The Book of Fire (62 page)

The gauzy, shimmering curtains are closed. Nothing is visible in the shadowed interior until a tawny, slim hand parts the drapery and the High Priestess herself peers out to see why they’ve stopped.

The two men share the same reflexive grunt of approval.

The priestess is young and she is beautiful. Really beautiful. More beautiful than any vid star N’Doch can think of, off the top of his head. He wants to whistle aloud, but he’s pretty sure it’d be considered inappropriate. She’s such a mix, he couldn’t begin to guess what her background is, but it looks like she got the very best of all of them. Her eyes are dark, her features delicate but lively, her skin that flawless espresso-and-cream that makes N’Doch wants to put his hands all over her. He nudges Köthen. The baron is transfixed.

N’Doch bends to hiss into his ear. “Hey. Dolph, didn’t your mama teach you not to stare?”

As if she feels their gaze, like some kind of magic heat ray, the priestess turns toward them, a slow haughty move like you make when you’re showing someone how little you notice them. N’Doch has the word “bitch” all ready on his tongue when the woman’s glance slides past him, past Köthen, then flickers back as if surprised, and settles on the baron in what appears to be shock. N’Doch thinks this could be getting dangerous. Everybody within ten klicks is looking at her, while she and the baron stare at each other long past what’s polite between strangers. Like, he’d have a big hole lasered through his chest if he stood between them.

He nudges Köthen again. “Whatcha trying to do, get us in trouble?”

Then the logjam clears up ahead, and the four bearers bend, grip, and hoist their golden burden to their shoulders.
The procession moves forward again, carrying the High Priestess with it. But her gaze drifts back toward Köthen again, and she gives him a kind of stunned smile that transforms her face from that of a proud, self-contained aristocrat to that of an astonished girl. Then she withdraws behind her curtains, and the chair disappears behind the next infantry squad and a long train of hand-hauled supply wagons.

N’Doch is irritated. Haven’t these guys ever heard of mule power? He jogs Köthen’s shoulder brusquely. He’s pissed at him for attracting all the attention. “C’mon. We’re outa here.”

Köthen follows willingly this time, as if he’s too busy thinking to resist.

N’Doch hugs the facades of the houses fronting the square, where the going’s a little easier. The crowd is surging inward toward the center of the square, but coming up against some force or barrier he can’t see. “Hey! Watch where you’re going, man!” He hauls Köthen out of the path of a loaded hand cart. “So the ice prince has blood in his veins after all.”

“Dochmann! I have never seen a more beautiful woman. Have you?”

“Well, she wasn’t looking at me, so what does it matter?” N’Doch thinks about how the girl back at the wagon would feel if she’d seen what he’s just seen. “And you could wipe that silly grin off your face, y’know.”

Köthen laughs, a charged-up, throaty laugh. A townie shoves past him rudely and he doesn’t even notice. “You are jealous, friend N’Doch.”

He’s trying to imagine a way he can reasonably deny this. Through the shifting crowd, a face catches his eye. He stops short.

Köthen is instantly alert. “What?”

“That girl again. The one I was following.”

“Alone?”

“Couldn’t tell.” N’Doch shrugs uneasily and moves on. By the time they’re back at the wagons, he’s slick with the crowd’s close heat and the effort of plowing through it. He sees that during the pack up, the four remaining wagons have been reshuffled into an open square, with the mules all hitched and facing clockwise. Blind Rachel and Oolyoot
are clustered inside, in conference. Brenda and Charlie are already perched on the roof of Luther’s van, weapons in hand. No one likes the feel of this crowd. N’Doch climbs over the traces of an Oolyoot wagon, and hears Luther sending the girl up into the driver’s seat, telling her to stay put with uncharacteristic brusqueness.

“Someone’s a little anxious,” he comments to the baron.

“You are not?”

“Well, yeah, actually I am. But I thought it was just the dragon working on me.”

Köthen reaches a hand back to stroke the hilt of the sword brushing his neck. “I feel like a dog before a thunderstorm.”

“What say we go sit with the Pit Bull . . . better view from up there.”

They scale the outside of the van, using the big steel latches as handholds. Köthen’s sword clinks against the insulated metal skin.

“Yo, Brenda!” N’Doch calls out. “Don’t shoot, it’s only me.” As his head clears the top, he finds his nose mere inches from the barrel end of Brenda’s new hunting rifle, courtesy of the dragon brooch. He frees up a palm and eases the muzzle aside. “Nice gun, huh?”

Charlie giggles. “Yo, Dockman.”

Brenda gives him a sour nod, then offers him a hand to hoist him over the edge. Köthen follows easily on his own. He finds an open spot, unslings and draws his sword, then settles with it across his lap. From a pouch on the sheath, he pulls out oil and a whetstone. N’Doch squints out into the deepening dusk. Torches flare around all sides of the square. Robed men and women are pressing back the mewling crowd, to open up a wide path from the main street and clear the center around the flaming gilt bowl, over the design of the red dragon. A phalanx of them, in red and gold, forms beside the dragon’s upraised claw.

“The reception committee,” N’Doch observes cheerfully.

Moments later, Sedou climbs up. “Almost as crowded up here as it is down there.” He hangs his legs over the outside edge and invites N’Doch to join him. They watch the doings in the square for a while, as the priestess’ entourage enters from the main drag and begins a slow ritual circuit around the outside. Then Sedou says, “I’ve told Stoksie and the
others not to be concerned should I suddenly disappear on them.”

N’Doch takes a breath. “Disappearing’s the easy part. Didja tell ’em what else might happen?”

But Sedou isn’t interested in sibling banter. His eyes have a deep-well darkness in them. “I may need a new song, my brother. I may need it soon.”

There’s that ant nest stirring in his gut again. “Yeah? What sort of song?”

“Not a Sedou song. Not a people song at all.”

“Hunh?” N’Doch’s shoulders hunch over the keyboard he imagines in his lap. “You want, like, some kind of animal?”

“No.” Sedou gets real still for a moment and N’Doch just knows the dragon is struggling to hold her man-shape. Whatever thoughts she’s thinking, they’re not about being human. “Imagine it, my brother. I need . . . a song of release. Of waves breaking and rivers flowing. Of glaciers melting into the sea. Of the sky giving up its moisture as rain.”

“You need a water song,” said N’Doch quietly, and suddenly all the ants in his gut are a chill tickling the base of his spine. “I get it. You need
your
song. The others have all been
my
songs.”

“Yes.” The dragon/man’s smile outshines the torches. “And they have served me well in the world of men. But now I must be what I truly am, to the utmost of my powers. And you must help me.”

N’Doch coughs. The chill has made it all the way to his throat. “Not sure I’m up to it, bro.”

Then Sedou does the thing N’Doch’s wanted all along, ever since the song that conjured his brother as a grown man. The thing he can’t ask for, because he needs it more than he knows how to say. Sedou leans over, wraps him in the curl of his big arm, and holds him, easy and firm, as if nothing could ever go wrong again.

You’re up to it
.

Release, damn it
, thinks N’Doch, and while trying to grasp what he means, he does. His hands, his gut, his brain, and finally, his heart, all unclench, as he releases himself to the dragon, no longer understanding his reasons for resistance. He feels the dragon enter him, almost as a man
enters a woman. But it’s his maleness that she enters, and her own female nature that he takes inside himself, like light, like a revelation, like a song. He shudders with it in his brother’s grasp, stunned by the wealth of songs within him, waiting to be born.

Then he becomes aware of himself again, a grown man cradled like a child in another grown man’s arms. He imagines Köthen behind him, watching this darkly, misapprehending. He sits up, reaching for autonomy, for a shred of distance. But he is not the same man he was just moments ago. He will never be that other man again. He has a dragon inside of him.

He grasps his brother’s shoulder and shakes it lightly, inarticulate with gratitude. “Just let me know. That song’ll be there for you.”

Down in the market square, the last of the late light seems to have settled over the dragon in the paving stones. The man-sized flame in the golden bowl makes the image dance as if it was alive. The procession of soldiers and priests and sedan chairs completes its outer circuit under the glow of the torches. The leading squad of infantry does a left face right in front of the Tinker wagons, turning in toward the center and the block of waiting clergy. The marchers split neatly around them and re-form in an honor guard behind. The sedan chairs follow and are set down side by side on the dragon’s breast. All motion swirls to a halt. Only the dust stirs, and the leaping, crackling torch flames. Köthen sets down his cleaning rag and slides over to watch, sword in hand.

The guy in the first chair steps out onto the pavement. Swathed in red and gold, he is as big as N’Doch has guessed, tall and bronze-skinned. His perfect musculature is revealed to all by an open robe, a glittery open vest and a magnificently naked chest.

“That dude’s seen some hard time in the gym,” mutters N’Doch.

Köthen sits up a little straighter. “Fighting man.”

“Nah. Pumper’s muscle, that’s all. Look at those show-off duds. Bet he spends most of his day looking in the mirror.”

“Trust me on this,” says the baron.

The muscle man accepts the many bows of the reception committee, then strides to the second chair, draws back the
gold curtain and extends his hand. The High Priestess takes it and steps out of the shadow into the orange-and-lavender flicker of torchlight.

Köthen leans forward.

N’Doch says to Sedou in a stage whisper. “So. Whaddya think of the baron’s new girlfriend?”

A sharp crack explodes the silence, then another. A double echo clatters around the walls of the square. N’Doch sees shattered stone puff up right at the priestess’ feet.

“Shit! Sniper!” He ducks.

Köthen leaps to his feet, sword at ready, and glares around for the source of the sound.

Another crack.

N’Doch drags Köthen down hard as the others flatten around them and roll off the roof into cover. Köthen struggles to shake him off, but N’Doch hangs tight and yells at him.

“That’s gunfire, Dolph! Tryin’ to get yourself killed?”

Köthen stops struggling. “Where?”

“Got me. We’re sitting ducks here, but so far they ain’t shooting at us.”

A fourth and fifth shot. N’Doch hears the slugs track above their heads just before the sound ricochet drowns out the direction of fire. Down in the square, everyone’s screaming and diving for cover. The big guy in the fancy clothes has already proved Köthen’s estimation of him. He’s snatched the priestess girl around the waist and dragged her into the thickest part of the crowd. Soon N’Doch sees the golden shimmer of his robe rising like a sail, a billow of distraction, grabbed by one too many eager hands as it floats free. Immediately, there’s fighting over it, despite the hail of bullets that follows. Doesn’t matter. The big guy’s no longer inside it. He and the woman have vanished.

Now the firing is coming from more than one place. What began as panic in the square is devolving into riot and mayhem. At least one priest lies facedown on the paving stones, his blood mixing with the red of the tiled dragon. N’Doch feels the van jerk into motion.

“Dockman!” Charlie pops her head up beside him. “Gichu down nah! Gittin’ ouda heah, pronto!”

Köthen’s still staring down into the square.

N’Doch grabs his arm. “She’s okay! Gotta be. Your fast-thinking fighting man snatched her outa there. Come on!”

Across the square, the trade booths caught unpacked by the procession’s early arrival are under attack from sneak thieves and looters. Some of the gunfire’s coming from there, as townie security moves in hard, but not all. N’Doch hustles Köthen off the roof of the van, then hangs over the front to peer into the driver’s seat. Luther’s down with the lead mule, calming him, urging him. The girl’s inside, pale and wide-eyed, with the reins in her hands. N’Doch somersaults into the seat beside her.

“Shit’s hittin’ the fan again, girl! What is it with the two of us?”

He gets the barest ghost of a smile out of her. He doesn’t understand. She looks like something terrible is about to happen. He thinks it already has. The van stutters forward as Brenda slides onto the back of the second mule to growl into its ears. In Luther’s cobbled-up side mirror, N’Doch sees Charlie vault onto the lead mule of the team behind them, Beneatha’s flatbed, now heavy with stacked cargo tied down under the stained canvas top. When that wagon starts to roll, the two Oolyoot wagons turn out of formation to follow.

“Guns.” The girl bites her lips. “Where is Baron Köthen?”

“He’s fine. Look in your mirror.”

Köthen’s alongside the van, his sword sheathed across his back again. He’s taken up one of the Tinker quarter-staves to fend off looters. Several of the Oolyoot Crew are doing the same. N’Doch counts heads. Shit, Only eight.

“Where’s Stoksie and Ysabel?”

“I don’t know. Weren’t they . . .?”

“Damn!”

And then the alarm shrills through him, unmistakable as middle C.

The girl stiffens, snatching at the seat with both hands. “Oh, God, oh God! Oh, Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us now in our hour of need!” The reins snake loose in her lap until she gets a grip on herself and snatches them up again. “He’s coming, N’Doch! Oh, dear God, he’s coming!”

“I know, I know.” He looks around for Sedou. Already the song is rising in his throat.