Chapter 21 Roast
Chapter twenty-one
Roast
Jaga doesn’t leave the torture chamber until I’m ready to wreak havoc in Slawa a few hours later. I knock, and when there is no sound or reply, I try to open the door.
It doesn’t budge. She has sealed it with a spell.
“Go away.”
I press my back to the door and send my shadows through the cracks, looking in. Nienad hangs in his ropes, unconscious, a pool of blood on the floor, and Jaga sits against the farthest wall, her leather clothes splattered with gore, her face and hair filthy.
I want to tease her about it, but this isn’t the right time. I’m about to prove I can win.
Maybe. If I’m not weak. If Perun doesn’t come. If I don’t fuck up. If, if, if.
“Will you kiss me if I do it?” I whisper so quietly, my words are barely more than the movement of my lips. “I might try harder if you do.”
Jaga sighs and presses her bloody knuckles to her temples, grimacing with raw pain. I watch her a moment longer, wondering which sharp edge in her mind cut her this time. My girl is broken, even more thoroughly than I suspected.
“I only wanted to tell you I’m going,” I call out to be heard through the door. “If you want to know what happens, look through my eyes. If you focus hard enough, you’ll hear what I hear, as well.”
She doesn’t move or reply, and I pull out my shadows, hating to lose sight of her. Fear sits in my stomach like a block of ice, and I ignore it carefully. This is a good plan, I tell myself.
Nyja talked to Strzybog, who told her Perun is in the mortal world again. I don’t know how long he’ll be away, which is why I act now.
Darkness sizzles around me, and I become Woland, my tail already swishing behind my thighs as soon as the shadows disperse. Transforming doesn’t remove the fear but changes the sensation. Now it feels like thousands of insects crawling in my gut, fighting and biting.
I let darkness swallow me whole.
When I emerge in the trial square in front of the dragons’ tower, it’s in the middle of a sunny day.
Summer is in full swing, and people are out, enjoying the good weather.
Most of them sit under awnings in front of taverns, drinking cool beer.
A few stalls selling wares are up. This is a popular spot, and it’s crowded.
All of those people, at least a few dozen, stare at me with wide, shocked eyes. I haven’t made such a showy public appearance in the city in years.
The sound of shattering glass breaks the silence, jolting the bieses out of their shock. Someone gasps, a child wails, someone curses. I grin despite myself, unable to refrain from milking my moment.
“Bieses of Slawa, you are heartily invited to a dragon roast!” I announce, raising my arms high.
The dragons guarding the tower’s entrance charge me with their weapons, shouting for backup. I pick them up with my shadows, and they try to wiggle out, their forms changing in my grip, but I’ve played this game before.
When Jaga saw Mokosz in the city in winter, I came and locked up all dragons in their tower, using magic only Perun himself could undo. He was away, though. They had no choice but to stay in while my rebels played.
I’m well-rested and fed, so it’s child’s play to fling both struggling guards in through the front door, right into the arms of reinforcements trying to run outside. As soon as they are in, I shut the doors, then send my shadows up to every window, making sure no way out is left unlocked.
It’s quick, efficient, and not a challenge at all. I almost yawn. Why was I afraid again?
“Roast?” Jaga hisses in my mind. “Do you mean to tell me you’ll burn them alive? What about your allies, Foss and the rapist commander? What about the prisoners?”
I roll my eyes and look up at the sun. Someone will come soon to fight me, and if it’s Perun, I’ll have to run, which will be undignified. I’d rather not waste time on saving the prisoners. And yet…
I remind myself of the goal of this exercise: to please Jaga.
“Since when do you care about Igor? Don’t you want him to burn alive?” I ask as I send my shadows into the dungeons, unlocking the doors and slicing through chains.
When the prisoners come out of their cells, I project my voice to direct them to the staircase Jaga and the team used to free the upir rebels. I’ll make a door for them once they reach the ground level. So tiresome.
“I thought he was your ally,” she says viciously. “Do you leave your allies behind, devil boy? Good to know.”
I growl under my breath, scaring a chochol child who has come close, watching my swinging tail with fascination. It stumbles back and falls on its butt, bursting into the loudest, most horrible wail I’ve heard in the last hundred years.
Its mother comes running, a look of utter terror on her face. Jaga scoffs.
“See? You make children cry without lifting a finger. And you want to be a father?”
Oh, my lovely bitch.
“That was cruel even for you, beloved.”
I drop into a low crouch, extending my hand to the child, who I now see is a boy. His mother freezes, watching me with alarm, and I wiggle my fingers, belatedly realizing they are tipped with claws the child might find scary.
He doesn’t. The cry ends instantly, the boy’s attention thoroughly diverted. I conjure a tiny image of a dragon stretching its wings in flight over my palm.
“See this, little chochol?” I ask as pleasantly as I can. “That tower over there is full to bursting with dragons. I bet you’re afraid of them. I bet your mama told you dragons are very, very bad.”
The boy nods slowly. His dark, birdlike eyes fill with blood, and he blinks, red tears rolling down the soft, tiny feathers on his cheeks. I sense Jaga’s discomfiture in my mind, and I put up a shield blocking my curse with a growl of frustration.
Most people I see every day have already bled their fealty, or their magic is strong enough to withstand it. Chochols are weak, though, and children are the weakest. With a huff of impatience, I wipe his blood off with a shadow, swiping it greedily to have later.
It’s mine to own, after all.
The boy’s mother stands behind him on shaking legs, wringing her hands. She’s scared out of her wits, yet doesn’t abandon the child. I look up and give her a close-lipped smile.
“Settle, woman. The child will come to no harm.”
She clicks her beak a few times but doesn’t say a word. Jaga’s dry amusement mixed with exasperation fills my mind. My smile widens, showing off teeth. She’s pleased. It’s working.
“Dragons are scary,” the boy says, trying to grasp the illusion of a dragon flying circles over my palm.
“They are. But do you know what’s even scarier? Me. I am going to cook them into a roast.”
“Usually, a roast happens over open fire. You’ve sealed up all exits, so the tower serves as a kind of pot with a lid, does it not?”
I can’t help it. I laugh, because Jaga’s droll explanation plays right into my mischief. She’s perfectly unsqueamish.
“You can do that?” the boy asks, his eyes huge with awe. “Dragons are so strong!”
I nod seriously. “Once I’m done here, you’ll never have to be afraid of dragons again. At least until Perun brings in new ones. Oh, well. I might stew them, too, if he does. Would you like that?”
“Stew? With parsnip and carrots?”
I change the illusion, and now, the dragon is tied to a pole stretched horizontally over a big fire. The dragon’s scales sizzle, and his tail lashes frantically in pain.
“Can you really do that? But dragons make fire. It can’t hurt them.” The boy’s voice grows suspicious, and he folds his arms on his feathery chest, challenging me.
“Tomek, stop bothering His Grace,” the chochol’s mother says shakily, finding her tongue at last.
“Did you hear that? Call me ‘Your Grace’ from now on.”
“Your Disgrace, more like it.”
“I make the kind of fire that burns even dragons,” I tell the child, getting up.
His mother pulls him away, huffing and cursing under her breath, because the boy wants to stay close and watch.
When I look around, I can’t hold back a grin of pleasure.
The crowd has grown, more people hastily rushing to the square, called in by those already here. I forgot how fun it is to make a show.
Since Jaga jokes at my expense, I will repay her in kind. “I’m sending you something, Your Poppiness. Do with them how you please.”
While I entertained myself with the child, my shadows raced through the dragon tower in search of my allies.
I have them now, and I transport them with my magic right into my bedroom.
They are tied up with ropes that prevent them from shifting, each sporting a pretty red bow on top of his hideous head.
My love can accuse me of many things, but not of being inconsiderate.
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Whatever the fuck you want. They are yours, since you’re the one who wanted them saved. But enough about them. Watch now. This will be good.”
The crowd jostles, people speaking in frantic whispers, staying well away from me as they squeeze against the buildings around the square. The prisoners file out through an uneven doorway I made, and I rush them, projecting my voice.
“Faster! You have a minute until this tower explodes. Faster, now.”
They run and scream, and some bieses pull away from the enraptured crowd and help them along, especially those prisoners who barely walk. Soon, all of them are out, and I seal the door back up just in case.
“Ready, beloved?”
I inhale slowly, tasting the aroma of the city that’s baked in the sun for months. It smells like old blood here, blood and terror, and I remember some poroniec children are probably held in the tower in cages.
Good riddance. I never cared for those beasts made by Mokosz.
“And burn!”
I rise into the air, hovering ten feet above the ground, both palms trained on the tower.
Fire shoots out of my hands, white hot and sizzling, sparks raining down.
They bite through the cobblestones, making tiny, deep holes before they fizzle out.
The tower groans, the stones heating fast, first red, then golden, now blindingly white.
Inside, dragons scream.
I fly around the tower for show, spitting fire from every side to bake it evenly.
“Dragon pie,” I tell Jaga with a laugh. “That’s accurate, isn’t it?”
“This is madness. How will you save Slawa from Perun’s vengeance?”
“All in good time. Now listen to the screams and let yourself enjoy them, hm? You hate dragons for raping your precious wilas. Now all the guards are gone, and Perun will be hard pressed to replace them.”
She says nothing, and I tell myself it’s because she’s so enamored with me after I did everything she wanted, and more.
She probably hates herself for liking it. Good. At least we both suffer.
It takes ten minutes until the last dragon dies, suffocating from the smoke and heat.
I grow enormous, batlike wings from shadows for myself, and coast lazily around the tower, throwing a ball of fire here and there.
The crowd swells, bieses of all kinds blocking the narrow streets leading to the square, craning their necks as they talk in hushed voices.
No one claps, and no one protests.
I have a split second’s warning when wings flap above me. Two dragons dive at me from above, circling each other in graceful spirals. Aha. They must have been on patrol, or spending a leisurely midday in the Wila Garden.
Pity I don’t have more time, or I’d drag this out.
“Look, pickles to go with the pie.”
I beat my shadowy wings, exploding up faster than the dragons ever could. My movements are pure magic, while theirs are limited by gravity and mass. The dragons stop, confused, as I shoot up right between their noses. It takes them too long to reverse course.
I rain down acid.
The beasts screech in horrible pain as scales and flesh melt off their bones in midair. The acid is potent, my own battle invention, and it eats through them so fast, they are half-skeletons when they hit the ground. Both are instantly dead, their corpses steaming and hissing.
Jaga cackles, the sound so clear, she must be laughing out loud.
“Pickles!”
I perform an elaborate aerial spin for the onlookers, a small dance of triumph and joy. There are shouts of dismay and awe, and now, some of them clap. I take a bow, still hovering in the air, right when the tower behind me explodes.
Stones fly in all directions, red-hot and deadly. I have half a second to decide. Save the people or let them be wrecked?
Jaga’s watching.
I shoot out my shadows, spreading them in every direction like a funereal veil.
For a moment, the sunlit square goes dark, darker than night.
I grunt from effort, but I’ve caught all the stones, and I call my shadows back, putting all the rubble away in a neat pile in the ruins of the steaming tower.
There is no sign of the bodies. They burned down to the finest ash.
Dead silence swathes the square, mamunas, kobolds, wilas, and others watching me with slack jaws and terrified eyes. In the silence resounds a slow, mocking clapping.
Mokosz squeezes through the crowd to stand at the front. She wags her finger at me.
“Naughty Woland. Fun is over.”
Well. That will spoil my plan well enough.
Time to improvise.
“Catch me.”