'They probably think Albekizan spilt the first blood at the Free City,' said Jandra. 'Let me go inside as your ambassador. I'll talk to the leader. Find out his demands.'
Shandrazel took his head. 'My spies say the leader is a survivor of the Free City named Ragnar. He's a religious fanatic who would rather die than make peace with dragons. His only demand, from what I told, is that all dragons be slain. You can see why I've no interest in accommodating him.'
'If what you say is true and I can't convince this Ragnar to make peace, then you won't have to kill thousands to stop this rebellion,' she said. 'It sounds as if one person might be enough.'
'Yes,' Shandrazel said, perking up. 'Yes, if you killed Ragnar, the others would break. It's only his charisma that holds their army together. If you kill him, victory is assured.'
'I didn't volunteer to be your assassin,' said Jandra. 'I'm going in to talk. After I speak to him, I'll give thought to the appropriate actions.'
'Do it,' said Shandrazel. 'I give you full authority to undertake this mission.'
'Shall I fly you there?' Hex asked.
'No,' said Jandra, fading into invisibility. 'I'm in the mood for a little walk.'
Chapter Thirty-One:
Revelations
The snow crunched beneath Jandra's boots as she hiked toward the fortress. The day was at its end. Long shadows painted the ground, and the dark clouds beyond Dragon Forge were tinted red. Here among the gleaner mounds, the winter evening was silent and peaceful. As she'd walked toward the fortress, she'd built dozens of hopeful scenarios in her mind, plausible, logical ways that this siege could end without further blood being spilled.
As she walked past the gleaner mound, she spotted the corpse of an earth-dragon. His body was riddled with arrows. His eyes were frozen open in death. From the scrapes in the mud behind him, she surmised he had crawled hundreds of yards in an attempt to escape the assault on Dragon Forge and return to Shandrazel's camp before finally succumbing to his wounds.
Her optimism that further violence could be avoided was suddenly rattled. Earth-dragons wouldn't soon forget this infamous day. Could she blame them? They'd want revenge. Would evicting the rebels from Dragon Forge be enough to calm them? Earth-dragons were such alien, stoic beings, it was hard to say. Perhaps there was still hope of peace, despite the atrocities committed by the humans.
She walked past the dead earth-dragon and found herself in the presence of another corpse only a dozen yards away. Her stomach tightened as she recognized that this twisted thing before her had once been a sun-dragon, like Hex or Shandrazel. The great beast had hit the ground so hard its body was half buried in the red clay. Only a single crimson wing, largely intact and jutting into the air like a sail, instantly identified the hill of flesh before her as a member of the royal race.
She knew, in her gut, that all hope of a peaceful solution was gone. Albekizan had launched genocide over the death of his son, Bodiel. Today, countless sons, brothers, and fathers had been slaughtered by rebel bows. The sun-dragons would now be a race of Albekizans. Human blood would be spilled throughout the kingdom if swift justice wasn't visited upon the rebels.
She bit her lower lip, knowing what she had to do. She'd undertaken this mission as a diplomat. Shandrazel wanted her to be his assassin. Could she bring an end to this madness by killing, or at least capturing, Ragnar?
'Oh, Ven,' she sighed. 'What would you do if you were asked to be an assassin?'
But, of course, she knew his answer. Vendevorex had confessed to her that he'd served as Albekizan's assassin multiple times. Indeed, he'd killed her own family at Albekizan's orders, simply to demonstrate his power. Her life story proved that when asked to be an assassin, Vendevorex had answered, 'Of course, sire.'
It was strange to think of Vendevorex as a killer. He'd always been so kind to her. Indeed, she'd never seen Vendevorex show cruelty toward anyone. Though perhaps the most powerful dragon in the kingdom, he hadn't abused his abilities. He never acted in anger, nor had she ever known him to hold a grudge. When Vendevorex had decided to use his powers to kill, he made the decision based on logic, and only acted when he felt that resorting to violence would serve some greater good.
She could almost hear his counsel now. 'Killing one man might spare the lives of tens of thousands if a wider war breaks out.'
By the time she reached the eastern gate, she'd convinced herself. She was no longer here as a diplomat. Invisibly, she approached the bloodied wood of the eastern gate. The giant wooden structure looked as if it had been knocked flat, then hastily rebuilt. The ground had been trampled into a gory muck that sucked at her boots. The stench of vomit hung heavy in the air, making her eyes water.
Standing ankle deep in the dark mire, the air full of death, she remembered how she'd stood on the oily beach, cradling the dying seagull. Killing for the greater good wouldn't be murder. Only, they weren't her hands that held the seagull, were they? And it hadn't been her decision. Those memories belonged to Jazz. She shook her head to try to push back the alien thoughts.
She touched the wood of the gate, impregnating it with her nanites. She allowed a few seconds for the tiny machines to slip between the molecules, then willed a hole to appear. A rough rectangle five feet high and two feet wide crumbled to sawdust. She ducked to step inside the gate and glanced back at the mound of pulverized wood, like a puzzle formed of a million impossibly tiny pieces. She could see in her mind's eye how all these pieces had fit together only seconds before. With a nod, the sawdust rose and swirled as her nanites lifted it on magnetic pulses. In seconds, the hole began to close. A moment later, the door was restored, as if she had never touched it.
Shandrazel's camp had been silent as a morgue. Even with the sun down, Dragon Forge was noisy. Men shouted back and forth, hammers struck metal, and dozens of carts rolled toward a central furnace, all loaded with the bodies of earth-dragons. The stink inside was even worse than outside, as the aroma of two-thousand unbathed men mixed with the other odors.
She wasn't certain how best to locate Ragnar. She'd met him briefly in the Free City-he'd been the naked, wild-eyed prophet Pet credited with saving his life. She'd instantly disliked him. He manifested every unpleasant trait the dragons attributed to humans. He'd been dirty, irrational, and brutish. How had such a man bested an army of dragons?
Then she heard a familiar voice from above. She looked up. The wall here was thirty feet high. She couldn't see who was talking, but was certain she knew the speaker.
'Pet!' she shouted out, losing all caution. Could he really be part of this rebellion?
Some of the men in the street glanced in the direction of her voice. Seeing nothing due to her aura of invisibility, they turned away.
A soldier in a tattered cloak leaned over the wall, staring down where she stood. This man's face was misshaped, his nose bent and broken, his scabby brow knotty and bruised. His chin and cheeks were covered in a scraggly beard. Her heart sank. It wasn't Pet.
The stranger asked, 'Jandra?' He pushed the hood of his cloak back, revealing a head full of golden hair, greasy and matted. His face was smudged by mud and blood and soot. Yet, as torchlight caught his eyes, she saw they were the same blue as a sky-dragon's scales. She only knew one man with such breathtaking eyes.
'Pet?' she asked.
'It's me,' he answered. He dropped his voice to a whisper. 'What are you doing here?'
'That's what I was going to ask you!'
'I'm fighting to free mankind from dragons,' he said. He disappeared back over the wall. She heard him say, 'Take over up here, Vance.' An instant later, Pet reappeared at a nearby ladder. He slid down the ladder rails in a fluid move that reminded Jandra of the first time she'd met him, when he'd performed as an acrobat.
'When did you get all militant?' Jandra asked. Pet approached with such confidence she wondered if he could see her.
'Since Shandrazel started torturing helpless women,' he said, now speaking to the empty air a few feet to her left. 'Since he outlawed all weapons for humans, then threw me in the dungeon as a traitor for standing up to him.'
'Torturing women?'
'Yes. The Sister of the Serpent we captured.'
