Gen; none was forthcoming. Piqued, I fumbled for the reins he held and yanked on them. Our escoa’s head snapped left and she listed sharply. I shrieked, felt myself sliding from her back, and Gen bellowed in my ear. Only his weight atop me kept me in the saddle.
After several heart-thudding moments, we righted. Some moments after that he lifted an arm and signaled to the men flying aflank us. We changed our course.
Night fell, and a short while later we landed on the out skirts of a crude village, in a dark smudge of field located in the lee of a mountain ridge. At the far end of the field, a stand of dead trees pointed jagged limbs toward the stars. Beyond lay jungle.
“An unplanned stop,” Blacksmith said sourly from atop his champing escoa. “What’s this place?”
“A Hamlet of Forsaken.” Gen dismounted. In the hamlet a dog barked, was joined by several others. “We’ll be safe enough.”
“Safe? You’re dressed as an Auditor—”
“I know what I’m wearing.”
A muscle twitched in Blacksmith’s jaw. “You should dis robe.”
“They’ll have seen us land, me in particular in this moon light. Better we not try to deceive them.” Gen took hold the bridle of my escoa and pulled.
We were met halfway across the field by a clawful of men bearing pitchforks, brands, and drawn bows. Several held yapping dogs on lengths of twine. Our escoas came to a snorting stop. Gen lifted both hands to show they were empty.
“We need a short respite from our journey!” he boomed above the barking of the curs.
A Forsaken man stepped forward. All his joints were grossly swollen and he looked on the verge of malnourish ment. As was the manner of all Forsaken, he wore a clay disk through his lower lip, signifying allegience to none but those within his hamlet. He glanced at me, dismissed me as a harmless rishi boy, then looked long at the dragonmas ter, who lay muttering and twitching between the shoulder blades of Blacksmith’s mount. He looked even longer at Dono, lashed crossways behind Sword Holder. He didn’t try to hide the aversion on his face as his eyes returned to Gen.
Gen should’ve shucked his Auditor’s disguise. As For saken, these folk would have vowed to live free of Temple influence.
But as the silence stretched taut, I thought again. They were a sinewy, scarred lot, barefoot and ragged, and had a desperate air to them; behind their ring of snarling dogs, they eyed us with a mixture of loathing and want. It was a
good
thing Gen was dressed in the robes, hood, and veil of one of Temple’s dreaded henchmen; fear of reprisals from Temple would prevent us from being killed for our possessions.
I was relieved to be mistaken for one of Temple’s ser vants, then immediately disgusted at Gen—and myself— for drawing the fear of Temple around us as a shield against these folk.
“We don’t like visitors,” the Forsaken man said at last.
“We won’t stay long,” Gen answered. His detatched tone belonged to someone who fully expected to be obeyed and wasn’t concerned about what it cost to acquire such obedi ence from others.
The Forsaken man wasn’t so readily cowed. “You’ve trampled our seedlings. There’s a cost for that.”
“You’ll be reimbursed.”
“Can’t wear a scrap of paper on your feet. Can’t defend yourself from outlaws or jungle cats with it, neither.”
“You’ll take what’s offered.” Gen stepped forward, and I didn’t blame the Forsaken for despising us. But Dono needed attention. “We’ll require clean water. Boiled and cooled, preferably.”
Fire licked along brands. Dogs snarled and strained against coarse rope. The escoas shifted.
With a look of contempt, the Forsaken man acquiesced with a nod. He took his anger out on the nearest cur, kick ing it in the ribs. It yelped and cowered.
The hamlet existed behind a palisade of hewn saplings meant primarily to keep out wildlife. The huts within were crude affairs; no light flickered beyond the skins and mats hung across their entrances. Other than the men and snarling dogs flanking us, we saw not a single inhabitant.
We were shown into a hut and given a brand for light. Sword Holder stood first watch, outside our door, with the escoas. Still twitching and muttering but moving without aid, the dragonmaster staggered to a corner and collapsed, limbs sprawled. Blacksmith laid Dono on the floor.
Dono’s face was distorted by the gross swelling of his torn eyelid, and pus and blood coated the lashes as thickly as gruel. The purple skin over his swollen eye had split in several places where it was so taut. His throat looked worse. I could see white glistening beneath layers of black dried blood. His larynx? I didn’t know. Didn’t want to. He was unconscious, waxen, and breathing shallowly. “He won’t last the night,” Blacksmith said.
Gen handed the brand to him and crouched beside Dono. “I fear you’re right.”
“Do something,” I said hoarsely. “Something . . . Djimbi.”
Something magic.
Gen’s hood and veil glanced at me. “There’s no incanta tion in the world that can stave off death, Babu. Not that I won’t try . . .” He held up a hand to forestall my protest. “I’ll do what I can, with whatever these folk can spare. But they’ve more need of their herbs than Dono does.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve seen enough to know when a man’s night draws near.”
I was swaying on my feet. Gen nodded at the floor. “Best you sleep awhile. I’ll wake you if anything changes.”
My torso felt rigid as old bamboo, my guts lacerated by my fractured ribs. Lowering myself to the ground seemed impossible. Gen rose and helped me. I lay on my back and listened for Dono’s breaths, but they were so faint, they were drowned by the snorts and rasps of the escoas outside, the dragonmaster’s mutters, the crackle of the brand, the stertorous breathing of Gen and Blacksmith. The smoke from the brand was filling the tiny hut; I shut my eyes against the sting.
“Should douse it, what-hey,” I heard Gen mutter. “Sparks’ll turn this place into a pyre.”
I meant to protest. I meant to say that Dono needed light, that we had to hold back the dark. But I was already asleep.
Dono died at dawn.
Gen woke me, held marshy water to my lips, and helped me to Dono’s side. “He’s going now, Babu. There’s no more I can do.”
“But you tried.”
His white veil stared back at me. A wall.
“You
did
try,” I said, angry now.
“You doubt me?”
I held Dono’s hand as he breathed his last. It was still bigger than mine, that hand, even in death. Big, calloused, the bones straight and stout. We hadn’t held hands since we were children, and then only to play spinning whip.
But whatever had given Dono life and strength had fled. My milk-brother was gone, his hand as cool as clay. I wanted to say something: a prayer, a stanza of song, some thing heartfelt and meaningful. Nothing came. Nothing.
I wondered if Dono had ever felt regret about sending me to Temple’s gaol.
I let his hand slip from mine.
The word is powerful, entwined with emotion, layered with memory. Home is where we are formed. We hold it in our minds as an example of what we do—and don’t—want for our children, our morrow, our kin. We want a hearth that is warmer, a shelter more welcome. Tweak that, change this. Keep a thing or three the same. The end result, by damn, will be the perfect sanctuary, a flawless home . . . and be forever just beyond reach.
Somehow, I’d convinced myself that I was flying home. I’d never been to Clutch Xxamer Zu, save in the dream world of a vision I’d experienced upon my mother’s death. Now, flying with Gen pressed atop me, the wings of the es coa glistening on either side of us like enormous sheets of burnt sugar, anticipation thrilled through me. I was head ing
home
, to a dragon egg–production estate that I’d won through an illicit wager at Arena. A place where I’d be safe, and where I could make others safe. I’d tweak one thing, change another, and the end result would be . . .
Dawn stained the sky lavender and pale orange. Miles below us, a sea of jungle buckled and humped toward the horizon. Dawn turned to morn, morning to noon. The to pography below altered; mountain changed into plains, jungle into undulating savanna. The warm scent of dust and seedheads was detectable in the wind, even as high as we were. The sun blazed; the air was mercilessly hot and dry. I was insanely thirsty. My body screamed with ache.
Then, ahead of us: a brown smudge, embroidered on one side by the reflection of a river.
“That’s it!” Gen boomed in my ear, triumphant despite his fatigue.
Xxamer Zu.
My
Clutch. Home.
I had navel kin there, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews on my mother’s side. Would they recognize my mother in my scarred, lean body? In my hacked-short hair? In my skin color, which bore not a pigment nor whorl of my mother’s Djimbi green?
“Ghepp’ll have arrived yesternoon,” Gen shouted. “He’ll be finalizing the takeover from the former overseer.”
Ghepp: the man I’d chosen to govern in my stead, be cause Temple forbade any but a recognized lord or warrior to command a Clutch. As the son of a renowned RoshuLupini, Ghepp met Temple’s criteria.
“Fine wine and succulent meats!” Gen roared against my ear. He was heady with our success. “Silk robes and ripe fruits! All yours, Babu!”
And there’d be destriers in my Clutch stables, venomous dragons trained for warfare. So there’d be venom.
Again a thrill coursed through me, this one followed by self-loathing. I’d given up venom, had vowed to be enslaved by its potent charms no more. Curse me for even thinking of the dragon’s liquid fire.
The Clutch on the horizon grew larger, faster.
The center of the Clutch was apparent. Jutting up from the grassland knolls were the mansions of the elite—aris tocrats who are known, in the Emperor’s tongue, as bayen, First-Class Citizens. The mansions were clustered around a temple, the central dome of which loomed from the savanna like an enormous egg in a grass nest. As we drew closer, I could make out the gold-plated minaret protruding from the dome’s apex and stabbing lancelike into the belly of the sky.
A patchwork of crop fields surrounded the Clutch, and beyond them, a huge sheet of white.
“Salt pans!” Gen boomed, as if following my gaze. “The Clutch’s source of revenue. Ready yourself for landing, now!”
We were there. My new life was about to begin.
Under Gen’s guidance, our escoa banked over roof tops, circled wide around the temple dome, and descended into the large courtyard of the messenger byre, which was clearly identifiable from the skies by its checkered red and black roof tiles. In Malacar, only places that can accomo date a dragon bear such tiles.
Blacksmith and Sword Holder landed on either side of us. We’d left Dono’s body with the Forsaken and promised them payment for nailing him to one of the trees in their se pulchral grove. I hoped that whoever shot and ate the jack als that would consume Dono’s corpse would say the ritual honor-thanks as they cooked the jackals’ ribs for dinner.
Every stall in Xxamer Zu’s messenger byre was filled with escoas. Some with two.
Good, I thought wearily as Gen slid off my back and dis mounted. I own an impressive amount of escoas.
“Give me your hand, Babu.” Gen’s white veil looked up at me. “I’ll help you down.”
Think of roasted meat and cold fruit, I told myself, brac ing for the dismount. My fractured ribs felt like a hot vise across my torso. Think of clean water and sleep.
I didn’t so much as dismount as slide, grunting, into Gen’s outstretched arms. A young herald apprentice appeared from the stablehands’ cottage at the far end of the byre’s long courtyard. He jogged over to us and took our escoa’s bridle. Blacksmith dismounted and offered a hand to the dragonmaster. The dragonmaster swatted it away.
“I’ve ridden more dragons than all the women you’ve ever ridden, or are likely to,” he snapped.
Blacksmith turned his back on the dragonmaster and tossed his reins to the herald apprentice. “Take good care of her, boy. She’s flown hard and far.”
The boy swallowed, shot a look at Gen, and scrambled for the reins of Sword Holder’s mount.
“Did we disturb your noon sleep?” Sword Holder asked the boy, swinging to the ground. “What, are all your fellows abed in this heat, and you left to work alone?”
The apprentice ducked his head and tugged hard on the reins of our three dragons, leading them quickly to the ground floor of the shadowed feed loft that formed one side of the court.
Gen slipped an arm carefully across my back and under my armpits. “Lean on me, if you have to—”
Blacksmith slammed into us. Gen staggered sideways; I fell to the ground with a scream of pain.
Sword Holder cried, “Down, down!” Then his head lurched forward onto his chest with such violence, he was thrown to his knees. Steel glinted from the back of his neck. A war quoit.
Gen and the dragonmaster dove to the ground as an Au ditor materialized from a corner of the courtyard, then a second from another corner, then a clawful of them from everywhere. We were surrounded.
“Stay down!” Gen shouted at me, even as he snatched Sword Holder’s blade from its scabbard. He rose to his knees as the Auditors drifted toward us. With an unholy Djimbi cry, Gen launched the blade spearlike toward an Auditor. The steel flew with preternatural speed and sank into the Auditor’s belly, where it exploded into a shower of blue-white shards. The shards formed a howling vortex.
I belly-crawled through the dust to Blacksmith and yanked at the quoit embedded in his neck. It came out with a gris tly rasp. Gen bellowed at me to stay down, and the hair on my nape rose, because I knew a throwing ring was flying at me. I dropped onto my side—the
pain
—and threw my own quoit with all the force and precision my training as an ap prentice had ingrained in me. An Auditor’s razor-ring spun over my left arm; my own sliced through his veil and sank into his gullet. I didn’t wait to see if it felled him; four more Au ditors were coming at me, fast, while the unnatural cyclone Gen had spawned ricocheted off a wall and exploded into two more Auditors. The cyclone stopped, became a sheet of white flame: shrieks, the smell of roasting flesh and burned hair. I scrambled for a fallen quoit, spun it around a forefinger, and released it at another Auditor. Missed.
The dragonmaster had Blacksmith’s sword in his hand and was running, bellowing insanely, toward an Auditor . . .
How many Auditors
were
there? A whole Host?
We wouldn’t make it. The realization was cool and clear. Four Auditors had us surrounded, quoits spinning around their forefingers.
One Auditor jerked once, twice, thrice, hands spasming, quoit spinning off uselessly to one side. The three Auditors beside him likewise convulsed; black tips stabbed through their robes in various places. Their hands dropped as they staggered forward one step, two. A quoit bit into the ground near my foot, sending a clod of dirt against my thigh. A sec ond quoit fell near my knee.
The Auditors fell like cornstalks beneath a scythe. Quar rels protruded from their backs.
I looked up; there, at the far end of the courtyard, near the stablehands’ cottage, stood a clawful of men, several bearing bows. Other than them, Gen, the dragonmaster, and I were the only ones left alive in the courtyard. The dragonmaster hacked and hewed at an Auditor’s fallen body.
“Dragon and the Snake!” a voice cried, and a bayen man strode toward us from the shadows, elegantly dressed in slit pantaloons the color of ripe dates, his emerald shirt billow ing about him as he gestured at the slain Auditors. “Damn you, Gen, damn you a thousandfold! You were supposed to arrive before dusk last night.”
It was Rutgar Re Ghepp, the man who’d agreed to deceive Temple insofar as acting as the overseer of my Clutch.
“I’ve been cut.” Gen gasped from where he was rising to his feet. Red was flowering across the white of his left sleeve. “Zarq?”
“I’m unhurt. I think. Yes.”
Gen tugged off his veil, breathing heavily, and clamped one hand across a bicep. His black beard, cleaved down the middle and as tangled and unruly as the tufts of hair on his head, glistened.
Not with blood, I thought. Not Gen. Not here. Not in my Clutch.
Rutgar Re Ghepp—now Lupini Xxamer Zu—stood be fore us, his canted eyes blazing, his high cheeks flushed.
“They arrived late this morning.” He sounded defensive. Petulant, almost.
“Could’ve warned us,” Gen said through gritted teeth.
“They locked down the stable.”
“Are there more of them?”
Ghepp ran a hand through his black hair and looked about the courtyard. His full lips moved slightly as he counted. “This is it.”
“What about in the destrier stables?”
Ghepp snorted. “Empty. This Clutch doesn’t own a single damn destrier. Not a one. You’re looking at Xxamer Zu’s only winged dragons, and most of these were flown in by the Auditors you just killed.”
If Gen took note of the
you
, he didn’t show it.
The dragonmaster staggered up to us, trailing his bloody sword through the dust. He had foam around his mouth. His ugly chest wound was bleeding profusely.
“What’s this, hey? What the
shit
is this?” he shrieked.
“I could ask the same of you.” Ghepp stabbed a finger at Gen. “You said you’d make a clean escape. You said Xxamer Zu wouldn’t be linked to
her
.” His finger stabbed my way.
“Xxamer Zu hasn’t been linked to Zarq,” Gen growled. “Think, man! Temple sends a Host to every Clutch that undergoes a change of governship after Arena, to super vise—”
“Then why the stable lockdown? Why the ambush?”
Gen’s cinder black brows furrowed. “Was it a lockdown? Did you try to send a dragonflier to alert us?”
Ghepp’s fine nostrils flared. “I wasn’t so stupid.”
“Titbrained fool,” the dragonmaster snapped. “Your fears turned you witless, and now we’ve got a dead Host on our hands!”
“Enough.” Gen swayed, braced himself. “You know for sure this was an ambush?”
“Look about you!” Ghepp cried.
Gen didn’t. “Why was the Host here in the byre with you?”
“We were to tour the outskirts of the Clutch and verify the boundaries—”
“So. No ambush. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they recognized Zarq for who she is and acted.” Gen gestured with his jaw at the bowmen watching us from the shadows. “Those yours?”
Ghepp nodded grimly. “From Clutch Re.”
“Got eight of ’em?”
Ghepp swore.
“Get those Auditors’ robes washed and dried as fast as you can and pick eight of your men to wear ’em. Put the fear of death in that apprentice cowering in the feed barn so he keeps his mouth shut about what he’s witnessed, and get me somewhere I can sew myself up, before I bleed out. Scout out the rest of the byre, make sure no one else saw or heard a thing.”
“And
her
?” Ghepp’s eyes blamed me for the Auditors’ deaths and the trouble it would cause him. “You know how
small
this Clutch is, how primitive? There’s no bastion here; I’ve nowhere to hide her. Bring her into the bayen quarter and she’ll be recognized by someone who attended Arena. Like
that
.” He snapped his fingers, hard.
“Anyone who’s at Arena is still whoring and gambling—”
“No,” Ghepp said, and there was iron in his voice. “Look at her. She won’t pass as a bayen woman or boy. Nor him. Hide them amongst the rishi.”
It was Gen’s turn to swear. Then he blanched, swayed, and closed his eyes. The magics he’d employed had sapped him of all strength.
“Catch him!” I cried.
Ghepp and the dragonmaster both caught the swooning giant—barely. They staggered under his weight, then, after a curt exchange, laid him down.The dragonmaster fell to his knees, breathing heavily. Ghepp stormed over to his men.
Gen stirred. “Arbiyesku.”
“What?” I leaned closer.
“Go to the arbiyesku.”
My heart sank. The dragonmaster started to protest, but Gen cracked open an eye and shot him a look. “No one’ll look for you there. Understand?” Gen paused. “I’ll send word.”
I
understood, and I knew that, after a moment, the drag onmaster did, too: Gen didn’t believe a word he’d said to al lay Ghepp’s fears. He suspected that, somehow, Temple had linked me to the wager that had won Ghepp Xxamer Zu. He feared the Host had been sent to ambush us.
Perhaps one of our decoys, or the man we’d left behind— Granth—had been caught and interrogated. Perhaps the merchant tycoon who’d backed my wager had turned on us. Perhaps that hunched, knuckle-spined creature in the labyrinth had been human, had recognized me for who I was and overheard me talk of Xxamer Zu. . . .
I could make a thousand speculations. Didn’t matter. The facts remained: After drawing weapons against me, a Temple Host lay dead in the messenger byre of my Clutch, and the panicked Clutch overseer was insisting that I hide amongst the laborers of Xxamer Zu.
Roasted meats, succulent fruits, clean water, and sleep were not to be mine. Not yet.
As for any sense of security and home . . .