Caged Warrior

FIVE

The letter is the most important development we’ve had about the cartels in a decade,” said Malnefoley, the Honorable Giva. “You refuse to acknowledge it.”

Sath Wisdom sat forward in her chair. “Watch your tone.”

He whirled his gaze toward the seemingly ageless woman. “What did you say?”

She pressed her hands flat against the meeting table hewn of wood older than memory. It, like everything else in the Fortress of the Chasm, was storied and inviolate—a functional memorial to the creature that had given life to them all. Even their robes were hundreds of years old, sewn from heavy black cloth and accented with each clan’s color. Copies of copies of copies of those worn by the first Council of the Five Clans, when Sath, Tigony, Pendray, Garnis, and Indranan bridged their divisions to secure an armistice that had kept the Dragon Kings strong for millennia.

Only the Sath knew their people’s entire history. They kept secrets they weren’t meant to hide, just as they took powers that weren’t their own.

“You heard me, Malnefoley,” Sath Wisdom said with narrowed eyes. “You won’t get anywhere by bullying us into submission.”

For the sake of harmony and, more important, as a means of keeping his temper, Mal didn’t call her on the obvious slight. His family still called him by his given name. To everyone else, he was the Honorable Giva—the only one of the Council to wear robes of endless black. No clan color. Senators relinquished their identities when they assumed their positions, the better to secure nonpartisan consensus. Two came from each clan. The old women were referred to as Wisdom for their sagacity and maternal patience, while the impetuous men were dubbed Youth for their spirit and eagerness to go to war.

Checks and balances, with the Giva as their fulcrum.

Of all the senators, Sath Wisdom was his most formidable opponent. She was a Thief.

No.

She was Sath. That she challenged him at the start of their twice-annual assembly was not a good sign. It was not a Giva’s place to resort to name-calling, and with what he had planned, the meeting was only going to become more contentious.

Outside their mountaintop Tibetan shelter, a snowstorm raged as if it would wake the Dragon from its forever sleep. Snow swirled against the wall of glass tempered in the deep fires of the Chasm. Unbreakable. Shimmering and golden. Only its unknowable properties kept them safe from the force of a Himalayan blizzard.

He hated the cold and couldn’t wait to return to Greece. Yet he couldn’t govern at a distance. Nynn’s letter changed everything.

With his fists clenched beneath the table, he breathed calmly, using time-honored techniques. The other clans thought the Tigony preferred politics to violence. Far from true. They possessed gifts so overwhelming that control was essential. Mal fought the electrical current gathering in every cell. To outsiders, particularly the Council, his control could appear as weakness. He didn’t feel weak; he was a man whose honor and will held a thunderstorm at bay.

“We are here to disagree,” he said, his voice practiced and even. “That much is necessary before we can agree to take action. We are not here to hurl insults.”

“What if ‘usurper’ is not an insult, but fact?” This from Pendray Youth, whose expression always revealed his powers. He forever stood on the precipice of untold frenzied violence.

Usurper. That word had followed Mal for twenty years.

The Council reminded him whenever they convened—not always with outright snipes, but with their refusal to cooperate. The previous Giva had guided the Five Clans for just over eighty years. He had been an authentic choice. Two children from each clan had looked into the churning, fiery maw of the Chasm where the Dragon had been birthed and where the Dragon had died. There, ten mouths had simultaneously screamed the name of the chosen Giva.

But Mal . . .

He’d been chosen by six whispers. Clans Pendray and Garnis were so few in number that they’d refused to condemn even two children to a mountaintop life of semimadness. For millennia, it had been considered an honor to choose the Giva. Never again wholly sane, the children grew into fierce warriors whose only duty was to protect the Fortress of the Chasm. Now it was regarded as a waste of what few children remained. Those who’d chosen the previous Giva were growing old, leaving the fortress vulnerable. Their skills were dwindling, as was the population of Dragon Kings.

Mal was an obvious symbol.

Only six whispers, when tradition required ten screams.

Four crucial votes had been missing since his first day as Giva, always raising suspicion about his authority. Giva meant fulcrum. Plain and simple. Mal fought to tip the scales in an attempt to save their race, but he did so without unanimous authority.

That didn’t mean he was without power. Or the element of surprise.

“Pendray Youth, if you have a better solution to my standing as the head of this Council, I’d like to hear it. Are you ready to assume my position? You as much as any senator know what we face, as clans and collectively. You have the privilege of speaking, arguing, making trouble, being useful—but ultimately, you’ll remain one of ten. Any consensus will be my responsibility to defend, for good or for ill. Are you ready to bear that scrutiny?”

“Fine.” Pendray Youth was the most contentious. Even Sath Wisdom knew when to back down. “Just know that ‘woe is me’ sounds pretty pathetic, Giva.”

“There is nothing woeful about stating a matter in plain speaking. Petulance, however—”

The young man banged his fist on the table.

“Enough,” said Sath Wisdom, her white brows narrowed. “We speak out of turn and with a lack of respect.”

From long experience, Mal knew she was quietly mocking his leadership. At the moment, he didn’t care. Her intervention gave him a moment to cool his temper as Pendray Youth’s posture lost its aggression.

“Now,” Mal continued, as if the outburst hadn’t occurred. As long as he kept calm, he could play any political game. Twenty years of contentious rule—and before that, years as the head of his clan—had made him a master. “The letter from my cousin is our most decisive proof that the human cartels have overstepped. We’re no longer talking about volunteers, desperate to pay off debts or to gamble on the possibility of a child. Human criminals are taking Dragon Kings from their homes! I’m struck dumb by how easily you’re letting this happen.”

“Because even if it can be proven, the information is from your cousin.” Sath Youth lifted his chin in an obvious sign of disdain. “She was banished for good reason.”

“She was banished because she married a human, and if we’re all honest, as retribution for circumstances surrounding her mother. But not because she was someone to spin tales. That Nynn bore a natural son is something we should be praising. Something to be thankful for. You’d rather dredge up what happened years ago.”

“Her son is only six,” said Indranan Youth, with his dark, steady eyes. He always spoke for himself and Indranan Wisdom, who sat stooped and shrouded to his left. Their telepathy made whispered discussion unnecessary. “No one yet knows whether he possesses a gift from the Dragon.”

How the Indranan chose their representatives was a mystery to the other clans. Northern and Southern factions had been engaged in a bloody civil war for three thousand years. Mal would never know if these two hailed from the Indian subcontinent or from the wilds of the Australian outback. But he resented them because they represented all that stood in the way of the Dragon Kings’ survival. Ridiculous rivalries. Long-held grudges. Jealousy and hatred and all the emotions they’d long disdained of human beings.

The humans thrived. The Dragon Kings held off extinction as if by chance.

The Indranan senators never failed to disagree with Malnefoley. He didn’t attribute it to their unnerving telepathy. They simply didn’t want to acknowledge what he had to say, for reasons he could never comprehend. Personal? Political? A means of manipulating the emotions he kept in check?

Then there were the senators from Clan Garnis. Useless. They were almost always quiet—even their Youth. Compared to the organized, even powerful governments of the other four clans, Garnis had nothing. The Lost. In twenty years, Mal had yet to discern whether their lack of involvement in Council discussions was because of their clan’s ways or because they had little power to reinforce any point of view. Surely they believed something.

He wanted to pace—or rain lightning down on those who opposed him. Too much temper for a Giva. He’d known it from the beginning. A slow-boil fury made him vibrate with things unsaid, actions not taken. He pushed his anger into the pit of his stomach. No one would humble him. For all the doubts others harbored about his legitimacy, Mal knew the truth. He had the insight and resolve to see his people through this crisis.

“We all know her husband was killed. No one has seen her or her son since. This letter is the first communication anyone has received from her. It’s half-scrawled in blood, for Dragon’s sake.”

Arguments burst across the table as the senators took his words, warped them, turned them into weapons to brandish at one another.

Aster guards the secret to our survival, but at this price?

Nynn’s words haunted him day and night. Even the fierce mountain winds sounded like his long-lost cousin. Her voice was strong enough to compete with the ticking clock in his mind that said they were running out of time.

His aunt, Leoki, had been dead since the accident no one mentioned. She had given birth to Nynn by a Pendray man. Perhaps one day she would’ve been accepted back into Clan Tigony, especially with Mal as Giva. Instead, Nynn had killed her.

Grief still pounded in his joints. Leoki had been his aunt, but they’d been separated by only five years—more like siblings. He’d lost so much that day. Leoki dead. Nynn subjected to the process that had boxed away her dangerous powers. She’d emerged practically human, so that his decision to have her educated in the States was an easy one to edge into her consciousness. After only a few weeks, she’d taken up the idea as her own.

And marrying a human man . . . That had been the end of Nynn’s life as a Dragon King.

He’d fought the Council. He’d even fought Nynn, hoping she would relent and come home. But layered over that wretched era had been one moment of goodness. She had appeared happy for the first time in years. Even when the Council delivered its verdict, she was a woman relieved of deep burdens.

Only, she didn’t know what burdens remained in her mind.

“That’s what I’d expect to hear from a Thieving liar like you!” came a shout from Pendray Youth.

“Quiet!” Mal’s voice thundered around the wide circular room. “You’re spoiled children, not senators. I will act without this Council’s consent if name-calling is the extent of your involvement.”

“Act without our consent?” Sath Youth looked ready to turn his chair into a weapon—whether to strike Mal or Pendray Youth didn’t seem to matter.

Tigony Wisdom cleared her throat. She was the only person who could stem the tide of so much anger with the arch of one brow. The Pendray and Sath Youths glared, but one cast his eyes toward the table and the other fussed with draped robe sleeves.

Named Hobik, Tigony Wisdom was Mal’s adoptive grandmother and the only senator whose name he still used in his mind. Despite no blood relation, they looked a great deal alike: thick, straight bronze hair and eyes so deeply blue as to appear black in the low light of the Council room. Elegant, the Tigony had always been called. Cultured. Gracious.

Another reason they weren’t taken seriously in times of war.

Mal could’ve laughed. His people had taught the Greeks and Romans how to fight. How to build cities and raze them. At that moment, a crackle of static was taking the form of sparks in his blood, inside him, all around him. If he let his concentration slip, those sparks would amplify into violent kinetic energy. He would become a living turbine.

Not now. Maybe not ever.

He gave his grandmother the barest nod.

Hobik turned her attention to the rest of the Council. “Whether or not Nynn’s child has been blessed by the Dragon, the other two human cartels remain our clearest stream of information. They are openly jealous of Dr. Aster’s acquisition. Because of the timing of her kidnapping, we can assume some truth to the Asters’ involvement. Why would he hold them captive if they weren’t important?”

That logic was apparently the key to coalescing the Council’s attention. Mal had been too agitated to think of it.

He breathed deeply of the mountain’s thin, chilly air, thankful that Hobik’s logic had quieted the senators. For now.

Nynn was a piece missing from his life since her departure for the States, and then gone from him forever after marriage. She had never treated him as a man apart, but as a friend. Worse, she had since become an obsession. She represented the first and only significant time he’d given in to the Council’s demands. As a result, he’d never met her husband or her son. Her resentment had been too strong.

Now he had her letter. What might be her last. Her disappearance finally warranted the Council’s involvement. He’d been waiting for such an opportunity.

Mal cleared his throat. Time to bring this meeting to a head. “What’s more, new information suggests the existence of an underground network of Dragon Kings. They work in secret and are unaccounted for among their clans. More than that, they have reached across clan boundaries. No politics. No allegiances other than to our people as a whole.”

Gasps of surprise and disbelief met his words. Every senator believed that he or she held sway over their territorial, increasingly bureaucratic governments. They likely thought it impossible for clansmen to escape entrenched lore and self-importance. Managing Council meetings even twice a year was becoming more and more difficult. No one was willing to compromise for the greater good.

Not even this small group.

Yet out there, he believed others might see the world—and their pending extinction—with more pragmatism. That gave him as much hope as Nynn’s letter.

“They don’t have a name,” he said, with all of his calm and focus. “No codes. No way of getting in touch.”

“Then who delivered the letter? Carrier pigeons?” Wearing a sneer, Pendray Youth made as if he were ready to retire for the evening.

Mal paused, looking the rebellious senator in the eye. “It was Tallis of Pendray.”

No one spoke. Mal could see them processing this new information, testing it for truth. Finding it lacking.

“The Heretic,” Tigony Youth whispered. “He’s been dead for years.”

“He hasn’t been dead, because he’s been a Pendray myth all along.” Sath Wisdom shook her head. “Some legendary assassin? I don’t believe any of this.”

Mal smiled coldly. “Careful. Calling me Trickster is one thing. That sounded very close to calling me a liar. I refuse to discount any possibility.”

The pair of Indranan senators shared a glance before their Youth spoke. “We’re with Sath Wisdom on this. He doesn’t exist. Never has.”

“Pendray Youth?” Mal stood, placed both hands on the table, and let it take his weight. The senator’s natural golden color had drained to a sickly pallor, as if he’d seen ghost. “He’s of your clan, so tell me. Is Tallis of Pendray a myth? Is he dead?”

“The Heretic is not a myth,” he said, his voice hushed and monotone. “And as far as the Pendray government is aware, he is not dead. We would’ve seen the celebratory fires from here in these mountains. Our people have hunted him for decades.” Although he appeared to have aged in a matter of moments, he snapped out of his daze. “And he just delivered this letter? Like some Good Samaritan?”

“Don’t think me so generous,” came a shadow-dark voice.

Mal stood to his full height, pleased with Tallis’s timing.

Guards materialized out of nowhere. The Council’s Youths jumped to their feet. Only the crackle of electricity from Mal’s fingertips silenced the chaos. “Stand down, senators. Now. And I suggest you introduce yourself. Quickly.”

“The Council spoke of the devil, so I appeared. I am Tallis of Pendray. I assumed you’d want to have a little chat.”

Everything about him, from his posture to his words, was laced with sarcasm. He radiated an impression of complete disregard. He was a man who didn’t care about a thing, not even dying. As with any Dragon King intent on blending into the world at large, he wore inconspicuous clothing—a pair of black jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt layered with a black sweater. The casual, almost sloppy disregard for fashion was meant to detract from, not accentuate, the classically handsome features of their people. His hands were in his pockets, as if interrupting the Council’s twice-yearly meeting was as common as going to a cinema.

Shock and curiosity layered in the Council meeting room like smoke twining with clouds. Despite having brought the man to the fortress, Mal held no respect for the Heretic. The man’s list of crimes was nauseating. “Tell us, then. How did you come by Nynn’s letter?”

“You’re near to the general idea of it,” Tallis said. “Which is impressive for a Council. Well done.”

Mal gritted his teeth. In the midst of fighting ten recalcitrant senators and the slow-wash tide of extinction, this bastard was testing the last of his patience.

“Yes, there exists a collection of rebels who refuse clan associations. They found the letter. Reed of Tigony wasn’t a kilometer from the Asters’ complex when he froze to death. They’d known its general vicinity.” He chuckled softly. “Only when your cousin blew the roof off the lab did they know for sure. Reed escaped in the aftermath.”

“You dare laugh about this?”

“Save it, Giva. You need them to hear what I have to say. I was willing to deliver that letter when none of the rebels could. Anonymity is their great asset. My asset is to become anonymous when I will it.”

“There are other rumors.” Mal stepped forward. He lifted his chin and prepared to kill a fellow Dragon King upon Tallis’s next answer—not there in the Fortress of the Chasm, but wherever the deed needed to be done. “There are rumors you killed Nynn’s husband, then handed her and her son to the Asters.”

Tallis stared at Mal, emphasizing their impasse. Under the flippancy was a flicker of something deeper. Flash and gone. “Funny things, rumors.”

“But you are a killer.”

Tallis nodded.

“Tell me why we shouldn’t keep you here and force you to stand trial? Or, more fittingly, return you to the Pendray who despise you?”

Pendray Youth practically growled his agreement with that idea.

“They do hold grudges, my beloved clan.” He shrugged. “But you, Giva, would rather believe me in hopes of saving Nynn.”

Mal felt as if he held the weight of his people in his hands. The entirety of his race depended on his next decisions. Luckily, his great weakness was an overabundance of tenacity, not a lack of resolve.

“Nynn and her son are in pain,” he said. “For now, for me, that is enough. With all due respect, senators, I’m adjourning this meeting. None of us are leaving until we reach a consensus. Take action against the cartels? Ignore them and hope Nynn’s fate is a single event? Follow this man’s lead? We owe our respective clans the answers they’ll surely demand.”

The crackling energy in his blood could stay. It was the purest part of him, giving him strength from inside out, providing a reminder to remain stronger than his gift.

“Take the night,” he said, his words spoken with deep confidence. “Take days if need be. Find it in yourselves to put away this petty bickering and lead our people. It’s your Dragon-damned duty and I expect nothing less than your full cooperation.”

He turned to the Heretic. With a flick of his wrist, Mal signaled the guards to take him into custody. “As for you,” Mal said, “I will listen to what you have to say. I may even accompany you to a stronghold—the Asters’ or otherwise. But first you will answer every question I have about my cousin.”