Outside, Kira and Ardek were looking after the mules. I Shifted back at a distance from them, to avoid scaring the poor creatures again so soon. When Mak fell and I had my worried outburst, they’d been so upset that they nearly pulled up the stake holding their leads. Now they were munching happily on both low leaves and undergrowth. They were slowly becoming used to me, with Stalwart of course being able to tolerate almost anything, but that ‘almost’ was important. “Dragon standing nearby and talking” was one thing. “Dragon suddenly exploding into motion” was very different.

  Once I appeared in the shade of one of the larger, nearby trees, Ardek disentangled himself from his girlfriend — who waved — and skulked over. “Everything all right down there, boss?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Just… a lot of bodies,” I told him.

  “Bodies? I thought there weren’t any. That everyone got out, kind of thing.”

  “So did I. Apparently not. There’s dozens and dozens of dried up bodies down there, just… dead where they stood, I think. Or sat, mostly.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that sounds nasty. Glad we’re up here. Dunno if Kira could handle it. Just, ah… no offence, but I sort of figured you’d not have a problem with that?”

  “The bodies aren’t the problem. The problem is they’ve got jewellery, and I can’t ignore that but I felt like a heel for stripping the valuables from people who died when they were just having a nice day. It’s probably stupid. Mak and Herald and the others are doing just that right now, and I’m not going to stop them. I just couldn’t be there, doing it myself.”

  “No shame in that, boss. I’ve let people do things for me I wasn’t proud of, too. Sometimes you’ve got to do what you got to do, and if you can’t do it, you get someone else to do it for you.”

  “I don’t have to plunder the dead, though,” I objected.

  Ardek gave me a soft, kind smile. It was weird to see. Not because it didn’t suit him — it did. And not because he rarely smiled — Ardek was one of the most openly cheerful people I knew. It was just… he’d smiled at me plenty, but those had been friendly smiles, or occasionally polite ones. When I saw him smile like that, sympathetic and supportive, it was usually toward Kira or one of the many kids he had working for him. I couldn’t remember ever being the recipient of one of those smiles. Now I regretted that. It was a really nice smile.

  “Not sure you’ve noticed, boss, but you’re a dragon,” he said, and his tone matched the smile perfectly. It was a way of speaking that I couldn’t remember from him, either, warm and comforting, but also confident. Oddly grandfatherly, for a guy who only needed to shave about twice a week. “I’m no expert,” he went on, “but I’ve been around you a bunch now and I’m pretty sure you do have to. Comes with the wings and the scales, sort of. And there’s no point feeling bad about something you can’t control, if it doesn't hurt anyone. These people, they’re dead, yeah? They’ve no need for gold and silver. The Traveller’s taken them, and you make the final journey as naked as the first. No one here to claim their stuff to make ends meet or to remember them by, either. Way I see it, as long as the rest downstairs treat the bones with a bit of respect there’s no harm done.”

  I settled onto the ground, letting his words settle in and soothe me. Maybe he was right. These people had been dead for half a millenium. Maybe it was okay, as long as we treated their remains with a basic level of respect.

  “Have I told you how glad I am that Herald convinced me to spare you?” I asked him.

  “You know that you have, boss,” he said, his smile somehow growing at the reminder of how insecure his position had been those first days. “And I do try to show the lady my appreciation.”

  “Appreciation, eh?” I said, feeling suddenly inspired to tease the boy. “I remember you telling Simdal how much you ‘appreciate’ her.”

  “Boss!” he half laughed, half sputtered. It was a strange enough sound for Kira to look up curiously from where she was currying Ashen. “I admit, she’s pretty” he said, lowering his voice after waving to his partner, “Very much so. The same goes for Makanna. Simdal would have known me for a liar if I’d pretended I wasn’t interested. But that was then. I’ve got Kira now, and she’s…” he laughed again, giving me a gooey-eyed little smile. “Honestly, she makes everything worth it just on her own. So, yeah. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t enjoy having a leggy girl around, but I appreciate Herald for a Sorrows-beloved lot more than that. She’s good with the kids, you know that?”

  “I didn’t, no. Haven’t really seen her with them.”

  “She’s been teaching them their letters and numbers and such, when they sit still for more than a moment. Has a soft spot for us street rats, does your Herald.”

  It went on like that for a little while. Then Kira joined us, having finished doting on the mules, and not much later Avjilan appeared from the trees. He saw the three of us sitting in a pile under a tree and gave me a questioning look, and when Ardek called out, “Go on, Avji, come sit!” I just snorted and motioned toward an empty patch of ground next to me.

  Realizing how much I cared and worried about Zabra and Tammy had me thinking a lot, and one thing had become very clear to me. I liked Avjilan. I hadn’t forgiven him for hunting me and putting my girls in danger, but my desire for him to be happy was far stronger than any grudge I might hold. I wanted to get to know him better. And, dammit all, the same went for my pet crime queen and slaving raider. It made no sense. I’d never be this lenient with someone who wasn’t mine. But they were mine, and that made them precious, and it suddenly seemed stupidly petty to keep any of them at arm’s length because of what they’d done in the past. The Night Blossom had been trimmed back into something more to my liking. Leretem, as far as I’d been able to see, had shattered entirely, and Tammy had put herself together from the pieces. Neither of them was the woman she’d been when I first encountered them. As for Avjilan, he hadn’t been all that bad to begin with. His greatest sins — if I ignored his bodysnatching, which was a whole thing in itself — had been ignorance, and that he was too proud to stop hunting me once he learned what I was. I could understand pride. It wasn’t nearly enough for me to deny myself the pleasure of his company.

  “Avjilan,” I told him once he’d awkwardly sat down, leaving a foot of space between himself and me. “Sing something for us, would you? You’ve got a voice like nothing I’ve ever heard, and this is too bloody beautiful a day not to have some music.”

  Avjilan smiled at my compliment, and as we watched the mules, he sang, and the rest of us kept the compliments coming. It was pretty damned nice.

  * * *

  Watching the mules and enjoying some good company didn’t stop me from checking in on everyone else. Allowing myself to feel something positive for Zabra and Tammy — I wasn’t quite ready to accept that I liked them yet, or even worse, loved them, like Mak claimed — didn’t make me worry about them less. Why would it? If I’d been concerned about their well-being when I forced myself to loathe them, obviously I got even more neurotic once I’d let go of that.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  We learned something that afternoon. My headmates and I, that is. No two of us could ride along in someone’s head at once. We could each look through a different pair of eyes, but if we tried to enter a head that was already occupied, as it were, nothing happened. Instinct had taken a liking to Tammy, and when I was in control of our body she spent much of her time just seeing what Tammy did. That left me watching through Zabra’s eyes, something I’d rarely done. And the only time I’d done so with her subordinates around, she’d been very focused on dispensing some personal justice to… some poor bastard who must have done something very naughty indeed, considering the limits I’d put on Zabra. This time I saw the world the way the Night Blossom did when she was off the clock, and it was quite an experience.

  Now, twenty-five years as a woman, one who worked hard to stay in shape, at that, had given me plenty of experience with the male gaze — and the occasional female one, though they tended to at least be more subtle about it. Usually. And eight months as a dragon with a slowly developing cult of worshipful followers had taught me what it was like to be adored for my power. Watching through Zabra’s eyes as the fighters with them looked at her, hearing the little crackle in her ears as she returned their looks with a smile, only for them to hurriedly look away, told me that the Night Blossom enjoyed both.

  The men with them — except for Hardal, who might as well have been carved from stone for all the reaction he showed — wanted Zabra so bad I swore that I could have smelled their desire if I’d been there with my draconic nose. At the same time, they were terrified of her. Men twice her size who had at least a Major and possibly a High Minor combat Advancement looked away with genuine fear when she caught them staring. The word “scaroused” might as well have been coined specifically to describe those guys. It was, frankly, amazing. I envied her. Having guys stare at my arse would have been a lot less annoying, and a lot more entertaining, if I’d been able to make them piss themselves with a glance when I caught them looking!

  The way Tammy looked at her was very different, and almost disturbingly familiar. I’d thought that there were exactly three people Tammy looked at with that mix of awe and respect: myself, Herald, and Mak. Apparently I had to add a fourth to that exclusive club. Though I couldn’t pretend to be entirely surprised; the two were clearly friendly, probably even quite close, but I’d seen how the balance of power lay. Tammy and Zabra could joke around and gossip, but when the Night Blossom spoke, Tammy did as she was told.

  I was… more okay with that than I would have expected. Zabra ended up in my clutches in the end, but she was used to commanding people, and she’d built a successful organization that mixed legal and illegal business without getting caught. She’d done so rapidly, by leveraging her Advancements and a pragmatic ruthlessness that any dragon would have approved of, and if not for one fatal error she likely would have continued to grow in power. When I placed Tammy in her home and told her and Kesra that they could have Tammy make herself useful I hadn’t meant that as making Tammy their subordinate, but if that was how Zabra and Tammy took it, that was fine by me. Tammy had the makings of a zealot; having someone holding her reins when I wasn’t around was for the best.

  I left Zabra behind joking and laughing with Tammy, trusting that Instinct would let me know if something important happened. After checking on the mule and the humans with me — Avjilan was petting the animals, and Kira had dozed off in a contently smiling Ardek’s arms — I joined Herald instead. I didn’t dive in fully, since I needed to remain vigilant in case something came for my charges on the surface, but seeing and hearing what she did was plenty.

  I could tell that Herald had noticed my presence when her perspective froze, followed by the sounds of an amused little exhalation and the crackle in her ears that I knew accompanied a smile.

  “We are almost done with the bodies,” she said softly. “Mak, Mag, and I mostly, though Sarina and Marvan helped, too.” They were all nearby, and she glanced at each in turn as she mentioned them. “Val is holding up well, though Tam thought it best for them to look around the perimeter rather than have him walk among the bodies.”

  Her perspective shifted to show two figures in one of the shops, or whatever they were, across the chamber. They had one of the two lightstones we’d brought, and shadows danced across the floor and ceiling between us as they moved. Sarina, Marvan and Mag, close behind her, had the other and made her own shadow leap and flit around ahead of her. Then Herald turned again, to show me a sizable sack on the floor nearby.

  “We have a good haul here. It should come as no surprise, since we are below the palace grounds, but most of these people seem to have been rather wealthy. Much of it will need to be cleaned up, and some melted down, but from jewellery alone we have…” She moved to grab the sack and hefted it, and when she spoke again there was a breathy undertone to her voice. “I would say about eight pounds so far, maybe a fifth or a quarter of that gold. Plenty of smaller gems, too. And this is just jewellery and accessories. We have a whole other bag with purses and spilled coins, though those are mostly silver. And we are not done. Not only do we have more to go through here, but Sarina says that her nose wants her to go deeper!”

  I dove in fully for long enough to have her whisper, “Let’s stay on this level today, but yeah, we’re exploring this whole thing!” Then I withdrew and settled in to just watch.

  I still felt a bit bad about plundering the dead. Ardek’s gentle encouragement had helped, and not being down there doing the work myself helped even more, but together they were only enough to bring my guilt down to a tolerable level. The level of feeling that I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to, but that I was going to do anyway. A feeling I’d made myself intimately familiar with in my old, human life, to be fair, but no matter how long my list of sins had been, they’d been mostly harmless; grave-robbing hadn’t been on it.

  I don’t know if Herald guessed at my discomfort or if Mak signaled her somehow that I missed, but she kept up a soft monologue as she worked, and she focused on the jewellery, never looking more closely at the bodies than absolutely necessary.

  “We are not sure, but our best guess is that this was some sort of indoor market,” Herald said, and I couldn’t help but grin. “From what Tam has said, many of the storefronts around the chamber look like eateries, with counters with holes for pots and pans. He and Val have found some heating discs and plates, though we’ll need to test them to see if they work.”

  “Speaking with Draka?” Mak asked softly from beside her.

  “Yes, I was telling her about what Tam and Val found.”

  “I was listening. You know what’s odd about that?”

  Herald hummed curiously as she carefully slipped a silver anklet over a mummified foot, the remains of its sandal disintegrating as she handled it.

  “There’s too many of the eateries,” Mak said.

  Herald’s — and thus, my — vision flashed into shadowsight as she briefly inspected the anklet before dropping it in the bag with a Clunk and turning to our sister. “How do you figure?”

  “Well, look at the number of people here. A normal eatery in Karakan needs to have something like fifty or a hundred customers in a day to make ends meet. We have, what, ten eateries here? But this place is under the palace. It couldn’t possibly have enough people passing through to sustain them all. So either they were monstrously expensive, or they didn’t need to sustain themselves.”

  “Maybe they were subsidized somehow? Just here to provide variety?”

  “Maybe! I was thinking along the same lines. Sounds like something rich people might do, doesn’t it? They’re odd like that.”

  “We,” Herald pointed out carefully, “are rich people.”

  “We do odd things all the time, by most people’s standards” Mak countered, and Herald laughed, soft and warm.

  “True! We do at that. I can only think of a handful of people who spend as much time with a dragon, for one”

  “Running off on expeditions to the north on a whim, too. This is, what, our third one?”

  “Ooo, lucky!” Herald said facetiously, still laughing as she continued stripping the corpse before her of its purse and remaining jewellery. “Should we have made an offering at the temple to the Three before leaving?”

  “We’ve already given the Three more than any three dozen of their worshippers will in a lifetime. I should think we’ve bought ourselves plenty of goodwill with them already.”

  They went on like that as they worked, with the other three nearby occasionally chipping in, until there was a cry of “Hey, Herald, could you come and take a look at this?” from across the chamber.

  “Hmm? Oh, sure,” Herald answered, leaving the others and leisurely picking her way between the bodies toward Tam and Val. If she’d known what they’d found, she probably would have been far more excited.

  and get 8 chapters early of both Draka and , as well as anything else I’m trying out.

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