Dragon (2 page)

“Are we going somewhere?” A heady swirl of hope surges inside me—when my father left me in Prague, he said I’d stay here until he comes to get me and bring me home.

Home.

Leaving Prague means going home, the one thing I want more than anything.

“We may have to,” Ram acknowledges with tangible reluctance. “For now, this is still the safest place for you. If we have to go, it may be on a moment’s notice, and you won’t have time to pack, or a chance to return. Put everything you care about and everything you need in a bag. Have it ready at hand so you can grab it and run if you have to.”

My heart thumps with a beat that’s more excited than afraid. “How will I know if I need to run?”

“I’ll tell you. Don’t attempt to go alone. Don’t go anywhere alone. You’ll go with me. I—” He pauses, looks around the beat-up old hallway with its flaking paint and lone light bulb. His voice drops a little, edged with an uncertainty I’ve never heard in his words. He’s always so sure of himself, except for now. “This is still the safest place for you.”

For a few seconds I study his face, but the light is dim and he is mostly goggles and beard. To be honest, I don’t really know this man. I’m sure I wouldn’t recognize him if I saw his face clean shaven. I don’t even know how old he is. Older than me, surely, but not a whole lot older. He doesn’t have any white hairs and he doesn’t show any sign of going bald. Also, he’s pretty spry. I’d be surprised if he was over thirty.

Not that it matters. All that matters is that my father told me to trust him, so I trust him.

With my life.

He turns toward the door. Pauses. “Are you going to be okay?”

I can’t help thinking he’s better equipped to answer that question than I am, but I muster up a smile that’s supposed to be confident. “I’ll be fine.”

Ram slips sideways through the doorway. As he pulls the door closed after him, a wave of that strange smell from the stoop hits me with a whoosh, slapping to life the memories that were awakened when I sniffed outside the first time.

The terrified screams.

Running in darkness.

Hiding in caves and tunnels.

Hungry.

Scared, so scared.

And I realize the answer I just gave him was probably a lie, but he’s gone now, and I’m not going outside to tell him I changed my mind.

Ozzie heads up the stairs toward bed beside me, but even her steps seem wary.

Chapter Two

My dreams are filled with the kind of stomach-churning anxiety that cut my childhood short at age eight, memories screaming like the winged creatures whose breath lit the night sky as I fled in terror.

Did I really see dragons that night?

I have feared them ever since.

Tonight they swoop through my nightmares, startling me awake too many times. I lie in bed panting, my thoughts swirling with theories.

Who am I?

What happened to my hometown?

All I know is, when our village was attacked, I spent three days in the caves with the other women and children from the village. Then my father came and took me away to Saint Evangeline’s School for Girls on the Northumberland Coast of England, where it was foggy with dreary rain and I didn’t know anyone, but worst of all, after going barefoot nearly all my life until then, I was forced to wear shoes.

Saint Evangeline’s is supposed to be one of the safest schools on earth. That’s their main selling point--safety. Sure, you get an education while you’re there, but everyone attends because of their claims of safety. You can get an education at a prison, too, which is what Saint Evangeline’s rather felt like.

Not that I’ve ever been to prison, but considering we had to wear uniforms and everything, and couldn’t leave, and considering it’s surrounded by high stone walls and armed security guards, I figure the only real difference between the school and a prison, are the inmates.

The girls who go to Saint Evangeline’s come from families who are willing to pay for safety—the Daughters of Privilege, I always called them, but never out loud. They’re descended from royalty, actresses, CEOs of major corporations, pop singers, dictators, supermodels, and drug kingpins. Sometimes all in one family.

I’ve always wondered which group my father belongs to, but he’s never let on. I never knew my real last name. When he enrolled me at Saint Evangeline’s, my dad put me down under the last name Smith, which I’m pretty sure he picked because it’s so generic. So that’s no help.

I can only guess based on what I can remember, which isn’t much. Dad made it a point to never refer to our town by name, only as “home” or “the village.” All I know about my homeland is that it’s sunny there, with mountains and a great sea, I think to the east.

And I know it’s too dangerous for me to return.

It could be anywhere in the world. For a long time, based on my dark hair and brown skin, I thought perhaps Central America. Perhaps my father is a drug kingpin or dictator. But when I graduated and my father came to get me, he brought me as far as Prague and told me it wasn’t safe to go any closer to home.

So perhaps my homeland is in the Balkans? I know Yugoslavia has been plagued by war. Bosnia, Croatia, and other regions whose names change with the pages of the calendar. Perhaps one of them is my home.

I don’t know. But I won’t find the answers inside my flat, and from what I understand, the danger is no longer content to keep me from my home, but is now seeking me out. It’s no longer safe, not even here.

For once, not even my aching muscles or my dread of the cold stalls my steps as I dress for work and wash down a couple of runny eggs with black coffee.

Ozzie is reassuring (especially because she’s not growling), but I just want to see Ram. He can be properly terrifying with all his butcher’s swords strapped on, but he’s on my side. That makes all the difference.

I arrive at work a few minutes before six, which is early for me. Ozzie sees me to the back door of the butcher shop and stands patiently watching until the heavy steel slab closes behind me. She’ll stay there in the alley all day, moving only to switch from sunbeam to shade depending on the weather, lifting her head every time we toss out the big bones, which she crunches down to nothing with an efficiency that makes me oddly envious.

I step through the anteroom to the large refrigerated chamber where we work.

Ram is already inside, in full gear, fresh blood dripping from his coveralls and beard.

He’s finishing a carcass as I walk in, and true to his usual habit, he doesn’t pause to acknowledge I’ve entered, but remains focused on his work, his movements rapid but precise. With the sharp, slightly curved blade of the saber in his right hand he slices the last of the round steaks. Then he drops the sword back into the leather sling at his right hip, simultaneously pulling the cutlass from his left hip with his other hand. He swings the heavy-headed blade upward, and with a powerful blow, frees the steaks from the shank.

At the last second he grabs a pan with his right hand and catches the steaks as they fall, then turns to face me, depositing the pan on the stainless steel table, which is already heavy-laden with the rest of the butchered cow.

For a second he just stands there, blood dripping. Then he grabs a spray bottle from the table, aims it at his eyes, and douses his goggles, wiping them with a fresh towel.

It may be bloody in the butcher shop, but it’s clean.

Well, sanitary at least.

I glance at the table of beef, mostly steaks with a few roasts and the inevitable kabob pieces. “Just one cow so far?”

“You’re early.”

“Not that early. What, did you pull a muscle? Need me to kick out a kink for you?” That’s happened before. The man works like an ox for twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a day, usually with no ill effects, but every so often he gets something out of whack and needs me to shove it back in place. Last time it was his left shoulder, and I had to run at him and drive my elbow into the spot while he braced himself against the wall. It took three tries until it slammed back into place with a loud pop.

I can’t imagine how that’s healthy. It’s just what happened.

But today he rolls his head slowly back-and-forth, sending out little neck-popping noises while the bloodied hairnet he wears on his beard dances a little jig.

The hairnet is for health code reasons. As near as I can tell it’s almost useless, and I’m sure if we were inspected he’d have adequate warning to throw one on, but he still wears it every day, true to the rules, even if it makes him look silly.

As much as a man of his size can look silly.

“I went for a walk this morning, just to make sure.” He glances toward the door.

I look behind me, too, as though there might be something there besides a steel slab and the door handle.

Nope, just a little blood splatter.

“Smell anything?” I ask.

I expect him to shrug off my question, to deny any danger, because that’s the way he is—confident, nonchalant, bigger than any obstacle.

But he doesn’t shrug or shake his head. He walks toward me, the volume of his voice turned down low, as though whatever was on my stoop last night might be out there right now, listening through the insulated walls of the refrigerated back room.

“I smelled it in Old Town, New Town, the Jewish Quarter, Castle District—”

“You crossed the river?”

“I’ve been all over town. I followed the smell.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” I honestly don’t even know what the smell is, just that it accompanies whatever Ozzie was growling at, so that must mean it’s something fearsome. And it was there when the world of my childhood was torn apart. Oh, and it seems to even make Ram wary.

Fearsome, indeed.

Ram speaks in quiet tones, the hairnet on his beard bobbing like a bloody sock puppet. “I’d say it means they don’t know where you are, just that you’re in town somewhere. It’s like they’re looking for you.”

I start to exhale, relieved.

“But if they were on your stoop last night—”

My breath catches in my throat, shoved back by the fear of whatever it is that makes that smell, that chased me from my home and forces me to live in exile still.

“But, who are they?” My heart pounds with theories. Are dragons real? Are they after me?

Ram only scowls, his mouth curving sourly in the midst of his beard. I don’t think he’s angry—I can’t recall ever seeing Ram angry—but I brace myself anyway for whatever’s going to come.

This is how we butt heads, me and Ram. No raised voices, no threats or violence. Just me asking for answers, and Ram refusing to provide them. We’ve been at this all summer, ever since school ended and my father brought me here.

Ram’s silence doesn’t surprise me. My father was always the same way. He visited me rarely enough while I was away in Britain in boarding school. I soon realized there was nothing to be gained by asking him questions—nothing but awkward silences, apologies, and longer gaps between visits.

The longer gaps may only have been coincidental, unavoidable delays on his part, but I felt them acutely, each day feeling more lost, abandoned, and unsure of myself and my place in this world.

So I’m not surprised that Ram denies me information. I’m used to it.

But now, instead of turning his back on me and starting in on another beef carcass, swords whipping through the air, singing the song of blade against bone, he meets my eyes.

As much as he can meet my eyes when his are covered. He’s stepped closer to me, so close I could reach out and touch him, not that I have any desire to do so, bloody and hairy as he is. Close enough that his voice is little more than a rumble like distant thunder warning of a storm, his words clear only because I know the sound of his speech so well.

“They are the ones who attacked your village ten years ago. The ones who killed your mother. The reason you live in hiding still.”

Pinprick stars flicker across my field of vision. Lightheaded, I reach for the table, but it’s wet with the blood that oozes from the steaks, and my fingers slip.

Ram catches my elbow with one leather-gloved hand. His other arm keeps my sagging back from dropping to the floor. The prickling lights seem to mock me as they skitter away, chased from my sight by a surge of blood that pumps through my veins in a flood of embarrassment.

I’m a daft twit! How am I ever going to convince Ram to tell me more if I faint when he tells me anything?

Not that I actually fainted.

I just got a little lightheaded and couldn’t quite stand upright. That’s all.

Normally I’m a right steady person. Keep in mind, I dismember animals for a living. It takes a lot to make me woozy. But the mention of my mother’s death, coupled with the reminder of the attack and my exile…it’s too much, even for me.

And of course Ram knows I’m not a fainter, so now his mouth is clamped shut, a thin line barely visible amidst his beard.

“Who are they?”

Ram shakes his head. He’s not going to tell me, not if it’s going to blow me over.

“I need to know. How can I avoid them if I don’t even know what they look like?”

“The smell,” Ram reminds me.

“What if my nose is stuffed up? What if the wind is blowing the wrong direction?” I lean hard on his arm as I struggle to put my full weight on my feet.

Ram doesn’t look confident in my ability to stand on my own, but his arms move with me, propping me in a vertical stance.

I feel slightly less stupid from this angle.

Slightly.

“You’ve been training me to fight them?” I stare at the mirror-like surface of his goggles and wish I could see the answer there. Ram has been training me to fight—there was never any question about that. He’s made it clear with his every instruction. The swordwork slices steaks, yes, hacks through cartilage and bone. We earn a living with our work, and Michal Jitrnicka, the butcher shop owner who works the front counter, is thrilled with our productivity and the lines that form to buy our precision-cut handiwork.

But every jab, every spear, every swing of the blades is a lesson, familiarizing me with the weight of my weapons, dulling the revulsion that would normally follow the stab of sword into flesh. Ram has been teaching me, not the clang of steel on steel, of fancy fencing like gentleman practice in sports clubs, wearing white uniforms and fighting like civilized men.