Draka

“I’m sorry!” The words tore out of Zabra’s throat with panic and desperation. “Please! Yes, it was me, okay? I told Tarkarran to make you talk! I told him to use your sister when you wouldn’t cooperate! I didn’t know exactly what he’d do, but I had a good idea. The man was ruthless. A monster. That’s why I picked him! Please! Just— you wanted me to tell Kes about the bottle?”

She was getting truly desperate as Mak didn’t put the dagger away, speaking quickly as her eyes flicked from Mak to me to Herald and back around, finally landing on her sister. “Kes, listen, baby, the bottle? It’s an old trick used for interrogation, okay? You offer someone a healing potion in exchange for doing what you want, telling you what you want to know, whatever, right? And then you hurt them until they take the deal. Then you do it again the next day, and the next. And we had both of these women— you know Tark’s house on Cloud Street? The one that we haven’t been to in a while? We had them locked up there, both of them, and Makanna only gave us horse shit, so…”

“Go on,” Mak said calmly, not taking her eyes from Kesra as she placed the point of her dagger just above the younger sister’s belly button.

Kesra stood absolutely still, her eyes locked on Mak’s.

“So Tark started killing her sister in front of her. Not really, but… gut wounds. Painful, can take hours to kill if you do it right. And it worked. After two days we only had to show her a bottle and she’d do anything we wanted, not that it stopped Tark. Makanna, please. Lady Drakonum. Is that enough? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I probably should have left before Mak and Herald started their little charade. I shouldn’t have been in the room at all. As it was, my heart was breaking for the two Tesprils. Only the insistent voice of Instinct reminding me of just what Zabra was confessing to kept me from removing her bindings and releasing her right there and then.

“Please! I’ve told Hardal not to do anything if I don’t walk out of here! You want me dead? Fine. I’ll drive that dagger into my own heart if that’s what it takes!”

“Zabra, no!” Kesra snapped, but her sister ignored her, her voice breaking as she babbled in her desperation.

“You want favors? Political power? I have some sway over a few people on the Council. You want a seat on the Council yourself? I might be able to arrange it if you give me a few weeks. You want money? You can have it! Just leave Kesra enough to live on! Ruin me, put me on the street, kill me, anything, just don’t hurt Kes!”

“Can we stop this?” Herald asked, stone faced, in Tekereteki. “I feel sick.”

“Yeah,” Mak agreed, putting away the dagger. “This was a much better idea in my head.”

Herald released Kesra, and Mak got out of the way as Herald gave her a little push in Zabra’s direction. Kesra stumbled forward, then threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around her sister. “Why, Zabra? You idiot! Why would you—?”

Zabra managed a sobbed, “Thank you!” to us before she buried her face in Kesra’s neck. “I’m sorry, Kes. I’m sorry. I can’t let them hurt you, no matter— I never meant for you to get involved in anything. But I fucked up. I’m sorry! I fucked up!”

“We’ll fix this. Don’t worry. We’ll fix this,” Kesra whispered back. Their words were quick and desperate, like they didn’t know how much longer they might have together, like every second was precious and they had to make it count.

“Mercies forgive us.” Mak’s tone was still low and menacing, completely out of tune with her words. I could see on her face how hard she was fighting not to give her feelings away. “When I was beating her, she always had this defiance about her, taunting me, challenging me to do my worst. It made it hard to stop, even after she went limp. Now I understand you, Herald. This… this just made me feel dirty. I think I need to go to the temple and pray.”

Herald looked down at the sisters with a forced neutral expression. “So what do we do now?”

“We make sure that this sticks,” I said gravely. “And then, when we are sure, we let them go.”

I grabbed the lightstone, and plunged the room into darkness. “Wait!” Zabra cried, then went silent as I wrapped them both in shadow.

“Remember this,” I told them. “Remember that unlike some, we show mercy if you cooperate. Now, Kesra, you’re going to go out there, and you’re going to tell this guy Hardal and the others that your sister is alive and well, yeah? And that she will remain that way as long as they sit back and do nothing. And you’d better convince them, because if they do anything stupid, Zabra dies first. Then you’re going to come back in, and we’re going to let you have some time together to think and to talk. I want you, Zabra, to tell your sister every horrible thing that you know that you should be ashamed of, so that she can help you become a decent human being. And then, we are going to talk about reparations.”

I released Kesra. Mak dragged her away from her sister and escorted her upstairs, and there were a few tense minutes as we waited for them to return.

I wondered idly if I could stop someone’s heart if I squeezed my shadows enough — If I could give them a heart attack or a stroke through sheer terror. I’d find out soon enough, if Zabra’s men decided to be heroes.

To my relief and disappointment Mak returned with Kesra inside of five minutes. “He wants to see me twice a day,” Kesra said. “Midday and sunset. Miss it by a minute and they’re coming in.”

We put Kesra in the cell with her sister and locked the door behind us.

“Kira?” I said with surprise as we stepped into the main cellar. She sat up on the bench where she’d been lying.

“Do they need me?” she asked anxiously.

“No. They’re not hurt. Go upstairs and get food and drink for two, would you? Something simple that can be eaten with just your hands. And a bucket, I suppose. Zabra’s been in there for a while.”

Kira brightened. “Yes! Immediately!”

As she disappeared up the stairs, I turned back to my sisters. “I’ll trust your judgment about releasing Zabra, Mak, and I think we should do it as soon as we feel like we have a leash on her, but does either of you feel like you don’t want to kill her because it would hurt Kesra?”

They both shook their heads.

“I hesitate to kill her because of the large number of thugs surrounding us,” Mak said. “We’ll need a plan to strike first if we decide to do away with her. But for Kesra’s sake? No.”

“Just me, then. And neither of you feel affected by Zabra either, right?”

“A little bit of pity, perhaps?” Herald suggested. “Not something I expected to feel for that woman, but it is there.”

“I still want her heart on a plate,” Mak said. “Although, now that you mention it, I suppose that I would feel somewhat bad about how that would affect her sister. Not enough to spare Zabra, if that was the only reason, but it sure seems like they’ve been shielding Kesra from things very effectively. She obviously loves her sister very much. I can relate, I suppose.”

Herald swept her into a side hug and pecked her on the top of the head. “Same to you, little big sister.”

I couldn’t let the feeling that something was off go, though. I thought about my interactions with Kesra, how my anger had always turned to pity. That might be Conscience’s influence. It would probably be a good thing if it was. Then there was the way Zabra had caved so thoroughly and unexpectedly, both just now and in delivering herself into our hands in the first place, when there was a credible, immediate threat to Kesra’s life. That might just be sisterly love, but somehow I didn’t think so.

“I think,” I said, “that Kesra’s got some kind of advancement that messes with our heads. Like how Ardek makes people like him, and Zabra makes people loyal to her, I think Kesra makes people want to protect her. I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking things, but we should question her about it.”

Herald looked thoughtful. “It would not be the strangest advancement ever. And with her background… I will admit, actually hurting her never came to mind when Mak and I planned this. But I doubt that it affects anything, practically, for us right now.”

Mak nodded. “Yeah. The important thing now is: Do we think that there’s any chance of Zabra reforming, or is she too far gone? Too deeply involved to let live?”

“Do we even know the extent of her— let us not say illegal activities,” Herald said. “I honestly do not care much if what she does is illegal or not, as long as it is not utterly immoral. How much do we know?”

Mak thought for a moment. “From what Tark told us, and what Ardek and Barro knew and have found out, Zabra has a lot of blood on her hands, but almost all of it is between her and other criminals. Most of her businesses are completely legal. There are no laws against properly run gambling houses or brothels.” She sighed. “Besides, between Tam and myself I can’t really honestly complain about either. Their overseas trade sounds completely above board except for a few illegal things they’ve been smuggling. It’s infuriating, really. Zabra could have been almost entirely law-abiding and still been wealthy. She might have been… I don’t know. Inoffensive.”

“If not for the slaving and the murders.”

“If not for the slaving and the murders,” Mak agreed, as the door at the top of the stairs opened and Kira came down with Ardek in tow, carrying a bunch of simple food, two large wooden flagons of something, and a lidded bucket. We paused for a minute or two as they delivered their cargo to our guests, with Kira, of course, making sure to leave the lightstone lit before we shut the door.

“So,” I said once we were alone again. “We demand that she gives up on everything we can’t tolerate, and we take some serious reparations out of her. I don’t know what kinds of fines she’d have to pay if we took her before the law, but I think we’d all be better off avoiding that. Then we hope and pray that a combination of fear and shame keeps her honest, because if not, I’ll have to kill both of them.”

“What?” Herald exclaimed, while Mak looked at me in silent surprise. “Why both? Why Kesra?”

“You’ve seen them together. You saw Kesra. She was willing to walk into our hands, alone, to make sure that Zabra was here and alive. What do you think she’ll do if we actually kill her sister? On the off chance that Zabra’s people don’t attack us when they find out that she’s dead, do you think that Kesra won’t ruin herself trying to get revenge, whether we deserve it or not? No. If we can’t trust Zabra, we can’t let either of them live. We’d just be back to square one — to where we started, I mean — with the same problem.”

Herald looked sick about it, but she eventually nodded. “All right. But you have to tell Zabra exactly what you just told us. It should help convince her.”

I did, an hour or so before sunrise the next morning. It was only me and Mak there; Herald was still feeling sick about the whole situation, and I wasn’t going to force her to join us. Kesra was still there, of course. We’d actually offered her a room, but she’d practically spat in our faces.

Someone — I strongly suspected Kira — had brought them some blankets to make them more comfortable. That was entirely counterproductive, but I didn’t comment on it.

I had Mak drag Kesra out into the main cellar so that I could talk to Zabra alone. I drowned her in darkness, and then I laid out our position. “Don’t tell me that you agree,” I told her before I released the suffocating shadows. “I doubt that anything you say right now has any value. I’ll be back this afternoon, or perhaps this evening. I’m not sure. I’m a busy lady. But when I come back, you have one task. You need to convince Mak, Herald and myself that you are not a danger to us, or any other innocent person. If you can do that, you and your sister will leave here alive.”

I didn’t tell her the obvious alternative. I just relit the lightstone and left, letting Kesra back in.

As the door closed I thought I heard Zabra crying softly and Kesra speaking to her gently, and I had a brief moment of self-loathing that I tamped down on hard.

“You were right,” Mak told me, “but not exactly. Kesra’s advancement isn’t about protecting her, not directly. It’s about wanting her to be happy. I guess when you know how much she cares for her sister, that’s enough to spill over to not wanting to hurt Zabra.”

“You got it out of her that easily?” Kesra had looked fine when I saw her. Which, under the circumstances, meant “no worse than when I’d last seen her.”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “I didn’t need to make any threats or anything, though I think the charisma I’m getting from you helped. I just told her that we don’t appreciate our heads being messed with, and that we wanted to know what exactly she was doing. So she talked. She knows the position they’re in.”

I snorted. “And knowing that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You’re sure that you’re not affected at all?”

“Pretty sure. And I have an idea about that, why Herald and I aren’t affected.”

“Hmm? Do tell.”

“It’s simple: We’re bound to you. And not only in the way that Ardek and Kira are, but truly bound. How could their petty advancements compete with you?”

She looked at me with adoration as she spoke. It warmed my heart and reignited a small spark of guilt all at once.

Be good to them, I told myself, and quashed the guilt until only the affection towards her remained. It was all I could do.

It was nice to have all that out of the way. One less thing on my mind. I had an important meeting at sunrise, and I needed to focus.

I’d wanted to skip the meeting, to stay and guard the inn, but my family had insisted I go. Snubbing Sempralia was just too dangerous. So I was going, and I was going alone. The others hadn’t liked that idea, but Sempralia had recommended in no uncertain terms that they should distance themselves from me. This was one small way of paying lip service to that. There was also the very real issue of their safety. I had no doubt that whoever Sempralia had with her would be a damn sight scarier than Hardal and Zabra’s other guards, and it wasn’t like anyone could expect to remain free for long if they got into a fight with one of the rulers of the city. If this was some kind of trap, or if Sempralia didn’t like what I had to say and tried to have me killed then and there, I didn’t want the people I cared about to get caught up in a fight they couldn’t win.

I left the inn, having promised my sisters not to do, say, or agree to anything foolish. We all knew what that promise was worth, going in blind to a meeting with one of the most powerful people on the island, but I still gave it. I went through an upstairs window; there were a couple of toughs in the yard, and we didn’t want to remove the barricade we’d built in front of the cellar door.

I really should have been focusing on the upcoming meeting, but my thoughts kept going back to Kesra. To what I’d resolved to do if I had to. It was that same old line, one of the two that I’d hoped I would never cross. The first was eating human flesh, and that line was scuffed as it was. I’d done a lot of biting over the last several months, and I’d swallowed more blood than I was comfortable with. Especially since the urge was so strong, every time I sunk my teeth into someone, to just start tearing and swallowing. I didn’t think that I’d crossed that line fully, but when Instinct took over completely, I couldn't always remember everything afterwards.

I hoped that I hadn't.

The other line, the one that I had decided to cross if Zabra couldn't be trusted — no, if Zabra couldn’t be controlled. She certainly couldn't be trusted — was killing for convenience. No matter how I dressed it up, if I killed Kesra it would be to make sure that she didn't become a threat. I was sure that she would, and that it would be stupid not to, but there was nothing I could do to convince myself or Conscience that it would not be deliberate and premeditated murder of an innocent woman. It certainly didn't help that Instinct agreed and approved of taking the easy way. She would prefer to just kill them both and have it over with. Consequences were for other people.

I flew south-west in a long circle, looking down at the twilit fields, then circled around. I passed over the coast, out above the open sea, and tried to focus on appreciating the slight rosy tint on the north-eastern horizon. It’d be fine. For all her flaws, Zabra was an intelligent woman. She’d do the smart thing, and I wouldn’t have to follow through on my threats.

I really should stop making threats I didn’t want to act on. It was going to come back and bite me in the tail some day, for sure. But when you’re a murder-lizard the size of a small horse, making threats is just so damn effective.

The meeting place was easy to spot. The short promontory, only a few miles south of the city and incidentally almost directly east of the Tesprils’ villa, stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb on the otherwise even stretch of coastline. I passed it at a height of a thousand feet or so, easily visible to anyone with good dark vision. It both let me see that Sempralia and her party had arrived, and gave them a chance to prepare for my arrival before I landed. Smart and polite, I figured. There were perhaps two dozen of them, with three standing well apart from the others, closer to the point of the promontory.

One of them shone with magic. I did not like that, but since no arrows came flying at me I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I took one last look over my shoulder, towards the horizon, and saw that telltale blaze that heralded the imminent sunrise. I turned back out over the sea, then began my approach. If I timed it right…

When I reached the promontory I was gliding slow and level. As soon as my feet were above solid ground I turned my wings up, braking hard, and for one glorious moment I hung suspended in the air as dawn broke behind me. It would have been more effective if the sun rose more than a fraction of a degree, but I happily took what I could get. Entrance made, I settled to the ground, and walked the rest of the distance.

The lady justice Sempralia rose from her seat, and her trio came to meet me halfway. Someone had put out a tent chair for her, just like when I met Zabra, though in this case it was entirely justified. The woman was old, in her 70’s or maybe even 80’s by my guess. Despite that, anyone who thought she looked frail should get their eyes checked. She held herself and moved as steadily as a woman half her age, and as we got closer to each other details popped out. Her silver-white hair was put up in a large, tight bun — it must have been long — and she looked at me with calculating interest, complete confidence, and not a hint of fear. Everything about her, even before she’d said a word, told me that this was a woman who was used to not only seeing her will done, but to being right, too.

I remembered what the others had told me about her. How she’d been on the Council for four decades. How well respected and feared she was, depending on how much you had to hide. How she was considered a master of law and rhetoric, able to cut through the lies, omissions, and half-truths of a case to render a swift and fair judgment, and do it so convincingly that most people considered it pointless to try and appeal any decision she’d made.

She had probably accomplished more in the last year than most people did in a lifetime. And I was suddenly very aware that less than half a year ago, I was a climbing gym instructor who’d barely graduated from high-school, and who considered two bottles of moscato and a Netflix-marathon to be a night well spent.

Ah, well. There was no point in worrying over that. I might not have a flashy degree, or five decades or whatever of experience arguing in courts and whatnot, but I did have one advantage that she couldn’t match: I was a goddamn dragon. And a dragon did not cower in front of some jumped up lawyer. The other two were nothing to worry about either. One was clearly a secretary or scribe of some sort, carrying a simple table and a large scroll, presumably with some pens and ink somewhere on him. The other shone with a steady magical glow. A tall, lightly armored man, he carried a sword and moved like every motion was precisely calculated to be as efficient as possible. A lawyer, a scribe, and a guy with a sharp stick. I had nothing to worry about.

I thought that, and then we were close enough to speak. Sempralia stopped, and so did I. She put her hand on the center of her chest and gave me a quarter bow, and I improvised something similar by bending my elbows and dipping my head.

“Lady Draka!” Sempralia said, and suddenly I was eight years old again, listening to my teacher take attendance, and God save any girl who made a racket. Her voice made it absolutely clear that while she was speaking I would listen and patiently wait my turn. “I was so glad to hear that you’d agreed to this meeting. Let’s discuss the future, shall we?”