43. Breaking the sky
43
brEAKING THE SKY
Anahrod’s only hope was that Neveranimas would leave in a rage the moment she realized. The flaw in that hope made itself terrifyingly clear just moments after the dragon entered the outer vault.
The vault was silent, so still and silent.
Slowly, sounds reemerged, like they were actors stepping onto a stage. A grinding noise as the amethyst dragonstone she’d dropped earlier continued its slow roll across the floor. The heavy, dull thud of an enormous dragon carefully making her way through the rooms. A metallic clink of impossibly large, dragon-scaled jewelry. The soft sibilance of scales rubbing against each other.
Lights flickered on, softer than a human might prefer, but just perfect for dragon senses.
[I can smell you.]
Anahrod closed her eyes. Dragon senses are not too dissimilar to a titan drake’s. Hiding was impossible; Neveranimas already knew they had invaded her lair, already knew someone remained behind. Anahrod’s only chance was that Neveranimas might be bluffing. She might not know for certain if any robbers remained.
Anahrod stayed still, slowed her breathing, and waited in the dark.
[How long has it been, Anahrod? Seems like it was just yesterday, but my people feel the passage of time less keenly than yours.]
Damn.
[Did Crystalspire lie about executing you?] The dragon seemed curious as much as angry.
More worrying, though, was that she recognized Anahrod’s scent. That she remembered it.
Anahrod wasn’t so foolish as to think the dragon would spare her. Neveranimas might keep her alive for long enough to find out what Anahrod knew, but she’d never let her live.
[This is indecorous, little beast. Have some dignity. It’s not as though I won’t find your partners. Do you think I’d be so foolish as to neglect to place tracking runes on everything I own? I don’t care about the diamonds, but whichever one of your friends took my Rampant Stone will be found.]
Anahrod almost laughed. She’d given it a name. Wonderful.
[She’s here,] Anahrod told Peralon as the heavy footsteps came closer.
[Hide,] he told her unnecessarily. [Whatever happens, stay hidden. I’m on my way.]
Anahrod appreciated the attempt, but Peralon wouldn’t make it in time, and had no way to get inside the vault even if he did. If she was going to get out of this, she’d have to do it on her own.
Metal crashed as the dragon swiped a dozen pedestals and shelves out of the way, scattering her carefully curated hoard of secret knowledge.
[Show yourself!] Neveranimas demanded. [You’re not a dragon, silly beast. You cannot stand against me.]
Anahrod shut her eyes, staying still. No, Anahrod was not a dragon. Not even the rider of a dragon…
Wait.
She’d wondered, once, if she could take possession of a dragon, regardless of bond. Anahrod already knew she could see through dragon eyes: she’d just done that with Peralon. Could she take control of a dragon?
Did she have anything to lose by trying?
Anahrod wanted the switch to be like what she did with Overbite, but she feared it would more closely resemble Peralon and Ris—a mutual exchange.
Anahrod had to assume that if she took control of the dragon’s body, the dragon would take control of hers.
How to guarantee Neveranimas couldn’t cause any mischief?
She fumbled through her coat pockets until she found the sleeping-potion bottles she’d created for Rider Brauge. It wouldn’t take effect instantly—these things never did—but it might buy her enough time.
And if she was wrong, at least she’d be unconscious when Neveranimas killed her.
Anahrod uncorked the bottle and drank it all down in one gulp, wincing at the acid taste. A glass of wine would’ve been welcome at that moment.
Neveranimas must’ve heard something, or smelled something, or both. [Ha! I told you that you’ll never—]
Anahrod rolled out from her hiding spot. She brushed the dust off her sleeves and tugged at her belt. She wished she’d brought her sword; not because she had any illusions about its effectiveness against a dragon but just for its familiarity.
“Heard you the first time. I can’t hide from you. I’m aware. Confirm something for me: You’re the one who turned Ivarion rampant, yes?” The moment she asked, Anahrod knew it was the wrong approach. Neveranimas hoarded secrets. She didn’t give them away.
Neveranimas wasn’t the largest dragon that Anahrod had ever seen, but she was monstrously larger than Anahrod. So large she had to lean back and brace herself against a table to see the underside of the dragon’s chin. Each of those claws—
Well. Each of those claws was the size of a sword, weren’t they?
Neveranimas still looked the same as she had seventeen years previously. Except now Anahrod knew better than to be awed. Afraid? Yes. But the burning contempt she felt pushed that down, made it meaningless. The only emotion she had left for this dragon was hate.
Anahrod told herself to think of Neveranimas as just a larger, winged version of Overbite. No more intimidating, no more difficult to overcome.
Neveranimas stared down at Anahrod. [It is you.]
“Yes,” Anahrod said. “But more important are the dragons who helped put me inside this room. The ones working against you.”
If Neveranimas collected secrets, perhaps Anahrod could buy herself time by dangling a few.
The dragon huffed out a cloud of ice vapor. [You’re lying. No dragon helped you. But I would like to know how you entered my vault.]
“You helped,” Anahrod said.
Neveranimas growled. Anahrod reminded herself that it might not be wise to bait the dragon into losing her temper.
“Those families you wiped out all those years ago? The ones who built this place?” She gestured. “They had another way in. And no motivation to keep such a way secret after you betrayed them.” She paused. “I’m not lying about the dragons, though. Or do you not care if there’s a secret cabal working against you?”
Anahrod felt the edges of Neveranimas’s mind—a distant, high place, obscured by clouds and cold, dark winds. Beautiful.
Vulnerable.
Neveranimas snarled at the mention of a cabal. She was both paranoid and curious—yes, of course, she wanted to know about a clandestine plot. She wanted to know everything.
[Tell me!] the dragon demanded. [Tell me who would—] Neveranimas canted her head to the side, regarding Anahrod with a single eye. [Oh, I know who it is,] she said. [Ivarion’s old lover. That annoying little gold plaything. That’s who’s responsible for this?]
She was right, but Anahrod would never admit it. “No.” Anahrod’s voice dropped scorn. “Tiendremos.”
Maybe Neveranimas never considered that someone who would do anything to be their second might also do anything to surpass them. Maybe she had different reasons for thinking Tiendremos fanatically loyal. The dragon reared back, eyes wide and teeth showing as she grimaced.
Which was when Anahrod attacked.
It was much harder than taking control of Overbite. The farther down Anahrod pierced, however, the less it mattered. Under that civil and cold exterior, Neveranimas was an animal—feral, full of rage and hate and endless fear. It was like trying to grab on to a rabid, shrieking drake, one lashing out with six flailing limbs.
Neveranimas’s eyes widened. She lifted a giant, clawed hand to silence Anahrod forever.
She wasn’t fast enough.
Anahrod was glad she’d taken the sleeping draught. She could feel Neveranimas slip into her body, even as she took control of the dragon.
The shift was painful and euphoric, an overwhelming wrongness combined with a sensation of power. Her point of view shifted, became something much higher than she’d ever experienced with Overbite. The anger took her by surprise, a never-ending storm whirling inside her. Neveranimas felt—
She felt close to going rampant. Anahrod was forced to take a moment to collect herself, to push down that awful, cold fury.
On the ground, “Anahrod” began screaming.
Understandable, Anahrod thought as she steadied herself. Neveranimas had never tried to use human vocal cords. She was screaming for the same reason babies did. Whereas Anahrod had spent weeks rehearsing how to move and fly while wearing a dragon’s skin.
Neveranimas deciphered running with commendable speed. Unfortunately, she didn’t have anywhere to go, being no more capable of escaping the vault now than Anahrod had been earlier. Anahrod had concerns that the dragon might try to damage her new body, so she (carefully, oh so carefully) scooped up the struggling human form with one hand and limped to the vault entrance using the other three limbs. She brushed aside the welded shield like the improvised toy it was, pressed the pressure plate, deactivated the traps, unlocked the doors.
By the time she reached the back entrance, Neveranimas had stopped struggling. Her human body was still alive, but Neveranimas’s panic had helped the sleeping potion kick in earlier.
Now Anahrod just had to figure out what to do.
If she switched back, then Neveranimas would have full control again, because the dragon’s body wasn’t drugged. Whereas Anahrod’s body would be unconscious for hours.
She needed to incapacitate Neveranimas’s body so thoroughly that it wouldn’t matter when they switched back again.
Incapacitate, but preferably kill.
Anahrod climbed back out of the steam vent rather than using the front exit through the Hall of Death. She discovered on the way she could use her wings to climb with as well as her forearms, just not with the same strength or dexterity. Still, it made the trip a great deal faster than she would’ve thought.
Once she reached the top, she looked around for a place where she could hide her human body. She had to approach this carefully. She couldn’t see Peralon, but he was approaching fast. Would she have enough time to explain herself before he attacked her? If he did attack her, would she be able to maintain control over Neveranimas’s body?
She didn’t think she should risk it.
“Stop!”
A tiny figure appeared in front of her, and Anahrod realized she had even more problems than she’d realized.
It was Ris.
Peralon must have left Ris behind earlier, and he wasn’t answering Anahrod’s calls to him. That meant that Anahrod had no way to communicate with Ris. She had no way to explain that the dragon that looked like Neveranimas was really Anahrod.
Ris jumped up on top of a boulder and held up a knapsack. It looked like it contained something hard, heavy, and round. “I have the dragonstone!” she yelled. “Just let her go, and it’s yours. We’ll leave and you’ll never see us again.”
Anahrod’s mind raced furiously.
—could Ris have been the one who sent Tiendremos rampant?
Now that she was thinking about it, it would be a monstrously ironic and appropriate way for Tiendremos to die, wouldn’t it?
“Please.” Ris’s voice was broken, and her eyes haunted. She spoke low enough that the only reason Anahrod could hear her was because of the superiority of dragon hearing. “Please, I’ll give you anything. Just let her go.”
Even if Anahrod could speak, she didn’t think she would be able to. This was Ris’s revenge, her chance to get back at Neveranimas. She was just offering it up? Giving it away?
“Please,” Ris begged. “What do you want?”
Anahrod-in-Neveranimas set her unconscious human body down on the ground in front of Ris, who threw so many wards on top of Anahrod’s sleeping form that she was difficult to see for several seconds.
Anahrod thought the expression on Ris’s face when Anahrod didn’t pick up that knapsack was also adorable, cycling as it did through determination, shock, and surprise. She idly wondered if Ris might have trapped it.
Anahrod launched herself into the air.
She kept flying up.
Anahrod soared higher and higher. She didn’t look down; that would come soon enough.
Flying was heaven. Her fear of heights didn’t kick in, couldn’t kick in—not when she was in control. Flying came easily, just as running in a human body had come easily to Neveranimas. The body knew the skill. If she never made the mistake of thinking about it too hard, the dragon body knew what to do.
Anahrod flew higher.
She flew until the sky turned from pale blue to deep indigo. So high that the air became hypoxic. So high that when she paused, Anahrod saw the entire world curve lazily underneath her. Fifty thousand feet—the point past which neither humans nor dragons ventured without magical assistance, the air too thin to support life. The height from which she’d been thrown.
This felt just .
She hung there for a glittering, perfect moment, perched on the lid of the sky.
She folded her wings and dove.
Anahrod had thought she’d panic. How could she not when stooping from a height? Instead, she felt a grim, cold thrill, a vicious satisfaction.
The difference between falling and jumping was as vast as the sky itself.
The hardest part wasn’t the flying, but the waiting. Waiting until the last possible moment, until the jungle tree leaves were so close she could see their purple veining. Waiting until the last second before she tore her mind away from Neveranimas’s body, snapped back into her own.
Anahrod hadn’t been sure it would work, or if it did, that the cost wouldn’t be her own life as well.
She felt the thin, wispy, cloudlike trail of herself, a lead line guiding herself back to her own body. She leaped for that thread, grabbed on with both hands, followed it back as fast and hard as she could—
And then nothing.
Nothing at all.
Anahrod stared at the cloth-wrapped ceiling above her for several seconds before her brain caught up enough to supply a location. She was in Gwydinion’s room.
She sat up.
It hadn’t been a dream; she still wore Kaibren’s dark green inscription suit. She also had a sore throat and a headache.
Anahrod put a hand to head, felt the bruises there, and winced. She wasn’t sure where those had come from, but if she had to guess—Jaemeh must have hit her to knock her out. Probably with a dragonstone.
Just as painful was the knot of rage at the edge of her consciousness, because it could only mean one thing:
They hadn’t killed Tiendremos yet.
Voices nearby shouted, including one that by cadence and tone she identified as Sicaryon’s. She wandered out into the main room to find her identification correct, with Sicaryon and Ris screaming at each other. Naeron leaned against a wall with his arms wrapped around his head as if to block out the sound, while Claw sat at the table with perfect posture, no expression on her face whatsoever. They all looked exhausted.
“—had just told us the fucking dragon had an artifact that would send other dragons rampant, maybe we could’ve done something about Jaemeh!”
“I didn’t know!” Ris screamed back. “We suspected she had some method, but honestly, we thought she was casting a spell, a curse! Why would we think it was a dragonstone?”
“I think Tiendremos believed it was where she kept all her blackmail material,” Anahrod offered, massaging her temples. “He might still be right. Who’s to say?”
Ris’s head whipped around. “Anahrod, how are you feeling—?”
“Like someone hit my head with a big, shiny rock,” Anahrod said. “What time is it?”
Ris made a face. “Early morning. Very early. Dawn won’t be for hours yet.”
Anahrod sighed. She didn’t ask if they’d been arguing since Ris returned with Anahrod’s body. She knew the answer.
“Where’s Gwydinion?” she asked instead. “Where’s Kaibren?”
The room fell quiet.
Ris ran a hand over her face and looked pained. “Kaibren’s dead and Jaemeh took Gwydinion, he took the diamonds, and we think he has the fucking dragonstone, too.”
“The dragonstone? But you offered to give that back to Neveranimas,” Anahrod said.
“You did what?” Sicaryon gave Ris a wide-eyed, accusative stare.
Ris sighed. “No, it’s—” She sighed. “I was trying out this strategy. Very new. Very experimental. It’s called lying . Lying out of my teeth.” She glared at Sicaryon. “At least it worked.”
“Oh.” Anahrod seesawed a hand back and forth. “Not exactly.”
Ris gave her a confused look. “What?”
“You didn’t say all of that to Neveranimas,” Anahrod said. “You—you said it to me. I was”—she made a linking motion with her fingers—“possessing her body, to carry mine out of the vault.” She felt ridiculously embarrassed about the whole thing. “We speculated that I might be able to do this. I tried it—and it worked.”
Silence.
“I don’t believe you.” Claw’s stare at Anahrod was venomous. “What ridiculous shit is this? No, the only way you escaped without a scratch is if Neveranimas let you out, and why would she do that unless you were working with her?” She pulled a knife from her belt and leaned forward.
“Calm down, Claw,” Ris told her.
“Fuck you,” Claw said. “And if Naeron knocks me out again, you better make it for good, or I’m gutting him the moment I’m conscious—” She paused.
The tip of Anahrod’s sword rested against Claw’s throat. Under other circumstances, she might’ve teased Claw about letting her guard down like that, taking her eyes off the target—but these were not other circumstances.
“Calm yourself,” Anahrod said. “I told you exactly what I could do. Don’t say that I’ve been deceiving you.”
“Well, I don’t believe you!”
“That’s your problem,” Anahrod said. “I still told you the truth. Hell, you’ve seen me do it, Claw. I wasn’t unconscious when those Scarsea soldiers were carrying my body away; I was possessing Overbite.”
Claw mulled that one over for a moment. Her eyes flicked to the side, to Ris, to Sicaryon, possibly to Naeron. Anahrod couldn’t see what they were doing; she didn’t let her focus stray.
“She’s telling the truth about the possession ability,” Sicaryon said. “I’ve seen her do it.”
Claw narrowed her eyes. “So, you had control of Neveranimas and you just, what, let her go?”
“I’m not a fool either,” Anahrod sneered. “I flew her up to fifty thousand, flipped, and dove straight back down.” She pulled back her sword, just enough to emphasize the confrontation was over. Anahrod glanced at Ris. “Please tell me I killed her.”
Ris sighed and said nothing.
Anahrod sheathed her sword, angrily. “How could she have survived that?”
Naeron mumbled something. As the yelling had stopped, he’d removed his arms from over his head and had gone back to tapping his wrist. Honestly, Anahrod was a bit surprised that he’d stayed in the room at all.
Anahrod turned toward him. “What?”
He looked up at her with red, teary eyes. “She teleports.”
Anahrod exhaled. If she’d teleported the instant she had control of her body again…
She’d given Neveranimas so little time to get her bearings, to recover. Half a second, if that. How had she managed such a thing?
“Valid,” she acknowledged. “Jaemeh has the Rampant Stone—which Neveranimas claimed she could track—as well as the diamonds and my brother. Neveranimas isn’t dead and worse, knows that I’m not dead. And now that she knows what I can do, she’ll be rousing every dragon in the city to hunt me down. Did I miss anything?”
“Jaemeh also stole our flyer,” Claw said, “which was our only exit plan except for Peralon—who we can’t fucking use either.”
“Peralon’s hiding,” Ris said. “At least until we figure out what we’re doing. Neveranimas has a kill-on-sight order out on him.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t smart to hide,” Claw snapped. “Just that it puts us in a bit of a tight spot, doesn’t it? How the hell do we leave this damn city?”
Anahrod pursed her lips. “That, I might be able to do something about.”