Flames sprang up immediately, burning lower than Lamprophyre had expected, so she breathed out again, hotter this time, and rejoiced in how the fire spread. She heard shouts from within, and the door opened.
Lamprophyre pounced on the first human through the door, grabbing her around the waist and flinging her aside to strike the next building over and then fall limp to the ground. She snatched the second human, tossed him from one hand to the other, then launched him into the air, catching him by the ankle and letting him dangle upside down while he screamed.
Something punched her in the chest, rocking her back on her heels slightly but not hurting her. She dropped the second human and made a grab for Harshod, who darted back, seeming unconcerned about the burning roof just handspans above his head. “You,” he snarled, and aimed his fist at her again.
“Me,” Lamprophyre agreed. “You shouldn’t have hurt Rokshan without making sure I was dead.”
Another blast struck her with no more force than a gentle slap to the ribs. “I thought you were,” Harshod said. “My mistake. It won’t happen again.”
Lamprophyre grabbed for him again. He darted out of the way, farther into the building. She snatched some of the burning reeds off the roof and flung them at him, making him curse. “Answer my questions, and I won’t kill you,” she said.
Harshod laughed. “You don’t have it in you to kill. I’ve been watching you. So generous. So ready to find a non-violent solution. How fitting that instead you’ve incited a war between dragons and humans.”
“That was you. Why did you do it? Your masters told you to?”
Harshod turned and ran deeper into the building, out of sight. Lamprophyre grabbed the sides of the door. She would bring the building down on his head if she had to. She pulled, and then felt the other humans climbing up her back, one on each side. She bucked, twisted, and flung one of the humans off just as the second one struck. Once again Lamprophyre felt a blow to the sensitive spot on her neck. This time, all it did was send a twinge of nerveless pain through her spine and arms and legs. “Ow! Stones take you!” she shouted, and slammed herself backward into the nearest building, spreading her wings as flat as she could. The human let out a grunt and slid off.
Lamprophyre went for the building again, this time tearing up the burning roof. It came apart readily in burning chunks of reeds that smoked as if fighting her fire. She tore handfuls of it away from the wooden frame beneath and tossed them through the widening holes, hoping to hit Harshod. She couldn’t see him through the smoke and flames. She smashed the thin wood of the frame to make a hole big enough to fit her head and neck inside. The laughing fire boiled up through the opening and through another hole, this one in the wall opposite the entrance. Harshod was nowhere in sight.
She pulled her head out to inhale fresh, clear air and saw movement on the far side of the building. Past the smoke billowing from the house, she saw Harshod fleeing westward. Cursing, she rose into the air and sped after him. He was her prey, and he would not escape.
She ran him down only a few dragonlengths away, plucking him off the ground and carrying him off just as she’d done Rokshan all those days ago. Fleeting worry for Rokshan coursed through her, replaced by fury at the male in her hands. “Talk,” she said, “or I’ll drop you.”
“Drop me, and you’ll never learn the truth,” Harshod said.
“We’ll see,” Lamprophyre said, and released him.
He fell screaming less than a dragonlength before Lamprophyre dove and snatched him out of midair. “From this height, a fall might not kill you, but it would hurt worse than anything you can imagine,” she said. “That’s assuming I don’t keep playing with you until I get bored.” She dropped him again. “I can do this all day,” she said when she’d caught him once more. “So it’s up to you. Tell me what your masters wanted, and I’ll let you go.”
“I don’t believe you,” Harshod said.
“I’m not the untrustworthy one here.” She tossed him this time and caught him by the ankle, raising him so his upside-down face was level with hers. “It’s true, you hurt my friend, and I want you to suffer. But it’s more important that Gonjiri not go to war. I want to know the truth, and I want to stop that happening. So I’m willing to bargain for, let’s say, the next twelve beats. After that, I stop caring what happens to you and go back to figuring it out on my own. Your choice.”
Harshod was silent briefly. Finally, he said, “Put me down, and I’ll talk.”
They were almost past the farthest reaches of the city’s outskirts, to where a road cut through cultivated fields just showing green with spring growth. Lamprophyre alit on the road and dropped Harshod, not roughly, at her feet. “First, I want your stones. The artifacts,” she said.
“That wasn’t part of the bargain.”
“Of course it was. The bargain was you do whatever I say, and I don’t turn you into a greasy pyre and eat your entrails.” This bloodthirsty show appealed to her. “You didn’t hear those words? I assure you that’s what I meant.”
Harshod glared at her. Slowly, he removed the erythronite ring, then a similar one with a chunk of pyrite, and tossed both at her feet. The aquamarine bracelet came next, followed by a second bracelet from which dangled a polished oval of agate. Finally, he drew a pendant of chalcedony, so large Lamprophyre had to suppress a sneeze at its strong bitterness, from within the neck of his shirt.
“Where’s the sapphire?” she asked.
Harshod’s eyes widened slightly. “What sapphire?”
She could smell its sweet odor, like overripe cherries. “Please,” she said. “Don’t lie to a dragon about stone. The sapphire. What does it do? Is it like the wand?”
His lip curled, making the black dot on his face move like a living insect. He dug into the pouch at his waist and pulled out a chunk of uncut sapphire smaller than his fist. “Here,” he said, offering it to her.
Lamprophyre shook her head. “Do you think I’m stupid? Just toss it next to the others.” She had no intention of touching it, which made her wonder how she was going to transport it back to Tanajital. Maybe the topaz would protect her from it enough that she could drop it into the river, right at the center where it was deepest.
Harshod shrugged and tossed it into the little pile at Lamprophyre’s feet. “Fine. I’m helpless. What do you want to know?”
Lamprophyre hooked the chalcedony pendant’s chain with her sixth claw and looped it over her wrist. This could repay Sabarna for her help. “Who wants war between Gonjiri and the dragons?”
“Fanishkor, obviously. Even a dragon ought to understand that.” His dismissive tone of voice angered her, but she suppressed her irritation and said nothing. Maybe it was obvious to him, but he clearly hadn’t considered all the possibilities she and Rokshan had. “Gonjiri fights the dragons and loses, Fanishkor overruns Gonjiri. Simple.”
“Except you didn’t count on two people caring about that not happening,” Lamprophyre said.
“No. Why would humans and dragons ever make common cause? You and that whelp of a prince turned my every ploy on its head. Stealing the egg, turning Gonjiri against you…” Harshod laughed. “I thought for sure the poison would work. Kill the dragon queen’s daughter, and nothing would stop her taking her vengeance.”
Lamprophyre decided not to point out why that wouldn’t work. “Well, you’ve failed. And when I tell King Ekanath what you’ve done, that all of this was a Fanishkorite plot, that will be the end of it. So you can go back to your masters and tell them not to bother anymore.”
Harshod laughed again. “Of course it worked. You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I—what do you mean? I captured you.”
“You fled the scene of your attack on the prince. That makes you look even more guilty than his burned body did. Once that’s reported to the king, nothing will convince him that dragons aren’t evil. He’ll order out the troops, they’ll march on the mountains, and I’ll have the war I wanted.” Harshod smiled. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”
Lamprophyre sucked in a breath. “But Rokshan will tell them what happened when he wakes up.”
“If he wakes. Even if he survived the blast to receive a healer’s attention, the treatment will have him unconscious for at least five days. Long enough to put the Army out of his reach. It’s too late.”
His deep chuckle pained her more than an evil laugh would have, his eyes mocked her helplessness, and without thinking she balled up her fist and punched him in the stomach. It knocked him off his feet, and she was certain she felt something rupture. She didn’t care.
She stood over him, fire roiling in her second stomach, and thought about setting him on fire as he’d done Rokshan. He was responsible for so much evil. She was sure Hyaloclast wouldn’t think twice about doing it. But she’d promised to let him go—or was a promise to an evil human anything worth keeping? She felt a pain in her right fist and realized she’d unconsciously let her claws extend just enough to prick her flesh. The pain woke her from her reverie. She should never have promised anything so rash, no matter what the bargain. And yet she had.
She heard running footsteps less than a beat before something slammed into her flank, sending a jolt of pain through her leg. “What—” she said, turning. One of Harshod’s companions darted back, brandishing a club with a chunk of jasper bound to its tip by long strands of copper wire. She turned back just as Harshod flung himself between her legs, grabbing the sapphire.
She kicked the other male in the stomach, flinging him away, and then Harshod was clinging to her arm and scrabbling his way up to her shoulder. She tried to grab him, but the pain in her leg dulled her reflexes, and in the space of two beats he was perched in the notch where Rokshan rode. More pain exploded at the back of her head, but it was not as terrible as before, and after a moment’s blindness she realized she was still upright and could move.
“That’s it,” she snarled, and took to the sky.
She sped upward for a dozen beats, with Harshod clinging to her and pressing the sapphire into her vulnerable spot. The pain grew so intense she was afraid of blacking out again, of falling out of the sky and smashing both of them. But that was unacceptable. She swallowed the urge to vomit and dove, nearly vertically, faster and faster. She pulled up at the last possible moment and rose, again nearly vertically. The sapphire fell away from her neck as Harshod gripped her ruff with both hands. Lamprophyre snarled at him. This was only the beginning.
Half-blind, she leveled off twenty dragonlengths above the ground and flew away from Tanajital, faster and faster until she heard Harshod groan with the effort of holding on. Then she banked sideways and rolled. Harshod’s weight slipped, one of his hands let go her ruff, and he dangled helplessly from her neck. Lamprophyre shrugged her shoulders, but he clung to her as if he’d bound himself there. Frustrated, Lamprophyre rolled again, and for the briefest moment felt his other hand reach up to grab hold. Then he was gone.
Dizzy from her aerial maneuvers, at first his absence meant nothing to her addled brain. Then she came to herself with a jolt and dove after him. She still couldn’t see clearly, and to her Harshod was an oblong shape falling faster than she could fly in that state. She heard him cry out once before hitting the ground, and it struck her to the heart. Slowing her pace, she landed beside him, swaying once before collapsing.
“Help…”
She sat up, astonished. He was still alive? Blood pooled beneath his body, his bones were clearly shattered, but his lips were moving in a soundless plea.
Fury rushed through her. He had tried to kill her and Rokshan both, had attacked her more than once—and he had the nerve to beg her for his life. She pushed herself to her feet. “No,” she said in the firmest voice she could manage. “Sparing you would make a mockery of everyone who’s suffered for your actions. And you’d never stop trying to hurt me and my people. You don’t deserve my pity.”
Harshod’s eyes met hers. Then the light drained from them, and he sagged, limp and motionless. Lamprophyre closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, trying to control the dizziness. Then she looked around. She’d flown far from Tanajital, far from the cultivated fields, but she needed to leave this place before anyone saw her with Harshod’s body. Explaining why his death was earned would be virtually impossible.
The two who’d been with Harshod were gone when she returned, as were the other artifacts. She felt too tired and sick to care about tracking them down. She flew in slow circles, low to the ground, sniffing for the sapphire, and found it some dozen dragonlengths from Harshod’s body in a patch of grass whose sweetness clashed horribly with the odor of the sapphire. Gingerly, using just two claws, she picked it up. Nothing happened. Maybe it was designed specifically to affect that strange sensitive spot at the back of her head. She dropped it in the middle of the Green River anyway. It was not a weapon she wanted to hand over to any adept.
Flying slowly helped clear her head, and once she was past the river, she accelerated until she was flying at full speed over the roofs of Tanajital. She needed to find Rokshan, to wake him up. If a healer could make him unconscious, a healer could rouse him. Then they would convince Ekanath not to go to war. However afraid and angry the king was, surely he wasn’t stupid as well.
She approached the palace and flew around it, circling the training grounds. No soldiers filled the space, and Lamprophyre’s hopes rose. Rokshan had woken on his own and told everyone the truth. There would be no war. She clung to that as she finished her circle and landed outside the palace’s enormous front entrance.
The grand doors were shut, and no human was visible anywhere. Lamprophyre felt the wood all over, looking for a way to open the doors. In the embassy, the back doors had handles that let you pull the doors open when you were on the inside. These doors were flat and blank, and she couldn’t tell which direction they were made to open. Aside from smelling faintly of a spicy wood she didn’t recognize, they were completely uninteresting and very bland compared to the bright gilt of the palace.
She ran her hands down the center and found a grain too regular and straight to be natural. She sniffed it. This was familiar; it was the place where the two halves of the door joined. Interesting, but not useful to her since she couldn’t figure out how to open it.
She pounded on the door with her fist. “Somebody open this door!” she shouted. “I need to see Prince Rokshan. Please, someone help!”
No one answered. She listened, but didn’t hear any thoughts nearby. The possibility that the palace was empty passed through her mind, and she dismissed it. The palace was large enough to hold many humans, and there was no way they’d all left it at once. They were just hiding from her. Frustrated, she drummed on the door with both hands and shouted, “I don’t want to break this thing down, but I really need to see Prince Rokshan! Let me in!”
Still nothing. The door rattled on its hinges, bouncing slightly and revealing the crack where the doors met. Lamprophyre regarded it more closely. She pushed hard on one half of the door, and the crack appeared again. Carefully, she fitted her claws into the crack and pulled, not very hard so she wouldn’t simply tear through the wood. The door moved slightly, then stopped. It felt as if it were caught on something.
Lamprophyre looked farther down. She could barely see past the wider crack, not big enough for her to fit her hand inside, but there was something there, a piece of wood lying perpendicular to the crack. That didn’t make sense. If it were there to stop someone opening the door—
Lamprophyre felt stupid. These doors opened inward, not outward, and the thing the door was caught on was its own hinge. She pulled on the door again, once more exposing the inner beam, and slid her claws through the gap. With a slash, she cut a deep groove into the beam, not quite enough to cut it in half, but enough to weaken it. She removed her hand, took a deep breath, and shoved the door as hard as she could. The door burst open, snapping the beam with a loud crack and making Lamprophyre stumble from the sudden lack of opposition. She was in.
The door was easily wide enough to admit her, and the cave—the hall—beyond was even wider. Her toe claws clicked across the hard, flat stones whose glossy surface didn’t smell like real stone, and she had to duck her head to avoid a metal web gleaming with fire that lit the hall dimly, as if the king depended on fireflies to provide him light. Staircases wide enough to admit her, if the steps had been deep enough to fit her feet, stood to the left and right, ascending to a couple of doors much too small for her. Another arched entrance lay straight ahead between the staircases. She might be able to fit inside that entrance if she crouched low and kept her wings furled tight. Aside from that, she saw no way for her to exit and no humans to tell her where Rokshan was.
“Hello?” she called out. “Someone? Please, I need to speak with Prince Rokshan.”
Distantly, she heard thoughts, mostly terrified ones. Entering the palace was a bad idea if she wanted the humans to trust her, but she was certain they’d brought Rokshan here, and without him, she had no chance of stopping the war. But there were other minds, thinking invasion and no idea what she was thinking and Rokshan dying, and that last one filled her with desperation. “Help me, please!” she shouted.
A female with long black hair appeared at the top of the left-hand staircase. “Calm down,” Anchala said. “You can’t help him if you scare everyone.”
“I’m not trying to scare anyone,” Lamprophyre said, frustration taking the place of desperation. “Where’s Rokshan? Is he—he’s not badly hurt, is he?”
“He’s alive, but not much more than that. What burned him?”
“An erythronite ring. It’s an artifact. A Fanishkorite wanted to make it look like I burned Rokshan so Gonjiri would attack the dragons and leave itself open to Fanishkorite attack.” Now it sounded so obvious she felt incredibly stupid.
Anchala looked at Lamprophyre without approaching. “And you’re here to stop that happening.”
“Yes.” Lamprophyre didn’t like the sound of Anchala’s voice, flat and emotionless to match her tired, grieving thoughts.
“It’s too late,” Anchala said. “The Army’s troops crossed the border into dragon territory two hours ago.”