Draka

From where I rested on a rooftop, I watched the humans in the alley below. Herald had just found Simdal in the well where I’d left him, and was looking around for me. I could have just dropped down to them right then, but I was curious.

I was watching Mak. She wasn’t just searching every dark corner and scanning the rooftops like Herald was. Instead she stood very still, relaxed, and then got a very focused look on her face. She turned in my general direction, zeroed in, and then looked directly at me and smiled.

Well, that was another theory confirmed. We’d have to figure out the specifics of that soon, because each of us being able to find the other had very obvious uses.

Satisfied, I glided down into the alley, checked that there was no one in sight but my three humans, and shifted back. Herald had noticed me when I came down, but Ardek jumped a little at my sudden appearance. Although, to be fair to the boy, he had been watching the ends of the alley, so I couldn’t exactly fault him for not noticing me earlier.

“We have him,” I said without preamble. “Now where are we taking him?”

“The inn has a cellar,” Herald said. “The innkeeper has kindly offered to let us use it for anything we might need.”

“Is there a way in, for me?”

“There is a cellar door in the courtyard, around the back,” Mak said, not quite looking at me. The smile from earlier had been replaced by an embarrassed, downcast look.

“Excellent,” I said, and walked over to the well. Opening the grille I reached down, took a firm grip on Simdal’s arm, and hauled on it. He groaned and clasped my arm with his free hand, and up he came, rolling in the dirt where I dropped him.

“Take him,” I said to my humans. Then, leaning down very close to Simdal’s face, I growled, “Go quietly and do what they say, and you may still be alive by morning. All we want from you is answers. Try to fight, or run, and me and you will go for another flight. Understood?”

Simdal clasped his arm with a grimace and nodded, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Slowly he got to his knees, then to his feet, and Herald and Ardek closed in on him. For all that he was silent and compliant, he still found the guts to give them each a dirty look before they slid a bag over his head.

“Mak,” I said.

“Yes?” she answered apprehensively.

“We need to talk. Once he is secured, go to your room and open a window.”

“Right,” she said, and with that they left the alley, Simdal boxed in between the three.

I followed them along the street back to the inn, flitting from shadow to shadow. They avoided most of the few people who were out. Of those that saw them, no one questioned them. People, I’d noticed, tended to keep to their own business around steely-eyed women carrying swords, peace-tied or not.

If anyone somehow recognised Simdal and ran off to tattle, I didn’t mind. I wanted the Blossom to know. I wanted her to know that someone was going after her people. I wanted her to know that someone was coming for her.

Which reminded me that I should ask if Simdal’s two guards were still alive. They had very definitely seen me and, if they talked to anyone higher up, the Blossom might well know exactly who was after her, and very soon.

That excited me. I was again struck by the urge to just go flying over the city, screaming for her to come out and face me. But, no, I reminded myself. We were doing it this way for a reason. Terrorising a few criminals was one thing. If I started to spread fear among the general citizenry, though, the city would have to do something. And that would be Bad.

I still wanted to do it.

Once inside the sisters’ room at the inn I was faced with a very contrite Mak. The room was larger than I’d expected, with two beds with some decent space between them, a table with two chairs, and a second, small table with a washbasin on it. It even had a wardrobe and some shelves! It was, however, fairly empty, with the sisters living out of their packs as long as they didn’t know if they’d need to leave on short notice.

“Well?” I asked Mak. I wasn’t angry, but I was annoyed. While I hadn’t been part of the plan for their ambush, it had been obvious enough that Mak was supposed to be the one to spring it. And she hadn’t.

“I froze,” she said. She said it with embarrassment, but she didn’t make any excuses. “I was about to attack, and I could not do it. I saw the man lying dead on the street, his blood on my hands, and I froze.”

“You had no trouble fantasising about killing Ardek,” I reminded her. “And you killed a woman a week ago. You did not freeze then.”

“That was different,” she said. She slumped onto one of the beds, closing her eyes. “With Ardek, I had so much rage in me that I was afraid to let it out. And with the northerners, they attacked us. It was kill or be killed, or at least lose our supplies. Tonight… I am sorry. I could not do it.”

I snorted with annoyance, but I knew that she was being honest with me. No excuses. She was a killer in the very literal sense, but that was it. She didn’t have it in her to kill another human because it was the most expedient way to solve a problem. She had to be forced into it, to have no other choice, and that was that. Perhaps it was something we could fix, but for the moment, I couldn’t count on her to kill in cold blood.

I sighed and asked, “What happened once I left?”

“Herald,” she said, her voice small and tired. “She… took care of it while they were stunned and staring after you. She and Ardek, they put the bodies in an alley. Tried to make it look like a robbery. There was blood all over the street, so who knows if anyone will believe it, but who will care?”

Herald. Dear, reliable, capable Herald. How far she had come. How satisfying, and how goddamn awful, that was.

“Well, I am… disappointed,” I told her. She slumped even further, but then, as I let the silence linger, she straightened and looked at me. She could feel what I felt. I didn’t know in what kind of detail she could feel it, but she certainly knew that I was not angry with her.

“But not with you,” I continued. “Only that the plan, such as it was, failed. It does not matter. We have the man either way. It is perhaps good that you are reluctant to kill, if Herald is not. And now that we know, we can take it into account. We will simply leave the killing to Herald.”

I stopped there, letting my words sink in. I was not angry. But I was disappointed. And for all the steps she had taken to get back on my good side, I still needed to be able to rely on Mak for anything and everything I might ask of her. I felt some little trickle of shame about using Herald against her like that, but there was truth in what I said, too. While I wouldn’t ask her to hurt anyone needlessly, I might need them to fight and kill in situations where I could not go with them. And while Herald had proven herself capable, she needed support. Who better to give it to her than her own sister?

Mak slumped again, almost falling forward, supporting herself with her elbows on her knees.

“No.” Her voice was low but firm. “I will do better. I will.”

Seeing the effect my words had on her was satisfying, but at the same time the trickle of shame turned into a stream.

“You do not have to, if it is too much,” I said, but she was determined now.

“I do. I must. What kind of sister would I be to let her shoulder that burden on her own?” She turned her eyes to me, and they were as hard as her voice. “I do not want my sister to become a killer, Draka.”

“Very well,” I told her, wondering if it was already too late. I had seen the excitement in Herald’s eyes when she fought. The first time she killed she had needed to process it, but since then it had seemed to come easily.

But I didn’t tell Mak that. I let her cling to whatever memories she had of the innocent little girl she loved, and I sent her down to the cellar to open the doors for me. It was time to talk to Simdal.

Interrogating Simdal was exhausting. Not because he wouldn't talk, but because once he started he just would not stop!

The man was used to being in charge. A flight with a dragon, repeated exposure to the apparently terrifying effect of my shadows, half an hour inside a well, and then being dumped on the floor of a small room in a cellar must have convinced him of just how little in charge he was, and it made him immensely uncomfortable. It didn’t help that Herald had apparently told him that if we decided that he needed to die, she’d leave it to me, after which she’d happily told him about the time I pulled a guy’s head off. The man could supposedly detect lies, and he believed her.

Simdal did not want to die, and Simdal was a nervous talker. But, it turned out, not a stupid one.

“We’re all supposed to have eyes out for the ‘teki girls, all of us, not just me! It wasn’t my idea, the orders came from the Blossom, she wants them found. I don’t know what you did,” he said, looking at Herald and Mak in turn, ”but she’s really pissed about it, wants you captured and delivered to her alive. Doesn’t care what we do to you, as long as it can be healed. But… but you…”

Just like every other time that he’d looked directly at me, his words deserted him. He’d need some encouragement to get going again.

“Yes?” I said. “You’re wasting our time again. What about me?”

“You… you… nobody said anything about you! Nobody said anything about any Sorrows-beloved dragon! I didn’t know! I just got some orders handed down to me from the boss to find and capture the girls and I had some of my guys keep their eyes open, that’s all! But you, I didn’t know anything about you! Oh, gods and Mercies, you…” his eyes widened until it hurt to look at. “That’s it, isn’t it? It was you! All of you! We all heard about the house on Cloud Street, how someone attacked it. It was you, wasn’t it? That’s why she’s so pissed at you!”

The man talked a lot. The problem lay in getting him to say anything useful. Yes, it was interesting that the Blossom had kept me and the reason she wanted the sisters secret. And it was good to know that she had all or most of her subordinates keeping an eye out for us, not just this guy. It told me that we’d need to be more vigilant. It also made me wonder if there had been other people following us, and I’d only seen the kids because they were… Well, kids.

But getting anything else out of him, anything about the Blossom, was like pulling teeth, something I began seriously considering as we got into the second hour. Because for all of his babbling, the man was admirably loyal. He kept dodging our questions, redirecting to prattle on about something else, but he did it as though he was giving us something incredibly useful. I did not care about who in the Guard was being paid to look the other way. I didn’t care which gangs occasionally did jobs for the Blossom, or which ones were on her shit list. I… did care a little about how much money the places he ran pulled in. How could I not? That was about silver, after all. But it didn’t get me any closer to my goal!

In the end it was Ardek who cracked him.

I wish I could say that it was planned, but it just kind of happened. We were tired and frustrated, but neither of the sisters had wanted to go so far as to actually start hurting the man. I was pretty sure that I could do it if I just silenced my nagging conscience, but if I did that I might just end up killing him in a fit of frustrated pique. And putting the fear in him only shut him up until he got going again, without making him say anything useful I was starting to wonder if there were such things as anti-interrogation advancements, because it certainly seemed like he had one.

So, to cool down we stepped out for a while. We left him in the small room where we’d stuck him and went into the main part, where the barrels of beer were kept. Ardek suggested that he might get the prisoner something to drink, and I off-handedly told him to do whatever he wanted, without thinking much of it.

We’d been talking about literally anything except the odious man for about half an hour when we realised that Ardek had never returned, and Herald got worried. We hadn’t heard anything, and there was no way for Simdal to get out without going past us, but that didn’t mean that nothing had happened. When we turned the corner into the room though, we were met by an entirely unexpected sight, which caused us to back up and listen rather than interrupt.

Ardek and Simdal were sitting on the floor, Simdal still bound and Ardek helping him drink from a tankard. Nothing too odd about that, except for the fact that they were laughing.

“... but honestly, I didn’t recognise you,” Simdal was saying. “Tark would have new recruits sent around to the places I run, sometimes, to try them out. Guess you lot couldn’t do much damage in the shitholes they have me in.” There was a lot of bitterness in his voice, and I wondered if we could use that.

“Well, sir, it’s damn good to hear that they don’t tell you high-ups much more than us on the street,” Ardek said. “Makes it easier to believe they had us guarding the dragon. A handful of new guys and not a fucking heavy among us, it’s just… it only makes sense they wouldn’t tell us if they don’t tell no one shit, doesn’t it?”

“It’s my only complaint, really,” Simdal said. “Fucking secrecy all the time, got to hear everything in rumours coming down the line. And I get told to do something and they don’t tell me shit, and then my guys ask why and I got to be the fucking bad guy telling them to mind their own business and keep their mouths shut when I want to know as much as they do. But the boss does good by us otherwise, so I won’t be complaining.”

“Yeah, until this,” Ardek said darkly. “You didn’t see her, sir. Every poor bastard in her way, she just tore them apart. Can’t blame her after what the boss did to her, but Mercies’ tits… every day I wake and I can’t believe I’m still alive.”

“Why are you? She killed ten guys in that house from what I heard. Why not you?”

“I ask myself that all the time,” Ardek said. “She wanted me to show her where the Tekereteki girl was being kept, and then she, the girl I mean, she asked the dragon not to kill me. Dunno why, though.”

Simdal snorted. “Fit young lad like you? It’s not so hard to guess why the girl wanted to keep you around. Play your cards right and she’ll be warming your bed soon enough. Not bad looking for a ‘teki either, if you like ‘em tall.”

“Eh, I doubt I’m that lucky. Don’t think either of the Tekereteki sisters like me much, and I think she has a betrothed, or something.”

“Why’s that stopping you?”

“There’s her sister, for one. Besides, you haven’t seen her with a sword. But Mercies, if I had the balls…”

Wait, I thought. Did he mean that? Was that actual regret in his voice? Still, emphasis on the full ‘Tekereteki’. Well done, Ardek. The boy had listened to me. Herald was looking distinctly uncomfortable, though. Even with my excellent ability to see in low light it wasn’t quite bright enough to really tell, but I could have sworn that she was blushing, which… I’d expected her to be annoyed, or angry. Not embarrassed.

Still a teenager, I reminded myself. She’s still a teenager.

“The dragon, though,” Ardek went on. “She really doesn’t care about any of the Blossom’s people who isn’t in her way. She wants the Blossom, and she wants Mister Tarkarran and anyone else who was actually involved. As long as she gets that, everyone else is safe. You can tell when someone lies, right, sir? That’s what they say. Am I lying?”

There was a long pause, then a tired sigh, and I knew that we had him. “No,” Simdal said. “Alright. I’ll cooperate. But I’ll need to lie low until this is all over, right? You’re already dead if anyone realises you’re here and alive. I don’t want to join you.”

“Fair, very fair,” Ardek said agreeably. “Here, finish this, then I’ll go talk to them.”

There was the sound of drinking followed by a satisfied sigh, then of Ardek getting to his feet. When he stepped out of the room and saw us he startled but had the presence of mind to keep quiet, and we moved back out into the main cellar.

“So,” Ardek asked apprehensively, “how much did you hear?”

“About my sister warming your bed, or the rest?” Mak asked flatly.

“I, ah… Miss Herald, don’t listen to that old lech, yeah? I was just trying to… Not that I wouldn’t… I mean, you’re very…”

That time Herald most definitely did blush, her cheeks turning a darker, richer brown than I had seen them for months. She didn’t look away from him, though, keeping her eyes locked until he withered under the sisters’ gazes and looked at the floor, flushing almost as dark as Herald.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Herald didn’t say anything, though there might have been just a tiny hint of a smile once Ardek looked away from her.

“With that out of the way,” I said, “good job. If this gets us somewhere, and if you don’t die of embarrassment, I think you can be satisfied with your performance in there.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, still staring at the floor.

“Go upstairs and have a drink. A big one, I think. We’ll talk to Simdal.”

With another mumbled, “Thanks,” Ardek scurried off. He didn’t look at any of us.

I led the way into Simdal’s improvised cell, the sisters flanking me. “So,” I said, “Ardek tells me that you’ve decided to stop giving us the run-around. Good for you. I was starting to consider bringing you back home for a snack.”

He didn’t look like he quite believed me, but he had the good sense not to call me out. “Is… is it true, what the kid said? That you’re only going after the ones who wronged you, and those who get in the way?”

I considered that. I might need to hit some of her people who weren’t involved to draw her out or get information, so it wasn’t quite true, but…

“I’m not going after anyone just because they work for her. And once she’s dealt with, I’m not going after anyone who’ll just walk away. That’s all you get.”

Simdal considered that. “If anyone knows that I talked, and I’m caught, I’m dead. Will you let me live and run if I’ve got to, once we’re done?”

“Once you tell us what we need to know, as long as you keep your mouth shut and don’t do anything stupid, I don’t care what you do or where you go. Of course, if you keep being useless, or if you do anything that pisses me off, well… we’ll see where my mood takes me.”

The way his vile little face blanched at that was far more satisfying than I should have been comfortable with.

After that he answered our questions directly and without any obvious bullshit. He couldn’t give us the Blossom; he’d rarely seen her, and he didn’t know where she might be or even what her real name was. But he could give us one Tarkarran, the weasely little shit he reported to, who himself reported directly to the Blossom. The man I’d disabled in the forest, and who’d escaped capture afterwards. The man who had tortured my friends. And that earned Simdal all the mercy he might desire.