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Tiamat's Kittens: With Muffled Drum
[there's an associated story, but i'm still in the process of writing it.]
4/13/978
Sondirra:
Before we left Khatanga, we went up to talk to Chaim again, after I told the other two pairs about the reason Kiana was over two hundred years old. After I reminded him of who Kiana had been, he said, "Oh, yes, her. She was the first I did that on. And the only."
He said it took a year to make up the potions for the lifespan transfer, and a month to do the procedure itself. I arranged with him to do four potions, since he said it was as easy to do several as it was one.
Jordan and I had had a...discussion about the lifespan transfer. He had been adamantly against it in the beginning, but as we'd talked about it, he'd softened a bit. "I can't do it," he said. "I can't take that from Gannon."
"Even if he's willing to give it to you freely?" I asked. "Even if it means you have more time with--" I stopped.
He gave me a sharp look with his blue eyes. "More time with?"
I shrugged, looking away. "More time with Gannon. More time with me." I looked back. "I mean, that's presuming a lot of things. But if you don't have to die after your four score and ten..."
"I thought you didn't mind me being human."
"I don't!" I took his hand. "Jordan, I will enjoy whatever time I have with you. If I have a choice, though, I'd rather spend more time than less." I sighed. "It's your decision. You don't have to make it for another year."
"I know," he said, and pulled me close. "Gannon's been through enough already. He should have his full span of years. I'll die like humans are supposed to, whenever that is. He'll be free, afterwards." There was a sorrow in his voice that tore at me.
"Is it freedom?" I asked him. "Truly?" I kissed him. "Just think about it, all right? Come on, we're going to be late."
Things were going well with him; frighteningly well, really. Palil was still sulking, and things between her and Gannon were decidedly strange. Their friendship seemed to be all right, but when they would accidentally touch, even to brush against one another, one or both of them would flinch away.
They seemed to be making the best of things, and I thought they would muddle through. Right when we were getting ready to leave, we got a message from Harbin. Admiral Coulter wishes to meet with you. Be in the back room at the Yellow Rose tavern in Petrozav at 8 AM three days from now. Bring Jordan and Paloma's teams with you; we'd want Hypatia's team up there, but it would take them too long to get there.
Palil nodded. "Understood, Captain Harbin. We'll be there."
Three days from then, all of us walked into the Yellow Rose Tavern, a place down near the docks. We'd met Paloma's team on the way, and Palil had been happily reunited with Olin. They were starting to get a bit less shy of letting others know what was going on, it seemed.
The back room of the Yellow Rose was large enough to hold all of us, and Coulter was there, sitting at the head of a long table.
Coulter was watching us, a compactly built elf in his small form with blond hair and finely carved face. "Majors, Captains, Lieutenants. Have a seat."
Palil and I glanced at each other. Did he just call us--
Ssh. "Admiral," Palil said and saluted. We all followed suit, then sat.
Coulter looked at us each in turn, then said, "As you may have guessed, you've been promoted. You no longer report to Harbin, but me directly. You are, as of this moment, on detached service. You are free of the encumbrances of the chain of command."
Holy shit.
(Palil: I concur.)
"You needed to be led by a pair of Majors in order to be in detached service, thus the promotions. I'll give you information, and you'll decide what to do about it. I have a list of things for you. I'll read the thing I'm pretty sure you're going to want to take care of last." A shiver ran down my spine. Something about how he said that--
"The black market trade has been increasing, and I am sure it will increase still. You're aware of the Gemini dragon hideout, and the giant caches. There have been strange things going on in Chelyabinsk, odd happenings like buildings moving around and arrows stopping in midair. We have someone who's been feeding us information on Reuben, one of the younger sons. He was traveling to Petrozav, and he got to Soshi and disappeared. The MI group with him turned up dead."
He took a breath. "Isla has offered alliance to Gada. Gada was more or less forced into accepting; she relies on Isla's region for food. Isla, in turn, has declared a trade embargo against Yafa. She has a full third of her army patrolling the border."
"How are we on food?" Paloma asked.
"We have enough to last the summer. When we get into the fall, we'll have issues. The military has stores that will last through the winter, but when spring arrives, life gets difficult. Tertia has made overtures to the pirates, and flew out for a meeting with Andromeda yesterday. And, of course, the pirates are likely working with Reuben. Penn has offered us--MI in particular--supplies in exchange for information about giant caches and Kane's potions.
"Yafa's ambassador to Reuben has been ejected from the country on charges that she was spying. Strangely enough, they didn't kill her. She'll be back in a couple of months for debriefing. We don't know what her story is. There is a fleet of ships that's just departed from Novgorod, and we need to know their numbers and destination.
"Lower on the priority list, there are reports of a ghost ship on King Lake, an exodus of white dragons from the Yablonov Range into Gada's territory--" Palil elbowed me-- "and four blue dragons washed ashore at Omsk. They were tortured before they died. There's a religious figure in Yaroslav stirring up trouble. He claims the end of the world is nigh, and he know a lot ore than he should. We've been keeping the trade embargo secret, and he claims that a famine is coming."
Another long breath. "And, finally. I have bad news for you. Garnet and Alvar's bodies were found three days ago near Chelyabinsk. They had been killed three times, and resurrected three, and ended up freezing to death. There is nothing we can do."
"No--" Palil whispered. I caught her hand and squeezed hard. She swallowed, and I could see her eyes staring as shock took her. She suddenly got up and left the room, but though I wanted to follow her, I had to stay.
"What happened?" I asked.
Coulter looked at me, and his eyes were compassionate. "Alvar was found very near the Chelyabinsk portal. Garnet was found three miles away. She had frozen to death before he had." He shook his head. "Bilanderigon--you call him Bill, correct?--and Alistair, Garnet and Alvar, Major Tessa and her bondmate, and Major Bonita and her bondmate Malcolm had been assigned to go interfere in a situation involving Bill's family. Bill's family is very influential, and his grandfather was about to die. His uncle was going to take over, and that dragon had been talking about never sending any more of their eggs to the hatching grounds and declining to participate in sending youngsters to the military. They were also speaking of getting up and leaving. We wanted to prevent that.
"Bill's father was leaning towards the status quo, so we wanted to get him into the succession. Something went very wrong, and there was a clan war. The clan ended up splitting, with Bill's uncle leading the larger faction, and his father leading the smaller. We don't know what went wrong, or how."
"Do we know if Bill and Alistair are alive?" Tchar asked.
"We believe they are." He closed his mouth and looked at all of us. "I have your new bars. We assumed you would want to see the bodies and perhaps speak with their shades; they have been left alone. According to their wishes, their bodies will be burned and their ashes scattered at sea. Alvar's father died recently, and his mother has been uncontactable. We do not know where Garnet's family is. You are his next of kin."
I choked, then recovered. I couldn't cry. Not now. There were too many things to do. "Where are the--bodies?" I managed.
"In the morgue. Two blocks to the east of the main barracks. Here are all of your new bars." He picked up a sack beside him and set it on the table. It was filled with wooden boxes. "Come see me before you leave, Major," he said to me. "Congratulations on the promotion, though I know it likely seems a bit hollow. Dismissed."
Small mercies. I collected the sack and handed it to Bambi. "I have to go find Palil," I said to her. "Give me a half hour. We'll meet you back at the barracks." She nodded, and I turned to go.
"Sondirra--" It was Olin. "Can we do anything?"
I shook my head. "Later. Right now, I'm the only one who is safe getting close to her." Then I left, stretching myself into a run. I knew where she'd gone.
There was a place in the center of Petrozav, a park filled with trees. She was in a grove, sitting with her back to the trunk of one of the trees, eyes open and staring into nothingness. "Hey, love," I said, squatting down next to her. "Hey."
"She's gone," Palil replied, her usually sweet voice strange and rough. "We failed her and Alvar. We should have gone to find Bonita as soon as we heard she'd been spotted here."
"We couldn't know," I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. She was shivering as if she were freezing to death. "We've been busy trying to stop a war."
"A war that is inevitable," spat Palil. "We're bailing while the boat's going down. And they died--" She put her head in her hands, and the shivers turned into sobs. I put my arms around her and she leaned into me.
The tears lasted five minutes or so, and I rocked her like I would a child, letting myself cry, too. I dropped to silent speech. I hate to tell you this, Palil, but we both need to pull ourselves together. We have to do this now, find out how they died, what happened.
She raised her head, and I felt the cold descend on her soul. And kill those who killed them. I will see them dead.
I could not contradict her.
Palil pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose, then offered it to me. We cleaned up and went out of the grove together. The only way I would have been able to tell just how much Palil was hurting at that moment if I hadn't been her bondmate was the wounded way in which she held her mouth. Through the bond, I could feel her holding down the grief and rage.
We rejoined the others, then went to the morgue.
Gannon and Jordan as well as Aldaric and Paloma and Sutton and Olin walked there with us. They would wait while we were inside; Garnet had been close to very few people, though everyone had known and mostly liked Alvar. His first and best friends, however, were us.
How would things be different, if they had stayed? What would they have led us into?
I shook myself out of that thought and squeezed Palil's hand. She balked. "I can't--"
"You can." My whisper was fierce. Something inside me twisted, and I swallowed. We must do this. Be calm. This is the first step towards finding their killers.
I felt her snap to attention. Somewhere inside myself, I wondered at my own calm. I had loved the sweet and shy Garnet and her brash and cheerful bondmate, too. But it took everything in me to keep Palil together. There wasn't much room left for my own grief.
She took a breath, and we stepped forward.
The morgue was kept cold enough to see our breaths. A dour attendant pointed us to the far corner, where we could see the dim outline of bodies.
The lights brightened as we walked close. Palil clutched my hand. No, no, no, no, no...
Be strong, love. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to look at the bodies.
It was hard to recognize them at first, lying so still. Garnet was almost as big as Palil, her shifting colors dull and still with death. She had a few scars I didn't recognize, and three neat, healed-over puncture wounds in her chest. Otherwise, though, she didn't look too bad.
Alvar, though.
God, god, what did they do to you, my friend?
He was heavily scarred, the tips of his ears twisted and burned. It looked like had been subject to a fireball or a fire breath weapon, probably several times. He'd lost weight, though part of that could be death changing him. He had a look to him that was sort of familiar, though.
He looked like a hunter. Would the look in his eyes have been as hard as most of the hunters we'd met? I wished, wished, wished I'd gotten a chance to find out.
"Who do we start with?" asked Beamer. His voice was shaken but strong.
I glanced at Palil. She was staring at Garnet's body, not responding. "Garnet," I said. I pulled out a Speak with Dead potion. "All right." I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly gone dry, and triggered the spell.
"Tell me all of the significant events of the last six months."
I was expecting it, but I still jumped when Garnet's mouth moved. Her voice was expressionless. It's just her shade, I reminded myself. Most of her has moved on.
"We joined MI, and Alvar, I, Bill, and Alistair were taken on a mission by Major Tessa and Major Bonita. Bill's uncle and father were having a civil war, splitting the clan. The uncle got reinforcements from somewhere. Casualties were heavy. The uncle overwhelmed Bill's father and we were captured. We never saw Bill or Alistair again. Tessa and her bondmate were taken away. Bonita, too, but we saw her again when we escaped. She was in charge of one of Reuben's MI teams. Bonita killed Bill's uncle, and replaced him with someone of Reuben's. We saw. It was the only way we could know, the spell they used to change him is proof against True Seeing. We were in the middle of escaping when we witnessed this."
The calm, calm voice kept going. "We got out, but were chased down and killed by a hunter team. They left us. We woke with a strange warrior standing over us. That happened two more times. The fourth time, we were so, so close. We were almost to the portal. The warrior appeared and drew the hunters off...but it was too cold. I froze to death. The last thing I remember is Alvar sitting with me, stroking my head, telling me it was going to be okay, and crying."
I glanced back at Alvar's body, then at the floor, trying to keep the tears in my throat from surfacing. "Describe the strange warrior to me."
"Half-elf. Long blond hair. Green eyes. Very tanned, very muscular. Bondmate was a red, female, very old. Almost as big as Chaim. Black leathers, pair of scimitars sheathed on his back. He stopped the hunters the final time. I don't know if he survived. He did things I'd never seen, stopped their weapons from moving."
The final question was, "What is Bonita intending to do?"
"Major Bonita. Admiral Bonita, for Reuben, leader of his MI. She's trying to get all of the red and gold dragons into Reuben's territory. I don't know any more, Sondirra."
Her voice fell silent, and Palil's grip on my hand was painfully tight. I bowed my head. It was the last time I'd ever hear Garnet's voice. Finally, I said, "We have work to do. Let's get to it."
We filed out, silently. Jordan's eyes met mine as we walked out the door, and I shook my head slightly. He nodded, and he and Gannon fell in beside us, Sutton and Olin on the other side, Aldaric and Paloma walking next to Tchar. Gannon reached out, laying his hand on Palil's arm, and I saw her stiffen slightly, then lean into him a bit.
Once we got back to the barracks, we filled the rest in. A divination potion gave us a pair of names--the warrior was Kristof, the red dragon with Psyche. A check in the records revealed that they were both just over a century old.
Then why had Psyche been so big? We messaged Chaim. "I know them only by rumor. Only a century of so old, but Psyche's as large as I am, or bigger. He has no love for Reuben. Several MI teams have come up against him, and he kills them down to the last. He returns no messages."
The archives came up with another piece of the puzzle. Psyche was born 117 years ago, and Kristof had been five years old when she hatched. They'd gone through school, served their two years and made Lieutenant, and their team had joined MI. On their first mission, they'd run into Reuben's MI, and all of his team except himself and his bond had been killed. Including...his wife.
"His wife? He married a member of his team?"
"Yeah," Galen said. "Looks like they'd been married under a year when she died, but there had been an existing relationship there for years."
There was a note on the entry to the effect that it was speculated that the team that Psyche and Kristof had come up against was the mysterious leaders of Reuben's MI. Well, that gave him a reason to hate Reuben, and be after Bonita. Palil and I went in to speak to Coulter, telling him about Bonita being the leader of Reuben's MI.
"Good to know," he said. "Do what you have to do. Here, Take these." He handed me three small keys. "Your own keys to the special potions cabinet. Take what you need, it may get rough."
"Thank you, Admiral," Palil said, and saluted. We went to raid the cabinet, waving to Eaton on our way in. He sighed and let us past. We picked up Raise Deads and a few Resurrection potions, then got Eaton to raid the regular stores for us.
We got packed up and left for Chelyabinsk. We flew up to #2, Jordan and Paloma's teams coming with us. We arrived at #2 after dark and diverted to the portal, bouncing to the Chelyabinsk portal. It was midnight before we got there, and the mages made us bright lights to track by.
Not that it was that hard, really. Someone had been very helpful indeed.
Palil:
I was holding myself together with an effort of will, drawing on Sondirra's strength and presence. It helped that we had something to do, something that might help figure out who had done this to our teammates and friends.
The landscape was flat, without much to block the ceaseless wind and blowing snow. I would have been happy to be here, usually; it was about the right temperature. Somehow, I couldn't being myself to care.
"Look, up there," Galen said, pointing. "The snow's acting funny up there."
We took our lights and ourselves to have a look.
There was, seemingly, an invisible barrier causing the snow to simply go around; it was about thirty feet across and, it appeared, tapered to a point at the top. Inside the bubble, which was what we immediately started calling it, the snow was churned up.
"Alvar," Sondirra muttered beside me. "Look, there's the imprint of his body, and--" She stopped, seeing what I too could see, now. There was a perfect imprint of Alvar's hand in the soft snow.
I could not think about it, not now. I reached out to touch the edge of the bubble, and felt a sort of membrane, a little sticky and fragile-feeling. I put my whole hand in, wiggling my fingers, and the barrier let me past. Taking a breath, I stepped through.
I stepped out again, just to make sure I could, and went back inside, Sondirra following me. Galen came in, as well. "Look, Sondirra," Galen said. "There, between the thumb and the forefinger. What's that round mark?"
She stooped to look. "Can't tell. Maybe the end of a staff?"
"Not nearly deep enough. A wand, maybe? Or something like a coin?"
"Weird." Sondirra reached out and knocked on the invisible barrier that separated us from the snow. It rang softly at the rap of her gloved hand. "Guys, this is metal. Invisible metal. Someone wanted us to see this, and went to a hell of a lot of trouble."
"Who?" Galen wanted to know.
"Look at the tracks. Maybe they'll tell."
Alvar had walked--staggered--to where he had fallen. I couldn't help seeing him in my mind, his beloved bondmate dead, determined to get to the portal and back to civilization. But he'd fallen, and had not gotten up. "Those should be the footprints of the people who came to get his body. Looks like they were careful not to disturb where the body lay. Except for that person." She pointed. There was a footprint in the snow by Alvar's head.
"They didn't find a wand or anything on him," Galen said. "They would have told us."
Sondirra was squatting, putting her own feet where the mysterious person had stood. "You stop here. You reach out. You take whatever he had. Then, see, how this one's wider? Pivot and step back."
"Whoever it was took whatever he had in his hand and left," Galen finished.
"Let's go find where Garnet fell," I said, and stepped out of the bubble.
Nobody seemed to have moved since I'd gone in. "That was quick," Gannon said.
"We were in there for a good five minutes."
He shook his head, then pulled his hood up a bit. "You stepped in and stepped out again, with hardly a pause."
The bubble held a time-stopping spell? Whoever it was who'd created this was a more powerful mage than anyone we'd met before. "It's been three days, and it shows no signs of fading," I said, quietly. "Who would have done this? The mysterious warrior? His bondmate?"
I turned and quickly shucked my clothes, changing to my large form. Sondirra and Galen had emerged, and quickly swung up into her place. "Let's go see where Garnet fell," she told the others. "It should be about three miles that way, or so."
There was another barrier with a metal bottom three miles away, and contained in it was the story of Garnet's death. She had been walking, it looked like, too hurt of exhausted to fly. I forced myself to look at where she'd fallen, and keep looking. There was where her body had fallen, a deeper indent where she had curled up like a cat, trying to preserve the last of her warmth. There was the imprint of her head, marks next to it where Alvar had knelt next to her. And there--away from the mouth a little--was a yellow residue scattered on the snow like pollen.
"Her breath weapon," Beamer said, catching up. "She breathed on Alvar before she died. That was probably how he got three miles away before he froze."
A thought struck me, and outside the bubble I crouched, running my claws along the smooth edge where the invisible metal met the magic of the bubble. I lifted experimentally, and discovered that it would come up in sections. "Bambi?" I called. "Could you come over here and give this a sniff, see who's been here?"
She nodded, and came over and started sniffing. "Garnet and Alvar. Five dragon-bond pairs on these footprints," she said. "It took a few of them to lift Garnet. Hm. Half-elf, male, tinges of red dragon around the edges. Full elf, female. Bit of green dragon on her."
"Kristof and Bonita," Sondirra said.
"Bonita came first. I think Garnet may not have frozen to death on her own, same with Alvar. She might have gotten them and assumed we would figure they'd died of exposure. Kristof came later."
"That matches up with the tracks," Sondirra said. "Let's go and do the same with where Alvar fell, and see if we get the same story."
We went back, and the scents told the same story there. There was only one difference. "Cedarwood," Bambi said. "Cedarwood and iron, on that round imprint. The cedarwood's pretty strong. Weird, I sort of remember a little bit of cedar about him when we saw his body. It seemed to come from a little pouch he wore at his side."
Tchar glanced back at the portal. "Hold on, I'll be back." He went into the stone building that housed the portal, and came out and said, "The MI team that fetched--the bodies--were the last people through before us. Before them, it was Bonita and her team. She was worried about a half-elf, and was looking for a pair of people who had escaped her custody."
The last place we needed to find was the battle that Garnet's shade had reported. It wasn't difficult to find; it was, in fact, an amazingly bloody mess. There were bodies everywhere, twenty-eight of them to be exact. Fourteen dragons, fourteen humans. Some of them had been killed by dragonfire, others had their heads chopped off or their torsos split. One was even split from the top of his head to his waist. Some of the dragons had been torn to pieces.
We searched the bodies, and found gold pieces minted in Reuben's territory, and drawings of Garnet and Alvar done by a professional hand. There were written orders that we found, too. The hunters were to kill Garnet and Alvar and return the cedar and iron disc.
Looking around at the wreckage, I thought that Kristof was someone who we needed to get and stay on the good side of. Anyone who could do this to three hunter teams could go through us like my claws through cotton. "I think it's time to message Kristof and see if he's amenable to an alliance," I said. I received no argument.
When I contacted him, he suddenly appeared before me. A big man, blond hair pulled back from his face. Not bad-looking, really. "It's a projection," he said after I jumped. "What do you want?"
"I believe we're after the same person. Bonita. Do you know where she is?"
"Somewhere in Chelyabinsk. Which may not be standing much longer."
"Why?"
He laughed without humor. "Because if I have to level it in order to get Bonita, I will."
We all looked at each other, and then I said, "We will be there within a few hours. I think we can arrange it so that the damage to bystanders will be minimized."
"Hurry. She is going to be moving soon against someone named Kane. Once she has what she wants, she'll disappear and it'll probably be months before I pick up her trail again."
(Sondirra: after I finished staring quietly, I faded back to the back of the group and sent a message to Kane. "Pack up and get out. You have a big bad on your trail. Head towards #2." The response was immediate--he and his group would take off within an hour. I hoped it was soon enough.)
I nodded. "Tell me. You raised Garnet and Alvar from the dead three times. What happened that you could not have helped them make it to the portal?"
He shook his head. "Until the last time, I was not there. I can cast spells through this projection. The last time, we were close enough to the portal that I thought that if I killed the hunters, they would make it. I was incorrect. They'd stolen the cedar and iron disc, and Bonita apparently tracked it."
"And you preserved where they fell, after the bodies were taken."
"I thought that someone would want to see the tracks. I take it you did. Are you done with them?"
I nodded. "Let the snow cover them. Do you know what the cedar and iron disc does?"
He shrugged. "It controls the crystal network."
"Crystal network?"
"Those crystals that Reuben's got installed at all the gates that he uses to watch what's going on at all of them."
Oh. That crystal network.
"We'll meet you at the edge of town in two hours," I said.
"Do you have a plan?"
"We'll work on one on the way."
The projection disappeared. I sighed, looking at the place it had been, my tail twitching. "It'll only take us an hour to get there," I said. "Let's use the time we have here wisely."
Several divinations and auguries later, and we had a little better picture of what we were facing. Kristof was not necessarily trustworthy, but that was mostly because in battle, he wouldn't care if any of us got in the way. If we stood between him and his goal, he'd kill us without a second thought. He did, however, want the same thing we did--the death of Bonita and her team.
With that in mind, we took off. An hour later, we were in Kristof's actual presence. "You have a plan?" he asked.
"Not much of one. It depends on how confident you are of your ability to kill Bonita and not get killed. We find her, then figure it out from there."
He laughed. "I just need a few minutes with her. Do you need anything else from me?"
"Do you have names and descriptions of her teammates?" I asked.
He did. We took those descriptions, sent Jordan and Paloma's teams to go to ground outside of town, and spread out where Kristof had indicated he thought they were, the warehouse district. We went invisibly with our tablets, and in a stroke of luck managed to find one of the pairs. Tchar narrowed Bonita's whereabouts to a warehouse down the street, and the pair we'd originally spotted went in. A mage eye showed that it appeared that her whole team was there.
It was time.
I messages Kristof and told him where Bonita was. He walked in, Psyche at his side, and closed the door behind him. A bare three minutes later, he walked back out, cleaning the blood off his blade. He tossed Bonita's head at my feet. "The rest are still in there. Dead, of course."
I tilted my head. "Do you have a use for the cedar and iron disc? If you don't, it would come in very useful for us."
"I probably wouldn't use it too much, it would come in handier for you. Here." He tossed it at me, and I caught it. "That's it, I think."
As a stab in the dark, I asked, "Tell me, do you know any of Reuben's heirs? Are there any that haven't been raised to be just like Reuben?"
Kristof thought about it for a minute. "His youngest daughter. He didn't know she existed until recently, and she grew up completely out of his sight. If I had to say anyone, it would be her. Don't know her name, though, just know of her."
Tchar was bursting with a question. Once he could get a word in edgewise, he said, "So why exactly are you so cool? I mean, we looked in the records, and you're only just over a century old."
He looked amused at the question. "If you could understand, you'd be like me already. Let's just say that if you free your mind from the constraints of what you think you know, anything is possible." He didn't say anything much more intelligible than that, but it's an interesting theory and one that bears more investigation.
"I'd say I didn't think we'll see you again, but I think we probably will," Sondirra said. "Goodbye, then."
I looked down at the head at my feet. Bonita's dead face had a profoundly surprised look on it. I reached down, grabbed the head by the hair, and lifted. "Let's go see what the dead will tell us," I said.
Once inside, with Bonita's head next to her body, Sondirra pulled me aside. "Are you all right, Palil?"
I nodded. I felt the cold inside beginning to thaw, though, and said, "For the moment. Let's get through this."
Bonita's head was spectacularly unhelpful. We only got out of her that Bill and Alistair were somewhere where we couldn't get to them, and that she'd tortured them before she'd taken them there. From a few of the others, we found out that she'd teleported to take them away, and hadn't been back to visit them in a month, so they were likely in Reuben's care. Reuben himself might know where they were, and the other person who might know was one member of an MI team who had escaped with some vital information.
Not particularly helpful. However, there was something else we thought of, looking at the head; Bonita had been in deep cover since she was eleven, placed at #2 by Reuben. Who would he trust that much? Who could he have raised to be both fanatically loyal and an excellent spy?
She was his daughter. She had to be.
We put the heads in sacks, intending to deliver them to Coulter. He might be interested in getting some information out of them. We flew back to the gate, and paused to try out the cedar and iron disc. It appeared that if the person who pulled out the crystal in the back of the wall were carrying the disc, the paralysis trap on it wouldn't go off. Then the procedure was to put the disc into the hole the crystal had left behind.
Beamer, who'd tried this, directed it to look at the gate near #1, where all of the information streams seemed to be going. And there was Reuben, an old elf, appearing to flip through each of the portals in turn, seeing what was there.
We pulled the disc and left posthaste. No need to let Reuben know right away what we had. Funny thing, though. In our brief glimpse of him...I could have sworn he was sitting in a wheelchair.
"We should go," I said when we reached the other portal. "We have a funeral to attend."
It was a silent flight back to Petrozav.
Sondirra:
Coulter was more than happy to have the heads of the leaders of Reuben's MI in his care. I went to the morgue and told them that they could prepare the bodies of Alvar and Garnet for the funeral. Three hours later, I went back and was given a bag of their clothing and belongings, and a large urn containing both of their ashes.
The boat we went out on was barely large enough to hold all of us. It sailed out of the harbor, to where the water became rougher and the wind picked up. Palil clutched the urn in her arms, her eyes brimming with tears. I tried to remember what I'd planned to say. "Alvar Irichenka. Garnet, daughter of the Aquarius dragon clan. You were both with us for too short a time, but in the time you did spend with us, you were both dearly loved. Rest in peace, friends. We consign your remains to the ocean you both loved."
I turned to Palil, and she held the urn out to me. After a moment, Beamer and Bambi stepped up, laying their hands on the urn. Then Tchar and Galen followed suit.
We tipped the urn off the back of the boat. A plume of ash was caught by the wind and whipped out over the water, and as we scattered the mortal remains of our friends on the water, the waves leaped up as if happy to see them.
My vision was blurred with tears, but I did see when the last of the ash ran out of the urn. We sat the urn down on the deck, and turned to the silent congregation. I looked at each of them in turn. "It is done," I said, softly. "May the gods receive them gently."
From beside me, there was a choked sob. I turned to Palil, feeling the cold and the calm that had served to keep her functional for the last pair of days vanish under a tidal wave of grief. I took her in my arms, holding her, and she buried her face in my neck and sobbed.
When we got back to shore, she leaned on me as we walked back to the barracks. "We're holding a wake in a few hours," Beamer said to me. "Are you two coming?"
I shook my head. "Palil needs me. I'll be there in my thoughts."
Beamer nodded and left us then, and Palil broke down anew once we reached our room. "It's all right, I'm here," I murmured to her, stroking her fine white hair. I murmured nonsense to her, holding her, until her sobs quieted and she slipped from consciousness into blessed sleep.
I cried, too, after I'd eased her into bed and pulled a blanket over her. I wrapped myself in my own blanket and, shivering, let my own grief take me. I pulled out the object that I'd put in my pocket, from the small collection of items that the people at the morgue had given me.
It was a knitted sock puppet, dragon-hand sized and purple, with button eyes sewn on and a mouth stitched on in red felt. I remembered Alvar making this for Garnet years ago, saying that if she was going to be a sock puppeteer, she might as well have proper puppets rather than his old socks. He'd learned to knit, just for her. Sweet, deathly shy Garnet, who hardly spoke her mind except through the characters she made up for the stage. Alvar, who had loved her to distraction, who was so proud of her and everything she did.
I dissolved into tears again, holding the puppet in my lap. It would never talk again with the mind who had given it voices gone for good. I cried for her and for Alvar, who had wanted to be the very best Corpsman he could be. I cried for my bondmate, for whom Garnet had been her closest dragon friend, who had always believed that Garnet and Alvar would be back soon and things would go back to normal. I cried for the rest of our teammates, all of them hurting in their own ways.
And I cried for myself, for the pain of losing two friends I'd grown up with, who I'd thought I'd have so much more time with. For the certain knowledge that we were going to lose more friends before this was over, maybe even our own lives. And for having to hold everything together, to give my bondmate the time and space she needed to fall apart.
I cried until the tears didn't come any longer, and wiped my face and blew my nose. I rose from the chair and, following an impulse, tucked the sock puppet into the crook of Palil's arm. There was a buzz in the back of my had, a warning of a headache approaching, and I downed a few quick glasses of vodka in order to quiet it down.
Then I laid myself down in my own bed, empty and aching, and waited for sleep to come.
Quotes:
"Malice or stupidity, is what I say."
"Malice, stupidity, or necessity."
--Tchar, Sondirra
"It'll blend in with the beautiful northern lights on the arctic seacoast..."
"Mmmmm... Nobody ever likes going to swim with me up there."
--Beamer, Palil
"We're always on the wrong beach."
--Bambi
"Why are you so cool?"
"Tchar has a crush."
"He shouldn't. Everything he does lasts three and a half seconds."
--Galen, Sondirra, Bambi
4/13/978
Sondirra:
Before we left Khatanga, we went up to talk to Chaim again, after I told the other two pairs about the reason Kiana was over two hundred years old. After I reminded him of who Kiana had been, he said, "Oh, yes, her. She was the first I did that on. And the only."
He said it took a year to make up the potions for the lifespan transfer, and a month to do the procedure itself. I arranged with him to do four potions, since he said it was as easy to do several as it was one.
Jordan and I had had a...discussion about the lifespan transfer. He had been adamantly against it in the beginning, but as we'd talked about it, he'd softened a bit. "I can't do it," he said. "I can't take that from Gannon."
"Even if he's willing to give it to you freely?" I asked. "Even if it means you have more time with--" I stopped.
He gave me a sharp look with his blue eyes. "More time with?"
I shrugged, looking away. "More time with Gannon. More time with me." I looked back. "I mean, that's presuming a lot of things. But if you don't have to die after your four score and ten..."
"I thought you didn't mind me being human."
"I don't!" I took his hand. "Jordan, I will enjoy whatever time I have with you. If I have a choice, though, I'd rather spend more time than less." I sighed. "It's your decision. You don't have to make it for another year."
"I know," he said, and pulled me close. "Gannon's been through enough already. He should have his full span of years. I'll die like humans are supposed to, whenever that is. He'll be free, afterwards." There was a sorrow in his voice that tore at me.
"Is it freedom?" I asked him. "Truly?" I kissed him. "Just think about it, all right? Come on, we're going to be late."
Things were going well with him; frighteningly well, really. Palil was still sulking, and things between her and Gannon were decidedly strange. Their friendship seemed to be all right, but when they would accidentally touch, even to brush against one another, one or both of them would flinch away.
They seemed to be making the best of things, and I thought they would muddle through. Right when we were getting ready to leave, we got a message from Harbin. Admiral Coulter wishes to meet with you. Be in the back room at the Yellow Rose tavern in Petrozav at 8 AM three days from now. Bring Jordan and Paloma's teams with you; we'd want Hypatia's team up there, but it would take them too long to get there.
Palil nodded. "Understood, Captain Harbin. We'll be there."
Three days from then, all of us walked into the Yellow Rose Tavern, a place down near the docks. We'd met Paloma's team on the way, and Palil had been happily reunited with Olin. They were starting to get a bit less shy of letting others know what was going on, it seemed.
The back room of the Yellow Rose was large enough to hold all of us, and Coulter was there, sitting at the head of a long table.
Coulter was watching us, a compactly built elf in his small form with blond hair and finely carved face. "Majors, Captains, Lieutenants. Have a seat."
Palil and I glanced at each other. Did he just call us--
Ssh. "Admiral," Palil said and saluted. We all followed suit, then sat.
Coulter looked at us each in turn, then said, "As you may have guessed, you've been promoted. You no longer report to Harbin, but me directly. You are, as of this moment, on detached service. You are free of the encumbrances of the chain of command."
Holy shit.
(Palil: I concur.)
"You needed to be led by a pair of Majors in order to be in detached service, thus the promotions. I'll give you information, and you'll decide what to do about it. I have a list of things for you. I'll read the thing I'm pretty sure you're going to want to take care of last." A shiver ran down my spine. Something about how he said that--
"The black market trade has been increasing, and I am sure it will increase still. You're aware of the Gemini dragon hideout, and the giant caches. There have been strange things going on in Chelyabinsk, odd happenings like buildings moving around and arrows stopping in midair. We have someone who's been feeding us information on Reuben, one of the younger sons. He was traveling to Petrozav, and he got to Soshi and disappeared. The MI group with him turned up dead."
He took a breath. "Isla has offered alliance to Gada. Gada was more or less forced into accepting; she relies on Isla's region for food. Isla, in turn, has declared a trade embargo against Yafa. She has a full third of her army patrolling the border."
"How are we on food?" Paloma asked.
"We have enough to last the summer. When we get into the fall, we'll have issues. The military has stores that will last through the winter, but when spring arrives, life gets difficult. Tertia has made overtures to the pirates, and flew out for a meeting with Andromeda yesterday. And, of course, the pirates are likely working with Reuben. Penn has offered us--MI in particular--supplies in exchange for information about giant caches and Kane's potions.
"Yafa's ambassador to Reuben has been ejected from the country on charges that she was spying. Strangely enough, they didn't kill her. She'll be back in a couple of months for debriefing. We don't know what her story is. There is a fleet of ships that's just departed from Novgorod, and we need to know their numbers and destination.
"Lower on the priority list, there are reports of a ghost ship on King Lake, an exodus of white dragons from the Yablonov Range into Gada's territory--" Palil elbowed me-- "and four blue dragons washed ashore at Omsk. They were tortured before they died. There's a religious figure in Yaroslav stirring up trouble. He claims the end of the world is nigh, and he know a lot ore than he should. We've been keeping the trade embargo secret, and he claims that a famine is coming."
Another long breath. "And, finally. I have bad news for you. Garnet and Alvar's bodies were found three days ago near Chelyabinsk. They had been killed three times, and resurrected three, and ended up freezing to death. There is nothing we can do."
"No--" Palil whispered. I caught her hand and squeezed hard. She swallowed, and I could see her eyes staring as shock took her. She suddenly got up and left the room, but though I wanted to follow her, I had to stay.
"What happened?" I asked.
Coulter looked at me, and his eyes were compassionate. "Alvar was found very near the Chelyabinsk portal. Garnet was found three miles away. She had frozen to death before he had." He shook his head. "Bilanderigon--you call him Bill, correct?--and Alistair, Garnet and Alvar, Major Tessa and her bondmate, and Major Bonita and her bondmate Malcolm had been assigned to go interfere in a situation involving Bill's family. Bill's family is very influential, and his grandfather was about to die. His uncle was going to take over, and that dragon had been talking about never sending any more of their eggs to the hatching grounds and declining to participate in sending youngsters to the military. They were also speaking of getting up and leaving. We wanted to prevent that.
"Bill's father was leaning towards the status quo, so we wanted to get him into the succession. Something went very wrong, and there was a clan war. The clan ended up splitting, with Bill's uncle leading the larger faction, and his father leading the smaller. We don't know what went wrong, or how."
"Do we know if Bill and Alistair are alive?" Tchar asked.
"We believe they are." He closed his mouth and looked at all of us. "I have your new bars. We assumed you would want to see the bodies and perhaps speak with their shades; they have been left alone. According to their wishes, their bodies will be burned and their ashes scattered at sea. Alvar's father died recently, and his mother has been uncontactable. We do not know where Garnet's family is. You are his next of kin."
I choked, then recovered. I couldn't cry. Not now. There were too many things to do. "Where are the--bodies?" I managed.
"In the morgue. Two blocks to the east of the main barracks. Here are all of your new bars." He picked up a sack beside him and set it on the table. It was filled with wooden boxes. "Come see me before you leave, Major," he said to me. "Congratulations on the promotion, though I know it likely seems a bit hollow. Dismissed."
Small mercies. I collected the sack and handed it to Bambi. "I have to go find Palil," I said to her. "Give me a half hour. We'll meet you back at the barracks." She nodded, and I turned to go.
"Sondirra--" It was Olin. "Can we do anything?"
I shook my head. "Later. Right now, I'm the only one who is safe getting close to her." Then I left, stretching myself into a run. I knew where she'd gone.
There was a place in the center of Petrozav, a park filled with trees. She was in a grove, sitting with her back to the trunk of one of the trees, eyes open and staring into nothingness. "Hey, love," I said, squatting down next to her. "Hey."
"She's gone," Palil replied, her usually sweet voice strange and rough. "We failed her and Alvar. We should have gone to find Bonita as soon as we heard she'd been spotted here."
"We couldn't know," I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. She was shivering as if she were freezing to death. "We've been busy trying to stop a war."
"A war that is inevitable," spat Palil. "We're bailing while the boat's going down. And they died--" She put her head in her hands, and the shivers turned into sobs. I put my arms around her and she leaned into me.
The tears lasted five minutes or so, and I rocked her like I would a child, letting myself cry, too. I dropped to silent speech. I hate to tell you this, Palil, but we both need to pull ourselves together. We have to do this now, find out how they died, what happened.
She raised her head, and I felt the cold descend on her soul. And kill those who killed them. I will see them dead.
I could not contradict her.
Palil pulled out her handkerchief and blew her nose, then offered it to me. We cleaned up and went out of the grove together. The only way I would have been able to tell just how much Palil was hurting at that moment if I hadn't been her bondmate was the wounded way in which she held her mouth. Through the bond, I could feel her holding down the grief and rage.
We rejoined the others, then went to the morgue.
Gannon and Jordan as well as Aldaric and Paloma and Sutton and Olin walked there with us. They would wait while we were inside; Garnet had been close to very few people, though everyone had known and mostly liked Alvar. His first and best friends, however, were us.
How would things be different, if they had stayed? What would they have led us into?
I shook myself out of that thought and squeezed Palil's hand. She balked. "I can't--"
"You can." My whisper was fierce. Something inside me twisted, and I swallowed. We must do this. Be calm. This is the first step towards finding their killers.
I felt her snap to attention. Somewhere inside myself, I wondered at my own calm. I had loved the sweet and shy Garnet and her brash and cheerful bondmate, too. But it took everything in me to keep Palil together. There wasn't much room left for my own grief.
She took a breath, and we stepped forward.
The morgue was kept cold enough to see our breaths. A dour attendant pointed us to the far corner, where we could see the dim outline of bodies.
The lights brightened as we walked close. Palil clutched my hand. No, no, no, no, no...
Be strong, love. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to look at the bodies.
It was hard to recognize them at first, lying so still. Garnet was almost as big as Palil, her shifting colors dull and still with death. She had a few scars I didn't recognize, and three neat, healed-over puncture wounds in her chest. Otherwise, though, she didn't look too bad.
Alvar, though.
God, god, what did they do to you, my friend?
He was heavily scarred, the tips of his ears twisted and burned. It looked like had been subject to a fireball or a fire breath weapon, probably several times. He'd lost weight, though part of that could be death changing him. He had a look to him that was sort of familiar, though.
He looked like a hunter. Would the look in his eyes have been as hard as most of the hunters we'd met? I wished, wished, wished I'd gotten a chance to find out.
"Who do we start with?" asked Beamer. His voice was shaken but strong.
I glanced at Palil. She was staring at Garnet's body, not responding. "Garnet," I said. I pulled out a Speak with Dead potion. "All right." I licked my lips, my mouth suddenly gone dry, and triggered the spell.
"Tell me all of the significant events of the last six months."
I was expecting it, but I still jumped when Garnet's mouth moved. Her voice was expressionless. It's just her shade, I reminded myself. Most of her has moved on.
"We joined MI, and Alvar, I, Bill, and Alistair were taken on a mission by Major Tessa and Major Bonita. Bill's uncle and father were having a civil war, splitting the clan. The uncle got reinforcements from somewhere. Casualties were heavy. The uncle overwhelmed Bill's father and we were captured. We never saw Bill or Alistair again. Tessa and her bondmate were taken away. Bonita, too, but we saw her again when we escaped. She was in charge of one of Reuben's MI teams. Bonita killed Bill's uncle, and replaced him with someone of Reuben's. We saw. It was the only way we could know, the spell they used to change him is proof against True Seeing. We were in the middle of escaping when we witnessed this."
The calm, calm voice kept going. "We got out, but were chased down and killed by a hunter team. They left us. We woke with a strange warrior standing over us. That happened two more times. The fourth time, we were so, so close. We were almost to the portal. The warrior appeared and drew the hunters off...but it was too cold. I froze to death. The last thing I remember is Alvar sitting with me, stroking my head, telling me it was going to be okay, and crying."
I glanced back at Alvar's body, then at the floor, trying to keep the tears in my throat from surfacing. "Describe the strange warrior to me."
"Half-elf. Long blond hair. Green eyes. Very tanned, very muscular. Bondmate was a red, female, very old. Almost as big as Chaim. Black leathers, pair of scimitars sheathed on his back. He stopped the hunters the final time. I don't know if he survived. He did things I'd never seen, stopped their weapons from moving."
The final question was, "What is Bonita intending to do?"
"Major Bonita. Admiral Bonita, for Reuben, leader of his MI. She's trying to get all of the red and gold dragons into Reuben's territory. I don't know any more, Sondirra."
Her voice fell silent, and Palil's grip on my hand was painfully tight. I bowed my head. It was the last time I'd ever hear Garnet's voice. Finally, I said, "We have work to do. Let's get to it."
We filed out, silently. Jordan's eyes met mine as we walked out the door, and I shook my head slightly. He nodded, and he and Gannon fell in beside us, Sutton and Olin on the other side, Aldaric and Paloma walking next to Tchar. Gannon reached out, laying his hand on Palil's arm, and I saw her stiffen slightly, then lean into him a bit.
Once we got back to the barracks, we filled the rest in. A divination potion gave us a pair of names--the warrior was Kristof, the red dragon with Psyche. A check in the records revealed that they were both just over a century old.
Then why had Psyche been so big? We messaged Chaim. "I know them only by rumor. Only a century of so old, but Psyche's as large as I am, or bigger. He has no love for Reuben. Several MI teams have come up against him, and he kills them down to the last. He returns no messages."
The archives came up with another piece of the puzzle. Psyche was born 117 years ago, and Kristof had been five years old when she hatched. They'd gone through school, served their two years and made Lieutenant, and their team had joined MI. On their first mission, they'd run into Reuben's MI, and all of his team except himself and his bond had been killed. Including...his wife.
"His wife? He married a member of his team?"
"Yeah," Galen said. "Looks like they'd been married under a year when she died, but there had been an existing relationship there for years."
There was a note on the entry to the effect that it was speculated that the team that Psyche and Kristof had come up against was the mysterious leaders of Reuben's MI. Well, that gave him a reason to hate Reuben, and be after Bonita. Palil and I went in to speak to Coulter, telling him about Bonita being the leader of Reuben's MI.
"Good to know," he said. "Do what you have to do. Here, Take these." He handed me three small keys. "Your own keys to the special potions cabinet. Take what you need, it may get rough."
"Thank you, Admiral," Palil said, and saluted. We went to raid the cabinet, waving to Eaton on our way in. He sighed and let us past. We picked up Raise Deads and a few Resurrection potions, then got Eaton to raid the regular stores for us.
We got packed up and left for Chelyabinsk. We flew up to #2, Jordan and Paloma's teams coming with us. We arrived at #2 after dark and diverted to the portal, bouncing to the Chelyabinsk portal. It was midnight before we got there, and the mages made us bright lights to track by.
Not that it was that hard, really. Someone had been very helpful indeed.
Palil:
I was holding myself together with an effort of will, drawing on Sondirra's strength and presence. It helped that we had something to do, something that might help figure out who had done this to our teammates and friends.
The landscape was flat, without much to block the ceaseless wind and blowing snow. I would have been happy to be here, usually; it was about the right temperature. Somehow, I couldn't being myself to care.
"Look, up there," Galen said, pointing. "The snow's acting funny up there."
We took our lights and ourselves to have a look.
There was, seemingly, an invisible barrier causing the snow to simply go around; it was about thirty feet across and, it appeared, tapered to a point at the top. Inside the bubble, which was what we immediately started calling it, the snow was churned up.
"Alvar," Sondirra muttered beside me. "Look, there's the imprint of his body, and--" She stopped, seeing what I too could see, now. There was a perfect imprint of Alvar's hand in the soft snow.
I could not think about it, not now. I reached out to touch the edge of the bubble, and felt a sort of membrane, a little sticky and fragile-feeling. I put my whole hand in, wiggling my fingers, and the barrier let me past. Taking a breath, I stepped through.
I stepped out again, just to make sure I could, and went back inside, Sondirra following me. Galen came in, as well. "Look, Sondirra," Galen said. "There, between the thumb and the forefinger. What's that round mark?"
She stooped to look. "Can't tell. Maybe the end of a staff?"
"Not nearly deep enough. A wand, maybe? Or something like a coin?"
"Weird." Sondirra reached out and knocked on the invisible barrier that separated us from the snow. It rang softly at the rap of her gloved hand. "Guys, this is metal. Invisible metal. Someone wanted us to see this, and went to a hell of a lot of trouble."
"Who?" Galen wanted to know.
"Look at the tracks. Maybe they'll tell."
Alvar had walked--staggered--to where he had fallen. I couldn't help seeing him in my mind, his beloved bondmate dead, determined to get to the portal and back to civilization. But he'd fallen, and had not gotten up. "Those should be the footprints of the people who came to get his body. Looks like they were careful not to disturb where the body lay. Except for that person." She pointed. There was a footprint in the snow by Alvar's head.
"They didn't find a wand or anything on him," Galen said. "They would have told us."
Sondirra was squatting, putting her own feet where the mysterious person had stood. "You stop here. You reach out. You take whatever he had. Then, see, how this one's wider? Pivot and step back."
"Whoever it was took whatever he had in his hand and left," Galen finished.
"Let's go find where Garnet fell," I said, and stepped out of the bubble.
Nobody seemed to have moved since I'd gone in. "That was quick," Gannon said.
"We were in there for a good five minutes."
He shook his head, then pulled his hood up a bit. "You stepped in and stepped out again, with hardly a pause."
The bubble held a time-stopping spell? Whoever it was who'd created this was a more powerful mage than anyone we'd met before. "It's been three days, and it shows no signs of fading," I said, quietly. "Who would have done this? The mysterious warrior? His bondmate?"
I turned and quickly shucked my clothes, changing to my large form. Sondirra and Galen had emerged, and quickly swung up into her place. "Let's go see where Garnet fell," she told the others. "It should be about three miles that way, or so."
There was another barrier with a metal bottom three miles away, and contained in it was the story of Garnet's death. She had been walking, it looked like, too hurt of exhausted to fly. I forced myself to look at where she'd fallen, and keep looking. There was where her body had fallen, a deeper indent where she had curled up like a cat, trying to preserve the last of her warmth. There was the imprint of her head, marks next to it where Alvar had knelt next to her. And there--away from the mouth a little--was a yellow residue scattered on the snow like pollen.
"Her breath weapon," Beamer said, catching up. "She breathed on Alvar before she died. That was probably how he got three miles away before he froze."
A thought struck me, and outside the bubble I crouched, running my claws along the smooth edge where the invisible metal met the magic of the bubble. I lifted experimentally, and discovered that it would come up in sections. "Bambi?" I called. "Could you come over here and give this a sniff, see who's been here?"
She nodded, and came over and started sniffing. "Garnet and Alvar. Five dragon-bond pairs on these footprints," she said. "It took a few of them to lift Garnet. Hm. Half-elf, male, tinges of red dragon around the edges. Full elf, female. Bit of green dragon on her."
"Kristof and Bonita," Sondirra said.
"Bonita came first. I think Garnet may not have frozen to death on her own, same with Alvar. She might have gotten them and assumed we would figure they'd died of exposure. Kristof came later."
"That matches up with the tracks," Sondirra said. "Let's go and do the same with where Alvar fell, and see if we get the same story."
We went back, and the scents told the same story there. There was only one difference. "Cedarwood," Bambi said. "Cedarwood and iron, on that round imprint. The cedarwood's pretty strong. Weird, I sort of remember a little bit of cedar about him when we saw his body. It seemed to come from a little pouch he wore at his side."
Tchar glanced back at the portal. "Hold on, I'll be back." He went into the stone building that housed the portal, and came out and said, "The MI team that fetched--the bodies--were the last people through before us. Before them, it was Bonita and her team. She was worried about a half-elf, and was looking for a pair of people who had escaped her custody."
The last place we needed to find was the battle that Garnet's shade had reported. It wasn't difficult to find; it was, in fact, an amazingly bloody mess. There were bodies everywhere, twenty-eight of them to be exact. Fourteen dragons, fourteen humans. Some of them had been killed by dragonfire, others had their heads chopped off or their torsos split. One was even split from the top of his head to his waist. Some of the dragons had been torn to pieces.
We searched the bodies, and found gold pieces minted in Reuben's territory, and drawings of Garnet and Alvar done by a professional hand. There were written orders that we found, too. The hunters were to kill Garnet and Alvar and return the cedar and iron disc.
Looking around at the wreckage, I thought that Kristof was someone who we needed to get and stay on the good side of. Anyone who could do this to three hunter teams could go through us like my claws through cotton. "I think it's time to message Kristof and see if he's amenable to an alliance," I said. I received no argument.
When I contacted him, he suddenly appeared before me. A big man, blond hair pulled back from his face. Not bad-looking, really. "It's a projection," he said after I jumped. "What do you want?"
"I believe we're after the same person. Bonita. Do you know where she is?"
"Somewhere in Chelyabinsk. Which may not be standing much longer."
"Why?"
He laughed without humor. "Because if I have to level it in order to get Bonita, I will."
We all looked at each other, and then I said, "We will be there within a few hours. I think we can arrange it so that the damage to bystanders will be minimized."
"Hurry. She is going to be moving soon against someone named Kane. Once she has what she wants, she'll disappear and it'll probably be months before I pick up her trail again."
(Sondirra: after I finished staring quietly, I faded back to the back of the group and sent a message to Kane. "Pack up and get out. You have a big bad on your trail. Head towards #2." The response was immediate--he and his group would take off within an hour. I hoped it was soon enough.)
I nodded. "Tell me. You raised Garnet and Alvar from the dead three times. What happened that you could not have helped them make it to the portal?"
He shook his head. "Until the last time, I was not there. I can cast spells through this projection. The last time, we were close enough to the portal that I thought that if I killed the hunters, they would make it. I was incorrect. They'd stolen the cedar and iron disc, and Bonita apparently tracked it."
"And you preserved where they fell, after the bodies were taken."
"I thought that someone would want to see the tracks. I take it you did. Are you done with them?"
I nodded. "Let the snow cover them. Do you know what the cedar and iron disc does?"
He shrugged. "It controls the crystal network."
"Crystal network?"
"Those crystals that Reuben's got installed at all the gates that he uses to watch what's going on at all of them."
Oh. That crystal network.
"We'll meet you at the edge of town in two hours," I said.
"Do you have a plan?"
"We'll work on one on the way."
The projection disappeared. I sighed, looking at the place it had been, my tail twitching. "It'll only take us an hour to get there," I said. "Let's use the time we have here wisely."
Several divinations and auguries later, and we had a little better picture of what we were facing. Kristof was not necessarily trustworthy, but that was mostly because in battle, he wouldn't care if any of us got in the way. If we stood between him and his goal, he'd kill us without a second thought. He did, however, want the same thing we did--the death of Bonita and her team.
With that in mind, we took off. An hour later, we were in Kristof's actual presence. "You have a plan?" he asked.
"Not much of one. It depends on how confident you are of your ability to kill Bonita and not get killed. We find her, then figure it out from there."
He laughed. "I just need a few minutes with her. Do you need anything else from me?"
"Do you have names and descriptions of her teammates?" I asked.
He did. We took those descriptions, sent Jordan and Paloma's teams to go to ground outside of town, and spread out where Kristof had indicated he thought they were, the warehouse district. We went invisibly with our tablets, and in a stroke of luck managed to find one of the pairs. Tchar narrowed Bonita's whereabouts to a warehouse down the street, and the pair we'd originally spotted went in. A mage eye showed that it appeared that her whole team was there.
It was time.
I messages Kristof and told him where Bonita was. He walked in, Psyche at his side, and closed the door behind him. A bare three minutes later, he walked back out, cleaning the blood off his blade. He tossed Bonita's head at my feet. "The rest are still in there. Dead, of course."
I tilted my head. "Do you have a use for the cedar and iron disc? If you don't, it would come in very useful for us."
"I probably wouldn't use it too much, it would come in handier for you. Here." He tossed it at me, and I caught it. "That's it, I think."
As a stab in the dark, I asked, "Tell me, do you know any of Reuben's heirs? Are there any that haven't been raised to be just like Reuben?"
Kristof thought about it for a minute. "His youngest daughter. He didn't know she existed until recently, and she grew up completely out of his sight. If I had to say anyone, it would be her. Don't know her name, though, just know of her."
Tchar was bursting with a question. Once he could get a word in edgewise, he said, "So why exactly are you so cool? I mean, we looked in the records, and you're only just over a century old."
He looked amused at the question. "If you could understand, you'd be like me already. Let's just say that if you free your mind from the constraints of what you think you know, anything is possible." He didn't say anything much more intelligible than that, but it's an interesting theory and one that bears more investigation.
"I'd say I didn't think we'll see you again, but I think we probably will," Sondirra said. "Goodbye, then."
I looked down at the head at my feet. Bonita's dead face had a profoundly surprised look on it. I reached down, grabbed the head by the hair, and lifted. "Let's go see what the dead will tell us," I said.
Once inside, with Bonita's head next to her body, Sondirra pulled me aside. "Are you all right, Palil?"
I nodded. I felt the cold inside beginning to thaw, though, and said, "For the moment. Let's get through this."
Bonita's head was spectacularly unhelpful. We only got out of her that Bill and Alistair were somewhere where we couldn't get to them, and that she'd tortured them before she'd taken them there. From a few of the others, we found out that she'd teleported to take them away, and hadn't been back to visit them in a month, so they were likely in Reuben's care. Reuben himself might know where they were, and the other person who might know was one member of an MI team who had escaped with some vital information.
Not particularly helpful. However, there was something else we thought of, looking at the head; Bonita had been in deep cover since she was eleven, placed at #2 by Reuben. Who would he trust that much? Who could he have raised to be both fanatically loyal and an excellent spy?
She was his daughter. She had to be.
We put the heads in sacks, intending to deliver them to Coulter. He might be interested in getting some information out of them. We flew back to the gate, and paused to try out the cedar and iron disc. It appeared that if the person who pulled out the crystal in the back of the wall were carrying the disc, the paralysis trap on it wouldn't go off. Then the procedure was to put the disc into the hole the crystal had left behind.
Beamer, who'd tried this, directed it to look at the gate near #1, where all of the information streams seemed to be going. And there was Reuben, an old elf, appearing to flip through each of the portals in turn, seeing what was there.
We pulled the disc and left posthaste. No need to let Reuben know right away what we had. Funny thing, though. In our brief glimpse of him...I could have sworn he was sitting in a wheelchair.
"We should go," I said when we reached the other portal. "We have a funeral to attend."
It was a silent flight back to Petrozav.
Sondirra:
Coulter was more than happy to have the heads of the leaders of Reuben's MI in his care. I went to the morgue and told them that they could prepare the bodies of Alvar and Garnet for the funeral. Three hours later, I went back and was given a bag of their clothing and belongings, and a large urn containing both of their ashes.
The boat we went out on was barely large enough to hold all of us. It sailed out of the harbor, to where the water became rougher and the wind picked up. Palil clutched the urn in her arms, her eyes brimming with tears. I tried to remember what I'd planned to say. "Alvar Irichenka. Garnet, daughter of the Aquarius dragon clan. You were both with us for too short a time, but in the time you did spend with us, you were both dearly loved. Rest in peace, friends. We consign your remains to the ocean you both loved."
I turned to Palil, and she held the urn out to me. After a moment, Beamer and Bambi stepped up, laying their hands on the urn. Then Tchar and Galen followed suit.
We tipped the urn off the back of the boat. A plume of ash was caught by the wind and whipped out over the water, and as we scattered the mortal remains of our friends on the water, the waves leaped up as if happy to see them.
My vision was blurred with tears, but I did see when the last of the ash ran out of the urn. We sat the urn down on the deck, and turned to the silent congregation. I looked at each of them in turn. "It is done," I said, softly. "May the gods receive them gently."
From beside me, there was a choked sob. I turned to Palil, feeling the cold and the calm that had served to keep her functional for the last pair of days vanish under a tidal wave of grief. I took her in my arms, holding her, and she buried her face in my neck and sobbed.
When we got back to shore, she leaned on me as we walked back to the barracks. "We're holding a wake in a few hours," Beamer said to me. "Are you two coming?"
I shook my head. "Palil needs me. I'll be there in my thoughts."
Beamer nodded and left us then, and Palil broke down anew once we reached our room. "It's all right, I'm here," I murmured to her, stroking her fine white hair. I murmured nonsense to her, holding her, until her sobs quieted and she slipped from consciousness into blessed sleep.
I cried, too, after I'd eased her into bed and pulled a blanket over her. I wrapped myself in my own blanket and, shivering, let my own grief take me. I pulled out the object that I'd put in my pocket, from the small collection of items that the people at the morgue had given me.
It was a knitted sock puppet, dragon-hand sized and purple, with button eyes sewn on and a mouth stitched on in red felt. I remembered Alvar making this for Garnet years ago, saying that if she was going to be a sock puppeteer, she might as well have proper puppets rather than his old socks. He'd learned to knit, just for her. Sweet, deathly shy Garnet, who hardly spoke her mind except through the characters she made up for the stage. Alvar, who had loved her to distraction, who was so proud of her and everything she did.
I dissolved into tears again, holding the puppet in my lap. It would never talk again with the mind who had given it voices gone for good. I cried for her and for Alvar, who had wanted to be the very best Corpsman he could be. I cried for my bondmate, for whom Garnet had been her closest dragon friend, who had always believed that Garnet and Alvar would be back soon and things would go back to normal. I cried for the rest of our teammates, all of them hurting in their own ways.
And I cried for myself, for the pain of losing two friends I'd grown up with, who I'd thought I'd have so much more time with. For the certain knowledge that we were going to lose more friends before this was over, maybe even our own lives. And for having to hold everything together, to give my bondmate the time and space she needed to fall apart.
I cried until the tears didn't come any longer, and wiped my face and blew my nose. I rose from the chair and, following an impulse, tucked the sock puppet into the crook of Palil's arm. There was a buzz in the back of my had, a warning of a headache approaching, and I downed a few quick glasses of vodka in order to quiet it down.
Then I laid myself down in my own bed, empty and aching, and waited for sleep to come.
Quotes:
"Malice or stupidity, is what I say."
"Malice, stupidity, or necessity."
--Tchar, Sondirra
"It'll blend in with the beautiful northern lights on the arctic seacoast..."
"Mmmmm... Nobody ever likes going to swim with me up there."
--Beamer, Palil
"We're always on the wrong beach."
--Bambi
"Why are you so cool?"
"Tchar has a crush."
"He shouldn't. Everything he does lasts three and a half seconds."
--Galen, Sondirra, Bambi