Free Soulblade by Lindsay Buroker Page B

Even if it’s a merchant ship out of another country, we don’t want it spotting us. If it’s an imperial ship, we definitely don’t want it spotting us.”
    As far as Cas had heard, the Cofah did not have radio technology yet, nor did they have anything like the communication crystals that Sardelle had made for the fliers. Still, they could get messages around quickly enough, and being identified at the very beginning of their mission would not be good. The emperor might turn around if he heard Iskandian fliers were in the area.
    “Shall we land early?” Cas asked.
    “Colonel Quataldo says yes,” Duck said. “We’ll look for a protected area that appears unpopulated.”
    In the seat behind him, Quataldo leaned over the side, a spyglass to his eye as he considered the coastline. He tapped Duck’s shoulder and pointed.
    “Follow me down,” Duck said.
    “I guess we get forty miles of crocodiles and carnivorous plants instead of twenty.” Cas remembered the vile tentacled creature that had tried to drag Tolemek to the bottom of a river on Owanu Owanus. It was hard to shoot at something underwater, and she also didn’t care for the idea of vines and tendrils snaking out to wrap around her legs.
    “You’re not scared, are you, Raptor?” Captain Blazer asked. “I saw you pack your sniper rifle, and with your aim, I’m sure you can shoot anything before it kills you.”
    “Shooting is problematic when you’re sneaking up on a town and trying not to be heard.”
    “I’ve seen you take down Cofah warriors with rocks and sticks before too.”
    “I know which part of a Cofah warrior you aim at. I’m less certain with carnivorous plants.”
    “The part trying to eat you, I imagine.”
    “Rocks and sticks?” Tolemek asked as she dipped the nose of the flier downward, following Duck toward a beach far below. “You haven’t mentioned that story.”
    “An early survival training mission on a deserted island that wasn’t that deserted. A Cofah ship had wrecked on a reef on the far side.”
    Gusts of air battered at her wings as they switched from following the air currents to flying against them. The beach Duck angled toward was more rock than sand, with algae-coated boulders rising amid clumps of green vegetation that curled around them. Cas was glad they were flying the two-seaters with their thrusters. Finding a landing strip down there would have been impossible.
    A wide river emptied into the ocean, and Duck turned to follow it, cruising low over the water. Cas took the rear, letting Pimples and Blazer go ahead, and she scanned the sky in both directions before descending below the tops of the mangrove trees lining the banks. At the far edge of the horizon, an airship had come into view, the dark shape hovering in an azure sky deepening with the promise of twilight.
    When she checked behind her, she twitched in surprise. Phelistoth had been behind her, but he was nowhere to be seen now. Had he already dipped into the trees? Or had he not been paying attention to Quataldo’s instructions? If that airship spotted a dragon, it was just as likely to send along a report that might keep the emperor from landing here.
    Shaking her head, Cas dipped lower, skimming along the water. She had to trust that the dragon had the sense to stay out of sight—after all, he had been the one to warn them about the approaching craft. Besides, she had her own team to worry about. The buzz of their propellers seemed twice as loud with the noise echoing off the wall of mangroves. She hoped the roar of the ocean would muffle the sound farther out and that the airship was still too distant to hear anything.
    Huge birds squawked and flew up from the thickets of exposed roots as the fliers cruised up the river. Though alarmed by the noise, some of those birds were as large as Cas was. Were all the animals down here giant? If so, she had little trouble imagining dragons evolving in this climate.
    With the trees and foliage so dense,