Dragon's Fire Read online

  Felix had contemplated telling her and Stefan everything, but Katrina would have lost her place in the bunker if Lukan learned of that betrayal. Weighing up the value of his wife against his children and grandchildren had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. In the end, a happy marriage to a woman who had loved and honored him all the days of his life had won out. He had chosen to spare Katrina.

  Felix suppressed a shudder at the cost of that terrible decision. While Katrina had a bed in the bunker, Felix could not even risk warning Stefan of the coming nightmare. He had hoped up until the last minute that Malika would relent and come to Cian. But up to a week ago, the time needed for her to travel from Maegkin to Cian, she had remained stubbornly resolute.

  He had balked when Lukan had first suggested Dragon’s Fire, but wisdom made him mask his objections—like almost everything else in his dealings with Lukan. If Felix had refused to help, Lukan would have found someone else less squeamish. How would Felix have managed to control the outcome from the grave? Not even he was that powerful.

  Raklus stood, still spewing sputum from his racking cough.

  Felix’s grimace deepened into a glower. Even with his worst sinus attacks, he had kept his germs to himself. He pulled out his handkerchief and offered it to Raklus. His old friend’s rheumy eyes widened, and he brushed the offering away.

  Felix noticed with some chagrin that the cloth was unusually soiled with bloody, green muck. His sinus flare was thanks to Lukan’s lunacy. He grunted and shoved it into his pocket. “Sorry to chase you, but I need to meet with the emperor.”

  Raklus patted his back and gestured to the tiles, each engraved with a different face, representing positions of power in Chenaya, and thus in the game. “I will cherish the memory of this day.” He picked up his walking stick and shuffled out.

  Felix waited until the door closed behind Raklus, then he swept the tiles off the table. Childish, he admitted, but it still gave him sour pleasure to see them scattered on the carpet.

  Heartburn quickly replaced his satisfaction.

  Felix walked into his bedchamber to Katrina’s side of the bed. On her bedside table lay many things: her rolled-up knitting, balls of wool she like fingering before going to sleep, and piles of patterns she had never gotten around to—and now probably never would. But pride of place belonged to a painting of Axel. Like a religious icon, she kissed it both morning and night.

  Not once in the last sixteen years had Felix shown any outward feeling to his lost son—to do so would have courted death. Not even Katrina knew how much he longed for Axel. Now the opportunity to reconcile with his son would be lost forever. Axel’s lungs would blister, and he would die in the skies above the Heartland.

  The whole situation was almost enough to make Felix support the Light-Bearer.

  Almost, but not quite.

  He sighed and shambled slowly to his dressing room to get his olive-green cloak. With a heavy heart, he flicked it around his shoulders, shoulders others in the palace called frail, but they bore burdens that would crush a lesser man. He picked up his cane and tossed it from hand to hand. He didn’t need the support of the stick but had taken to using it as a prop. Young people expected a man of seventy-one to be nearing his dotage. Dolts like that believed old men to be deaf and frail. They gossiped more freely around him—and paid for that insolence with their lives.

  He was about to head for the door when he spotted four brightly colored tiles, so different from the usual ivory, glinting on the map in the study, where, moments before, there had been none.

  Where had they come from? Was someone in his apartment?

  Eyes darting around the room—he could see no one—he pulled a sword out of his cane. Blade at the ready, he walked across to the table. The tiles—one blue, one red, one green, and one that sparkled with crusty diamonds—lay face down, as they would if the player were yet to reveal them. Somehow, Felix doubted they were made from ice crystal.

  He reached out to flip them over when a shimmering hand grabbed his arm.

  “Not yet, you old devil.”

  One look at that gleaming arm, and Felix knew his sword would be worthless. He let it fall and sat down heavily in his chair. “Dmitri.”

  “You recognize me just from my glowing hand?”

  “You are a force one never forgets.” Felix didn’t bother to hide his dislike. “What do you want with me? I have somewhere to be.”

  The confounded seer, whose hated curse Felix had spent his whole life fighting, materialized.

  As usual, the stocky, salt-and-pepper-haired Dmitri wore a robe made from the provocative old Norin flag—midnight blue with a spangle of stars representing Nicholas the Light-Bearer.

  Dmitri sat in the chair Raklus had recently vacated. “I know exactly where you are headed. But I found I had some time on my hands. Not much, because my current charge will soon be requiring me.”

  “And you chose to torment me with that time? Is it not enough that your curse has blighted my life?”

  “That was your choice. When you were Mott’s crown prince, I offered you a different path—to be the man who changed the world. You rejected it in favor of the Dragon.”

  Felix bristled. “I have changed the world. My inventions, my ice crystals—”

  “Are an abomination. But perhaps, if you choose wisely today, they can still be turned to some good.”

  Felix resisted the urge to pull out his handkerchief.

  Dmitri scoffed a laugh. “As much as I would enjoy testing how long you can survive without your filthy rag, I do not have the luxury of time today. As I say, my boy will soon be returning from his fishing trip, and I must be there to meet him when he does.”

  Felix had no idea who Dmitri was talking about, other than it was clear the seer had read his thoughts. He pursed his lips in disapproval and then snapped, “I assume you still honor the agency of men. Say your piece or leave.”

  “I do honor the agency of men. A principle you would have done well to have practiced in your long, heinous life.”

  Felix started to stand. “I have no wish to listen to you insult my choices. Good day, Dmitri.” He picked up his sword and slotted it back into his cane, fully expecting Dmitri to have gone by the time he had finished.

  The confounded seer remained in his chair.

  Felix’s anger flared. “I said leave. The rules of engagement between the living and dead say that you must obey.”

  “Do your Dreaded leave when your subjects ask them to?”

  An unexpected flush of red burned Felix’s face. As much as it grated, he realized Dmitri would not leave until he done what he had come to do.

  The seer played with the four tiles on the table. Despite himself, Felix peered down, trying to make out which tiles they were. Dmitri kept them hidden.

  Felix’s curiosity got the better of him. He harrumphed as he sat.

  “Lukan has not prepared a place for your son-in-law. That means you stand on the brink of losing almost all you care for in this world.”

  More blood scorched Felix’s cheeks. As much as he longed to deny it—he cursed that dolt Lukan for placing him in this humiliating position—he couldn’t.

  “While I feel no pity for you, dying so cruelly is not the reward I envisaged for Stefan and Malika, or their children. I also find myself uncommonly fond of Axel, rogue that he is. Not to mention the millions of other people who inhabit this tortured planet.”

  “Well, what do you propose? You, the almighty Dmitri, should be able to wave a hand and save them all.”

  Dmitri snorted. “I leave the hand waving to the living.” He fixed Felix with sharp, dark eyes. “This is a problem of your making. You must solve it.”

  “My making! I am not the paranoid emperor cursed by some rotten seer who thought it expedient to set my son up as my executioner!”

  “When you put it like that . . .” Dmitri smiled a thin smile that faded. “However, as someone with so much to lose, you have the most to gain by stopping this
lunacy.”

  Felix’s sinuses clogged. He grabbed for his handkerchief and blew hard. “How? My hands are tied. You, who seem to know everything, should know that.”

  “Oh, on the face of it, they seem tied. But you have always proved resourceful when it served you.” Dmitri picked up the four tiles and tossed them in the air. “That is why I am offering you the four key pieces on the board.”

  Felix’s eyebrows twitched. Dmitri was offering to aid him? That sounded as doubtful as Felix offering to help Dmitri. “I am not sure I understand.”

  “Come now, Felix. You were never a stupid man. Conniving and single-minded, certainly. Vicious, too. But never stupid.”

  So Dmitri was offering to help.

  “Your price?”

  Another disparaging snort from the seer. “We are not all as self-serving as you.”

  As much as Felix wanted to believe Dmitri could help save his family, a lifetime of fighting for advantage precluded any belief that a human being—dead or alive—could be selfless. If Dmitri refused to declare his hand, how could Felix even begin to trust him?

  “Now you begin to understand the challenge you will face when you try to convince your opponents—my allies—that you are working on my side.”

  Felix bolted in his chair. “You malign me! I never said anything about working on your side.”

  The whole notion was preposterous; Felix had spent his entire life fighting against Dmitri. Everyone who had any inkling of the curse—few in number, at least in Chenaya—knew Felix was rabidly anti-Dmitri. The rest of the world feared him as the greatest champion of the Avanov Dragon to ever live. To turn against a lifetime of belief was impossible. And in any event, no one with a functioning brain cell would believe it.

  Face contemptuous, Dmitri’s eyes narrowed. “Tough times call for strange bedfellows, Felix. But if you wish to save your family, not to mention the power you worship, then, as mind-boggling as it may seem, you and I are to ally on the same side of this great conflict.”

  Felix slumped in his chair. What to do? So many options, so many choices. His head throbbed as if someone hammered at him with a battering ram.

  The grandfather clock in the corner of the room chimed, and he shifted in his seat. He needed to get going if he and Morass were to meet Lukan in time to arrest Nicholas before Axel arrived at the cottage.

  But how could he leave if Dmitri offered even a glimmer of hope to save his family?

  Felix sighed. “You have my attention.”

  “I have even more than that. I have these.” Dmitri placed the four tiles face down on the board. “Use them wisely, and you will avert the calamity Lukan wishes to rain down on us. For now, at least. Fail—and the world dies a second time.”

  Sweat beaded on Felix’s face.

  Dmitri reached over and placed a shining hand on Felix’s shoulder. “As you debate your options, consider—I am offering you a chance to redeem yourself.”

  Felix’s heart hammered in his chest. “If I ally myself with you, will you tell my son . . . and your other associates that I am on their side?”

  “You would have me do your job? Only you can save your soul, Felix. Part of that lies in convincing them that you have changed.” Dmitri gave him a withering look. “I hardly expect you to find it easy.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the seer vaporized before Felix.

  The four colored tiles were the only evidence the conversation had ever happened.

  Felix’s hand hovered over them. Which should he turn over first?

  Red.

  The color of his ruby. The stone that signified that he—and Axel—were lower than the emperor and his sons, but higher than the high-born with their emeralds and sapphires.

  He tossed over the red tile—and started at the engraved face staring back at him: Crown Prince Grigor, Lukan’s so-called son.

  He pondered a moment, saw no logic in it, and, not knowing what to expect, turned over the green tile.

  Grigor’s brother, Meka, looked back at him.

  In a normal game, such tiles would represent the Lord of the Conquest and the Lord of the Household, important pieces, certainly, but never of the same value as the emperor.

  The message was clear. Lukan may have embedded diamonds into the twins’ faces and told the world they were his sons, but it would never change their status. Grigor and Meka would never rule Chenaya. The best they could hope for was influence.

  So why present Felix with the twins at all?

  He stood and walked to the window. Far below, at the ornamental lake on the palace grounds, his two great-nephews fished, as they had every day for the last ten years. Hair long, clothes unkempt, despite Felix’s protests to the contrary, they had been sorely neglected by both Lukan and Kestrel.

  Dmitri suggested those two wretches as a solution to Lukan’s planned insanity? Felix shook his head in disbelief. His nephews had grown up shunned by the palace—and for good reason. In Lukan’s attempts to stop them learning of the Dmitri Curse, Morass and his team of guardsmen had been programmed to kill anyone who spoke to them.

  Lukan hadn’t even spared Grigor and Meka a bed in the bunker.

  Ignorant, little better than wild animals, what use could such expendable fodder be in saving Felix’s family?

  Dmitri’s voice chimed in his head. “They are Lukan’s acknowledged heirs.”

  That Felix could not deny.

  He turned back to the last two tiles, wondering what mystery Dmitri had presented there.

  Again he hesitated.

  Sapphire or diamond?

  He had little doubt whose face he would see under the diamond. The Light-Bearer’s, whose else?

  As fascinating as it was that Dmitri offered him Nicholas—the intended emperor, Felix supposed—as a solution to this particular problem, the blue tile intrigued him most. He flicked it over and grimaced.

  Lynx.

  He couldn’t even begin to imagine where a Norin rebel would fit in a Chenayan game of strategy, other than as the enemy to be conquered. Mind churning on how he could use Lynx to save them all, almost absentmindedly, he lifted the diamond tile. As he expected, the great constellation, Nicholas the Light-Bearer, beamed back at him.

  Felix rubbed his face.

  That bastard Dmitri has certainly presented me with a puzzle.

  “Tut, tut, Felix. If we are to be allies, I take exception to being called a bastard.”

  Felix looked around the room, but couldn’t find the seer. “Tut, tut, Dmitri. If we are to be allies, I take exception to disembodied voices talking to me in person or in my head.”

  Felix blinked. Dmitri sat opposite him as if he had never left.

  “Ask your questions. Then I must be gone. It is my boy’s birthday, and I do not wish to miss his party.”

  Felix’s eyes widened. “So you spend your time with Nicholas?”

  Dmitri’s face settled into a serious mien.

  It had probably been a frivolous question, under the circumstances. Felix waved at the tiles. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

  No answer from Dmitri.

  Felix oozed another tired sigh and then spoke his mind. “I plan to inject Nicholas with the Final Word tonight.”

  He waited for some reaction from the seer. But not in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the quiet but firm “aye” that fell from Dmitri’s lips.

  “Aye? You approve? I would have thought you would be berating me for my cruelty.”

  Dmitri’s stern face gave nothing away.

  “You are aware, I assume, that we intend to imprison Nicholas in a dark hole? That’s if Axel fails to rescue him.”

  “Aye. Do your worst.”

  Felix shook his head. Needing clarification, he said, “Nicholas will die along with the rest of the planet when Lukan releases the Dragon’s Fire.”

  “That is what you are charged with preventing.” A tiny smile from Dmitri. “You asked what my price was. Now you know.”

  Felix
was no closer to clarity. Even if he stopped the Burning, Nicholas would still be in a foul prison with no hope of escape. How did that serve Dmitri? And what did the seer gain if Nicholas was embedded with the most sophisticated tracking device the world had ever seen?

  His mouth dropped.

  If Felix and Dmitri were on the same side—the one opposite to Lukan—how could he use the information soon to be streamed from Nicholas’s neck? A thousand questions and ideas tumbled through Felix’s mind.

  He cut them dead. There would be time enough in the steam carriage with that low-born Morass to ponder on this puzzle.

  Now he had to tackle the seer.

  “The twins,” he said to Dmitri. “The so-called princes. You know they are wild. It makes it hard to devise a clear strategy for them.”

  “I have a plan to tame them. But whatever happens, do not allow your prejudice to lead you to squander those boys. They are winning tiles on this board. In time, if you stop the Burning, Lukan will realize that, too. Make sure you own them first.”

  Felix would have loved to ask what Dmitri intended to do to tame the twins, but he sensed that no answer would be forthcoming. He licked his lips. “Perhaps the most challenging of all . . . Lynx.”

  “Aye.”

  Felix wanted to writhe under Dmitri’s relentless scrutiny. Seventy-one years of training kept him steady in his seat. “I have never fathomed that woman. Rebellious, breasts the size of peanuts, no social graces, yet the three most powerful men of her age bent at the knee for her. Axel, Tao, and Lukan. Remarkable power.”

  “Use it.” Dmitri stood. “My boy will be looking for me. Good day.”

  Felix guessed the seer would not return. He closed his eyes to think.

  The logical place to start was Lynx. If he could thwart Lukan’s plan to relocate her to the secret bunker, he might throw a wrench into all of Lukan’s other lunacy. While Lynx roamed free, Lukan would never trigger the gas.

  Planning anything around volatile Lynx was risky in the extreme, but there was one variable he could control.

  Morass.

  Just this morning, on Lukan’s instruction, Felix had programmed the low-born to guard and defend Nicholas the way Morass did the emperor. Tonight, with the care of a loving parent, Morass would lift Nicholas from the cottage and see him safely to his prison cell. Until death took the Light-Bearer in the Burning.