The Book of Fire Read online

  “This is not . . . what is this place?”

  N’Doch shrugs. “Damned if I know.”

  The baron’s gaze fastens on Water, whom he has never seen in dragon-form. “What’s that, another one?”

  The girl says quietly, “My lord baron, may I present the Lady Water, in her truest form.”

  Water turns her attention full at him, and somehow her expression is Sedou’s. The guy stares back, figuring it out. N’Doch recalls the taut look that had passed between Sedou and the baron, that first night at dinner. He’s obscurely proud to see the angry line of the baron’s jaw relax as he takes in the blue dragon’s beauty. But it hardens again when he turns to face the girl. “Where am I? What have you done, witch?”

  “Told you this was a bad idea,” N’Doch murmurs. But he’s got to give it to her—this mean guy is real pissed, yet she faces him bravely all the same, like she’s got nothing to apologize for, kidnapping him and all.

  “Not I, my lord. It was the dragons who brought you.”

  The baron takes a breath, still not quite steady on his feet. “The conveyance, perhaps, but not the planning of it.”

  “You think that dragons do not plan, my lord?”

  “I would not presume to guess. Damn it, woman! Don’t play with me!”

  “There is no play intended, my lord.” She is so earnest, even N’Doch finds it hard to suspect her of the scheming he knows she’s guilty of.

  “What have you . . .!” The baron bites back on his snarl in an obvious decision to humor this madwoman until he can figure out what the hell’s going on. “What would any self-respecting dragon want with me?”

  “You might be surprised, my lord.”

  “You are correct. I would be. Would you care to explain further?”

  N’Doch can see the toll it takes, reining in his anger like he is, mustering up this cool manner and terse formality, reminding himself that she’s only a girl. Yeah, right. N’Doch gets his first inkling of pity for the dude. He’s spitting nails and still shaky on his feet, but he’s not taking this as seriously as he should be, because he has no idea how serious it really is. He’s overmatched and doesn’t even know it. N’Doch shifts sideways a bit, to where he can watch the power struggle from a better angle.

  “Well, my lord baron, it is you who are correct. It was my idea.”

  The baron nods, like he’s won a huge victory. “You thought to save Heinrich’s life, I suppose.” He runs a hand down his cheek, lets it drag across his throat. The memory seems to amuse him in a grim sort of way. “Death by scythe. Not exactly the end he’d envisioned.”

  “Not his life, my lord. Yours.”

  “Again?” He rubs his eyes, abruptly showing an entirely different kind of exhaustion. “So you think the old man has one trick left he hasn’t taught me? Perhaps he does, though he was never much for withholding his secrets. But it hardly matters. Truth is, my lady, I suspect Heinrich and I will never be ready to kill each other. We’ve threatened it so many times in our lives, it’s become a meaningless exercise.” This thought carries him into pensive silence, as if he’s forgotten he’s not alone. He stares into the dust, then catches himself and rouses. “Of course, there was always the happy possibility that he’d kill me by chance. Meanwhile, my lady, the prospect of your continuing to rescue me might well induce me to behave under any circumstances. So now, you and your dragon familiars can return me to whence I came—though I hardly relish the trip—and we’ll all be the wiser. I have work to do, and someday soon, God willing, Heinrich will let me do it.”

  She nods. Her hands are clenched behind her back. “We could indeed send you back, my lord.”

  “I am only waiting.”

  “But we will not.”

  And here we go, N’Doch tells himself. Now the shit really hits the fan . . .

  “Of course you will.”

  “No, my lord baron. We will not.”

  “Come, girl, you’ve had your witchy fun with me. Enough is enough. I give my word that I will not kill Hal Engle.” He raises one palm, lays the other on his heart. Then he grins. “Only beat him up a little.”

  “You persist in thinking of this as a prank, my lord, but it is not. We will not take you back.”

  “But you can’t . . . this is an outrage!”

  “But a necessary one, my lord baron.”

  He stares at her, and she stares right back. N’Doch sees that his highness Baron K. just cannot believe this mere slip of a girl is jutting her chin at him, telling him no and sounding like she means it. Again N’Doch wonders if he’ll have a fight on his hands. He’s not sure he can take this guy, even though he’s armed and the baron isn’t. Definitely a good thing that the scythe didn’t make it through the veil, ’cause the baron’s breathing has tightened, like a man in a corner preparing to attack. But he doesn’t. He stalks away a few paces. He looks again at the dragons and back at the girl, then he shoves his hands onto his hips and stares off into nothing. Incredulous and seething, but for the time being, controlling it well. “So,” he mutters, “I am fated to remain a prisoner no matter what land I find myself in.”

  For a moment, the girl wavers, and N’Doch worries she’s about gone her limit—she’s gonna crack. She’s also fighting a touch of translation sickness. And maybe it would be all for the best to just send the guy back. But she’s followed the baron’s glance at the dragons, and what has apparently subdued him lends her strength. N’Doch can hear whole choruses of dragon support vibrating between his ears. For sure, she’ll assure him later that she could never have done this on her own, but he’s more and more convinced she’s a lot stronger than she looks.

  “No prisoner, my lord,” she says, her voice tightened to the verge of a squeak. “Any more than we all are—prisoners of our duty. In this world, you are free to come and go as you like. But you said you were a man without a purpose. I am offering you one. If you wish so much to fight, fight here. Your services are needed.”

  Laying it on kinda thick, N’Doch thinks, but even he can’t help getting caught up in her rap just a little. As she warms to it, her squeak drops away. He hears for the first time that her voice is no longer that pure girlish fluting—it’s gained harmonics, and that means power. She stands up real tall in her pale linens and her hair’s finally grown out some, so it kind of coils nicely around her long narrow face, with its skin as perfect as some white girl’s porcelain doll. But she’s not as bleached out as she was when N’Doch first met her. The hot sun of his homeland has brought up a healthier color which the chill and dank of Deep Moor have not dispelled. She looks strong. She almost looks confident. One day soon, she’s gonna be beautiful. Not N’Doch’s taste, of course, besides she’s his sister. But maybe the baron’s starting to see it just a little, or maybe he would, if he’d stop feeding his anger for half a minute and take a good look around him.

  “My services,” the baron repeats bitterly.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Not much in demand anywhere else, is that it?”

  The girl nods earnestly.

  “I don’t think you were supposed to agree with him,” N’Doch murmurs.

  She gives a tiny little gasp. “For now, that is, my lord.”

  N’Doch leaps into the gap. “Hey, man, I didn’t want this gig either, y’know? One day I’m doing nothing special, then suddenly there’s this blue dragon in front of me, and poof! I’m drafted!”

  The baron stares at him, and N’Doch remembers he can’t have understood a single word. But somehow, he must have gotten the gist, ’cause he looks away at the girl, then down at the ground, shaking his head. His laugh starts slow but builds and builds to a hard ironic barking that bends him almost double until he gets control of it. When he’s done, he’s wiping dampness from his eyes and beard. “So—this is how you get me out of Heinrich’s hair. Ah, sweet Jesus! Might as well kill myself your way as his, is that it?”

  The girl’s eyes narrow. She is not happy with this. N’Doch can tell she co
nsiders it inexplicable and undignified. As for himself, he likes the man better for it. It suggests a complexity N’Doch wasn’t sure he had. Feeling companionable, he unfolds a long arm to give the baron’s shoulder a sympathetic slap, and finds himself jerked, suspended in air, then slammed down hard on the ground with Baron K. looming over him and the dust rising around them both.

  Man! I knew he was fast, but . . .

  Breathless, N’Doch hold up a palm. “Whoa up, brother, I was just . . .”

  The girl throws herself between them. The baron shoves her aside and levels a finger at N’Doch like it was a blade. “Don’t ever do that again!”

  N’Doch scrambles up, ready to fight him now. But the girl is there, holding him back. “No, N’Doch! Please! He’s not . . . please let it go!”

  “He’s not what?” N’Doch snarls. “Not in his right mind?”

  “Please, N’Doch. There are things . . . your ways are just . . . different.”

  N’Doch is amazed that, angry as he is, this makes him even angrier. “Different how? I offer the man a friendly little pat and he decks me!”

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  “Well, I think it matters!” He looks over the girl’s shoulder to see the baron eyeing him with a faintly superior smile. Suddenly, he’s had enough of the arrogant son of a bitch. “It’s more of that lordship shit, ain’t it?” he roars, looking for a way around the girl’s dancing, pleading hands. “If he’s so sure he’s better ’n me, let him prove it!”

  “STOP IT!” she screams at him.

  And N’Doch stops. She’s never done that before, never leveled the full power of her lungs and being at him like that. It hits him like a ton of bricks, and his brain is vibrating with not-so-subtle dragon resonance. They’re not too happy with him either. What is it about this baron dude, he fumes, that has everyone protecting him, putting up with his bad behavior? He’d get it if it was just the girl—these handsome, moody guys are always big with the women. But now it’s the dragons as well. No way he’d get away with behaving like that. Least not anymore.

  “I shouldn’t hafta be like no prince for him to treat me decent!” But he knows the girl’s not going to understand that. He glares at the baron, spits deliberately into the dust, and stalks away.

  He heads off down the road a bit, blowing off his rage in long stiff strides but uneasy in his heart just the same. Because he knows the girl’s just trying to help keep the peace. Plus, now that he considers it more calmly, he sees what the baron is up to, and it makes him mad again that the dragons don’t get it. Mad enough to let them know it.

  You all think he’s so hot, but it’s just the same old alpha-dog bullshit!

  But as usual, Water surprises him.

  I know that. And you’re supposed to be man enough not to buy into it.

  What? Why me?

  Look at it this way: would it be useful to have him on our side?

  N’Doch groans his assent. It pains him to admit it.

  So do what it takes to get him working for us. What does it really cost you?

  A whole helluva lot, N’Doch thinks. It’s all this lordship stuff, really. That’s what keeps getting him so riled. None of that bullshit where I came from! In the gangs, no real leader ever dissed his men for no good reason. In the gangs, a guy had to really prove himself before anyone’d give him the kind of respect this Köthen dude seems to think he was born with.

  N’Doch kicks at a chunk of shattered concrete, trying to remember when life was normal, how he felt then. Something nags at him, and the concrete is in several smaller chunks before he finally makes the connection. He can say—like he has to the girl many times, to her total disbelief and astonishment—he can say there are no lordships and kings and what-all where he comes from . . . but is it really true? What’s nagging him is, it’s not.

  ’Cause there are lordships and princes in his country, and princesses, too. And kings and queens. Only he’d call them celebrities. Stars, like the beautiful women his mama watches on her vid, or rich people, like Kenzo Baraga the Media King. People with all the power of the girl’s King Otto, and from what he heard at Deep Moor, probably a hell of a lot more. And he’d say: that’s the life I want. That’s what I’ve been dreaming of since I first sat down at a keyboard. And if he met them, he wouldn’t expect them to treat him any differently than this baron guy just did.

  N’Doch finds a piece of broken guardrail and sits down on it, totally confused.

  Well? Can you deal with it?

  Okay, so the guy’s used to being in charge, and he’s gotta keep up the front.

  So he was bound to challenge you sooner or later.

  Nice if it’d been later. But I could probably take him, y’know.

  Water has no interest in that argument.

  What would it gain us if you did?

  What about what it would gain me?

  But meanwhile, down the road, there’s two people standing in the hot sun, waiting on his next move. For two entirely different reasons. Add the damn dragons and you got four. It seems to N’Doch that before he met these dragons, there was a whole lot fewer people expecting things from him. He wishes he was home, where he had some options.

  But he gets up anyway, dusts himself off, and heads back. Wary, the baron watches him approach.

  “Tell him I was just trying to be friendly,” N’Doch mutters to the girl.

  “I did. He accepts your apology.”

  “My what?”

  “Please, N’Doch . . .”

  Is there no end to this, he asks himself. “He tossed me around, and I’m supposed to apologize?”

  She nods. “What can it hurt?”

  “How ’bout my pride?”

  She doesn’t seem to have thought of that. And the baron’s just staring at him, waiting for some acceptable sign of capitulation. N’Doch gives back the glare as best he can until the moment stretches beyond even his own patience with macho posturing, and the dragons are whispering between his ears again. Finally he reminds himself that he’s always said he’s a lover, not a fighter, and that there are other ways to win a war, and that he’s got no reputation here to maintain, like Baron K. seems to think he has, no matter what century he finds himself in. And finally, if he keeps them standing here in the sun much longer, they’re all gonna melt into smears on the ground. N’Doch decides to cede the skirmish—for now. But if it was a battle of guitars, he thinks, then let’s see who’d win. He shrugs and looks away. Maybe this’ll make a good song someday. “Go ahead. Take it all out on me.”

  The girl’s eyelids sag briefly. “My lord of Köthen, he thanks you for your gracious pardon.”

  “Like hell I do,” N’Doch mutters. But he tries the name out like she’s said it, mouthing it silently, trying for that vowel again.

  And Köthen relaxes, like he’d tired of the game even sooner than N’Doch and as necessary as it was, it’s about time the girl got it over with. He turns his back on both of them, scuffs his boots in the dust with a deep and ragged sigh. Then, for the first time, he takes a serious look around. He tests the sun-softened pavement with his heel, then walks to the end of the broken bridge like he’s taking possession of it, and gazes down into the water. When he comes back, it’s with a bit of a swagger and a pensive frown. N’Doch can see he’s intrigued despite himself.

  Oddly, it’s to N’Doch that he puts the question. He pulls up a few yards away and faces him directly. Like he’s trying the idea on for size, he says: “Is this the Future you spoke of?”

  The girl hastens to interrupt. “Why, yes, my lord baron. We believe it is.”

  The baron doesn’t even look at her, and N’Doch tries not to act too sullen. He knows the guy’s still smarting from them seeing him sick and retching from the transport. He’s gotta show off enough bullshit bravado to recover the shreds of his dignity. So, this could be just another challenge, but it could also be some kind of peace offering. Carefully, man to man, he nods.

  “Interesting.�
�� Baron Köthen shades his eyes, looking into the red sun. He studies the angular profile of the western horizon. Mountains, but before the mountains, there’s a city there, a little to the north, maybe ten miles away. N’Doch has spotted the building tops already. In fact, the heat’s not the only reason not to be standing out in the open like this for so long. Who knows who’s been watching them with high-power whatever from whatever distance? But his thought is, probably no one. There’s a too-weird stillness about this place. No birds, not even the buzz of an insect.

  Now Köthen studies the dragons, letting his gaze linger speculatively on Water. “A shape-shifter. Do I understand that correctly?”

  “Yes, my lord.” The girl smiles at him tentatively.

  “How could Heinrich bear to let you out of his sight?”

  She folds her forehead seriously. “Other priorities were . . .”

  Köthen waves her silent. “I know, I know. I know all about Heinrich’s priorities. I am living proof, am I not?” He kicks at the dust again, then looks back at N’Doch. “We don’t even know where we are, do we?”

  N’Doch shakes his head, keeping his expression real neutral. The guy’s bitter humor is so dry, it’s practically invisible. But it strikes N’Doch funny. Then he has an insight. With her tin ear for comedy, the girl doesn’t hear it, and until she does, she won’t even get to first base with this dude.

  “Or when,” Köthen adds. “Am I right?”

  Now N’Doch can’t help but grin. “You do land on your feet, man, I gotta grant you that.”

  When the girl translates, irony settles comfortably into Köthen’s eyes. He almost smiles. Then he says, “So what do we do now?”

  A challenge for sure, but this time, not an idle one.

  N’Doch shrugs. “First thing? Look for water.” As the girl translates, he adds, “Water we can drink.”

  The girl offers the baron a few remarks from her own experience about the treachery of water in the Future. Köthen grunts, then raises a brow at the two packs lying in the dust. “Are we provisioned?”