The Dragon Round (Dragon #1)(98)

Ravis leans back over the balustrade, aims, and lets fly. The bolt hits the man on the side of his buttocks, but it skips off his odd black leather pants and clatters over the dome.

Oftly aims for the man’s sandaled foot. The bolt hits him in the heel with a clank and bounces away.

Ject says, “What the—”

The man whistles. In the cupola, a sinuous silhouette rises over the chest-high walls stretching between its pillars. Ravis and Oftly reload, trying not to look.

Who is this man who can command a dragon? Ject thinks. How is that possible? He could try to capture them, but generals who overreach generally fall.

Bolts twang from around the walk. Two hit the cupola, one chips off some cream-colored marble, the other lodges in its tiny blue dome. Two others sail through the cupola, past the shadow, and disappear into the city. Ject doesn’t want to know where they land.

A gray head emerges, flecked with golden light and gore. A long neck follows it then two little claws pull two wings over the wall.

“Tiny,” says Ravis, “as dragons go.”

“Big enough for me,” Oftly says.

“Is that a pack on its back,” Ject says, “or a saddle?”

The rest of the dragon pushes out of the cupola, and it picks its way toward the man, tail waving for balance, claws grating on the dome’s tiles. Clay scree showers the guards. The man mounts the dragon and faces Ject.

Ject sees through the beard, the goggles, and time. “Impossible,” he says.

As the shadows of Ject’s detail dance across the stained glass windows, Herse mounts the iron stairs. Halfway up, he grabs the railing as they’re rattled by something heavy banging on the dome. Several different thoughts assemble into an unexpected whole.

Was that feet? The person who snatched Chelson’s daughter must be hiding above. What creature that large could get on top of the tower? Someone riding a dragon destroyed Tuse’s ship. Solet’s wolf pack was destroyed by a dragon. Is there a dragon up there? Is the abductor its rider? Could he be responsible for all three attacks and the body here? If so, Herse doesn’t care what the rider must have against the Heroes of Hanosh. He wants the dragon.

He crawls along the catwalk lest he be shaken off. He doesn’t touch the severed hand resting there. He climbs the ladder, which smears his hands and clothes with blood, which can’t all be Skite’s. Holestar and Derc must be above. That would explain the stain around the trapdoor.

Footsteps move down the dome toward the widow’s walk. Ject is standing tough, Herse will give him that.

He pushes the trapdoor. Blood rains down his arm and over his face. Something’s blocking the door. He climbs higher and rams it open with his shoulder. A weight slides off it; he whips his crossbow up and points the bolt at the wide, icy eye of Tristaban.

Ravis steps in front of his general and raises his crossbow, but he can’t bring himself to fire. His face loses all color; his eyes, all focus; his heart, all warmth. He wishes the eave offered more cover. The dragon’s teeth are so white.

Ject looks into the dragon’s lacy eyes and sees the future: the creature biting off Ravis’s face, grabbing Ject’s head, tossing him over the balustrade. This is not the victory he imagined by discovering the dragon.

“Hold your fire!” he yells. He puts his hand on Ravis’s shoulder, and the first guard dips his crossbow. Oftly does too. Then Ject says to the man, “I remember you. Before the beard.”

The man guides the dragon to the lip of the dome. It’s ungainly on all fours, head bobbing, tail swishing, like a horse whose legs were cut off at the knees. Ject is terrified it will slip and fall and carry them to the plaza. The dragon sniffs Ject and Ravis. Its breath is a miasma of fish and fresh meat.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.

“I don’t want to hurt you either,” Ject says. “I need your help. To save the city. Again.”

“You can help me too.”

“I’ll do what I can. You can trust me, Jeryon.”

The cupola is disturbingly well organized. On one side a canvas tarp, rolled and tied, sits beside crude woven baskets of food and black skins full of water or wine. On the other, a neatly collected pile of scat, bones, and the remains of a city guard, probably the missing man from Quiet. The floor glistens as if recently mopped. In the middle lies Tristaban, wrists bound behind her, mouth gagged, body bruised and bloody. Holestar’s head sits nearby, as does his body, the belly torn open.

Herse smiles, lowers the crossbow, and puts a finger to his lips. Tristaban shivers a nod. He climbs all the way into the cupola, keeping his head below its low walls. He lifts her onto her knees, pulls her gag loose then plucks a ball of dirty cloth from her mouth. She coughs and spits. He shushes her soothingly, and she remembers how to act alive.

“Are you all right?” he says, pointing at several aloe leaves tied on like bandages with thread.

“It ate him,” she says. “I watched it eat him.”

“Listen.” Herse holds her cheek. “Who’s he with?”

“What? A company?” Tristaban says. “None. It’s Jeryon.”

“Who?”

“The captain of the Comber.”

So the rumors are true. Jeryon was given the captain’s chance. Herse should have known. Chelson had to have seen something in Livion.