Draka Chapter 370: The Spoils (Patreon)

Before Sandstorm and I left for her island, Indomitable had been callous, telling us that if we died he’d be furious, but that was just how things went sometimes. I was becoming more and more convinced that had just been his ancient-dragon-way of encouraging us.

“Are you hurt?” he asked urgently, hard to listen to as he swirled around us, constantly in motion. “Worse than the small wound in my granddaughter’s side? Is that from a horn? How deep is it? Granddaughter, is the pain deep?”

“It is not deep,” Sandstorm whined. “But it bleeds and hurts a lot.”

That seemed to reassure him. I’d seen the other adults take in stride any wounds that weren’t likely to kill them; since Sandstorm’s puncture hadn’t gone into her guts, it seemed to fall into that category. Still, once we were back on the beach where we’d rested earlier he went into full mother hen mode, fussing and chirping at Sandstorm like she was some hatchling. He even licked at her wound, despite her half-hearted protests.

As for Sandstorm, she was embarrassed, but clearly reassured by Indomitable’s attention. Nothing he did would have prevented her from leaving if he was really bothering her; instead, for all her complaints that she wasn’t a baby, she kept surreptitiously moving closer to him, until her uninjured side was pressed against his.

“You have both been very brave,” he said later, as we all lay on the sand. And as far as I could tell he wasn’t just flattering us; he meant it. “Making them abandon their pursuit was an impressive feat. Were you successful in the goal we came here for?”

“We were!” Sandstorm declared. “I could not take all of my hoard, but I have all the most precious bits.”

“Then you are victorious in every way that matters!” he declared. “Well done. Tomorrow we can return in triumph. Now, rest! It is late, and I will not take you across the sea while that wound still bleeds.”

And he meant what he said. He had us both curl up on the grass, well away from the water — a lesson I’d learned the hard way, months earlier — and then he left to hunt. He returned an uncertain length of time later — I’d been napping — with two deer, the burns in their pelts suggesting that they’d been struck by lightning. An effective way to hunt, I had to imagine. He gave one to us while claiming the other for himself, and when we’d all had our fill we curled up in one big cozy pile for the night.

I couldn’t say if Indomitable slept at all. I doubted it. The last thing I remembered was him gazing out across the sea, and he was still there when I woke, softly bidding me good morning. Softly, because Sandstorm was curled up between us, still asleep. 

*

We didn’t return to Malyon straight away. Indomitable may not have been worried about Sandstorm’s wound, but I still had enough human sensibilities to not want to just leave it to time and chance. Not when I had two healers on call, one of whom had an Advancement that specifically let her heal dragons more effectively.

By happy coincidence, the most direct route to Karakan took us over the city of Tavvanar. The city lords and the ruling council may not have even heard of us crossing the island yet, but by noon everyone in that city would know about three dragons passing in formation only a few hundred feet above them. Another few hours, and my cousin and I landed in the square before the inn. Indomitable chose not to. He didn’t have enough interest in humans to stay for curiosity’s sake, and besides, as he put it, “You know how your mother frets. Best I inform her of your victory sooner rather than later.”

Kira was out doing house calls again, but we didn’t need to wait long before she returned. When she did she fussed over Sandstorm terribly, treating more like a child than the magnificent creature that she was.

Sandstorm, predictably, loved it.

Then we were off again, heading north along the mountains. Sandstorm was eager to return to her new lair to enjoy the spoils of our victory. With a fair part of her hoard recovered, she could finally start over. I wasn’t entirely sure what that would mean for her, but she’d been excited about the prospect for a good while now.

When we reached the canyon that held the entrance to her lair, she didn’t invite me in. Nor would I have expected her to; she’d be dealing with her hoard, and I would never want another dragon close to mine, no matter how close of an ally they were. Instead we quickly congratulated each other on our successful mission then separated, her descending and I carrying on north to Malyon.

She still hadn’t thanked me. I didn’t know that she would. She’d acknowledged when I first suggested this that she’d be in my debt, and I trusted her to hold to that. Frankly, that was enough. I was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself as I left her little territory behind.

You did something good yesterday, Conscience said as I set off on the last hour of my journey back to Malyon.

Oh, you’re back now? I asked. Lightly — I wasn’t upset with her or anything. I just wasn’t used to not hearing from either her or Instinct for over a full day.

I was there for the worst of it, she admitted. I just didn’t see how anything I said could help keep us alive. And then you won, and Indomitable was being all soft on you — relatively, at least… I was with Mak when you got to the inn, actually. Anyway. You did good. That’s all I wanted to say.

I did, didn’t I? I agreed smugly. Did you see how excited she was?

How could I have missed it? She was silent for a long moment, then said, You know, this is going to help you, too.

How so?

With her being able to grow her hoard again, she’s going to get stronger. And if she liked you before, she’s gonna love you now.

Huh.

That didn’t even occur to you, did it? she asked.

Not until just now, no.

I said that, and was hit by a wave of warmth and affection as she told me, I don’t think I’ve ever been prouder of you.

I rode that feeling all the way back to Malyon.

Instinct still wasn’t back when we approached the vast ruin, but Mother didn’t seem to mind much when she came up to greet us. “My uncle tells me that you were successful!” she exclaimed, and while I couldn’t see her eyes to be sure what her tone was, I had no reason to think that she was anything but pleased.

“We were!” I confirmed. “The two invaders returned while Sandstorm was retrieving her hoard, but we got past them and forced them to give up.”

“Well done, daughter,” she said, then led the way to the library. “Come now. Your little Herald has been quite worried, and her mate can only distract her for so long before he needs rest.”

*

The next two days were nothing but relaxation. I spent some time with Herald and Maglan, but mostly I left them to each other. I spent some time with Tammy, which she of course loved, but I could tell that she felt guilty over basking in my glory rather than working on the task I’d set her, so I mostly left her to it, too. Who I did spend a lot of time with was Mother.

Or rather, Instinct did. For the first time that I could remember, I stepped away from the driver’s seat for over a full day, which Instinct mostly spent reminding me that deep down, she truly was a child. She was all but glued to Mother’s side from the moment she woke to find herself in control, until she closed our eyes late that evening, cuddled up against her. And in between, if they weren’t napping together, she was trying to impress Mother with her flying, her swimming, her hunting prowess, or our magic.

It was heartwarming, really. At least what I saw was, which wasn’t much. I wasn’t around for most of it. I was taking something of a vacation from my own body, hopping between thralls and just seeing what their day was like. Not because I was tired, or anything like that — I didn’t have to be tired to want to enjoy myself. It was curiosity, more than anything, along with a feeling of missing out. My headmates spent as much time out of our head as they did in it. More sometimes, like the past few days. I, meanwhile, mostly just hopped in for a minute or two to make sure that someone was alright, or to see what the vibe at the inn was like. The time I spent with Zabra at the auction might have been the longest I ever rode along with someone, and that had only been an evening. Not long at all, really.

That day, though, I spent hours and hours in a row with each of them, and I regretted not doing it more often. I’d never known that Tammy sometimes sang to herself as she worked; not very well, perhaps, but she put her heart into it. Especially down in my lair, where the acoustics were so forgiving.

Nor had I really known just how outrageously — and unseriously — Avjilan flirted with both the staff and the patrons at the Favor. I knew that he was popular with the girls there, but I’d never really seen just how deftly he manoeuvred those particularly treacherous waters. It wasn’t everyone who’d dare to demand that the inn’s cook, a woman fifteen years his elder, marry him if she were ever to be widowed. Especially not with said cook’s husband in the kitchen with them, and their daughter giggling in the door. Double-especially not after telling that daughter, in front of her parents, that he’d been having an absolutely wretched morning up until he saw her, and asking her to elope with him so that every morning could be a beautiful one. Hell, the man flirted with Sarina in front of Marvan, and they both just laughed! How he’d survived long enough to run afoul of me, I had no idea.

I’d known that Onur took his duty as Lord Mercantile Parvion’s head of security seriously, and how skillfully he balanced that with his devotion to me. But I’d never seen him as a family man. The room I’d taken him from at the Parvions’ country estate wasn’t his home; he had his own, rather nice house a few minutes from where Lord Parvion now stayed in the city, where he had a family of his own, one that I’d never bothered to even ask about. I’d never heard of or seen him with his wife, or his daughter, who shared their home with her own family, or his teenage son. The man was a grandfather, for Mercies’ sake! I watched him tell a bedtime story to a boy no more than three years old, making up silly voices for the animal characters, and struggled to reconcile that with the man who’d sent thugs to attack our family in the middle of the night.

I was so very glad that I hadn’t killed him. He’d deserved it, but I would have hated to find out that I’d deprived two adorable little kids of their pop-pop.

And then there was Zabra.

I knew more about Zabra’s day-to-day than I did the others, but I’d still only seen snippets for myself. Some of those snippets had been illustrative, though; Zabra was very hands on when it came to running her expansive semi-legal business empire, and when someone went after her properties — or worse, her employees — there was a decent chance that the last face they saw was the Night Blossom’s. She’d started delegating more, lately, but that depended entirely on whether Samara could see her that night or not.

I’d spent some time with her during the day, but she was a fairly normal House matriarch while the sun was up. She’d been going over various numbers with Kesra, ones that I could never hope to follow, so I’d moved on quite quickly. It was only after Onur fell asleep reading on a couch that I returned to her, and there was nothing boring about what I dropped in on.

She was… you could say that she was paying someone. He wasn’t enjoying it much.

She, on the other hand, was enjoying herself immensely. She practically purred as she said, “You know, if you’d treated your girls better I would have never known that you even existed.”

She took a gold dragon from the handful she held, pushing it in under a few others that were already wedged between his tongue and the lumpy leather pouch keeping his mouth open. Then she pushed in another, considered, and added two more. Dragons were small, thin coins, but with every one she added the man groaned just a little, struggling uselessly against the thugs holding his arms, and Hardal, who kept his head steady.

She wiped her hand on his fine clothes between coins; he was drooling copiously.

“If you’d accepted my generous offer, or even replied with a counter, I never would have come speak with you in person,” she continued, steadily adding coins, wedging his jaw open by just the tiniest fraction of an inch with each additional sliver of gold. “I like to think of myself as a reasonable business woman, you see. I don’t mind a bit of negotiation. As you can see, I brought a fair bit more gold with me than my initial offer.”

She was having to put some force behind the coins now. Sweat streaked down the reedy man’s face, and he whimpered as something creaked in his jaw. She didn’t stop.

“I even would have forgiven you for calling me a whore,” she said. “I used to be one, after all. That’s no great secret. But it was the way you said it, you understand. Your tone. It explained so much about why one of your girls would come running to me, begging for protection. Explained the state of her, too, poor girl. The healer who helped her was nearly in tears. So I had one of my boys take a look around the place, and I was not happy at all with what he told me.”

She went to grab another coin, and found her hand empty. The man — a pimp or brothel owner, I assumed — was breathing quick and shallow through his nose and around the leather and gold in his mouth, but when he saw that she was out of coins he held his breath, a plea and a desperate hope entering his eyes.

Zabra sniffed with annoyance. “Hardal, dear, do you have your purse on you?” she asked. “I’m short a dragon.”

“Right inside pocket, madam,” he replied.

“Do you mind?” she asked as she reached out.

“Not at all. Though it’s all a few eagles and a bunch of peacocks.”

“Oh, that’s fine,” she said, completely unbothered as she fished out Hardal’s purse. I doubted there was anywhere close to a dragon’s worth of coins in there, but somehow I didn’t think that was the point.

“Now, where were we?” Zabra asked her prisoner, pouring out another handful of coins. “Ah, yes. The way you’ve been treating your employees.”

*

On the fourth night since I brought Herald and Maglan to Malyon, Herald declared that they were done. Together they’d found three books that she was excited to work on, and she expected them to take weeks each: one on the magical and alchemical strengthening of wood; one about advanced metallurgical techniques which she was pretty sure had been lost; and her greatest prize, a tome that detailed the making of pigments for dyes and paints. “Val is going to weep,” she squealed as she told me, smiling so fiercely that just seeing her made my face hurt in sympathy. “If that book holds the secrets I hope it does, we could make paints in colors our best alchemists cannot even dream of, and that never fade! I am telling you, Val will weep with joy!”

“And it’s probably worth a fair bit of gold, too,” Maglan reminded her.

“And that, yes, of course,” she laughed, golden eyes glinting as her smile somehow, impossibly, got wider. “And did I tell you that it was Mag who found it?”

“Luck, really,” he said. “I’d just been studying some words for colors, and happened to recognize them. Didn’t even read them, not really; just recognized the shape of them.”

Herald laughed and promised, “I am going to make sure that Mak gets you a fair share of the proceeds.”

“I— ah—” After a few attempts at speech, Mag’s mouth opened and closed silently several times before he managed to pull himself together enough to say, “Thank you. Yes, that would be… but it won’t matter, will it? Not once I join—”

Herald hurled herself at him, literally covering his mouth with her hands in an attempt to silence him as she stared at me with the worst attempt at innocence I’d ever seen. And that — after promising to keep everything I heard to myself — was how I learned that Maglan was going to formally ask Mak for permission to marry our little sister.

*

The next morning I made sure that Tammy had everything she needed, and then Herald, Maglan, and I left for Karakan. Mother pretended not to see Herald on my back as she bid us a pleasant flight, and made me promise to return soon. “I cannot put off returning to my hoard much longer,” she told me. “Once I do, I will be away for some time. I would like to see you again before I go.”

I promised not to be too long, and then we left. I was excited to get back. Because as happy as I’d been for Herald and Maglan, and as much as I’d congratulated them and promised them that they had my full support, seeing Mak’s and Tam’s reactions was going to be an absolute treat.