Page 7 of Of Blood and Fire
“My stomach appreciates the thoughtfulness.”
She laughed again, then moved over to the racks, plucking two loaves free and wrapping them separately in oilskin cloth before dropping both into a sack. “Sorry to hear about your parents, Princess. They were good people.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “They were.”
I thanked her for the bread, then headed out, taking a deep breath to once again calm the inner emotional turbulence before reaching out for Kaia.
Okay, ready to go.
Am waiting.
I frowned.Where?
On wall. Fun watching men scatter.
Seriously? You have to stop that. Making people afraid is not helping the situation.
Don’t care. Burn if they attack.
That won’t help things either.
Swat with claws?
No.
Tail?
No.
You no fun.
Andshewas deliberately trying to cheer me up. I made my way out of the palace and back up to the wall she now dominated. She was at least eighty feet long, with a wingspan more than double that. Unlike Esan’s drakkons, who were red, she was a burnished gold, and her scales gleamed like jewels in the gray of the morning. Her wings were outstretched and gentlyfanning so she could maintain balance on the wall, and the four main phalanges on each wing shimmered like flame, the leather membrane in-between glowing like embers.
Even those who hated drakkons surely could not deny she was magnificent.
Am queen, she replied.Biggest and best.
Modest too.
What modest?
Someone who is neither bold nor self-assertive.
Definitely not modest,she agreed.
I ducked under her wing and scrambled up the leg she extended, carefully edging around her wickedly barbed wing thumb before settling onto her neck. After clipping my pack, sword, and bow onto the various D-rings fastened to the rope looped around her last neck spine—which, in turn, was latched onto the anchoring girths I’d looped around her neck—I attached my harness. “Right, let’s go.”
She hunkered down and then launched into the air, her wings pumping hard, sending thick swirls of dust and stone fragments into the air. Once we were high enough, she did a lazy turn and flew over Esan’s multiple levels, then out past the lower curtain and into Mareritten.
With the wind at our tail, it took under an hour to reach the fog I’d seen through the long viewer. It was as thick and gelatinous as it had appeared, and sat like a heavy blob on the landscape despite the strong wind—and that meant it was very definitely magic enhanced. The question was, did the magic do more than just anchor? Did we dare find out?
Should breach?Kaia asked.Fly here waste otherwise.
With that I agreed, but the need for caution still held the upper hand.Circle around its perimeter. Let’s see if we can spot any watchers.
I tugged my long viewer out of my pack and adjusted the eyepiece until the ground far below jumped into focus—although at the speed we were going, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to see much of anything.
See through me, she said.
