Draka

Kira didn’t leave. Nor did she answer me. I made some room for her among the pillows and blankets, and she sat with me as we continued our lessons in Karakani. I’d been keeping track of Herald and Mak, of course, making sure that they stayed together and didn’t seem like they were in any trouble, but I didn’t let that interrupt my time with Kira. This was the first time we’d actually done something normal together, and I didn’t want her to feel like I wasn’t giving her my undivided attention.

I only started rounding off when I felt my friends returning to the inn, but I asked her to stay. When they piled into the strongroom they were far less boisterously cheerful than I’d expected, but their smiles were as bright as any I’d ever seen.

“It is done,” Herald said. “We’re a real family. The House Drakonum!”

“The taxes are ridiculous,” Mak said, grinning. “Three Dragons per year, but we should be fine. We may need to go out on another adventure or two every so often, though.”

No one seemed upset about that.

“Anyway, we’ve talked a lot these last few days. And now that it’s all official — and I want you to know that this isn’t Herald and me! Tam agrees, and Val likes the idea.” She turned to look at the others, who just smiled and nodded.

I felt a warm, wonderful pressure in my chest. I knew what was happening. It wasn’t hard to guess, but I needed to hear her say it. “Go on.”

She gathered herself, looking straight at me. “Draka. I can’t officially adopt you, unfortunately, but as matriarch of House Drakonum I would like to formally extend to you an invitation to join our House. There would usually be a ceremony, and there’s a whole ritual where you’d accept my authority over you in all things—” she grinned and shook her head. “We all know that’s not happening. And technically all you own would be mine to dispose of as I see fit, but… yeah. We can skip that, too. Really, I’ll have to improvise. So: Draka, of parts unknown. Will you join our family, House Drakonum, the House named for you, that you made possible? Will you defend us as we defend you, be it a question of life, happiness, or prosperity?”

Herald had leaned in close to Kira, whose eyes grew wide as she heard the translated words.

“Will you be our sister in all ways but blood? Before the gods, if not the law? Will you do us this honor?”

It was completely unnecessary, of course. We were already bound to each other in a way that I knew no way of breaking. I would already defend their lives, their happiness, and their prosperity, because I take care of what is mine. But at the same time, they were offering to give me the only thing they had that I could not simply take.

A traitorous thought tried to make me doubt their sincerity. To make me believe that they were only acting out of obligation, or compulsion, or even cynical selfishness. But the outpouring of sincerity and open love and kindness that l felt crushed that voice utterly.

I looked at them each in turn, sitting up to my full height and spreading my wings so that they filled the room, their tips curled around Kira and Val on the edges of the group. “Yes! Happily, and without any doubt.”

I nearly had the wind knocked out of me as Herald laughed with unbridled joy and threw herself at me, and I choked just a bit as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

Mak laughed and continued in Tekereteki. “Kira. Bekiratag. You understand that I do not know you well enough to extend the same invitation to you. But as long as you stay with us, you are a guest of House Drakonum and under our protection, such as it is.”

Mak held out her hand. Kira looked at her, then me, taking in the entirety of the House with one long, slow sweep of her eyes before settling on Mak again.

“Thank you,” she said without a trace of sarcasm as she clasped Mak’s wrist. “If nothing else, I have no doubts about my safety.”

We had a private celebration that evening, just the five of us. The family. Well, Val wasn't legally part of the family, for whatever reason, but neither was I. It didn’t make it any less real.

We sat in the cellar, the bar upstairs well stocked and the door barred from the inside to prevent any interruptions. A table and four chairs had been brought down, with me sitting on a pile of pillows at the short end, opposite Mak. We talked, we sang, and we laughed. We ate ridiculous amounts of roast meat. They drank — too much in the case of Tam and Val. They started trying to get some wine in me, and it wasn’t like I wasn’t curious. I’d barely thought about alcohol since coming to Mallin, being too busy surviving and making a life for myself, but I’d always liked splitting a bottle or two, or much, much more. But I had no idea what it might do to me, and the idea of losing my inhibitions in the body I had now, with Instinct always lurking in the back of my mind… no. I politely declined, and when Mak felt my unease she stepped in as well. But that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the night one bit. It reminded me of our evenings around the fire as we returned triumphant from the north, but better, and it was a wonderful time.

As close as I felt to everyone present that night, I still couldn't bring myself to tell Tam and Val my secrets. They were my allies, they were my brothers, but they weren't mine. They didn't belong to me. I cared about them, and I would defend them and do what I could for them. But a deep-seated part of me still couldn't trust them completely.

I didn’t control them. It was as simple as that.

But I didn’t let that dampen my mood either. We continued well into the night, until the time came when Tam and Val were simply too drunk, almost passing out where they sat, and needed to be put to bed. Mak decided to be the responsible one, coaxing them out of their chairs and up the stairs, and we all said our good nights.

Herald, though, clever girl that she was, had snuck a nice, long nap in the afternoon. She was only barely tipsy and had no interest in sleeping, and we both agreed that there was only one thing to do. She let me out the cellar door, went out the front door herself, and then we were flitting through the shadows of the street, sometimes together and sometimes racing each other, reveling in this incredible thing that we shared only with each other.

I discovered something then. I’d always thought that my shadowsight was the same no matter what, so it came as a surprise that when we were Shifted I could both see and hear her perfectly. There was none of the distortion that I experienced with everything else, or the odd distance that I’d heard in her voice when she was Shifted and I was not. And she was breathtaking, a shining, ethereal spirit dancing and leaping and laughing through the light of our inverted landscape.

I let her win, just so I could watch her revel in her newly claimed power. I could have watched her all night. My magnificent little sister.

We finished at the abandoned garden. We Shifted back, she leaped onto my back, and I took off, climbing hard. Soon we were high above the city, Herald whooping and cheering and just barely hanging on as I dove and whirled and cruised and climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed! Herald kept shouting, “Higher, big sister! Higher!” How could I deny her anything when she asked like that? I went higher and higher until the whole city was visible in a single glance, and I only stopped and began a long, lazy descent when I heard her voice shudder with the cold — not that it stopped her howls of joy.

I settled on the roof of the towering lighthouse that sat at the end of the spit of land embracing the city’s harbor. I did so lightly, and if the lighthouse-keepers heard and wondered about the thump on the roof they didn’t make a fuss. With a bright light below me and the darkness behind I should have been impossible to spot, but I chose the side facing the sea on the off chance that someone with the right advancement and the right interest just happened to be looking our way. There, with me laying down on the lightly sloping roof and holding on to the spire at its peak, and Herald laying relaxed on my back in something like a full-body hug, we looked at the city across the water.

“It is beautiful,” I whispered.

Herald hummed in agreement. “I pity anyone with regular night vision. To not be able to see how the city glows in the light of lanterns and torches…”

“Yeah.”

“What are the cities like where you are from? At night, I mean.”

“There are so many lights that you often cannot even see the stars. Buildings and signs lit up in every color you can imagine. Towers a thousand feet high, with tens of thousands of people living and working in them, shining in the dark, visible from a hundred miles away on a clear night. The roads and streets are ribbons of light, just miles and miles and miles of them, with carriages moving on their own visible as little dots sliding along them. I… did not like it much. It can be beautiful, but for me it was usually just too much. This…” I looked across the harbor at the muted lights of Karakan. “This is just right.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Honestly, I barely think about it anymore. I know it has not been long, but… it is only relevant to part of me. How can I be nostalgic for something that one half of me never knew? So, yeah, I will remember family sometimes, or Andrea, my best friend, and I will wonder how they are doing. But it does not hurt. I still love them, but not like I love you, little sister. You are important to all of me.”

She giggled happily at that, and only held me tighter for a moment. She had no problem with being called ‘little’, as long as it was me doing it.

After looking at the city in silence for a while I felt Herald shift her weight upwards along my body. “Is this alright?” she asked.

I turned my head to see what she was doing. “Yeah.”

She finished maneuvering herself so that she sat with her legs slung over my shoulders, giving her a better view of the harbor and the city. “So, what have you figured out about your advancement? Your second major advancement. In… Gods, in four months, you horribly spoiled lizard!”

I bumped her on the arm with my horn for that, and she rubbed it in mock outrage which was somewhat spoiled by her laughter. “Well, I need to figure out how to do the dream thing. It has not happened again, so it is not something that just happens whenever I sleep.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah? Oh, and I can see you when we are both Shifted.”

“Yeah, you said.” She pouted, then looked at me sternly. “Draka, have you been trying at all?”

“What? I have been using my magic like I always do. It is easier, alright?”

“Fine, yes, but have you been pushing your boundaries? Listening to your instincts? Are you sure that there is nothing else you can do?”

“I mean…” It had taken me three months or more to figure out the fear thing with my shadows. “Aw, shit. No. I guess I have not really been trying.”

“Well, I guess we know what we are doing tomorrow, while we wait for Ardek and Barro to bring back news about the Blossom.”

“Ardek?” He was never around much, come to think of it. I’d been wondering if he was avoiding me, but hadn’t cared enough to be annoyed as long as the others kept track of him.

“Yeah. Mak has him helping Barro. It keeps him mostly safe while keeping him out of the inn. You know. Away from her.”

“Oh.” I was surprised that Mak was ordering my servant around, but found that I didn’t mind. And I had told her outright that I appreciated her handling stuff like that. “I do not suppose that Mak offered him the protection of our House? Like with Kira?”

Herald laughed at that. “Ardek? Mak? No.”

It was no surprise that Mak hadn’t offered Ardek the same formal hospitality as she had Kira. She’d apologized for how she’d treated him. For beating the shit out of him in a fit of pent up rage, really. Since then they’d been getting along politely enough, at least around me, but there was still some clear lingering resentment on her part which might never go away completely. And I didn't blame her. If Ardek wanted her forgiveness, or Herald's, he would have to earn it. To his credit he had been trying to do just that, and doing a good job helping Barro should go a long way.

“He is doing a good job,” she continued. “He recruited some old friends of his from the street to help him out, so we have some less recognizable people to keep an eye on the streets for us, now. We are mostly paying them in meals and Peacocks. He has not told them a word about us, of course. As far as they know they are working for him, and we’re just the new proprietors of the inn where he feeds them.”

I made some appreciative noises. I liked his initiative. The kid was clearly serious about making himself useful.

Herald stilled where she sat on my shoulders, and her face became serious. “He mostly has them watching Tark. Parvion Tarkarran. The little shit who… you know.”

“I know.”

“Draka, when we kill him, it needs to be me who does it. If at all possible, it needs to be me. I know he hurt Mak too, but… I still have nightmares, Draka. I do not know if they will ever go away.” She shuddered. “It needs to be me. Please.”

“I would not have it any other way,” I promised. “If at all possible. But if it is a choice between me killing him or letting him get away…”

“Yeah. I understand. And I agree. But if you can…”

“I will leave him for you, little sister.”

“Thank you.” She stroked my head, and scratched the dumb little bump where my left horn was growing back. The right one was four inches long now, curving slightly back over my neck, and then on the left there was that little… thing. “We should be getting back, I guess.”

She was right. My internal clock was pretty good, and it told me that it was well into the small hours. Dawn couldn’t be far off. “Yeah. Lie back down, and let us get going.”

“Tomorrow we will do some serious practice.” Herald’s tone left no room for discussion. “We are going to figure out what you can do.”

I sighed. “Yeah, alright. What about you?”

“I figured out my abilities before you even woke up that morning in the cave. But I should probably try to push my limits. Just getting to the garden before was exhausting.”

I didn’t tell her that staying Shifted for as long as she had, only days after I got my powers, would have been unimaginable to me. I loved the girl, but she was getting a big head about it as it was.

“Have you tried using your shadows on people, like I do? Can you cause fear? It took me months to figure that one out.”

“I… well, no,” she admitted. “I should probably try that. But it is not like I have anyone I would like to try it on, in case it works. I do not want to terrify someone I like, you know? And some poor innocent person would be even worse!”

“Just ask first! I am sure that Ardek would let you, if you asked nicely.”

“Yeah,” she said dismissively. “Maybe.”

That whole line of thinking seemed to bother, so I changed subjects. “Will you get a license? The whole reason we met was that Tam tried to save twenty Eagles on a magic-in-the-city license and slipped up, remember?”

“I have thought about it. But what I can do: invisibility, manipulating shadows, perhaps more, they are so remarkable that I am worried about drawing the wrong kind of attention. Perhaps I am being romantic or paranoid, but I do not want to be pressured into acting as a spy or assassin or something like that.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me, but I remembered vaguely that Rib and Pot had told me that despite all the magic in this world, invisibility was considered in the realm of fantasy. Herald might be right to be worried.

“Well, be careful, then,” I told her. “Your powers are too strong to not use them.”

“You say that as though I could stop myself,” she scoffed with a little laugh.

That night I dreamed of shadows and blood. Not another lucid dream, though I tried to will that to happen as I went to sleep. In a completely normal dream I followed the scent of jasmine through dark streets, biting and tearing at the poor fools my prey threw in my way, never seeing more of her than a flutter of silk as she ran from me. But I was relentless, and after an eternity I had her cornered in my strongroom. She turned, her face covered by a veil, and I rushed forward and ripped the damn thing from her face so that I could look her in the eye when I—

An impassive, androgynous face stared back at me, and I felt a sharp pain as an arrow slammed into my chest. In spite and fury I tried to tear my killer’s throat out, but my whole body was going numb. They simply pushed me to the side, took the red lacquered box under one arm, and stepped past me out the door.

When Herald woke me by banging on the heavy strongroom door the next day, my internal clock told me that it was nearly noon. The need was still there, and I still ignored it.

When I unbarred the door and opened it for her I was met by a big, eager grin. “Come on, great lazy one,” Herald said. “We have work to do!”

“It is the middle of the day!” I complained. “I will not be able to fly you out without risking being seen together!”

“Why would we need that?” She waved me out and through the short corridor that connected the strongroom to the main cellar. “We have the whole cellar to practice in!”

The table and chairs from the night before had been cleared. Someone, presumably Herald, had placed lanterns here and there, and the columns, barrels, and shelves cast numerous overlapping shadows around the space.

“What about the staff? Will they not need to come down here?”

“Maybe. I told them that I would be doing some training and exercises down here, so they should at least knock first. Why? Are you afraid of being seen? Do you doubt that you could hide in time?”

I snorted at her in irritation. “I do not care about being seen. I care about making you all targets, worse than you already are. Every time I wake up, I am surprised that the Blossom’s goons have not tried to torch this place yet.”

She sighed. “There is that, I suppose. Though my theory is that she is simply afraid of you.”

“Afraid?” I liked the sound of that.

“You killed her guards, and then you killed her pirates. Quite publicly, I should add. Perhaps some of her people are rethinking their loyalties. Perhaps she hopes that you will leave her alone if she does not provoke you any more.”

“That would be nice. It would buy us a lot of time. But I doubt it. She did not strike me as the careful type.”

“Yeah, me neither. So we are waiting for her next move and taking precautions, while planning our own. You can feel that Mak is out, can you not?”

I checked, and yeah, she was definitely out. In the direction of the center of the city. “What is she doing?”

“Attending an open Council session with Val. She hopes that the Blossom will be there. She might be able to get her real name, that way.”

“Sounds like a boring way to go about it when we can just tear it out of Tark. Which is what we should be doing instead of—”

“Draka, please.” Herald looked at me patiently. “Calm. Careful. Barro and Ardek are gathering more information on where and how we can move against him, remember? We do not know nearly enough. We know where we might find him, yes, but we do not know who he surrounds himself with, or if there is a better place to strike where he will be more vulnerable. And when we do strike, we need to know if there are any tools you have at your disposal that you have overlooked. Besides, we need to be more careful, now that we know that he is not just some connected nobody. His family may not be powerful, but they are rich enough to be in the rolls. We need to know if and how they may retaliate against us, if it became known that we were the ones to kill him. We need to take our time.”

I huffed and clenched my jaw at that, but she was right. I had asked her and Mak to help me when I got too eager, and that would only work if I forced myself to listen and accept their judgment.

It still rankled, though. I wanted to take Herald on my back and fly out to the upscale tavern that Simdal had pointed out as his most common haunt. Grab the little bastard, break his limbs until he told us everything we wanted to know, and then let Herald slit his throat, or turn him into a bloody sculpture, or whatever she needed to do to put her nightmares to rest. And then I wanted to dump whatever was left of him on the forum and let anyone cowering nearby know that the Blossom was next, whoever she was.

Yeah. I definitely needed to listen to Herald.