War of the Princes 02: Dragoon (18 page)

“
We
were
lucky. Lucky we didn't get tossed into one of those vats! What were you thinking, puppet?” Dylan said, rounding on Rune. “Why bring us there? Were you trying to have us killed?”

Rune looked just as surprised as I was.
“It was worth investigating.”

“
For an expendable like you, perhaps it was. I, for one, would like not to die for mere curiosity's sake,” Dylan said, gesturing wildly. “You've risked us all, frightened Katelyn to no end, and we're not an inch closer to finding her mother. What good did this do any of us?”

“
Dylan,” I warned.

Rune was ready to respond.
“It's best to know your-”

“
Enemy? Or master? Which were you going to say? For all we know, you were
trying
to have us caught.”

“
If I wanted you caught, I'd catch you,” Rune said, irritation seeping into his words.

“
Hear that?” Dylan said, pointing at Rune. “Sounded threatening to me.”

“
Dylan, stop,” I said.

“
Stop what? Telling the truth? Being right? Which should I stop? He's still a Dragoon in the Prince's army. I don't know how I let you talk me into this. We're finished here, puppet, go report for duty.”

“
I do not take orders from you,” Rune answered in a dangerous tone.

“
But you do still take orders, don't you? Do your orders include killing enemies of Prince Raserion?” Dylan snapped.

Rune straightened his back, frowning. Of course they did.

“And if we were brought before our Prince, do you think he'd find us guilty?” Dylan went on.

“
I'm fine, Dylan, we all are. Nothing happened. We're okay. I needed to see those things back there. Most of this stuff is ancient history where I'm from. We're in danger, immediate danger. No one knows that something is headed for us, or what that means. Anything I learn might help to save us. I needed to know how serious this is.”

“
If you don't know that
everything
is serious by now, you're dumb as a puddle,” Dylan said, glaring at me. “If he wanted to help us, he should have risked his own damned neck and left us out of it! Did any of what we saw change what we have to do? No. Did it help us find your mother so we can get out of here? No. Did it put us at unnecessary risk and waste a perfectly good chance to rescue your mother? Yes.”

“
I don't see it that way,” I said, hoping that by staying calm, I'd affect him. “We just need to try again.”

“
You're dismissed, Dragoon,” Dylan said haughtily. “Go on. We're finished with you.”

“
No,” I said, feeling rage creeping up in my stomach. The evening had been difficult enough without Dylan making it worse. “We're not.”

Dylan was furious with me, I could tell. The way he looked at me, waiting for me to join his side, almost made me feel sorry for him. I wouldn't. He was afraid, rattled to the core. I would not give in to panic the way he was. I refused.

“I'm not leaving until I must,” Rune said simply.

“
Very well,” Dylan said, an unsettling smile drifting to his lips. “Cut your throat.”

Rune unsheathed the knife on his belt. It was the same blade he'd used the night before. Steadily, he raised it to his throat, pressing against his brown skin. He was the picture of calm, steadily breathing in and out of his nose.

“No!” I shouted. It was a picture out of a book of insanity. Why would Rune listen to him?

The Command.

I reached for my side, remembering too late that my satchel was left in our rooms. “Dylan, stop!” My arms burst into a hot display of electricity, and the once elegant old room shined in my light, reflecting its former beauty. Round mirrors encircled by ornate silver frames hung between faded photographic portraits of young ladies and distinguished gentlemen. The wallpaper glistened with vertical stripes of delicate silver floral vines. Rich mahogany wood, smooth and polished, shone out from beneath the bottoms of the sheets, and marble sculptures of dancing lovers posed as though they might twirl to life. Unique though it was, I didn’t care about the old chamber. My eyes were on Rune.

Dylan was infuriatingly smug.
“As you wish,” he said, his long hair covering one eye as he tilted his head.

Rune lowered the knife, returning it to its sheath. He stared unblinkingly at Dylan. His jaw flexed. I waited to see his rage, but it wasn't there. Just a steely serenity that frightened me more than any display of anger could. It wasn't the measured calm before an explosion. It was acceptance.

“You
must
leave now,” Dylan told Rune, reveling in his own power. “Off with you, puppet.”

Just like that, Rune turned from the room and left us.

C
hapter 30: All the Comforts of Home

“What is
wrong
with you?” I wanted to hit him. No, that wasn't right. I
needed
to hit him.

Dylan was actually chuckling with the palm of one hand over his eyes, like he'd seen something
embarrassing and hilarious. His laugh trailed off and he shook his head. After all we'd just seen, any humor, cruel or otherwise, had no staying power. “Relax, I wouldn’t have
really
done it.”

I wasn’t sure I was convinced of that.
My arms still blazing, I took a step toward him.

He halted me by holding up a single finger.
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk,” he clucked with his tongue. “We'll have none of that.
You
know I can stop you, and
I
know that you hate it when I do, so let's avoid the conflict, shall we?”

“
You can't do that to him! He was helping us!” I shouted, pushed too far to my limits to lower my voice.

    
“First of all, yes I can. What's he going to do? Tell on me? I'm a
Lord
of Breakwater, my word is better than his. It wouldn't take much to send him to the block,” he said, pulling the ends of his cobalt coat down to smooth out the wrinkles. “Oh, yes, and secondly, dragging us into a corpse-ridden workshop to go meet the greatest mechanical executioner the world has ever seen does not constitute as help. If you don't start making better decisions, Miss Kestrel, I'll start making them for you.”

“
Dylan, I swear, I'll-”

“
What? Shoot me again?” The question was biting, his malice only tempered with a thin smile. “No, I'm afraid not. You'll find that pretty pistol of yours has gone missing. You have the Pull. You can go and get it, but it’ll cost valuable time. Don't look so angry, I'm not so vengeful that I'd shoot you. Really, you should be thanking me. 'My, Dylan, what a stalwart friend you've been, looking out for my best interests in spite of myself.'”

He took my pistol? Gravity! I leave it out of my sight once, and he gets to it?

“You are
not
my friend,” I said through clenched teeth. My fury snapped within me like the lashing branches of lightning that coursed over my arms. Looking down at my hands, I remembered what I'd done to Calvin, back home. Guilt overtook me, and I dismissed the Spark.

Shadows devoured the old palace room once again, returning the paintings, furniture legs, and life-like sculptures to obscurity. The chandelier candles flickered, and the dim yellow light wrestled with the prevailing darkness.

Dylan's arrogance abandoned him. His shoulders drooped, but he straightened them. He blinked his hazel eyes once and lifted his chin to me. There was no humor, no cocky swagger.

My words had stung. I could hardly believe it.

Really? You thought we were friends?

“
And Rune Thayer is no friend to anyone. He is a Dragoon, an extension of Prince Raserion. Don't forget that,” he warned me, not for the first time.

*   *   *

It was evening, and Cape Hill was alive. Its bones and flesh were stone and wood and clay. Its skin was tile and slate and cobble. Its blood was machine and horse and human. The copper barrel train charged through the crowded street, wheels screaming on the rails, black smoke billowing heavily behind it like a never-ending flag. It was fat with passengers. They hung from the windows, clung to the outer doors, and chased behind it, for all the good it did them. The behemoth locomotive groaned, its engine coming free of the tracks and skidding in a shower of sparks to a stop. Four people were nearly crushed.

Automobiles and carriages plowed down the street without regard for the tide of pedestrians that they sliced through. It was everyone for themselves. Somewhere, at the top of one tower or another, a siren was wailing. Maybe it was a horn. I couldn't tell.

Ladies tripped over their skirts and men tripped over the ladies, each one frantically scrambling for safety. A surge of black bled into the streets, like a great inkwell had been spilled. It was the Dragoons atop their warhorses. They were sweeping over the road in an impenetrable line, forcing the crowd toward the installment. Their swords, spears and rifles were drawn at the civilians. One rider was dragging a woman by the hair.

“
The channel is open. That pathetic trinket of a boat could be here by now,” Dylan said, gripping the railing of the second-story balcony where we stood. “It could be sitting right out there on the harbor, and we can't leave the bloody Gold Palace.”

My attention was fixed on the scene below.
“What are they doing?” I was still angry with him, but we were stuck together, whether I liked it or not.

“
Suspicious persons,” Dylan said. “The warrant, a writ with the Prince's own seal, went out to every door in the lower city this morning. A few privileged doors too. A group of northern infiltrators have gotten into the city. They've been sabotaging the installment. I'm willing to pay a wager that our lovely pilot, Carmine, is one of them.”

“
You don't know that,” I said. So that's where the explosions were coming from.

“
You don't know that I don't know that.”

The
Dragoons were systematically emptying the train and side streets, corralling civilians toward the installment fortress. “There are so many of them. They can't all be traitors,” I said watching the scene below. There was a kind of resonance at my witnessing their forced march. I knew how they must feel, frightened, overwhelmed. My chest tightened and my knuckles went white where I gripped the rail.

There was a flash in the sky a moment before I blinked. The boom of thunder was not far behind. I looked up and saw dark clouds building up over the palace. Had they always been there? A drop of cool rain touched my face.

Dylan paid no attention to the threats from the sky. “An interrogation will decide their innocence.”

My eyes focused on something emerging from the
installment. I was seeing things. What I looked down upon was impossible. Wasn't it? A warhorse strode from the immense fortifications, but it was not ordinary in any sense. It was larger than the others, and if I was seeing clearly from the second-story balcony of the adjoining palace, the warhorse had three heads. Each face was longer and narrower than it should have been. The heads raised, tucked and pulled against the three sets of reins without uniform movement. Red trappings hung from its body.

Riding on the back of this unnatural creature was the Voice of the Prince. The lean figure, taller than the tallest person I'd ever seen, darker than shadow, sat astride the beast, with a long staff in one hand, while the other was raised up, palm out toward the crowd.

Everyone within line of sight to the Voice ceased trying to escape. They stood tall and calmly walked past him into the fortress. As each layer of the crowd was exposed to the Voice, their reaction was the same. They peeled away, transformed from a panicked mob to a submissive and orderly group. I saw a couple people cower away, unwilling to look the shadow man in the eyes. Some force from nearby Dragoons ensured their cooperation, and they too numbly marched into the installment.

It reminded me distinctly of what Dylan had so recently done to Rune.
“The Voice. He's Commanding them.”

“
It's not. The Prince is speaking through the Voice,” Dylan told me, frowning.

“
How is that even possible?”

“
How is anything possible? Ridiculous quantities of complex scientific explanation, I'd imagine,” Dylan said, sounding irritated by my question. “It is what it is. Prince Raserion can see through the Voice, and speak through it. I told you how powerful he is. Does it really come as a surprise that he can Command through it too?”

“
But he's Commanding so many people at once.” The wind blew and pulled my hair away from my shoulders. A chill seeped into my back.

Dylan didn't respond this time. I hadn't really asked a question. His silence compounded the gravity of my statement. If the
Prince could bend so many people to his will, I stood no chance of breaking his hold on me the way I had with Commander Stakes.

On the street, a young man was covering his eyes, falling to his knees. I could see a
Dragoon wrench his arms away while another forced him to face the Voice. He struggled against them, and fell limp. In a moment he was walking in line with the rest.

By that evening, I didn't feel like me anymore. I'd seen too much to be Katelyn Kestrel, lover of adventure and cake baking. I stood apart from myself. I was a stranger. There was a disconnect in my mind. How could the same person who'd thought the scariest things in life were detention, make up tests, and poorly prepared
omelets, be standing here, seeing what I'd seen?

There was another flash, and the sky growled ferociously. The sound of natural thunder was a comfort, almost as reassuring as my dad resting his hand on my shoulder. There was another boom, and I wondered if I had influenced it somehow.

The sunset was dull yellow and green. Lowly drifting clouds were settled over the arms of the cape, and the water reflected the subdued evening light with little luster. The crowd emptied into the installment, followed by the Voice on his three-headed horse, and a string of Dragoons. The streets below were unnaturally quiet. The empty automobiles, carriages and broken train were like husks, empty of life, save for the horses, hitched and abandoned. Not a soul dared step out into the vacated lanes. If the streets of Cape Hill, just below the Gold Palace, had so recently seemed alive, they were dead now.

I was about to leave. I'd had enough of the heavy dress I was wearing. I was
furious with Dylan. Stress pressed in on me and exhaustion threatened to knock me off my feet. I just wanted to change my clothes, eat a solid meal, close my eyes, and pretend I was home, just for a little while. Then I would send for a courier to see if the Flying Fish had arrived, and reattempt the search for my mother.

My plans were flung unceremoniously from the balcony when the ivory stone floor burst into flames beneath our feet.