Dragon's Run Read online

  Rictus Hana, Author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History

  A constant hiss of sizzling water accompanied Yaki as her sledge flew through the streets, trailing steam from her clothes. Gama drove the horses through the city as fast as the rain allowed, the sledge flying behind them, swinging wide around the corners, smacking into boarded-up shops and stalls that strayed too far into the street.

  As they neared a courtyard, Raiju drifted behind her and used his slower mount as a brake. The sledge came to a stop in front of its central fountain. Chimon waited for them, grinning from the top of a barrel very similar to the two on the cart. “Oi! Ya made it!”

  “Mostly,” Yaki tried to say, but the sound out of her mouth was more akin to the rumble of thunder overhead than to any language she knew.

  Chimon cocked his head and pushed wet hair out his eyes, looking Yaki up and down. “Gama should really take better care of you, Yaki. You look like something chewed you up and spat you out. You’re leaking.” He pointed to his own eye.

  Yaki dabbed a finger to her cheek, and it came way with a mix of red and silver.

  “Mitsuo stabbed me,” Yaki tried, but again the gravelly sounds spilled from her lips. She slammed her fist into her palm to demonstrate her frustration. Turning to Gama, she made wheeling gestures with her hands, trying to get him to proceed. She tried to say his name. It came out Guh-MA; an improvement, at least.

  “She can’t talk,” Gama grunted as he tipped his barrel. “Curse or something.”

  “Eee!” Chimon rushed to cushion the barrel as it toppled. “Careful with that!” He began to roll it toward the sledge, grimacing at every bump. “Soo…didn’t this entire plan hinge on Yaki talking our way onto the ship?”

  “Yes,” Yaki tried to say, and nodded her head for emphasis.

  Gama hung back, scratching his chin in thought. “I’ll do that talking. But I’d say the backup plan is much more likely to happen. Is Simon ready?”

  “He and his friends are in position down on the wharf,” Chimon said as he carefully heaved his barrel into an upright position. Conversation paused as all three of them lifted this third barrel onto the sledge. Yaki moved to secure it, feeling disconnected from her own plan now. Eyes appeared in the top floors of the residences surrounding the square.

  Chimon held his hand out to Yaki. “You can still use this, right? You would not believe the amount of paperwork I had to fake to get one of these.”

  Yaki smiled, tried to wipe the wet off her hand on the pants of the Nishamura livery, and held it out. “Yes, I’m sure it was,” she said in the rumbling language that had become her own.

  A glass vial containing a pale blue crystal fell from Chimon’s hand into hers, thin as a needle. “You just snap it,” he said, breathing out a sigh of relief. “Then that barrel will do a really good impression of the sun for a second or two.”

  She smiled her thanks. There had been a plan to try to talk them all out of coming with her. To thank them for all their selfless help in getting her sister back. Yet now she had no words to do so and was almost glad of it. She had devised a similar speech for Mitsuo to ask him to come with her. How many speeches in the world were crafted only to be left unsaid?

  She took her place on the sledge, and Chimon climbed up next to the barrels after saying a silent prayer. Chimon and Raiju looked to Gama, who had remounted. Gama looked to her and smiled; Yaki had to fight off a sudden urge to hug him. She forced herself to simply admire the way he endured the cold of the water pounding them and be so happy she didn’t have to lie to him.

  Yaki nodded, and they were off again through the night. As they neared the wharf, the wind began to howl so loudly that even the glowstone lantern that Gama held to light their way flickered as if afraid.

  There on the docks, among the dozens of ships that swayed with the wind, only one was lit. Dozens of glowstones battered back the inky dark from its deck. The bulbous shape of Scale shone like a beacon.

  Gama increased his speed from a cautious trot to an eager canter as they transitioned through the nearly empty docks. Black-cloaked figures stepped out from behind crates and barrels, and filed out of alleyways, and a few seemed to coalesce from the night itself. Big, small, lumpy, or sleek, Simon’s friends had nothing in common but the black cloaks they wore. They fell into step behind Raiju, whose horse no longer looked so eager to be in the rear as the figures flowed like a wave around them.

  A single shadow strayed into the light of the lanterns and leapt up onto the sledge. Chimon squeaked as the form of Simon landed directly on the bomb barrel. The ratman’s frame had thinned considerably since Yaki had seen him last. Livid pink scars crisscrossed his muzzle, and one ear had gone missing entirely. Both eyes were open, but only one held an eye. The other was consumed by the black-and-white spiral of Lady Night.

  “Captain Yaki! Lady Night sends her greetings.” Simon stood up on the barrel and bowed. “And Simon brings friends that wish to join your crew. We are ready to step into the light.”

  Yaki gave him what she hoped was an appreciative smile as Chimon explained her new difficulty with words.

  “Changes nothing. Simon not come here expecting sweet talk to work. Simon here to sail again!” He pulled a long dagger from his sleeve. “Nobody give ship to Enshadowed.”

  The hoofbeats changed to hollow clops as the horses moved onto the docks. Their wood lengths extended from a once-natural cliff face over the river that passed below the city. Each of the four docks extended a thousand feet or more. Scale’s berth lay midway down a spike, flanked by smaller trading vessels. It floated much as it had when Yaki had arrived in it. The main opening was positioned close enough to the dock to extend the cargo gangplank.

  Guro stood at the end of that plank, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, the rain dripping down in front of his eyes, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword as he watched their approach.

  Yaki took out the small needlelike detonation crystal from its bottle and grasped it in her hand. Funny how it trembled now. If she broke it, everyone on the dock would die in a similar manner to how Yaz’noth had dispatched most of Fox Fire’s crew.

  Gama looked back at her, eyes searching her face. Yaki steeled her face and nodded. Simon laughed and bounded from the sledge, seeming to fling himself over the side of the dock. Three hundred feet out from Guro, the horde of Enshadowed stopped and melted out of the light of the lanterns. Her plan was in motion, even without her voice to direct it. Yaki smiled as they approached Guro.

  “I see you brough—”

  “Produce Ishe or surrender your ship, Guro,” Gama snapped, cutting off the shorter man.

  Guro smiled wickedly. “Or what? You blow us all sky-high? One of those barrels a bomb? That why your friends are staying back?”

  “Just you, Guro,” Gama and Yaki said in unison, although in different languages. Guro’s gaze shifted to Yaki with a look of intense confusion on his face.

  “What you say, girl?” he said.

  It was a poor time for him to be distracted. Two black shapes burst from the darkness behind him and charged. He noticed a fraction too late, his sword appearing in his hand a split second before a blade flashed across his wrist. The sword clattered to the dock. Simon didn’t even give him time to grunt before pressing the dagger to his throat.

  Guro boggled as the second Enshadowed roughly pulled his hands behind his waist. More than a dozen Dragonsworn appeared at the cargo door, pointing crossbows and the occasional hand cannon. Yet they all hesitated, sharing glances between each other.

  “Tell them all to drop their weapons,” Gama said. “Tell your little miss princess that this entire plan is doomed.” His eyes shifted to Yaki. “You think this will end any differently than it did for your mother, girl? You take his ship and he will not show any mercy. He’ll—Erk!” Simon pressed the blade into Guro’s throat.

  “Simon not care for rant,” the ratman hissed. “Next words be stand-down order or they be your last.” The dagger pulled away and Gu
ro slumped, gasping for breath.

  He cast an indignant stare at Yaki, the same lecherous entitlement shining in his eyes as when they first met. “Everyone stand down. The lord will punish all of these interlopers in due time.” With silent nods, the crew of Scale lowered their weapons.

  Yaki’s heart gave a ponderous thrum. Ishe wasn’t there. Guro would have said as much by now. Still, a smile spread on her face; they’d gambled on Guro’s cowardliness and won.

  Gama barked an order and black-robed Enshadowed rushed up the gangplank, pouring their numbers into the ship and plucking weapons from sailors’ hands.

  Plan B would be to swarm the ship by force. But then you’d have a great excuse to kill all of the crew. You don’t need them; they’re dead weight, Madria’s voice whispered in her head. Yaki mentally slapped the thought away. They’d be useful hostages, she told herself.

  Yaki dismounted the sledge and advanced on Guro. The crystal-touched gentleman who held him resembled of a skeleton covered with skin, although apparently far stronger than his muscle-less frame would suggest. When Guro flinched at her approach, the man did not budge. “Where is the communication crystal?” Yaki asked him.

  “Bitch,” he replied, mouth tightening.

  He could understand her; Yaki had no doubt. “Tell me where it is…” She grasped for a word, and one came to mind. “…minion.” Yet it meant more than that in this guttural language; it meant that Guro was a lesser being, a human. And it also inferred that Yaki herself was a god.

  Anger flashed in his eyes. He responded haltingly in that language, “You not there yet. Not real dragon. Never be Yaz’noth equal. Gold is soft.” He didn’t sound sure of himself, but Yaki couldn’t know if that was the due to his limitations with the language itself or because he actually wasn’t sure.

  “I’m going to get my sister back, and then we will see what happens to Yaz’noth.” Speaking that name clicked in Yaki’s head. It fit in a way that everyone else’s did not in this tongue. Yaz’noth was a native name to it. That’s why Guro knew it: she was speaking some flavor of Draconic.

  “Why don’t we get out of range of the city’s cannons and then discuss where I’ve put the crystal?” Guro grinned as if he had just seen a light at the end of a tunnel.

  Yaki growled in frustration and gestured at the ship.

  Simon laughed. “Come, Grim, lets find a dark hole to stick this one in!”

  The skeletal man chuckled and followed Simon up the gangplank, the light of the lanterns glinting off two huge hatchets that crossed his back.

  Chapter Forty

  Even with propellers, we are at the mercy of the winds. If you cannot feel their mood, then you are blind.

  Admiral Madria

  “Storm like this, ship like this, we no need sails,” Simon explained to Gama. They stood on the bridge of Scale, which was a totally surreal experience to Yaki, as it was completely dry and enclosed. Rain sheeted down windows that arched around the bridge and stared into the black of the storm, only the occasional flash of lightning illuminating the roiling clouds above. A large, plush chair sat in the middle of the room, ringed by gauges and talking tubes. Mother would have viewed it as an abomination, the barrier between herself and the winds an insult to both them and her. Yet Scale, despite its being younger than Fox Fire by decades, was only a sail ship. There was one other station in the bridge, a desk laden with maps for the navigator. Yet how did the navigator do his or her job without being able to see the stars?

  Yaki lifted the voice funnel marked deck from its cradle and stared at it uncertainly. She recalled the ratman talking about himself, thought on the sounds of his name. “SiMOn?” she growled, stringing together pieces of words that felt wrong in her throat.

  “Ready to sail!” Simon’s voice squeaked back, barely audible over the sound of the wind. “Killed all the lights! No one see us. Already took care of nearest cannons.”

  Yaki fought her brain to assemble the words that she’d known from childhood, but only draconic sounds floated into her tendrils of thought. It awakened a hot pain in her head where Mitsuo’s sword had sliced through. It was a bizarre sensation, like she thought in Golden Hills but the words transmuted as soon as thought moved to sound. But maybe... A workaround occurred to her.

  Her eyes searched the trio who stood at various places around the bridge, gawking like schoolchildren on a trip to the naval yards. Raiju still had his scribe bag on his shoulder. “Raiju!” Yaki barked his name well enough. He turned and Yaki thrust her finger at the boy’s bag and mimed writing.

  It took one repetition before he got it and hurried over. Yaki took the pen and paper from him before using the glass of the altimeter as a writing surface.

  “Captain!” One of the other funnels burst to life. “Watchmen entering the docks!”

  Characters flowed from the tip of the ink pen. Garbled-looking nonsense. Yaki hissed with such violence that Raiju took a step back. The characters alternated between the straight strokes of Golden Hills and glyphs with a more serpentine motifs. Yaki tried again, forcing her hand to make the short, tight lines of a young student instead of the calligraphy beaten into her by the finishing school. Still, the sentence appeared to be a mix of Draconic and Golden Hills words. She wrote a third time, substituting words or, in the case of Simon, drawing a small rat.

  She thrust the paper at Raiju, who nodded after a brief struggle with the words. He picked up the deck funnel and shouted, “Captain to Simon. Cast off!”

  “Aye!”

  Yaki wrote a second sentence and gestured to engineering. “Rise until we catch an eastern flow,” Raiju told Engineering, who answered with a reedy affirmative. Simon apparently had selected friends who knew what they were doing; the hull hummed to life. Yaki yearned to retreat down into the engine room. There she could at least do things with her hands and not be a mute captain.

  The winds buffeted the ship as the deck pushed up into Yaki’s feet. A gauge labeled wind direction and marked with degrees moved wildly as they rose. Twice, it briefly pointed east, and Yaki fingers itched lever to pull or a button to push. She couldn’t even yell at Engineering. A captain with no control. Is this why Madria had installed the thrust sticks on the deck of Fox Fire? Even though they simply relayed messages to the engineering crew?

  The push on her feet vanished. The wind gauge stabilized, pointing northeast. It would do. She ordered the deck crew to deploy storm sails, tiny sails with quick releases that converted the sails to flags if the wind turned unfavorable.

  “City’s pulling away, ma’am!” the lookout barked.

  They were finally under way. Yaki stared out into the black of the stormy night. For the first time, she allowed her fingers to prod her ruined eye. The pain of that contact quickly convinced her to stop.

  “Coming for you, sister,” Yaki said, not caring if anyone else would understand her or not. With any luck, she could come up with a plan to shove that explosive barrel down Yaz’noth’s throat.

  Chapter Forty-One

  A true lady has no need to get her hands dirty. And if she does, then she better not get caught.

  Madam Mana, Headmistress of the School of the Cultured Lady

  Ishe’s teeth chattered so hard that she feared she’d break a tooth. Behind her, Sparrow, Drosa, and Blinky seemed to have merged into a single bundle of wet misery, when the lightning illuminated anything at all. Taste of the wind guided her more than anything else as they danced between the thermals. The city’s welcoming glow had grown in size but not swiftly enough for Ishe’s liking. At this rate, they’d all be sodden balls of cold meat before she reached the city. They needed to get out of this storm.

  A bolt of lightning gathered itself in the clouds before hurling itself at the ground. In the afterimage of its blinding flash, a dark shape lurked beneath the clouds.

  Ship! Ishe’s heart sang out, and she immediately reoriented Dancing Fly toward it. It would be tough to coax the glider up that high, but she could do it. She had to
do it. “Hold on, everyone! We’re almost there!”

  Whirling her way to the top of the thermal, Ishe let her numb hands guide the craft toward the bulbous ship.

  Five hops between thermals and another lightning strike converted the Ishe’s hope to a yawning horror. Scale floated in front of her. The same ship that had appeared in the sky the morning after Yaz’noth had destroyed Fox Fire. In the dark, she couldn’t read the name on its hull but leaving the city at night, in the middle of the storm there was no mistaking it. Was the quicksilver on board? What about Yaki?

  Yes. Certainty flowed out of her on that last bit,

  There were no options. She had to take that ship.

  “I have good news and bad news!” she called back.

  Sparrow coughed and sputtered. “As long as the good news is getting out of this storm!”

  “You’re in luck!” She laughed. “We’re just going to be going through some windows to get there.” Ishe angled the Dancing Fly higher into the sky.

  “Captain! There’s a Behemoth rising up from the naval dock!” the lookout funnel squawked.

  Yaki pressed her frown into a scowl and scribbled on the paper before her:

  Keep posted.

  Raiju relayed the message. Having a naval ship after them was bad, but at least it meant nobody knew where they were; otherwise, the air would be full of fire shells. Yaki had no idea how far they were from the city, but if the lookout could see a ship, even a massive one, pulling out of its dock, then they weren’t far enough.

  Gama and Chimon had managed to unbolt the desk and drag it over to the side of the captain’s plush chair so Yaki could see most of the gauges and write instructions to Raiju.

  “Sails are snapping!” he reported as the wind direction began to shift.