NORTH OF THE WIND

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Chapter Two: Breathless

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On earth as in heaven, we will be strong together
On earth as in heaven, we will be untethered
No martyr can ever divide our beating hearts

How I hold on, free from ever
Seeing your light
Touched you, so loved you

[Globus: Prelude]

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Dusk falls in blaze-orange skies and purple shadows while we are still seven or eight miles out from the shelter. Alone, I could have made it, but not now that I have Dart, Shana, and a pair of Runners to consider. The Runners slow, unwilling to travel the treacherous mountain passes at night. If not for them, I probably would have transformed a mile outside the city limits. Runners, like all good sane natural creatures on Soa's earth, don't like Dragoons.

We find a promising nook between two great boulders split apart by ancient ice, which should keep out the worst of the night winds. A creek burbles nearby. "Tomorrow night we'll sleep in a real cabin," I say, dismounting. "For tonight, it will have to be like old times."

I didn't quite expect a smile, but Dart doesn't even seem to hear. He slides down from his mount's back without ever letting go of Shana. He moves more stiffly than the ride alone would make him.

His Runner shies away at once, eager to get away. It can feel the dragonfire leaking out of him, in flickers around his eyes and lips and fingernails. I tether both beasts at some distance and make camp alone--a poor camp, constructed with just my hands, a penknife, and a roll of canvas from the saddlebags for both groundsheet and windscreen. There is enough piney deadfall to make an evergreen roof over us, though I am covered in sweat, sap, and needles by the time it's finished. It's never taken so little time to ruin a set of clothes.

The whole time, Dart sits with his back against the granite, deaf and blind to the world. The girl in his arms never stirs, nor makes a sound.

It's a warm enough night. Once satisfied we won't die of exposure, I go over to the pair.

"Can I see her, Dart?"

I didn't waste any breath in Deningrad suggesting we take her to a house of healing; there are better doctors between here and Seles that he could have taken her to if he'd thought it beneficial. It lies clear as glass between us: he came to me as a Dragoon.

And the soul of the White-Silver Dragon is fully awake now, pressing against the insides of my ribs and the backs of my eyes. The scene in the carriage is almost forgotten. We're here again, monster-men in the mountains, power humming like a brewing storm all around us. I ache to let go and let white fire sweep over all of us.

Not yet. I crouch to examine the unconscious girl. His arms tighten the slightest bit. "Dart?" I say again, and with evident reluctance, he lets me pull the blankets away from her face and neck.

Her brow is cool (almost too cool) instead of feverish, like I expected. Her heart beats lightly as a dove's under my fingers. She looks terribly thin, but Dart won't let her go to be examined. He sits mute, reeking of pain, while I puzzle through my mental catalogue of wounds and signs of plague. Was she ill, had she fallen, when was the last time she ate? He doesn't answer.

I catch his eyes following my hands, so I know he hears. He just doesn't want to tell me.

It's as if he spent all the imagination he has just coming to me, all the way from their grubby little hamlet in the backwaters of Serdio, the place he never really wanted to leave even knowing he would never be content. There are just no words left in him. If I were Wink, I would know the right soothing things to say to coax him, but I can only be myself.

Here's the truth that the people of Mille Seseau haven't realized, and the Dragoons never asked. I am not a healer. I am not kind or gentle or peaceful, and I don't know the first damned thing about making anyone feel better. It's all the Dragon's doing.

It's different for me than it was for Shana, who really is sweet and tenderhearted, and hates seeing people hurt. I suspect the Dragon would have brought people back to life for her, if she ever had the nerve to try it. It burns in me, cold and clear and angry, because that's who I am.

I don't heal because I'm nice. All I can do is turn all that cold white light onto all the badness and hurt in a person, and burn it away because I am so furious with it and with myself, for all the badness in me that's never been cleaned away. But I don't know what I can do for Shana, and this poor idiot who loves her won't tell me.

My well of patience has never held more than one bucket's worth. Dart's lack of answers wins him no sympathy. "At least tell me when she got like this, you bonehead!" I hiss.

At that, his old-man, slate-blue eyes come up from Shana's waxy face. He's measured every sluggish heartbeat of that time.

"Almost two months since she went--still," he says slowly. "I left Seles that day. It started earlier. Maybe even when the Moon set."

A chill prickles my skin. I blame it on the coming night, folding my arms so he won't see. "How about you get a fire started, and tell me from the start," I order. He seems to respond better to commands. The irony hits me: Dart Feld is the only being in history to command the bloodlust and battlethirst of the Divine Dragon, and not be overwhelmed by it. I push away the thought of how far he's fallen.

Thank Soa I'm good at barking orders.

Settling Shana tenderly in her cocoon of blankets, he does as I say. He uses flint and tinder, like ordinary men, when I know he could burn the mountainside to a cinder if he wanted. He was never ambitious, like some of us. The warm glow licks up the edges of our camp as the last of the daylight leaves the sky.

The firelight carves ghost-sigils into his face while he speaks. From the way he begins his story, I rule out accident or injury as a cause. "She was quiet after we took her back from Melbu Frahma," he starts. "More'n usual, I mean. She's always been pretty quiet. She never talked about it later."

"Did you ever ask?"

"No." He frowns. "Why would I? If she wanted to talk about it, she would."

Men. An old, old surge of anger comes and goes. "Whatever. Go on. So she was quiet. Was she pretty happy otherwise?"

"I think so. She didn't smile much, but she said she was happy." Sitting beside her again, Dart smoothes his silent moonwife's hair, although only his touch disarrayed it in the first place. "She smiled at our wedding," he remembers aloud, softly.

I picture that homely plank-and-mud-brick-chapel, one rusty bell its only treasure--Dart in a Serdian groom's sky-blue jacket, hair brushed down with water. It's dangerous to dwell there. "And?" I probe, too sharply.

He doesn't notice. "We moved into my old teacher's house. Tasman died while we were away and left it to me in his will. She liked having our own place, talking like she never wanted to leave Seles again. A month after we got married, I took her to Bale to see Albert and Emille, but the whole time she kept looking around like she couldn't wait to go. Like she was lost. Emile was nice about it. Said Shana was probably just overwhelmed, you know, since we'd never seen Albert much as a king before, and here we were sleeping on golden sheets in the guest room. But when we went home, she kept looking around like that. Started standing in front of the mirror, touching her face over 'n over. Started…" He shuddered. "Started waking up in a panic, asking me where we were."

"How did she do as a wife?"

"Oh, you know Shana, all she ever wanted to do was cook and clean and have about a hundred Dart Juniors running around underfoot."

"It's the last part I was asking about," I interject. I keep my voice level.

Dart isn't as good as a Sacred Sister at hiding his blushes. He drops his eyes, sparing both of us. "Like any new wife, I guess," he answers. "She cried the first couple of times. I didn't hurt her or anything," he adds, quick, like a guilty man. "I love her. You know that. When she got spooky, like I was saying, I didn't want to push her, but she kept holding onto me, so I figured she was okay. I love her," he repeated.

I put another log on the fire. An old, old fear of the dark mumbles inside me. The night isn't full yet, but I learned when I was young to have a fire burning high and hot before the blackness settles in, so that you don't have to poke around in the dark for dry wood. "And then?"

"She kept getting quieter and more pulled in. She stopped leaving the house, at least when people were around, though sometimes I'd come back from work and she'd be out in the woods or up in the hills around town, all by herself. I was working with the rest, rebuilding Seles and tearing down Hellena Prison down the road. There was always something to do. But I'd find her just staring at the sky, or tilting her head like she heard things that weren't there. She began sleepwalking, too."

Dart pauses. Some vast-winged bird sweeps low overhead, just past the fire, and vanishes into the dusk. "I had to learn to cook. She wasn't up to it anymore. It got hard even persuading her to eat. I went to talk to the doctors in Bale and Lohan, and they just said she'd had a bad experience and she'd come out of it when she was good and ready."

"Was she still talking then?"

"A little. Just to me." He shakes his head, ghoul-eyed in the dim light. "It didn't always make sense. About Mayfil, like she'd seen it herself, and Shirley waiting thousands and thousands of years for her comrades to join her in peace. I remember one time her saying she wished she could haunt me like that. I didn't like the sound of that. She… she kissed my hands, and said not to worry, she didn't think she'd be able. A lot of talk like that. I'd want to talk about what to name our babies and she'd want to talk about souls. That wasn't like Shana."

"Maybe it's just a side of Shana you never saw before," I interject. After the White-Silver Dragon abandoned her and put its magnificent, exhilarating curse on me instead, I spent several three-candle nights in Wink's vacant room in the Crystal Palace, talking with Shana. I never forget those nights, any more than a man forgets falling in love.

But it's one of Dart's flaws to think in black and white, his opinions set in stone. He has one unalterable image in mind of his beloved. In the end, it hadn't been much of a stretch from little sister to bride. On the other hand, I can't shake my own impressions of the girl: haunted eyes and a smile not strong enough to hide the overwhelming air of tragedy that hangs about her.

Distracted, I'm not prepared for what Dart announces next. "She talked about you a few times, too, Miranda."

"Me? Why?" We weren't ever comrades.

"She liked you."

"Shana liked everyone." I correct both of us. "Likes."

"Not everyone. And she likes you extra special." He shrugs. "She said she was glad the Dragon left her while she could still see it, so she knew it went to someone stronger and braver."

Once, she entrusted them to me, as if I could do the least thing for the Dragoons except kill and bleed beside them. I can't even make up a single comforting word for her young husband, who clutches her like a dog guarding its supper.

He doesn't seem to notice the lack. Now he's talking, and it matters more to get the words out of him than for me to have anything valuable to trade.

"Then she pretty much stopped talking altogether," he continues. "She still listened, though. She'd nod or shake her head. Kept meeting my eyes the whole time, though if anyone else came over, she'd avoid them and hide in the bedroom until they left. People didn't visit much. That was about three months back. She slept a lot, and when she wasn't sleeping you'd think she was sleepwalking. I didn't know what to do, so I would just sit and hold her. I tried to take her to Shirley's shrine once, just in case, but she started crying and wouldn't let up when I tried to get her to leave the house."

I have two particular tones of voice, and a third most people never hear. The Dragoons mostly got the dry, cool, impatient tone. Now, sitting cross-legged across from my former comrade-in-arms and his bride, I fall into my diplomat's flat, disinterested tone. I learned it from watching men lie and feign assurance neither they nor I could claim. I talk as if I have some notion what's wrong, to give Dart confidence. "Did you go by yourself?"

"No." He wrinkles his brow. "I couldn't do that. I need to stay near her." And he holds her just a little closer. One of the Runners, which had been quietly tearing up the moss, lifts its head, ears back.

"What then?"

Dart presses his knuckles to his mouth and doesn't say anything for a little while. They're split and dirty, with dried blood deep in the cracks of skin. His eyes move from Shana to the fire and back again. When he does speak, he's quiet. I lean in to hear. His recounting is so vivid, so tangible, that I can almost see it myself.

"She was up and down for a few weeks. She could be pretty active, sitting with me in the kitchen, handing me stuff if I needed it. Then she'd go dead still and wouldn't look around even if I called. Wouldn't even get out of bed. I… I told people she was sick, even her folks, trying to keep them from coming in. Then this rumor went around that she was…" He swallows. "That she was pregnant. Going to have a child. That didn't help much.

"One night--"

He cuts off, rubs his thumb into his eyes. I think about putting my hand on his shoulder, but he goes on before I muscle through my hesitation. "One night I woke up all of a sudden and she wasn't next to me. The bed was still warm. I got up. She wasn't in the house, and the door was unlatched."

"You locked your door?" I hadn't thought Seles a large enough village to house thieves. Trespassing becomes awkward rapidly when one's cousin is the victim.

Dart nods uneasily. "I didn't want Shana wandering around. But that night she must have been clear enough to work the latch." The image of Shana locked in like an infant, like an animal, gives me chills.

But he isn't done. His nightmare is still rising. "I didn't even get shoes on, just ran out to find her. It was after midnight, hours still to go before dawn. This kind of night, it used to be bright as day in Seles, but now that the Moon's Set, I could barely see to walk. But at the edge of town I saw a little light, and followed it, and it was Shana in her nightgown, sitting on a rock on the hill that overlooks Seles.

"I went up. I thought she was sleepwalking, so I'd grabbed a robe for her. When I came up, she looked right at me. She spoke. She was all there for the first in I don't know how long. And I hoped." Dart puts his hand over his heart, nails digging into his shirt. "Soa damn it, I hoped. Especially when she said my name." We both look at Shana, filling in the voice we remember. "She said, 'Dart, I'm scared.'

"I hugged her as close as I could. She hadn't said anything to me in so long. I told her, don't be scared, I've got you. I'm not letting go.

"She said, 'I know you won't want to. I just don't think you'll have anything to hold onto.' So I held her tight, feeling her breathe. I didn't know what she was talking about, I was just happy that she was talking again. We sat and watched the sky get light in the east and the little moons set. I said that we should go home before people start waking up. She put her face up and kissed me, hard enough it hurt." Dart touched his lips, remembering, then laid the same finger across hers.

" 'Try not to love me too much when I'm gone.' "

He turns his face back to me with the worst grimace of a smile I've ever seen. "And that was it. She's never said another word. I carried her back to the house, but she was done. Wouldn't move, wouldn't even stand. Like she was asleep with her eyes open. I shut them myself.

"I left for Deningrad that afternoon."

His tale told, he refocuses on the pretty, lifeless little doll he brought to me. He digs his arms under her limp weight and resettles her onto his lap, keeping the blanket wrapped securely around her.

This isn't normal, isn't right, although who can say what is normal for a Dragoon? Or for a Moon Child?

I wait for him to ask me to save her. It hasn't crossed his tongue yet, though I've known it since I laid eyes on him. The soul of the Dragon is crying for release, hammering on the backs of my eyeballs and making my hands tremble with the need to surround and protect. I hold back. I seal my lips against the pressure. Even seeing his heartbreak, sharing his nightmare, there is too much that's proud and cold in me to make it easy for him.

Ask me, Dart, I command him silently. Deaf, he rocks his beloved like a dead baby.

After hearing scary stories as a child, my father would hold me in his arms until my heart stopped racing. Sometimes, the Queen still does. There are no arms here for me right now, so I lean back with my hands laced across my knees and jut my chin against the dark. "Dart, why didn't you take her to the Winglies?" The thought has been turning over in my mind for a while now. Their magic, and their wisdom of the strange things of the world, is greater than mine could ever be.

Dart snorts, surprising me with his bitterness. "The Winglies? They don't like us Dragoons. They'd have prodded and picked and probably done nothing at all."

I could never believe that the Winglies had forgiven the Dragoons for the Dragon Campaign, no matter how much they smile and offer their help and their too-sweet tea when their own lives are on the line. I didn't expect Dart to have the same insight. On the other hand, he did know Rose better than all of us, and Rose knew Winglies even better than Meru, who was one.

The wind chases the shadows down the mountain. The shelter I built keeps the sharpest gusts from reaching us, but enough curls around the sides of the boulders to flush sparks out of the coals. They rise like whirling red stars around us. I bat them aside before they can burn me. Dart ignores them, though they cluster thick as fireflies. He kisses just above Shana's ear, where the firelight glows golden-red on her dirty hair.

"Even Shirley couldn't help her, back when she fell sick," he muses aloud, "not as a ghost. It was the White-Silver Dragon's soul that saved her then. It was all I could think of. As soon as she went still, I couldn't get you out of my mind."

He's lifting his eyes to meet mine. I turn away just in time, biting my lips shut. We need more firewood--an excuse to avoid this moment.

No good. He follows, standing with Shana in his arms. She must weigh no more than a large doll. "Miranda, if anyone can help her, it's gonna be you," he insists.

My heart thumps with the Dragon's pulse. "Dart, I don't have the faintest idea what's wrong with her. Don't get your hopes up."

"You're the White-Silver Dragoon. You have all the power in the world."

"I never claimed--"

He drops to his knees, laying Shana at my feet like an offering to a goddess. As I recoil, he grabs my hand in both of his (such big, scarred hands!) The flames gleam along his face and armor.

"Please, Miranda, I need you."

Maybe it's the way Shana crumpled across my boots. Maybe it was the way he said please, begging like a little boy who's never wanted anything more. It could even be because I'm a fool who'll grasp at any chance to prove I'm any good to the world, whether my Sisters see it or not. It might just be that he touched my hand.

Whatever the reason, I surrender. The Dragoon takes over me.

The night turns brilliant around me. Every cinder radiates a thousand colors. Every pine needle and blade of grass becomes luminescent. As the light rises, I shut my eyes to keep from going blind. Still, I feel the White-Silver Dragon rising like the dawn inside. The warmth of Dragoon armor races from my chest to my fingertips, taking my turn and sweaty clothing and turning it to iridescent scales and living gold. I hold my breath to feel the shuddering weightlessness of bones hollowing, arching my back while wings of steel and gossamer reshape my human silhouette.

My feet leave the ground without a thought. I open my eyes to a world carved of gemstones, magnified in every detail. Darkness becomes a word without meaning. I can see the she-wolf, eyes glowing and fur rippling as she hunts four miles up the mountain, with equal clarity as the individual feathers of the owl roosting above our heads. The lights of the windows of the Crystal Palace seem as near as the cricket frozen in terror at my feet. The ache is gone.

I reach up and gather the light of the stars into my fists. I wrap the last glimmer of the sunset around my fingers like a ribbon. One freezes and the other is still faintly warm, and together they burn. They sing to me, the piping of the stars in harmony with the fading relentless bugle of the sun, so much sweeter now that the discordant thrum of the Moon That Never Sets has been silenced.

The Dragon, soul of light and tragedy, cries inside to add its song to this. Holding my breath becomes too hard. I throw my head back and yell. Even my hoarse voice is transfigured into music by the Dragoon's dawning.

With my razor eyes and my hands full of light, I look down at my companions. Dart Feld looks so small and brittle on his knees. The presence of the soul of the Divine Dragon emanates from his midsection like a bloodstain. Every cut and scar he has ever taken stands out so white on his sunburned skin that he looks stitched together. A patchwork man, I think, about to rip at the seams with the power and the grief inside.

I could put his eyes out with a touch, break in all his ribs with a blow. I could take his poor head between my nails and kiss his cracked lips. But his eyes are on Shana.

Shana, his bride.

Dart glows in my light, every vein and pulsing muscle laid bare before my eyes. Shana is gray. Her eyelids are as still as carved stone, where any dreamer's would have twitched with little visions. From what feels like miles above, suspended above the world by the unfurling of these broad wings, I count the pulses in her throat where the big arteries lie.

The blankets over her flat chest are still.

I bend down, weightless, transcendent, curling my knees up under me without ever touching ground. My hand looks like an angel's next to Dart's--like the sun itself beside Shana's colorless skin. I touch her eyelids with my fingertips and lay my palm under her nose and mouth. With the Dragon in my soul I reach out for anything to hold, something to fight on behalf of this sad, sweet girl.

Soa's sake, I search, white light overflowing from me like a bursting levee, and it flows and eddies around her and doesn't sink in. She slips through my fingers.

Dart whispers words I can't hear. My tongue is frozen to the roof of my mouth. If time stopped, I would feel less horror, but it crawls on. I feel it passing under my radiant fingers in the beating of Shana's baby-bird heart.

"Dart, she…"

"Yeah. I know."

She isn't breathing at all.