The Mark of the Dragonfly (5 page)

The tarp was just big enough to carry Micah and the girl. Briefly, Piper considered leaving the two of them to go get help—it was risky to move Micah, especially if he had a head wound—but the howling, frigid wind made her decide against that. The sooner she got them both back to town and got them warm, the better.

Piper took as much medicine and food from the caravan as she could carry, which wasn’t much, but once she got back to town, she would tell Micah’s brother where to find the rest. She’d taken bandages from one of the medicine packs and used them to wrap Micah’s head, but she could see no visible wound on the girl. She did a quick search but found no other bodies in the caravan wreckage. If there were any other passengers, they’d either escaped the meteorite impact and run off—or there was nothing left of them.

She dragged her burden out of the fields, trying to be gentle as possible as she passed over the crater-marked earth. When she finally reached the town limits, she was half fainting with exhaustion, and a fiery ball of pain had settled around her ankle.

The townspeople were still in the shelter, which meant all the healers were there too. Piper didn’t think she had the strength to get both Micah and the girl all the way to the center of town. Her own house was closer. That would have to do.

She dragged the tarp across her yard, kicked open her front door, and pulled it into the house. Her legs wobbled as she lifted the girl by the armpits and propped her up by the stove, the warmest spot in the house. Piper put Micah beside her, then stripped the two blankets off her bed, one for each of them. As far as Piper could guess, the girl would be fine—she’d probably just passed out from the force of the meteor blast or from the thick fumes in the air. She’d been the lucky one. But Micah needed help, now.

Voices filled the air, breaking the heavy silence that had settled over the fields in the wake of the storm. Stumbling, Piper went back outside. While she’d been tending to the injured, the rest of the town had emerged from the shelter and were now running for the fields. Piper was torn. She could try to chase down one of the healers or go find Jory and bring him here, but that meant leaving Micah. A wave of panic washed over her at the thought
of leaving her friend alone, even for a few minutes. What if he woke up and she wasn’t there? What if he got worse and he was all alone?

Just like her father—alone when he died. She hadn’t been able to be with him.

Piper clamped her jaw tight to stifle a whimper. She’d brought Micah this far—she had to get him home to his brother.

Her arms leaden, Piper put Micah back on the tarp and dragged it outside. She headed toward the center of town, shouting frantically for Jory as she went. Halfway there, she met him running.

“What happened?” Jory’s face went ashen when he saw his brother lying on the tarp.

“He got hit in the head. It was a meteor … or … maybe debris—just help me!” Piper stammered. She’d been calm before because she had to be, for Micah, but she could feel herself starting to come apart. “We have to get him inside and warm.”

Jory had been staring at Micah—lifeless and pale, blood soaking through his bandages as he lay on the tarp—but Piper’s words galvanized him. He took one end of the tarp and helped her drag it to his house, which thankfully wasn’t far. She didn’t think she could have made it back to her own house.

“There’s a caravan wrecked in the fields,” Piper said haltingly. Even with Jory pulling most of Micah’s weight, her arms shook with weariness, and her breath came in
sharp gasps that burned in her chest. “Meteorites destroyed most of it, but I found some medicine packs, food, and clothes. I couldn’t carry it all. You should go back and get them.” Piper waited for him to say something, but he didn’t even look at her. His face was frozen in a mask of shock. “Are you listening, Jory? Get the healer for Micah, then go out to the fields and get the medicine packs. You can use them to pay for the healer. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Jory said hoarsely, coming out of his trance. “We need to get him inside first. I’ll take his head and shoulders; you lift his legs. Once we get him there, we’ll put him in bed and I’ll go.”

As gently as she could, Piper did as he told her. She couldn’t stand seeing Jory like this—she’d never seen him look so scared. “I’m telling you, there’s a week’s supply of food out there in the fields,” she said, trying to distract him from his brother. “So much I couldn’t carry it all. If you hurry, you can get the rest before anyone sees the caravan wreck.” She babbled on, her voice shaking, but she couldn’t make herself shut up. She just kept telling Jory to go get the medicine packs, to use them to pay for a healer, as if that would somehow make up for the fact that his brother was unconscious with a bleeding head wound and maybe wouldn’t wake up. But Piper kept repeating the words until her throat was so tight she couldn’t talk anymore. Then she noticed that, aside from them, the house was empty.

“I forgot—your parents aren’t home yet,” she croaked. They didn’t know their little boy was hurt, that they might never see him alive again.

“They won’t be back until tomorrow,” Jory said. Gently, they laid Micah down on his bed. Jory covered him with a blanket.

As soon as Micah was tucked in, Jory headed for the door. His face was still deathly pale, but he spoke calmly. “You’ll stay with him, won’t you, Piper? I’ll be back as soon as I find a healer.”

Mute, Piper nodded. She wouldn’t leave him alone. When Jory left, she stood beside the bed, looking down at Micah. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I should have looked after you better.” She was older, stronger; she was supposed to protect him, but she’d failed. What would Micah’s parents think of her? They always said Micah looked up to Piper like a big sister.

She stared at Micah for a long time, willing him to open his eyes, to point and laugh at her for crying and carrying on like this. But he never moved. There was only silence in the room until the door opened and Jory was back with one of the healers in tow.

The older man was much more finely dressed than Piper and Jory, his tailored suit as nice as any worn by the Trade Consortium representatives. He elbowed Piper aside and pulled up a chair beside the bed. Jory stood on Micah’s other side, watching anxiously as the healer examined his brother.

Piper wanted to stay to hear what the healer would say about Micah’s injury, but she suddenly remembered the girl. If she woke up while Piper was gone, she wouldn’t know where she was or what had happened to her.

“I have to go,” she told Jory. “There was a girl unconscious in the caravan wreck. I brought her back with Micah and left her at my house. I need to check on her.”

Jory nodded. He looked like he was still in shock. “Does she need a healer?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “But … will you tell me if Micah—if anything changes?” She didn’t want to think the worst and tried to block the thought that Micah could die from her mind.

“I will.” Jory had already turned away, his attention fixed on his brother.

Piper wiped her face. There was nothing more she could do. Reluctantly, she slipped out the door.

Piper’s steps got heavier as she trudged back to her house. Her ankle still ached, but she didn’t think it was a bad sprain. When she was finally home, she locked and barred the door behind her, pressed her back against it, and slid to the floor in a quivering heap. Through her tears, she saw that the girl was still asleep by the stove, her chest rising and falling in a regular rhythm.

Exhausted, Piper curled up on her side, burying herself deep in her dad’s coat. The worn fabric used to smell like him, his warmth, but now all she smelled was her own sweat and sour echoes of the green dust. She closed
her eyes and tried to shut it all out, to bring back her father. Eventually, she fell asleep.

She woke to a mewling cry. Piper sat up stiffly, her back against the door, hand reaching instinctively for her knife. Her mind was still fuzzy, but through the haze, she saw the girl thrashing and twisting under the blanket. Her eyes were closed. She must have been having a nightmare.

“No! No, keep it away!” she cried. Her voice was terribly hoarse—Piper barely understood the words. The girl pawed the air frantically, reaching toward the hot stove.

Piper scrambled across the floor and got hold of the girl’s hands. That only made things worse. The girl fought back with wild punches. Piper took a hit to the eye and saw stars. All the while, the girl’s cries grew louder. The house had thin walls; Piper was glad all the townspeople were out in the fields. If they’d been at home, someone was bound to think she was beating the girl.

“Stop it!” Piper hissed as the girl continued to thrash in her sleep. “You’re safe, do you hear me? Listen, the scrapper you’re punching is the one who saved you!” She dodged another blow. “One more like that and I swear—” Flailing knuckles glanced off her jaw. “I should have left you in that field!” Piper was too tired and worried to deal with this mess.

For all her wild terror, the girl was still weak and Piper finally got a secure hold on her. With soothing motions, she rubbed the girl’s trembling hands, trying to show her that she wasn’t dangerous. Gradually, her cries grew fainter, and Piper began to relax her hold. She pushed up the sleeve of the girl’s dress, intending to check her pulse, and gasped.

Inked on the girl’s forearm was a tattoo roughly the size of a matchbook. The design was a dragonfly, but instead of a normal insect, this one was made of mechanical parts. Transparent wings veined with iridescent wires and minuscule springs curled around the girl’s arm. Gears and cogs composed its multifaceted eyes, and the dragonfly’s metallic green body was a piston that tapered toward the bend of her elbow. A skilled artist had painted the dark-haired woman on Micah’s music box, but whoever had done the dragonfly design was a true master. The inks alone had to have cost a fortune.

It was the mark of the Dragonfly.

Piper had never seen one, but she’d heard of the famous tattoos. The mechanical dragonfly was the symbol of Aron, the king of the Dragonfly territories, which lay directly to the south of the Merrow Kingdom.

The two powers had been rivals for as long as anyone could remember, competing over resources and land, with the Merrow Kingdom usually being the more aggressive. In fact, rumor had it the Merrow Kingdom had been making and stockpiling weapons and had been
plotting to try to take over part or all of the Dragonfly territories—until Aron caused the iron shortage.

A well-known inventor and explorer, King Aron had set up factories all over the Dragonfly territories in the last five years, with the sole purpose of building a fleet of airships and ocean steamers to explore the uncharted lands of Solace. The world’s future lay in exploration and expansion, he claimed. But for the longest time, that expansion had been halted by a range of impassable mountains to the north and west, and by oceans to the south and east. Expeditions that tried to cross the mountains were stopped by avalanches and peaks so high and cold that they froze the blood in a person’s veins. And the wooden sailing ships that set out to find new lands across the sea were battered by storms and vicious currents. They returned in failure—if they returned at all.

King Aron intended to change all that, with steamships that would weather any ocean storm, and airships that would pass over the highest mountains in safety and comfort. But to accomplish his goal, he needed iron—lots of iron. Lucky for him, most of the iron mines in Solace were located in his kingdom, but to ensure he had a large enough supply, and at the same time to prevent the Merrow Kingdom from building mass quantities of weapons to attack his country, Aron had stopped trading iron to the Merrow Kingdom. Instead, he funneled it all into his factories. Ending this trade had left the Merrow Kingdom with a shortage that put thousands
out of work and soured relations between the two kingdoms to the point that many feared a war would erupt anyway. But King Aron continued with his shipbuilding, claiming that finding new lands and resources was the key to lasting peace. He built the largest factory of all in Noveen, his capital city—the place where Piper’s father had gone to work, and died.

The dragonfly tattoos were only given to two groups of people: Aron’s advisory council, of which there were four members, and those who were under the king’s protection. This usually included the rich and powerful, although no one knew exactly how many bore the mark. The symbol itself had originated with Aron’s family. One of his oldest family crests was a pair of sabers crossed to look like the wings of a dragonfly, which had started the tradition of the people referring to the reigning monarch as the Dragonfly. Over the years, the symbol had changed as technology evolved, but Aron was still called the Dragonfly. Done in a mixture of rare inks, the tattoos were almost impossible for outsiders to duplicate. Piper could tell by the swirling metallic colors—emeralds and coppers so vivid they sparkled like jewels—that the mark was genuine. Whoever this girl was, she must be under Aron’s protection, so she was obviously very important. Her king was one of the most powerful men in Solace.

And Piper’s father’s murderer.

Not directly, of course. But King Aron had built the factory in Noveen, the monster that had swallowed Piper’s father up and made him breathe poisonous black smoke until his lungs couldn’t take it anymore. After her father died, Piper had spent many sleepless nights imagining her journey to the capital, how she would burn Aron’s precious factory to the ground.

And now look at her, still living in the scrap town, tending and comforting a spoiled capital girl. Yet the girl couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve years old, and in the grip of the nightmare, she’d seemed much younger, terrified half out of her mind.

Carefully, Piper adjusted the girl’s sleeve to cover the tattoo. What was a girl under Aron’s protection—one so young!—doing on a caravan in the harvesting fields during a meteor storm? Who else might have been on the caravan with her? Was she with her family? Had any of them escaped? Piper sucked in a breath—surely not Aron himself? No, she couldn’t believe that. The scrap towns didn’t get much news except what the traders brought with them, but they talked plenty about Aron. Rumor had it that he didn’t condone scavenging from the scrap fields. He even encouraged people to come from the Merrow Kingdom as her father had done, to work in his factories, shaping iron for his fleet.