Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 31
No matter how we looked at it, Akela always came to the same conclusion.
“We are not having enough soldiers. Not having enough horses! The spears, there are too many of them, but not all soldiers are even knowing how to hold them. These soldiers, they are not me. And that is being a very sad thing, because when Rylan’s army is coming, we are being overwhelmed,” she said with a sigh. “Northwood, when you are going to Canth, you are doing me a favour and you are asking Queen Nasrin to be borrowing her soldiers, yes?”
“We’ll find a way, Commander,” Goblin would always say. “We aren’t going to lose now.”
Supplies were sent ahead to Ironash for me and on the morning of my departure, Eden brought me a cake of her own making wrapped in brown paper.
“For the journey,” she said, leaving me with a kiss on the cheek for good luck. “I apologise. It won’t be nearly so good as Akela’s.”
I left as the sun rose, having said my goodbyes to the others the night before. Kouris would’ve come with me, had she not been occupied by a hundred other things, and had I not needed to do this alone.
Oak looked as though he’d not only been up all night, but had been pacing back and forth across the bank of Lake Lir since sunset.
“Ready to go?” I asked, grinning up at him.
He let out a strangled roar of exasperation and I didn’t keep him waiting any longer. Climbing on his back with Claire’s leather-bound documents on my own, we took to the air, headed as high as we could, and circled around Thule. The people didn’t need another dragon to pull their frayed nerves all the tauter.
Fingers hooked around Oak’s scales, I let him fly as fast as he wanted without fear of falling. The landscape tore past in a blur, and at the height of summer, moving freely through the air brought a new sort of clarity. The hours melted away, and we didn’t begin our descent until we were a few dozen miles from the coast. We hadn’t spoken about it, but there wasn’t any need to. Oak glided into the fields that had once overflowed with sheep, and I ran the rest of the way to our farmhouse.
“Rowan!” Michael called from his bedroom window. “Talk about making an entrance!”
By the time I’d slid off Oak’s back, found my feet and endured one of Michael’s hearty slaps on the back, I managed to laugh at my father’s bemused expression. It was hard to faze him, and even a pane had caught him off-guard for a mere matter of seconds, but the same couldn’t be said of Oak.
“Hm,” he eventually said, standing straighter when Oak puffed out a happy breath. “Michael wasn’t lying about the dragon.”
I had lunch with them, and there was no end to Michael’s questions about Claire and her coronation. I would’ve rather caught up with how things had been for the pair of them, but it was easier to give Michael the answers he wanted rather than attempt to change the subject. I couldn’t spend more than an hour with them, but I was glad to have seen them; not so glad to have taken them the news about Orinhal and Atthis. My father clapped his hand on my shoulder as I left but could not bring himself to smile.
I shared Eden’s cake with them, saving plenty for myself, and continued on to Canth. The locals at Ironash had been told to expect a dragon, but I still thought it best to fly around the town and approach by sea. Oak landed hard in the water, sending up waves and soaking us both, and drifted leisurely towards the docks.
Most of the town had come to see the commotion. They stared down at us, and I didn’t miss the way the hands of the soldiers stationed there hovered over their weapons.
“Ambassador Northwood?” one man asked.
“I… Yes? That’s me,” I said, holding out my arms as I stood squarely on Oak’s back. “Is my ship ready? I can tell we’re making people uncomfortable, so I’d like to get out of here as quickly as possible.”
“It is,” he said, and gestured down the docks.
The ship he pointed out was the last one I would’ve expected to be set aside for me. It was massive, with room for at least two dozen crew, but had a strange look about it for the way the mast and sails had been removed. It wasn’t the fishing boat I’d expected.
“It’s… bigger than I imagined,” I said.
“Her Majesty Queen Claire deemed it to be of suitable size. Anything smaller would’ve had difficulty remaining stable at the speeds your, ah, dragon will be travelling at. Your supplies are already in the hull, and your crew are on board.”
My daydreams of sailing to Mahon with Oak and Oak alone had been crushed days ago, when I realised I’d need someone to navigate for us.
With there being no need to attend to any sails, my crew was only four-strong. Two of them looked excited beyond belief at the prospect of reaching Canth in a week, and the others looked at Oak as though he’d be the death of them. I let those two remain on deck and had the more enthusiastic of the group help me strap Oak into his harness like he was the world’s largest horse.
I gave him a little time to get settled, for the restrictive straps were unfamiliar and initially uncomfortable, and after a great deal of splashing and stretching, he decided he was ready to leave.
I watched the coast as Oak took flight. There was resistance, at first, and the ship shook as though a storm we couldn’t see or hear was pulling waves into the air, but Oak found his stride quickly enough. We cut straight through the ocean as easily as I’d flown through the air that morning, and soon there was nothing but sea and sky all around us.
I’d overcome seasickness some time ago, and though Oak’s speed made the journey smoother, it still took some getting used to the momentum. He didn’t fly as fast as I knew he could, considering the weight of the ship, but his tattered wings beat without fail. On and on he went, flying for days at a time, only ever stopping for an hour or two. He’d sprawl out in the water, face under the surface, and float aimlessly.
I talked to the crew and found them pleasant, for the most part, but it was hard to dedicate myself to the present when I was so excited about what was to come. They treated me with a strange, stiff sort of respect. Either they thought I was more important than I was, or I had not fully comprehended how important I’d become.
With the speed Oak travelled, there was no gentle increase in temperature. Each morning I awoke drenched in more and more sweat, as though the angry sun was drifting ever closer. Had I not been a necromancer, I’m certain my skin would’ve cracked and burnt. I spent my days at the bow of the ship, impatiently gripping the rail as I waited for Canth to come into view, and helped the crew shout orders at Oak when we needed to adjust our course.
The air was thick and stifling and familiar when land crept over the horizon. Breathing was a chore and my chest burnt with the effort. I’d spent the last day in a sluggish haze, but with Port Mahon mere minutes away, no one on Bosma had ever possessed so much energy. I was so eager to make dock that I almost flew straight into a pirate town with a dragon. It was only the distant sound of horns blaring that brought me back to my senses.
They had no idea that Oak was on his way. Dragons were native to Asar alone, and most of the pirates didn’t have the first idea what they were seeing.
“Stop! Oak, that’s close enough!” I called.
Better to get the situation under control before anyone started firing cannons.
“Help me get him out of his harness,” I said to the crew. We drifted on a calm sea as we clambered over the bow and unstrapped him. He got us most of the way there: he swam around to the stern, and with a shove of his front legs, sent us gliding towards the docks.
Grabbing a rope, I half-jumped, half-lowered myself down the side of the ship. I landed in the warm, salty water, and swam to the docks like a fish fleeing a net. Water splashed against my face and the sun blinded me, but I could see it all in my mind: Reis’ hut along the edge of the beach, the temple in the centre of the town, Siren Song full to the brim, and the bright, fierce murals on the side of white, square buildings.
I climbed onto the end of a pier and found a crowd waiting for me. Daggers and swords glinted in the sunlight and it felt as though I was a heartbeat from being banished into the ocean in a stream of red, but Reis was right there in front of me.
They lifted a hand and the masses behind them relaxed. They stood apart from the rest of the pirates, save for two people I didn’t recognise. The first woman was all muscle: she was tall and black with a jaw strong enough to survive the swing from a hammer. Her hair was so short it had likely been shaved off entirely the week before, and when I caught her eye, she didn’t blink. The other woman commanded respect with her mere presence. For all the Queens I had met, I had never known a woman like this.
One look my way and I felt my powers wither to nothing.
She dressed extravagantly, as if to spite the Canthian heat, in a long, thick coat and high boots made from some animal I had never encountered. She was neither Canthian nor Myrosi though she shared a striking similarity to both people, and her voice was rich with something new to my ears.
“Reis,” she said, effortlessly making an order of it.
Frowning, Reis stepped forward and pressed their pistol to my forehead.
“Sorry, kid,” they said.
PART III
CHAPTER XVII
Reis’ pistol made an unsettlingly satisfying sound when it was cocked. I put my hands in the air, not knowing what else to do, and understood intimately that Reis was not in control.
“Sza?” the woman in the long coat asked.
“Kéta Rowan os,” Reis said, not taking their eyes off mine. “Kéta orus os.”
The woman gave a slight nod. Reis felt it without having to turn around. They raised their eyebrows, less I’m sorry and more you know how it is, and holstered their pistol. They held out an arm. I’d gone from pure, honest excitement to confusion-driven fear in such a short space of time that it left me paralysed. When I didn’t move, Reis clicked their tongue, stepped forward, and threw their arm around my shoulders.
“Alright, kid,” they said, ruffling my hair. “Ain’t every day we get a dragon making port here. Didn’t have a bloody clue that it was you with ‘em. I needed to be more than sure.”
“It is me!” I said, almost throwing myself headlong into a hug. It was far too hot for that, and Reis had never been the cuddly sort. Their arm around my shoulder was more of a welcome than I’d hoped for.
“What brings you back so soon? You ain’t set fire to the rest of that continent, have ya?”
“I came back to see Queen Nasrin. To talk to her about Canth’s alliance with Felheim,” I said, remembering how to grin. My brain didn’t register that I’d thrown myself headlong into Canthian: it came to me as easily as breathing in the depths of sleep. “We’re doing it, Reis. Claire’s Queen now. We’ve got Felheim back.”
“Claire?” Reis asked. “Ain’t she dead?”
“Nope!”
“That your doing?”
“Nope!”
“Huh. Sure thing, kid,” Reis said, knowing better than to ask. “You’ve got bloody good timing, though.”
The woman in the long coat stepped forward, and for a split second, my eyes were allowed to scan across the docks. Reis had always kept order in Port Mahon by letting its citizens and visitors alike believe everything happened purely because it happened, rather than by their machinations, but there was a stiff sort of formality that made the place unfamiliar. Seeing rows upon rows of pirates silently stand shoulder to shoulder when there was a dragon splashing around in the ocean was an unnerving feat.
“Szet Rowan os?” the woman asked Reis. “Lat virkénsz? Tu vallá ostayhár.”
Laughing, Reis said, “Tza, tza. Zhoba Rowan os.”
The woman stepped closer, moving in the same way smoke billowed from a fire.
“Rowan,” she said, jade green eyes fixing on mine. There was something endless to them, and I felt I could spend an eternity waiting for them to burst into light like Kondo-Kana’s. “I’ve heard much about you. Much that led me to believe you would not be returning to Canth so very soon.”
“Things are kind of…” I waved my hands vaguely in the air. “You’re, uh. You’re…”
“Yin Zhou,” she confirmed and offered her hand.
The woman she was with sneered over her shoulder, and I didn’t know whether Yin Zhou was inviting me into a trap. Yin Zhou wasn’t supposed to be there. She wasn’t supposed to be real. She was an character from Reis’ stories. A creature of legend and a part of the way the world worked, like the tide or billowing winds. She was a Kondo-Kana who didn’t sleep the ages away.
She wasn’t a necromancer. The draw I felt towards her was not like the one that had radiated from Kondo-Kana and Halla. It was not familial. It was not safe. But it wasn’t cruel or dark, either. I didn’t understand it and had a sinking feeling it wasn’t my place to.
“I…” I took her hand. It felt like anyone else’s; there was no ice in her grasp. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“And I, you. The necromancer of Port Mahon, come all the way from Asar. And by dragon, no less. A remarkable creature; I have never seen one tamed in such a way. Or is this the new practice in Felheim?”
“He isn’t tame. He’s my friend.”
“Hm. A necromancer with a dragon for a friend. Curious.” Yin Zhou looked at him for a moment longer, then promptly lost interest. “Your Canthian is good, for a Felheimer.”
She said it as though it was the most remarkable part of the situation. Her companion, likely a bodyguard of sorts, tapped her on the shoulder and caught her eye. Yin Zhou offered a weary agreement.
“Back to business?” Reis asked, and Yin Zhou hummed.
Getting the feeling I was supposed to join them, I said, “Hang on, I just…” and sprinted down the pier. I’d almost dried off since my last stint in the water and saw to it that it didn’t last long. I headed back to Oak with a splash and placed my hands on his snout as I trod water.
“I’ll be back soon. No one here’s going to hurt you. They’re our friends. Just let me talk to Yin Zhou for a bit and we’ll sort it out.” Oak stopped blowing bubbles in the water at the mention of Yin Zhou and I said, “I know!”
I headed for the beach and waded through the shallow water towards Reis’ hut. With Yin Zhou, her bodyguard, and Reis already out of sight, the pirates of Port Mahon were scattering and dispersing. No small number of them rushed my way, cutting me off on the beach.
“Felheim!” a familiar voice called. “Oi oi! Look what the cat dragged back.”
I turned my head in time to see Tae swing her fist and endured the friendliest punch to the shoulder of all time.
“You gone blind, Tae?” Tizo asked from behind her. “That weren’t no cat I’ve ever seen before.”
My cheeks ached from smiling. Having shown restraint in not hugging Reis, I wrapped an arm around their shoulders.
“I have so much to tell you guys,” I said, not caring that being hugged by two pirates during a Canthian midday was like stepping directly into a furnace. “Let me talk to Yin Zhou and we’ll going to Siren Song, okay?”
“Pssh!” Tae said, dusting herself off as she stepped back. “Don’t go acting like we ain’t got nothing to tell, either. You’re not the only one who’s been up to stuff, Fel. We’re ain’t been pining for your return, day after boring day.”
“We don’t have a dragon,” Tizo pointed out. “So, ah. Felheim. Mate. What’s the chance we could…”
“You can talk to him. He’ll know who you both are. Just don’t overwhelm him, okay? Don’t let the whole port go after him at once.”
“So what you’re saying is, basically, we’re in charge of the whole dragon situation?” Tae asked, eyes gleaming in the same way a blade did before being swung.
“… Tizo’s in charge,” I decided, if only to see betrayal in its purest form claim her.
“Best not to keep Yin Zhou waiting,” Tizo said, and dragged Tae off by the arm.
I knew Yin Zhou had founded Port Mahon close to two hundred years ago. I knew she was from a continent to the south-east of Canth, and that Reis’ stories made it sound like something from another world, torn out of another time; I knew that much of the world beyond my comprehension was only what it was because of her. In spite of all that, I could’ve turned from the hut and never thought of her again, if it meant getting to spend more time with Tae and Tizo.
I might’ve done so, if I didn’t get the feeling Reis would be held accountable for my disappearance.
Inside, Yin Zhou was sat on one of the sofas. She took up the entire thing, arms spread across the backrest, coat billowing around her. I tried to look at the door leading to my old room, tried to absorb the gaping nostalgia I should be at the mercy of, but Yin Zhou kept pulling my gaze back towards her.
And she wasn’t even looking at me.
“The dragon-born isn’t with you?” Yin Zhou asked, and raised a finger in a way that told Reis exactly which drink to fetch her.
“Kouris? No, she stayed behind. In Felheim.”
“A shame,” Yin Zhou said. She took her drink without a thanks or so much as a glance. “Kouris a dear friend of mine. I have not seen her in some years. I hear things are changing in Felheim, however, and thanks to her, in part. Last I visited, Queen Mera was on the throne. What is the state of affairs now?”
I hadn’t heard of Queen Mera. Claire’s grandmother or great-grandmother, perhaps. I shot a glance at Reis, sat at the table in the centre of the room, and they shrugged. More account books than I thought possible to exist at once were sprawled across the table, and I could tell they hadn’t slept in days. There were dark marks beneath their eyes, and exhaustion clung to them in the same way it did to Claire, casting familiar shadows across their face.
“I, well. A lot has happened. Felheim used dragons to destroy Kastelir. Did you know that…? About the dragons?”
