10. A funny way of saying yes
10
A FUNNY WAY OF SAYING YES
Naeron’s arrival with food distracted Anahrod from the poster. The man gave Anahrod a small, apologetic smile, and backed away from the table hastily when she glared in response. He looked hurt.
That man had a lot of gall.
“Don’t be like that,” Ris said, after Naeron left. “He likes you.”
“Clearly.” That must have been why he’d knocked Anahrod unconscious in the Bay of Bones: feelings of camaraderie and friendship.
Anahrod thought about rejecting the offered food for approximately half a second before she pulled her chair back to the table. She’d spent too many years living on what she could catch, steal, or harvest to turn down free food.
Kaibren had put together a nice, if simple, spread. He’d made a thick soup of meat stock and root vegetables, served with a side of jaeld leaves, sliced thin and pickled in spicy vinegar. There was also a rich black bread, cultured butter, a soft white cheese rolled in ash, and a side of sweet golden plum jam with the raw fruit spread out around it decoratively.
Ris raised an eyebrow. “No demanding that I eat first? No worries that we might poison you?”
Anahrod poured a mug of tea. “If you wanted me dead, I’d be dead.”
“How unexpectedly reasonable of you.”
“Don’t get used to it.” Anahrod’s fingers paused at the sliced golden plums before continuing on to the bread and cheese. The plums were raw—which meant they were inedible, both in terms of nutrition and taste.
Anahrod didn’t talk while eating, while Ris seemed content to watch her instead of making conversation. It gave Anahrod a few valuable minutes to contemplate her situation.
Ris had mentioned Tiendremos. Anahrod knew that dragon, or at least, she knew of that dragon. One of Neveranimas’s claw-licking peons. Powerful, big, but apparently not as loyal as Anahrod had always assumed. Because—if Ris was telling the truth—Tiendremos didn’t want his boss knowing what he was up to.
She didn’t trust it, and no matter what Ris said about her motives, Anahrod didn’t trust her either.
Anahrod’s skill with a sword wouldn’t help her. As fast as she was on the draw, Ris was faster with magic.
But Anahrod knew magic, too.
While she ate, Anahrod reached out with her mind.
There had to be something bigger than a scrabber in a city as large as Crystalspire. Humans were social creatures who included animals in their web of loyalties. Anywhere one might find large gatherings of people, one also found large gatherings of animals. Placid pack animals. Small, adorable pets. Animals to move goods and people, and to provide milk, leather, and food.
Up above them on the mountain ice, a silver-ridged hunting drake roamed. They shared part of their name with Overbite’s kin, but were much smaller. As the name implied, their speed and ferocity made them fantastic hunters—lightning fast, with razor-sharp talons capable of disemboweling a man.
That would do. She whispered a mental apology to the drake: it was unlikely to survive what happened next.
Anahrod glanced up. “What does Peralon hoard?”
“That’s a very personal question.”
“I’m just wondering what you’re trying to accomplish here. What your dragon wants.”
Ris cocked her head to the side. “Don’t you mean what Tiendremos wants?”
“No. What he wants doesn’t matter.”
Ris straightened, interested. “Why would you say that?”
“Because of this.” Anahrod tapped the wanted poster. “If Tiendremos had known about this, he’d have gone to the Deep and made his demands down there. At best, you’re not sharing all your information with him. Just as likely, he doesn’t know you and Peralon are involved in this at all. Either way, his opinion doesn’t matter.”
Ris grinned and clapped her hands together. “Oh, you’re smart! Nobody told me you’re smart!” She chuckled. “Wrong on a couple of points, but still—smart.”
“Just tell me what the game is. What does Peralon want?”
She smiled fondly. “You have it backward. It’s what I want.”
Anahrod found that hard to believe. Dragons seldom indulged their riders’ whims. “What do you want, then?”
Ris curled a lock of red hair around a finger. “Oh, you know. The usual.”
Anahrod squinted at her. “Money?”
Ris threw her head back and laughed. For just a moment, something else peeked out from behind those exotic green eyes. That darker side of Ris who lurked behind all her cheerful masks.
“No.” Ris let the smile fall from her face. “The oldest motive there is.”
“Love” flashed into Anahrod’s mind and was dismissed as quickly. Some instinct inside her whispered that the oldest motive in the world was far less sweet.
“Revenge,” Anahrod said.
Surprise flicked across the woman’s face. “People usually guess love.”
“People are usually fools.”
The two women stared at each other. Anahrod moved around the table, in Ris’s direction. She raised a hand, as if to touch the woman’s cheek. Ris leaned forward.
Ris said: “You already met the rest of the team, but tonight we’ll—”
Anahrod channeled power from the silver-ridged hunting drake and struck.
This time, she caught Ris by surprise.
Anahrod pushed Ris against the wall with one hand, and with her other, set a handful of razor-sharp talons against her throat.
The talons weren’t real. Rather, a golden outline of talons surrounded her hands like oversized gloves. Phantom as the energy seemed, however, the magical copies were every bit as sharp as the real thing. Just as capable of ripping someone’s throat out.
“Don’t scream,” Anahrod ordered.
“Are you sure? I’ve been told my screams are lovely.” Ris was still going for suggestive and flirty, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Anahrod frowned. “If you try to cast a spell or call your sword, you’ll be dead before you can finish.”
Ris exhaled, and then nodded.
“Good girl.” Anahrod watched the door and waited.
“I didn’t know you could do that.” Despite the claws at Ris’s throat, she didn’t look scared. No. Anahrod corrected herself. She wasn’t scared. She was intrigued and excited, but not scared.
“We’re all made of secrets.” Anahrod continued looking toward the door. Continued waiting.
“You think someone’s watching the room?” Ris wiggled a little under her touch, but nothing more. Yet. “Okay, yes. I was watching the room. No one else. Nobody’s coming.”
“Why not? Nothing’s stopping you from telling your dragon exactly what’s going on here.” Anahrod’s gaze slipped for a moment, down the length of Ris’s body. She reminded herself to focus.
“Absolutely,” Ris agreed. “If only he wasn’t a two-hour flight from here.”
Anahrod raised an eyebrow. If Ris claimed he was two hours away, he was probably five minutes away, and flying for speed to make it back in three.
Ris pulled her metaphorical feet back under her. “You’re really running?”
“If my options are being executed for crimes I didn’t commit or becoming a dragon’s puppet, I pick ‘neither.’”
“Neither works for me, too.”
“So says a dragon’s slave.”
“Ouch.” Ris grimaced. “Dragonriders aren’t—” A spark of fire and frustration crossed her eyes. “We’re not slaves .”
“Lucky you. You chanced upon one of the ‘good’ dragons, the ones that take care of their little pets. Catch him on a bad day and disobey him. See where that takes you.”
“We respect each other. Complement each—”
“Save it.” Anahrod lifted Ris’s chin with a claw. “Dragons don’t see us as equals. We’re slaves, we’re pets, we’re things . As far as they’re concerned, our only purpose is to keep them from going rampant. What we want doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Ris whispered.
Anahrod felt sorry for her. She must have been new at this, still giddy at the idea she’d been chosen. She hadn’t realized that any power she would ever have in that relationship was at the dragon’s discretion—and they could reclaim that power at any time.
“Don’t move,” Anahrod told her, pressing the claw under Ris’s chin to emphasize how she wasn’t playing around.
She patted the woman down, feeling at her coat pockets and around her hips until she found the bag of scales—all two hundred—that she’d originally promised. They’d made a deal, after all. She tucked that into her belt and kept searching, lifting a dagger. No sword—or at least no sword that Anahrod found. There were limits to how thoroughly she could search a woman while keeping one hand clamped around her neck.
Anahrod suspected what the jasmine flowers on Ris’s garden rings meant. Delicate, fragile—sweetest when bruised. It wasn’t hard to imagine—far too easy, in fact—how tantalizing that creamy flesh would look, marked with purple and blue.
Even if Anahrod had never gained her own rings, she knew her preferences.
Just stupid bad luck it was never meant to be.
Anahrod sighed. “I wish we’d met under different stars.”
“Fair. I am very cute.”
Anahrod didn’t move her face closer, no matter how badly she wanted to. Ris struck her as a woman who was not above a good headbutt. “No. You aren’t.”
Ris threw her a hurt look.
“Not even the tiniest bit cute,” Anahrod said as she leaned in close but to the side, so she was whispering in the other woman’s ear. “What you are is the most exquisite person I have ever seen. And I believe you.”
“You do?” Ris whispered. “Wait. You do?”
“Yes.” Anahrod leaned back, again avoiding any obvious opportunities for a turnabout. She eyed the drapery pulls. Those might work. If only Ris wouldn’t slice herself free in seconds. “I bet your screams are like music.”
Ris shivered. It wasn’t fear.
Anahrod could’ve knocked her unconscious, choked her, but she wasn’t Naeron: there was no method Anahrod might use that didn’t hold a chance of serious injury.
When she’d drawn her sword on Ris, she’d only been hoping to threaten her. Anahrod may have had her reservations about dragonriders, but she wasn’t foolish enough to deliberately hurt one.
She’d seen what happened when someone broke a dragon’s toys. But maybe violence wasn’t the only solution.
“Strip,” Anahrod said.
Ris gave her a surprised look.
“Take off your clothes,” Anahrod elaborated. “And while I’m sure you could make it a wonderful show, I have places to be, so hurry.”
Her eyes widened in faux innocence. “Why, Anahrod. You are full of surprises.” She began unbuttoning her coat. Slowly.
“Remember that I warned you.” Anahrod put her unchanneled hand around Ris’s neck. The woman’s eyes all but rolled back in her head.
“Don’t move,” Anahrod ordered, “or I’ll hurt you.”
“What—”
Anahrod hooked a claw under the woman’s shirt and yanked. The smooth, dull front side of the drake’s claw slid harmlessly against bare skin, while the sharp underside sliced through the fabric, lace, and leather like water. Four cuts. One down each arm, then one long pull down the center, sliding to the side, down first one leg, then the other. Her claws caught briefly on the crystal belt, but Anahrod yanked until the thin gold links snapped.
The result was Ris pressed up against the wall, wearing nothing but shreds of leather tucked into boots. Anahrod didn’t look down again.
It was a view she didn’t have permission to see.
“Roses,” Anahrod said. “You said I was thinking of roses earlier?”
Ris nodded. She was leaning into Anahrod’s hold on her throat, her eyes heavy-lidded with desire. “Yes. Eannis, yes.”
Anahrod released the drake’s claws. From a great distance, she felt their owner collapse in the snow. She might not have killed him immediately, but she’d left him too weak to fight off other predators. His fate was sealed. With her newly freed hand, she picked up the bag of scales the mayor had left her.
“If I had rings,” Anahrod told Ris, “they’d be roses.”
Ris closed her eyes for a moment, then blinked suddenly awake. “What? You can’t just say that and walk away. Take some responsibility!”
“Here’s to hoping you were telling the truth about not wanting to kill me. I’d prefer to remember you fondly.”
The woman made a distressed sound. “That’s so unfair!”
“Tell it to the mountains.” Anahrod ran a finger across the edge of the woman’s jaw. “Like I said: I wish we’d met under different stars.”
Anahrod dove for the window.