Bared Blade (20 page)

I realized then that what I’d seen in that flash of light was just the head of a
much
bigger creature. The upside of that was that the Elite on the docks above was about to get a lesson in how bad an idea could be. The downside was that after the dragon was done with them it might decide to blame us for the incident, and that was a very big downside indeed. Because angry dragons are about the worst news there is. Especially if the dragon in question was
the
Dragon, Tien Lun, ancient guardian of the city’s bay.

But even if it were merely the least member of the mighty Lun’s court, it would be more than sufficient to make an end of us, there in its element, if it wanted to. So I swam like mad, and hoped that the dragon chose not to see us as a part of the problem. Hoping that it hadn’t noticed us, or that it couldn’t eat the Elite and still catch us before we got out of the water seemed a bit too much like hoping that the Emperor of Heaven would descend from the Celestial City to personally pick us out of the water and set us ashore.

We had gotten about back to where we started from when an enormous banner of golden light rolled through the water in front of us, cutting us off. It came from our right and lit up a good acre of the bay. Turning toward the source of the light, I found myself facing a dragon that compared to the one we’d seen a moment earlier as a gryphon does to a gryphinx. All I could see of it was the head, but that must have been thirty or forty feet long, and eight feet from top to bottom with whiskers like harpoons.

Its massive jaws were spread wide and golden light poured forth, like flames from the mouth of one of its winged cousins. As I hung there slowly treading water, I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to do or say. Vala and Stel, who paced me on either side, seemed just as
incapable of any useful response as I. Only Triss was not frozen. My shadow slid forward between me and the great dragon, his wings spread wide in my defense.

He looked like a toy. Fear filled me as I imagined the great dragon turning that blast of liquid light upon my best friend, and I had to stop my hands from sliding back to draw my swords. Any attack I could make would act as little more than a provocation. But instead of destroying us as it so easily could have, the water dragon closed its mouth and cocked its head to one side, as though trying to get a better look at Triss.

The great banner of light that it had spewed forth did not disperse. Rather, its near end hung in front of the giant face, as though it were anchored there somehow, while the long tail of it curled around to encircle us with light, like some sort of huge fishing net being drawn tight around an interesting catch. The increase in light was painful for Triss—I could feel the echoes of it through our link—but he neither flinched nor backed away from the great dragon.

The creature fixed me with one enormous green eye and I felt a terrible pressure in my head. Intense but brief, it ended with a tearing sensation as something seemed to break suddenly free, and a voice spoke into my mind,
Whither go you, oh Blade? And why come you into my domain?

I found myself answering in like style.
I come out of necessity, fleeing the forces of Tien’s master.
It didn’t even occur to me to try to lie.
I would not have intruded if I could have avoided your realm. I wish only to pass from here to the far side of the bay where I have business with a trader in stolen goods who knows things I need to.

Is your cause just?

I paused at that. Was it? What would my goddess think of what I was doing now if she could see me? Would she be proud? Disappointed? Appalled? That I didn’t know the answer to that hurt me. That I could never know the answer …there were no words.

I hope so.
It was the best I could do. No, it was the best I would ever be able to do.

The eye blinked, then shifted to fall on Triss as the great mind voice spoke again.
What say you, my little cousin of the shadows? Is the cause just?

I couldn’t hear Triss’s answer, but whatever it was, the great dragon nodded his head.
Then, so let it be.

Its nostrils flared and the banner of light flowed backward into them, leaving us once again in darkness save only for the dull green glow of that gigantic eye. For a few heartbeats more it hung there, then an eyelid the size of an Aveni war shield blinked slowly closed.

Before I could think of what to do next, a mighty current sprang up and seized us, dragging us willy-nilly across the bay. If I’d had any doubts about the source or shape of that current, they would have been dispelled in the moment before the current let us go. Just for an instant, I saw that great green eye again, one of a pair hanging unsupported in the water on either side of us as though the dragon carried us in its mouth. Then they wavered and dissipated as the dragon let go of its mortal shape to become one with the waters once again.

The last vestige of the current rolled us into a calm spot at the base of one of the many little piers that dotted the bay and was gone. I didn’t have to swim so much as a stroke to put my hand on the bottom rung of the slimy wooden ladder fastened to one of the pilings. I started to pull myself upward, and everything was going fine until my head broke the surface of the water.

The wind across my spell-burned cheek and ear felt like fingers of fire sliding along my skin. When I gasped at the pain, I drew more fire down my throat and into my lungs, and lost my grip on the ladder. The cool water instantly put out the fire in my throat and chest and soothed but didn’t completely erase the pain in my face. Vala swam in close then and touched my lips.

“Fool,” she said into my ear, though her tone sounded more affectionate than exasperated. “Let me unspell your breath before you try that again.”

I nodded and she moved in even closer, pressing her lips against my own. The kiss shocked through me, sending
tendrils of what felt like gentle magelightning down my throat and into my chest. There was no denying that it hurt, but in no bad way—more like a lover’s teeth nipping at a tender spot. The electric feeling lasted for a few bittersweet seconds then faded away.

Vala’s lips left mine. As she drew away, I felt as though someone had seized my lungs and started squeezing from the bottom up, like a parched man trying to get the last few drops out of his water skin. The pressure rolled up through my chest and throat, forcing me to open my mouth as all the water I’d breathed in burst forth like a drunkard’s one too many.

Suddenly, I ached for real air again. Putting my hand once more on the ladder, I pulled myself up and out. This time, when the air burned across my injured face, I was ready for it and kept my grip. By the time I reached the top of the pier and dragged myself out onto the wooden planks, I’d grown used to the pain. There were no lights on the smugglers’ docks, and it was as dark as the inside of a troll up there. Ostensibly that was because the docks were closed at night, though the real reason was that every time the city tried to put lights up, they mysteriously went missing.

I cleared the way for the Dyad to follow me, then flopped down on my back for a moment. I felt like I’d swum the width of the bay rather than being carried, and I badly needed to catch my breath. Triss must have felt much the same, as he sank down into the shape of my shadow without a word. Even then, hours after the brutal summer sun had gone away, the boards felt warm against my wet back, and the night breeze had no bite to it.

Stel followed me out and lay down a few feet away as well, panting lightly. “I don’t suppose we can call it a night now and skip visiting this Coalshovel fellow?”

VoS shook Stel’s head. “No, of course we can’t.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so,” said Stel.

It was odd how natural that exchange seemed already, where under normal circumstance hearing someone arguing with themselves in two different voices like that would have had me moving quietly away. Somehow, without my really
noticing it the Dyad had become a part of my world, a friend even.

I wanted to be happy about that, to take pleasure in the simple comfort of companionship, but the great dragon’s question about justice kept echoing and reechoing in my mind. Was my cause just? I looked at Stel and hoped that it was, and that someday I might even be sure of it. But until and unless that day came I had nothing but my own badly flawed vision of the world to guide me. For now it would have to do. Just as I would have to hope that my promise to help the Dyad wasn’t going to come into conflict with my promises to Fei.

Vala climbed up to collapse on the edge of the pier then, hanging her head over the water and vomiting noisily. “Eyn and Eva but I hate the way that spell ends.” She rolled onto her back and up against my side, giving my thigh a squeeze.

“It didn’t seem so awful to me,” I said. “I never knew a kiss could pack that much punch.”

“Honey,” said Vala with a touch of her usual fire, “that part wasn’t the spell. That’s just me.”

I squeezed her back. “Then we’ll have to try it again sometime.”

“You’re on. But it’ll have to wait till after I get something to clean out my mouth. The spell might not be so bad for you and Stel, but I get both ends of the chain and it doesn’t open or close with a kiss.”

“I could use a palate cleanser myself.” My mouth tasted of bay. And since the bay was the ultimate end of Tien’s sewer system …and well, I didn’t like to think about that. “Now, I just need someone to carry me somewhere so I can get it.”

“Not going to be me,” said Triss from his spot in my shadow. “I’m done for the night. First that river dragon scared me halfway back to the everdark. And then Tien Lun her own self shows up.” I felt him shudder beneath me. “You can get your heavy butt up on your own this time.”

“
River
dragon?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied Triss. “You can tell by the feel of them,
though what a freshwater dragon was doing out in the bay and wearing its physical form I have no idea.”

“Whatever the reason,” said VoS, “it turned out to be a good thing for us. We might have done all right on our own, but you never know, and the dragons ultimately saved us a lot of swimming.”

Vala rolled up onto her shoulders and then flipped herself from there to her feet. “We’ve wasted too much time here already and I
really
need to get this taste out of my mouth.”

I turned my head to look at Stel, though it made my cheek hurt. “Is she always like this?”

“You have no idea. In school the other Dyads threatened to sleepspell her every other night. Perky is
not
a standard operating mode for our kind. Not even VoS can keep her under control all the time. Ouch!”

“What?” I asked.

“She pinched herself when I wasn’t expecting it. That’s just mean, Vala.”

“And telling tales on me out of school isn’t? Here, let me give you a hand up.” There was a scuffling noise as the Dyad got her other half upright, then she approached me. “It’s your turn now, Aral.”

She extended her small hand to take mine and then pulled me upright with a great deal more ease than I’d have expected, even knowing what good shape she was in. She was so tiny it was almost impossible to believe she could be that strong. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised given my experiences with Jax back in the day.
She’d
saved my life once, too.

I remembered long distant kisses then and almost against my will found myself comparing them against the way Vala’s lips had felt against mine—the magic of a spell vs. the magic of first love.… I blushed and shook my head. It was an unfair comparison, to both women.

Together, the four of us headed up the pier toward land. By mutual consent we decided to find a tavern and get a drink to wash away as much of the …stuff we’d all been breathing as could be managed. Likewise by mutual
consent—with one abstention from Triss—we’d decided it should be a sterilization-strength drink. We passed quite a number of people in the immediate area of the docks, mostly carrying darkened magelanterns and pretending that they couldn’t see us.

We extended them the same courtesy, of course, it being Smuggler’s Rest. That’s how you kept out of the sort of conversations that substituted the club and the dagger for hellos and good-byes. Farther in, we started to pass more legitimate traffic that carried its lights with the shutters open.

Mostly yellow and white depending on whether they could afford magelight or needed to rely on fire and oil, though there were a number of lanterns whose gaudy green glass announced the bearer as open to negotiations where virtue came into play. Some of those were quite elaborate, with filigree on the lens casting intricate shadow patterns that told the streetwise that the bearer was into more …exotic sorts of play. Several of those swung their lanterns wide, to play across our feet and legs by way of invitation when we passed.

There were just enough of the poor and reckless out to prevent our lack of lights from marking us as anything too out of the ordinary. I had a tiny thieveslamp in my trick bag, but no one carried those openly. I considered conjuring a temporary light onto a bit of rock, but I’d have had to carry it bare, and that
would
have been even more unusual.

The first obvious tavern we came to had a pair of dim torches out front lighting up the sign of a seaweed-encrusted ship’s wheel. Vala went in first—crossing quickly to the bar to place an order, then turning back our way—with Stel and I trailing behind. For this one brief appearance we figured it would be all right to be seen together.

As we came through the door, Stel let out a little gasp, and said with Vala’s intonation, “Aral, you should have told me how bad you got clipped by that firespike!”

Then she grabbed my arm, spun me around, and shoved me right back through the door before following after. As soon as we were outside she dragged me off the street and into a gap between two buildings.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“The side of your face looks like a nightmare, blood and mud and blisters everywhere. I couldn’t see it till we got into the light there, but Holy Twins, Aral! You must be in some kind of pain. And that doesn’t mention the front of your shirt, which is a scorched ruin. I’m half scared to peel it off of you in case your hide comes with it.”