“Foul things. Insult to all dragon-kind.” Ymmen’s feelings were even stronger than mine on the subject of the mechanical dragons—and I didn’t blame him, as the mechanical, clockwork, and steam innards were clad in the stolen and discarded scales of living, breathing dragons.
It must be like seeing someone wearing your friends, I thought with a shiver of horror. At least we Daza gave up prayers of respect for the animals we hunted and skinned. At least we even protected the beasts we also hunted from the wandering prides of wildcats or wolves!
All Inyene was doing was trying to build an army that would overpower any opposition. There was no respect or honor there. Just greed.
Which was why I found myself in this stupid fixed-pole tent. I grumbled as I got myself ready. I could tell from the sounds of the distant Hooping birds somewhere outside that it was before dawn. The sky would be graying and the Plains dark, perhaps with the first mists lying over the ground. I used to love this time of the day, second only to dusk, when the Plains would come alive with mournful birdsong and the calls of the distant herds of antelope, bison, gazelle, and the gigantic bull-like grazers we called the Orma.
“You could leave. Fly with me and the others,” Ymmen suggested, although I could sense through our mental connection that the dragon’s thoughts were tinged with wry acceptance of what he knew my answer would be.
“Ahh, Ymmen—if only…” I said with more than a twinge of regret. And I dearly wanted to see my two friends whom Ymmen was currently looking after: the mage, Montfre, who had worked for Inyene but rebelled, and my god-uncle, Tamin, who had helped me escape from the Mines. But as much as I wanted to see them, I knew that would risk what I had to do here, on this expedition. There were Daza here who needed protecting, and Montfre had already taken the blame for killing Dagan Mar. If any guard saw him or the black dragon, then they were sure to send a messenger or bird back to Inyene to summon the rest of her mechanical dragons to hunt him down!
“I know. I had to ask. Again,” my dragon friend said. It was his way—he was mature even by dragon standards, but there seemed to be some part of his reptilian heart which despaired over the circles that we humans ran around in.
“Ha!” I sensed a blossom of sparks and a lizard’s mirth. Which I guessed meant that I had been right.
But Ymmen knew as well as I did why I had to stay here, with Inyene’s expedition across the ‘Empty’ Plains to find the artifact known as the Stone Crown. I was the one supposed to be navigating them, thanks to my Daza heritage. And I was the one who had been promised, not just my own freedom, but that of my people if I managed to help Inyene find it.
And if Inyene got a hold of the Stone Crown, then she wouldn’t just have her mechanical dragons at her beck and call—she’d also be able to control all of the natural dragon-kind, too…
“Never!” the black dragon growled deep, filling my mind with frenzy and ash.
“No, never,” I swore.
There was a grunt from outside the tent, and the flap of canvas was once again pulled back for the broken-faced guard to glare in at me suspiciously. “You’re talking to yourself again?” I saw his hard eyes flicker across the store boxes and sacks, as he expected an accomplice to be hiding in the shadows.
“It’s a Daza thing,” I said contemptuously, throwing the green cloak around my shoulders, fastening it at my throat and storming towards him so fast he had to step out of the way.
“The Lord Abioye wants you anyway,” the guard growled at me, hurrying to keep pace with me as I marched across our makeshift camp.
“Good.” I announced as haughtily as I dared (I was still, technically, a slave to these Westerners—albeit one who ‘knew’ the way through the Plains). “Because I want to speak to him, too!”
Even to my own ears, my comeback sounded a little weak. Ugh, I sighed.
“I don’t think she needs guarding, Homsgud,” the young Lord Abioye said wearily as I was ushered into his palatial tent by my ‘minder’. It was much larger than the one I was graciously allowed to sleep in, and even had separate tent ‘rooms’ for Abioye’s sleeping quarters, a servant’s lodging for the man ‘trusted’ enough to be Abioye’s personal manservant, and his main meeting area. We were in the main area, which had two small iron fire-holders on long legs, plus at least two lacquered and painted side tables on which were carafes of water and table-wine, as well as thick rugs on the floor.
Old habits die hard, huh? I thought back to Abioye’s rooms in Inyene’s Keep above the Mines of the Masaka. They had been similarly opulent while my people lost fingers and limbs and even their lives in the dark recesses of the world below.
Abioye must have seen my scorn as my eyes moved around the room, as he gave me a nervous half-smile. This was a conversation that we’d had before—it was our second week into the Plains, and I’d already told him exactly how much all this stuff was just slowing us down. Worse still, it was an insult to the people who had to carry it!
But, at least he’s trying. The young man looked down in embarrassment as his hands fiddled with the lace bindings of one of his ‘spare’ shirts he was holding. (Spare! Who can afford to bring even one fine shirt with them, let alone have spares!)
Lord Abioye, with his choppy dark hair and clear blue eyes, cleared his throat suddenly. “Homsgud, I said that would be all, thank you…”
A muttered grunt came from the man still standing behind me. “As you wish, sir.” Homsgud the guard didn’t sound very happy at all, it had to be said, as he sauntered back through the main tent, to the sounds of our camp starting to wake up outside.
He probably doesn’t understand why his good and noble lord chooses to listen to a lowly Daza like me, I thought a little vindictively at Homsgud’s retreating back. Good riddance, I thought.
“I’m folding my own shirts,” Abioye said after a moment, nodding to the stack of not one spare shirt, but what looked like several on one of the side tables.
“Uh…good?” I hazarded. What did he want me to say about it?
“I got rid of Aberforth,” Abioye explained, nodding to the open view of the empty servants’ room. “He was a good manservant—but I was thinking about what you were saying, about how we needed to be leaner and quicker… He’s leaving this very morning with a wagon of”—he looked around distractedly at the room—“oh, this and that…” He appeared to brighten up. “I think it’ll be good. Now when I call for you, we can talk without reservations…” I knew what he meant.
That we could continue with our real plans.
“Are you sending a guard with him?” I asked, dropping my pretense of humility now that I knew there was only us two here.
“What?” Abioye looked up at me in confusion.
I knew that the manservant Aberforth wasn’t a rugged and well-traveled guard like Homsgud and the others—and neither was he one of us Daza, who knew how to live out here in the Plains. “We’re a week out from the Masaka,” I explained wearily as I walked to the table to get a pitcher of water. “There are wildcats and wolves and the occasional stormbear out there…”
“Oh.” Abioye’s fine features suddenly fell. “I wasn’t going to send him back to Inyene’s Keep—I was going to send him to the nearest pass through the World’s End Mountains, and the Middle Kingdom beyond that…” He looked suddenly torn by guilt. “I told him to sell the goods and deliver some letters for me—that way if my sister finds out then she’ll just think I’m continuing to try and garner support from the Middle Kingdom nobles…”