Draka

While Herald and Mak returned with Jekrie to the camp, I remained among the trees. I didn’t feel that it was the right time to reveal myself to the group at large, but it would have to happen. The only question was whether it would be sooner or later.

“What happened?” Kira asked me as I joined her and Ardek. “What did you talk about?”

“You should start working on your Karakani,” I told her. “We’re going to have some new guests at the mountain.”

“You’re taking them in?” Her tone told me that she hadn’t expected that outcome at all, but by the way her lips curled she was clearly pleased. I told myself that I shouldn’t be surprised. I’d been told several times that she cared about people, no matter who they were – except, perhaps, Tekereteki ‘homers’. Seeing the pitiful state of the northerners must have hurt her badly.

“Jekrie asked for protection, on behalf of the others. I decided to grant his request.”

Kira thought about that, with a look in her eye that I found hard to decipher. “I cannot imagine what you might gain from this that’s of any value to you,” she said after many long seconds. “But you have more mercy in you than I would have expected.”

“They’re neither slavers, bandits, nor raiders,” I said, pointing out the obvious for the sake of contrast to her own group, which I’d destroyed with extreme prejudice. “Some of them made an incredibly stupid mistake, but that sin punished itself. The rest of them… I don’t know. It felt right.”

I wasn’t about to tell her, of all people, just how good it had felt to claim these people. She’d been anxious about dragon worship as it was. Better not to give her any ideas that hadn’t occurred to her already.

“Does helping them salve your conscience?” she asked.

I snorted. “My conscience is clear, no matter what you may think.” It wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough as far as she was concerned.

While we talked, Jekrie and the sisters walked on into the camp to deliver the terms I had laid out for him. “I have made a bargain,” Jekrie announced, raising his voice so that all of the gathered people, who’d returned when word went out that he was back, could hear him. “The… patron of these two women has offered us a place to make a new home, and protection from man and beast. She can deliver, of this I am sure. In return we must obey her, unless her demands are cruel.”

That was the one concession I had made.

“Choose for yourselves. Come with me, or go your own way. Know that once you accept this bargain, you cannot back out. But know also that there is no other place in the south which is safe from the law of Karakan. We have until sundown.”

“None of this is negotiable,” Herald added, her tone brooking no argument. “You either accept the terms, or you leave our territory. There are many villages scattered around the forest, and good people. They may take you in, if you are lucky, or they may treat you as the outlaws that you are, fair or not. But if you go, do not expect to be easily welcomed back. My lady does not look kindly on those who refuse her generosity.”

After that we waited. The refugees broke camp, since it was clear that no matter what decision they reached they would not be staying where they were. Two small groups returned from the forest during the afternoon, and once they did Rib and Pot joined Kira, Ardek and myself. Herald and Mak stayed with Jekrie, helping to break the camp and talking about things I couldn’t hear.

There were many things I could have done with the time. I spent some of it napping, but there was one thing I wanted to do that I hadn’t found the time for until then.

“Kira,” I said, getting her attention. She’d been listening to Pot, Rib and Ardek telling increasingly dirty jokes, with no sign of understanding.

“Yes?” she said, turning on her rock to face me.

“The others told me that you recognised the name ‘Night Blossom’. Tell me about it.”

She got a thoughtful look on her face, and said, “That is true, in part, at least. I remember hearing the commander mention someone named ‘Blossom,’ though I do not know or recognise ‘Night.’”

“What was the context? What was your commander talking about?”

“Something about interrupted deliveries, I think. I assumed that it was about logistics and it did not seem to affect us, so I didn’t listen too closely. It was when we had only recently crossed into Karakani territory, I remember that much, and that the commander was annoyed and ordered one of the lieutenants to contact this ‘Blossom’. I didn’t think much of it. But then I heard someone mention the same name and I wondered if it was Karakani, and I asked if it was a common one. Since you’re asking me, I’m guessing it’s someone important.”

“You could say that,” I told her. “She’s a crime lord who tried her hand at slaving, and someone I want to find very, very much.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll try to convince her to change her ways,” Kira said, looking down at my talons. I followed her eyes and realised that I’d been unconsciously scratching long, deep furrows in the dirt.

“You’re right about that,” I said, angrily stilling myself. I’d never been a fidgeter, but these last few days had me on edge. “This woman doesn’t deserve any second chances. As soon as I get my hands on her she can start counting her remaining minutes.”

Kira sighed and looked away, clearly uncomfortable with how sanguine I was. “You said she’d taken slaves?” she asked after a while.

“Yeah. Whole villages. Keeping children and young adults, discarding anyone who was too old or with permanent injuries. Her people told the… suppliers to deal with them however they wanted.”

“That’s awful,” Kira said softly, and I could see her own guilt writ large on her face. She was barely more than a slave herself, but she’d still been a part of the same kind of cruelty.

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. “That would have been reason enough to get rid of her. But then she decided to hurt my friends and insult me, which got her bumped from ‘deliver for public execution’ to ‘try to leave some identifiable chunks’ in my book.”

Kira turned a little green at that and that, finally, did ping my conscience just a little.

“Kira,” I said. “This woman is a monster. I don’t know how much the sisters have told you, but what she had her people do to them… Think about this: She calmly told one of her men to break some of Herald’s fingers if Mak wouldn’t stop crying. Alright? And that’s where you can start from. It only gets worse. There is nothing I can do to her that she doesn’t deserve.”

“I see.” Kira kind of folded in on herself, and something stirred inside me. She looked… what? Sad, sure. Resigned, maybe. Very tired, definitely, though this was the middle of the night for her, so that was fair enough. But mostly, I thought, she looked very small right then. Like she’d been through a lot of shit that she’d had no control over, and that she didn’t deserve. And like she knew that it was going to keep happening, and there was no way, no matter what she did, that she could stop it.

Some of that was my fault. It was done in anger, and I’d felt completely justified, but I doubted that made any difference to her.

She’d made a choice, once. She’d wanted to do the right thing, to help her people, and I got the feeling that that was the last real choice she’d been allowed to make. And then they’d made her a party to unimaginable suffering. She, who just wanted to help. To help anyone and everyone in front of her, even the people who’d abused her.

I did the first thing that came to mind. I couldn’t tell how welcome or not it would be, but I walked straight up to her and wrapped my wing around her, pressing her against my chest. I would have used my neck, but she looked so small that it didn’t seem possible without lying down on the ground, and whatever I felt in that moment I couldn’t do that. Not in front of her. She stiffened, then seemed to realise what this was and relaxed a fraction.

“I won’t ask you to do anything, yeah?” I said gently.

“If you say so.”

“I really won’t. I promise you that. This is something we have to do, Herald and Mak and me, but I won’t ask you to hurt anyone. Or to help us hurt anyone. That’s over. Okay? I can’t let you go, but… I won’t ask you to be a part of that. That little, I can do for you.”

I felt her lean into me, slowly, tentatively. Just a little, but enough that I felt it. “Thank you,” she said, very softly.

“I’ll have Ardek and the cousins take you back to the mountain to sleep, yeah? You know how to open the gate?”

“I do, but… can I have a moment?”

I looked around, and immediately felt like an idiot. What was I worried about? My image? Rib and Pot were off somewhere. Ardek had seen the whole thing, though he presumably hadn’t understood a word of our conversation, being in Kira’s vulgar Tekereteki. He sat with his back to a giant tree, carefully whittling a piece of a branch he’d picked up. He was studiously avoiding looking at us, but, what? Was he going to make fun of me for showing a crumb of empathy? Not likely.

“Take all the time you need,” I told Kira, and wrapped my other wing around her. “There’s no rush.”

I filled in Rib and Pot on what Kira had told me about the Blossom. Then I sent Kira home with them and Ardek, just like I’d said I would. They couldn’t talk to each other, but Kira didn’t need that to get along with people and Rib and Pot were really good with gestures. They’d be fine.

By the time sunset rolled around no one had loudly denounced me and stormed off, but there were definitely some differences in opinion among the refugees. Both Herald and Mak had popped in among the trees to talk a few times, and their combined opinion was that we’d lose a handful of people, but not many. And they were right. Two young men and one woman – a brother-sister pair and her husband, I thought – took their things and vanished into the night. They preferred their undisputed freedom over safety, and I could respect that. None of them were among the party that had attacked us. They knew neither who I was, nor where we were taking the rest, so I let them go in peace.

I agonised over that for a moment or two, but at that moment it seemed like the option I’d be happiest with in the long run. I considered following them and putting the everliving fear of me in them, but that would just invite one or all of them to grow some gonads and a hero complex in the future, which might invite all sorts of trouble. And that possibility meant that if I suspected any one of them of not being entirely, irreversibly cowed, I’d have to kill all of them. And I just didn't feel like I had it in me. It would be practical, sure, but it would be completely monstrous. And on a different day, that might not have been a problem. I still swung between the extremes of my combined self, depending on the circumstances. I had days when I felt no concern about the possibility of becoming a completely pragmatic, practical monster. But after spending most of the day watching a small group of people gather the remnants of their shattered lives, and after my little moment with Kira, that was most definitely not such a day. So I watched them wander off in the general direction of Pine Hill and a bunch of other small settlements, and silently wished them well.

The rest of the refugees decided to trust Jekrie and take a chance on me. Or rather, on Herald and Mak’s mysterious patron, whoever that may be. They’d find out soon enough, but for the time I was content to let them wonder. I’d let them settle in and get comfortable before I showed them what they’d gotten themselves into.

In the end, as night set in, Mak and Herald led twelve adults – five men and seven women – of various ages through the trees towards the mountain and the gate. With them came one boy of about six and two girls, one maybe four years old and the other Jekrie’s infant daughter. Having kids around changed the game a little. Not that I’d been planning on throwing any lives away, or even making them needlessly uncomfortable, but I had a soft spot for kids. I’d never wanted any of my own, but I’d always liked messing around with other people’s kids. All of the fun and barely any of the responsibility was exactly how I’d liked it. So, with the kids around I felt a little more motivated to actually live up to my side of the bargain. As they walked among the trees, I kept watch over them from the shadows. It might have been excessive, but they were mine now, and I’d be damned before I let any of them stray or get eaten by wolves or something like that.

I was going to set them up at the scholars’ campsite outside the gate to start with, and then we’d start looking into setting up more permanent homes for them. It was a good spot. Plenty of game and forage around, and a stream nearby large enough to have fish in it meant that they wouldn’t go hungry, and there was plenty of both stone and timber to build with. Fields might be a problem, but if they were from the far north I doubted that they’d done any large-scale farming anyway.

And there was, of course, the gate. I’d said that I’d keep them safe, and being able to put several tons of rock between them and any threat if necessary would go a long way towards that.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that I was second guessing myself, but I was very, very aware of the fact that this would change things significantly. I had been relying partially on secrecy to keep my people and my stuff safe. That wasn’t really going to be possible anymore, if I set up a small village right at my doorstep, and especially not when that village was made up of outlaws. While I was sure that detail could be fixed, any village invited visitors. At a minimum, once people became aware of the village’s existence you’d have adventurers show up looking for resupply, and there was always the possibility of the council’s taxmen, which had been the thing that drove these people’s forebears north in the first place. And it wasn’t like this place was completely unknown. Enough people knew that there had most definitely not been a village there as little as a month or two ago that someone would start asking questions.

I’d had a problem foisted on me, and my solution was to invite a bunch of new problems. So, I wasn’t second guessing myself. Second guessing myself would lead to doubting myself, and I had too much shit going on to be able to afford that. But a very big part of me was asking, trying to figure out, rationally analysing, really, why the hell I was doing this.

As we neared the mountain Herald dropped back, out of earshot of the group, and said, “I truly cannot wait to hear what your plan is, here.” It was pretty impressive how she found me in the darkness.

“I am flattered that you think that I have a plan,” I said wryly. “I did the only thing that felt right. Beyond this moment we will have to take things as they come.”

“We, is it?” Herald said, but I could feel an eagerness from her. It was more than just her tone, expression, and body language. More even than the way she smelled, which could tell me when someone was happy or angry or afraid. It was quite literally a feeling, like I’d somehow unlocked a whole new sense.

“You approve,” I said, and she gave me a single firm nod.

“I believe that they will be useful more than they will be a nuisance. As long as we can keep them in line, of course, but I do not see that being a problem. And, well… it was the humane, if not necessarily the human, thing to do. I was glad to see it.”

“That is a relief,” I told her. Her opinion meant the world to me, and having her support made me even more certain that I’d made the right choice.

“That was quite a trick, by the way. Back in the clearing. But I would thank you to never do it again when I might be affected. Part of me wanted to scream and run, and the rest hoped desperately that if I just sat completely still and silent you might not notice me in the dark, insane as that idea was. And I know that you love me! I cannot imagine what it was like for Jekrie, and Mak… based on what I felt I am beyond impressed that she remained on her feet.”

“Have you told her?” I asked.

“What, and let her get a big head about it?” She smiled. “But you are right. It is good to see her proud again, and I should encourage that. Though I assume that her new advancement has something to do with it.”

“You may be right,” I agreed. “Or it may simply be that she no longer fears me. Or the dark, perhaps. Still, you really should celebrate her advancement.”

“Do you know what it does?” she asked, though I got the feeling that she already had an answer of her own and just wanted to know what I thought.

“Based on what she has told me…” I said, thinking about it. “She is stronger, clearly. More confident. And she says that Tekereteki comes more easily to her. I would be surprised if she was not more resilient and stealthy as well.”

“Yes?” Herald said, waiting for me to state the conclusion she had already come to herself.

“I think that she has the effects of all my minor advancements,” I said. It just fit. Her vision of growing in my shadow, the effects she’d reported… “Reduced perhaps, but that is what I think. And you, I see, have drawn the same conclusion.”

“I have,” she said, her smile turning into a full-toothed grin. “And I could not be more pleased for her. It is an amazing advancement. Do you think it will work as you grow?”

“I can only assume so based on what she saw,” I mused. “I should think about that the next time.” Then I remembered something, and it was my turn to grin. “One of the choices I have had, ever since my first threshold, is Physical Greatness. Improving all my physical attributes at some unknown cost. Imagine if I take that, and it affects Mak?”

“You would not dare!” Herald said, her face stormy with mock outrage. “She is my sweet, tiny little big sister, and I will not have some lizard with delusions of grandeur ruin that!”

“Lizard with…” I sputtered back. “Those are brave words for someone in head-tearing range!”

“Try it!” she challenged, then reached out and scratched the scar where my horn had been. My remaining horn curved back over my neck and was about as long as Herald’s palm. I leaned into her hand. It wasn’t like it itched or anything, but the scritches felt really good.

“I accept your tribute, mammal,” I purred. “All is forgiven.”

After a bit she stopped scratching and instead ran her thumb with some firm pressure over the scar. “You have a little bump that has not been here before,” she said, leaning in to look closer in the dim moonlight. “I wonder if the horn is growing back.”

“I almost hope not. One horn missing looks fearsome, in a way. One big one and one tiny one is going to look dumb.”

“I think it will look cute,” Herald declared.

“Cute,” I repeated, trying to make that gel with what I knew of my appearance. Nine or ten feet from my nose to the tip of my tail. Powerful, batlike wings. A snout full of wicked teeth, brutally strong limbs that ended in hands and feet with claws that could shred flesh without a second thought. All of this covered in sleek, matte scales of just the right black to let me vanish into deep shadow or against the night sky.

If a tiny horn could look cute on that…

I bumped her shoulder with my head. To my great satisfaction it made her stumble. “I’ll take it.”