Havemercy Page 20

  ROOK

  Pretty soon our period of lazing about was all over, and, quick as that, it seemed like every night the siren was howling and we were grabbing our boots and getting out just as our palms were itching to do for too fucking long.

  The way to ride depended, to begin with, on what kind of airman you were and what kind of dragon you were flying. Balfour’s Anastasia was small and sleek and kind of the same as riding a horse, I’d wager, though I’d never been astride her myself. If you were a big mother-fucker like Ghislain, then you could get away with straddling Compassus and steering her through the air without cramping up your legs something crazy, not to mention breaking both your arms just to jerk the harness and bring her around. But you’ve got to be a real serious son-of-a to ride a girl as fast as my Havemercy—or Thoushalt, Ace’s girl, who was the only dragon of the lot to match my darling for speed.

  Basically, our girls were all designed by different men who I guess were thinking completely different thoughts at the time they designed them, so things are real different depending on whether you find yourself saddling up a swift like Anastasia or a fire-belcher like Ivory’s Cassiopeia, or a Jacqueline-of-all-trades like Havemercy, who’s the greatest beauty of the lot and who kills like none other, not even Thoushalt. Havemercy was the best, though, since she was almost as fast as Anastasia herself and easier to rein in, besides. And where fire was concerned, she was the most precise and so could hit them hardest and fastest.

  The Ke-Han call Have the fire god, and that’s about as good a name for her as any, not to mention one I’m particularly proud of for my personal hand in.

  The problem with the Ke-Han was that they were smart, and they knew the lay of the land better than any of us, seeing as how the Cobalts were theirs to begin with, so of course they had these tricks, like hiding in the mountains or using the winds against us. That was how Balfour’s brother—who rode Anastasia before him—died, the first time the Ke-Han got their magicians together and turned the skies against us. After that we figured pretty quick how to fly even when the wind was shrieking us down with all it had; leastways, it’s easier for the bigger girls to resist a sudden gust from an unnatural direction, the kind that always means the Ke-Han’ve spotted us and the race is on. If you’re on a swift, you’ve gotta let yourself be pummeled along until you can duck down below the gust, double back around, and hit the sons of whores when they least expect it. Of course flying against the winds used a hell of a lot more Well’s-piss fuel than normal, so whenever we got hit by the magicians we had to move double quick to make sure we got back to the Airman in time and didn’t cause a national crisis by crashing into the mountains or getting caught by the Ke-Han.

  The fuel thing was what got under my skin like nothing else, since there were nights when we could as good as see the magician’s dome, blue like an overturned bowl and nestled in the heart of the city. Any trip out that far’d be a suicide mission, without enough fuel to get back, but I couldn’t help thinking some nights—if I was angry enough—that it’d be worth it to put the Ke-Han in their place once and for all.

  The way rounds worked was that you signed up for at least two shifts a week, and it was best if you were working in threes with a swift for recon, a fire-belcher for razing, and a crusher like Compassus, or a Jacqueline-of-all-trades like Havemercy. Once things started getting hot and heavy I was working with Ghislain and Balfour pretty regular, but also with Ace ’cause there was no beating us when we worked together, hitting the Ke-Han from both sides no matter which way they went scurrying, toward the mountain or their cities.

  They hadn’t even rebuilt their fucking lapis wall. They had no clue what they were doing, and the way everyone was figuring it now was that because of the corps and our dragons, it was going to be over pretty soon. We just kept hitting them and hitting them with all we had, magicians and dragons both, which meant we were being called for every fucking night for a period of about two, two and a half weeks.

  It was pretty fucking great.

  I mean, I wasn’t supporting war or anything—just my role in it. I wasn’t some kind of half-wit and I knew that this was my place, up in the air whooping like crazy and steering Havemercy until we were right overhead—Compassus or even Adamo on Proudmouth watching my tail, and one of the swifts scouting out the next target. Sometimes we even got in two, three hits a night. Soon enough we were going to absolutely crush them—I mean, absolutely have them crushed. They knew it. They weren’t even being smart about their moves anymore, just scattering every which way, so’s knocking them off was like picking out ants beneath a magnifying glass, until there wasn’t any point in it anymore and we were too close to sunrise and were recalled.

  Because that’s the thing about riding a dragon into battle: You just can’t do it in the daytime. Well, you could, but you’d have to be pretty fucking stupid or pretty fucking desperate or a really uncomfortable combination of the two to do it. It’s too easy to see a girl in the sunlight, and too easy to bring her down. The Ke-Han don’t depend all that much on catapults anymore, but that’d change real soon if they could see us even halfway clearly. Everything’s done by moonlight, and you’ve got to hope to whoever’s actually listening that you can just get out there on a night when there’s clouds and shit mucking up the starlight. Dragons can see pretty well in the dark, so basically you’ve just got to trust your girl and she’s got to trust you—and the two of you have to work together to live through the night.

  Havemercy and I had it down to a science, to an art. I signed up for all the extra shifts no one wanted, and we were up in the air near on to every other night, the wind making my hair even more of a knot than usual, and on our off-days we slept like the fucking dead. In the skies, we didn’t have to answer to anyone and we didn’t have the time to think about what our actions meant, what poor bastards they affected. You do unto others or they do unto you—that’s the first rule of the skies and the one you stick to like the words are your brothers.

  The best thing about all this was that the professor didn’t have any time or any orders to keep torturing us with our feelings, and whenever I did see him—mercifully more rare now than ever—he was just wandering the halls looking lost and alone.

  And that’s when I got my idea.

  Adamo was going to tear me a brand-new one, since there’s laws against taking a civ up into the skies without filling out all kinds of miserable paperwork. But the idea was too good and, anyway, there was no real punishment for an airman when the war was on. I mean, Adamo could give me rations that tasted like dogshit and make sure I never slept on a comfortable bed again, but the truth was I wasn’t sleeping much anyway and I didn’t care what I ate so long as it kept up my strength for flying.

  So I sat on my brilliant idea for the whole day I was off duty, and made sure to eat all my favorites in the mess since I might not be able to for a long while after.

  The logistics were kind of hard to figure. Like: How the fuck was I supposed to get the snotnose into the hangar decks? And where the fuck was I going to get an extra pair of goggles so that the smoke didn’t make him go blind?

  Anyway, I got the whole thing prepared; I just had to make sure I was awake and dressed when the siren started its wailing. That’d give me, I figured, about a half minute extra to find him, grab him, get him down below, and strap the goggles on him without nobody seeing it. And, since nobody was going to be out and about with the raid bell ringing, it wasn’t all that hard to maneuver. I just had to be quick enough, and smart about it. And I was.

  I didn’t even figure for sleep that night, and when the bell started to clang I was out of my room like a shot and inside that common room in, possibly, negative time, grabbing the professor by the collar and hauling him to his feet. Before he was even awake enough to protest I had a hand clamped over his mouth.

  “Angh!” he said, very angry, and tried to bite my palm.

  Too bad for him I was wearing my riding gloves.

  “Shut up,
” I said, “and pay close attention. I’m going to show you a little something about the Dragon Corps—for mutual understandin’, that kind of thing.”

  His eyes were wide and I didn’t wait to hear him complain any further. We only had fifteen seconds, and in just that time I’d dragged him back to my room and shoved him through the chute, coming down fast behind him.

  Then, we were inside Havemercy’s private quarters. I flung the harness on her and strapped up, shoving my feet into the stirrups and holding my hand out to his highness the sensitivity trainer.

  To my surprise, he didn’t hesitate—just reached out and took it, just like that.

  “Goggles behind you,” I said, grabbing my own and putting them on. I heard him struggle for a moment, then the familiar snap that meant he’d got ’em on, but the wrong way. That’d leave a bruise for him in the morning.

  “Havemercy’s a go!” Perkins, the prep for that evening, shouted at us from the main deck. I dug my heels in.

  “Hold on tight,” I said.

  The professor barely had time to follow my instructions before the doors opened and we were thrown out into the night—Havemercy held tight beneath my thighs and my boots strapped to the stirrups, with the professor hanging on around my waist. That first push once you’re off deck was a necessary propulsion to get us flying in the first place, but most fresh blood doesn’t expect it, and I heard the professor grunt somewhere next to my ear as all the breath got knocked out of him like a sucker punch to the gut.

  This was probably a piss-poor plan from the professor’s point of view, since there was no one to say he wasn’t going to get thrown at any minute the rest of that long, bloody night. There wasn’t a single thing standing beneath him and the distance to the ground—dropping away beneath us every second of rushing wind and cloudy moonlight—except for his arms wrapped around me. He was still in his fucking pajamas. If he did survive the night, he was going to be covered from head to toe with ash and he wouldn’t be able to wash it out of his hair for at least a week, but if that was all he suffered, then he could consider himself one lucky bastard, and thank the skies for treating him proper.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he shouted, while meanwhile Havemercy was leaving all of Volstov behind, and the wind she was creating pummeled his words so as I could barely make out what he was saying.

  It was easier for me, since I was in front, to keep my words from getting swallowed up somewhere just a ways behind us. “Introducing you to my particular lifestyle,” I snapped back. Adrenaline was working its magic on me even as we spoke.

  It was always like this, when I got close enough to the mountains to see the little Ke-Han lights dotting the desert in the nighttime—like a miniature sky flipped onto its belly.

  “You’re crazy,” I heard him mutter, though it must have been louder than that or I wouldn’t have heard a thing.

  “That isn’t any kind of a thing to be saying to a man in my position, professor,” I said, real easy, like it didn’t bother me in the slightest—which it didn’t, not really. There wasn’t much that could bother me once Have and I were in the air, which was how come I would be able to stand being close to the professor for any length of time.

  He fell silent, and as far as I could tell that meant he was thinking it over. With that big brain of his, I was sure he’d come to the right conclusion, which was not to insult me on my own fucking dragon when no one even knew he was here except me and Havemercy, and her with no loyalty to anyone but herself and me.

  Ghislain’s Compassus rose huge and terrifying at my right. The professor’s reaction was real sweet; I could hear him swear the way I was sure they didn’t ever teach in the ’Versity, and after that he nearly pushed the air from my lungs with his skinny arms.

  I remembered what he’d said about never having seen a dragon up close before. Now he was face-to-face with two in one night. Let no one say I never did the kid any favors.

  “It’s three for a raid,” I said, loud over the wind as we were climbing now, and the higher up we got the more it whipped around us sudden and fierce. “Unless the fighting’s hot, then we got no need for recon because the Ke-Han are barreling out from the hills every which way and we just got to plug them up no matter what.”

  “Ah.” I felt him nod, sharp, into my shoulder. He was paying attention, I realized, and let loose a snort of amusement. The little freak was paying attention like this was some class, where he’d be tested later, and then graded on his memory of everything he’d learned.

  If he’d known to bring a notebook, he’d probably be taking notes in that, too.

  Whatever. If the kid wanted to treat me like one of the Nellies who taught at the ’Versity and didn’t ever once figure on going out to learn things for themselves, that was fine.

  “Who’s the kid?” Have’d been pretty quiet for her usual quick self up until now, but that was only because she was smart, trying to get the lay of the situation before she said anything. She was deadly, my girl, and wicked sharp in a tight situation just the same as I was.

  I hadn’t told her about the professor, least not in as many words.

  “Did—Did you say something?” He was yelling practically into my ear, which I didn’t appreciate, and I let him know by shrugging my shoulder so that it bounced his jaw. “Bastion,” he swore again, as if he’d bit his tongue something painful.

  “I’m not deaf,” I told him. To Have, real close to her neck, I said, “This is the man who’s been teaching me all manner of speaking pretty and not treadin’ on the feelings of others.”

  Havemercy made the sound I’d come to think of as her laugh, all machinery and metallic amusement. “The one you said you were going to slit open like an envelope from end to end?”

  “I—What?” The professor was speaking quiet again, I’d give him that. “Did you . . . I could have sworn you said something.”

  “That was just Have,” I said, not because I took pity on him or nothing but because I could see his questions getting really old really fast, and for a clever sort of brat he didn’t seem any closer to figuring it out.

  “Have?” he asked, proving me right. “Have what? Do you mean . . . oh, I—I didn’t realize . . .”

  It was almost painful, keeping my laugh in, but then I knew Ghislain would want to know what I was laughing at, and chances were that up until this point he hadn’t even seen the professor hitching a ride with Havemercy and me. The dark’s pretty good for keeping secrets.

  I knew Balfour would see him, though, because Balfour saw everything. It was what he’d been trained to do. But he also wouldn’t be likely to go running to Adamo on me, mainly ’cause he didn’t want piss in his boots anytime soon, whereas that kind of retribution wouldn’t be weighing too much on Ghislain’s mind—stony bastard that he was.

  “She talks?” The way the professor said it, I could tell exactly what kind of a look he’d have on his face: the exact same dumb, incredulous expression he wore when he woke up with beetles in his hair or missing all his clothes.

  “You bet your sweet ass she talks,” said my girl. “Now be quiet, would you? We’ve got important matters to look after. And stop all your fucking cursing. Haven’t you seen a proper dragon before?”

  “I can’t say that I have,” the professor said, and maybe more that the wind swallowed.

  Balfour had come up on our left from the rear, Anastasia sleek and hidden behind the clouds. Even if he had girl parts, Balfour was still good for recon, had a mind for understanding that, when it was important to stay in one place, he should damn well stay there. That’s harder’n most think, especially when you’ve got a fight happening around you on all sides. But, as Adamo was fond of reminding us at full pitch, someone has to keep their heads when the battle’s going on.

  I knew sure as dragonfire it wasn’t ever going to be me.

  We picked up speed with the cresting slope of the Cobalts—they’re real smooth and easy for a while, tricking you into thinking
they’re all pretty and welcoming, until they get jagged as alligator teeth and you know the truth. Once we crossed over those mountains I’d go in fast and hard, hammer the bastards first and give ’em a bit of a show, something to chase. Ghislain’d be right behind me, crushing the sons-of so thoroughly they’d never get up again.

  The idea was that Balfour would use this distraction to get close, fly in deep over the Ke-Han city territory, and see if there was anything th’Esar needed to be worrying about; then we’d all go scurrying back to the rendezvous point and make it back to base before the sun came up over the range’s edge.

  We’d tried it the other way round, recon first and us guns coming in later if the swift got into trouble, but I was too damn impatient to be put into the sky for any kind of a waiting game, and after several instances of Adamo trying to explain the way of things to me yet again, we all just figured it’d be for the best that we changed the plan around so as it suited us rather than trying to fit us to the plan.

  ’Course what had helped my case was Balfour’s brother getting into the trouble he did, and us not knowing anything about it until it was too late. We almost lost Anastasia in that one, and then we’d have all been nobly fucked harder than the chambermaids in th’Esar’s palace. We only had two swifts. Recon was dangerous flying: the point of being small was to get close, and if you got too close, there was always a chance you wouldn’t get out again.

  It was funny—not so funny that I was laughing—but I could hear the professor breathing in my ear, piss-terrified no matter what he said and holding tight to me like a kid hiding under his bed from monsters.

  “You want to ease off so I can say this,” I said. I heard the quiet oh before I felt the vise around my waist loosen marginally. “It’s going to get loud real soon. Real fast, too, and real messy. Nothing’ll get in your eyes with those goggles on, but don’t look directly at nothing that seems too bright, and don’t fucking scream or I’ll throw you to the Ke-Han and let them sort out the pieces. You got that?”