Chapter 8 #2
I open the cabinet door and climb out, my muscles cramping and I try to stand with the help of the counter.
‘I’m here,’ I call.
He’s helping me to stay on my feet a second later. ‘What were you doing in there? What’s going on?’
‘There were people here. They came in through the main door. They had a keycard. I heard it click. There were more than three.’
‘Humans?’
I look at him like he has six heads. ‘No. Dragons. Males. They were saying horrible things. They were trying to find me.’
He looks around the room, nostril flaring. ‘I can’t smell anyone,’ he says dubiously.
‘I’m not making it up, Drey.’
I watch his eyes narrow a little as I say his name and I wonder if I’ve angered him by not calling him ‘Commander’ like the others do, but when he speaks, his voice sounds strained, not upset.
‘I don’t think you’re making it up, but you’ve been tired and not well. Maybe—’
I shake my head and extricate myself from his grip. ‘No. I know what I heard. I was hiding in that cabinet for hours. Do you really think I’d have done that if it was all in my head?’
He regards me for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he whispers. ‘Okay. There’s a camera. It’s separate from the main system. When Brax suggested it, I thought he was being paranoid, but… Come on.’
I put my hand in his and he leads me to his office.
He wakes up his computer screen and does a bunch of things that I could never replicate before a little box appears with a timestamp.
He rewinds for one hour, two, three. He begins glancing at me with pity in his eyes and I clench my jaw, but there’s a niggling doubt in my mind.
Maybe I’m cracking up in the dragon lair.
But then I see movement on the screen ‘There!’
He stops it and five dragon men appear on the screen. I let out a sigh of relief.
‘See?’
‘Yeah,’ he mutters. ‘I see. I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d ever… How the fuck did they get into my rooms and not leave a scent? It’s impossible.’
I snort. ‘There’s a lot of that going around.’
He turns up the sound and listens to everything they say before he rewinds it and does it again.
‘Sonofabitch,’ he mutters.
His arms are suddenly around me, pulling me into his lap. I let out a squeak as he buries his face in my hair and breathes me in. ‘Good call hiding, sweetheart.’
Sweetheart?
‘If they’d have got you, Aziel would already have had you moved to somewhere I would never find you. Fuck! I promised you you’d be safe. I’m a liar, Mari. I’m sorry. I’ve done everything wrong since you got here. Maybe even before that.’ He heaves a sigh.
‘He’ll try again and next time you might not be so lucky. I need to get you out of here.’
I look back at him, noting the tortured expression in his dark, tired eyes. I‘m drawn to this one as well and he is to me too. I’m sure of it.
‘Where is there that’s safe?’ I ask.
‘From Aziel? I don’t know. I had no idea that three of those guys weren’t loyal to me. Hell, I didn’t know that he was planning to lock our females up to breed them. Jesus, what is he thinking?’
‘Maybe it’s better that I stay closer to you, then,’ I say quietly. ‘You’re still the Commander for a reason, aren’t you?’
He nods. ‘My dragon is more powerful by far than Aziel or any of his followers. But that won’t matter if he stages a coup, and all of my warriors are on his side.
I can’t fight everyone.’ He puts his head in his hands.
‘I wouldn’t want to. They were my friends once, dragons I grew up with, fought with side by side for hundreds of years.
For them to turn on me… even though our numbers are dwindling…
I knew Aziel was dangerous. I just didn’t realize how far he’d go. ’
‘What does he want?’ I ask.
‘A return to what he calls the old ways. Humans enslaved. All humans, not just the few he flaunts around the mountain. He wants all the humans working for our gain. He says it’s their fault that the world is toxic, that our females don’t breed much.
He lost his female and a youngling in the Fall. He wants to punish humans for that.’
I stand up. ‘You said that the past few months have been hard for you, that there’s so much to do. Was it not like that before?’
‘Not like this. It just seems like everything I try to achieve as Commander fails. Every trade route is attacked, every outpost is struck with sickness. Bad luck.’
‘Is it?’ I ask, frowning at him as a suspicion starts to unfurl in my mind.
‘You know, our town had a really bad year once. I wasn’t all that old.
Water in the well went bad, bridge to the mainland collapsed, animals got sick, there were some fires that seemed natural.
We thought it was bad luck until we caught one of the boys from a couple towns over dumping a bucket of sewage in our well.
He admitted to us it was all on purpose.
They wanted our fields because they flooded every year.
They were really fertile, so we had better harvests.
They wanted what we had, but they knew if they came to take it, they’d have a fight on their hands, so they pretended it was just bad fortune.
They knew that we’d get tired and leave sooner or later. Maybe that’s happening here.’
He’s silent for a few minutes and then he looks at me incredulously. ‘Jesus. You’re right. You’re fucking right. Of course that’s what he’s doing. Why didn’t we see it? Why didn’t I?’
‘Because you and Brax have been so busy trying to put out fires that you can’t see they’re being started on purpose for all the smoke that’s around,’ I guess.
I frown. ‘You said you’ve been really tired too.’
He nods. ‘Well yeah, there’s always something and all I do is work. There’s not much down time.’
‘But would you say you’ve been weirdly tired?’ I look at him meaningfully. ‘Like ‘sewage in the well’ tired? Maybe your food isn’t as safe as you think.’
Hi brow furrows. ‘No… He wouldn’t go that far. Poisoning me? No…’
But I can see he’s not quite convinced.
‘Is there something that would do that to you? Weaken you so that when it’s time, he can fight you and, when he wins, it looks fair and square?’
‘Yeah,’ he says after a moment, anger in his tone. ‘There is.’
‘Can you figure out if you’ve been given it?’
He shakes his head. ‘But I know who can.’
He’s grim as he pulls out his phone and presses some buttons.
‘I need you in my office. Quietly. As soon as you can,’ he murmurs to the person on the other end of the line. ‘And bring the special med kit, would you?’
He stares at the screen of his computer for a long time in silence. I ease myself off his lap and sit by the bookshelf on the small red couch as we wait. I can see he’s lost in thought, and that he can’t believe he didn’t see these things happening around him.
‘I knew it was getting worse,’ he whispers suddenly. ‘I knew he was trying to turn the faction against me, but I didn’t think they’d all switch to his side so easily.’
I give him a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry.’
He shakes his head. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for, Mari. If you hadn’t cut through all the bullshit, made me see what’s going on, I’d still be blissfully unaware, and probably dead within weeks.’
‘Weeks?’ I gasp
He opens his mouth to answer when there’s a soft knock at the door followed by a scratching sound.
‘That’s Del,’ he says, rising from his desk and going to the door.
He opens it a little and she slips in, her brow furrowed. ‘What’s with all the cloak and dagger?’
‘Do you have a dragonsbane testing kit?’ he asks without preamble.
Her frown deepens. ‘I always have one in the special bag. But who for?’
He gives her a look and she breathes out slowly. ‘Shit, Drey. You think someone poisoned you? That’s one hell of an accusation.’
‘That’s why I need the test, Del.’
‘Yeah.’ She puts a small duffle bag on the desk and pulls out a cotton swab. ‘Open.’
Drey opens his mouth, and she swabs the inside of his cheek.
‘How long does it take?’ I ask.
She looks surprised that I’m in the room. ‘About ten seconds.’
She puts the swab into a small vial and screws it shut. ‘If dragonsbane is present, the liquid in this tube will turn green,’ she says as she sets it on the table and then gasps as it turns a shade of olive and then a very putrid green.
‘Fuck!’
She fumbles for her bag, opening it and taking out a bottle of pills. She thrusts it into Drey’s hands.
‘Take five. Right now,’ she orders. ‘At these levels, you’ll be dead in days if we don’t bring them down. After these first five, you’ll need to take five pills a day for ten days at least at regular intervals.’
Drey gapes at her as if he didn’t really think I’d be right.
‘Drey!’
He blinks and unscrews the bottle. ‘Yeah. Okay.’
‘We need to figure out where the source is, too. I haven’t seen concentrations like this since the days in the Middle Ages when dragon hunters would line dungeons with the stuff, Drey.
This is prolonged exposure. Months. We’re talking exhaustion, but also severe headaches. Brain fog. Cognitive decline.’
‘No wonder you didn’t see what was happening in your faction,’ I mutter. ‘They made it so you weren’t thinking properly. You couldn’t.’
Drey regards me in dawning realization.
‘Where could it be coming from?’ Del asks.
‘The food?’ I ask, remembering the baskets that would appear in Drey’s kitchen. ‘It’s delivered every day.’
Del shakes her head. ‘Sheila is in charge of packing the daily deliveries. She’d never do that. Never.’
‘But who actually brings them?’ I ask.
Drey snarls low. ‘Robson.’
‘Who’s that?’ I ask.
‘The blond from the fucking tape!’ He sits down heavily. ‘He pretended he was on my side, but that sonofabitch has been poisoning me. This is Aziel. Fuck!’
‘What tape?’ Del asks.