The building shuddered and groaned, coming to life. Ari pushed herself as hard as she could, the Revos from the refinery still hot on her tail. But she was several steps ahead, literally and figuratively. She knew how the building would sway and fall. She knew the way to run to narrowly miss the first colossal beam collapsing. Once more, it all came down to numbers: the number of load-bearing pillars, the weight distribution of the structure, the probability of how the collapse would occur.
The second she crossed onto the other side of the smoke and chaos, Ari dropped down into an alleyway. She’d had her grand finale. Now it was time for her to do as her namesake and disappear like a wraith with the dawn.
Ari didn’t have any safe houses in New Dortam. She could never feel safe in an area that worked so closely with the Dragons, their Royuk language was used as commonly as Fennish. Even if her eyes could make sense of the rectangles, lines, and dots, she avoided reading the Dragon notices and advertisements plastered on buildings.
Well, almost.
“That looks nothing like me.” Ari squinted at the drawing of a lithe and long-haired woman on a wanted poster that had White Wraith written in bold Royuk below, along with an impressive sum of dunca. The reward for her head had gone up, Ari noted with pride. She tore the notice off the wall. Florence would find amusement in it as well.
An unnatural scream tore through the sky, followed by a fast zip. Wind rushed through the alleyways and fluttered the mostly folded paper in her hands. Ari scowled at the rainbow trail glittering through the pale morning clouds.
Bloody Dragon Rider. What in the Five Guilds was going on to get a Rider involved? Ari felt in her bag for the three tubes she’d swiped from the refinery. It was a capital offense to engage in the illegal transport or harvesting of reagents, but that shouldn’t merit the King’s Riders.
A second time, the heavens themselves sounded like they were being torn apart as a Dragon descended from the sky world of Nova. The Dragon’s mechanical gliders swept arcs of magic across the impenetrable clouds that separated Loom and Nova as they darted over the city. Ari pressed the wanted poster into her breast pocket. She’d stick to the original plan. Now was not the time for panic or over-calculation.
The sewer systems of New Dortam funneled together into the older, original system in Old Dortam. Ari headed in a straight line, sticking to alleyways and hastening across the slowly crowding streets she couldn’t avoid. Eventually, she knew she’d hit a main line access, or she’d run into Old Dortam. She’d lost the Revo grunts from the refineries. So long as she moved quickly and confidently, people wouldn’t notice the unorthodox clockwork gearbox and chest harness she wore. People only ever saw what they expected, rarely what was actually there.
Ari rounded the corner of a back alley near her expected sewer entry, and came to a dead stop.
Shingles littered the ground, scattered underneath a prone Dragon. Ari’s breathing quickened, her goggles flaring brightly with the Dragon’s magical presence. Slowly, she reached for the sharper of her daggers.
The Dragon’s steel blue flesh was covered in the shining glow of a corona. It looked like the scales of a sea serpent, sparkling with its own unnatural brightness, and would render even her sharpest golden dagger useless no matter how much magic she put behind it. Ari inched around the opposite wall, her eyes tracking the Dragon the entire time.
He didn’t move. She couldn’t even tell if he was breathing despite being only a short peca away. Ari dared to creep forward, and luck rewarded her.
Exhausted, the Dragon’s corona flashed and disappeared as the golden bracers that sustained the protective magic cracked and fell from around his wrists. Still, the Dragon did not stir. His head and heart were intact, so no matter what state he appeared to be in, he was certainly going to wake soon. His Dragon blood was quickly pulsing through his body, healing him. When his mind caught up from the blackness his fall had created, he would be as well as if nothing had ever happened.
Ari passed the dagger hand to hand.
She didn’t have time to harvest the body properly of all its useful parts. She had to be prepared for the Dragon to wake the second she began trying—if she tried at all. Ari slid her feet over until she was standing next to him. She’d have to cut out his heart in one motion.
It was reckless to the point of idiocy. Ari’s mouth curled into a sinister smile. Florence would scold her for it later. But perhaps the tidy sum a Dragon heart could fetch would be enough to sway the girl.
Kneeling down beside the rainbow-colored eyesore, Ari raised her golden dagger. It was refined steel, and tempered to her magic and her will. It’d slow him if he woke. Ari could only imagine what a fresh Dragon heart was going to fetch in the seedy underground market of Old Dortam.
She plunged her weapon down.
In the same instant, the Dragon’s hand shot up and caught her wrist, stopping her just short of his chest. He stared at her in surprise.
Ari snarled and bore her teeth in rage. She’d been set up. It was certainly too good to be true. A prone Dragon without his corona? Never.