Page 13

CHAPTER

Thirteen

N EEMA STRODE DOWN the golden hallways of the inner sanctum, swift and certain.

She had no right to be here. She had no badge of office, she had no pass, no imperial summons. If the Hounds found her, they could kill her on the spot. You trespass, you die .

Neema knew this. She didn’t care.

Luckily for her, she had just missed the night watch. Except it wasn’t luck. She could hear them, their footsteps heading in the opposite direction, the rumble of their conversation. She could even catch their lingering scent—the polished leather of their boots, the laurel soap they all used. Some deep, animal part of her brain was gathering this information and using it, helping her to reach her goal, her desire, her one and only reason to be: the painting, the painting, the painting .

She had arrived. Pushing open the doors, she grabbed a torch from its sconce and moved to the centre of the room, her attention clamped to the ceiling.

The Awakening Dragon of the Last Return coiled and writhed, silver-green scales glinting in the torchlight. Was it moving? Was it breathing? Was that sulphur, and blood, and judgement in the air? Tantalised, Neema stood beneath its gaping jaws, its dagger teeth. Heat emanated from its throat, fire building from deep within.

“Show me your mysteries, Guardian of Death.” The words flowed from some dark, potent corner of her soul. Another lifetime, perhaps. Another journey on the Eternal Path. A time when she was Chosen. “Destroy me, and bring me back to life. I am ready for the fire.”

She opened her arms, welcoming the white-hot flames as they tore through her. Then on, through the palace, out along its golden halls, its pristine gardens, flames flicking across the Mirror Bridge, over the sea to the mainland. An ancient, purifying fire, raging hard enough to consume an empire. Raging in her. The fire was hers now. Burn it down. Burn it all down.

“Neema?”

Cain was sitting on the throne in the dark, a small canvas bag at his feet. “What are you doing?”

She lowered her arms. The fire swept to the edges of her vision, lingered for a moment, then died. She saw not the world, expanding, but a room, contracting. At her feet, a few dwindling embers. “The Dragon called me here.”

“Oh, you’re drunk.” Curiosity sated, Cain settled back on the throne, trying it out for size. “How do I look? Commanding?”

Cain’s hair was fire. His eyes were emeralds. His skin was silk, imperial silk. She would like to touch, she would like to taste. Must have. Will have. Need. “Your hair is fire. I’m not drunk.”

Cain shouldered his bag and slunk down the throne steps to inspect the evidence. “Wow,” he laughed. “High as a raven’s nest. What did you take?”

Want, want, want. She shook her head, trying to clear it. “Didn’t… I didn’t…”

“You were spiked?” A flicker of concern, and professional interest. Drugs were an integral part of Fox training, especially hallucinogens. “How do you feel?”

His hair was fire, his eyes were jewels, and there was a war inside her. “Possessed.” Possessed by herself, by her own desire. The deepest core of herself. Neema Kraa’s inner sanctum.

“What else?” Cain prompted.

His voice vibrated through her. Ripples of pleasure, pain, need. “I can hear… I can feel… too much.”

“Your senses are heightened.”

He was too close. She could smell him. His skin, his sweat.

He touched her forehead with the back of his hand, then frowned at the heat coming off her. Her ever-expanding pupils. “Neema… what did you take?”

He was right there, and she needed, she needed…

She kissed him, hard—then wrenched herself away. “Sorry, I’m sorry…”

Cain licked his lips, then flinched at the taste. “No. It can’t be.” He took her wrist and breathed in deeply, confirming it. “Dragonscale. You lucky woman.”

“Dragonscale,” she repeated. She was going to kiss him again, she was going to lick his face like an ice cream.

“Type of fungus. The Dragons use it in their rituals. Eight—I wish I was you right now.”

“Stop… Make it stop.”

He laughed softly. “It’ll fade in a couple of hours. Find somewhere quiet to sit it out, you might even enjoy it. Neema? Are you listening?”

The portraits of the Eight were swirling and shifting on the walls. The Raven, perched on its clifftop, opened its beak and called her name. Kraa! Kraa!

“Big dose. Very big…”

“Don’t worry—it’s potent, but you can’t have taken a dangerous amount. Dragonscale oil is fantastically rare—and impossibly expensive for that matter.”

“Oil…”

“Yeah, it’s thick and oily.” He rubbed his fingers and thumb together. “And smells bitter. It was probably mixed with something sweeter like rose, or lavender.”

An image floated into Neema’s mind. Lying in her bath, breathing the fragrant steam, massaging oil into her tired limbs. “Bath…”

“Bath oil? No, that would be far too much…” A shadow passed over Cain’s face. He stepped right into her, ran his fingers down her bare neck. “No, no, no,” he said, hastily wiping the oil from his hands.

For a moment he stood paralysed, then his training kicked in. He grabbed her by the shoulders. “We need to rinse this off now. ”

He pushed her towards the octagonal window behind the throne. Neema was humming to herself—the vibrations in her throat and chest helped distract her from Cain, and the wanting. Dimly, she knew she could be dying, but she wasn’t worried. The stars were diamonds, the sky was black velvet.

Cain was levering open a section of the window. A fronded path led into the Garden at the Edge of the World. The emperor’s private grounds, perched over the ocean like a jewelled lozenge. She glided (it felt like gliding) through the window into a small courtyard, breathing the night into her lungs, her senses gloriously alive. Earth. Salt spray. Leaves, roots, bark. Smoke, from distant campfires. The subtle perfume of closed flowers.

Below the moon, the Tiger’s Path constellation gleamed an invitation. “Let’s fly to the Hidden Realm,” she said, reaching out to the stars. So close. “I can rip the sky open with my claws.”

Even Cain didn’t have an answer to that one. “Here,” he said, pointing to a raised ornamental fish pond covered in lily pads. Frogs croaked in the dark, surprised by the intrusion. “Get in. Neema.” The fear in his voice cut through to her. “Take off your robe. Hurry.”

She plunged into the pond, naked, and laughed. The fish were bumping up against her legs. “Another bath. A fish bath.”

The edge of the pond was decorated with chunks of pumice stone. Cain shoved a piece in her hand. “Scrub as hard as you can bear.”

He watched her for a moment to be sure she was following his instructions. Then he set off with the torch, the flame a bright, comforting orange as he disappeared into the night.

Neema rubbed the pumice over her body, sanding the oil from her skin as the fish weaved around her. As she scrubbed, the oil began to float on the water. If she wasn’t quick, her skin would reabsorb it. She jumped out and crossed to another pond close by, rinsing off the last of the oil as best she could.

The scrubbing had worked. The drug was still racing through her system, but she held the reins. She no longer wanted to fly to the Hidden Realm, or lick Cain’s face, or burn the world to ash. She wanted to go home, and sleep for a hundred years.

She looked about for her dressing robe.

“It was steeped in the oil,” Cain said, emerging from the darkness. He tossed her a pair of overalls and some gardening shoes, liberated from a tool shed.

She put them on. Behind her, in the pond, the fish writhed and thrashed as they succumbed to the drug.

“How do you feel?” Cain asked her.

“Sad.”

“The fish?” he guessed.

“The fishes.” Sitting on the ground, she shoved the boots on, before coming to a stop. The laces were too much for her.

Cain kneeled down and tied them for her. “Someone just tried to kill you.”

Neema didn’t think so. Whoever dosed her bath oil couldn’t have known that Benna would tip in the whole bottle. “Generic,” she guessed, using her private name for him without noticing. He had access to her quarters and the money to pay for the drug. “Assistant. Former.”

“You do have a knack for making enemies.”

“We enemies?” She’d lost her verbs in the fish pond.

“Neema,” Cain sighed. He had his head down, she didn’t hear him. The laces were done. He put his hands under her armpits and lifted her up, then prodded her towards the path. She stumbled forward, woozy and exhausted, but not dead, so that was something.

They took a shortcut, skirting around the back of the palace. The moon silvered the branches. In the distance, the ocean turned and crashed against the rocks. It could be romantic if you were in that frame of mind, which she wasn’t.

“We should go back and save the fishes,” she said.

“We can’t save the fish, Neema.”

“We could wash them, we could wash the fishes. Can you wash fishes?”

This was not the drug talking, this was just Neema. “It’ll take a while for the effects to wear off,” Cain said. “It’s lucky you’re leaving tomorrow. Rent a room in Armas, rest up for a few days. No thrills, no excitement. Read one of your essays, that should do the trick.”

“Monographs,” she corrected.

“Already on the mend.”

They slipped through a break in the bushes and came out on a service path, a safe distance from the Dragon palace. Neema realised he’d been escorting her out of danger.

“I’d do the same for anyone,” he said, and her heart cracked with disappointment.

From here she could see the wooden lodges of the Monkey palace perched in the trees, lit up with strings of lanterns. Anyone still looking for a party at this hour would be on their way to the campfire gatherings—music, poetry, philosophy. Sex in the bushes.

A sharp hissing broke the silence.

Even in her heightened state, she recognised it instantly. Pink-Pink.

A longer, sharper hiss.

It was coming from Cain’s bag.

“You!” She pointed at him.

He laughed, because she was pointing at him, and there was no one else around. He pointed at himself, mimicked her aggrieved tone. “Me! I kidnapped your chameleon!”

“Why? Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you destroyed my faith in love, and left me a cold, empty husk of a man. Does that make us even? What do you reckon?”

“Fucker.”

“A well-aimed dart, expertly thrown.” He opened the bag.

More energetic hissing from Pink-Pink. Neema peered inside and there he was, nine inches of swivel-eyed fury. She opened her palm in invitation. Pink-Pink relaxed. Rotating his feet for a better grip, he walked solemnly up Neema’s arm to her shoulder, and gave Cain a final, full-bodied hiss before settling.

“Well,” Cain said. “Fun as this has been, I’m late for an orgy at the Monkey palace.”

She pulled a face.

“I’m joking. Of course I’m joking. They wouldn’t dream of starting without me. Guest of honour.” He backed away, sharp green eyes taking her in one last time. The overalls, her damp, dark brown skin, the lizard on her shoulder. His expression softened, and for a second, just a second, she glimpsed the old Cain through the artifice.

“See you in the next life,” he said.

And then he was gone, into the woods.

Neema had walked in heels tonight; she had walked barefoot. The gardening boots were a revelation. She clomped her way back to the second palace, down the service paths in the dark, and was almost home when she walked through a hedge. This wasn’t intentional—one moment she was not walking through a hedge, and the next moment she was. It was a hedge ambush. She dragged her way through.

Fenn Fedala was sitting on a stone bench, smoking a joint. He was still in his ceremonial robes and she was in overalls and boots, as if she’d stolen his look. He sketched a wave as she made it out from the hedge.

She waved back, brazening it out.

“You found your lizard.”

She stared at him, then remembered Pink-Pink, clinging to her shoulder. “Kidnapped.”

“Huh.” Fenn breathed out a trail of smoke. “Sorry about tonight. Maybe it’s a good thing.” He made a circle with his finger, meaning—this island. He’d only accepted the position of High Engineer after Andren’s rebellion. He’d wanted to help Bersun restore peace. Unfortunately, he’d proved far too effective at the job, and had been trapped in it ever since. He was always the first to congratulate someone when they escaped, as he saw it.

The difference was, Fenn had a life out there on the mainland. Neema had nothing. Yes, she could find an apartment in Armas for a few days, as Cain suggested. But then what? Even if Gaida let her keep her Raven name, did she have the strength to start again? To burn herself to the ground, and rise up from the ashes?

On reflex she looked up at Gaida’s apartment. She was standing right by the iron staircase that led up to the balcony. The shutters were open, just as Her Contendership had demanded. But Neema was in no state to plead her case now. She’d have to wait until morning.

Bed, then. Abandoning Fenn, she stumbled on. The temple bell struck the half hour as she reached her door. Two thirty. Neema did the maths. Four and a half hours before the last boat left the island.

She dragged herself up to her sleeping platform. Lizard, wall. Face, pillow.

Oblivion.