A Birthright of Blood (The Dragon War, Book 2) (4 page)

Nairi.

"She killed her," he
whispered and his eyes stung. "My twin did it. Kaelyn. She
killed her. And now I'm dying too."

Dawn and Dusk were moaning so
loudly—stars, they sounded like hogs in heat!—they did not hear.
Leresy let them keep doing their work. He no longer knew where he
lay. In the fog of wine, he was back in Castra Luna. He flew upon
the wind, a red dragon roaring fire, and she flew at his side, an
iron dragon with mocking green eyes. Below them spread his
dominion—his first fort, a mighty outpost, a beacon of civilization
in the wilderness.

"And they took it," he
whispered and clenched his fists. His eyes stung. "The boy
Rune and my sister Kaelyn. They took everything from me."

His fists trembled. He saw it
again—the horde of the Resistance howling his way, and the bodies of
legionaries raining around him, torn to pieces, entrails dangling and
limbs severed.

Nairi was gone. His fort was
gone. His hope for inheritance was gone. All that remained was wine
and cheap whores.

"Enough!" he shouted
and opened his eyes.

He rose from the bed, shoving
Dawn and Dusk off. They fell to the floor, naked, and gazed up at
him. Fear filled their eyes.

"My lord?" Dusk asked,
her raven hair spilling across her shoulders.

"I said wine, damn it!"
he shouted, stepped toward her, and slapped her. "I demanded
wine, and you ignored me. Is there no more wine in this whorehouse?"

Dusk recoiled, clutching her
struck cheek. Dawn rushed to her and embraced her.

Disgusting
harlots,
Leresy
thought and spat. He grabbed his clothes from the chair, dressed
himself, and fished through his pocket for coins. He tossed them a
silver each.

"You're not even worth
copper," he said and left the room, slamming the door behind
him.

Before him, the hallway swayed.
Leresy had to hold the wall to walk. Everything spun around him.
Other patrons moved from room to room, and women ran naked and
giggling, but they were only streaks of color to Leresy, only ghosts
of sound. He had to get out of here. This whole house was a nest of
disease and filth. The walls were spinning and closing in around
him; soon they would crush him.

I
have to get out!

He staggered downstairs, falling
the last three steps and banging his hip hard. A girl tried to help
him up. He struck her, sending her sprawling, and pulled himself to
his feet. Holding the wall, he made his way to the front doors and
stumbled outside into the night.

The cold autumn air washed over
him. His wound, an ugly stitched gash across his face, blazed with
new agony. It was here, at this very doorstep, that his twin had
slashed him. Whenever he stood here, the wound flared.

"I will cut you too,
Kaelyn," he hissed into the shadows. "And I will cut you,
Rune, and I will cut you, Shari, and I will cut this whole damn world
until we all drown in blood."

Tears filled his eyes.

She
scarred me and she killed you, Nairi,
he thought, and a lump filled his throat.
She
burned your corpse and buried you in a mass grave, and now you're
gone. Now I'm nothing.

He tried to remember every
detail of Nairi—her short yellow hair that fell across her brow, her
green eyes that were always so haughty and teasing, her pink lips and
their crooked smile, her body clad in leather and steel, and
mostly… mostly her power.

With his wife fallen, her father
was beyond his reach. Lord Herin Blackrose, lord of the Axehand
Order, would no longer serve him.

His love. His fort. His power.
His face.

"You took them all from me,
twin sister," he whispered and tasted his tears. "You will
hurt so much when I find you. You will scream so loudly."

He stumbled through the city
streets, holding alley walls for support. The smell of frying onions
rose from one brick house, invading his nostrils like poison. Leresy
fell to his knees, crawled toward a ditch, and retched. He had eaten
only scraps all day; he now lost them.

He righted himself, wiped his
lips on his sleeve, and kept walking. His father would be furious to
see him, a prince of the realm, stumbling alone through the darkness.
Princes should march ahead of brigades, soldiers and might
surrounding them. Leresy smirked and tightened his cloak around him.

Anything
that upsets you, old man, is good.

Finally he saw his new fortress
in the distance, a shard of black rising from a dark square. A
thousand legionaries served in Castellum Tal, a milanx of
battle-hardened men. Leresy snorted.

Men! Who wanted to serve with a
thousand sweaty, hairy, disgusting men? Back at Castra Luna in the
south, Leresy had commanded thousands of youths, half of them soft
females only eighteen years old and frightened. So many beauties had
served him—Tilla Roper with her pale cheeks, that scrawny friend of
hers with the short brown hair, and so many others to conquer.

Leresy stood in the night,
staring up at his new home, at this pathetic little tower with its
wretched milanx hidden inside. This was no place for him. This was
no fortress for a prince. Yet his father, the bastard, had insisted.

"I demand another training
fort!" Leresy had shouted at court, his eyes stinging. "I
will break in recruits. I—"

The emperor had only snorted,
glaring down from his throne.

"I'll not have my son
whoring his way through the Legions," Frey Cadigus had said.
"Do you want to train female youths or bed them?"

"Father!" Leresy had
cried. "I will train them. I trained the last recruits and—"

"And we saw how that
ended," Frey spat. "You commanded a fort for only three
moons, and it crumbled. You had a chance to mold youths into
soldiers, and you proved yourself weakest among them." He
snorted. "My Legions are not your brothel, boy. You will no
longer serve among women; they have softened you. You will serve
among men now, hardened warriors who've slain enemies in battle.
Maybe they'll teach you to be a man too."

Leresy walked across the
courtyard, reeling from side to side. When he reached the tower, he
banged upon the doors.

"Let me in, bastards!"
he howled, pounding. "This is your prince. Let me in, sons of
whores!"

The sound of laughter, howls,
and song wafted from behind the doors. Leresy pounded with more
vigor.

"Open these doors," he
shouted, voice hoarse and slurred, "or I'll flay you all and
make cloaks from your skin!"

Finally the guards pulled the
doors open, and Leresy stumbled into his new tower.

The grand hall swam before him,
a cavern of light and sound. Soldiers banged mugs upon tabletops,
singing hoarsely. A few were so deep in their cups, they were
dancing upon the tables, kicking off plates and mugs. Roasted boars
and jugs of wine lay everywhere. Two stray dogs ran between legs,
and three whores squealed, clutching silks to their naked bodies and
fleeing pursuing men.

"Bring me wine!"
Leresy demanded, marching deeper into the hall. His boots stumbled
over discarded turkey bones, smashed mugs, and a drunken soldier who
lay gurgling. "Wine, sons of dogs, and lots of it!"

When he had taken command of
this fortress, it had been a dull, dreary place, its men automatons
who knew only to march, drill, and shout "Yes, Commander!"
like trained birds. Leresy would have gone mad.

A woman ran naked toward him,
holding a jug of wine. He grabbed the jug, drank deeply, and slapped
the woman's backside to send her scurrying off.

This,
he thought,
is more
like a fort for a prince.

Soon he was lying across a
tabletop, pouring wine from a jug, aiming for his mouth but mostly
splattering his face. His scar blazed—it was only days old—but
Leresy didn't care. Pain was good. Pain made him forget.

Wine poured. Men sang. Memory
faded into numbness.

Leresy's eyelids fluttered and
he smiled.

A shriek tore across the hall.

"What is the meaning of
this!"

The singing died at once.
Silence fell across the fort.

Lying upon the tabletop, Leresy
pushed himself up onto his elbows. He squinted toward the hall
doors. A figure stood there, blurred and shadowed. Leresy shook his
head and blinked, struggling to bring it into focus.

"Shari?" he asked,
squinting.

She came marching down the hall
toward him, clutching her sword. Leresy rubbed his eyes, and finally
she came into focus.

Shari was ten years older than
him, and as a child, Leresy had always feared her. A sadistic youth,
Shari had delighted in torturing him—cutting his flesh with her
knives, burning his hands upon coals, and once even locking him in a
coffin for a day. Today Leresy was a grown man, but Shari still
frightened him. She was a tall woman, the tallest he'd ever known,
and her body was as strong as any man's; Leresy could see that even
through her black armor.

And today she was furious. Her
dark, curly hair bounced, her eyes flashed, and her lips peeled back,
revealing sharp teeth that had bitten him many times.

"Leresy!" she shouted.
"What have you done to this place?"

Leresy shook his head to clear
it. Still lying upon the tabletop, he managed a grin.

"Hello, sister!" he
said and raised a random mug in salute. "Would you care for
some wine, some food, or perhaps a lady of the night?"

She marched toward him. Her
gloved hand reached out, grabbed his hair, and tugged. Leresy
yowled. Snarling, Shari dragged him across the tabletop by the hair,
then slammed him down onto the floor. His hip blazed with pain.

"Ow!" he said and
struggled to rise. "Stars bloody dammit, Shari, you—"

She backhanded him. White light
blazed. Pain flared across his cheek.

"You will not mention the
old gods," Shari hissed and clutched his throat. "You are
a son of Cadigus. You serve the red spiral. You—"

"Shari, why are you here?"
He shook himself free. He leaned against the tabletop, feigning
nonchalance; in truth he was hiding his wobbling knees. "Don't
you have any prisoners to torture, puppies to eat, or Father's arse
to kiss?"

She grabbed his collar, twisted
it, and began dragging him across the hall.

"It's you who'll be begging
to kiss it tonight," Shari said. "He demands to speak with
you. I would be less comical, Leresy, and more afraid. Very
afraid."

He stumbled behind her, his
wobbly legs struggling to keep up. Mugs and bones clattered around
his feet. She kept dragging him, marching toward the doors.

"Shari!" he said.
"Let go, damn it."

He reached for his sword but
found it missing. Stars damn it! He must have left it at the
brothel again. He wanted to go back and fetch it. He wanted to lie
in the bed upstairs again, to make love to Dawn and Dusk, to sleep,
to drink, to forget. To do anything but see his sister and father.

I
want to see you again, Nairi,
he thought, and tears stung his eyes.
I
want to die and fly with you through the halls of afterlife.

But
Shari would not release him. She dragged him outside into the night.

"Shari, let me go—"

"Be silent or I'll cut out
your tongue, then feed it to you."

She tossed him back, growled,
and shifted into a dragon.

Blue scales clattered across
her. Her body ballooned, her claws scratched the cobblestones, and
her tail flailed. Flames churned behind her fangs like a smelter,
and her eyes blazed like molten steel. Her wings spread out in the
night—one blue and veined, the other a contraption of leather
stretched over wood.

"Twisted freak,"
Leresy said, staring at her.

The pup Relesar, a soft boy, had
ripped off her left wing. Shari had built herself this prosthetic,
this mockery of true dragon glory. The wood-and-leather apparatus
creaked like a sail.

"You look like a
fisherman's barge, Shari!" he screamed at her, voice hoarse, and
laughed. "Look at you! A freak. A joke."

She flapped her wings and rose
several feet in the air. Her claws reached out. Before Leresy could
even stumble back, let alone become a dragon himself, she grabbed him
like an owl grabs a mouse.

"Shari!" he screamed
and struggled in her grip, but couldn't free himself. He tried to
shift now, but her claws constricted him, keeping him in human form.

"Silence, brother,"
she said. "I'm taking you to him."

She flew. Her wings beat in
unison, her true wing and her mechanical monstrosity. Leresy
squirmed in her grip, screaming and cursing and spitting. The city
rolled beneath him, a whirlpool of black buildings, streaming lights,
and streets like veins in a rotted heart. Leresy gagged again,
spewing wine into the sky. His head tilted back, he moaned, and he
saw it there.

The ground lay above him, the
sky below. The palace of Tarath Imperium hung like a stalactite, a
thousand feet tall. It ended with a claw of black, jagged
battlements. Torches flickered across it, and dragons circled the
tower like flies around the hand of a corpse.

Tarath Imperium. The greatest
tower in the empire. The home of his father.

It was the very last place
Leresy wanted to go.

"We would have ruled this
place together, Nairi," he whispered, head dangling. "It
could have been ours. It should have been ours. But she betrayed
us." He growled and wept. "Kaelyn betrayed us. We will
kill her, Nairi! We will kill her."

His eyes fluttered shut. He
barely noticed Shari shrieking, descending, and carrying him to the
palace doors. Next thing he knew, he was stumbling on his feet
again, wobbling so madly he almost fell. Only Shari, who marched
while gripping his collar, held him up. He blinked, trying to bring
the world into focus, and saw his sister dragging him into the palace
throne room.