Draka

“I’m sorry,” I heard myself say in Kira’s vulgar Tekereteki. “I never meant for that to happen, but I knew that it might. And I don’t know if I can do anything about it.”

It had been a few minutes. Kira had gone from standing stiffly, merely allowing Herald to hold her as she cried, to returning the embrace, to full on burying her face in Herald’s chest as her body was wracked by sobs. She’d finally cried herself out, and Herald stroked her hair as she breathed shakily.

“That’s alright,” Kira whispered, then looked close to tears again. “No. I take it back. It’s not alright. I know that it’s not alright. That’s how I feel, but it’s not how I should feel. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful to have my life, and for what limited freedom I have. But my mind… It's terrifying. I can’t feel anything towards you except gratitude and forgiveness, and it’s terrifying!”

“Do you want to hate me?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you want to be angry with me, or disappointed?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you want to feel anything bad about me, at all?”

“You killed almost everyone I could tolerate in that company,” she whispered. “And whenever I think of it I tell myself that I shouldn’t judge you. That you were justified. That’s not right.”

“They were mercenaries, who killed indiscriminately to cover up that they were enslaving innocent people. Was I not justified in killing them?”

Kira closed her eyes, and a few stray tears escaped. “They were still the closest thing I had to friends.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I can see how that makes a difference. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. Not for my part in it, but you didn’t deserve all this shit.”

“Can you just… take the rest of my mind?” she asked, opening her eyes and looking at me earnestly. “Make me content to serve you? If I must know that part of my mind is not my own, I would rather not care about it.”

“I don’t think that it works that way, Kira,” I said, shaking my head. “This isn’t anything I do consciously, yeah? It just happens. I mean, there’s something I could try, but…”

“Please. Whatever it is, please try it. If you can’t undo whatever this half-domination is… I know that I should fight you. That I should try to break free. But I’m tired, and I’m not brave enough. Please, try it.”

“I think I understood parts of some of those words,” Herald said, still calmly stroking Kira’s hair. “Care to fill me in?”

“Whatever she has done to you,” Kira said, looking up at Herald. “I want it. I do not want to care that I cannot hate her.”

“Oh, Kira,” Herald sighed. “You do not understand. I do not care that I cannot hate Draka, but it is not because of anything she has done to me. It is because she has been my friend since the day we met, and I love her. I would not wish to hate her, even if I could.”

“But she said that there was something she could try! I… Please!”

Herald looked at me, and asked, “The shadows?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “It might work.”

“I would not,” Herald said, shaking her head gently. “Kira, that would not make you happy. It would make you too terrified to dare hate her. That is not what you want.”

“Then there is no hope for me,” Kira said, looking somehow even smaller.

“Sure, there is,” Herald said brightly. “You only need to get to know her. You have mostly seen her wrath. You have not seen how caring she can be, and how generous, and kind. Yes, really! She can be unbelievably selfless! And you should spend more time with those who call her ‘friend’, those of us that you can speak with.” She turned to me. ”We could take her with us to the city, could we not, Draka?”

“I could fly very carefully,” I said, considering. If Kira wanted to return to Karakan with us, I didn’t mind. We could leave her at the inn, and she could go out with the siblings. Nobody there knew who she was besides Lalia, Rib, and Pot, and I doubted that any of them would say anything.

“You would have Mak and myself to talk to,” Herald said before Kira had a chance to reply, “and Tamor, our brother! His Tekereteki is… well, it is terrible, to be honest, but it would be good for him to practice.”

“What if I were to run?” Kira asked, but it sounded more like she did it out of some sense of duty than actual desire.

“Where would you go?” Herald countered. “There are only a handful of people in the city who speak Tekereteki, unless you count the visiting merchants. But would you approach them? I do not think so. Because you could be free, Kira. This ‘being bonded’ that you speak of, it does not exist here. You would be a foreigner, yes, but you would be our guest, and I doubt that anyone would bother you. If they did, you could claim to be a refugee, like my parents. What do you say?”

“I would still be a captive,” Kira objected, but there wasn’t much conviction in her voice.

“No more than you were with the mercenaries. And your companions would be much kinder, and the food much better. And if it does not work out, I am sure that Draka would be happy to take you back here.”

“You really don’t think that she’d run?” I asked, switching to Karakani.

Herald snorted softly. “No, I do not. If she feels what I have felt, and what Mak and Ardek feel, she cannot. She is only talking about flight because she feels that she should. And possibly because she is miserable out here. Have you noticed how much she loves to talk? It must be torture for her. Besides, how much damage could she do, if she managed to go through with it?”

“She could tell someone about us,” I pointed out. “It’s one thing for one person on the Council to know, yeah? And whoever Sempralia chooses to tell, I guess. It’s something completely different if it becomes common knowledge that you’re friends with a dragon.”

“No one would ever believe that we were friends on the word of one foreigner, but it makes no difference. I do not believe that Kira could betray us. Not now. She cannot run away, I am sure of that, and she cannot speak ill of you. I would be amazed if she could do anything to harm you, and that includes harming people close to you.”

I thought about it for about half a second. “In that case…” I said, and switched back to Tekereteki, “Kira, if you want to come, take whatever you have that you would like to bring. We will leave as soon as you are ready.”

“Will we fly?” Kira asked.

“Until the edge of the forest, we will,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

“I suppose not,” she sighed. “It was not so bad once I knew that you would not drop me.”

“Allow yourself to enjoy it,” Herald said, smiling wide just thinking about it. “If you only trust her, flying is marvelous! How many can say that they have seen the world from so high? Do you understand how privileged that makes you?”

“Perhaps you are right,” Kira said, though she didn’t sound convinced. “I admit I did not look much, and it was quite dark much of the time. I can try, I suppose.”

“We are in no hurry,” I said. “I will try to go slow, so that you can look around and will not get too cold. Now, get your things. Say goodbye to the children, maybe? We will be here.”

It took Kira only minutes to gather what little she had. It was a little bag holding some simple gifts, she told me. A pair of fur-lined moccasins, a carved bone comb, practical things like that, gifts given in exchange for looking after the children, for helping with simple tasks, and for healing the many small scrapes and injuries that the refugees had either brought with them or accrued while building their simple shelters. She had clearly made no secret of her talents, and it seemed to be in her nature to help. My followers looked genuinely sad to see her go, and it was easy to see why.

If only they could talk to each other she might have been happier, I told myself, and decided that I should bring her back once she learned some Karakani. Any idea of handing her over to the Wolves or the authorities was long gone. As I’d told the humans, I was keeping her. Anyone who wanted her would have to fight me. I just had to remember that she was a person with her own feelings and dreams and desires, and that was hard sometimes. It was the same with Ardek, although I had spent more time with him and had seen that he could be useful. It probably wasn’t fair, but that made him a little more important to me, let him take up a little more space in my mind. The simple solution was to do the same with Kira – keep her around me, and let her be useful.

And if that made her feel better, I certainly wouldn’t complain. She really didn’t deserve what had happened to her. It wasn’t like she could have stopped her companions from doing what they did, capturing magic users and killing whole villages to cover that up. It wasn’t even really like she could have helped the captives escape, not with a company of horsemen following them. She’d done what she could to help and to comfort, and I’d put her through hell simply because she’d been the only one to surrender. I could tell myself that I hadn’t known at the time. That I hadn’t had the full picture, and was doing what I felt was right based on what I knew. But that really wasn’t much of an excuse. Being an asshole because of faulty assumptions was still being an asshole.

I didn’t blame myself for what had happened to her, but I wished that I’d acted differently. Kira deserved to be happy. The least I could do was to give her a chance.

I had Herald and Kira follow me to the top of the cliff overlooking the Gate. The village below stopped to watch and point as Herald climbed on my back. Kira stood before me. I wrapped my arms around her chest, and she locked her hands under mine, keeping her securely in place. We’d figured that out when she’d slipped forwards once when I braked too hard. Then I leapt forward.

We fell forward in a long glide, my locked wings taking us over the small settlement before I began beating, taking us slowly higher until we were a dozen feet above the tallest trees. As I felt the wind under my wings I had an impulse to go north, but shook it off. We needed to get back to the city.

It was the middle of the day, and I wanted to stay low to minimize the chance of being spotted. Kira was less stiff in my arms than she had been on previous flights, and slow as I was going I thought I heard her saying something. I strained to hear, and I realized that she was repeating, over and over, slowly and calmly like a mantra, “She won’t drop me. I can fly. I am not afraid. She won’t drop me…”

Herald, of course, was laughing and cheering. Not as much as usual, since I was trying to make this particular flight as unexciting as I could for Kira’s sake, but I doubted that I could ever take Herald into the air without making her half delirious with joy. After a while she contented herself with relaxing into my back. I felt her chin resting on my neck as she looked ahead.

“How are you doing, Kira?” Herald shouted down to my other passenger when we were about halfway to our destination.

“Not bad!” Kira shouted back. “You were right! It is more enjoyable when I relax!”

“See? I thou– Draka, ahead!”

Herald suddenly cried a warning, and just in time I saw what she meant. There was a figure clinging to a tall tree before us, and I only spotted it by the glint of gold as it released an arrow from the large bow it was holding, which shone as it streaked right for us. I dove and rolled to the side, but I wasn’t fast enough. Pain shot up my leg as the arrow lodged in my thigh, and I bit down on a scream.

A mix of rage and relief washed over me. A magic damned archer! At the speed the damned arrow was going it went right through my scales, but I could take it. If it had hit Herald… Hell, it nearly hit Kira!

I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to fight. All of me, Instinct, Conscience, and whatever was uniquely me wanted, oh so badly, to fight, to tear this arrogant fool to pieces and feast on their innards, but I couldn’t. I had Kira in my arms and Herald on my back, and I couldn’t fight our attacker without risking both of their lives. So, as much as I hated it, I decided to flee.

I passed the tree with the archer as they were readying another arrow. I caught a glance of a wiry build, a wildly swirling sphere of light in their chest, and an androgynous face surrounded by long, curly, brown hair as I tore past. Then I flew as fast as I could, staying low and juking repeatedly. I was rewarded by the next arrow missing, a streak of light vanishing ahead of us, passing within inches of me despite my evasive flying. Even when I was sure that we must be out of range of even the most advanced archer, I kept my speed up, heedless of the pain, the burn in my muscles, and the way Kira tensed in my arms.

“Fucking tree-humping piece of shit! Magic-slinging bag of dicks! Are you two alright?” I growled, looking between my two passengers, frantically searching for any sign of injury I might have missed.

“No!” Kira screamed. “I am not alright! Someone tried to kill us! You’re hurt! How could I be alright?”

“Fine, but are you hurt? Injured?”

“No!” she replied, but even while shouting she managed to sound fragile and terrified. I tightened my grip on her. It was the only thing I could do to try and reassure her at the moment.

“What about you, Herald? Tell me that you are not hurt!”

“I am fine,” she replied tersely. She’d been silent since the first arrow flew. It took a moment, but then she blurted, “How fucking dare he? How dare that bastard ruin such a lovely flight for us?”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“No one I recognised,” she answered bitterly. “Tall and thin, narrow face, full lips, bushy eyebrows. Long hair. Think I saw some stubble, but it could have been the shade. I was too busy staying on as you dodged to look much closer.”

“Yeah, sorry about that!”

“Better than an arrow in the gut! And I might recognise him if I saw him again!”

I flew on. I could handle the pain. What scared me was when the pain started to fade.

“Kira!” I called down. “You’re going to need to hold on tight! My leg’s going numb!”

“Numb?” she called back. When I looked down I saw her hand on my leg by the arrow, and though I felt nothing it was wreathed in light.

“You’re poisoned! A curse on their filthy fucking soul, that bastard poisoned you! But I can’t do anything until the arrow comes out! You have to land!”

Against Kira’s protests I kept going, putting a dozen or more miles between us and the archer before I landed in a meadow near the southern edge of the forest. Kira had to steel herself before I dropped her the last few feet, rolling in the grass as I carefully made the most graceful landing I could manage. Herald still had to bail as my numb leg buckled beneath me.

“That needs to come out, now,” Kira pronounced as I lay on the grass, going fully into her role as a healer. I was numb to the hip at that point and felt nothing as she pulled gently on the arrow. “Stuck firm. We’ll need to cut it out.”

Getting the arrow out was deeply unpleasant. It wasn’t too deep, but it was barbed, and neither Herald or Kira could cut it out with how tough my scales and hide were. So it fell to me to dig it out with my claws. The damned Mercies be blessed, I thought, that it was a numbing poison.

Finally I had made enough of a mess of the wound that Herald, with one foot braced against my leg, could pull the arrow out. It was accompanied by a gout of blood that stopped almost instantly as Kira pumped magical healing into me, going all out from the look of it. There was only a moment of pain between the poison being neutralized and the magic numbing the pain.

“Great job, Kira,” I told her after she broke off, panting and slightly instead where she sat next to me. I truly meant it. She hadn’t hesitated for a moment, and she’d done everything she could. “Thank you. Truly.”

“My… my pleasure,” she panted, smiling weakly. “Love to help.” Then she passed out.

I believed her.