Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology (50 page)

“That wasn't—” Alek tried to say, but Oriole was already up and moving, catching his hand as she went.

“Yes it was!” She shouted louder than she'd meant to, startling the stunned pedestrians. “After it!”
 

“You know,” Alek said, tripping over his feet as she pulled him off balance again, “most people run
away
from the giant flying predators.”

“We're Wandering!” Oriole flung the words over her shoulder, moving from a jog to a sprint. “And that's a
dragon!
”

* * *

The impossible creature landed in an almost empty temple square, but Oriole didn't care about the six-pointed stars set into the shaded walls. She had eyes only for the dragon. It had landed, in the sense that all four feet were on the ground, but its wings were spread wide to show the pattern of gold and blue that flashed from their edges. Except for that edging the creature was black from nose to tail, so black it was blue and purple and red as well. Every twitch brought new color shimmering across the surface of its skin; the long, thin scales that cascaded down its spine were the only part of the dragon that bristled with impenetrable blackness. The leanness of it reminded Oriole of nothing so much as a greyhound, even down to its sharp muzzle and pointed face. But no greyhound had ever had a neck so long, or a tail so thick and strong she could hear it whistling through the air from across a fifty meter space.

It spoke quietly, white teeth flashing in a red mouth, to the woman in the gold vest who had run to the shelter of the dragon's side. Oriole stared, shocked, at the human standing so still, with her hand pressed against the iridescent scales of a dragon's neck.
Impossible, impossible
. Oriole could feel her brain shifting, trying to find another explanation, another space for the woman, like she was an illusion or a painted trick of the stones. Because no one spoke to dragons, no one
knew
dragons, and it was the dragons themselves who had forbidden it.
 

“Who of you has threatened my friend?” it shouted, raising a huge head to glare out across the plaza. Oriole shivered at the words; everything about them screamed of
otherness
, and the Wanderer was giddy with it. “Who are you that she must call for my aid?” The echo of smooth strings was overlaid by the weird way the dragon emphasized its syllables—the pattern was all wrong for human speech.
 

Oriole ignored the grip on her elbow, watching the dragon extend its neck to glare down at them, clawed feet shifting with sharp clicks against the paved stone of the square. “Oriole, let's
go
.” It was Alek, trying to pull her away from this.
 

“Are you kidding me?” she whispered back, disentangling herself from his unsteady hold. “This is history being
made
, Alek. I wouldn't move if my life depended on it!”
 

“It probably does,” he hissed back.

Even as he spoke a man in the pale green and silver uniform of Waterway's police brushed past, his attention focused on the dragon and not any bystanders. But another stopped to glare at the Wandering pair, making clear 'go away' gestures with her baton. None of them, Oriole noted, answered the dragon's questions.
 

“You are trespassing here, drake!” The voice came from a balcony, just below eye level for the dragon. It turned at once, lips curled back in a snarl, to see a rabbi leaning out to shout back at it. “By your own laws your lives are forfeit!”

The woman it sheltered beat one fist against the dragon's shoulder, but it took no notice of the gesture except to move the closest wing forward, shading her entirely.

“
Qieas aeui kuur!”
the dragon hissed, the unknown words laced with red rage.
“Wru ora aeui su kvaod su ka?”

“Gas uis uk rara, Dokeom!”
It was the woman, giving up her silence for words in a language that, as far as Oriole knew, had never been spoken by humans. The dragon-lady hadn't been afraid before, or at least she hadn't looked it. But now she spoke with terror in her voice and shoved at the creature's leg, as high up as she could reach. And Oriole might not have known what the two were saying, but she could piece together what they meant.
How dare you threaten me, puny human!
and
don't be stupid, let's just leave!
 

The guards moved close enough to block her view of the other woman, and Oriole stood on tip-toe to see better. The sheer number of them might have been overkill for one human, but in the face of the long white fangs above them, Oriole couldn't help but feel like they were ants fighting a wolf.
 

“No law takes my sister from me,” the dragon snarled. It moved with the speed of a snake, snatching up the woman and launching itself skyward. The wind from its gold-edged wings was enough to drive the guards back, and Oriole covered her head, shielding herself from the dust picked up by the force of the gusts.
 

Everyone turned to watch the dragon's flight as it dipped into the canyon-city below, brushing so close to some of the roofs that the tip of its wings struck the domes with not-quite-bell-like chimes that faded the moment they were rung. The sinuous black shape was visible long after it had passed the mouth of the canyon, fleeing across the deepening blue of the sea. Eventually it banked to the north and vanished behind the obscuring towers of the ground-level city.
 

After the electrifying presence of the dragon, the square felt empty and silent. Murmured conversations wound through the air like shy cats, and the guard officers huddled near the center. The rabbi, who must have been teaching when the dragon landed, retreated from the balcony only to reappear in the square a moment later. “Yes sir, I know I shouldn't have yelled at it like that.” His voice, not loud but still stronger than anyone else's in the place, sounded clear in Oriole's ears. She turned towards him, planning on getting a better view, but Alek had had enough.
 

“Oh no you don't,” he said, reaching out to take her arm again. “We're getting out of here.”

“Don't be such a mimosa, Alek.” Oriole tried to shrug away again, but he seemed to have recovered from the dragon's presence as quickly as she had. “I'm just going to listen. I won't say a word.”

“Yeah, and how many times have I heard that before?” He wasn't strong enough to drag her off her feet, but Oriole let him tug them both out of the square and into the street.
 

“That was a
dragon
,” she said, still not quite able to believe it.
 

“Let's just get to the hostel, and we can gossip about it all you want. I bet every other Wanderer there will want you to tell the story.”

“I mean, what are the chances of us being there when it landed?”
 

“More'n a million to one. Let's
go,
Birdy.”

“All right,” Oriole sighed. The adrenaline from the past few minutes drained away, leaving her joints loose as a puppet's. “Let's go then.”

* * *

Most towns had at least one house with a sign posted saying Wanderers were welcome to stay for a night or two. Waterway had an entire
tower
dedicated to travelers, furnished with everything from bedrooms to one of the city's dining halls. The dining halls were always touch and go, supplied by whatever excess produce people were growing at the moment. Some made it a point of pride to grow more than they needed, so the halls would never go empty. And it wasn't just Wanderers who ate there; anyone from the busiest artist to the most beleaguered city planner was liable to stop by for a snack or two when they were too harried to cook for themselves.

Oriole would have stopped to admire the huge diameter of the place and the mint-striped onion dome that perched several hundred feet above them, but Alek towed her inside. It was clear her friend had quite enough of the day, and he wasn't giving her any more chances to prolong it. She would ask him about it when they were settled into a room; maybe he would explain why he'd flipped from her co-conspirator to someone who couldn't wait to get away from all the fun.
 

The dining hall was on the first floor, and they'd arrived just as the lunch hour was starting. Even with the whole city in an uproar over the dragon sighting, more than a few prosaic folk had deemed food more important than adventure, and the two Wanderers were forced to wade through a fair line of people to get to the key desk. Only a hostel as large as Waterway's would need a desk more than a meter long to show off all their keys. A sign-out book and pen stand had been placed in the middle of the desk, while the keys hung on hooks across the back wall. Several other sheets of paper were scattered across the flat surface, everything from complaints to recommendations and, Oriole noted, several short poems. If the papers were meant to be organized, it'd been a while since anyone had paid attention to the fact.
 

She knew Alek should have been itching to comb through the papers for sightseeing tips, but he refused to glance at a single one. Instead he just picked one of the keys labeled 'double' and wrote their names and the room number in the book. “Come on.” He glanced back to make sure she was following before striking off towards the elevators.

Oriole huffed out a breath caught between annoyance and concern. Still, she didn't want to argue with him in the middle of a busy dining hall. Growing more concerned by the minute, she put up with his ridiculousness for a too-long elevator ride and a confusing circle of hallways before confronting him once their door was closed.

“What is
wrong
with you?” she demanded, dropping her bag by the wall.
 

“What's wrong with me? Let's start with what's up with
you
, Oriole!” Alek snapped, shoving his things onto one of the twin-sized beds. He'd obviously expected her question, but he wouldn't turn and face her. Another very un-Alek-like thing. “You want to go explore the city, yeah, but you don't run towards a dragon, for crying out loud!”

“I thought you'd be excited too,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “How many times did we wish we could just catch a glimpse of a dragon overhead?” Unnerved by his dismissal, she didn't move from the doorway, though usually when they argued it was with a few inches between them—just enough room for shoving, when it came to that.
 

“That's different,” he said flatly, and she could hear the rage draining out of his voice. There was something else there instead, something almost like … fear? “That's not breaking the Accord.”

“Who cares about some dusty old law?” Oriole sighed, her stomach a mess of knots and worry.
 

“Just … You scare me sometimes, Birdy.” Alek crossed his arms, still refusing to look at her. “The Accord isn't some dusty old law. You heard what that priest was saying.”

“They're not going to execute every guard who saw the dragon, Alek.” She gave up her post by the door and walked around to look at his expression. “They're not going to execute someone for being curious.”

“They're going to kill that lady,” he said. Oriole, still not sure where this was coming from, leaned against the dresser between the beds instead of getting close to him. There
was
fear in his face, twisted up in his eyebrows and the tightness of his mouth.
 

“If they catch her, yeah,” she admitted, because there wasn't a way around that one. “But she's far away from here by now. The dragon rescued her. Why are you scared for me, Alek? I can take care of myself, you know I can.”

“You want to tell me you wouldn't have spoken to the dragon if you'd been close enough?” he asked, his voice strained. “You want to say you wouldn't have broken the Accord if you could have?”

Oriole stayed silent. She still didn't understand, really, how he thought this was any more dangerous than some of the crazy stuff they'd pulled at home. “How can you be all worried and masculine about this when you were fine with us going caving on Midsummer's Eve? We didn't have a clue what we were doing!”
 

“What does being masculine have to do—”

“Ugh!” Oriole threw her hands in the air, stepping away from the wall but unable to start pacing in the tiny room. “Just answer the question, Alek, for Tiw's sake.”
 

She pretended not to be glancing back to catch his expression as she made it to the window, pausing to stare over the multi-colored domes and glittering white buildings. Her friend had closed his eyes, and for a moment she thought he was going to refuse to answer.

“Being reckless is different than throwing your life away.” he said at last, tucking his chin closer to his chest. “Breaking the Accord means dying, Oriole. That's it. And I
know
you would do it anyway, because laws have always been something vague to you, things that don't matter in real life. This one, though. This one
does
.”

“I've known you since we were kids, Alek,” Oriole said softly, turning away from the view. “You can tell me what's wrong.”

“It's—”

“It is
not
nothing,” she snapped. “If you're going to be this upset I deserve to know why.”

He took a deep breath. “My older brother, Dmitri.” Oriole felt her expression twitch into a frown; as far as she knew Alek had never had siblings. Shared loneliness was one of the reasons the two of them had gotten along so well. She let the silence grow until he spoke again. “He's the one who died.” Alek sighed and sat on the bed, crossing his legs in front of him and staring at his hands. “We were living near the border. Hells, we saw a dragon flight almost every day. I think they patrolled, to make sure we didn't start messing with anything that wasn't ours.”

“Because that doesn't sound like something the human race would do at all,” Oriole said drily.
 

She won a smile out of that, though just a tiny one. “Right. Anyway, my brother was always trying to get out of babysitting me, so he'd go into the forest at the crack of dawn. Most of the time he got back before dinner, but one night he didn't come back at all and my parents panicked. They called most of the town to go looking, stayed out all night, brought way too many flashlights. That sort of thing. Only to have him show up at the house the next morning, wondering why it was empty.”