The tram car wobbled and swayed as the wind gusted and rain pattered against the windows. Rysha didn’t think it was an auspicious morning to take off on a mission, especially since the fliers were open to the elements. The infantry soldiers liked to talk about the pilots as if they were precious pansies, but Rysha couldn’t imagine the courage it took to do what they did.
She would rather fight someone on the ground than fly in all manner of crazy conditions to battle pirates, Cofah, and now dragons. Especially considering how fragile their fliers appeared. The bodies were a lightweight metal that didn’t always stop bullets, and the wings were made of some kind of cloth material.
She’d heard Trip’s flier had crashed into the ocean during the battle, and she’d wanted to go see him in the infirmary the day before, but she had been pressed into duty, helping find injured people and cart them to hospitals and infirmaries. Buildings were still smoldering all over the city, so she ought to be grateful for the rain.
The wobbling car made it to the top, and the doors opened to let Rysha out, along with a couple of other yawning soldiers who headed straight toward one of two hangars. Her step faltered when she saw that one of the hangars had been ripped to shreds, its roof gone and its walls torn from the foundation. A private drove something akin to a street sweeper around the top of the bluff, cleaning up shards of metal.
Shaking her head, Rysha headed through the puddles toward the remaining hangar. The doors stood open with soft light coming out.
She spotted two figures standing on the edge of the bluff, looking out toward the city and the harbor, and she detoured toward them. Their backs were to her, but the tall one looked like Captain Kaika. One of her feet was propped up on a huge duffel bag that had to be full of more than changes of clothing.
The other appeared to be a woman, too, but she was almost a foot shorter than Kaika and couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Despite that, she wore a large sniper rifle on her back and a sword in a scabbard.
They both turned as Rysha approached, even though she didn’t think she’d made any noise.
“Morning, Captain Kaika,” Rysha said, looking at the other woman’s collar as she saluted, to see if she needed to include her too. Another captain, one with pilot’s wings pinned on her jacket. AHN, her nametag read. “Ma’am.” Rysha nodded politely to her as she saluted.
“Lieutenant Ravenwood,” Kaika said, half greeting, half introduction, as she waved from her to Ahn. “This is Captain Raptor Ahn.”
The name and the weapons seemed at odds with the woman’s physical stature, but Rysha didn’t know her at all, so didn’t dare make jokes or ask how she’d gotten the name.
“Oh, and that’s Kasandral,” Kaika added, pointing at the sword hilt poking over Ahn’s shoulder.
It glowed green briefly, and Rysha stumbled back a step.
“He knows his name,” Kaika said. “He’s a good boy.”
“So long as there aren’t any sorceresses or dragons around that he desperately wants me to slay.” It sounded a bit like a joke, but Ahn’s expression was as grim as death. She looked toward the open hangar door. “Or odd new pilots that rub him the wrong way.”
Kaika tilted her head. “Which one was that?”
“I didn’t get his name. I got out of there as soon as Kasandral flared to life and started urging me to slay him.” Again, it wasn’t a joke. Ahn grimaced, as if she were resisting that urge right now, and she even turned her head toward the hilt and whispered words under her breath.
Rysha didn’t hear them fully, but guessed them to be Old Iskandian, the terms used for controlling the magical blades. The dragon-slaying swords had all been made during that time period, before the disappearance of the dragons and before the worst Cofah invasion in Iskandian history, when the imperials had occupied the country for decades and forced the inhabitants to switch to their language.
Kasandral’s green glow disappeared.
“Huh,” Kaika said. “That’s why you’re out here in the rain, then?”
“No, I’m on sentinel duty right now.” Ahn pointed up and down the coast. From here on the bluff, she had a great view to the north and south, or she would on a clear day. Right now, between the wan pre-dawn light and the rain, they couldn’t even see the castle on the other side of the harbor. “Colonel Therrik gets days. I get nights. He should relieve me soon.”
“Just think of all the fun he’d be missing if Angulus had actually let him retire from the military to become a castle guard.”
“I imagine he’d still be carrying the sword during the days. He’d just be standing guard from the castle instead of here.” Ahn nodded toward the other end of the harbor, then lowered her voice to add, “Nobody trusts the dragons to wait three days—two, now—to visit again.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry I’ll miss their return.” Kaika touched a bruise on her cheek.
Whatever the elite troops had been doing during the battle, Rysha was sure it hadn’t been sitting on their hands and watching.
“I’m envious of your mission,” Ahn said. “But since Therrik and I are the only wielders trained to handle Kasandral’s eccentricities, we need to be here. If the capital falls… We can’t lose the capital. It’s horrible to lose any cities, but this is the center of our government and so much of our culture.”
“And it’s got all the best houses of ill-repute. You can order up a classy man between your legs any time, day or night.” Kaika winked, probably trying to lighten the mood.
“Yes, that’s a key reason we can’t let the city fall,” Ahn said, her voice so deadpan it took Rysha a second to realize it was a joke.
“Good luck.” Kaika slapped her on the shoulder and picked up her duffel bag. It must have weighed seventy or eighty pounds, but she shouldered it with ease.
“Are you allowed to take that much gear on the fliers?” Rysha asked as they walked toward the hangar. She had been ordered to pack as lightly as possible.
“Nobody objects to having my explosives along.” Kaika patted the side of the bag.
“Ah. So that’s fifty percent bomb-making material and fifty percent undies and socks?”
“More like ninety and ten.” Kaika grinned at her as they stepped through the doorway. “I only need a lot of changes of undies when Zirkander is flying me somewhere.”
“Because he’s terrifying to ride with?”
“Sure, we’ll go with that.”
Rysha stumbled, almost tripping over her own feet. Kaika glanced back, smirking.
“You’re not quite what I expected, ma’am.”
“Before you joined, your parents probably told you not to spend time with people like me.”
“That’s unfortunately true of the military at large, though it had more to do with my interest in joining rather than crude panty jokes.”
“Crude? Please, my panty jokes are always tasteful.” Kaika stopped in front of the four two-seat fliers lined up in front of the open hangar door. “Which one of you fine gentlemen wants to carry me and my bombs across a couple of oceans?”
“One?” A woman with blonde hair pulled back in a bun jumped down from the lead flier, a lit cigar dangling from her lips. “Shit, Kaika, it’ll take at least three fliers for all that.”
“Are you calling me heavy, Blazer? Or my bombs heavy? You know a lady doesn’t like to hear that.”
“That’s Major Blazer to you.” The woman jerked a thumb toward her collar pins, shiny new ones.
Trip closed a panel on one of the fliers and walked over to join Rysha as the two women talked.
“You got promoted? Whose butt did you kiss for that? Zirkander’s?” Kaika reached over and extracted the cigar from Blazer’s mouth so she could take a puff.
“Nah, you know his butt doesn’t excite me the way yours does.” Blazer took her cigar back without apology.
“It is a nice one, isn’t it?” Kaika turned and gave her cheek a slap.
“This is alarming,” Rysha said quietly.
“That our mission commander is hitting on our demolitions expert?” Trip asked.
“That I’m the most feminine woman here.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “That’s not usually the case?”
Thankfully, he didn’t give her a once over and comment on her attributes. Leftie would have, she was sure, even though she’d only spent a couple of hours with him.
“Between my height, all the sports I played with my brothers growing up, and how much time I spent dirty, I wasn’t generally given gifts of frilly pink dresses and hair bows.”
Leftie appeared from behind a flier in time to hear the comment, and his quirking lips promised an idiotic remark before his mouth opened. “What’s that, you say? You like to get dirty and wear frilly dresses? I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see that side of you at the Stag.”
“You were too busy examining the inside of that woman’s mouth to see much of anything,” Trip told him.
“Don’t be jealous, buddy. I was going to see if she had a friend. If dragons hadn’t invaded the city.” Leftie’s smirk turned into a grimace as he glanced out the hangar door at the dreary gray sky.
“I wasn’t jealous. It just wasn’t how I imagined our team bonding going.”
“Did you recover from your injuries?” Rysha asked him quietly. “I heard you crashed.”
“I did.” Trip winced, probably not caring to be reminded. “I lost my flier, almost lost my life, and had to be rescued by General Zirkander and his wife’s sword. It’s not at all how I imagined my first battle under his command going.”
“If it helps, I spent the night shooting artillery weapons at dragons that couldn’t be harmed by artillery weapons.”
“Did you crash anything?”
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t help.”
Rysha snorted and shoved his shoulder before remembering that he outranked her and there was probably a regulation against shoving a superior officer.
Trip didn’t seem to mind. He pointed to the second flier in the lineup. “You can ride with me, if you like, Lieutenant.”
“Afraid you’ll get stuck with Kaika or her bombs if you don’t fill that seat quickly?” Rysha headed that way with her pack, relieved by the offer. She didn’t want to end up riding with Leftie, who had ambled over to join Kaika and Blazer, perhaps intrigued by the butt slapping.
“Both are moderately alarming prospects,” Trip called after her.
Rysha found straps in the back seat so she could ratchet down her pack. She’d seen numerous fliers sailing around upside down while battling the dragon. And, as calm and quiet as Trip was on the ground, she had no trouble imagining him corkscrewing through the air like a maniac.
Three people walked in through the side door while she adjusted her gear. General Zirkander was one of them. He promptly noticed Sardelle’s soulblade in its scabbard on a table by the door and veered over to pick it up. The second person was Captain Duck. The third was a bronze-skinned, shaven-headed man Rysha hadn’t seen before.
She glanced twice at him because he wore the reds and grays of a Cofah uniform, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealing muscular forearms. She ended up gawking at him. It lacked any sign of rank, but that was definitely full Cofah military garb, and he also wore a sword and pistol at opposite sides of his belt.
Was this… some prisoner? And if so, why was he armed instead of walking in chains between Duck and Zirkander? And where was he going? There weren’t any other pilots in the hangar getting fliers ready.
The conversations stopped, Blazer planted her cigar firmly in her mouth, and everyone stared at the trio heading toward them.
“Well, it beats the clapping and cheering that my entrance was garnering everywhere yesterday,” Zirkander said into the silence.
“You sure about that, sir?” Duck asked, a backwoods drawl that Rysha had barely noticed two days earlier more pronounced now. Maybe because he was tired. Both he and Zirkander were yawning as they walked in.
Rysha didn’t think anyone had slept much since the attack. There had been too much to do. She hoped it would be safe to fly with sleep-deprived pilots. But what if they encountered dragons along the way? She didn’t think fliers could outrun—or outfly—dragons.
“As long as nobody raises weapons at me, it’s fine,” Zirkander said, joining Kaika, Blazer, and Leftie, all of whom saluted him, despite his odd company. “This, my good officers, is the fighter who I mentioned would be going along with you.”
“Are we adopting more Cofah soldiers, sir?” Kaika asked. “Was Tolemek not enough? Does this one also make goos?”
The Cofah man stared at her. Or maybe that was a glare. He only looked to be about twenty-five, but he had already mastered the humorless stare of a grumpy old general.
“This one is a gift from King Angulus,” Zirkander said. “Dreyak, this is your team. Kaika, Blazer, Leftie, Trip, Ravenwood, and you’ve met Duck.”
“You people have strange names.” The Cofah—Dreyak—folded his arms across his chest and stared flatly at them. He had a heavy accent, making it seem as if Cofah and Iskandian were different languages rather than variations of the same, but he’d spoken slowly, almost theatrically, so it wasn’t hard to understand.
“Yes, Iskandians are quirky,” Zirkander said. “Did the king not tell you?”
The flat stare shifted to him. The Cofah didn’t appear daunted by him or his reputation, nor did Zirkander appear daunted by Dreyak or his muscles. They might have stared at each other for hours, neither flinching, but Zirkander ruined it by yawning.
“Sir,” Blazer said around her cigar, “we like brawny warriors to use as dragon fodder as much as the next pilots, but we’ve already got Kaika for that.”
Kaika eyed her cigar, perhaps considering using her brawn to shove it up the major’s nose.
“He’s here for diplomatic reasons,” Zirkander said. “The Cofah would like to help us with our dragon problem.”
“Don’t they have their own dragon problem to deal with?” Blazer asked.
“Angulus and Varlok, the temporary leader of the empire while his father is alas missing—” that statement got Zirkander a harsher glare from the Cofah, “—have apparently been discussing our joint dragon problem. The Cofah want to join forces with us to battle our common enemy. This is…” Zirkander spread his hand toward the surly warrior. “Something akin to the raspberry tarts given to the northern clansmen by the southern tribes to suggest an alliance so they could work together to fight off the third Cofah invasion attempt back around 500 BD.”
“Actually, that was closer to 700 BD, sir,” Rysha said. “And it’s a common misconception that raspberries were used in the tarts. But they hadn’t yet been cultivated at that time and weren’t popular among humans. They were blueberry tarts. The clansmen had trouble growing blueberries after Mt. Suviai erupted in 800 BD. You see, the ash, along with changing climate conditions, altered the composition of their previously acidic soil. The blueberry bushes there died, and their attempts to grow more were in vain. Thus, blueberries were extremely coveted by the populace at that time.”
Everyone in the hangar had gone from staring at Dreyak to staring at her.
Rysha blushed and finished with, “I thought you’d want to know.”
“Important information, most certainly,” Zirkander said. “Dreyak here is reputed to have experience with battling dragons. If you can get the appropriate weapon into his hands—” his eyes widened for emphasis as he met Blazer’s gaze, “—then perhaps he can be an asset out there.”
Rysha took that to mean the Cofah warrior hadn’t been given all the details of their mission yet. At least not the part where they would try to acquire a chapaharii blade.
If he was coming along, Rysha didn’t see the point in not telling him. He would find out as soon as they landed and started battling pirates.
Trip walked toward the Cofah and stuck out his hand. “I’m Captain Trip. Welcome to the team.”
Dreyak squinted at him, squinted at his hand, and then clasped it. And didn’t let go. He stared into Trip’s eyes in some silent challenge, fingers tightening around his hand. Trip didn’t look like he knew if he was supposed to squeeze back or punch him in the nose.
Leftie noticed this happening and walked up, puffing out his chest and glowering at the Cofah as he approached. Dreyak ignored him. Leftie looked at Trip, as if asking if he wanted him to jump in.
Trip’s face had turned red, but he didn’t try to yank his hand away. He stared back at the Cofah.
Finally, Dreyak released him. “You have soft hands, Iskandian.”
“Thanks, it’s the lotion I use. There may be blueberries in it.”
Dreyak didn’t crack a smile.
“What’s your problem?” Leftie demanded of him. “You want to squeeze my hand? I’ll kick you in the balls so hard your—”
“All right, gentlemen,” Zirkander said, stepping toward them and raising a hand. “Let’s save the ball-kicking for the dragons.” He looked at the sword in his other hand, then sighed toward the others. “Apparently, it would be cloaca-kicking, and Jaxi isn’t certain it’s effective.”
The men sent him puzzled looks. At least it put a stop to their bristling and puffing.
Zirkander handed the soulblade to Trip, who regarded it as if it might be a venomous snake before accepting it.
“You keep leaving her behind,” Zirkander remarked.
“She was just on the table, sir. I wasn’t going to forget.”
“Good. You’ll need her. Also, she promises to educate you on a few key things.”
“On magic? Or dragon anatomy?”
“Both, I imagine.” Zirkander waved toward the fliers and raised his voice to tell everyone, “Load up!”
“Why would you want to learn about magic?” Leftie whispered to Trip as the general walked away.
Trip twitched a shoulder. “It goes hand-in-hand with dragons. We should be aware of the powers our enemies possess.”
It sounded like a plausible answer, but Rysha didn’t think it was a complete one. As she’d been speculating earlier, there had to be a reason the soulblade had chosen Trip, even if it was only for one mission.
Judging by the way Leftie shuddered visibly, he might not be such a stalwart friend if he figured out that reason.
