Draka

“Please tell me that I heard you wrong,” the Herald said, her face twisted with horror. “Please, tell me that you did not just say that you nearly killed Mak.”

“I did,” I told her. “I had my hand around her throat, and if not for her terror I would have done it. I will not apologise for that. I do not regret it. But I do regret the necessity of what I did.”

“By all the gods, Draka,” the Herald breathed, “what could possibly justify that?”

She was so much calmer than I’d expected. Sad and horrified, sure, but I could feel, or maybe smell, what was bubbling under the surface. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit me. She wanted to hate me. But she didn’t. Perhaps she couldn’t. Instead she said, “Please, tell me why! Don’t I deserve to know?”

“You do,” I told her. “And your love for her and my love for you is one of the reasons Mak is still alive. But like I told Garal, her shame is her own. She can give you the details when she’s ready, though I think you have an idea already. I can tell you that in the moment I truly believed that she deserved to die for what she had done. I am not sure that I do not still believe it. Mak does. She is ashamed, and she wants to earn my trust back. That is why she does as I tell her.”

I could smell the anger coming off the Herald, quite literally smell it. She wanted to… I wasn’t even sure. Fight me for dominance? For ownership of Mak, as insane as that notion was? But she didn’t show it, not at all. I couldn’t tell if she even knew it herself. We were friends. We loved each other like sisters. So instead of raging at me, cursing me, challenging me, instead of anything like that she asked, with love and humility, “Please, Draka. Do not hurt her. Do not mistreat my sister.” She stood up from the box she’d been sitting on. Alone like this I saw that I’d grown. We were nearly face to face now when I sat with my neck lifted, with her just taller than me. Rather than look down on me, however slightly, she knelt in front of me. She took my face in both of her hands, and looked up at me. “Please. I love her.”

“I know,” I said softly. “Please, Herald. Help her. She will resent me. I know it. I do not want to be angry with her, but I am. I do not want to hurt her, not any more than I have, but I will if I must. Do not let her do anything foolish.”

“I will not,” the Herald said with conviction. “Whatever she did, I will make sure that she does not do it again.”

And just like that, it was clear where her loyalty lay. The little voice at the back of my mind screamed that this wasn’t right. That she shouldn’t be choosing us over the woman who’d loved her and raised her for nearly her whole life. That we were doing something to her mind whether we knew it or wanted to or not. That there was no way anymore to pretend that there was anything normal about this friendship.

I heard the voice, and this time I couldn’t silence it. “Thank you, Herald” I said, and I meant it in more ways than I could possibly tell her.

We waited in thoughtful silence for a long time, until I broke it. “The boy, Ardek,” I said. “I may have to kill him.”

“What boy? He is older than I am,” Herald said reproachfully. She had found some old, folded textile, and we were lying on the floor, her using it as a mat as she rested her head on my side.

“That is what you take issue with?” I asked. “But no, I understand. The young man, then. I think I may have to kill him. He knows too much about me.”

“He could be useful, could he not?” Herald asked. “If you can force him to submit and offer his loyalty.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But if he betrays one mistress to swear loyalty to another, can he be trusted?”

“He had not been with the Night Blossom for long,” Herald pointed out. “And I believe that you can offer him more than she did, both in threats and in rewards.”

“Rewards?” I asked.

I felt Herald shrug against me. “We have the bag of loot,” she said. “Think of it as an investment. A Dragon should seal his loyalty nicely. It has a nice symmetry to it. A golden Dragon if he accepts, a black dragon if he refuses.”

“And if he lies to me?” I asked.

“Then we kill him and take the Dragon back. But Mak and I can keep an eye on him,” she said, a little too casually. It was an obvious attempt to show me how Mak could be useful to me, but it wasn’t like I could blame Herald for that. And it wasn’t a bad idea, either. A team is almost always stronger than an individual, and I didn’t doubt Mak and Herald’s ability to keep Ardek in line.

“We will have to explain it to Tam and Val, though, when they get back,” Herald continued.

“We will need to explain more than that,” I said. Another conversation I wasn’t looking forward to. They would find out sooner or later about Mak, and while I didn’t know how they might react I didn’t expect it to go well. I didn’t have the close relationship with either of them that I did with Herald.

“It might help if I am the one to talk to them,” she suggested. “But on that subject, I should speak to Mak. And not only to see if she is ready to tell me. She will need support.”

“You are probably right. Have you spoken to her properly since… you know? Garal said that you both just ate and then slept when you came in.”

“I have not,” Herald said, and deflated against me. “Mak has been evasive, and I have not truly wanted to push the issue. I still… thinking about what happened is painful.”

I curled my head back and rested it on her chest. “You are strong. And talking is a step towards healing. You both need this, and I do not think Makanna can take that step without help. She needs you.”

I felt more than heard Herald’s sigh. It rolled all the way from her belly. It was the acceptance of someone who truly does not want to do something but will do it anyway. “I should go, then,” she said and stroked my neck.

“Can you ask Garal to clear the way to the cells?” I asked. “I should talk to Ardek before Rallon gets here.”

Five minutes later I was in the cell with Ardek again.

“Ardek,” I told the young man cowering before me. “I am going to offer you a chance. I will ask the Wolves to release you –” I looked at Garal, who gave me a very eloquent shrug that said ‘Probably? I’ll see what I can do,’ “– and in exchange for your life and your freedom you will swear to serve me. When I need you to do something, you will do it. You will not question it, unless you need to know more to do a better job. Other than that I will ask Mak to keep an eye on you. You know what will happen if you refuse or if you betray me.”

Ardek looked at me with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. I could only assume that he’d been hoping for nothing more than a clean death instead of whatever he’d imagined that I’d told Mak to do to him.

I moved in to seal the deal “You should know that I’m your only real chance of survival,” I told him. “Since you’re involved with the slavers, the council and the Wolves will probably… I’m not sure how criminals are executed here, really. Hang you, probably. Escape is unlikely, but if you do the Night Blossom will definitely kill you in some horrible way. As my servant you might still get killed, either while doing something for me or just because the wrong person spotted you in the wrong place and the wrong time. But you’ll have a chance, and you’ll have allies.”

Ardek barely waited for me to finish speaking before giving his answer. “I’ll do it,” he said eagerly. “I’ll serve you. I swear that I’ll be loyal to you!”

I’d expected a little more reticence, and it made me suspicious. “As loyal as you were to the Night Blossom?” I asked.

“She left me and my friends to guard a dragon,” he answered angrily, then seemed to realise how he’d spoken to me as his face filled with apprehension.

“She did, didn’t she?” I mused. “What exactly did you think that you were guarding?”

“A new, valuable prisoner,” he said. “That’s all we were told. There’d been rumours that Tark and some of the heavies had fought a dragon, and lived. You, I guess. Nobody really believed it, I mean, a dragon, here? We figured they were talking about that wyvern. And for sure none of us ever thought they’d try to capture it. You. But yeah, we weren’t told who we were guarding, just that we weren’t to let anyone down there except with the Night Blossom or Tark.”

Tark was the little man who’d escaped us in the forest, and who’d tortured my friends. Learning that he was alive and well, back working for the boss he’d failed, had surprised me. Either he was extremely valuable to the Night Blossom, or she was far more forgiving than I’d expected. On the bright side, this meant that I could kill him myself, or let the girls do it.

“You knew that they were holding the Tekereteki sisters?”

“Only the younger one. The tall one. I’d seen them take her up from below and towards the office.”

“And you know what they were doing to her?”

He looked away from me. “I had a pretty good idea. But we were new, and asking questions is a good way to get hurt.”

“Well, here’s my first order to you. When I’m not around, you’ll be in the hands of those two women. The older one is Makanna, the younger one is the Herald. You will obey them as you would me. If they contradict each other, you will listen to the Herald. Is that clear and understood?”

“Yes, boss,” he said earnestly.

“You understand that I am taking a risk in letting you live, and that they will not hesitate to kill you if you betray me?”

“Yes, boss.”

“Here is my second order: When the Wolves question you, and they will question you before they release you, you will answer them truthfully and as helpfully as you can. Understood?

“Yes, boss.”

“That said, you understand that you are not to tell anyone anything about me, no matter how close you might think that they are to me, unless I have explicitly told you that they are allowed full knowledge?”

“Yes, boss.”

Either he was a really good liar, I was a complete dope, or he was being fully honest with me. I decided to go with the latter, or I’d have to kill him. “Good. The Herald is allowed to know anything and everything about me. She is the only one,” I said, turning to give Garal an apologetic look. “Sorry, Garal.”

“That’s alright,” he said, though he gave me an odd look. “If Herald is the only one with full clearance, I’m not too offended.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Bleed and cry with me, and we’ll talk, right?”

“Right. Already did the bleeding, but I know what you mean.”

Afterwards, Garal brought me back to the cellar. These secret moves must have looked shady as all hell to the mercs who kept getting ordered out or upstairs, and I hoped that it would be the last time before I could leave. I was hiding. Even here, the only safe place for me in the city, I was hiding. I didn’t like it. It chafed my pride horribly.

This time I was alone. Herald was probably with Mak, talking, comforting her, or just being there. Being alone was fine with me, though. I needed to think. I poked around in the bags, barrels and boxes that filled the small space, but they weren’t very distracting. It was mostly oil, dry foods, spare clothes, and other things a large company of people might need. I’d been hoping for dried meat or something like that, but no luck.

I needed to decide how to handle Tam and Val, as well as the Wolves. I also needed a plan for dealing with the Night Blossom. Tam and Val should be easy. If they opposed my dominance over Mak, I would have to either dominate them as well, drive them off so thoroughly that they wouldn’t oppose me, or destroy them. At least that was what my gut told me. But the little voice in my head insisted that this was wrong. That they were our friends, and we needed to treat them with respect and make them understand, so that they wouldn’t abandon us.

Respect. Was it not respectful to recognise that they couldn’t just be ignored? Had the voice always been this annoying?

But that didn’t feel right, either. I didn’t listen to ‘the voice’, I listened to my dragon, didn’t I? And this wasn’t my dragon.

The voice rarely steered us wrong. I knew that much, so I should listen to it, annoying as it was. The voice was good with humans.

No, I was good with humans. Because I was human. Mostly.

Garal and Lalia were problematic, too. Garal was respectful, but he was more careful than I was used to, which was reasonable. Lalia was being more fearful than aggressive, which I approved of. But the voice – no, my reason – told me that these were bad signs. From my impressions Garal was carefree and irreverent, and Lalia was naturally domineering. Any change from that was a cause for concern. And I couldn’t just dominate them or kill them, because we liked Garal, and Lalia had actually been warming up to us. Kind of. A little. Besides, Lahnie would miss her. We wanted them to like us, so that they would help us because they wanted to, not because they were afraid not to.

I wasn’t sure why I needed to be reminded of that. Things had been so clear when I woke up in the prison. Punish Mak. Show her where she belonged in the hierarchy. Rescue the Herald and kill everyone in my way who would not submit. They’d been getting steadily less so ever since. The voice had been getting louder, more insistent, almost indignant. Silencing it had been getting harder.

Because it was my own voice, wasn’t it? My own reason. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t this cold, calculating, and spiteful, especially not against people I liked or who I wanted to like me. Mak had been cagey and suspicious, and then she had done something stupid, but she’d had good reasons for it. Lalia has been a pain in the ass but I’d never actually wanted to kill her. That was the dragon. My dragon.

I was right on the edge of something when Garal called down the stairs.

“Hey, Draka? You hungry? I sent some of the, uh… support staff out earlier. They brought back a bunch of fresh fish.”

“You’re a prince!” I called back. I wasn’t sure why. I was hungry. I’d been ignoring it, but I’d been hungry since the day before. But it was only right that he should tend to my needs, wasn’t it? I was stronger than him. He should seek my favour, so why should I thank him? But the voice disagreed. The voice insisted that he had considered our needs not because he feared that we might eat him, but because that was what friends did. And when I hadn’t intended to dignify him with an answer, it was the voice who had spoken for us.

Garal came down the stairs carrying a large, open topped box full of long, slender fish. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, and I realised that he could barely see. Of course he couldn’t. There was no light down here, except what spilled down from the open door.

“Sit down on the stairs for a while,” I told him. He put the box on the floor and took a few steps back up before sitting.

“Are you alright down here?” he asked.

“Sure. Better now that you brought me some food.” I walked up to the box. The fish smelled as fresh as if they’d just come from the sea, making my mouth water. I snatched one up and swallowed it whole. You’d think that I wouldn’t be able to taste much that way, but I did, and it was delicious. I quickly horked down another one, and another after that.

“So… you like the fish?” he asked after the fourth one had gone down my gullet.

I paused before going for another one. “I always liked fish. Don’t have a good way of getting them now, so this is kind of a treat. Thanks.”

“Good to hear. I think the kids I sent out got fish because it’s easy to get fresh here, and cheaper than meat. They probably pocketed half of what I gave them, honestly.”

“Appreciate it either way. These are great.” I sucked down numbers five and six.

“So, uh… do you want to talk about what’s going on with you?”

I stopped. “What do you mean?”

“Well… Mak, mostly. I’ve never seen her act so deferential to anyone. And the prisoner. I know that I don’t know you very well, but the way you spoke to him… it doesn’t sound like the Draka that my friends have told me about.”

“You disagree with how I treat a member of the group that tortured our friends?”

“No, not as such, but… he’s barely a man. His friends are dead. He wasn’t even involved, if he can be believed. Hasn’t he been punished enough?”

“The punishment is not the point. The point is to let him make himself useful, and make up for his mistake.”

“And Mak?”

“Exactly the same situation. Does it make you feel better to know that she agrees with me?”

“No, not really. And I find it hard to believe that she could have done anything to deserve the way you’ve treated her today.”

“Perhaps you don’t know how far she’d go for her sister.”

He sighed. “Draka. Come on, please. What did she do? Help me. I want to believe that you’re justified in treating her the way you did, but I’ve known Mak for years. Honesty and honour are so important to her that I just can’t make it fit. What could she have done? Why is it so important to you that she tell me herself?”

“Because I want her to remind herself of what she did,” I hissed. I didn’t even think about my answer, but I knew that it was right. I wanted her to humiliate herself. I knew that she wouldn’t be able to hide something like that from the people she loved, and I wanted her to remind herself, every time, of the shame she deserved.

The voice said nothing, but I could feel its quiet condemnation.

“She betrayed me,” I said after a long silence. “That is what she did, if you have to know so badly. She told the slavers how to get in touch with me and how to lure me in, and then she went with them to bring me into an ambush. She didn’t want to. I know that now. They used the Herald to make her do what they wanted. But she was my friend, and she helped them chain me in a cell, like a goddamn animal. How do I forgive that? How do I trust her after that?”

“I’m so sorry that that happened. For you, and for her,” he said, his voice leaden. “Do you want to forgive her? To trust her?”

“More than anything.”

“Then please, give her a real chance. I understand that you’re angry. I can’t tell you how I’d feel in the same situation. But the way it is now… I don’t know what you asked her to do with the prisoner, but I think it broke her just a little bit more when she was already broken. Let her heal. Let her show you that she regrets what she did, and that you can trust her, but let her do it her own way.”

“Sometimes when I look at her,” I whispered, “I just want her to hurt.”

“She is hurting. There’s no need to hurt yourself to make it worse.”

I snorted with frustration. I was getting annoyed with him, the way he questioned me. I wanted to dismiss him, or tell him what a weak fool he was, but the voice told him, “I can try to be less harsh.”

“Thank you. And Herald?”

“What about Herald?”

He smiled. “Nothing. Forget it.”

I shook my head and went back to eating.