“No,” she said. “I’m not out of money.”
She had a few months before she had to worry about that. Also, Tolemek had invited her to stay with him, even though she had been avoiding him of late. She didn’t feel she deserved his company any more than she deserved the company of her Wolf Squadron comrades. Nor did she like the pitying look she caught on his face whenever they were together. Logically, she knew she should appreciate his support, and she did, but she didn’t want to be pitied. She wanted to be blamed. Why wouldn’t any of them do that? It didn’t make sense. Even if the sword had held some magical influence over her, it had been her weak mind that had allowed it to gain a hold.
“I’m not hiring currently,” her father said. “I can let you know if that changes.”
The rejection did not surprise her, not fully, but it stung, nonetheless. She had always believed that no matter what happened between them, they were still blood and he would still take her back. Wasn’t that what parents were supposed to do?
“Is this because I sided with my unit out there?” Cas asked, her cheeks heating. Her emotions must be all over her face, but she didn’t care. “You always said that you can’t let feelings or even relationships interfere with doing your duty. I was doing my duty.”
“I understand,” he said.
He did not add, and I forgive you for it. She wasn’t sure why she had thought he might. She also did not know why she cared. They had barely spoken for years. If they didn’t have any kind of relationship now, it was as much her fault as it was his. He had never come to her, but she had also never gone to him. She had been busy with her army training, and then with the flight training, and then working with Wolf Squadron. There hadn’t been time to notice her lack of family or to miss it. But now…
It must make her emotionally weak, but a part of her felt like an eight-year-old girl again, standing in front of her father and hoping he would offer comfort over some wound she’d received while playing. When she’d been young, he’d occasionally relented and hugged her. Maybe her mother had insisted. She didn’t know, but she remembered a few hugs here and there, even if it had been fifteen years.
“Caslin.” Her father sighed, ever so faintly. “At this time, I can’t trust you to join in with my business. I believe your loyalties would be to your unit and to those aligned with the king.”
Those aligned with the king? She couldn’t imagine going against King Angulus, nor could she imagine why her father would back his opposition. Surely, he must have suffered repercussions for choosing to take an assignment from the queen, especially when that queen had been responsible for having Angulus kidnapped. Or had her father bought his way out of legal trouble? Maybe nobody had been left alive who could prove that he’d been trying to kill Phelistoth because of the queen’s wishes.
“No, I wouldn’t agree to act against the king, but I fail to see why any loyalty I might feel toward my old comrades would matter.” Unless, Cas realized as soon as the words came out of her mouth, he had been hired to kill one of them. Her heart gave a lurch, and she stared into his eyes, wishing she had Sardelle’s knack for mind reading. Unfortunately, she had never been good at guessing her father’s thoughts.
“It’s possible that your loyalty would one day be a cause for conflict,” he said without giving anything away.
One day? Or did he have an assassination assignment now?
The sound of clanks came from around the corner of the house, and a sleek black steam carriage with silver piping came into view. A driver she did not recognize rolled the vehicle around pond-sized puddles and stopped in front of the walkway.
Her father plucked a black jacket from the coat rack and stepped forward, closing the door behind him. “It’s good to see that you are well, Caslin,” he said. “I have an appointment I must attend.”
He started past her, but paused, looking down at her.
She tensed slightly, aware that she hadn’t brought any weapons. She had turned in her sniper rifle with the rest of her gear when she resigned from the army, and, despite being her father’s daughter, she didn’t keep a rack of guns under her bed. She didn’t truly believe he would attack her, not here, when there wasn’t a logical reason for them to be at odds, but she never felt at ease around him.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “you could come back another time, on a less dreary day, and we could shoot at the range.” He inclined his head toward the expansive backyard that had stationary targets as well as an automated machine that threw up clay disks.
A normal father would ask if she wanted to go out for a beer or come over for dinner. Hers asked her to go shooting with him. Still, it was an offering of a sort. It just wasn’t the one she had come for.
“I’ll think about,” Cas said.
“Good.”
She waited under the portico, thinking he might offer her a ride back into town, especially since it was raining. He did not. Was he late for his appointment? Or was he worried she might get a whiff of what that appointment involved? Who it involved?
She started walking toward the road as the steam carriage trundled away, spitting black smoke from its stack. But her pace slowed as it disappeared around the trees at the end of the drive. She waited a few minutes, ignoring the rain trickling down the back of her neck, making sure her father wouldn’t forget something and return. Then she turned and went back to the house. She assumed he had more staff inside, so she didn’t knock or ring the infernal bell again. Instead, she went into spy mode.
Ducking low to avoid windows, she sneaked along the front of the house and around the corner to the three-story tower that had once held her room. Whether it still did, she didn’t know, but the place was a mansion, so it wasn’t as if her father would have needed to convert her bedroom to a study after she moved out.
She skimmed up ivy on trellises, smiling slightly as she remembered the day when her ten-year-old self had oh-so-innocently asked the gardener to plant the foliage under her window. It had long since matured, providing a way into and out of her bedroom window. She hadn’t been much for trysts in her teenage years, but she’d sneaked out a few times when she had been in trouble and confined to her room.
As the ivy spattered droplets onto her face, she climbed to the third story. She jiggled the window just so, thwarting the lock she’d made to be thwart-able, and landed on the thick carpet inside without a sound.
Cas had intended to rush straight out the door, down the stairs, and to her father’s office, but the familiar smells and sights of her old room distracted her. Nothing had changed, from the medals hanging from bedknobs to the half-burned lemon verbena candles on the fireplace mantle. Those medals brought back memories of all the shooting competitions she’d won as a youth, where she had been one of the few girls out there among boys who had always been older and taller than she was, most of whom had glared sullenly when she had beaten them. She’d always been the oddity growing up and then in the army, too, until she’d come to join Wolf Squadron, where she’d finally worked with people as odd as she was, people who appreciated her skills.
Cas blinked away moisture forming in her eyes and growled at herself. She wasn’t going to weep during the middle of an infiltration.
“Some soldier,” she muttered and rested her ear against the door.
When she didn’t hear anything, she eased out into the hallway. She ghosted down the stairs, the house familiar and yet no longer home, not after almost eight years without stepping foot inside. A few unfamiliar scents touched the air, including something tomato-based wafting up from the kitchen. That meant at least one person was here.
She made it to the first floor without seeing anyone and hurried when she saw the door to her father’s office was open. She almost turned into the room without checking, but remembered at the last second that he always kept it locked. If it was open…
A faint creak reached her ear, and she reacted instantly. She couldn’t run to the next room without crossing in front of the open doo
r, and she might not make it back to the stairs in time, so she hopped onto a side table that held a vase. If someone heavier had tried this, the table might have wobbled more, sending the vase to the floor, but she barely stirred it as she used the elevation to vault up toward the arched ceiling. She softened her touch as much as possible, thanking the tumbling tutor her father had brought in to teach her as a girl as she landed above the door with her feet on one hallway wall and her hands pressed against the other.
She didn’t have time to inch higher before a maid walked out, carrying a feather duster, a bucket, and a sponge. Jartya. She had been working here for years. Cas sucked in her belly, wishing she had found a perch higher on the wall. Jartya had been a friendly face once, one to sneak Cas cookies and milk at night, after her father had sent her to bed for being too picky about dinner. Jartya might not say anything about Cas’s infiltration, but that wasn’t a certainty after all this time.
Jartya paused, snapped her fingers, and walked back inside. She plucked a spray bottle of cleaning solution from the desk. Cas used that moment to raise herself a bit higher, out of sight, but as she did so, water dripped from the hem of her jacket and splatted to the floor. She cringed, certain Jartya would notice it. What kind of thief tried an infiltration when she was soaking wet?
Jartya walked out again, and Cas mentally urged her to hurry. But the maid noticed the water droplets.
Don’t look up, Cas silently urged. Don’t look up…
Jartya bent and swept the sponge across the water. She glanced at her bucket. Yes, Cas thought, those drops came from your bucket, not from the woman with trembling forearms braced above the door.
There was no way for Cas to stem the drops falling from her hem, not with both her hands occupied. As Jartya was cleaning up the mess, a new drop fell, plopping onto the back of her white uniform. She didn’t seem to notice. For the moment. Another drop fell. Jartya stood up with a sigh. She had gained weight and a few gray hairs in the years since Cas had been here. She probably wouldn’t appreciate a hundred-pound woman falling onto her head.
Sweat slicked Cas’s palms, and one started to slip. She flexed her shoulders, pushing harder to keep herself in place. Finally, Jartya headed down the hall. She disappeared around the corner that led to the kitchen without looking back.
Cas dropped down, wincing when she couldn’t make her landing silent. She hurried into the office, afraid someone would have heard her. Jartya might also return to lock the door again once she put away the cleaning supplies.
Her father’s tidy office and clear desk made it easy to spot something out of the ordinary. A single envelope lay on a corner, the top sliced open. It was addressed to the Trim and Tight Landscaping Service, one of her father’s businesses that covered up what he truly did. Cas wiped her damp palms and pulled out a single page inside the envelope. She skimmed the short letter inside, pausing on key terms. His celestial highness… authorized me to hire you… the traitor Tolemek Targoson. Fifty thousand nucros or good imperial gold.
Cas slumped against the chair. Tolemek.
• • • • •
Sardelle knocked on the door to Ridge’s office on the second floor of the brigade headquarters building in the middle of the army fort. Thanks to King Angulus, she now had a fancy piece of paper that could get her past the guards without chicanery. Nonetheless, she had expected to have trouble this time, since she had Tylie with her. The guards had questioned Sardelle, but one look at Tylie’s paint-stained dress and the grass-thong sandals she had grabbed after the attack, and they’d decided she wasn’t a security threat. Fortunately, they did not know she had the potential to be a powerful sorceress someday and had already learned a few skills.
“Come in,” Ridge said, then silently added, You don’t ever have to knock.
Sardelle had already brushed his mind, letting him know they were coming, so she was monitoring him for comments.
I wouldn’t want to catch you doing something embarrassing. She tried to make her tone light, though her mood was anything but light after the dragon incident. She hadn’t yet told him about that, just that there was trouble and they needed to talk.
Generals don’t do embarrassing things in their offices. They’re proper and staid.
The man across the hall has his door locked and is vigorously looking at a calendar with naked women in it, Jaxi informed them both.
Well, Ridge replied, he’s only a colonel.
How does one look ‘vigorously’? Sardelle wondered before she could think better of it. She opened the door and waved Tylie inside, glancing at the closed door across the hallway.
“No need for details,” Ridge blurted, frowning at Jaxi’s spot on Sardelle’s hip. How a soulblade could pulse mischievously, Sardelle did not know, but Jaxi managed it.
Sardelle walked over, hugged Ridge, and kissed him on the cheek. He looked quite handsome in his freshly pressed uniform—General Ort would be proud, since his boots were even mud-free at the moment. She would have enjoyed lingering for more than the perfunctory kiss, especially since he had been sleeping on base most nights of late, ever since Phelistoth showed up at the cottage. He was staying close and assisting with Tylie’s teaching. Sardelle couldn’t blame Ridge for being uncomfortable having a dragon wandering around the house at odd times of the day. It rattled her too. But it meant that she slept alone. She didn’t feel that Tylie was old enough to stay out there by herself, and Tolemek was away on a mission for the king, so Sardelle had been taking care of her.
You did agree to teach her, Jaxi said.
That was before I knew I’d get a dragon with the deal.
Technically, Phelistoth is her dragon. He just tolerates you because you came with the house. Much like Ridge’s original couch.
I doubt the dragon belongs to anybody.
Reluctantly, Sardelle released Ridge and stepped back. “We have trouble.”
“So you said.” He winced. “It’s not the house again, is it? We’ve barely been there a month.”
“The house is still standing.”
“The couch was incinerated,” Tylie said, waving her arms in an expansive gesture. “And Phel is missing. The other dragon chased him away.”
“The other dragon?” Ridge braced himself against his desk.
“The thousands-of-years-old criminal one that escaped from his magical prison in that cavern.” Sardelle had arrived only for the aftermath of the mission Ridge had gone on with Captain Kaika, General Ort, and King Angulus, but she had seen the big gold dragon flying into the sunrise, and she had felt the power of his aura from miles away.
“Angulus was worried he would be a nuisance.” Ridge sighed. “I didn’t think he would be a nuisance to my house. Or my brand new, paid for in installments that haven’t been installed yet, couch.”
Sardelle squeezed his arm, tempted to let him know that she felt the loss of the couch even more keenly than he. She had been delighted when he had agreed to take her and his mother shopping to replace his atrocious plaid sofa, and that he had allowed himself to be persuaded from dubious choices by the joint efforts of Sardelle and Fern. The dragon was, of course, a more pressing concern.
“I’m worried about him,” Tylie said, gesturing and pacing. Somehow, her sandals had come off by the door, and she was walking barefoot across the polished wooden floor. “He’s a silver. And a scholar! He’s no match for a gold dragon.”
“Phelistoth is a scholar?” Ridge’s eyebrows rose.
“So he tells us.” Sardelle hadn’t been home when the incident had occurred, but Tylie had shared the events with her through a mind link. She thought about having Tylie do the same thing with Ridge, but he might object to telepathic sharing with Tolemek’s little sister. Sardelle touched his arm and relayed the incident herself, including the way it had ended, with Phelistoth leading the other dragon away.
“Well, that’s going to alarm the neighbors. Especially if they figure out that those dragons started out on our lawn.” Ridge eyed Tyl
ie, who had walked around his desk to stare out the window as she worried her lower lip with her teeth. “I’ve heard the gold dragon has been flying around the Ice Blades, terrorizing mountain communities. There have been deaths, of people as well as livestock. I’m sure the king is considering ways to deal with it, especially since—” He glanced at Tylie again and finished with a shoulder shrug.
Sardelle decided not to tell him there wasn’t much point in leaving secrets unspoken around Tylie. She sensed what others were thinking without meaning to. Sardelle had been working on teaching her to wall off her mind so she wouldn’t be bombarded by the thoughts and emotions of those around her, but since she spent so much time flying off with Phelistoth, her education was at a rudimentary level. Tylie already knew the king had been, however inadvertently, responsible for freeing the gold dragon. Phelistoth knew too. Sardelle hoped the silver dragon would know better than to react out of spite, especially now that he seemed to be a target.
Sardelle realized she didn’t know why he was a target. “Tylie? Do you know why the gold dragon went after Phelistoth?”
“Morishtomaric,” Tylie said, turning from the window. “That’s his name.” She frowned down at her bare feet, or perhaps the floor, then picked up a ladybug that had found its way inside. “Did you know ladybugs have very focused minds? They’re always on the hunt for insect eggs, and that’s always in their thoughts. Do you have any insect eggs in here, General Ridge?”
“Sorry, Private Domez cleaned in here last night. We’re out.”
“Morishtomaric told you his name, Tylie?” Sardelle had learned it from reading the plaque and doing research on the dragons imprisoned in that cavern, but she doubted Tylie had plucked the name from her thoughts. Unlike Ridge, Sardelle knew how to keep a barrier around her mind, both for protection from snooping telepaths and as a courtesy to those who were sensitive, such as Tylie, and were uncomfortable with the constant background noise of loose thoughts. In her time, it had been much more of a concern.