I’d been told that Marvan was a good climber. I’d figured it must be true since he scaled the mountain to my lair, and I’d seen some evidence of that myself as we crossed the city wall. But it was during our efforts to get the mules up to the Palace that I really saw what an Advancement-powered climber could do.

  Marvan wasn’t just good. Marvan was some kind of mutant cross between a mountain goat and a gecko, masquerading as a human. Not only was his power-to-weight ratio the envy of any climber I’d ever heard of, myself included, but some of the holds he used quite simply weren’t holds. On half of them there was nothing to grip, pinch, crimp, or anything else. They were little more than a barely-there protrusion on a vertical slab of stone, and Marvan blithely put first his palm and then, somehow, his entire weight on them, hauling himself up one-handed in some cases and hanging there while he hunted for his next impossible target.

  The man was climbing with cheat-codes. Inside me, Conscience seethed with envy. I, myself, had to remind myself that I had wings now, and that my current body wasn’t at all built for rock-climbing. Those were the only things that kept me from throwing a tantrum over the unfairness of it all.

  By the time noon rolled around, we’d only been at it for a little over an hour. It had taken some time before I returned to the temple. Mother had needed some time to gather herself after the overwhelming emotions that had crashed over her in Night’s shrine, and Instinct had refused to hurry her. My dragon had just had us lie there, rumbling soothingly as what may very well be the greatest dragon alive curled herself silently around us. And for all that I wanted to get back to the others so that we could all get going, I couldn’t bring myself to speak up. I’d never seen Embers so vulnerable or Instinct so empathetic, and I didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Thank you,” Mother had said when she finally huffed and rose from the floor of the rotunda. “I cannot believe I embarrassed myself like this. You must think me ridiculous.”

  “You mourn my father,” Instinct had stated, with none of the disdain or dismissiveness that was so common for her. “I have never mourned anything. I do not know what it is like. But you, Mother, could never be ridiculous.”

  Mother snorted then nuzzled us affectionately. “That is… kind of you. Far more insightful than I would expect of anyone with less than a few centuries of growth. The influence of your humans, no doubt. I hope it does not make you weak and vulnerable, for I cannot say that I dislike it.”

  “It helps with the humans,” Instinct had said noncommittally, and that seemed to satisfy Mother.

  Which brought us, sometime later, to the vertiginous pile of debris that must once have been the approach to the highest part of the rock that dominated the ancient city. Marvan was climbing up, down, and sideways, looking for good places to put in joists or beams or girders or whatever a load-bearing piece of horizontal wood might be called. While he marked likely spots with simple flags, most of the others turned the nearby street into a minor lumber camp. I was seeing skills and industry out of my humans that I’d never expected and I was, to put it mildly, impressed!

  Much of what the humans had discussed and decided the previous night went over my head, honestly. I might have some few memories from twenty-first century maths and physics classes, but my grades had been awful. I’d been one of those kids who could never sit still and was labeled “disruptive.” Herald, Marvan and Avjilan, on the other hand, all had solid theoretical or practical knowledge of how to build things like, say, a secure platform on a steeply inclined wall, and that was what they intended to do.

  The plan was to put two or three platforms on that wall, depending on how many good locations they could find, and then raise the mules in stages. And it took two damn days, but by late afternoon of the second day they’d done it! No nails, either; Avjilan had, during some stretch of one of his two lives, learned joinery to the point where he was confident that he could make something that would last weeks or months, if not years. Under his supervision, they did it all with pegs and cuts in the wood that might as well have been magic for all I understood.

  I spent most of that time watching the people I’d been neglecting. Some of that was in Karakan behind the eyes of Onur and Barro, listening to their conversations and getting a general idea of what was going on. Barro mostly hung around the inn; apparently Zabra had let him know about the Tekereteki agents, and he’d decided to step up security. Onur was diligently maintaining his guise of still being mostly concerned with the safety of Lord Parvion, but he kept his eyes and ears open for anything that might affect me, under the cover of better serving his lord. He even sent a short, coded note to Soandel as I watched. Unfortunately, the man’s scrawl was almost illegible, so I wasn’t sure exactly what was in it, but it was nice to see him working!

  Outside of the city I checked in on Jekrie every so often. Lady’s Rest was doing all right, but I had a constant nagging feeling that I wasn’t doing enough for them. Even though Conscience had assured me that she checked on him daily and that nothing was seriously wrong, I kept expecting him or someone else to off-handedly mention some ongoing problem or impending disaster that I’d somehow neglected. But, no; all I got was Jekrie hard at work cutting wood, Jekrie talking about everyday things with the others, or Jekrie doting on his wife and daughter. It was heart-warming, but not something worth spending a lot of time on.

  That left Zabra and Tammy.

  My two least favorite minions and their little band of bastards had made it to the end of the road, so to speak, and were continuing along the path broken and kept somewhat clear by a sporadic stream of adventurers; most recently, my little group. And the one actual woodsman among them insisted, based on the campsites they found, that there was a small group constantly about a day ahead of them, a distance that he thought might be growing shorter, but he wasn’t sure. Which meant that whoever was after me was getting closer by the day, and there was no guarantee that Zabra and Tammy would overtake them.

  The whole situation worried me. I didn’t want them to fail in their pursuit, but if they caught up to the hunters they’d be at risk, and despite who they were I didn’t like the thought of that. I very badly wanted to fly south to deal with it, but I’d promised my two headmates that I wouldn’t, so all I could do for the moment was to watch. So that was what I did. Whenever I wasn’t checking in on Onur, Barro, or Jekrie, I rode shotgun with either Zabra or Tammy, listening to their conversations and watching Zabra struggle to perform the most basic of survival tasks outside of civilization.

  It was, Mercies help me, entertaining. Even relaxing at times. Tammy, with her broken — though quickly improving — Karakani had a friendly relationship with the accompanying fighters, and a relaxed, easy one with Zabra. The two women spoke a lot, in Karakani or Barlean, about me, about what they were doing, about their lives, their hardships, and their hopes for the future. And they were so hopeful that it almost broke my heart.

  Tammy quite simply worshipped me. She spoke of me as some kind of messiah, who’d shown her the darkness in her soul and turned her toward the light. To hear her tell it, Leretem had died in that unnamed little village where we captured her. I had made a chrysalis of my wings and my shadows, and from that chrysalis Tammy had been born, eager and grateful for the opportunity to repent for Leretem’s sins by serving me.

  Zabra, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as zealous, but she still pinned her dreams for a better future firmly on me. She knew very well that she would never be free of me, nor did she want to, and so she was all in. She’d always been ambitious, and that hadn’t changed; the only difference now was that for her and Kesra to rise, I would have to rise higher, and she saw nothing wrong with that.

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  As pleasant as it was to hear how dedicated they were to me, though, the most interesting thing I heard during those two days was a short conversation about, of all things, Zabra’s love life.

  Conscience had told me previously that no matter how dedicated Tammy was to serving me, she clearly didn’t see that as ruling out her enjoying herself with some male company. So I wasn’t too surprised when a short conversation about how they’d ended up in a monster-infested forest dozens of miles north of Karakan ended with Zabra laughing and saying, “I still can’t believe you let that absolute dibby lay to, I can’t!”

  “His sails spill the wind, they do,” Tammy laughed back. “But he is pretty, he is, and he has nice shoulders!” Then a sly tone crept in as she said, “Besides, we cannot all be as favored as you. This Parvion girl… you like her, don’t you?”

  Zabra had always affected me. I couldn’t say if there was something I’d never admitted about myself, or if it was just her and her Advancements, but no matter how much fury I’d felt when I saw her, no matter how much I’d hated her, I’d always found her jaw-droppingly attractive and pleasant to look at. So when I got to see her blush and look away shyly, even through Tammy’s eyes, I was very glad that I’d been listening in. I doubted she’d ever dare look that sweet and vulnerable in front of me. It was enough that I barely picked up on the name “Parvion.”

  “I do,” she admitted.

  “She’s the granddaughter of the new Lord Mercantile, she is. That has nothing to do with it?”

  “No. Not at all. Samara being from a prestigious House helps, it does. It’s how I met her, and we understand each other. But she could be as poor as I once was, she could, and she would be no less beautiful, she would not. No less of a poet. Her laughter would still make my heart sing, it would, and her touch would still make my skin burn.” She giggled, something else I’d never had from her, and said, “I am sailing headlong into a storm, and I wish for nothing but to stay my course.”

  “The Lovers bless you both, then,” Tammy said, with a kindness and gentleness that I’d never expected from her. It almost offended me. Where the hell was this Tammy when I asked her to apologize for how she’d treated Kira?

  “Kesra…” Tammy started a little later. She trailed off, seeming unsure what to say before trying again. “Kesra told me about your past with Samara’s cousin, she did.”

  “Oh.” All the warmth and the girlish yearning on Zabra’s face vanished in an instant, and the Night Blossom looked back at Tammy with a cool detachment.

  “Does Samara know?”

  “No,” the Night Blossom replied, and it was truly impressive how much menace she put into that one word. “She knows that I knew him, she does. Nothing else. It will stay that way, it will. He fouled enough for us, he did. I will not have him foul this.”

  For all that I cared about the well-being of all my servants, there was a vicious part of me that wished that I could have seen Tammy’s face. Perhaps I could have moved my perspective to Zabra, but that took a moment, and I wasn’t familiar enough with my new power for such things to be second nature. Instead I got to experience her reaction from the inside, so to speak.

  Zabra’s message was clear: “We may serve the same mistress. We may even be friends. But if I even suspect that you’ve let anything slip to Samara about how Tark and I used each other, I will find a way to destroy you.”

  And Tammy, for all the strength and confidence that she’d found, wilted. She looked down at the reins of her horse, fumbling with them where she had them wrapped around her stump, and mumbled, “As you say.”

  “What was that?” the Night Blossom demanded.

  Tammy risked a glance and said, a little louder, “As you say, Lady Tespril.”

  “Good.” Then the Night Blossom was gone, and Zabra was back. She leaned a little in her saddle, reaching across the short distance between them to put her hand on Tammy’s shoulder, and smiled as she said, “By the way, I never thanked you for sending Samara back to my room with breakfast. That was very thoughtful of you, it was.”

  “You knew?” Tammy asked.

  Zabra laughed. “She has more wonderful sides to her than I can count, she does, but I doubt she has ever put together a breakfast in her life, I do.”

  After that they slipped back into their slow, easy banter. There was no sign from either of what had just happened; nothing that hinted at resentment from Tammy, or distrust or lingering anger from Zabra. Zabra had made her will known, Tammy had submitted, and that was that. And while that dynamic was interesting, and something I’d have to look into and talk to them about later, it wasn’t as interesting as what I’d learned from their conversation.

  Zabra was in love.

  Zabra, who’d been complicit in the suffering of so many innocent people, who’d ordered my sisters to be taken off the street and tortured, and who’d used Mak to capture me, setting so many changes in motion, was in love with the cousin of the monster who’d led their slaving operation, and who’d inflicted so much pain on Herald and Mak. She was in love with the granddaughter of the new Lord Mercantile, whose head of security was one of my servants. I had no idea if this Samara’s family would accept their relationship, but I could easily see how this might strengthen Zabra’s position, and thus my own.

  And yet, none of the details mattered as much to me as the revelation that Zabra was in love, and I was happy for her. And I had no idea what to do with that.

  I was so fixated on Zabra and what to do with myself that I didn’t even notice Mak hurrying over. I had no idea she was even there until she asked, “Draka, what’s wrong?”

  I took a moment to gather myself enough to speak, and said, “I’m not sure where to start. Can you tell me what I’m feeling right now?”

  “Joy,” she said without hesitation. “Joy, and guilt, and confusion. What happened?”

  “I’ve been watching Zabra and Tammy,” I explained. “And… something nice happened to Zabra.”

  “And that made you joyful?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” Mak didn’t exactly look pleased at that. I doubted anything could make her feel anything more positive than pity and obedient tolerance toward the woman. Then, with a reluctance as though she was admitting that Tam was right about something and she was wrong, she said, “That… makes sense, I suppose.”

  “Does it?” I asked. And the question was genuine. I didn’t see it. “I don’t like Zabra! Why should I care about her happiness?”

  “Of course you don’t,” Mak agreed. “She’s awful. But you love her.”

  I shied away from her. I physically pulled my head back, pushed myself up on my front legs, and reared back in some kind of lizard-brain attempt to distance myself from her ridiculous claim. “I do not!”

  “Of course you do,” Mak said. She scowled as she approached me, putting her hand on my chest. “You love Tammy, too, as much as you despise her.”

  “No!” I insisted, forcefully enough that Val and Maglan looked up from the log they were splitting. “I love you. I love Herald. I love Tam and Val, and Kira and Ardek. I don’t love goddamn Zabra or Tammy!”

  But Mak didn’t back down. “You do. You can ignore it, deny it, and hide it from yourself, but take it from me. You do love them. It’s the love you feel toward a drunkard of an uncle, or a close friend who’s wronged you terribly, but it’s still love, of a fashion. You wish that they were better, but you still want them to be safe and happy.” She snorted and smiled entirely without humor then said, “If it makes you feel better, I doubt you have any choice in the matter. It’s the price you pay for making us yours.”

  I wasn’t much use to anyone for the rest of that afternoon, as I chewed over her words. Love. I wasn’t sure the word meant the same thing to the two of us, but I couldn’t deny what I’d felt.

  I wanted Zabra to be happy. Why did that scare me?

  I barely paid attention as they finalized everything. I distractedly flew up and played anchor for the rope as they hauled the mules up one by one, then just as distractedly airlifted those humans who didn’t want to try the climb. I only barely paid attention as Marvan scaled the wall of the palace grounds and let down a rope for Val and Mak to join him, so they could open the gate from inside. It wasn’t until the light was low, and we were all gathered outside the rotunda of my father’s shrine, that I really forced myself to give them my full attention.

  Mak said that the bond between myself and Zabra made me love her. I wasn’t sure that I agreed with the word, but that was semantics. I wanted her to be safe and happy. I wanted Avjilan to be safe and happy, too, and he’d tried to kill me several times. And since I was being so honest with myself, I had to admit that I wanted the same for Tammy.

  It bothered the hell out of me. I’d known that the bond went both ways. I’d known that it made me protective of them, but I could easily justify that as protecting what was mine. But this went deeper. I had hated each of these people, and I hadn't spent anywhere near enough time with any of them for grudging sympathy and familiarity to change that. Even Zabra’s Advancements had only ever affected me strongly when I spent a lot of time around her; their effect on me wore off pretty quickly. No, this went beyond what I could explain away.

  As I opened the doors of the rotunda, and the humans trooped in, oohing and aahing in the bright glow of the lightstones, I finally put a name to my fear. It came back to that word: love.

  If the bond could make me feel all these things for Avjilan, Zabra, and Tammy, I asked myself, what about the people I had legitimate reasons to like? If not for the bond, would I love my sisters as I did? Could I? Instinct felt only possessiveness. Could I truly love anyone who I hadn’t broken to my will to some degree?

  I couldn’t honestly say that I knew, and that absolutely terrified me.

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