Draka

I woke to the ever present background noise of rushing water.

Sometimes the rain pattered, and sometimes it hammered, but it never let up. And while I could only hear the rain itself when it was particularly heavy, when it sounded like someone was trying to break in the door to the cellar, I could always hear the water rushing by in the storm drains beneath us. It came in through the hatch in the floor of the next room over and penetrated through the stone wall into the strongroom where I had my nest, a pleasant murmur just at the edge of hearing.

For four days the rain had been relentless, and according to Mak it could continue like this for weeks. In those four days I had only gone outside once, to attend a meeting with the Lady Justice Sempralia and her two uninvited guests, Lord Commander Barvon and Lord Exchequer Soandel. And, of course, about two dozen guards and functionaries of various kinds. Just because I was talking to the literal rulers of the city was no excuse to forget the regular people. Well, as regular as anyone good enough to be on their staff could possibly be.

The point was, I’d been keeping myself inside and dry. But that couldn't last, no matter how much I wished it would or how long I put off getting up. I had things needed to do, and they couldn’t wait for fair weather.

Three items on my agenda were urgent. The first was fixed, something I absolutely had to do at a specific time and place: The following morning, at sunrise, I would be meeting with the Lady Justice Sempralia and the lords commander and exchequer, on the roof of the citadel, the highest and most fortified building in the city. There we would discuss just what I’d get in return for facing an adult, full-grown gods damned dragon, and hopefully not do anything more than parley with it.

I hoped that it could speak. If it attacked me on sight… I’d rather not think about that. They’d said its name was “Reaper,” for goodness’ sake!

On a less apocalyptic scale, but hardly less important to me, I needed to check on Jekrie and the others in the tiny village at the foot of my mountain. I was supposed to be making sure that they were safe, but it had been weeks now since I last visited. That wouldn't do.

I also needed to visit the Tespril sisters. Zabra, also known as the Night Blossom, had been the cause of a lot of misery for me and my family, not to mention everyone else who’d suffered, and was still suffering, because of her callous disregard for anyone but her sister. Kesra seemed to be doing her best to run things now, with Zabra not having left their home in the high city since I released them. I’d been told that Kesra was trying very hard to show that they were complying with the terms we’d set for them to keep their lives, but I wanted to remind them, face to face, of the consequences of violating those terms.

And, loath as I was to admit it even to myself, I wanted to see them for my own personal reasons. I felt a responsibility towards Zabra. I’d broken her. She was mine. And I had an instinctive need to take care of what was mine, whether I liked them or not. The same went for Avjilan, the hunter who’d tried to kill me and who still languished in a cell somewhere, and for Seretem — Tammy — the one-handed mercenary raider. I loathed the woman. She was an unrepentant slave taker and murderer of innocents, and I didn’t see how I could ever stop loathing her. Yet every so often I’d think of one of them, wondering how they were doing. In Tammy’s case I even found myself regretting that I couldn’t make sure that she was safe.

Of course, everything would be much easier if I sated the Need that was constantly nagging at me. If I consumed a Nest Heart I’d be able to dreamwalk, and then I could find anyone who belonged to me. Anyone my shadows had touched, and who I’d made an impact on, I could visit in their dreams. I planned to do that with Zabra, even though I could find her whenever I wanted; she should know very well by now that I’d visited her sister that way more than once, but I wanted her to experience it for herself. I didn’t want her to nurture any kind of dumb hope that she might ever get out of my shadow. And I intended to do it with Tammy, since she was at best hours away, and possibly on her way across the sea by now. But first I needed to actually find and consume some Hearts, and once I was done with my in-person visits I planned to do just that.

Besides sating the Need, the general feeling of strength and well-being that eating a Heart brought, and the power that it unlocked, I had another reason to want to find some Hearts. I’d found that Herald could consume some of their power, though not nearly as much as I, and with similar effects to when I did it. I wanted to see if Mak, Tam, and Kira could do the same. If anyone with an explicitly magical Advancement could do it, if it was only those who belonged to me, or if it was something unique to Herald, since she shared my shadow magic. As it was, Nest Hearts could only be destroyed using nest killers, rare enchanted crystal devices jealously guarded by the Adventurers’ Guild. If it turned out that anyone could draw in power from a Heart, and become stronger by doing so, that might just be a game changer!

Although, if that was the case, shouldn’t we keep it secret? I expected some serious trouble once I went fully public. If only my family knew about this source of power, that could be an important edge.

I’d have to discuss it with my humans. Especially Tam and Ardek; I wasn’t nearly as devious as either of them. Mak, too; she was pretty good with people and gauging their reactions. She should be able to predict how we might benefit from revealing it much better than I could.

Taking them out to hunt Nest Hearts was probably not going to be popular. We’d have to fly, of course; I was not walking for hours upon hours in a river of mud when I had a better option available to me. But no one was going to be happy about clinging to my back for upwards of two hours with the rain hammering down, and Mak hated flying in the first place. She’d do it if I asked her to; she’d just be praying for much of it and worryingly silent for the rest.

At least she’d be mostly dry if I carried her in my arms, as opposed to the poor sap — probably Herald to start with — on my back. Their raincoats were pretty good, but there’s only so much you can do with oiled leather and waxed cloth.

Having done quite enough thinking for one morning, I stretched out best I could where I lay, then focused on my most important sense: my sense of where Herald and Mak were. I could feel them above me in the inn, close together, but not in their room. They were on the first floor, in the common room. Having breakfast, maybe? I was pretty sure that they usually took their brekky in the kitchen, but then one or both of them usually woke me after they were done, so I might be completely wrong.

I considered going out into the main cellar, but mornings usually saw a lot of running up and down the stairs, and we still hadn’t let the staff in on the minor secret that there was a dragon living down here. I grabbed on to that excellent excuse and curled up again on my ever expanding nest of pillows and blankets. I let the distant roar of the storm drains fill my ears, and soon I was back asleep.

I woke, again, to a knocking on the heavy door.

“Good morning, great sleepy one!” came Mak’s sing-song voice, muted by the thick wood, right before the rasp of a key turning in the lock. Warm, steady light spilled into the dark room as the door slowly cracked open.

Watching Mak open the door to the strongroom was always funny. She had strength in spades, both from training her body and because she benefited from my own minor Advancements. But, strength can only get you so far. The door was made of thick, ridiculously dense wood and reinforced with bands of bronze, and Mak was just south of five feet tall and might have weighed a hundred pounds after a big meal. She simply didn’t have the mass or the leverage to open the door gracefully. She solved this by first slowly pulling the door open a few inches, then putting one hand on the door and the other on the frame and pulling it open that way, as though she were parting tall grass or tearing a hole in the side of a tent.

Herald was waiting outside with her, but she found Mak’s struggles as funny as I did and never helped. She held a lightstone on one upturned palm, the source of the light. The direct lighting glinted off her metallic golden irises and cast sharp shadows across her smiling face, making her look positively demonic, looming over her sister. Or, draconic, perhaps. She and Mak were my little dragons, after all.

“You should try just putting your foot on the frame and kicking off,” I suggested helpfully as Mak came into view.

“And tear the door off its hinges? I think not,” she replied cheerfully, coming into the room. Herald came close behind, towering over our sister.

“You know, going back to sleep once you have woken up is a big mistake,” Herald said, sitting down on a pillow next to me. “You should have just come out when you woke up an hour ago.”

“Didn’t wanna scare the staff,” I said, laying my head down on the floor so they could scratch around the nub that was my left horn. It had been poking up noticablý past the scales ever since my last growth spurt, and the damn thing was itchy. “Besides,” I told them as they dutifully got to scritching, “you should be glad that I’ve been taking my time. We’re going out today.”

Mak’s scratching stopped for a moment before continuing. “Out? As in out in the city, or…”

“We’re going up north. Herald, you told Mak about the gremlin nest we cleared out a few weeks back, yeah?”

“I did…” Herald said apprehensively.

“The one she consumed a bit of, yeah,” Mak agreed, raising an eyebrow to ask me where I was going with this.

“Well, I want to see if you can do the same. Our time is limited, so we may as well do it now. Besides, I’m going to start getting cranky if I don’t eat a Heart or two soon, and I really should have someone watching me when I do. I tend to pass out.”

“I don’t like flying,” Mak said. It was a statement; not quite a complaint, not quite a whine. But no matter how carefully flat she kept her voice, I knew how much emotion lay behind it.

“I know,” I told her, raising my head to look her in the eyes. “And I wouldn’t do this to you if I didn’t think it was important. But there are no Hearts nearby, and we really need to do this.”

Mak closed her eyes. Her lips became a tight line and she breathed out heavily through her nose, as Herald reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Yeah, I know,” Mak said finally. Her hand at her hip fiddled nervously with her hair, straight and black and so long that it reached her lower back. “I’ll have to put my hair up, I guess. Will you be holding me? I think I prefer that over being on your back.”

“Yeah, of course. I was hoping Herald would come, too, anyway.” I looked at my dearest friend. Her nose scrunched up adorably as she grimaced, but she gave me a nod.

“You are lucky I love you so much,” Herald said. “I know that Mak suffered through a short flight in this rain yesterday, but this will take hours, will it not?”

“It could, yeah. Wear your best rain gear, and warm clothes underneath. Wool if you have it.”

“Can you at least go above the clouds?”

Herald put on the fakest pout I’d seen in my life, as a human or a dragon, and I couldn’t help but smile at her as I shook my head. “I would, but I’m worried that you’ll both be too wet by the time we get up there. And you remember how much colder it is up there, right? If you’re soaked and I bring you up there, you’ll get sick or worse.”

“Ugh, fine. When do you want to leave?”

“As soon as you two can get ready, ideally. But first: Mak, I’d like you to send a message to the Tesprils. Tell them that they should both be at the house tonight. In the big bedroom at sunset. That’s all. I’m going to go visit them, but you don’t need to tell them that.”

An hour later I was climbing above the city, with Herald on my back and Mak in my arms. They both wore their armor, and had swords and daggers strapped to their belts. We left Herald’s bow and Mak’s spear behind, the bow because it wouldn’t take the weather well and the spear because the damn thing was eight feet or so long, and carrying it would have been a pain. Besides, they wouldn’t be needed. Herald could go functionally invisible, and Mak had the strength of a man four times her size while being tougher than an old boot. Swords should be fine. If we found ourselves in a situation where a bow and spear might be needed, we’d be better off just fleeing.

“We’ll start off with visiting Jekrie,” I shouted to them as I turned towards my mountain. I felt Mak nod into my chest, while Herald called out her acknowledgment.

I felt a rush of guilt at my long absence, and hoped that Jekrie was all right. It would be good to see him and the other villagers again. Most of them had been out trading when I last visited, making it several weeks since I’d met Jekrie, who’d been shoehorned into the role of chief by virtue of him being the first one I spoke with, and accidentally dominated. With the weather the way it was I worried that they’d not have enough food or firewood, or that their roofs leaked or the nearby stream flooded or something equally problematic.

Once we were in sight of the village I sighed with relief. Not only was everything there, but two new cabins stood finished, making three completed houses separate from the longhouse. Even through the rain I could see smoke rising from the chimney of the longhouse, though not from the other buildings. A hundred feet to the north, against the mountainside, a small pond had formed where the magically sealed gate into the mountain had been excavated, and I wondered if the gate was completely watertight or if water was slowly trickling into the tunnel. Not that there was any risk of flooding; the tunnels seemed to go on forever, and the air in there was dry as dust.

The visit was short but satisfying. I stood outside the longhouse under a canopy of my own wings, talking to Jekrie and Tinir. They assured me that they had stocked up on everything they needed well in advance of the rains, with their short trading expedition having plugged any holes they couldn’t handle themselves. Meanwhile, Herald and Mak sipped warm herbal tea inside and talked — and apologized on my behalf — to Tinir’s adventurer cousin Darvallan and his wife Elem. They’d settled in as long-term, if not permanent, residents, and it was good to know that there were two reportedly skilled fighters around, keeping my people safe.

As we were leaving Jekrie told me, “We shall visit the city once the rains stop, Great Lady. We need iron or bronze, and the nearby villages have none to spare. We should be eternally grateful if your other servants might help us when it comes time to trade, as we’ve been told that the city merchants will have the teeth out of your gums if they think they can get away with it. Dar and Elem, unfortunately, are not traders by heart.”

“Nah, yeah! Of course! Tam or Val will see you right, I’m sure, or Mak if she has the time. I’m sure we can put you up in our inn, too. Hell, bring the kids! Kira would be delighted!” I grinned, and Jekrie smiled back nervously. “I’m all excited now. We’ll get Barro to come, too. It’ll be good to have you all gathered under one roof!”

Where I can keep you all safe, I added silently. That was just Instinct and her pathological possessiveness talking. Nobody needed to hear that part.