Page 4 of Magick and Lead
I gave a casual kick to the dead man at my feet. And I really looked at him for the first time. A glance at his rusty chainmail and his worn boots told me he was no Lacuna, nor was he a knight or a defected royal guard. He looked like a commoner… but that didn’t make any sense. The people were supposed to be loyal to me. Sure, some of the commoners were bound to have loyalty to their local lords, but… something about the scene gaveme an uneasy feeling, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me so much.
A sound behind me made me jump, and I spun, my sword at the ready. Just beyond where the dead man lay, something square sat covered by a canvas tarp. From within it there came a low growl.
We all glanced at one another.
“A golena?” Dagar wondered aloud.
I crept forward, tightening my grip on my sword.
Careful,Othura said in my mind.I sense hunger.
Slowly, I hooked the cloth with the tip of my blade and pulled it aside. It was a cage. And inside the cage…
“A baby dragon,” Pocha gasped.
But it wasn’t just any dragon. I recognized him. And when he spoke in my mind, my hunch was confirmed.
Parthar,he said.
Parthar… It was his name.
“Not just any dragon,” I whispered. “This is the one that was bonded to…”
“To Kit,” Pocha said—sparing me from saying his name. Or rather, the alias he’d used to woo and deceive me.
“Look, he’s hurt,” Dagar said, rushing to the cage and kneeling before it. Sure enough, I could see blood on the little dragon’s talons where it had been clawing at the bars. His eyes looked dim, too. He was sick. And sad.
My heart swelled with hurt as well as anger. No creature should be treated like this, especially such a beautiful little dragon.
“We should kill him quickly,” I said, looking away.
“Essa!” Pocha scolded, shouldering past me to kneel with Dagar at the edge of the cage. She reached out, and the little dragon licked her fingers with his forked tongue.
Lure came to stand beside me, considering the cage with crossed arms.
“Essa is right,” Lure said. “I’m sorry to say it, but if he’s bonded to an enemy, he’s a threat. And a dragon that young with his bonded rider gone… he’s probably going to go mad anyway.”
Pocha glared at Lure. “Maybe. But let me remind you: we’ve lost control of the hatchery. There aren’t exactly a lot of spare dragons lying around. We can ill afford to throw one away, especially a beautiful little fellow like this. And some riders have lost their dragons.” Her eyes widened for emphasis, and we all knew what she was talking about. Dagar’s dragon, Barnard, had been killed in the attack on Charcain. He’d put on a brave face, masking his pain with his usual humor, but we all knew that a part of him was in agony.
“What if this little dragon could be rebonded?” Pocha pressed, appealing to me now.
It was rare for a dragon to be successfully rebonded, even one as young as Parthar. Still, Pocha was right. We’d need every dragon we could get to win back my kingdom.
But Lure was right, too. There was a risk to keeping Parthar alive. A full-grown dragon bonded to one of our enemies, especially one as treacherous as Kit—Charlie—was almost too terrible to contemplate.
The little dragon was giving Dagar’s fingers little licks through the bars. Dagar glanced back at me with a hopeful expression. It was the first genuine smile I’d seen on his face in months.
I sighed. “Fine. We’ll give the little dragon a chance to rebond to Dagar. If it doesn’t work, he dies. Now get him and let’s move. We’re losing daylight.”
3
CHARLIE
The land stretched out below me like a tapestry woven with a hundred shades of green. As many times as I’d flown over Maethalia, I’d never get used to the wondrous beauty of it. The emerald-hued grass on the hills. The waterfalls glinting as they fell from the cliffs. And at night, the supernatural glow of wisps and fey lights in the woods, mirroring the stars above.
And then there was the thing I searched for. The most beautiful wonder of all. Essa.
Two months of searching and I hadn’t found her—hadn’t gotten so much as a clue about where she might be. Every trip across the sea was more of the same. A countryside ravaged by those soulless clay monsters—the golenae—and their Lacunae knight handlers. A capital city and palace reduced to rubble. And a thousand small villages where the residents stared up at me as I passed. In the beginning, they hid or shouted and fired arrows. Now, perhaps because they’d seen me gunning down the golenae that terrorized them, most just watched me with upturned faces.
