Mick smoothed a lock of hair from my face. “It’s dragon law. I still have to face the charges, no matter what else has happened.”
“What else did happen? Besides Drake rescuing me? Should I be thanking him?”
“Cassandra found me through the mirror. She said you’d told her you thought you were inside a volcano. We flew to the one sacred to the kachinas, and then a lightning bolt struck the mountain, pointing the way. I knew you’d called it to you.”
“So you had Drake dig me out?”
“Yes. There are other dragons who want you dead—they thought me dead and gone, so they decided to go for you. I and my dragons got there first.”
“Then who were the kachinas fighting?”
“The other dragons. The kachinas were trying to protect you.”
“Protect me,” I repeated. “Not kill me?”
“They don’t want the other dragons to get their hands on your power. I know their leader; if he thought he could control and use you, he’d keep you alive and do just that.”
“Control me?”
Mick smoothed my hair again. “I said he’d try. When he didn’t succeed, he’d kill you. But don’t worry. I’ll never let that happen.” This was the man I loved. Cryptic, evasive, hiding things from me until he thought I needed to know.
“The kachinas are fine with you having me?” I asked.
“You seemed to make a good impression on them.”
I thought about my debate in the cave with the Koshare. I didn’t remember winning the argument, but maybe it had made him think. Good gods, did that mean someone had actually
listened
to me?
I had other worries at the moment.
“Why is the dragon trial
now
?” I asked. “I thought it was in a week—not that I know what day it is.”
“The dragon council called an emergency session. First order of business, my trial.”
I looked around at the dragons who’d broken formation and stood talking together in clumps like people waiting at an airport.
“What are
they
going to do?”
“They’re here to observe. Not much else they can do. The council of three will preside, and only they and my defense can do any talking.”
“What about you? The defendant? Do you get to talk?”
Mick shook his head. “The prisoner is mute, because the council can’t trust that he won’t lie to save himself. A neutral defense will tell the truth.”
“And Colby is your defense. I wouldn’t call him neutral. Why don’t we fly away now and go to Australia?”
“Then we’d have the trial in Australia. There are dragons there too.”
I touched the magic inside myself, the beautiful, solid, hard core of it. “What do you want me to do? I can take out the dragon council if you want. I can do it, you know. They need to understand that.”
“They do understand it.” He brushed my skin with his thumbs. “Tell me something. When Drake snatched you, why didn’t you, as you say, ‘take him out’?”
“I didn’t want him to drop me.”
“You could have hurt him before he snatched you. Why didn’t you?”
I shrugged. I loved Mick’s hands on my shoulders, warm through the chill of the desert night. “I didn’t know who he was at first, or which side he was on.”
Mick touched his forehead to mine, breath on my face. “And that’s why I believe in you. You could wipe away anyone you want with the sweep of your hand, but you wait, in case they turn out to be innocent.”
“Not always smart.”
“But you’d rather take the consequences on yourself than destroy someone who doesn’t deserve it. Jim couldn’t make that distinction.”
I gave him a shaky smile. “Is that why you’d rather go to bed with me than him?”
Mick’s wicked grin answered. “That, and so many other reasons.”
I felt someone breathing down my neck. Colby. “This is very sweet,” he said. “But the council is arriving.”
Three dragons landed a little way away from our group and changed to human form. One was Bancroft; another was the man I’d seen Drake talking to at Bancroft’s strong-hold in Santa Fe. The third was a woman, tall and broad-shouldered with white hair sweeping to her waist.
The dragons that had followed Mick started moving away from the three, retreating a distance, arranging themselves to watch.
Except for Nash Jones, who had walked over with Colby. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.
He looked incongruous, the only man dressed and not tattooed. He wore his sheriff’s uniform, the star-shaped badge glinting in the morning sunlight.
“The dragons wanted a neutral human observer, since there was another human involved. Colby asked, I volunteered.”
“Another human . . . meaning me?”
“Yes.”
I glanced at Colby. “I’m magical.”
“But mortal human,” Colby said. “And you’re what this trial is all about. You’re entitled to representation by a human.”
“Besides, I didn’t trust them to return you safely.” Nash spoke matter-of-factly, as though being carried hundreds of miles by a dragon to the middle of Death Valley was part of his job. “Neither did Maya or Cassandra.”
I imagined both ladies had given him hell. “You know, Nash, you’re a good guy, underneath it all.”
Nash frowned at me and returned to watching the dragon council. “Don’t push it, Begay.”
I didn’t want to wait through the damned trial. I had no way of knowing how long it would take. Twenty minutes? Twenty days? I wanted to grab Mick and take off with him somewhere, to hole up with him and make love for a week. I’d grieved for him; now I needed to reassure myself that he was here, alive, not a dream. I wanted to touch and taste him, to hold him and reconnect with him. And yes, I most of all I wanted to have hard, heavy, and sweat-soaked sex with him.
The dragons didn’t do anything so formal as call the meeting to order. The dragon council simply stood in place, and Mick and Colby led me and Nash to stand before them.
The female councilor had fine-lined tattoos down her arms and legs plus one snaking across her perfect belly. Her aura told me she was older than the other two, but I’d never know it from her lineless body and face.
“That’s Aine,” Colby said in my ear. “At least that’s the shortened version of her name. She’s who we have to watch out for. She’s old, experienced, smart, and doesn’t have an ounce of compassion in her ice-cold body.”
“Comforting,” I said. “Worse than the other guy? The one who wants me obliterated?”
“Farrell. He’s got a nasty temper, but he can be reasonable—if the stars are aligned. He’s the senior.”
“The one whose—what did you call it—‘bit on the side’ you stole?”
Colby grinned. “Yep. The man hates me.”
Bancroft was the third of the council. “Will it make any difference that I saved Bancroft’s life?” I whispered to Colby.
“Nope. The dragon council likes to believe that they’re blind justice, impartial judges. Huh.”
“This trial will be fair, won’t it?” Nash asked him.
“In dragon terms, sure,” Colby said. “In human terms, not so much.”
Mick said nothing. He stood a little apart from us, his stance calm, the wind from the mountains stirring his hair. His eyes were dragon-black, and the jagged tattoo that snaked across his lower back glowed with fire.
The woman, Aine, spoke. “Micalerianicum has been charged with disobeying a direct order from the dragon council to kill the Stormwalker Janet Begay when she committed an act that could have brought danger to all dragon-kind. Mick had pledged his life to be contingent upon the Stormwalker’s good behavior, which she then violated by opening a vortex. However, Mick still insisted she be kept alive even after that, and took her as mate to protect her under dragon law. How does he plead?”
Colby stepped forward. White dust clung to his tattooed body, making him look a little like the Koshare.
“He pleads guilty,” Colby said.
“Damn it, Colby.” I knew Mick had already been found guilty, but it was another thing to hear Colby so gleefully say it.
“Please advise the Stormwalker that she may not speak until recognized,” Aine said.
“Fuck you, lady,” I muttered, but Nash put his lips close to my ear.
“It’s a trial, Janet, rife with rules we don’t understand. For once in your life, shut up.”
I closed my mouth, knowing he had a point, but this was Mick’s fate we were talking about. Losing him last night had nearly destroyed me, and I didn’t want to go through that again.
Mick said nothing and didn’t move, a man awaiting his fate. He’d told me he had ideas on how to get out of his sentence, but he hadn’t shared them with me. Besides, what could he possibly do if he was not allowed to say anything?
Farrell spoke. “Does the defense counsel have anything to say before sentence is passed?”
“Oh, I have plenty to say.” Colby walked forward a pace. “But I’ll keep it brief. My first idea was to claim that Micky was insane, which was why he chose to believe that the Stormwalker was harmless, but I think that won’t wash.”
“No,” Aine agreed.
“The second was to prove that the Stormwalker really is harmless, and it was all right that Micky didn’t kill her. But after everything that’s happened, everything the council has seen her do, that won’t wash either.”
Obviously not. All three council members nodded.
“So my third and final idea is to let the Stormwalker herself plead for Mick’s life,” Colby continued. “To tell you why he was justified in sparing her. Therefore I give you the Stormwalker, Janet Begay.”
All eyes turned expectantly to me.
“Colby, when I get you alone...” I said under my breath.
Colby rubbed his hands. “I can’t wait.”
I stepped forward, putting myself under the scrutinizing stare of three tall dragons. Bancroft and Farrell had let their eyes become dragon-black; Aine’s were a chill light gray.
The magic inside me was calm, serene, like the sheet of water that must have covered this lake eons ago. I imagined a pool of clear, deep blue that had reflected the sky. I felt my magic waiting, ready for my command. The dawn sky was empty of clouds—no more storms—but that no longer mattered. The Beneath magic would pull what it needed from the storm magic and vice versa.
My mouth was dry, but no one had bothered to bring any water. I cleared my throat.
“Mick sacrificed everything when he decided nearly six years ago not to kill me,” I said. “I didn’t know it at the time, but letting me live went against everything he sincerely believed in. Dragon law and dragon honor are very important to him—I know this because he wouldn’t have showed up at this stupid trial if they weren’t.”
Farrell’s eyes narrowed. “You are insolent.”
“I know I am. I think that’s why Colby wants me to speak, so he can see your faces when I say what I’ve got to say.” Colby’s smirk confirmed my suspicion. “I didn’t coerce Mick or glam him into keeping me alive. When I met him I had no idea he was a dragon—no idea that dragons even existed—and no idea what he’d come to do. I only saw him as a man who’d come to my rescue, a man who seemed to like me, a man who could take my Stormwalker magic and live. Mick’s had to make some tough decisions regarding me, decisions that none of you people could have made. You follow your rules and never stop to think about the consequences.”
Aine’s lip curled. “Are you finished?”
“Not quite.” I was warming up, beginning to enjoy myself. “You feared me because I might open the way to Beneath. Well, if Mick had followed his rules and killed me, my goddess mother would still be wandering around up here, trying to create another daughter to help her, one who would have done whatever my mother wanted. And if Mick had stuck to his pledge
after
I opened the vortex and killed me, I wouldn’t have been around when Undead Jim, who couldn’t control his magic, started destroying people. He could have killed every single person in Magellan and gone on a murdering rampage.
You
couldn’t have stopped him.” I still hadn’t figured out who’d resurrected Jim, but that was a worry for another time.
“However,” Farrell broke in, “if not for you, and if not for Bancroft going behind our backs, this undead person would have come nowhere near dragons. The point is moot.”
“Gee, what compassion you have,” I said. “Maybe Jim wouldn’t have gone near any dragons if Bancroft had stayed home, but he was still killing human beings. No wonder dragons like to stay hidden from humans—you’d be locked up for being sociopaths. Mick’s act kept a lot of people alive and even saved Bancroft’s ass.”
“But this destructive human would not have been walking about at all, had it not been for magic like yours,” Farrell said.
“Magic
like
mine,” I returned. “Not mine. At the time Jim Mohan was getting himself resurrected, I was pulling Mick out of a jail of your making, in a mountain ridge not far from this one. Nash Jones is witness to that. I know you want to pin Jim’s second life on me, but you can’t. And I bet that pisses you off.”