THE DEVIL CAME KNOCKING
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It was in the lobby when I set my sights on you
I should have kissed you in the elevator
But I was too scared to
It was in the morning when I made up my mind
I want you staplegunned right to my side all the time
Do I have to spell it out for you
Or scream it in your face?
The chemistry between us could destroy this place
[The Spill Canvas: "Staplegunned"]
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It started with the child.
Toddling after his father's longer stride, he fell and bloodied his knee on the grit of the road. Shirley set down her bucket of water and knelt to inspect the damage. It wasn't bad. "Shh, shh," she crooned, as the child sucked in a lungful of air to wail. "You're not hurt."
The scarlet rope of her hair, braided to keep it out of the way, slid over her shoulder. The bright color distracted the child. He seized it in a grubby fist. Shirley gritted her teeth and endured. At least he wasn't crying. When he flung his warm arms around her neck, she stiffened. There was his father returning for him, though. She patted the child's back and forced a smile.
"Thanks, friend," the man said. She returned his son gratefully. The touch of the child's small, soft hands made the hair on her neck and arms stand on end.
She didn't recognize the dark-skinned man. It had been a long time since the human rebellion had been small enough for her to know faces, if not names. Now they filled a city and a half: ten thousand soldiers in Fort Magrad, their families and other noncombatants moving up the mountain into the half-built megalopolis of Vellweb. Day by day, the walls climbed toward the sky. Clouds of brick dust rose to choke the sun. Centermost and above the streets, suspended by arches, the Dragoon Towers cast ever-lengthening shadows. Two were already completed, and a third nearly so. Syuveil's design called for seven in all.
Zieg thought it was enough that the five of them fought for Vellweb's continued existence. The Dragoons took the most risks, threw themselves into the boil of Wingly magic as if they were immortal, sacrificed their very humanity for the power and insanity a dead dragon's soul offered them. Sweating over the city and the fields that fed it—that was for the other human refugees.
The lesser ones.
Shirley did not agree. Neither did Belzac. Syuveil, the gangly scholar with the androgyne's face, said that his writing was his work. Shirley couldn't say what Rose thought because Rose didn't seem to think much about anything. The black-haired girl always looked slightly surprised by what happened around her. She had never done manual labor in Charle's court. The way Zieg treated her—his princess and black goddess—it didn't seem likely she would here, either.
It fell to Shirley to do Rose's share. Belzac did for the other two men. Without Zieg's approval, with Diaz's tacit permission, the two of them continued to take their turns among the other laborers.
Food was an urgent matter. The rapid growth of the human population placed heavy demands on the farms around Vellweb, especially now that the Wingly weathercasters withheld rain from the skies over Gloriano. Crews of workers in long lines carried buckets of water from the deep wells to the fields, while another set of crews—Belzac included—dug what would eventually become irrigation channels. It was hard work, but the former slaves reminded each other that what they did was for their own benefit, by their own choice. Shirley used it to remind herself that she was still only human.
Not everyone in Vellweb saw her as such, anymore.
She picked up her bucket and rejoined the line. The father of the clumsy child, however, continued to stare. "I haven't seen you with this crew before," he said. Shirley shrugged and ducked her head. He scooped his boy up under his arm and kept pace with her. "What's your name? Are you new here?" he pressed.
She evaded the question and his searching eyes. "I shift crews from time to time." Soa wither him, let him be satisfied with that.
But now the other slaves around her were taking notice. "I don't know her either," she heard one say. "Hair like that, you'd remember her."
It was a man up the line who looked back, started, and dropped his bucket. Water spilled across the cracked soil. "By the Tree," he gasped, loud enough for all to hear, "That's Dragoon Shirley!"
"Shirley!"
"Shirley the Radiant!"
"Dragoon Shirley!"
The line dissolved into chaos. The former slaves abandoned their tasks and crowded around the red-haired woman. They cried her name. A thicket of hands reached out for her-begging for blessings, for a touch; clutching at her sleeves and skirts; withered limbs and infants thrust toward her for miracles. Their fingers tore at her hair.
Shirley looked for escape, but everywhere she turned, more open mouths howled for her. The din grew as word spread: one of the Dragoons, stepped down from the heavens in the shape of a mortal woman. The crowd surged against her. Those in the front held onto her to keep from being dragged away or trampled underfoot. Her sleeve tore. The sound of her name became a maddened chant. She shielded her face with her hands. The Dragoon Stone on her breast was cold and dead. Her soul screamed for wings, for flight, but she could not fight against these people.
Then wings did wrap around her, but they were not her own. The voice of the mountains rumbled through the clamor, silencing other voices.
"Get back!"
Shirley uncovered her face. Belzac, hearing the commotion, fought through the press of bodies to her side. He towered over her, armored and alight with the power of the dragon in him. The big man's face was dark with anger. At the sight of him, the crowd retreated. His wings flared out like sheets of crystal, refracting blinding light among them.
Disheveled and shaken, Shirley reached out to him. Belzac looked down, and the flecks of green stone in his eyes softened. He picked her up and set her on his shoulder like a bird, out of reach. The workers realized his intention too late. They rushed forward again to claw at empty air as the Golden Dragoon leapt into the sky, taking their white messiah with him.
In the air, Belzac didn't speak. He glowed with a deep heat different than the blaze of the naked sun. Shirley wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed her eyes shut.
A thousand feet above, they landed, touching down lightly on the broad stone walk ringing the Towers. Belzac set Shirley on her feet. As the heat of the transformation faded from him, Shirley stepped away, taking stock of her new bruises, her torn clothing. Someone had yanked out several strands of her hair. Her hands trembled. In another five minutes, she would have been torn to pieces.
She was looking down at the ruined sleeve when Belzac touched her shoulder. She flinched. "Sorry," Belzac said. His voice became as low and gentle as it had been terrifying. "Are you alright?"
"Yes. You came just in time." Shirley forced a smile. "Thank you."
Belzac smoothed the hair that had come loose of her braid, then let his hand fall. Shirley avoided his eyes. She knew the look of concern and love she would find there. She was angry at having needed his help-rescued from her own people!—angrier still that he didn't mind. Belzac would never ask her for anything in return, nothing that would balance the scales between them.
She felt his eyes on her. The question he had asked the day the White-Silver Dragon came for her was always burning in the air between them, no matter how many months passed. It always would. Why did he insist on being hurt? Why did he make her hurt him? The anger flared.
She tugged her blouse straight and looked straight at him. Belzac gazed at her, a sad quirk lingering on his lips. There was such infuriating patience and understanding in that look.
He opened his mouth. Shirley spoke first, so that she did not have to hear. "I'm going to find Rose."
Belzac shut up. Shirley left, walking quickly, before her flash of anger turned to tears.
.
Her red hair had always made her stand out, even as a child. Her aunt, trying to spare her, had kept it shorn so close it left her almost bald. One day an overseer noticed the cherry-red curls defiantly sprouting from her head and ordered her to let them grow long. She had rarely cut her hair since.
Her master owned a vast garden near the Birth City, Deningrad, and slaves to tend it. Deningrad, with its crystal spire visible from miles away, was the only Wingly city to be permanently earthbound. Mothers of all the enslaved races came here to receive approval for their offspring—assisted in giving birth if they were favored; their pregnancies terminated and the little half-formed bodies ripped from their wombs if they were not. Winglies in more distant locations sent in requests for authorization to expand their slaveholdings. The breeding program was rigorously controlled. The punishments for bearing an illicit child were severe, with the euthanizing of the infant only the beginning. The Winglies had no intention of seeing rebellious temperaments passed on to a new generation.
Her master's garden was one of several in the area, designed to provide a serene retreat for Wingly mothers-to-be, delivering flowers to them at the celebration of the birth. (Slave mothers, obviously, had no such courtesy.) There were parks and groves, fountains and floating lights, stretching on far further than any of the floating cities had space to offer. The slaves, like Shirley, were selected to be attractive enough not to be an eyesore, but neither elegant nor clever enough to suffer reassignment to the higher echelons of Wingly society.
Shirley's mother died bearing her—a harsh blow to her master, who had intended to breed several more slaves with her fiery hair and gentle features. Her aunt kept Shirley out of his eye and reported that the child was a disappointment, resembling her father. Growing up, Shirley knew there must be something wrong with her.
She was seven when the overseer noticed the beauty of her hair. By the age of nine it fell halfway down her narrow back in a shining wave. Her master, escorting a pair of aristocrats through the grounds, looked quite keenly at her when she delivered an armful of lilies to their floating carriage. One of the women called her "a remarkably pretty thing, in its own way." For the first time, it occurred to Shirley that she was not hidden away out of some monstrous deformation.
The thought brought little pleasure. That night, her master sent for her for the first time.
When the Giganto guards came to take her, Shirley's aunt seized her by the throat and tried to choke her. The guards stopped her. Shirley went to her doom with bruises on her neck. When her master sent her back at dawn, she was told that her aunt had been executed.
Her master had a graceful wife and platinum-haired children of his own, all born with the stamp of Deningrad's approval. The guests he brought to the garden estate would have chided him for his indulgence if they knew. Intimate relations with non-Winglies was frowned upon, a distasteful but not uncommon aberration. But in the end, what a man did with his own slaves on his own lands was his own business. He came to her in the remote parts of the gardens, with only her fellow slaves for witness, and they turned their eyes to the ground and pretended they did not hear.
When she was fifteen, she helped arrange a delivery of flowers to a Wingly who made his fortune ushering aesthetically-minded nobles to distant and dangerous parts of Endiness, transporting them in comfort and protecting them from wild beasts. One of his favored slaves saw Shirley, with her hair like the sunset and her sad eyes, and asked to have her for his wife. The two Winglies negotiated. Two years later, she had outgrown her master's tastes, and he agreed to sell her.
Shirley could not stop smiling when her husband-to-be came to collect her. They were strangers, but she felt a surge of affection for him for bringing her out of the garden. His name was Fitz, he was a year older than her, and he blushed crimson when he saw her grin.
"You'll have a good life," he promised her, taking her hand in a sweaty palm. "My master's fair—rarely beats us, doesn't like to split up families. He said he could use someone like you to attend the ladies. You'll have it easier here."
A chain of teleporters led them to her new master's estate, far in the south. The other slaves—a smaller and more close-knit group than she had known, warriors and entertainers—welcomed her with cheers. One older woman, the cook, pinned an embroidered shawl around Shirley's head for a veil, and with song and a simple ceremony, she married Fitz.
The other slaves courteously left them the privacy of the barracks that first night, though the weather was damp. Bride and groom were shy, nervous. Fitz kissed her hands and pushed back the veil.
A pounding on the door interrupted their moment. The leader of the warrior slaves, a thin dark man, did not meet their eyes. "The master wants to see his new slave," he said.
Fitz, flushed with the whiskey the newlyweds had been given, failed to understand. "Can't it wait until tomorrow?"
"No."
Shirley stepped away from him, letting their joined hands fall apart. A cold knot of comprehension filled her stomach. "I'll go," she told him. The slave leader draped his coat over her shoulders, ignoring Fitz's baffled complaints, and led her to the master's house.
The Wingly waited for her in his study, where the eyes of slain beasts watched her from the walls. He dismissed her escort with a wave. "I thought I would welcome you to your new home myself," he said, facing Shirley across the room.
Shirley had always been meek. For the first time, anger loosened her tongue. "My lord, this is my wedding night," she said coldly.
The Wingly's eyebrows arched. "So it is. We'll have a drink to celebrate." He indicated the bottle of champagne, the two glasses on the table between them. Slowly, seething, Shirley poured them full. Her wedding veil fell over her shoulders. She delivered one glass to her new master and stepped back, out of his reach. She left the second glass untouched on the table. He chuckled and sipped his drink, and she wished it were poison.
"Shirley. That's what they call you, isn't it? Your former master told me some fascinating things about you. I will be interested to find out if they are true."
Shirley would not join in the banter, would not play along with this cruel game. She looked straight at him, her eyes burning. "You are an abomination," she told him.
He set down his glass and folded his arms. "And you, pretty Shirley, are a slave," he answered, the teasing gone from his voice. "Drink or not, it's all the same to me. Now take off that veil. I want to see what I've paid for."
Fitz was inconsolable. When she returned alone, long after midnight, she found him pacing the slave barracks. None of the others could speak to him. The tracks of tears stained his face. He ran to Shirley, but instead of taking her in his arms, he dropped to his knees and buried his face in her middle. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," he said over and over.
Shirley looked down at her new husband, feeling very old. The affection she had felt for him was gone. She felt numb wherever he touched her. She seemed to be very far and high above him. Why was he crying when she could not? What right did he have?
In the end, she did forgive him. He could not have known his "good" master would treat a pretty female slave differently than his favorite men.
She should have known. The promises of a slave, no matter how well-intended, meant nothing.
.
A world away, high in the sanctuary of the Dragoon Towers, those memories seemed unreal—something that had happened to someone else. Shirley could take them out and turn them over in her mind, feeling nothing, while her fingers were occupied plaiting Rose's glossy black hair. She thought about the stillborn boy she bore Fitz, the sister she suspected was half Wingly and suspected did not die by accident in her cradle, one year old. The touch of the little boy in Vellweb felt like her baby's fingers. Dry-eyed, she added a tenth strand to Rose's braid.
The Dark Dragoon relaxed under her touch. She did not speak, for which Shirley was grateful.
Rose was about her own age, but those wide surprised eyes made her seem so much younger. From what Syuveil implied about Charle Frahma's court, Shirley knew Rose was not the naïve child she seemed, but there remained a guiltlessness about her. Shirley protected her as well as she could. Even from Zieg, who was a good man at heart and a dear friend, but a complete asshole sometimes.
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"You probably shouldn't go down into Vellweb like that anymore," Zieg told her that night, when all five Dragoons gathered around the fire in the men's tower. Neither Belzac nor Shirley had said a word about the incident in the fields, but word had carried to the commander anyway. "Better that they love you from a distance."
Zieg sat on the edge of the hearth, behind Rose's stool, unweaving all the braids Shirley had made in her hair. The firelight made him glow, with Rose a shadow before him.
Syuveil, perched atop the table they had dragged over for lack of better seating, propped his chin on his hands. His eyes strayed thoughtfully from Zieg to Shirley. "It's interesting how much more they adore her than the rest of us," he remarked.
Belzac made a neutral sound. "It's not that strange."
"I didn't say strange. It makes perfect sense—she's the holy one, the far-seeing, the one with the healing touch. It's just interesting."
Shirley made no comment. Let them think what they wanted of her. She didn't feel holy, with her head still aching where the mob had ripped at her hair, and the bruises rising on her arms. She tugged her white cape more snugly around her shoulders. Even with the roaring fire in front of them, nights were cold in Vellweb, and the wind shrieked. Thunder rumbled around them. The Dragoon Towers dragged at the bottoms of the clouds. Perhaps this time, rain would fall.
She shared the bench where she sat with Belzac. The big man's head lay in her lap. She had tugged him down to rest there when he entered. He had resisted a moment, then relaxed. A little affection was all she could offer in repayment of his help earlier. He would hope for more, and Soa knew she probably should have kept her distance, but she owed him this much. His gaze was on Zieg, his hands folded still on his chest like a corpse, one that breathed and spoke with the voice of the deep. Shirley pulled the yellow scarf off his head—Fitz's scarf once, Belzac's now—and smoothed her fingers through the stubble of his scalp. She felt rather than heard him sigh.
"If I stop working alongside them after this, what will they think?" she demanded of Zieg. "They'll say I'm scared."
Zieg laughed patronizingly. "You don't understand the way your devotees think. They won't remember mobbing you. They'll be telling their grandchildren how Dragoon Shirley came down and walked among them, and how they touched her with this very hand before she was taken back up to the sky."
"To the Towers."
"It's the same thing by now."
Shirley's eyes narrowed in frustration. "Zieg, do you hear yourself? We're going to become another kind of Winglies to them at this rate."
"We have a long way yet to go for that," Syuveil interjected.
Belzac tilted his head back to catch the Jade Dragoon's attention. "There won't ever be enough of us to risk ruling them, right?" Syuveil shook his head. "Do you know how long we'll live?"
"Not yet." Syuveil had been researching the Dragoons as well as he could, always testing their heart rate, their response time, both in and out of Dragoon form. If any of them died—Soa forbid—they joked that he'd cut them up on the spot. His curiosity knew no bounds. "We might have been granted a dragon's lifespan, for all we know. Or maybe the strain on the human body means we'll all die young."
Zieg watched Rose's hair slipping between his fingers. "Not too young, I hope."
They were all silent for a moment, thinking that over. Belzac turned his eyes up to Shirley. She returned his gaze for a moment before he looked back to the fire. "No," he said, returning to the topic at hand. "Emperor Diaz rules, not us."
Syuveil chewed absent-mindedly at his lip. "You know, he wouldn't if it weren't for us. There are others who could lead. If people didn't associate him, mentally, with the mighty Dragoons, he would have been replaced by now."
"If it weren't for us, the rebellion would have been squashed by now."
Rose shook her head at Zieg. "How humble of you."
Zieg grinned ruefully. It pleased Shirley to see Rose talking back to Zieg and, more importantly, Zieg listening to her comments. They were still always together, and Rose still always looked like her mind was elsewhere, but now she seemed as likely to join him for company as vice versa. That part, Shirley didn't quite understand, but perhaps Rose just liked what was familiar.
A flash of lightning split the skies, brighter than the fire. The thunder that followed shook the Towers. Belzac glanced toward the door. "I hope Melbu Frahma and Magician Faust are having a hard time of it out there," he said.
Syuveil smirked. "I guarantee you that the Wingly cities are built to withstand storms. They probably directed this one our way to spare Charle's roses."
"But no rain will fall on Gloriano."
"Oh no, certainly not. That would be too generous."
Belzac sat up, stretched, and went to the cabinet where he and Zieg kept the liquor. "Anything for you, Rose? Syu?" he asked, gathering up their chipped glasses. Long years together had taught him what Zieg and Shirley drank.
"Thank you, Belzac, that would be lovely."
"None for me." Syuveil laughed. "I know what kind of swill you two keep in there. I wouldn't give it to a pig."
"How about a dragon?" Zieg shot back.
Here we sit, Shirley thought, the kings and queens of a new world. She was not in the mood for banter. As Belzac passed out the glasses, she rose, smoothing her skirt. "It's late," she declared, shaking her head at the glass he offered her. "I'm going to sleep."
They turned towards her. "It's vicious out," Belzac said, his words punctuated by another peal of thunder. "Want me to walk you back?"
"No, you've already done—" She cut herself short, stamping down the resentment. She sighed and continued, less sharply. "I'll be fine. It's not far to the other Tower. Rose, don't let them keep you up too late."
"Sweet dreams, o radiant one," Zieg teased, leaning back against the hearth. Shirley rolled her eyes. She took down the lantern and lit it with a coal from the fire. One of the men would walk Rose back later.
The door swung open before her hand touched it. It brought a blast of wind that chased up the fire and rattled around the room. Shirley jumped back, seeing only a dark figure on the step. It bulled past her and into the firelight, before the hood came back, revealing Diaz. One of Vellweb's warriors followed him in and shut the door against the storm.
The little emperor swore as he untangled himself from his cloak, hair in messy spikes, crown askew. "Soa's tits, this is a bad night. Aren't you afraid you'll be blown away up here? These gusts nearly took me off the steps a time or two."
"Some of us like the danger." Zieg stood, sweeping off his place at the hearth for Diaz to take. Belzac took Shirley's unwanted glass and offered it to the emperor, then poured another for his guard. "It's nearly midnight, sire. What brings you all the way up here? Are we under attack?" Diaz's casual manner didn't seem to suggest it.
"Nothing of the sort." He seated himself on the hearth. Rose scooted away from him. "I actually have good news—for once."
Diaz's smile flickered. There was something tense about his manner. The emperor was always bursting with energy, but he seemed on edge tonight. "I suppose it could have waited for morning, but you'll want to hear this at once. It's good I found you all together."
Rose looked up, her black eyes on Diaz's face. "Shirley was just leaving."
"Oh? Stay a moment, my dear. This won't take long." She set down the lantern. Diaz hesitated, flexing his splayed fingers against each other. "Commander Feld, I've found you another Dragoon."
Eyes flashed at once to the sapphire Zieg had placed on the mantel. When Charle Frahma mentioned that a Wingly gamesmaster was intending to pit a great sea dragon in the Kadessa Coliseum, Zieg had snuck in—without Emperor Diaz's approval or even knowledge—and, in front of thousands of stunned Winglies, killed the beast. He escaped with the Dragoon stone, but the little dragonling was lost. So far the stone had refused to spark for anyone. For months now it had sat on the mantel, a promise of some future glory.
Zieg glanced from the stone to the emperor. "With that kind of news, lord, you can come barging in any time. But are you sure? Last time we tried to pick out a Dragoon ourselves, we got Syuveil here."
"You wound me, commander," Syuveil said dryly.
Diaz turned the glass of whiskey around in his fingers. He did not meet their eyes. "I'm quite sure of it, actually. Kanzas?"
They turned expectantly to Diaz's guard, who had propped himself wearily against the wall to nurse his whiskey. His eyes had been tracking one speaker to the next. Shirley had almost forgotten he was there.
Now that it was his turn, he lowered the glass from his lips. Dark red hair traced a narrow diamond around his mouth, bristling back from a cynical brow. He looked older than any of them, but a harsh life aged humans fast. "A big dark dragon came hunting down the southwestern coast," he said. "The thing spat lightning like a storm. It ripped up two Wingly villas before they even knew what hit 'em. When I saw it, I thought, well, those Dragoons in the north will be wanting this."
A greedy light kindled in Zieg's eyes as he considered yet another dragon to be added to his collection. "Sounds like our kind of monster," he agreed. "Can you lead us to it?"
Kanzas tilted his head. "Well, I would," he drawled, "but it's dead." Teeth flashed in his weathered face. "I killed it."
Silence fell as the Dragoons turned this over in their heads. At last Zieg nodded. "I see. All by yourself?" He traded glances with Belzac. Shirley knew that look, both skeptical and smug. Zieg thought himself oh, so clever when he caught a lie. "Did you know it took almost forty men to take down the first dragon?"
"Have you gotten better since then?"
Kanzas' casual irreverence did nothing to strengthen his story. Zieg turned to Diaz. The little emperor spread his hands wide. "I know it sounds unbelievable, commander, but he even had the stone."
"Anyone can find a rock and—" Zieg began, but he didn't finish.
All the air in the room went hot and dead, and the shadows lay too darkly against the walls. The hair rose tingling on their arms. The cups on the table rattled. A flash came, too bright, too near, and thunder shook the room. Shirley threw up her hand to shield her eyes, but the image of wings was already burned into them. She blinked hard, and the afterimage faded. The wings remained.
Kanzas hovered a foot above the floor, suspended on outstretched yellow-green wings. Dark armor, cracked and warped, shimmered unevenly in the firelight. Traces of violet and green eluded the eye. Shirley could almost see faces in the gnarled, misshapen plating. Spats of lightning played across his body, arcing from the Dragoon stone glowing in his chest.
"Good God," Shirley heard Syuveil mutter.
As quickly as they had appeared, wings and armor vanished. Kanzas thumped back to the floor, shaking out stiff joints. He cracked his neck to the side. "Might want to close your mouth, skinnybones," he told Syuveil. "Someone might get ideas."
The air rang with the hollowness that lingered after a lightning strike. Shirley squeezed her hand into a fist until she felt her pulse racing in her palm. Across the room, the other Dragoons looked dazed.
None of them could transform at will. Not even Zieg.
Emperor Diaz drained the last of his drink and set it down. "He was very convincing," he said mildly.
Kanzas searched Zieg's face, tagging him for the leader even without an introduction. When he walked forward—swaggered almost—Shirley realized that he was shorter than the other men. He might have been Rose's height. His boots lent him a false inch. His belt sagged low around his hips with the weight of the knives it carried. A fighting man, the kind Zieg wanted most in his little band, now that he had Rose.
"Now that we're all on board," Kanzas said, "I've come a long way, and I'm dead tired, and all I want is to know where to lay my head down tonight. Can I be one of you Dragoons? I'll fight anything you put in front of me. If you don't want me, say so, and I'll find myself some other place."
Humility seemed an unnatural condition for him—he was too blunt, clumsily aggressive and awkwardly apologetic by turns. He tried to be diffident and came across as careless instead. Instinctively, Shirley's heart went out to him.
It seemed that Zieg's did, too. If Kanzas had been pushy or demanding, the Dragoon commander would have turned against him—Shirley was certain of that. Zieg was the jealous kind. The fact that this newcomer had killed his dragon alone—if he told the truth—threatened Zieg's pride. But Kanzas asked permission to be counted among them, and that won him a chance.
Zieg folded his arms across his chest, looking from Belzac to Emperor Diaz. "You're already one of us, Dragoon Kanzas," he answered. "Welcome to Vellweb."
The anxious tension went out of Kanzas. He slumped like a puppet. But his grin was steady this time, his fear of rejection relieved. "Well, that's good." He wavered on his feet.
Zieg saw it, too. He glanced around the inside of the tower, one cluttered room, crowded even without the four extra bodies packed around the fire. They only had the three beds, wedged against the back wall, two of them bunked for space and wedged. "Been a while since we had to bunk together," he told Belzac.
Belzac fixed him with a flat stare. "Back-to-back on the forest floor isn't spooning in a bed. You're like a furnace."
"Then you keep the bed and I'll spoon with Rose."
"No," Syuveil, Rose, and Shirley snapped simultaneously.
Kanzas held up his hands. "Whatever. I'll sleep on the floor." He looked ready to do it, too.
"Give up the storeroom," Syuveil said to Zieg. "It's time we spread out, anyway."
"Dragoon Shirley." She found Emperor Diaz looking at her. "You were on your way out, weren't you? Could you show our new comrade the way? I must bend your commander's ear about our battle plans."
"Of course."
Shirley retrieved the lantern and pulled her cape close. Syuveil whipped a blanket off of two of the beds and folded them into scratchy bundles. "Once you've rested," he told Kanzas, handing them over, "I'd like to know more about your experiences with the dragon." Kanzas nodded wearily. He must have been close to collapsing.
As Shirley headed for the door, Diaz took down the sapphire from the mantel. It was as big as a turkey egg. "Now there's just one to go," he said. "How do you like your army, Commander Feld?"
Shirley couldn't hear Zieg's answer. Syuveil's voice came more clearly, as Kanzas opened the door for her. "How the hell could he do that?"
Kanzas followed Shirley outside. The door boomed shut behind them. Light, warmth, and comrades vanished, leaving the storm.
The roaring tempest swallowed any word spoken more than an inch from the hearer's ear. It buffeted them against the wall. Shirley held high the lantern, glad for its closed glass sides, and started down the stairs. The Dragoon Towers were lattice-like in design, heavy stone turned light and airy by careful engineering, but the narrow spans were precarious in the dark and wind. She chose the simplest path to the third tower, following the circular outer walk so that they could hug the second tower for shelter. Kanzas stayed on her heels, hunched against the blast. She glanced back during a lightning flash, and the image of his grin burned against her eyes.
The wind turned the flying strands of her hair to a swam of bees, stinging her face and blinding her. She found the steps of the third tower by feel rather than by sight. She turned back to signal Kanzas. He stepped close to her, raising his voice to ask, "Have you ever thought about getting sucked right off these Towers?" She shook her head.
The storm seemed to have reinvigorated him. That lightning-flash grin came again. Before Shirley realized his plan, he unfurled the blankets he carried. The wind caught them at once, billowed like a sail, and jerked him toward the edge.
"What are you doing? Stop!" Shirley shrieked. She grabbed his belt and hauled him backward up the steps. One blanket went flapping into the void. They staggered inside the storage room. The door slammed between them and the storm. Kanzas was laughing.
"We'd be fine," he reminded her. "You still think like you're human, huh? How long have you been doing this?" He flicked his fingers out from his shoulders, miming wings.
She drew a deep breath and glared at him. "Too long."
She raised the lantern and looked around the tower. After the warmth and cheer they had left behind, it was bleak. The flickering flame cast deep shadows. Tangled heaps of furniture they had carried up from their old quarters in Magrad made monstrous shapes against the walls. Shirley had cleared the corner nearest the door, under the window, for preparing food. The rest was clutter, but of a lifeless and empty-feeling sort. Their voices echoed.
She turned to Kanzas, whose eyebrows shot up as he surveyed the gloom. "It's much better in daylight," she assured him. "Now that you're here, we'll get it squared away."
"Don't bother. It'll be fine. A coat of paint, some decorations, and it's home." Kanzas dragged chairs aside to clear a space on the floor. Shirley set the lantern down and shook out the remaining blanket. Together they spread it out to make a bed. Without the other blanket, it was pitifully stark. Shirley took off her cape and handed it to him with an apologetic shrug. "Tomorrow we'll put a proper bed together. Will you be all right for now?"
Kanzas plopped down in the middle of the blanket, felt its thickness, then stretched out. He gave the little sigh of a man just happy to be off his feet. "It'll do. A little cold maybe." He looked up at Shirley. "Care to keep me warm?"
Shirley had been asked the same question all her life, but never so bluntly. She laughed at his audacity. "I'm married," she told him.
"That so? I'll find some other way to keep warm then."
She ignored the crude insinuation. "Good night. Sweet dreams."
"I will," he answered. His eyes were already closed.
She left her light with him. Shivering in the wind, she picked her steps back to the second Dragoon Tower. The cold and dark waiting there matched the tower she had just left. Rose was not back yet. Shirley undressed by feel and lay down in the bed they shared.
Thoughts of their new comrade drifted through her head. There had been such hunger in him to be accepted among the Dragoons, as if Zieg would ever have turned him away. As if Zieg wouldn't take any ragged son of a bitch who could get them one inch closer to liberty. And whatever gave Kanzas the power to slip into a dragon's soul on command—they'd make good use of that.
Shirley remembered, picking through her memories of those surreal moments, how Kanzas had twitched afterwards, as if in the throes of a minor seizure. She'd taken it for nerves, but it could have been more. Each of them had struggled through various side effects, which had either faded or become ordinary over time. Perhaps the tiny spasms were Kanzas' curse.
Shirley's had been blindness. That first time, she didn't know whether her vision would ever return. Belzac had sat beside her, holding her hand, apologizing for—well, for everything. That was the first moment Shirley hated him. But she loved him, too. He had done his best by her. She couldn't blame him if it wasn't enough. Even if she did blame him.
Whatever had happened to Kanzas in killing the dragon, taking its soul, he had done it alone. Even Zieg had had Belzac by his side. It was a miracle Kanzas had gotten so far. He had come to them offering his help, needing theirs.
And, Soa have mercy, he had no idea what he was getting into with the Dragoons. He'd learn soon enough. Shirley would help him. Give him a better start than she had had.
On such thoughts, she dozed, waking only when Rose put her cold feet on Shirley's shins.
.
She slept poorly, woke early, chased by dreams of clawing hands. When her eyes popped open, she stared fixedly at the ceiling, reorienting herself. Her breath came fast. The sheets were a sweaty nightmare tangle. In the middle of it all, Rose slept soundly, curled like a child with her knees to her chest and Shirley's arm imprisoned against her ribs. The beams creaked overhead as the Black Dragon, Michael, shifted his position on the roof. Shirley was safe here, out of reach of all hands but a few. She relaxed.
She freed her arm and slipped out of bed, leaving Rose to her peace. After a storm like that, the light should have been clear and washed, but again the rain refused to fall. The sun rose over the same dusty city as before. The morning was cold. Kanzas had her cape, though, so she went out in her cotton dress with her hands balled in her armpits.
Across the empty pit of air, she saw Dart, Zieg's shining red dragon, stretching atop the first of the Towers. Feyrbrand and Condor were too heavy for permanent aerial residency and lived below. The city was still in shadow. The sun had not yet risen far enough above the crest of the mountains to reach any but the highest spires of Vellweb. For a moment, she could have been alone in the world.
But others were stirring. She heard the rattle-creak of the massive pulleys that supplied the Dragoons with food and with endless buckets of water for their cistern. She went to the jetty to meet the delivery.
Turnips—they always had turnips; bread that had been fresh and warm half a mile ago; mushrooms; a string of sausages. It didn't matter what Vellweb sent its heroes. Like locusts, the Dragoons ate everything. What surprised her was the basket of wildflowers: crocuses and a heap of stripped trumpetvines. She thought she knew why. A cold lump in her stomach banished hunger. She would spread them out among her comrades, and pretend it had nothing to do with her.
Belzac often came down to help her prepare breakfast. Diaz's meetings always ran late, though, and she didn't expect to see him for a while. In the privacy of this great height, Shirley bundled everything up in her skirt, goose-pimpled to her bare knees, and carried it to the uneven spike of the third tower. Her mind wandered while her hands went through the familiar work of dividing the food, heaping it onto their clay bowls—a gift from Diaz—and the bowls onto the wide board they used for a tray. She dropped the flowers at one edge of the table. The turnips would have to stew a while before they were edible.
She was setting them aside when something, some sound, tickled at her attention. Shirley stood still for a moment, then seized the chopping knife and spun around.
She would have sworn someone stood right behind her, but found nothing there. On the other side of the room, though, the new Dragoon lay on the floor under his blanket, watching her with his hands folded behind his head. At the sight of her brandished knife, he arched one eyebrow.
Slowly, Shirley lowered the knife. "How long have you been watching me?" she demanded.
Kanzas shrugged. "Heard you come in." He squinted against the sun. He was rumpled with sleep, but looked somewhat less haggard and hollow-eyed than the night before. In the morning light, his red hair was at odds with his teak-brown skin. The stiffness to it suggested some kind of dye.
She stepped sideways, so that the light behind her would not carve her body from the dress. " We'll make up a real bed for you today," she said again, setting the knife down. "I hope you slept well."
"A little lonely, but good enough. You?"
"Just fine, thanks."
He grinned at her without rising. Suddenly Shirley knew with absolute certainty that he was naked under that blanket, and that he wanted to shock and upset her with that fact. She decided to ignore it.
"I was thinking," Kanzas said. "The blond man—that's Commander Feld, right?"
"Yes. It's just Zieg up here, though."
"Thought so," he said to himself. "He looks like he never got whipped much."
She shook her head. "People have always liked him."
"I like him, too."
"Then you'll get along with him better than Syu." She leaned back against the counter.
"Syu?"
"Syuveil. He was the one sitting on the table."
Kanzas brightened at the reminder. "Ah, right, the skinnybones! What's his deal?" He sat up and stretched. The blanket fell down to his waist, baring a torso riddled with scars and blackened with tattoos. The Dragoon stone, a colorless dark mass, lay in the hollow of his throat on a leather thong. Something seemed crooked about his hunched ribs, though she couldn't pinpoint how.
Shirley saw no reason to hide anything. They would have to live with him, and he needed to know his new comrades—for better or for worse. "Rose," she answered. "They escaped from Charle Frahma together."
"And that's the girl Zieg kept kissin' with his eyeballs? She's pretty. Is she a Dragoon too?" Shirley nodded. "Damn. She looks like a good fart would knock her over. Didn't hear of them down in my parts… How about the giant, who's he?"
"Belzac, the Dragoon of Earth."
"And if Zieg cocks it all up, he'll be the one to take over."
Shirley bit the inside of her lip. She hadn't let herself consider this. The Dragoons without Zieg—he was an ass, but none of them would have gotten this far without him dragging them in his wake. Wouldn't want to be here. Without Zieg, who would lead them? "Not Belzac," she answered at last. "I'd probably be the one."
"And that would make you Dragoon Shirley," Kanzas concluded, "the white lady herself, the one every man here's half in love with." His mouth quirked sideways. "But I already knew that."
Shirley eyed him. "How so?"
Kanzas held her gaze a moment before his grin straightened out. "Last night, when I came to see the Emperor, folks were putting together that bundle of weeds you've got there. I asked him what for. He told me about the ruckus you caused yesterday. What are you gonna do with 'em?"
She shrugged restlessly. "Give them to the others."
"If you don't want them, throw the damn things back over the edge."
"Feelings would be hurt."
"Well, we can't have that."
At the knowing, mock-sympathetic look he sent her way, Shirley snorted a laugh. He'd keyed to the quiet resentment she kept locked down inside.
Kanzas went on, resting his arms across his crooked knees. He kept the blanket modestly draped. Maybe Shirley's lack of response made him think better of his prank. "Diaz said some other things about you. You were one of the first, right? Knew Zieg way back when?"
"We had the same master. He planned the escape. He and Belzac did the killing."
"Diaz also said you were a widow," Kanzas said then, and his eyes were very dark and intent. "So last night when you said you were married, what was that?"
That was the look she felt against her back earlier, the one that made it seem he stood close enough to kiss her, though an entire room lay between them. Shirley pressed her lips together. She countered his too-direct stare with one of her own, neither cowed nor abashed. "Just being polite about not wanting to sleep with you."
Both of his eyebrows quirked at that. "Then fucking say so, and don't lie to me."
He flipped the blanket aside and pushed himself to his feet. Shirley kept her eyes steady on his face. "You see, Dragoon Shirley," he continued, weaving his way through a thicket of boxes and beams and broken chair legs, "I'm a liar to the bone, and I know my own kind when I see them."
As he approached, Shirley reached instinctively behind herself for the knife. The man's tone was casual, his attitude friendly, but there was a sharpness behind the words and his eyes that she no longer trusted. His smile was not what it had been. "You think I'm like you?" she asked.
"Well. Are you?"
"I don't know you well enough to say," she hedged, remaining diplomatic.
"I'll make it easy on you. Here's what they say about you down in Vellweb—that you've got the noblest little heart ever beat, that you're good and kind and brave beyond any mortal patience, that your touch is health and life. That one kiss from your pretty lips would seal a man's soul for good. That you'll be the one to save us all." Kanzas stopped, an arm's length away and feeling closer. "But they didn't say you were a liar, which means I know you one jot better than the rest right now. What do you think?"
Still Shirley met his gaze without flinching. He didn't scare her. She raised her chin. "I think," she said, very quietly, "that you should put some clothes on."
"Should I?"
"Yes. Belzac will be down soon."
Suddenly the sharpness, the soft half-threat in his words was gone, and the sheepish easy grin returned. "Sorry," he said. "Haven't been in decent company for a while—I've lost the knack." He bowed and walked away to find his clothes.
Shirley released her white-knuckle grip on the knife and resumed preparing the food for the other Dragoons. From behind her came the faint rustle of clothing. "I hope one of those is for me," he called.
"Did you think we were going to starve you?"
"I don't know what to think of you yet."
Kanzas reappeared beside her, fully dressed. He had her white cape balled up under his arm. When Shirley reached for it, he took the opportunity to lean past her and pluck a mushroom from her carefully divided bowls.
"Give it back," she said. He popped it into his mouth and bit down. "Fine. That one's yours."
He swallowed and went for another, like a mischievous child. Shirley grabbed his wrist. He looked at her, his face very close to hers now. Something sparked behind his sunken eyes. "I wonder what you taste like," he said.
Shirley let go of him as if burned.
The door opened, a flood of sunlight immediately dammed by a large silhouette. Belzac entered glowing with sleepy goodwill, freshly shaven, a little spot of blood at one corner of his lip. His smile faded into stillness as he looked back and forth between the two of them. Kanzas went for the second mushroom. "Good morning," he said through a mouthful.
"Morning." Belzac focused on Shirley. "I'm half an hour late, and you find a new helper?"
He spoke lightly, but creases of worry appeared above his brow. Shirley smiled for him. "He was already here," she explained. Still he looked at her, his eyes saying are you all right, is this man bothering you—the way they did every time they were in new company, always ready to fight the battles she didn't want fought.
Kanzas read the silent exchange. "Was I wrong about her being married?" he asked dryly.
With a visible effort, Belzac said, "No." Shirley said nothing.
Kanzas took a third mushroom from the tray. This time Shirley just shot him a glare. It rolled off. "Shirley was just telling me about you Dragoons," he said to Belzac, pleasantly enough, as if the tension didn't hum like a lightning bolt seeking a target in one or another of them. "Just trying to put that together with what I saw last night. You've all had months to get to know each other—I'm trying to catch up."
Belzac tore his eyes from Shirley's. He forced a flinty smile. It didn't last. Shirley sighed and redistributed the mushrooms to account for the stolen ones, leaving them to their posturing. "Sure thing," Belzac said. "What do you want to know?"
"Correct me when I'm wrong. Zieg's the head man, Rose is the one he's screwing—"
"—not yet."
"Really? All right then. Rose is the one he wants to be screwing. Likewise skinnybones, who's the brainy type, from the looks of it. And Shirley here's our saint." Belzac leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. His jaw tightened slightly at the crude assessment of Rose. "Which leaves you," Kanzas finished. "Did you know she didn't look to you?"
"What?" Belzac asked. Shirley looked up from a handful of flowers.
"Last night, when you all made me prove myself. Caught you all off guard. You know how people go straight for their buddies when they're spooked? Rose got Zieg's hand, and he didn't seem to mind. Skinnybones thought Diaz was supposed to have the answers. You," –he tipped his fingers in a mock salute— "looked around for Shirley here to make sure she was okay. But she never looked back at you. What does that mean?"
Belzac's brow darkened. "What are you—"
"Maybe you're not as scary as you think, Kanzas," Shirley intervened smoothly. "Remember, we're used to being Dragoons."
"Not enough to remember that you can't fall." He turned back to Belzac, switching tack. "Zieg up? I want to talk to him, too. Get his take. What he wants from me."
Wordlessly Belzac jerked his head towards the door. Kanzas grinned at both of them and went out, letting the door slam behind him.
"I'm sorry," Shirley told Belzac. "He has… a way with people."
"He has his way with people," the big man muttered. "Was he like that with you, too?"
"No. He was just joking around." She didn't tell about Kanzas being naked, or the weird challenge he'd offered her. Belzac didn't need to know. Maybe Kanzas was just that clumsy with social cues—unable to read when Shirley had had enough, unable to keep from offending and antagonizing Belzac. Soa only knew how he'd do with Zieg. Zieg was touchy and didn't have even half Belzac's patience.
But as Belzac shook off the sour feeling and started filling her in on last night's discussion (whether Kanzas had left a vassal dragon out in the world somewhere, an assessment of the next nearest set of Wingly plantations, the progress of Syuveil's giant cannon idea), a new thought left Shirley cold.
If Kanzas knew the effect he had on people, with his double-edged questions and that too-close stare—if he did it deliberately, and only played apologetic when he saw he'd pushed too far—
—she didn't want to think it—
—he'd been probing her for information on the Dragoons, their relationships to one another, who was most important. What she had told him, unwitting, not intending, was that Belzac was irrelevant. He was not the one whose opinions carried weight.
That explained why Kanzas had taunted him, wearing that friendly smile. He knew he could get away with it. He had humbled himself for Zieg, apologized to Shirley, but he made no concessions for the big man who was the least of them, despite his strength. Worst of all, Kanzas had seen that Shirley herself wouldn't defend him. She had betrayed her best friend.
If she was right, if these uneasy suspicions were more than paranoia, then she had created a monster. Soa save them from each other.
Belzac had stopped talking, peering at her with anxious eyes. Shirley opened her mouth to tell him, but she couldn't. It was too cruel. She had to be wrong. Belzac waited for her, though, and now she had to say something. Syuveil's question came to mind, the last she heard before the door closed between them. She lifted her eyes to her friend's worried face.
"Tell Syuveil—I think it's because Kanzas is completely insane."