Dragonoak (3 page)

Kouris
feigned offence, covered her chest with her hand, and Tae snorted
out a laugh from Reis' side. Leaning down, Kouris kissed my
forehead, and I tugged on her horn, guiding her into the seat next
to mine. The chair gave a creak, but she more or less fit into it,
stretching out her legs and closing her eyes, exhaustion pleasantly
chipping away at her, now that she was home.

“That's
the problem with people owing you favours, yrval,” she said,
opening one eye and taking the drink I'd poured out for her,
“You've gotta spend days tracking 'em down to make them follow
through on their word.”

“Any
luck... ?” I asked, and Kouris hesitated, finishing her drink off
in a few gulps, tongue slipping into the glass to claim the last
few drops.

“Let's
talk about it once we're home, alright?”

“That
means no,” I said, frowning at myself for daring to get my hopes
up. If she'd managed to find what she'd set out in search of, she
wouldn't wander back without a grin on her face; she wouldn't be
able to sit down and keep it to herself. It was just like the last
four times she'd been gone.

“Oi,”
Tae called from across the table, throwing a cold chunk of meat at
my forehead to get my attention. “The hell do you wanna go back to
that place, anyway? It's all ashes, Fel. And that's if it's stopped
burning! Couldn't pay me enough to go up there.”

“She's
got a point, you know,” Tizo said, lending Tae her support for what
must've been the first time ever, judging from the way Reis glanced
between the two of them. “The only morons still heading up north
are getting turned right back around. Hear one ship ended up at the
bottom of the ocean, and all 'cause the Felheimish didn't like the
look of their sails.”

I'd
heard it a dozen times before. Nobody in Port Mahon understood why
anyone would want to leave, and had I left my village and headed
straight for Canth, neither would I. There was nothing for me in
Asar, in Kastelir. I repeated that over and over every night before
I fell asleep, every morning when I awoke, but I needed to see for
myself. Needed to see what was left, once the fires died
out.

We were
only meant to be in Canth for a week. For a month. We'd no choice
but to head south as the dragons did, but once we'd crossed the
ocean, there was no turning back.

Seeing
that I had no reply strong enough to pass my lips, Reis grumbled,
“Would you two knock it off for half a second?”

Tizo
held out both hands apologetically and Tae slumped back in her
seat, lips sealed.

The fire
between us had burnt to embers, and though Soeta reappeared with
more skewed meat, she didn't tend to the grill. She handed it over
to Kouris, who pulled off each chunk with her tongue, and we sat in
silence until she finished, sucking in a breath between her
fangs.

“... so.
Hear you caused quite the commotion earlier, Reis,” Kouris said,
for the sake of getting the conversation rolling again.

“Gods,”
Reis said, throwing up their hands. “Why's it always my fault? I
ain't touched a sword in years.”

Kouris
chuckled, and slowly, our group came back to life around the table.
People came and went, the faces around us changed, but it never
quieted down. I doubted I'd be able to sleep, if I lived in the
heart of Mahon. There wasn't a moment of silence in the hut, and I
liked it that way. The waves rushed back and forth, but that was
rhythmic; there were no bottles unexpectedly smashing, no one
screaming out, no jeers rising from taverns and brothels
alike.

Kouris told us how her travels to track down a merchant who
she'd once plucked out of the sea and saved from drowning had been
fruitless. Business had been bad, these past few years, and he'd
lost all but his smaller ships. This, in turn, reminded Tizo of a
market she'd happened across weeks ago, where a man, offended by
the lack of variety on offer, had stuck a knife in the back of a
spice merchant's hand and thrown a fistful of cinnamon in his face.
Never one to be outdone, Tae retaliated with a story of her own,
and they both went on and on, until the drunks in
Siren Song
wouldn't have
believed a word of what they were saying.

“Feel
like calling it a night?” Kouris asked, no longer able to endure
their absurd boasts.

With a
nod, I stood and stretched, and Tizo said, “We're heading out at
dawn, Felheim. If you ain't there then you ain't getting another
invite,” and waved pleasantly at us.

“I'll
join you later,” Reis said, and Kouris and I headed off, walking
side-by-side in silence, until we pulled away from the
town.

I
balanced along the edge of the road winding out of Mahon, where the
path abruptly dropped down a few feet to the beach below, arms
spread out. Walking on the sand put Kouris at my level. We'd got
into the habit of heading home like that, over the
months.

“Sorry
to be disappointing you like that,” Kouris murmured, and I darted a
few steps ahead, trying to find the point where the sea met the sky
in the darkness. “I'm doing my best to get us out of here. We're
all trying, yrval.”

I kept
moving ahead at my own speed. I didn't want to pull away from
Kouris, but I didn't want to take my frustrations out on her,
either. Through everything, she'd stuck by my side. She'd ensured
we had a place in Port Mahon, and she'd never stayed still for
long, not when there was someone she could track down, someone from
her distant past who might help us out.

Abruptly
stopping, I sat down on the raised path, and once she caught up to
me, Kouris sat in the sand, barely having to look up at
me.

“It's
not so bad here, is it?” Kouris asked, tusks gleaming in the
moonlight.

“It's not bad!” I replied instantly, and it took all the
breath out of me. “It's not bad at all. I like it here. I
love
it. I love getting
to work on the boats, getting to fish, helping out Reis. I've made
friends here. People like me, I've learnt so much, and I get to be
useful...”

I slid
off the edge as I trailed off, toes curling in the warm
sand.

“But?”
Kouris asked.

I
circled her, full of as much restless energy as there were grains
of sand on the beach, threw my hands up and brought them down,
defeated before I'd even said anything. But I had to learn to force
the things I was thinking out, otherwise they'd fester in the dark
corners of my mind. Whenever it was too hard to say anything, I
thought back to the eight weeks it'd taken to cross over to Canth;
the eight weeks I'd spent in silence, huddled beneath the deck,
pretending seasickness alone had turned me so pale.

“But I keep getting so angry, Kouris. I just...” I started,
refusing to let my jaw tense up. “I want to believe that we're
going to get out of here. I
do
believe it, but I can't stand waiting. Every time
you set out, I have so much hope that this is it, we're finally
being given a way back, but you always come back empty-handed. I
know how hard you're trying, but I just get so
angry
at myself for having hoped
that much, when it's all useless.”

Kouris
didn't take her eyes off me as I paced, trying to stomp the
frustration out against the sand. She held out a hand but I didn't
take it. I didn't want to be close to her, not with this
heat.

“It's
tough, yrval. Tough on all of us, but sometimes, staying still is
the hardest thing you can do.”

“You'd
know,” I muttered under my breath, wincing the moment the words
were out of my mouth.

My back
was turned to Kouris and the waves were drawing close, but she
couldn't have missed what I'd said. My shoulders rose, and without
turning to her, I could see the look cut across her features
against the clear night sky.

“I'm
sorry.” I span on my heels and clutched her shoulders. “I'm sorry.
I didn't mean that. I did, but I meant, I meant that you'd dealt
with this before, and... that wasn't fair. I'm sorry,
Kouris.”

Kouris
stared and she stared right through me, and my stomach sank like a
ship in a storm. I couldn't lose her. Not after all we'd been
through. My hands shook and my teeth ground together, and I scolded
myself, wanting to know why I couldn't accept the way things were.
Why I couldn't move my thoughts to the present and control what
rushed through my mind, out of my mouth.

“No, it
wasn't,” Kouris said slowly, “But none of this is. Come on, yrval.
We're both tired.”

The
silence we walked through was more stagnant than before, and the
sounds of Mahon no longer clawed their way across the beach towards
us. I glanced back once and it was all lights glinting in the
distance, making the hut seem a million miles away.

I pulled
myself onto the pier and Kouris took a single step up and pushed
the front door open as I ducked under her arm. The candles had long
since burnt out and neither of us thought of relighting them. The
moonlight that spilt in through open windows was more than enough
to find our way across the living area by, and Kouris followed me
to my room, as she so often did.

The bed
was more than big enough for the two of us, and my room was hardly
bare. I'd collected brightly coloured shells from the beach, bought
trinkets from passing merchants and red phoenixes carved from
candle wax from the temple's Priests, and arranged them across my
dresser and shelves, along with oddly shaped glass bottles and the
wooden wolf Reis had carved me for my twenty-fifth
birthday.

Yet
sometimes, I still expected to open the door and walk into my
farmhouse; to open the door and see a four-poster bed, blocking the
view of Isin from the window.

I laid
on one side of the bed, blanketed by the stifling heat, wishing
that there was any adapting to it. I could get used to the language
and the food, the customs of the locals, but even those who'd spent
half a century in Canth ended up drenched in sweat before
midday.

Everyone
except for Kouris, that was. She hadn't once been tempted to hack
off her long hair.

“... I
love it here, but I could do without the heat,” I said, eyes fixed
on her as she curled up next to me. I felt the ache in my chest
ease when I caught her smiling, and said in a whisper, “I don't
want to leave forever. But I need to know. You went back to
Kastelir for a reason, didn't you? You wanted to help the pane, to
help everyone, and it's worse for them now than it ever has been.
That's why I wanted to go back. Even if...”

I
pressed my face into the pillow and Kouris placed a hand against my
back, pulling me close. I let her draw me to her chest, not
believing it could get any hotter until I'd committed myself to
being plastered against her.

“I know,
I know,” she said softly. “We'll be there and back again before you
know it, yrval. You'll see."

CHAPTER II

Tizo had
inherited three ships upon becoming a captain, but only one of them
matched up with my old expectations of pirate ships. The other two
were more suited to hauling cargo, and we set out on one of those
at dawn, sailing west as the sun rose with a crew of
twenty.

“Akela
not with you?” one of Tizo's regular crew asked, once the sails
were tended to and Mahon was fading in the distance.

“We're
just picking up goods. I doubt we're going to run into much
trouble,” I said, leaning on the railing and watching the waves.
“Besides, I haven't seen her in a few days. I think she's off on a
job at the moment.”

The
woman shrugged, supposing we could do without Akela, and headed
below deck to pretend to make herself useful. Even amongst pirates,
Akela stood out as particularly intimidating, when she wanted to
be, and she had no shortage of offers from people needing someone
to stand behind them, arms folded across their chest while threats
were issued, or to act as a bodyguard. I often went along with her
to help translate, for few in Mahon spoke Mesomium, and Akela
hadn't picked up the language as quickly as I had.

Eloa
took less than an hour to reach with the favourable winds we'd been
granted. It was easily twice the size of Mahon and boasted that
those within all earnt an honest living, but the port thought far
too much of itself for a town that openly traded with pirates. The
docks were swarmed with fishing boats that hadn't yet set out for
the day, and the Eloans had been expecting us; everything we were
there to collect was waiting for us, and a space to make port had
been left clear.

It was
in their best interest that they get the exchange over and done
with as quickly as possible, lest we tar their
reputation.

“Seems
to me that we ought to be getting a discount,” Tizo announced as
she strode across the gangplank. The merchant who'd been sent to
make the trade cleared his throat nervously and placed a hand atop
one of the crates, as though that'd stop us from pulling them from
under him. “Seeing as how you lot are no longer making the
deliveries, that is. Time is money, and you've cost us a hell of a
lot of it. A whole morning wasted on services you should be
providing!”