Free Dragon Thief by Marc Secchia Page B

mind-reader? “You’re safe.”
    “Safe? How?”
    “I’m shielding you.”
    Trust. The word lingered unspoken, but was clearly communicated by her tone. Lightly, Kal said, “I meant, how does it work? I once saw lightning fry a rajal mid-leap on the western fringe of Jeradia Island. That was a big cat, and it was dead before it hit the ground.”
    The Dragoness grunted, “Three things, Kal. My shielding keeps you alive, my body has special tissues which act as conduits for electricity, and my tail is a discharge point.”
    “So you’re one giant–”
    “–lightning conductor,” she agreed. The thief noted the underlying stresses in her voice, but made no comment. After all, what experience did he have of Dragon flight? He felt sore, humiliated and keen to see the Dragoness return to her Human guise. “You Humans borrowed the idea for your fortresses, especially in the South and around Fra’anior, where there are many electrical storms.”
    “So you’ve a hot tail now?” he joked.
    “Ew. Save your lewd jokes for my Human form.”
    Kal’s jaw worked. Perhaps he ought to divide his feelings into two neat camps. For the Dragoness, fear and awe. But for Human-Tazithiel, his attraction came tempered with a healthy dose of respect. Never in his life had he tiptoed around a more volatile fumarole.
    He said, “That’s amazing. And you’re Blue spectrum, so lightning attacks are in your blood.”
    “Aye.”
    “May I pose another question?”
    KAL! Heavens above and Islands below, will you just let me fly? I can’t concentrate with your constant yammering.
    Sorry.
    He glowered at the darkness. Whose fault was it he had embraced a creature of living flame?

Chapter 6: Rogues Need Wings
     
    F OR KAL, BEING forced to keep silent was tantamount to rolling about in a patch of invisible prickle-bushes. He squirmed mentally, watching for the first sign of dawn’s light, for surcease from the storm’s mauling. Escape? Awkward. Help? Impossible. Change her mind? As futile as pounding an Island with a war-hammer. Trust must flow both ways. His life hung in the balance, in the storm.
    With the dawn came a deluge of sleeting rain, more ice than water. Already deafened, sodden and chilled to the marrow, Kal threw his futile hopes to the winds. Of course he could be colder. He could have icicles dangling from his nose and the numbness in his fingers and toes might perversely develop into dull knives burrowing beneath his skin. Beneath him, Tazi laboured. How she strove! Again and again, the glacial winds blasted them backward, until Kal began to imagine Tazithiel flew yet remained stationary in the air. Wriggling and heaving, the Indigo Dragoness cracked off the ice collecting on her wings and along her spine; he realised her fires must be dampened, for why would the ice not simply melt away? Or had her shielding failed? Using a long, heavy arrow, he chipped off the ice he could reach.
    Hours passed before insight sparked in Kal’s mind. Once again, the Dragoness sought to prove herself. This was beyond stubbornness. Beyond madness. This was a profound, ulcerated kind of pain which could only exist in a person’s heart, a pain no years of solitude had stanched. It was rooted not only in what she had suffered, he imagined, but also in the betrayal of her shell-parents, and perhaps exacerbated by the advent of a thief upon the stage of her life.
    Never had Kal watched another suffer like this. Especially not someone he cared for. It threw the hollowness of his life into sharp relief. Her breath rasped as his did in the gasping thinness of high altitude flight. Her wingbeat slowed. Through his thighs, Kal felt the juddering in her muscles as Tazithiel tore from herself by sheer, bloody-minded strength of draconic will alone, the power to keep aloft.
    What could he do? What could a mere Human help a mighty Indigo Dragoness best this storm?
    Gazing at an ocean of black thunderheads seething around them, Kal remembered Master