Dragon-Ridden (36 page)

She placed one hand on the window
frame gradually adjusting her weight until only her hand and her foot held her
up. Tate let go of the roof and grabbed the frame before she could fall.

“Did you fall?” Dewdrop hissed.

“Not yet,” she said through gritted
teeth.

“Be careful.”

“No, I thought I’d do something
crazy while I was up here.”

“You’re so grumpy when you’re
hanging by a finger.” He snickered at his own joke.

She rolled her eyes at his banter
before getting back to the task of breaking into the room. The window wouldn’t
budge no matter how much she yanked and pushed at it. Probably because it was
locked from the inside.

“Do you have something-“ she
stopped when a thin piece of metal appeared in front of her. “Thanks.”

She slid the jimmy between the
window frame and window and yanked hard, popping the lock. The noise was lost
in the furor of the crowd. Tate pushed the window open, throwing one leg over
the sill so she was straddling it. She held her arms up to Dewdrop.

He lowered the boy down. “You got
him?”

“Yes,” she said, clasping him
around the waist and guiding him into the room. She repeated the process with
Dewdrop. With him, she barely had to steady him before he was scrambling into
the room.

She stepped totally into the room
after him and shut the window before leaning against the wall with a sigh.

The little boy wandered around the
room, touching things lightly before moving to the next object. It seemed that
the utter lack of expression or concern for his surroundings of before was
fading the longer he was away from Jost. She was glad. It wasn’t normal, his
lack of response. Even now he didn’t act like other young boys.

Dewdrop stumbled over to her bed
and collapsed face down with a groan. “So tired.”

Tate’s stomach chose that moment to
protest. It’d been several hours since she’d last eaten. In fact, her last meal
had been when Ryu fed her when she’d first woken from her injuries. Suddenly
she felt weak as if her body suddenly realized just how hungry she was.

She searched the top of the desk
for any food, hoping Ryu had left some from earlier. No such luck. Not there,
or in the drawers or on her bed or under it. Nothing. There was no food in the
room. She growled. She felt like she was going to turn into a raving lunatic if
she didn’t get some food in her.

“I don’t suppose you have any food
on you.” She kicked the bed next to Dewdrop.

He lifted his head from where he’d
already been half dozing and gave it a slight shake before burying his face
back in the covers.

Tate thumped her head against the
wall. She wanted food. Already she felt slightly nauseous and headachy from
hunger. Ignoring it wouldn’t make it go away.

The little boy stopped in front of
Tate and held out his hand. A wrapped piece of candy was in it. She took it,
unwrapping it before popping it into her mouth. Its flavor burst sweetly on her
tongue.

“Thanks,” she said. “Its good.”

It was too. And oddly filling.
Already she could feel the worst of her headache fade and the nausea lesson as
if she’d eaten part of a meal instead of a small piece of candy.

He nodded gravely and took a seat
beside Tate and looked up at her expectantly. She smiled faintly down at him,
not really knowing what he wanted. A tap on the window saved her from having to
ask.

Her heart in her throat, she looked
over at the bed. Dewdrop had stiffened but didn’t lift his head. Even his chest
barely moved.

Tate thought about ignoring the tap
and remaining seated. It was unlikely that whoever it was could see her and the
boy from their viewpoint. Maybe they would go away.

There was another tap. Tate waited
with baited breath not daring to so much as a twitch. She jumped when there was
suddenly a pounding against the wall next to her head.

It was with reluctance that she
moved to peer out the window from her position on the floor. She lost her
balance when a feline face appeared before her.

Cursing she popped to her feet
pulling the window open. “Night, what are you doing here?”

Me?
he asked hanging onto
the ledge effortlessly.
You’re the one who disappeared this afternoon. We’ve
been looking everywhere for you. Ryu’s furious
.

“Is that Tate?” a head popped out
of the window next to Tate’s. She could barely make out Tempest’s dim figure
despite the light spilling from the street.

Let me in
, Night ordered.

“I’m coming to,” Tempest said
climbing out of his window.

“I don’t think-“

Do it or I’ll go find Ryu and
tell him where you are
, Night said, striking for her weakness.

She glared at him, “And how do you
expect to do that. People would probably run screaming in the opposite
direction if they saw you bearing down on them.” Nevertheless she relented. The
last thing Tate wanted was Ryu to come back and mess up her plans with his own
agenda.

She pulled Night then Tempest in
despite her reservations. Perhaps they could help her put together the missing
pieces of this mess and find a way out of it.

After pulling Tempest in she
glanced around the street one last time before ducking back into her room. No
one appeared to be watching.

Tempest had frozen in place at the
sight of the boy, and Tate barely managed to avoid bumping into him as he
stared transfixed. The boy, for his part, met Tempest’s gaze with a calm
acceptance. Tate looked between the two. It looked like they knew each other.
She rolled her eyes. Of course they did. Tempest had been part of Umi’s plan to
locate the fulcrum. He had to have known they were searching for a boy and not
a thing.

Suddenly Tempest was on his knees
in front of the boy and had prostrated himself, placing his forehead on his
hands on the ground. Words from another language spilled from his mouth in a
torrent.

“What are you saying? Share with
the group.”

The boy looked at her with a very
adult expression on his face. “He said, ‘Forgive me. Please forgive me. I did
not know. That is no excuse, but I am prepared to make recompense.’”

“So you can speak,” Tate said with
an arched eyebrow. “Why would he need to make recompense for Umi’s actions?
He’s not responsible for what she did.”

The boy kept his eyes trained on
Tate’s though he didn’t move from the spot where he’d been sitting. “In our
culture a servant can be held accountable for a master’s actions just as a
master can be held accountable for a servant’s.”

Tate snorted. That was ridiculous.
She folded her arms in aggravation. All right so maybe it wasn’t exactly
ridiculous. A ship’s crew often shared in their captain’s fate in the event the
Emperor’s Justice found him guilty of a crime. Usually, though, they
contributed to whatever crime he was charged with.

“What would happen to him?” Dewdrop
asked sitting up in the bed.

“Maiming or exile,” was the quiet
response. “Death.”

Tate wrapped her arms around her
body and shivered. Those were some harsh penalties when he hadn’t really done
much wrong. None of the options sounded particularly appealing. She wasn’t too
sure of what all he’d done against their laws, but from where she stood it
wasn’t enough for the penalty proposed.

It was on the tip of her tongue to
say so when Tempest spoke, lifting his head, his face wet with tears. “I’ll
accept any punishment the elders feel appropriate.”

Tate bit her tongue against what
she wanted to say and looked away instead. She wanted to shake Tempest until he
felt some form of self-preservation. It wasn’t any of her business, though. How
they dealt with internal problems was their own affair.

Dewdrop didn’t look any happier
about it than she did, but he too kept his own counsel.

The little boy seemed perfectly
content to let the silence stretch as he regarded them placidly.

“Enough of this,” Tate finally
said, reaching down to pull Tempest to his feet and forcing him onto the bed
beside Dewdrop. “We’ve got a lot to sort out. Focus on your personal failings
later.”

Tempest nodded shakily keeping his
head down and wiped the tears from his eyes quickly.

“What’s this about Ryu?” she asked
Night changing the focus.

He straightened when attention turned
to him.
When he came back from his errand to find you gone, he was not
happy. Wanted to know where you’d gone and why.

“Did he have anybody with him?”
Dewdrop asked.

Night thought back and shook his
head slowly.
Not in here, but he carried scent markers for several other men.

 “Could be the same people we
saw earlier,” Dewdrop told Tate.

She nodded. Probably.

“They were probably enforcers with
the Kairi Ambassador’s party,” Tempest said quietly. “It’s likely they are
trying to recover the fulcrum and key before the ball on the last night of the
Donza Festival.”

“Why before then?” Dewdrop asked.

“He’s needed for a religious rite,”
Tempest said, not quite meeting anybody’s eyes.

The truth, but only part of it,
Tate’s instincts said. She wasn’t content with a partial truth. Not anymore.

“No doubt, but what’s the real
reason?” Tempest hunched in on himself. It was noble how he wanted to keep his
people’s secrets, but Tate didn’t have the patience for it. “Answer me.”

The answer came from a surprising
source. The boy spoke strongly and confidently. “It’s to seal the peace between
my people and yours.”

“I don’t understand,” Tate said. “I
thought the Kairi were part of the empire.”

“We are, but we aren’t,” was the
boy’s confusing answer. “We stand with the Emperor but apart. He doesn’t
entirely trust us or we him. For that reason, once every ten years our
representatives meet with his to renew the seal on the fulcrum’s powers.”

“Your powers,” Tate clarified.

He inclined his head.

What happens if you’re not
there?
Night asked.

“It would be considered an act of
war.”

The room got very quiet after that
response, with each person lost in their own thoughts. War, huh? Tate really
didn’t want to be responsible for starting a war, and in her room sat the
possible spark.

“I’m never doing a favor for
anybody ever again,” she said, looking up at the ceiling in disbelief.

How did these situations find her?
She pinched the bridge of her nose. This made her already difficult situation
more precarious. She couldn’t give the fulcrum to Lucius in exchange for him
forgetting about the key. Now it sounded like the whole Kairi nation would be
out looking for the boy, and if they found him with Tate she’d probably be
blamed for snatching him. If they executed people who were only mildly
responsible for this situation, Tate very much feared what they’d do to her.

“I still can’t figure out Jost’s
role in this or the Red Lady’s,” she finally said.

“From what I picked up during my
time at her… mercy, she’s the one who originally kidnapped the fulcrum,”
Tempest said.

The boy nodded.

“How did Jost come to have you?”
Tate asked the boy. “I can’t see him working with either of those women.”

He inclined his head slightly. “He
took me from her several days ago. It was part of a plan to lure those responsible
out so that they could be arrested.”

Tate gulped. “So I guess I
shouldn’t have rescued you then?”

He shook his head. “No, your
interference has actually saved this scheme. Even if Umi had been caught, her
accomplices would not have been. I, and it seems your Ryu, believes there is
another party behind all of this. Umi just doesn’t have the resources or
knowledge to attempt something like this.”

“We already know who the other
party is,” Dewdrop said. “It’s the Red Lady.”

“She is only a pawn,” the boy said.
“The mastermind has a knowledge of magic and politics that a low level Night
Lord would not have. We’re after the string puller, not the puppets.”

“So you agreed to be bait in all
this?” Dewdrop asked.

“Yes.”

Tate listened to the conversation
with folded arms and a pensive expression. This explanation made sense and fit
with what Tate knew of events but still didn’t answer the question why. Why
would Ryu, much less Jost, involve themselves in politics? The pay, while
great, would in no way equal what they could make by selling to the highest
bidder. And Ryu. Why did the Kairi want to work with him, much less trust his
plan? Most important of all, why send Tate into the tunnels with Umi to locate
him if they already had him in custody? Was it a ruse? To throw her off about
their knowledge of Umi’s involvement? Ryu had said that she was simply to keep
an eye on Umi and report back. Tate’s encounter with Lucius might not have been
part of the plan at all.

She tapped one finger against the
bed. Why, why, why? That had to be it. No doubt they had what they considered a
brilliant plan intended to fool their enemy into showing their hand, but here
comes Tate to ruin the plan. When you thought about it, every wrinkle they’d
experienced had been because of her. The stolen key, the trip underground, the
boy. All because she’d stuck her nose where it didn’t belong.

“If we get you to this ball on time
tomorrow, that should be enough to prevent any war, right? Nobody will want to
kidnap you afterwards?” she asked. And she would be free. Absolved of all
responsibility because she’d fixed things.

The boy studied Tate before smiling
faintly and nodding.

Her nod was firm. “That’s what
we’ll do then.”

It would get Ryu and the Kairi off
her back, along with Jost. The Red Lady and Umi wouldn’t have any interest in
her anymore either. It wouldn’t solve the problem with Lucius and his men but
she figured she could keep out of sight for a few weeks until their memory
faded. She took a shaky breath. This could work. Maybe.