Draka

I woke to knocking on the door, followed by a groan that I only belatedly recognised as my name. The unnamed need that I’d felt last time I woke was still there. No stronger, no weaker, but still there, and I had no idea what to do about it. I got up, stretched, and lifted the bar, then gently pushed the door open.

Outside Herald stood, supporting herself with one hand on the doorframe and a perfect picture of well-deserved misery. She scowled at me, her hands clenching and unclenching, and I raised my eyebrows at her and backed up, lying down again in my warm, comfy nest.

Narrowing her eyes, Herald seemed to come to a decision. She drew in a long, sharp breath through her nose, then half stomped, half stumbled into the small room and draped herself on top of me.

“Mak woke me at the ass crack of dawn,” she complained into my back, “and I want to die.”

“Did you eat anything?” I asked.

“Kill me,” she demanded.

“Did you drink anything? A big mug of water?”

“I will never drink anything ever again. Please just spray venom directly into my lungs and end this.”

“Herald. Go back upstairs, to the kitchen. Drink plenty of water, and eat something. Preferably something greasy. And if you have anything you usually drink for pain, like for cramps or something, drink some of that. Or, you know what? Ask Mak. She should know a thing or two about hangovers.”

“She laughed at me!” Herald moaned miserably. “She thinks this is funny!”

“She also loves you, and will help you if you ask her. Now go!” I said, putting all the gentle force I could muster behind my words.

Herald growled, but she got to her feet. With a look of incredulous betrayal, she turned and left. I closed the door behind her, and shortly thereafter I could fell her and Mak close together, walking around the inn.

I hadn’t gone to the dream place this night, I thought as I drifted off again. Odd. I wondered if there was something that triggered it, and if I could control it somehow. I’d have to figure it out at some point.

The next time I was woken I could feel both of the sisters outside my door. And when I opened it I saw not only them, but Tam and Val as well.

Herald looked marginally better, even managing a weak smile. Tam was… keeping himself together. He was hanging off of Val and raised his hand weakly in salute, but that was it.

“Good morning!” Mak said, oddly cheerful. She patted her sister on the arm. “And thank you for getting this one to come to me for some help with her hangover.”

“Yeah, well, I figured you’d know better than me. Not like you have electrolyte drinks or aspirin here.” That got an odd look from the men, but I just ignored it. Herald and Mak, who knew where I’d come from, just took anything odd I said in stride at this point. “Are you all heading out to the, what? Censor’s office, was it?”

“That’s right!” Mak said, her mouth curling into a wide smile. “We need to be registered in the tax rolls!”

First I blinked. Then I thought about what she’d said, trying to decide if there was any way I could have possibly misheard her. But, no, she had definitely said that she was going to get them signed up to pay taxes. Which, yeah, sure, perhaps you needed to do that to avoid getting in trouble later, but why the hell was she so happy about it?

“And that’s a good thing?” I asked. “Very exciting?”

“It is! Because only families who own at least 120 Dragons of property more than their debts are required to register in the rolls. And we do. And it’s the family that’s registered, not members. I mean, each member is on the census rolls, to keep track of the population, but a family only truly exists if it’s in the tax rolls!”

Then it dawned on me. “And if you’re going to register, that means that your family will have a name?”

“That’s exactly what it means!” Mak said. They were all smiling now, even Tam, and Mak’s was wide enough that it threatened to split her head in half. “From refugees to a real Karakani family in one generation, it’s…”

Her voice broke, and suddenly she was crying, still smiling wildly as Herald wrapped one arm around her and pulled her into a tight side hug. “Thank you, Draka. If you hadn’t been with us in the north… thank you! Herald, do you want to…?” She looked at her sister while waving one hand at me.

Herald looked at her completely with a perfect lack of comprehension, then her eyes went wide and she turned to me. “Yes! Of course, yes! Ah, um, so… Draka. We need to register a Family name. In the rolls! And we have been talking, for a long while, really, and we were wondering… could we use yours?”

Time stopped.

What did she mean, use my name? They couldn’t register me. Sure, I probably had enough money in my hoard, but I wasn’t a citizen. I wasn’t even a person as far as most of the city was concerned. And I sure as shit wasn’t paying any tax!

Then things began to fall into place. What Mak had told me the night before, about having another surprise. How they’d all promised Herald that she could be the one to tell me, which must mean that it was something Herald was excited about. And now this, asking if they could use my name for the rolls. They wanted to put my name in the rolls when they registered themselves.

They wanted to name their Family after me. An achievement that most citizens didn’t even bother dreaming about, and they wanted to use it to honor me. Sure, Mak was right. I had been instrumental in finding the treasure, but we’d all been there, clearing out the trolls, and Tam and Val did all the legwork afterwards.

They’d made this little place for me, inviting me into their home. But with what they were asking, they were inviting me into their family.

Still standing silent in front of them, I, the mighty dragon, began to cry. My pride flared and so did my anger, directed at myself for showing them this, or any, weakness. I shoved it aside. There was no place for it. Not here, not now.

“Yeah, nah, yeah, that’s…” I said, trying to sound dismissive and turning my head away in embarrassment. “That’s fine. Yeah. You go ahead and—”

At that point I was cut off as Herald wrapped her arms around me, squealing with delight. Then Mak joined her, and then Tam and even Val crowded into the small room and turned it into a big, awkward group hug.

“Thank you, Draka,” Herald whispered.

“Yeah. Of course! Just, if my name gets out there, maybe something like ‘Drakona’ or ‘Drakonus’ is better? Or ‘Drakonum’? I don’t know if it’s grammatically correct but ‘Drakonum Draka’ sounds better anyway and it gives you some plausible deniability and—”

“Sure, we can do that,” Mak laughed, no doubt feeling every shred of how moved and overwhelmed I was at that moment. “We’ll all know where it came from either way.”

I wanted so badly to go with them. And perhaps I could have, staying in the shadows and playing my little game of mobile hide-and-go-seek with the entire population of Karakan. But while I didn’t care much about getting spotted anymore, getting spotted near them would be risky. They were already pushing it by taking a name that could, without much imagination, be connected to me. So I stayed. I asked them to take Ardek with them again, with instructions for him to run back and let me know immediately if anything happened, and asked them to send Kira down on their way out. Then, when I was alone in the cellar, I let myself cry properly for a little while.

In a fairly messed up way, I had a family again. I had already begun to think of Herald and Mak in that way, but for all of them to recognise it in such a permanent way, it was more than I could handle. And while I knew exactly why I was reacting the way I was, part of me was still confused and annoyed at my reaction, though the fact that I was alone at least kept the anger at bay.

I wiped my face furiously on my pillows when there came a knock on the door. I’d retreated back to the strongroom; this was still a working inn with guests, and there were staff who needed to get things from the cellar now and then. We might have to let them know the situation at some point, at least Reben who still handled the day-to-day operation, but it was still too early for that.

I lifted the bar and gave the door a light shove, and a narrow sliver of pale light came in through the crack, growing wider and brighter as Kira struggled to open the door enough to enter.

“You asked for me,” she said, looking around the small room nervously. She was carrying one of the lightstones, clutching it in both hands between us like a talisman to ward me off. I wondered what I looked like, lit from below by that single, cold light as I towered above her, seated on my throne of pillows and blankets.

“You can change the color of those, you know.” I reached out to tap the stone lightly. “Want me to show you?”

She stared at the stone for a moment. “Please. This cold light is depressing.”

So I took a moment to show her what I’d figured out about the things, and my experience translated pretty well. She listened seriously and understood my explanations quickly, and soon she was adjusting the hue and brightness of the light to her liking, spending quite some time getting it just right. I watched, feeling rather proud of how I’d actually taught her something useful.

She settled on an orange tone that reminded me of a sunset, though much brighter. “There,” she said, satisfaction tugging at the corners of her mouth. “That's it.”

“What is it?”

“Home,” she sighed. “It’s the light through the window of the big room of our house, right before the sun dipped below the hills in the evening. I didn’t think I’d ever see this light again after I was bonded.”

“Stick with us and you can have it anytime you feel homesick.”

Or if she stole one of the lightstones and took off, I thought, but that was neither something she needed to hear, nor something I thought likely.

“I’d like that,’ she whispered. Then, in a more normal tone, she said, “So, what did you want with me?”

What did I want? I hadn't had a plan when I asked the others to send Kira down. I suspected that I just didn’t want to be alone, though it could also be that I wanted to keep an eye on her.

Or it could be that I was alone and so, in most ways that mattered, was she.

I settled on asking her, “Have you been learning any Karakani?”

She concentrated and said, “Little I learning.” She messed up the word order and missed a prefix, but her pronunciation was solid. “Stone, frog, play…” she smiled fondly and switched back to her own language. “The kids back at the mountain taught me some ‘important’ words, but your servants have been trying to teach me to actually speak the language.”

I snorted at that. ‘Servants’. I still had some very complicated feelings about that description, even if I couldn’t deny that it fit Mak, to some degree at least. She’d be the first to agree, whatever I’d told her about my feelings on the subject. But Herald? She was mine, there was no doubt about that, but calling her my servant felt… it wasn’t enough. She was so far above that. Ardek was a servant. Kira might be, though that was a whole situation in itself. But Herald?

My dearest friend couldn’t be my servant. Companion, perhaps? Partner in crime?

As I pondered I realized that I’d been quiet for quite a while, and Kira was beginning to look anxious, probably worrying that she’d somehow offended me.

“That’s good,” I said, breaking the tension and allowing Kira to relax. “I’m happy to hear that. What have you been practising?”

We spent the next hour working on her Karakani, practising simple sentences. I let her choose what she wanted to learn, and wasn’t surprised when she had me teach her things like, “Are you hurt? Where does it hurt? I can help. Sit still. Hold him. Hold her,” and similar short phrases. That led into me asking her about how she'd gotten her healing advancement, and what other advancements she had.

Kira was, to my surprise, almost entirely open. She didn't hesitate to tell me about her advancements, except for one, which I had to drag out of her. Her first two advancements were about helping the sick and injured, figuring out exactly what was wrong and what to do about it. The last one, though, the third minor that she’d gotten before her major, her healing magic…

“Fine,” she said, surrendering to my badgering before I felt it necessary to resort to threats. Her face was flushed with embarrassment. “Healthy pregnancies and easy childbirth, alright? I always wanted a litter of kids, but I assisted a midwife for years and… well, I don’t know what it’s like for a dragon to lay an egg but I’ve seen too many complications.” She sighed, her mood steadily dropping. “I was scared. Then when I hit my threshold it was that or being much more resistant to disease. But it was never a good time, and then I got my major and I was bonded, and it wasn’t like I was going to bring a child into that kind of life…”

Her voice creaked at the end, but she sniffed once and kept herself together. “When I got my first high minor I got the disease resistance. I can’t heal disease, and there’s a lot of bad water in the field, so I had to protect myself. And that’s where I’m at.”

“How do you not hate them?” The words just fell out of my mouth, with no conscious thought connected to them. An anger had grown inside me as she spoke, and I couldn’t keep it inside anymore. “They took your dreams! They forced you into what is just a word away from slavery! How can you defend that place?”

“It’s home.”

“They took your life away!” Some of my anger was turning against her, now. For her weakness, for the way she didn’t stand up for herself. She could have run. She could have made a new life for herself somewhere else, like Herald and Mak and Tam’s parents had done. I felt a disgust rise inside me, wondering why she hadn’t fought, when even death would have been better than what she’d submitted to.

Then just as quickly I was filled with anger and disgust at myself. She wasn’t a warrior. That was the first thing that she had told me. All she wanted was to help people and to have a bunch of kids, and I was angry at her for not fighting? No. I stomped that part of myself down into a corner of my mind. I didn’t need Instinct, right then. Kira didn’t need her. She needed some goddamn sympathy. And I understood, or at least I thought that I did. I had been so happy about being included in Herald’s little family, and that was all that Kira wanted, I thought. A family. People who loved her.

She cowered before me, unable to look at me. I didn’t know if she was too afraid to move or if she was literally unable to run from me, but I felt so fucking ashamed.

“Kira,” I said gently. “Kira, look at me.”

I could see her trembling, but her gaze stayed fixed on the lightstone in her hands.

“Kira, look at me. Please.”

She slowly, in little jerks, raised her head, and met my eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you, and I’m sorry for what I said just now. But it’s not too late, is it? You’re young. You could make a life here, as a healer. Learn the language. Meet someone. Have a whole bunch of kids. I wouldn’t stop you.”

“How could I?” she whispered. “I’m still not free.”

“Perhaps not. But you’re freer than you were, and I think you could still be happy. Here in the city, or with the refugees back at the mountain, or in some village… Anywhere you go, there will be people who need help. And… What would you do if I let you go?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I told you, right now, that you’re free to go. Even asked the others to give you some money to help you on your way. What would you do?”

“I… I’d go back, I guess.”

“Would you? Could you go back to the people who forced you to travel with a band of murderers and kidnappers? What would they do with you? Do you think they would let you live out your life in peace?”

She slumped at that. When she answered, her voice was barely a whisper, only audible in the silence of the small room. “No.”

“They’d probably send you right back, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“To the death and the cruelty and the suffering.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting tears. “Yes.”

“I would never ask that of you, Bekiratag,” I told her, and I meant it. “I’ve told you before, and I'll tell you again. I will never ask you to be part of anything that involves harming anyone else. I might ask you to heal someone afterwards, but that’s as far as it would go. Doesn’t that sound better?”

“Yes.”

“Look at me, Kira,” I said, and she opened her red-rimmed eyes. “Believe it or not, but I want everyone who belongs to me to be happy. I want them to be safe and healthy and prosperous. One big happy family. Doesn’t that sound good?”

“Yes!” she sobbed, her face twisting for a second as she fought to control herself.

“You could be a part of that, Kira. I want you to be a part of that. I could make you, but I don't want to see any more fear in your eyes than I already do. I want it to come from you. I want you to accept that you belong to me. That you belong here, with us.”

“I…”

“You don’t need to say anything now. But I want you to think about it. Really look inside yourself. And if you truly believe that there is no place for you here, that you have to return to your people, to Tekeretek, that you will be better off there, then I promise you that I will let you go, with enough money to get you there. No matter what the Council thinks. I swear it, on… on my hoard.”

She looked at me, silently, with a desperate hope in her eyes, and I knew that I had her. She knew as well as I did that there was no chance for her to be happy in Tekeretek. They’d sold her to the highest bidder, and they’d either return her there or do it again. And I meant every word that I’d said to her.

“Think about it.”