A tale in the world system of Steam & Stars. For more airships and dragons, check out Moore’s award-winning novel, Children of Solo!
The dirigible cast a chill shadow across the coffee field as it passed between the distant sun and the fecund plants. Balthasar looked up from his notebook. Squinting into the glare created by the backlit balloon, he recognized the winged, blue hammer of House Bronzewater. His cousin’s betrothed had arrived. Balthasar’s stomach rumbled. Tonight, his relatives would host an exorbitant feast in honor of the impending nuptials.
All summer, his graduate student stipend had afforded him only lentils, chickpeas, and mutton. A dragon, even in its human form, needed more red meat than that. He wondered how Vezzarrhuk’ti fared. He had intended to switch before dinner and let the young blue stretch its wings outside Holoxia, but he had once again lost track of time. He removed the silver watch from his vest pocket and clicked it open. He had forgotten to wind it.
“Balthasar,” came a girl’s voice. Aemilia ran down the jungle path, smiling and waving, still wearing the nondescript gray traveling clothes required by the academy for all non-bonded dragons. It fit everyone as well as a burlap sack, and, Balthasar remembered involuntarily scratching his neck, was just as comfortable. Aemilia’s fit a touch better than average and enhanced by the black and yellow sash indicating her lineage as a Stormcloud.
“Aemilia,” was all Balthasar could say before she bowled into him, embracing him with such enthusiasm that she nearly knocked them both to the ground. She squeezed. Balthasar coughed.
“Welcome home, it’s wonderful to see you. I didn’t expect the academy would allow you to attend so close to Xiamentarisia.”
Aemilia released her embrace, taking a step backward to inspect him. Her gray green eyes flashed with humor and intelligence. Balthasar wondered what color they would be after she bonded her dragon and suppressed a pang of sadness that they would change.
“My father donated the new library,” Aemilia laughed “I think the Airene forbade the Head Mistress from objecting.”
Balthasar grinned, Aemilia’s exuberance was always infectious. “I suppose that’s true. Power and prestige has its privileges.” The Airene, the dragon’s High Priestess, was supposed to be the supreme power in draconic culture, but the power and clout of the Stormclouds reached high.
Aemilia elbowed him in the ribs, “Hey now, I work hard.”
“I heard, top of your class, maybe you’ll bond a gold and join the scholars.” Balthasar rubbed his ribs, “You have sharp elbows. Are they feeding you enough at the academy?”
Aemilia rolled her eyes. “You’d like that wouldn’t you? Me squirreled away in an ivory tower amongst a bunch of stodgy academicians. Or a blue, can you imagine?”
“Ha!” Balthasar retorted, “you’d make a fine scholar, and a fine blue. You could be my research assistant.”
“And listen to you boss me around all day? No chance! I’m going to bond a red or a purple.”
“The academy is turning you into a soldier, are they?”
“They’re not turning me into anything. I want to be a soldier in my sister’s army and bring new moons into the Solan Empire to win glory for my family.”
“You’d leave behind your studies to grow the humans’ empire?”
“It is also my sister’s empire, is it not?”
Balthasar wasn’t sure about that, but he didn’t say it. The Solaric emperors had been powerful enough to force draconic parliament to sign the Treaty of Matrimony and Aetherial Regulation. He wondered if Empress Octavia Stormcloud-Callire was much more than a prisoner to ensure the dragons kept their aetherial magic in check.
“It is,” was all he said.
Aemilia moved with surprising speed, hooking her leg behind Balthasar’s knee, sending him toppling backward into the loamy soil. As Balthasar fought for breath, Aemilia rolled on top of his chest, pinning his biceps with her knees while grasping his wrists in one hand above his head; the forearm of her other arm rested stiff against his throat.
“See?” she smiled down at him.
Balthasar tried to nod but found it difficult. “Impressive.”
Her face was suddenly very close to his. Her dark hair had come undone during their tumble and enshrouded their faces like a delicate curtain. He could smell the lavender and rosewater of her perfume as they inhaled and exhaled the same air. Her thighs tightened against his chest.
They stared at one another for a long moment before Aemilia cleared her throat, rising abruptly. She extended a hand to help him up but would not meet his eye. Aemilia’s lack of a reptilian form made her seem a child, even though only six years separated them in age and she would bond a dragon next week.
“A purple, huh?” Balthasar brushed dirt from his clothes to hide the flush in his cheeks. Aemilia didn’t seem to notice but prattled on about academy rankings and probabilities and Xiamentarisia. He could barely remember life without the bond to Vezzarrhuk’ti.
Could a person really grow up in the span of a week? Balthasar wondered, then remembered his own ceremony, five years prior. Yes, I suppose they can.
Balthasar realized Aemilia was watching him expectantly, waiting for an answer to a question he had not heard.
“I’m sorry, what?” he said.
Aemilia chuckled, “Are all scholars as fuzzy-headed as you?”
“Not all,” Balthasar chuffed.
“I asked how Vezza is.”
“He’s…” Balthasar struggled for words, “He’s a dragon, you know, a hot-blooded reptile.”
“That’s it?”
Balthasar watched Aemilia. She met his gaze, then looked away, color rising in her cheeks. Then again, he was a man with a dragon, and her whole life up to this point revolved around the draconic ceremony of Xiamentarisia.
He shrugged, “I think he’s ready to move on from here. So much time in one place, even a scholastic dragon like Vezza gets bored.”
“What?” Aemilia said in mock surprise, “he doesn’t find Dryad Spiders fascinating?”
Balthasar swatted at her with his notebook, but Aemilia danced out of the way, “Did you come down here to make fun of my research?”
“No, I came to tell you the party is about to begin.”
“I saw the Bronzewater dirigible.”
“Ah yes,” Aemilia’s tone was wicked, “the great Rehmalika Bronzewater graces our house with her presence.”
“Have you met her? Is she as arrogant as her reputation?”
“She’s a dragon, Bale,” Aemilia said, using Balthasar’s childhood nickname.
“I’m not so stuffy as that, am I?”
“Please, I’ve seen you give lectures.”
“Hey, what about my lectures?”
“Nothing,” she poked him, “I love them. I’ve never slept so well in my life.” Balthasar laughed now, a roaring guffaw that left no doubt he was a dragon. Aemilia patted his face.
“Not you, Bale, you’re exceptional, I mean, the exception, of course.”
“Don’t you think it’s ridiculous that dragons ride around in dirigibles?”
“It’s tradition. House Bronzewater is nothing if not traditional.”
As if on cue, a great beating of leathery wings filled the air. Firebirds, phoenixes, and macaws took flight from verdant treetops, suddenly tossed about subject to a great gale. Balthasar shielded his eyes against the setting sun. The moon of Karis filled the northern sky. Moments later, the largest dragon Balthasar had ever seen roared over the treetops, a brilliant metallic white. Its flashing scales temporarily blinded him.
Solaurumahkti. Balthasar realized. Rehmalika’s platinum dragon. He had never met Rehmalika Bronzewater, but she had been a legend in the academy. Only twice in recorded history had anyone successfully bonded a platinum. Metallic dragons were rare. Only polychrome dragons occurred with less frequency. The metals were larger than their matte brethren, and Solaurumahkti did not disappoint. From nose to tail she stretched three hundred feet, but somehow managed gracefully despite her ponderous weight.
The dragon banked above them, one silver eye taking them in. She roared, filling the air with crackling lightning and the smell of ozone. Balthasar squealed in delight and squeezed Aemilia’s hand. Everything within him called out to his dragon, pulled him toward the open sky, urged him to swap places with Vezza and fly. He looked at Aemilia with what must have been a stupid, gleeful expression. She was not watching Solaurumahkti, but glaring at Balthasar. The air, charged with dragon’s breath, made her hair stand on end. Balthasar realized that his too stood straight out from his arms, neck, and head. He laughed despite the anger so clear in Aemilia’s face.
Could she not feel it? The joy? The tension as if wings might erupt from her very back? No, he supposed, not yet.
Solaurumahkti circled them once more, metal talons gleaming pink in the evening light, before disappearing behind the trees that hid the manor from the view of the coffee fields.
“What a dragon!” Balthasar breathed.
“Had to make an entrance,” Aemilia complained.
“She has a different placoid scale pattern.”
“It’s no purple.”
“It’s much larger and more majestic than a purple,” Balthasar said before he could catch himself. Aemilia let out a startled gasp, and Balthasar colored.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that I’ve never seen a platinum before.”
“It’s fine,” Aemilia said, though Balthasar had enough sense to know it was decidedly not fine.
“Shall we join the celebration now that the bride-to-be has arrived?”
“Yes, of course.”
Balthasar picked up his notebook and shoved it into his satchel, offering her his arm.
“Lead the way, my Lady.”
Aemilia hated being called by her title, and so Balthasar used it now to draw her good mood back out by teasing her. It worked. Her smile returned. “Ah, my Lord, puh puh puh, right this way, my Lord, puh puh puh.”
Balthasar offered her his arm. She took it and they started up the path through the jungle toward the manor.
“Your impression of a stodgy old dragon is excellent.” She pushed him, but it turned into more of a lean. “You’re not going in those clothes are you?”
“I only have these clothes,” Balthasar looked down at his grimy, dirt-streaked shirt and breeches. “They looked a lot better before you attacked me.”
“No, they really didn’t. I think the dirt might be an improvement. Is that spider goo on your breeches? Gross!”
There was a sticky stain on his knee, Balthasar realized. “It really is fascinating stuff,” he said, “there are so many applications, I…”
“Save it, Professor,” Aemilia said.
Balthasar grinned truculently, “Fair enough.”
“Save the spiders for tomorrow. You’ll go out to the fens then, right? Take me with you. I want to see the buggers.”
“It can be quite dangerous.”
“I can’t imagine it to be that dangerous with the great Balthasar and Vezza to protect me. Plus, I can manage myself.”
“I don’t know if your father—”
“Please, my father is too busy politicking to even notice I’m home. Come on. Take me with you.”
“Fine,” Balthasar said.
Aemilia clapped her hands together with glee. How much innocence will she lose through Xiamentarisia, Balthasar wondered.
“Now, let’s get you some clothes. I’m sure my brother will have something in his wardrobe that doesn’t hang off your bony frame.”
“I’m not that skinny.”
Aemilia looked him up and down from the corner of her eye, “Just make sure you get seconds tonight before my brother does.”
‘Celebration’ Balthasar reflected later that night, was not a word invented by dragons. He sat alone at the edge of the party, close enough to the grand buffet that he could sneak back to it and load his plate once more before any of the staff whisked away his silverware. Members of first- and second-tier dragon families stood in groups speaking in polite, muted tones, their faces impassive as if an expression of marital bliss might betray a secret political machination or diplomatic intrigue.
Musicians and poets stalked the crowd; Seraphs, their wings gilded in matrimonial gold. The musicians were tolerated, the poets mostly waved away. It wasn’t that draconic culture eschewed poetry, just the opposite. Poetic verse was revered, much too revered for a Rite of Betrothal. It was opulence from House Stormcloud to invite poets here. It was an acknowledgement of that opulence to waive said poet away before uttering any verse.
Balthasar let out a long sigh at the utter foolishness of it all. He’d rather be thigh-deep in jungle mud identifying arachnids than hobnobbing with aristocratic dragons. He picked up his book to dive in once more. Soon enough he would return to the jungle with Aemilia. The latter thought made him tug at his borrowed collar to release sudden heat.
“Do you find my betrothal boring?”
Balthasar started at the sound of a woman’s voice so near. Where had she come from?
Rehmalika Bronzewater stood beside him, her pale hands resting on the back of the chair that bore Balthasar’s feet. Two platinum cuffs glinted beneath the flared white lace of her sleeves. He risked a look back toward the high table. Balthasar’s brooding cousin Virgil Stormcloud watched them. Even from across the courtyard he could see the covetousness in Virgil’s inebriated expression.
“M’lady,” Balthasar stammered, knocking over his chair in his haste to rise and make the required obeisance.
He bowed low, “May Zalivex the Serpent God smile upon your union.”
Rehmalika bowed, but only slightly.
“Is he watching?”
She did not give him permission to rise, so he stayed bowed, watching stitcher ants make their chemical pathways through the manicured lawn.
“He is, m’lady.”
“Good,” her voice was cold, even for a dragon, and Balthasar flinched.
“Rise, Sir Balefire. I would join you at the table.”
Above them acrobats flipped and swung, dangling from the branches of a towering Flynt Mahogany, whose height was eclipsed only by Storm Tower in the northwest corner of the estate, and that only because the patriarch trimmed the tree to make it thus.
“You would—Of course, Lady Bronzewater.” He could not refuse. Half the guests would be pretending not to watch, while watching every nuance intently. She glanced down at the cushion where Balthasar’s feet had been. His eyes followed hers to a smear of mud left by his shoes. Virgil’s shoes had been much too large for Balthasar to safely walk in, and so he still wore his hiking boots. When he realized his error, he moved swiftly to brush it away. When he was finished, Rehmalika snatched the cushion and tossed it aside before grabbing another and placing it on the chair. Balthasar watched her for some sign of irritation but her pale skin was as unblemished and unreadable as the travertine pilasters flanking the courtyard. Rehmalika sat and motioned for Balthasar to do the same. He sank into his chair, grateful not to be holding up his own weight. He marshaled his own stoic demeanor as best he could, but he felt the color rising in his cheeks.
“Are you embarrassed to be seen with me, Sir Balefire?” she asked when she had finished arranging her copious skirts.
“Please, m’lady, call me Balthasar.” Balthasar sucked in a breath, “And no, m’lady, only surprised that you made the trip across the courtyard to speak with me.”
“Then I insist you call me Lady Bronzewater. Is this not my Rite of Betrothal? I will not allow court gossips to whisper that I slighted a guest.”
“I should have come to you, Lady Bronzewater, at the end of the night, as is the custom for representatives of fourth-tier households.”
“Ah yes,” she skewered a grape from his plate with one manicured nail and popped it into her mouth. Balthasar gaped at her impropriety before recognizing his own and shutting his mouth.
“Can I offer you a plate?” he asked.
The shake of her head was nearly imperceptible even to another dragon, perfect court manners.
“Did his face turn purple?”
It took Balthasar a moment to remember whom she was speaking of. He glanced toward Virgil. There was indeed color in his cheeks, but from the booze or the blunder, Balthasar did not know. His own head spun despite his sobriety.
Who is this woman? Does she think this will illicit Virgil’s passion? That was a question he dared not ask. Food from someone’s plate would be a spirited court rumor for a couple of days until something else inane and meaningless stole the spotlight. But to ask a betrothed woman about her husband’s proclivities would bring most, if not all, of the good things in his life to an abrupt end.
She waited patiently for his response. “He is, Lady Bronzewater. Why—”
“Very well,” she interrupted, “why are you here?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re the youngest child of a fourth-tier house, by what right do you claim entry here?”
“Virgil and his siblings are my cousins.”
“Except that isn’t true, is it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I noticed you did not say. Byron and Vanessa Stormcloud are your aunt and uncle.”
“I confess the relation is more distant than that.”
“Of course it is. If it were not, Balefire would be on equal footing with Bronzewater.”
Balthasar inclined his head slightly.
“My mother, Lucinda Balefire, formerly Lucinda Winghaven, is three generations from Rianna Winghaven, who married Byron’s great-grandfather Bretton after his first wife, Corinne Spandrel, jumped from that tower,” Balthasar nodded toward Storm Tower, “when Damon Holythunder cast out the Spandrel’s from Flynt.”
“So, you are a scholar?”
“Were you under some other impression?”
“I thought perhaps you were an assassin.”
He gazed at her, gobsmacked. What is she accusing me of? There was nothing in her silver eyes that suggested anger. Her face was without blemish. Were it not for the rise and fall of her breath and the occasional reptilian blink, someone might accuse him of speaking to a statue. He might have believed them. That sat that way for a long time. Is she waiting for a confession?
Then he saw it. The left side of her mouth quirked upward for the briefest instant. If he weren’t a dragon himself, accustomed to occasional court appearances, he would have missed it. She was teasing him. He let out a breath, steadying himself by gripping the table. He looked down at his half-empty plate of thirds and his book to compose himself.
My book! He realized. Lifeblood: The Sanguine and the Aetherial. How have I been so obtuse!?
“You are bonded to Solaurumahkti, a platinum dragon,” he said at length. “You must be the most powerful wielder of aetherial magic in the room, perhaps in the Empire.” Balthasar noticed other guests staring now. He looked at the high table. Virgil was not in his seat.
“I see your academy training has served you well.”
There it was again! That quirk indicated sarcasm this time. Balthasar did not think he could control the muscles in his face well enough to make such a minute gesture. Everyone who knew anything about dragons knew the metallics were masters of aetherial magic. He felt the spark of intrigue light within him then. Who is this woman? In his experience, private conversations with dragons from families of Bronzewater stature did not happen often, but in the handful he’d had no one had ever told a joke. Let alone two; back-to-back.
“Our time is limited,” Rehmalika cut into his thoughts, “Tell me about your research.”
Finally, Balthasar swam in familiar waters. “On Dryad Spiders? I would be happy to provide you with a summary or send you the research before publication. Your insight as a platinum would be most welcome, Lady Bronzewater.”
She held up a hand to stay his enthusiasm. Balthasar flinched as a nearby guest gasped at the rudeness. They would assume he had said something offensive, not that she had overreacted.
“Not here,” she said. “Do you have an office or a laboratory on the grounds? My entourage and I will visit tomorrow.”
“I am afraid I work out of an empty wing of a servant’s bunkhouse. It would be no place for a Lady. I was going to head to the fens tomorrow to observe the spiders, but perhaps a report in the sitting room after tea. I can go to the fens on Besday, provided it does not rain.”
“Might I interrupt?” Balthasar looked up to see Virgil glowering down at them. He grasped a carved silver chalice in one hand and leaned on Aemilia for support with the other.
“My father says it is time for toasts.”
Balthasar shot to his feet, rattling his silverware in his haste. He bowed lower this time. Two Stormclouds loomed above him. Aemilia did not seem angry. Neither did she smile at him as was her wont. Lady Bronzewater also rose and bowed, though with deliberate practice.
“Do not be angry with Sir Balefire, my betrothed,” she said. “My interest in his research caught him off guard. He meant no offense. You know how enthusiastic scholars can be.”
“Rise, cousin,” Virgil ordered. Balthasar rose from his bow.
Balthasar suspected Virgil was too angry with him to notice the shower of minute indignities his betrothed heaped upon him. The set of her shoulders, the nearly imperceptible drop in her tone, the fact that she used the standard imperial word ‘betrothed’ instead of the draconic ‘meniphexa,’ which translated loosely as ‘star-sworn’.
“I trust Balthasar answered your questions,” Aemilia said. The steel in her voice let Balthasar know that she too noticed Rehmalika’s slights. “Master Victorinus is here from the Institute in Polaris, if Sir Balefire’s responses were incomplete.”
Balthasar bit down on his cheek to keep from flinching at Aemilia’s rebuke.
“Quite the contrary,” Rehmalika said, “his insight into the uses of non-ferrous metal to enhance aetherial refinement during distillation was scintillating.”
Aemilia glared at him, and Balthasar did not miss the accusation in those eyes. You never indulge me.
Virgil was too preoccupied eyeing his intended spouse with new wolfish discernment to notice. Balthasar’s arm hair bristled. Balthasar had trouble remembering that Aemilia outranked Rehmalika. “We are flying to the fens tomorrow,” Rehmalika said, “I insisted on seeing these intriguing arachnids myself.”
“They’re dolophones, actually,” Balthasar corrected her before he could stop himself. “They are distant relations to arachnids and share some similarities.”
“We do not care about your insects, Bale,” Virgil said.
Aemilia was openly glaring now, and Bronzewater did not miss it, though her expression did not change.
“Distant relations? I’ve been learning a lot about those this evening.” She turned her attention to Virgil, “Don’t worry darling, he did his duty and refused, but I insisted. I will take my guards, and we are dragons.”
Virgil seemed at a loss. He clearly wanted to prohibit these plans, and he could have by right. Rehmalika Bronzewater was not yet a member of a first-tier family. But Balthasar suspected that telling Lady Bronzewater ‘no, because I said so’, would not go over well.
“That is not wise,” he said, “Tomorrow is the hunt. The hippoguarox has already been released. It is not safe.”
Lady Bronzewater rolled her eyes.
“I think Solaurumahkti can handle one hippoguarox. Besides Vezzaruhk’ti will be with us too.”
“A blue?” Virgil’s own red dragon was a common color. “Blues and golds are scholars. Last time I checked there were no hippoguaroxen roaming the library. If I need mold vanquished, or some boredom to sleep by, I shall summon Vezza.”
“Brother,” Aemilia said, “don’t be cruel. Vezza is a storied dragon in his own right.”
Virgil opened his mouth to breathe further insults, but Rehmalika was quicker.
“I will accompany Sir Balefire to the fens tomorrow. As a priestess of the Airene, I am tasked with generating a report on any creatures connected to aetherial magic. I am of course at your disposal, but know that the Airene will expect a better story about why I failed than the suggestion of an encounter with a hippoguarox.”
Virgil took a drink from his chalice to buy himself time. Balthasar wanted to ask if the Airene knew who he was, but for once, kept his mouth shut.
“Very well,” Virgil acquiesced, “but I will send some members of my guard to accompany you.”
“Of course,” Rehmalika practically purred, “a wise course, my betrothed. Shall we?” She offered Virgil her arm. He had to set his cup down to transfer his weight from his sister to his bride-to-be. Rehmalika continued to speak as she led him away, “I hear your father winding up for one of his infamous tales of the Spandrel’s War. Toasts is it?”
She is very clever.
Balthasar watched them go. As they approached the steps up to the high table, Balthasar startled to realize Aemilia still stood beside him, glowering. She could not come now, of course. Vezza and Solauri would fly, and Aemilia did not bond for another week. Neither had Lady Bronzewater invited her. Aemilia could insist of course, as a daughter of Lord Byron Stormwater.
But on what grounds? Balthasar wondered.
Any avenue would make her appear a truculent child, yelling ‘I wanna play’ from her crib, and by the look on her face, she knew it, too. She knew what Balthasar was thinking as well. The woman, whose presence commanded the entire room, intrigued him. Rehmalika knew intricacies of aetherial magic from Solaurumahkti that literally no one else did. Her presence seemed to linger well after she was gone. Come to think of it, Balthasar noticed Lady Bronzewater’s perfume did linger, honeysuckle, sage, and crisp ozone. With an apologetic look at Aemilia, he slipped from the celebration before the toasts began. Rehmalika had maneuvered perfectly to achieve her aims, and Aemilia had suffered the consequences. She blamed him, Balthasar knew. It pained him, but there was nothing he could do.
Balthasar lay awake on his bunk late into the night. His research assistant took the steam engine into the city on the weekends to visit a girlfriend, so Balthasar had the place to himself. Normally, he loathed that situation. Besides the two of them, the bunkhouse—enough space for forty servants—was empty. Positioned as it was on the southern edge of the estate, the jungle pushed right up against the eaves.
During the day, the two of them chased away monkeys and guided bombero wasps safely back outside, but at night the jungle transformed into something more sinister. The sighing of the trees became the moaning of tortured beasts, the howls of primates became the screams of those locked outside heavenly Avernus, the buzz of wings the insidious approach of an unseen death. It was melodramatic and blatantly untrue, Balthasar knew, but that didn’t stop him from leaping out of his cot on multiple occasions.
Twice he thought he heard the growling whisper of the hippoguarox and watched the windows for its blue/green aura. He had no intention for the hunt to come early or for it to involve him. In truth, he felt sorry for the hippoguarox, but he was certain the creature would have no such reservations about him. Fireworks woke him about an hour later, followed by rain so hard he thought the building might collapse.
He awoke to the pounding of a mailed fist, leaping to his feet, his shirt collar damp with sweat.
“Sir Balefire!” A man’s voice echoed against the soft palmwood of the door.
“Just a minute,” he called, pulling on his trousers. “I’ll be right there.”
He was still tying the laces of his breeches when he opened the door to see Lady Rehmalika Bronzewater flanked by two burly guards, one a brown, the other a red judging from their eyes.
“What time is it?” he asked, groggy.
“7 am.” Lady Bronzewater’s eyes scanned his face before she raised a delicate hand and smacked him hard on the temple.
“Ow, Djinnar’s blood, woman,” he swore. It was all he could do to hold onto his trousers and not smack his head on the doorframe.
The ring of steel echoed in the humid morning as both soldiers drew their blades.
“Mosquito,” Lady Bronzewater said, showing him the palm of her hand. A smashed insect lay pasted in the middle, along with a healthy amount of his blood. Her skin distracted him. Contrasted against his blood, it was blindingly white, but not translucent like an insect wing, nor rough like ivory. It was smooth and firm, like marble. His head rang as if he’d been hit with a brick.
“You will not use language like that in the presence of Lord Virgil Stormwater’s betrothed,” the red guard said.
Balthasar looked up abruptly, stammering, “Of course not, sir, my apologies.”
“What kind of bug is it?” Rehmalika asked.
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t look like the mosquitoes in Fyrehaven.”
“It isn’t,” Balthasar replied, “come in, breakfast?”
The soldiers sheathed their swords. The red stepped in first, then Rehmalika, then the brown. All three sniffed. Despite the voluminous cavern of wood and glass that was the old servant’s quarters, two graduate researchers had spent the summer in it after traipsing through the most humid jungles in the World System day in and day out.
“No, thank you for breakfast,” Rehmalika said. “What are you having?” The trio followed Balthasar into the kitchen, where he shook random boxes to see if they still contained food. When he found one, he inspected the package, “dried mango and fervix berries.” He looked up to see three pairs of eyes on three disgusted faces. He couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “We’re used to getting by on little.”
“There’s no protein in that,” the red said. Chatty, that one, Balthasar thought. “Sometimes we make lentils, but I figured you wanted to get moving. Beat the hunt.”
“The hunting party left an hour ago,” the brown said. Balthasar must have looked startled, because the two soldiers chuckled. “Don’t worry, big blue, we’ll keep you safe from the bad creatures of the jungle.”
Vezzaruhk’ti could hold his own, but against a hippoguarox it was the Balthasar half of the equation that was a problem. He noticed a wicked scimitar hanging from Rehmalika’s belt. She wore green trousers and a matching blouse, with a wide-brimmed slouch hat pinned up on one side with a platinum pin. She had pulled her dark hair up beneath the hat.
He tossed a handful of dried fruit into his mouth and withdrew into the old cleaning closet he and his assistant had repurposed into a library. He came back a moment later, still chewing, crumbs dribbling from his mouth, and grabbed Rehmalika’s hand. The soldiers drew their blades once more.
“Gentlemen,” Rehmalika gestured with her free hand, “despite my betrothed’s concerns, Sir Balefire is not the danger here. Please keep your animosity trained toward that big green leafy world of carnivores and magic spiders, and we will all make it through this day without losing an appendage. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” they grumbled in unison.
Balthasar inspected the smashed bug in her palm. His blood had lost some of its luster as it dried. “Behlian horned blood beetle.” Balthasar showed her the page. She took the book with her clean hand.
“What is it doing here?”
“They come over on the transport dirigibles sometimes, probably find this moon much more hospitable than Behl.”
“They would be correct,” Rehmalika said.
“You’ve been?”
“The Airene asked me to investigate a warren of lightning marmots.”
“That’s Manford’s research,” Balthasar said excitedly, pouring more dried fruit into his mouth. “You were there?”
“I visited the scene, like I’m doing here.”
“He didn’t mention you in the report.”
“Neither will you.”
Balthasar nodded.
“The Airene is interested in learning anything she can about aetherial magic as it presents in the wild. While our treaty with the Emperor constrains production and use, it says nothing of research.”
“You mean to hold knowledge over the Emperor in some future diplomatic exchange.”
Rehmalika shot furtive glances around the large kitchen-dining area as if an emissary of the emperor might step from the shadows. When none did, she turned back to Balthasar.
“That is what I mean, yes.”
Everyone knew aetherial magic was illegal under the Solan Emperors. Not that dragons could help it, Balthasar reflected, they had aether and astral dust coursing through their veins as a matter of biology. Aetherial magic was the magic of life, but employing it in one place meant taking it from somewhere else. His own research was allowed only under strict imperial protocols.
Rehmalika waited for him to gather his thoughts. He appreciated that about her. Most of Balthasar’s interlocutors were so impatient.
Why are dragons who live three to five centuries always in such a hurry? he wondered. “Does the emperor know of my research?”
“No.”
“Will he?”
“Depends on what we find.”
This time Balthasar waited.
She continued, “There are strict protocols that determine whether it is necessary to run a report up the chain of command.”
Balthasar leaned against the countertop. “So, this isn’t really a visit, it’s an inspection?”
Rehmalika gave a dragon shrug. “View it however you like.”
“Is there a chance you might shut my project down?”
“If the Airene ordered you to stop your research, would you refuse her command?”
“Of course not,” Balthasar said, but he knew it was a lie. He suspected Rehmalika did too. He suddenly found his enthusiasm for the outing waning.
“I’m not sure today is a good day to go,” he said. “Big rain last night will make the fens difficult. Especially for two soldiers in full plate.”
“I warned my betrothed of this very issue, but he wouldn’t hear of anything else. He doesn’t like you very much. Should I know why?”
“I am beneath his hatred. He is Virgil Stormcloud. Blood or no blood relation, he sees only the youngest child of a lower house reaching for his coattails.” He began to stutter when he realized he’d just said this aloud in front of two of Virgil’s soldiers.
“An arrogant dragon,” Rehmalika smiled, “how original. There now, if they report your insult, they’ll have to report mine.” She turned to give them both her best draconic smile. “I don’t think they’re going to do that.”
Rehmalika sighed. Balthasar thrilled. Not only were there layers to this woman, but she knew it too, and she could navigate them like flights of stairs to suit her needs. She was not like an onion to be peeled back and observed, but a puzzle box whose moves changed at her whim.
“No, ma’am,” they said once more in unison.
“Alright, shall we go?”
Balthasar returned to his bunk to grab his hat and pack. He searched the room for a weapon in case of a chance encounter with a hippoguarox, but found none. He took his field knife from his pack and placed it into his pocket. It made him feel a touch safer.
The quartet traipsed out the door of the servant’s quarters into the cleared land between the building and the coffee fields. They followed a muddy path westward, their boots squelching in the wet earth. The grounds were quiet save a gentle wind rustling high in the treetops. The usual cacophony of birds and monkeys from the dense foliage was silent because of the hunters crashing somewhere through the jungle’s depths.
The path led them up a steep hill, through damp ferns and chiming bamboo. The summit was rocky and bare, providing a decent view of the landscape between them and the fens. Balthasar pointed out the landmarks in case they got separated. Before he could offer to lead the way, Rehmalika smiled at him, then ran and leapt off the edge of the cliff on the leeward side. Balthasar rushed to the edge to watch. It was a fifty-foot drop to the tops of the trees below. Rehmalika fell poised like a diver, her body parallel to the ground, arms wide. In a flash of lightning, her body disappeared.
A split second later Solaurumakhti roared into existence, her ponderous belly scraping the heights of the kapok trees. He watched as the massive platinum dragon wheeled above them, screeching in delight. Virgil’s soldiers rushed to join their charge, not that Balthasar could imagine a scenario where the great beast needed assistance, but duty was duty he supposed. A sleek red and a weighty brown assumed positions just ahead of Solaurumakhti’s wings. Balthasar spent a moment admiring the sight before backing up and taking a running leap off the summit, somersaulting in mid-air, then disappearing as Vezzaruhk’ti burst out of Holoxia to join the flock.
The four dragons cruised low over the jungle canopy toward the fens. To the north, Vezza smelled other dragons on the hunt, and the adrenaline-fueled fear of their prey as it crashed through the underbrush somewhere off to their right. Vezza ignored the commotion of that pursuit, knowing that Balthasar intended the distant fens as their destination. As the bond between a human and dragon matured, they were more aware of each other’s desires and even succeeded at rudimentary communication. While Vezza soared, Balthasar languished in the cocoon that was the plane of Holoxia. Man and dragon never occupied the same plane at the same time. He was vaguely aware of his own body, whose autonomic nervous system switched into torpor, reducing respiration and metabolism during this strange suspension. But Balthasar’s mind experienced Flynt through the heightened senses of the dragon.
Vezza was smaller and faster than his comrades, and so he soon took the lead, but kept looking back over his shoulder to admire Solaurumahkti. He had never met a platinum and his inquisitive nature filled him with questions, but the roar of the wind and her indifference to him made it an inappropriate time to ask. Familiar smells wafted on the wind; the tang of metal, sweetgrass, and perspiration. A horse and rider on the jungle road, moving at speed in their direction. Vezza’s stomach rumbled, but Balthasar’s will pressed him forward.
We eat back at the estate, Bale pressed upon his bonded partner. Vezza obliged. Barely half an hour passed before the edge of the fens came into view. A webbed mat of algae and lily pads floated on the brackish, tannin-brown water. The still water twinned the moon Karis, bright enough to be visible in the morning sky despite the harsh sunlight. Vezza did not like to muddy his feet and so initiated the swap two feet above the ground. Balthasar, caught unprepared, splashed down into the tepid muck. He sat down hard on a tangle of roots, soaking his pants and spluttering with frustration.
A dragon who doesn’t want to get dirty, Balthasar thought at his partner, unbelievable.
You requested field research, Vezza chided. I was perfectly happy in the library.
Balthasar could hear the other dragons chuckling above him. Then they, too, descended and phased out of the material realm, delivering their human forms more gracefully than Balthasar, landing neatly on their feet. Bale hefted his pack and waded through the shallows toward the stand of trees and rocks that comprised the spider warren.
Twenty yards from the warren, the ground rose enough to make dry land. Balthasar removed his boots, dumping the swamp water from them. He plucked a pair of leeches from his ankle and tossed them back into the fen. Rehmalika seemed not to mind the mud rising to her knees. She waited patiently while the rest of the party composed themselves. The two soldiers, as Balthasar had predicted, had to remove their plate mail or risk sinking into the soft earth.
Balthasar usually came out via the jungle road. While that took several hours, it was easier on the spiders. The presence of reptilian dragons agitated the creatures. He guessed the aetherial magic latent in the spiders reacted to the aether present in dragons. When human and reptile swapped, it created a large spike in the aetherial field, which was noticed by those creatures attuned to that type of magic. Balthasar looked around to gather his bearings.
Wisps of last night’s webbing glittered silver in the sunlight. Balthasar scanned the lower branches of the nearby trees and counted half a dozen Dryad Spiders, each the size of his palm. Their hairy, bark-like bodies flattened against the trees in near perfect camouflage.
“Are they here?” Rehmalika asked.
“They are,” Balthasar approached the nearest and pointed. “They spend most of the day hidden, flat against the trees, and are more active at night. These webs were built last night and mostly devoured this morning. They reuse their silk as it is a complex protein and metabolically expensive to produce.” He poked one. It hissed.
“Fascinating,” she said, drawing closer for a better look. The spider’s abdomen was an inverted disc covered with smaller discs that could release air, so that it lay completely flat, its legs drawn up around it. Its mottled coloring mimicked the lichen- and moss-covered bark surrounding them, making it almost impossible for predators to spot the creatures. After three months of observing them, Balthasar had trained himself to spot them more easily, but he was certain there were many he missed.
“How many are there?” Rehmalika asked.
Balthasar shrugged, “Hard to say. Thirty or forty in a warren.”
“And the aether?”
“It is related to the webbing. They reuse the webbing but it’s not like a spool winding and unwinding. In the evenings, they spin their webs, and in the morning they devour them. The webbing is broken down inside their bodies into pre-webbing, then
excreted again at night along with a formative agent that causes a chemical reaction that makes the pre-webbing fibrous again.”
“And it is this pre-webbing you’re interested in?”
“The webbing is reactive to aetherial magic and seems to contain some of its own.” He explained how the spiders behaved around reptilian dragons, and his theories about the spiders using their pre-webbing as both the focus and wellspring of their aetherial magic, trying to avoid too much alchemical jargon, but he found Rehmalika had no difficulty following his explanations.
She stepped closer to him, filling his nostrils with the scent of fresh rain, “So, these spiders don’t need a third-party source from which to drain aether? They can use aetherial magic without harvesting from someone or something else?”
Balthasar struggled to regain his focus. “I-I believe so. By re-ingesting their own webs, they can use that as both source and focus. I suspect this grants them their extraordinary lifespan.”
How does the woman smell so good in the middle of the jungle? He wondered.
“What do you mean?”
“They can live up to forty years. After that, the web recycling process breaks down and they die.”
“Have you collected any pre-webbing?”
Balthasar could feel her hot breath on the side of his face. Clearing his throat, he gave a brief, stuttering overview of his attempts to isolate certain compounds in the pre-webbing to augment the aetherial potency of certain foci, explaining how so far he had met with little success.
“Why do you think that is?”
“Not sure. Could be a couple of different things.”
“Such as?” she pressed closer, her eyes on the spider before them.
“The quantity of pre-webbing may be too great, the specific bioaetherial markers don’t match, other compounds in the Dryad Spider’s body may function as chemical or magical catalysts.”
“What does that mean?”
Balthasar grabbed Rehmalika’s hand as she reached to prod one. Her skin was smooth and cool despite the humidity.
“I haven’t been able to completely separate the pre-webbing from the bile that makes it fibrous, or it could be something in their venom.”
“They’re poisonous? You might have led with that!”
Balthasar laughed, still holding Rehmalika’s hand. “They’re not lethal. Their bites are more irritating than anything else. The wound site will itch and swell, and you’ll feel lethargic for a day or two, but that’s all.” He coughed and dropped her hand, then rolled up his sleeve to show her two small puncture wounds in his forearm. They were healing nicely, thanks to his meticulous cleaning.
“Why haven’t you been able to isolate the fibrous compound?”
“Collection error mostly.” He gestured at the palm-sized spider. “Their abdomens contain their venom sac, slightly behind the eyes, then the pre-webbing sac is tucked beside the bile duct containing the fibrous chemical. It’s difficult, given their scale and the proximity of so many fluids to collect one without contamination from the others.” Rehmalika caught Balthasar’s eye. “You need a bigger spider.”
Balthasar grinned. “We do.”
To be continued August 7th, 2026….
