Draka

“All right,” I said, opening our family meeting. “It’s been one hell of a day. Let’s talk.”

Val didn't hesitate to speak. “There is much confusion about what is happening in the south,” he said. “Herald says that there has been an invasion by the Happarans. Is this true? There have been no announcements, and the Wolves don’t know anything.”

“They were preparing to cross the river when we heard that the White Cranes were attacking the Palace. All along the river as far as I could tell. General Sarvalian was mobilizing as I left, but I imagine they must have crossed by now.”

“So it is war,” Herald said. The others looked at her with sympathy. Maglan was down there, his life at risk, but Herald was taking it well. She’d had months to get used to the idea in general, and all day to accept that it was happening. “Happar alone against the entire Sareyan League.”

“I don’t get it.” Ardek stretched his arms high over his head, and something popped in his shoulders, making him grunt with satisfaction. Kira, sitting beside him, gave him an exasperated look and rubbed his back. “They’re proper fucked, aren’t they? I’ve heard some grumbling about the state of our army, but if the Happarans manage to push north there’s thousands of people to levy. And it’s not like Happar could take the city before the rest of the League gets here, anyway. Once that happens, they’re done. There’s not even going to be a city of Happar by next summer.”

“They appear mad or desperate,” Val agreed. “But we must assume that they are not fools. This was planned. A river is not crossed on a whim. They may have some secret strength that they are relying on. But that is for the Council — those who remain — and for the League to worry about.”

“Mag will be fine,” I told Herald gently.

“I know.” Her tone said that he’d better be, or she’d find someone to take the blame.

There was a soft babble as everyone agreed with various levels of conviction, which sputtered into an awkward silence. Into that silence Kira spoke, suddenly and in halting Karakani. She looked around the room. “Draka, ah… more big?”

The babble came back, stronger now that everyone was relieved to have a less depressing topic to talk about. Over the course of the day I’d already received plenty of looks telling me that they’d all noticed, but Kira was the first since Tam to bring it up. “Thank you!” I told her, speaking clearly. “Yes, I am bigger.”

“And that’s not all, is it?” Mak said. She grinned, a mad gleam in her eye, and looked at Herald who gave her the barest hint of a nod. That was all the warning we had before she drew a knife from her belt and slashed it across her own arm. It was fast enough that no one could move to stop her, but slow enough that we could all see the skin crease around the edge. It left behind an indentation and a line of fine, cut hair, and that was all.

The room exploded with noise. Tam and Val protesting and grabbing the knife from Mak. Kira leaping forward to make sure that Mak wasn’t hurt, cursing at her in Tekereteki as she did so. Ardek kept exclaiming, “What the hell? What the hell!?” And Mak and Herald broke out into a shared fit of laughter.

I was as surprised as the rest of them, though not for the same reason. When we’d grabbed Tark I’d seen Mak take a cut along the neck, leaving only a shallow scratch behind. I knew that my own upgrade to Greater Fortitude would make her more impervious to harm as well. I just hadn’t expected her and Herald to have planned something like this, nor the delight they clearly took in having freaked the hell out of everyone present. It was a side of them that I’d only rarely seen before. It was fun, and nice to see them laughing, especially since everyone else joined in when it was clear that Mak wasn’t at all hurt.

“So, I passed a threshold this morning,” I told them. “And I think you all know by now that Mak inherits my own minor Advancements. We’re both a good bit tougher now, as she so kindly demonstrated.”

Mak grinned impishly and Tam flicked her on the forehead, sparking some half-hearted protests. “If no one else has any pranks planned,” he said, pausing to look around before turning to me, “would you tell us about your trip? From what Mak’s been telling us it sounds like you had an exciting time.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” I agreed, and went into the tale of my journey to the border, starting from when I’d discovered who my traveling companions were.

“We figured that out easy enough,” Mak said, “since all three disappeared the same day you did. But even if we hadn’t, the lady justice sent a message two days after you left. Not quite apologizing, but asking me to contact her to arrange a meeting between the two of you once you got back. Which I’ll do tomorrow, if that’s all right with you? With any luck she’s still alive to reply.”

I agreed, then got back to the story. I hoped that Sempralia had made it. I really wanted to hear her explain herself.

Herald translated for Kira, as usual, and when I got to the part with the Silver Spurs our healer’s eyes slowly fixed themselves to the floor. She’d told me once that there was no one alive in the mercenary company that she cared about, but I’d never really believed her. They’d abused her, forcing her to be part of things that went completely against her nature, but she wasn’t the type to hold grudges. And she’d been with them for years. She knew everyone in that company to some degree, and if she’d taken the death of a number of them with anything other than sadness I would have been much more shocked than I’d been at Mak’s bit of fun.

When I told them how I’d returned the captured mercenaries, and convinced their commander, Sarahem, to take her remaining troops back to Happar without further bloodshed, Kira released a shuddering breath and looked up again, eyes full of gratitude. Ardek put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. I blinked a few times, as though that might change what I was seeing, then just accepted it. No one else batted an eye, so I figured it must have been going on for a while. I’d just missed it.

Ah, well, I thought. Good for them.

“Leretem was always an outsider,” Kira told me. She spoke in her own dialect, and my sisters listened intently, trying to understand. Tam paid polite attention, but he was still struggling with relearning classical Tekereteki. “She was as bad as the rest of them, doing what she was told without complaint, but she never fit in with the rest. We talked a little, though. She was from some little village up in the mountains of my province. I wonder… You remember how I told you that there are still some that hold to the old ways?”

“Dragon worshippers?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to.

They were all shocked and angry about the homing medallion, of course. But they also agreed with General Sarvalian that it probably wasn’t Sempralia who’d had it put in the message case. Both because it didn’t make any sense, and because she hadn’t mentioned it in her letter. She’d apologized, sort of, for surprising me with Garal, Lalia and Maglan. So why, they reasoned, wouldn’t she have done the same for inviting an attack?

Why, indeed? All I knew was that she’d better have a good excuse ready for me if I saw her again.

I skipped ahead quickly after that, only touching on talking to Herald and then going to the Forum once I returned to the city.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Tam said, shaking his head with a smile. “What happened to the secretive dragon we met just a few months ago?”

“I’d already shown myself to every officer in the army,” I said with a shrug. “Secrecy and hiding is not a thing anymore, though I’d prefer not to pull too much attention to you all. Anyway…”

Of all that came after that, up until the part where I returned to the inn, it was my tactics against the White Cranes that got the biggest response. “The possibilities!” Val said, alight with enthusiasm. “A catapult may be able to throw larger stones, but the precision! One large stone was effective, clearly, but consider a net with many fist sized ones. You could disrupt a whole section of a line! Or a bag full of even smaller stones, dropped on a camp at night. They wouldn’t cause much harm, but they’d damage equipment, crack storage pots, make holes in tents, frighten animals… That’s not even mentioning what you could do with alchemical concoctions…”

He went on like that for a while. I wasn’t entirely sure about his background — he didn’t like to talk about it — but strategy and tactics were apparently interests of his.

As for their side of the story, I’d already learned everything I needed to know about the previous night from Herald and Mak. That left the previous ten days.

“I got your horn back from Kalder,” Herald told me. She could barely look at me, she was so embarrassed. “I burned it in the fireplace.”

“And thanks for that, by the way, Kitten. Made the whole common room stink like burned hair for the whole afternoon,” Tam complained, pulling a disgusted face. “Hope we never have to do that again.”

“Good,” I laughed with relief. “Glad to know that’s out of the way. What else?”

“Kesra came by on the same day we got the lady justice’s letter. She wanted to talk to you,” Mak said. “She seemed disappointed when I told her you didn’t want anything to do with them.”

“Kesra? Not Zabra?”

“Yeah, Kesra apologized on her sister’s behalf. Apparently the older sister is unwell.”

“She hasn’t left that house in the high city since you let her out,” Ardek added. “She goes out into the sun, sometimes. Or, well, she did until the rains started. But… yeah.”

“Still?”

“Ten days now, and I’ve always got someone watching the house. Unless they have a secret tunnel or something, she’s been in there since you left.”

“Huh.” I could only suppose that I’d shaken her even more than I’d intended to. And I didn’t feel a shred of guilt over it. “All right, what did Kesra have to say?”

“Nothing new,” Mak said. “They’re getting their books in order, it might take a while to gather the money without looking suspicious, things like that. I got the impression that she just wanted to show that they’re cooperating.”

“And how did she seem to be doing?”

“Not great. She’s not happy with her sister. That’s obvious whenever Zabra comes up. And she looked beyond tired, like she hasn’t been sleeping much. Almost like she just found out that her sister’s a crime lord, and now she has to deal with everything on her own after said sister had a mental breakdown. Like that.”

“Right.” I felt a little worse about that, but it was impossible to tell if it was because I still genuinely believed that Kesra was mostly innocent in all this, or if it was a lingering effect of her Advancement making me want her to be happy. “I’m going to need to talk to them both,” I decided. “I don’t care if Zabra never steps outside again, but I don’t want her organization collapsing if you all think it can make us some money.”

Mak nodded. “I do think so, but the way Kesra looked… yeah, I think it would be best if Zabra were back in charge, or if they could at least share the load. Of course, if they do lose everything…” She shrugged.

“Unfortunate, but good riddance,” Herald agreed.

“Ah, I don’t know.” Ardek spoke up, less confidently than before now that he was contradicting Mak on… well, anything. “I know we talked about this before, yeah? If the Night Blossom disappears, if her organization goes to shit, things are gonna be bad while her territory and her property gets carved up. Like, ‘lots of people ending up in the river’ bad. And a lot of those people won’t have had anything to do with it.”

“I’ll talk to them,” I reassured him. “I’m sure I can get Zabra back to doing her job.”

Not much else had happened until the previous night. Kesra had come one more time, three days earlier, again asking for me, and again just to show that they were complying with our conditions. Other than that there had only been one thing of note, and they’d been saving it for when we were finishing up.

“So, we’ve spent a bit of money on the inn,” Mak began, and her face was strained that way some people get when they’re trying not to smile and losing. “And a bit extra to get it done quickly, to be honest. We wanted it done before you got back, and since we had no idea when—”

“It was Tam’s idea!” Herald burst out, beaming at her brother. “The weather made a mess of things, but we can still show you and you can try it later!”

“Show me what?” Their excitement was getting me worked up as well, and curiosity had always been one of my vices. I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re going to have to let me in on the secret right now!”

“Come on, Tam. You do the honors,” Mak told her brother, and he happily complied, getting to his feet.

“This way, then,” he said, waving his hand at the small doorway which led to the strongroom and the smaller storage room which was our improvised cell.

As he led the way I thought that he must be leading us to the strongroom, and I wondered what I could have possibly missed. I’d spent most of the day there, after all. It was a surprise when he instead opened the other door, the one to the cell.

The sound of rushing water, the constant noise that I’d long since filtered out, became louder.

A heavy wooden hatch, banded with what might be bronze, sat in the middle of the floor, the stone around it still bearing chisel marks.

“No!” I exclaimed happily. It was all I could think to say.

“Oh, yes!” Tam replied, opening the heavy hatch. The sound of rushing water became a roar. Underneath the hatch was a set of bars, spaced wide enough for me to get through when I was Shifted. “It goes into the storm drains, as you can probably guess. Stonework the whole way. Now, it’s not a smuggler’s tunnel. Not like the ones you found. The bars are intended to be permanent, so no one can get through except you. And snakes and rats and such, which is why we have the hatch. But this way, if we expect you to be coming, we can just leave the hatch open and you can come and go this way. Even if you go fully public, you can use this way for privacy. No more waiting around in the yard, no worrying about being watched. If you’re carrying something big you’ll still have to come through the door, I guess, but—”

“I love it! How did you get it done so fast?”

“Ardek knows a guy who knows a guy. And it’s not illegal to put a drain in your cellar, especially not when you block it off properly so that it’s definitely not a smuggler’s tunnel… not that we intend to report its existence.”

“Nah, yeah, I get that.” I looked around the small group. They’d clearly all known, and were just as clearly delighted with how much I liked the surprise. “Thank you all. It’s lovely.”

It was a literal hole in the ground, but as always it was the thought and the message that counted. I’d always had to wait for someone to let me in. This way I could come and go mostly as I pleased, and it was at once a small but significant step towards making me truly feel at home at the Favor. A little like being given a key to someone’s apartment when you’ve been staying with them for a while; a move from just being a guest to someone who lives there.

“You all are the best humans, the best family, that a dragon could wish for,” I told them, meaning every word. They had given me a hole in the ground, and it meant the world to me.