Havemercy Read online

  He nodded mutely, fingers worrying dedicatedly at a button on my coat.

  Well. It was better than screaming, I supposed.

  “What about you, sweetheart?” I twitched Have’s harness fondly, knew what the answer’d be before I even asked it, but it was a politeness I knew she liked. It was probably the only one.

  Most of the guys talked to their dragons like they were real ladies, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary. If the professor knew what was good for him, he’d forget he ever heard it.

  “Just don’t spin around so hard this time,” she said. “You’ll break my neck.”

  I laughed, feeling the air all around us as she began to plummet. “I won’t.”

  I didn’t warn the professor or tell him to hold on, so as we made our descent I felt his hands scrabbling for a safer purchase, like he wasn’t so sure just holding on to me would be safe enough. I really hoped he wasn’t going to tear the buttons off my coat or nothing, ’cause then I’d have to make him sew them back on.

  I bet he knew how to do it, too.

  Finally, his arms locked tight around my ribs again, like he figured we weren’t going to be doing much more talking anyway, and I wouldn’t speak up to complain. He was at least right about that.

  The wind hit us like a bucket of cold water, sharp and freezing and all at once, which meant that it wasn’t real wind at all but the work of those fucking magicians. I held our course, steering Have right through because I knew that if there were anything stronger they could have hit us with, they’d have done so right up front. We’d caught them unawares, the lazy cunts, and in the time it’d take to cook up anything really threatening, Ghislain and Compassus would have them flattened to the ground.

  I let out a war whoop, wild as any of the Ke-Han’s breathless, ululating screams, and took out a guard tower on the far wall. The trick to getting Have to breathe fire was a different kind of jerking the harness, pulling against the mechanism just behind her tongue; and then the gasoline caught the fuse and she was screaming fire. The guard tower burst into flames—orange and the faint soul of green that was the dragonmagic. These were fires that couldn’t be easily quenched with sand or water.

  The tower lit up our section like a beacon, and below us the tiny scrambling silhouettes of Ke-Han warriors came pouring out from behind the wall, as though there were anything they could possibly do against three fucking dragons.

  “That seems a—a rather showy way of announcing our presence, doesn’t it?”

  It took me a full minute to figure out one, why someone was talking to me, and two, why that someone wasn’t Havemercy. The thing with flying is, you’ve got to get your head into an almost completely separate mind-set, deep focus, and you can’t be taking breaks to ask yourself: Gee, I wonder if there are families down there, or: Hey, I haven’t seen Ghislain and Balfour in a while, because that’s the kind of thinking that can get you killed. The first thing you learn is how not to get all distracted like that.

  “Not trying to hide,” I gritted out, twisting with Have to one side as a sudden push of wind beckoned us closer to die on the rocks.

  “Those look like catapults,” he said, in a voice that meant he’d been shocked calm, or was a little bit of a sociopath, our professor.

  “So they are,” I said. Then, just for revenge, I added, “Trebuchets, actually.”

  We took off like a streak of lightning, wind howling in my ears as Havemercy let out a screech to make sure everyone on the ground knew just who was the god of fire around here. Something molten crashed against the mountains behind, where we’d just been.

  “I don’t understand,” the professor said, loud as he could over the boom of the catapult. “They don’t even seem to be trying!”

  I wanted to tell him no, professor, that we were just that good, but the trouble was that I didn’t quite understand it, either.

  Catapults were inelegant, a clunking technology the Ke-Han had given up on years ago when it became evident that they weren’t quick enough to hit us even flying half-blind and on one wing. They hid behind their magicians when it came to matching us, and if I’d been in any kind of a charitable mood while dealing with the Ke-Han, I’d have said they did all right. Not well, because when you were pitting anything against the Dragon Corps it was just a sad inevitability that we’d send ’em screaming, but all right.

  Now things almost seemed too easy. I was suspicious of easiness from anything, excepting women, and thought I might make a point of saying as much to Adamo when we made it back to the Airman after we were finished.

  It was like the Ke-Han emperor had gone on a holiday and left his fourteen-year-old nephew in charge.

  They were lining the catapult up to us again when a long, earth-shattering groan pierced the skies, and Ghislain came roaring down on Compassus like he didn’t have a care in the world for the little breezes the Ke-Han magicians threw at him.

  Ghislain said the Ke-Han called Compassus the sky-shaker. Fuckers were apt, if nothing else.

  The catapult creaked and swung loose, and we soared wide of the mark, Havemercy’s long, gorgeous framework glinting silver in the arc light.

  The sound of screaming was louder now that the sky-shaker had arrived and was mowing down everything they sent forward. In moments, the catapults were no longer a threat, and neither was the second guard tower, resolutely pealing its alarm to all that could hear—as if they couldn’t already hear from the screaming and our dragons, gnashing and roaring their pleasure to the skies.

  “Oh,” said the professor. I felt his hands go slack as interest got the better of him and he tried to sit up, presumably to get a better look while still holding on.

  A twister of a spell hit Havemercy square in the jaw left of nowhere, so that I had to turn us hard like she’d told me not to, and for one sick moment I felt the professor’s hands slip against my stomach.

  “Sit the fuck down,” I snarled, harsher than I’d meant to. I couldn’t grab both his hands in one of mine, they weren’t at all tiny like I’d’ve thought, but I held tight to Have’s harness with one hand, tighter to his wrist with the other. If the air had been perfectly still, I’d have been able to hear his bones grinding. Or maybe that was my teeth. “Let go again and I swear, by Havemercy, I’ll let you fall.”

  I released my hold on his wrist in disgust, gloved hands put to better use trying to steer us clear of the litter of tornadoes that had popped up around the city walls. I was as mad at myself as anything—I’d been watching and thinking when I should have been moving, and that was what came of bringing the professor up where he didn’t belong for a second.

  It was my own damn fault, though, trying to teach the professor some kind of reverse lesson.

  Below us, Ghislain was still wreaking havoc with Compassus; she was big enough that the twisters merely nudged them with a suggestion of a twirl this way and that.

  Holding close as he was, I could feel the professor shaking like he was out-of-his-mind-terrified, which—for once—I couldn’t blame him for.

  The sky was losing its pitch-darkness fairly quickly by this point, so I hoped Balfour was planning on heading back our way real soon. Anastasia could move when she had to, but I knew Compassus would need a fair time’s warning to make it back by first light.

  Something shifted in the clouds.

  You never heard Anastasia before you saw her. That was one of her talents. And even then you didn’t see her unless you knew what to look for, silver and blue like skymetal, and in the clouds she was fucking invisible. Still, when I saw the flicker of movement wide of the city, I knew what it meant. Time to go.

  I didn’t warn the professor this time when we dove either, and I could hear him cursing all the way down, soft in my ear as the wind whipped around us and Havemercy started to sing.

  “I didn’t know they taught that sort of pretty speak at the ’Versity, professor,” I called without looking back at him. When we got closer, I let Have take out a barracks Ghislain had been headin
g for with Compassus, because I knew it would get his attention.

  “No, that I learned from you,” the professor answered. He sounded almost sullen.

  I laughed, wild and exhilarated with the wind in my blood. Have laughed, too, all creaking and sweet, rattling beneath us and making the professor curse again—so that I had to wonder if he wasn’t really a Mollyrat, same as I was.

  Have and I circled once around Compassus, in case Ghislain hadn’t got the message and thought I was trying to start some kind of a game on my own with the barracks, which I’d also been known to do.

  He got the message though, and I let them go tearing out ahead of us, smoke spewing in all directions and streaming into my nose and mouth.

  The smoke you got used to, but for the first few nights it was pretty terrible, and when the professor started coughing behind me I knew it’d be at least a week before I heard the end of it.

  I thought I could hear cheering when we went back over the mountains, like we hadn’t just razed their city forces to the ground, and over half the towers they used for their magicians with it.

  It was like they weren’t even trying to win anymore—which of course I’d heard could happen when you just wore a man down for so long he didn’t even care what the outcome was, so long as he could get out. But this didn’t feel the same as that.

  I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like having to think about it neither, but with the professor breathing quick and uneven in my ear, Ghislain up ahead, and Balfour out in front, it was all I could do.

  Well, almost all, I thought, and joined Havemercy just in time for the verse about ladies’ undergarments. There was a moment where I wondered if a third voice hadn’t joined in with ours, but that wasn’t too fucking likely, and in the end I blamed it on the wind.

  We got back to the Airman a little more than an hour later, with the sun just peeking her head up above the horizon at our backs. Ghislain and Balfour were flying on ahead and not looking back, so I figured I might’ve made it out of this without it being noticed I’d taken the professor out for a spin with me—though of course if the boys noticed the soot under his fingernails and the grease in his hair, they’d pretty much realize straightaway what we’d been up to, what I’d done, and have a list of all the rules I’d broken. Whether or not they actually set that list down on Adamo’s desk was another matter. It depended on what kind of a mood they were in and whether or not they saw me sharpening my knives beforehand. Anyway, Adamo had more important things to be worrying about than something that hadn’t made any difference in my performance in the first place.

  I’d make sure they saw me sharpening my knives.

  When we got back into the hangar and I got myself unstrapped, easing my aching feet out of them stiff boots and tossing them aside for the mess-men to deal with and have polished and ready for me by sundown that same day, the professor came down off of Have’s back like his legs didn’t have bones in them any longer and his knees were made out of nothing more useful to him than water. The airmen called that kind of wobbling Civ Legs, short for civilian legs, and those who’d got over all that shaking soon forgot their own misery about how it felt, all your body gone numb from the force of riding a dragon all night long.

  The professor was lucky. He’d made it out alive, and he hadn’t had to fucking steer her or anything, just hold on and make sure he didn’t slide off, and he could barely even manage to do that. He hardly deserved a fucking medal just for staying alive.

  I took off my gloves next, pretending like I didn’t see him wobbling all around and fumbling with the straps of his goggles, trying to get them off so he could actually see. My fingers were stiff from gripping the harness reins all night long and didn’t move quick as they might’ve done. There’s some things a body can’t get used to, no matter how many calluses it builds up, no matter how much the muscles shift to accommodate whatever crazy flying you’ve been doing of late.

  At last, when I was sorted out and all the things that needed washing were in a corner of Have’s dock—my jacket and my gloves thrown over to join my boots—and I made sure Have was settled in nice and comfortable for the night, I turned finally to look at the professor. He was watching me with his big green eyes sort of eerie—but not accusing—with the rest of his face soot black in streaks, and only the shape of the goggles marked pale as a backward raccoon.

  “Why?” he asked at last.

  I scratched the back of my neck, just to get my fingers working again. “Don’t know,” I answered lazily. “Thought, in the interest of sharin’ and carin’—”

  “What did you think I’d learn?” he pressed—not quite snapping, and his voice trembling beneath its calm. “Or did you think perhaps you’d kill me while we were up there?”

  “I coulda done,” I pointed out. “But I didn’t. Even caught you once.”

  The professor barely moved his blackened lips as he spoke. “And as I said, I want to know why.”

  “Would’ve landed me in fuck-all trouble,” I said. “Would’ve been some nasty explaining.”

  “No one knew I was up there with you. There’d be no body. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all.”

  The professor was smarter than he looked. Must’ve been, any case, in order to get so far as to be given this position of wrangling us. I could’ve hit him right there, but my hands would’ve cramped up if I tried to clench ’em into fists. Instead, I said, “So what do you think, then? Bein’ the genius among us.”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, almost helplessly. “That’s why I asked.”

  “You want to know that bad?”

  “That badly,” he said, then winced. “Yes. I do.”

  “Inspiration, I guess,” I said. “Thought maybe I could scare you off, make you piss yourself. I don’t fucking know.”

  “I just,” the professor began. He cut his own self short, though, and had to swallow around something that seemed a little too thick for him for a moment, like he was choking on his own thoughts. Not many men could have held on the way he did—not many men would still be standing now. Any second I expected him to collapse to the floor, but he didn’t. “I wish you’d tell me,” he finished, finally.

  “You want to know why?” I stepped closer to him, too tired to be real intimidating, but drawing myself up to full height and managing a grin—covered in soot and ash and grease as I was, I must’ve looked like some kind of monster out of a storybook. He met my eyes, and there was this weird electric kind of charge between us, like when two dragons fly close enough that their tails or wings scrape against each other and sparks rain down onto the world below. I’d never got that feeling anywhere other than in the air before. I hated it; I wanted to be sick. When my words came, they were even angrier than I thought they’d be. I wasn’t so tired I couldn’t get charged up by some idiot ’Versity civ thinking he had me figured. “I’ll tell you why,” I went on, ignoring how strange it was. “It’s ’cause all those pretty things you say—all that horseshit you try to feed us about weighing both sides and learning every man’s story and getting to know your fellows—all of that doesn’t mean fuck when you’re up there. I can’t stop to ask myself questions when I’ve got Have to think about. I can’t even balance out what my own fucking feelings are when I’m in the air—and I sure as shit don’t have time for anyone else’s. All I gotta know—all I’ve been trained to know—is how to not get my ass killed. And maybe tonight I figured that was something you needed to know, so as you could get a clearer vision of your big picture.”

  I was breathing pretty heavily by the time I was finished, since I wasn’t usually a man who talked so much in one go. The professor—who usually was the sort of man who talked so much in one go—didn’t seem to have anything in particular to say to that. No two ways about it: It felt good to get it off my chest. Now it was all out there on the table, how much of a stupid civ he was and how he didn’t know the first fucking thing about any of us. All he was doing was coming in uninformed, disrupting our flo
w and looking down his snub nose at us—like we weren’t saving his ass and every other ass in the whole of Volstov, leastways when the war was on.

  My blood was up and I could barely see straight, I was so tired, my skin heavy with dragonsmoke. He deserved what I threw at him, whether he’d been man enough to keep his feet after first flight or not.

  He did, but only barely. When he wobbled out, if I’d been less firing mad, I would have chased him out of the room just laughing at him, the way he had to hang on to the doorframe and the wall just to keep himself upright.

  “You weren’t any better your first time up,” Have said, snorting through her flared nostrils. Dim light from the hangar glinted off them, and I turned back to see her trying to wipe grease and soot off the corner of her mouth. She didn’t like the way it tasted, and it was a bitch to clean if it hardened overnight. I didn’t trust snot-nosed Perkins, or anybody else for that matter, with her.

  No one knew how to take care of my girl but me.

  “Was fucking too,” I said, rubbing down her neck next. “You told me I was the sweetest ride you’d ever had.”

  “I was young then,” Have said. She sounded wry and echoed like inside she was grinning. “Impressionable. I didn’t know any better.”

  “Save it,” I told her. “I’m too tired.”

  “I’m just a Jacqueline,” Have replied. “I can’t do anything but tell the truth. He wasn’t half-bad. Didn’t even piss himself on me. I appreciate that in a man. He reminds me of you. Not so dirty, but no one is.”

  “Are you on his fucking side or something? Is that it?”

  Have looked at me the same way Have always looked at me, ever since we first met and my fingernails were dirty and she didn’t waste any fucking time in letting me know what she thought about that—and all the other things, for that matter. It wasn’t a way I enjoyed being looked at, not even when Have’s dark eyes were doing the looking.