Dragon Thief (8 page)

“Wheresh he? Where–ooh, I shmell beer.” Out back, the screaming and panicking continued. Tazithiel growled, “Sherve me a barrel of your besht, barman. I’m thirshty.”

Seen past Tazi’s knee, the barman measured his length in a dead faint.

“Tazi! Tazithiel, come on!”

Great. Guzzling noises emanated from inside the building. More beer? Kal rolled his eyes. As if the benighted beast would listen to him now! Pity the man who met her with a Dragon-sized hangover in the morning. Old-Kal would have made himself scarcer than pollen on a breeze. New-Kal, risen from the ashes of those dubious materials, had to try. He drew a long, calming breath. Right.

Just then, Kal spied the tavern’s sign dangling above Tazithiel’s spine spikes.
The Drunken Dragon.
Life could not possibly be that ironic, could it?

“Hey, you–that your Dragon?”

“Aye. And I–”

Kal never finished his sentence. He never saw what hit him, either.

* * * *

Waking in a jail cell was the most excellent homecoming in recent memory. Kal felt rested, rat-infested and ready to foment mischief. Bump on the head? So what. He’d suffered worse. He felt eyes boring into his back. Kicking his feet to scare off the vermin, he rolled over and sat up. A hulking, scarred Western Isles warrior crouched on the far side of his cell, picking at his fingernails with the point of the most ridiculous weapon Kal had ever seen–a four-foot scimitar decorated with notched, barbed edges that screamed, ‘this is a weapon of incalculably massive evil!’ To complete the picture of thuggish glory, the warrior had one eye, the grand sum of two teeth populated his sneering mouth, and three fingers of his left hand were missing.

“Islands’ greetings to you,” Kal offered. Very polite.

In a voice that was the stuff of granite mountains and dizzying abysses, the dark-skinned warrior returned, “Move an inch and I’ll spit you like a wild pig, boy.”

Spit him on that scimitar? No problem. Call him boy? Kal mentally reserved space in the nearest volcano for the dim-witted swine. By the angle of the light leaching into one tiny window overhead, the hour was mid-morning and the day, dull and overcast. High time for Tazithiel to be slinking in with profuse apologies for her behaviour.

“So, everything quiet in town?”

“Seeing as ya gone destroyed half of it, aye,” rumbled the thug.

Kal nodded. “I regret that most sorely, my friend. The Dragoness was drunk. I tried to stop her.” The scarred face did not move a muscle. “Now, I’ve a delightful little proposal for you …”

The confidence trickster slipped into familiar tales of riches exceeding the fabled Dragon-hoards of Gi’ishior, with which it might be alleged he had certain personal experience, but the stone-face warrior opposite seemed unmoved by his word-weaving. Mid-sentence, the scimitar pricked his neck.

“Tell you what, stranger.” His gruff Western Isles accent was as thick as the fingers holding that blade, Kal noted. “I’d prefer the bounty on your head.”

Evidently, his fame preceded him. Stretching with leonine pleasure, Kal inquired innocently, “Bounty? What bounty?”

The mug-ugly warrior showed every inch of his decaying gums in a broad smile. “Three thousand gold drals for a thief from Fra’anior.” Darn. Not as witless as hoped for. The blade moved to Kal’s left ear; flipped up the hair. “You’ve odd ears, stranger. Ya want to know what I think? I think this town’s set to be rich.”

Dignify the accusation? Bah! Curse those Dragons, making his life a misery. Suddenly, the jealous protectiveness of a Dragoness seemed more a boon than a bane, and oddly, he found himself longing for the clasp of a huge blue paw. The thought made his skin crawl.

“They want you alive.”

So that the Dragon Elders could torture him properly? Posse of rock-chewing worms!

“That restriction’s a pity.” The warrior resumed worrying at his fingernails, a devious smile playing about his lips. “Mind you, a person can live without fingers or toes. Or limbs, I hear.” Kal sucked in a breath. “Ears, eyes, nose … none of those keep ya alive, do they, stranger?”

He howled in his mind,
Tazithiel!

Outwardly, Kal kept his cool. “What happened to the beast?” he asked, as if inquiring after a lost pet.

“Dragon hunters chained the beast down, they did. Got him tied so tight he can’t lift a claw.”

“Her,” Kal said automatically. “She’s a girl–a Dragoness.”

The huge man hawked and spat on the ground beside Kal’s foot. “You sick in the head, stranger?”

Exactly. He touched upon Kal’s own fears. Romance a beast? Even if she appeared in Human form, that was an Isle too far for many people.

“I am a Dragon Rider and she’s my Dragon.” Before he could process the heat this statement sparked in his breast, Kal added, “And when Tazithiel wakes up, she’s going to level this town to find me.”

The big ruffian threw back his head and laughed, but a rising roar outside cut him off with the facility of a scimitar-stroke applied to the knees.

Thunder! The walls and floor shook as though one of the mythical Land Dragons had taken to beating the Island like a drum. Springing for the window, Kal peeked out just in time to be dazzled by a series of lightning strikes from the low clouds. Explosions resounded from what he assumed was the general direction of the marketplace, followed by flames that quickly rose above the town’s roofline.

“I think she’s feeling irritable,” said Kal, conversationally. Boiling storm clouds; a vortex developing over the town? Unholy, freaking Dragon-bones! “Probably a beastly hangover.”

The Western Isles warrior interrupted his personal grooming activities to stare unashamedly out of the window. He whispered, “But the chains, I saw those chains!”

Now was not the moment to describe Tazithiel’s boot-unlacing, trouser-divesting powers, Kal resolved. The man already thought him a pervert. Instead, his heart sickened with worry over the townspeople. The innocents. And although Dragons were meant to be arrogant monsters who would level a town without the slightest regret–revelling in the destruction, most probably–he wondered that any intelligent creature could take life so callously. Or was he just naïve?

Evil existed.

Was she evil, or was this the fundamental nature of the Dragonkind?

Nevertheless, the storm above town appeared to be linked to the Indigo Dragoness’ ire. Kal could not watch. He of a thief’s heart, who had many times slipped a blade into a warm body or garotted an unwary guard, now quaked as justice came home to roost? What right had he to judge? His idea of moral navigation was a Dragonship long since lost over the Cloudlands.

What to do? Reaching out with his mind, Kal shouted,
Tazithiel! Stop! I’m present and well. Let’s just get out of here, please …

Over the crackling of flames and the thin, faraway shouts, Dragon-Tazi’s battle-thunder rose, wild with pain. Kal found himself gripping the bars, screaming in sympathy, and to his surprise threw off the huge Western Isles warrior as though he were a child.

I COME, MY RIDER!

Never had thunder resounded so sweetly in his mind. Kal staggered, holding himself upright only by dint of his grip on the bars. A dirty, draconic body sprang aloft. Lightning played about her slim, serpentine length, blasting off the dried mud, and through the gaps and streaks now visible on her hide, Kal noted how Tazithiel shone with an unearthly light. Freaking windrocs! No ballad or lore-scroll had ever extolled a Dragon-power to rival this.

Pinpricks incinerated before they reached her hide. Arrows? Crossbow bolts? He could not tell, but Kal shivered as her gaze seemed to leap to his across the thousands of feet that separated them. She knew precisely where he was.

Wings pumping, the Indigo Dragoness lanced beneath the brooding clouds, a bright comet-trail streaking across his vision. Captivated, Kal yet had the presence of mind to wave the warrior back. Her wings flared. Shadow occluded his window. Dust blasted into his face as Tazithiel landed, her posture majestic even though her musculature appeared diminished, her many-fanged smile never sweeter nor more predatory. Golden Dragon blood seeped down her muzzle. Wounded!

“Kal. Stand back.”

He jerked backward as two talons slipped through the window. As sharp as curved grey swords, they gripped the wall. Those blocks of dressed stone had to weigh upward of a tonne, but Tazithiel, with a sharp hiss to accompany the flexion of her muscles, tore one free. A Dragoness’ paw reached inside to provide an easy exit for an agile thief.

“Mine,” she growled, drawing him out upon her wrist.

“Verily, you are
mine
.”

Heated draconic laughter shook the jail. “Verily? You scholarly reprobate.”

The Indigo Shifter’s massive thighs coiled like springs. Blasting sixty feet aloft in a single bound, Tazithiel beat her wings to propel them into the clouds.

T
Hat EVENING, FIFTY
leagues distant on a new Island-Cluster, Kal and Tazi lay hand-in-hand, stargazing beneath a two-moon night. Blue and Jade sliced thin, crescent slivers of colour into the eastern horizon, casting little light to impede their view of a night sky so brilliant, it seemed to explode with stars.

Having coyly transformed behind a boulder, to Kal’s piqued amusement, Tazithiel dressed in a simple, white cotton
inkaliar
dress, a garment of her native Mejia Island, before foraging for dinner. She prepared a meal of spiced grilled duck, with a side of wild vegetables seasoned with yaffar-seed and tarragon. Rather domesticated, for a Dragoness. Kal smacked his lips approvingly, and cleaned the small pot with a chunk of sweetbread.

Their entwined fingers were the only place their bodies touched. Touch was a kind of magic, the thief thought, for a soul should perish for lack of this simplest of actions. Perhaps this was what he had unknowingly sought in the many flirtations and liaisons of his life.

All meaningless, in comparison.

“The Sorrowful Servant,” said Tazi, naming a constellation.

“The Dragon Rampant.”

“One for you, Kal–The Feckless Felon.”

“You made that one up!”

“Who pulled who out of jail this morning, may I ask?” His hiss did not cow her in the slightest. “Dawn over Rolodia.”

“Where?”

With her bandaged hand, she pointed low across his body. “There. On the horizon.”

“Didn’t know you could see it from this far south,” Kal said, wondering at the heat-trail her arm created upon his skin, detectable even through his linen shirt.

Odd, how Human-Tazi reflected the damage done to her Dragoness. A six-foot crossbow bolt had pierced the webbing of her right paw. Another had deflected off the bone of her nose. He had cleaned and dressed the wounds for her with neat daubs of antiseptic turbic-gum. Now she had a splodge of green on her nose, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

Tazithiel sighed. “Kal, did you ever look at the stars, and wonder …” Here it came, he thought. Why, since time immemorial, had the stars always inspired Humankind to philosophical endeavours? “Have you ever wondered if you came from the stars?”

That sucked the wind from his sails.

“I don’t know why it is, but I’ve always dreamed … I’m just weird. Have you–”

“No,” he replied, with the utmost intelligence, insight and sensitivity, “and aye, you are weird.”

“Kal!” she squeaked, and then lowered her voice to a throaty chuckle that traced every nerve in his body with Dragon fire. Rising to her elbow, the enchantress gazed down at him with a sparkle in her eyes Kal could not fathom. Just a hint of her Shapeshifter nature lurked within those eye-jewels; perhaps in the colour, matching the indigo blues of her Dragoness, or in the play of magic which tantalised his senses. To search her gaze was to know a connectedness so deep and intimate, he felt as if he had been punched in the gut without any physical contact.

Her lips twitched; the merest whisper of a smile. “I love it when you look at me like that, as if you see
into
me, Kal.”

Winner! “Actually,” he cleared his throat, “I was trying to decide whether you might enjoy one of my sanity-stealing kisses, or whether you were having a womanly moment, offering the briefest intimation of your feminine mysteries to this humble–”

“I was having a womanly moment.”

“Alright. Therefore, I shall merely dust your lips with the starlight of my kiss–” the kiss he essayed being rather more ordinary than his poetry “–and now, I shall attend your verbal jewels with bated breath.”

Tazithiel pretended outrage, but her hair betrayed her true feelings as the long locks wended their way over his arms and chest, caressing his neck and wrists. Kal tried not to shiver; he laughed uneasily in the face of her chiming laughter.

“Can’t keep my hair off you,” she said. “Fine. I shall now demonstrate the effects of an air kiss upon the male of the species.”

“Air kiss?”

“Shh. Pay attention.”

First, a ravishing smile. Second, her breath warmed his cheek, fragrant and exotic, as though she had chewed dorlis-flower perfume. Then, with the utmost guile, Tazithiel lowered her lips toward his. Dreamily. Enticing him with the magic of her presence. Struggling manfully, Kal managed to maintain his self-control for all of a handful of heartbeats–which thumped the insides of his ears,
whomp whomp whomp,
with deafening softness. He tried to kiss her.

Dragon-swift, she withdrew. “Wait.”

“Oh, come on!”

“You’ve all the restraint of a feral Dragon crazed by fresh blood.”

“I am the very paragon of respectability. And don’t you use your magic on me. It’s deceitful, that’s what it is.”

“Oh no.” She approached him again, predacious, alluring, maddening. “No magic here. I’m all about feminine mystery.”

“And about as subtle as a twenty-tonne drunken Dragoness.”

For that affront, she strung out her ‘lesson’ until Kal was seriously contemplating whacking her over the head and dragging her off to a handy cave, while his innards resembled a desperate, quivering lump of prekki fruit mush. Then, she changed the subject.

Truly a womanly moment.

“I don’t much resemble either of my shell-parents, Kal. It has always bothered me.” Tazithiel tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear with a self-conscious gesture. “Shapeshifters are odd creatures. We can arise spontaneously in a lineage, particularly around Isles of magical significance.”

“Such as Fra’anior?”

Kal wondered how this revelation linked to her starry dreams.

“Aye. Neither of my shell-parents are Shapeshifters. But they are … ordinary. They’re Dragons of pure soul-fires for the most part–” she ignored his choked cough of outrage “–but my shell-mother’s a Red and my shell-father styles himself an Aqua Blue, although there’s only the merest hint of Blue in his greenness. Neither lineage boasts a single Dragon of my unusual colouration and aspect. Kal, I do love my shell-parents, despite everything. If you knew them, you’d understand–”

“How colossally bigoted and heartless they were?”

Crack!
Tazithiel withdrew her hand; her eyes, huge with hurt and fright.

Kal touched his cheek, dazedly wishing back his words. “Islands’ sakes! Sorry. Tazi, I …”

The white of her long dress disappeared into the night.

Flutter. Gone.

* * * *

“Kal, you’ve a reasonable command of Island Standard, haven’t you?”

“Aye.”

“So if I used the words ‘skewer’, ‘peel’ and ‘bake to a crisp’ in the same sentence, you’d probably understand what I mean?”

“Haven’t a clue!”

Human-Tazi would have placed her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed as rage tinted her cheeks. The Indigo Dragoness crisped the goat-meat stuck between her fangs with a sizzling fireball. It missed the thief by a rajal’s whisker.

Kal, as a result rather whiter than his standard golden-tan Fra’aniorian complexion, straightened up. He patted his face.

“Oh, Kal!” Her paw flew to her mouth in a typically Human reaction. “Your beard …”

“Er, no damage done. Nothing permanent. Look, Tazi, please transform. I want to apologise properly.”

A second fireball, mercifully wider of his person than the first, erupted from the Shapeshifter Dragoness. “You unbelievable, two-legged numbwit! Which part of ‘now’s not the right time’ do you fail to grasp?”

Then, with a rush of that infolding-before-flowering magic Kal wished with every fibre of his being he could understand, she transformed from her Dragoness into Human-Tazi. Tonnes of Dragonflesh vanished into nothingness. In her place stood an enchantress whose volcanic nudity … Kal hoped he was not leering like a courtier drunk on berry wine.

Vibrant of face and voice, Human-Tazithiel said, “I’d prefer a female-style apology. Feelings before action. Being a typical male, you–”

“Go for action first, while my emotions trail behind, snarled up in a hopeless tangle?” Kal grinned, knowing that a man with half a beard had to look ludicrous. He gestured at her state of undress. “That is both spectacularly unhelpful and … spectacular.”

Three days of wrangling and defiant silences as they fled westward ahead of pockets of Dragonships and Dragons scouring the Isles for a certain crook with a king’s ransom on his head–how that alliance had come about was a conundrum indeed–had left both Kal and Tazi emotionally wrung out. One more flustered dive for a bolt-hole, Kal decided, and the Shapeshifter would transform into a rabbit. Tazithiel needed time and plenty of food to recover from their epic crossing. But there had been no chance. No respite.

In these parts, thousands of low, forested Islands mounded out of the Cloudlands like a scattering of furry hats afloat on a vast, opaque lake. The hot season suns baked the malachite-green coniferous forests ferociously, seventeen hours a day, and the activity of millions of sap-drinking drill-birds spread both birdsong about the Islands and the sweet, sticky scent of thousands of types of pine. Legions of fat worker bees raided the dense pockets of wildflowers nestled beneath the trees, giving rise to the moniker for this region–the Garden of the South. Tazithiel had quite another reason for liking this region–jambiss buck, the frenzy-inducing pinnacle of a carnivore’s gustatory dreams. She only ate two of the man-tall antelope. Daily.

The Dragoness appeared to be developing a discernible wobble in the belly region.

“I can do words first,” Kal said. “Tazithiel, I’m sorry for–mmm.”

“Words shmurds,” she murmured into the crook of his neck, having relinquished his lips. “Here’s my deal. Take it or leave it.”

“Take it.” Kal fitted his hands to her slender waist. “The only question is where, when, how and for how long?”

“That’s four questions, you conversational harpist.” How she remembered his every word, and oftentimes turned them against him! “You’ve been pinging looks about like angry hornets. Here’s my offer. I will now proceed to discombobulate your brains until they dribble out of your ears, following which, you will tell me exactly what’s bothering you. Promise?”

Either Tazithiel had miraculous powers of persuasion, Kal decided, or he had a spine as supple as a terrace lake trout. Willpower? Bah. This Dragoness owned him for a slave. The worrying part? Kal did not want to escape, nor express so much as a contrary thought. One smile, one flash of those indigo eyes, and he was lost. Yet, if she found out his other identity … and every westward league brought them closer to the hour when he must decide. Trust her and risk losing her–could he face that? Kal did not know any more. The old tenets of his life had been uprooted, perhaps forever.

Easier to put it off.

“I promise,” he said, hoping Tazi ascribed the quaver in his voice to her feminine charms.

Later, Tazithiel curled up against him, her toes practically cooking in the small fire they had built to warm the old Dragon-roost they had found. A soft, white-sand floor sloped up to a ledge where generations of Dragons must have roosted, judging from the claw-marks scored into the stone. The entrance lay behind a barrier of towering jinsumo trees, oddly transplanted from their native East. Their thick sprays of blossoms lent the hot season night an intense fragrance.

“I apologise for what I said about your shell-parents.” Kal sighed, staring into the flames. “Parents are a touchy topic for me. So is magic. As for your suspicions about what I wrought to aid us through the storm, Tazi–I’ve been tetchy about many things.”

“Thank you, Kal.”

“I thought Dragons despised apologies.”

“Some do. But I’m an enlightened Shapeshifter. I know a few things about being an upright-walking mammal.” Her chuckle was a many-faceted outlet for her feelings–irony, apology and hope, he thought. “You’re either a great enchanter of Fra’anior, or something wacky is going on.”

“Wacky? As in, a Shapeshifter Dragoness whacked me over the head and–”

“Regretting your choice to stay?”

“Never.” Kal winced, stroking the backs of her fingers, which rested upon his chest. “A spot of candour on my part. I have regretted this liaison a few times, Tazi.”

“The drunken Dragoness?”

“Aye.”

“Feisty, fire-breathing, flying girl-fiend?”

“Now, just a minute–”

Tazithiel’s fingernails pricked his skin. “Dragons have excellent hearing, Kal. You’re lucky you’re such a funny man.”

“I plan to filch all your scales and sell them on street corners for trinkets, making myself implausibly wealthy in the process.”

Her magical hair rippled against him as if he wore a warm blanket. If he had discovered anything about Shapeshifters, it was that they both loved warmth and radiated heat at a phenomenal rate. Her appetite matched his, and he was no picky eater. Six feet tall and as sinewy as a champion Jeradian warrior, she was, yet Tazi remained pleasing in all the right proportions. Delightful distraction! Distraction being an occupational hazard around this woman, apparently.