the Roc’s men had staged a bloody, well-planned revolt. Lia had killed two soldiers with her own hand while protecting Princess Fyria, only to wake on Ra’aba’s Dragonship with a lump on her head and no memory of the balance of the day. Judging by the low, ruddy rays beaming in through the porthole, evening approached.
The Dragonship flew southwest, she calculated. Had they already crossed the rim of Fra’anior’s volcanic caldera? Would his threat land her on one of the rim-Islands, such as Ha’athior, or drop her into the Cloudlands, the realm of deadly, opaque gases which lay more than a league below the Human-inhabited Islands of her home?
She could not beat seven elite soldiers.
Allowing her shoulders to slump and her lower lip to quiver, she said, “You win, Ra’aba.”
He began to nod.
With a snap of her wrist, Lia hurled the sword at him.
Almost, the ploy succeeded. Had the Roc not been wearing metal wristlets, or had the blade struck his body armour slightly more squarely, Ra’aba would have been gutted like a ralti sheep prepared for a spit-roast. To her dismay, the blade deflected off his left wristlet, tearing a shallow gash in the armour above his hip. Blood welled up immediately, but not much.
Go! Lia dived for the second soldier’s blade.
Men piled on her. Grunting, wriggling, elbows and knees thrashing, drawing their curses as she jabbed a man in the eye … the soldiers subdued her, wrenching her arms behind her back, putting a dagger to her throat. A rough hand gripped her headscarf together with a handful of her pale hair, jerking her head upright, forcing her to meet the Roc’s gaze.
Ra’aba glared at her, the set of his scarred mouth so draconic, that Hualiama pictured him changing into a Dragon and lunging at her, talons poised to rend her flesh. His fingers explored the cut at his side. Ra’aba wiped the blood across his mouth, sucking the crimson off his fingertips with cold deliberation. Murder blazed in his eyes.
The Captain growled, “Fine. Let her go. Give the girl a weapon.”
“My Lord Captain …”
“Give her a cursed sword!”
Hualiama shook off the hands holding her, tasting blood in her mouth, too. A sword hilt pressed into her fingers. Her heartbeat raced off over the Cloudlands. She confronted the man said to be the most dangerous swordsman in the kingdom. He was tall and heavily muscled, yet possessed of a lithe elegance of movement that had always struck Lia as improbably feline. The burns splashed across his left cheek, running from his eye down across the corner of his mouth, flamed reddish-purple beneath the inimical fires of his narrowed eyes. He meant to kill her.
This was no way to spend a birthday. Mercy.
As if echoing her thoughts aloud, Fyria whispered, “Mercy, Ra’aba. Please. She’s just a girl.”
He snarled, “Nobody cuts the Roc and lives to tell the tale!”
Captain Ra’aba’s attack jarred Lia so powerfully that her teeth clacked together. He was a supremely skilled swordsman, but he hacked at her in a demented fury, by sheer strength beating her backward across the cabin. Always, Hualiama felt graceless with a blade in hand. Jerking this way and that, she kept Ra’aba out with a flurry of desperate parries. Great Islands, how could any man be possessed of such demonic strength? The Roc pounded Lia to her knees.
“Get up!” His finger crooked beneath her nose. “Fight me, you little dragonet. Fight!”
When Lia rose, he smashed the blade out of her numb fingers.
Fyria shrieked, drawing Ra’aba’s attention for a fraction of a second, allowing Lia to kick off the wall and upset his balance. As she darted past, the Captain swivelled and slashed at her unprotected back. The blade bit deep.
Hualiama arched in agony, grabbing for the air, for a wall, for the mail shirt of a soldier who kept her upright with a rough thrust of his forearm. The soldier spun her about; Lia’s green eyes flicked to Ra’aba, who bowed slightly, his expression turned unaccountably gentle. Lia wondered if he had decided to end his lesson. Had his pride not been satisfied by that cruel cut? She felt nothing, as though the nerves had been amputated so suddenly, they had been unable to signal her brain. Then, the muscles of his jawline hardened. Lia stifled a sob. Warmth dripped down her back, each drop a wordless testimony to the gravity of her wound.
“Pick up the sword, girl,” he ground out.
Several soldiers sighed, but no-one lifted a finger to help her.