“The start being when you kidnapped me among my own people for reasons that seem founded on madness?”
“Yes. That.”
“At least you can admit some of what took place yesterday.”
“What happened to how much you appreciated my saving your life?”
Kavya brushed long chocolate-brown hair back from her shoulders and used a sleeve of her sari to wipe her face. Only then did he realize that yes, she was rather a mess. He must look worse. “I thanked you once,” she said, not breaking stride. “Don’t expect more gratitude until you do something new to deserve it.”
The October morning gave way to surprising warmth. Tallis unbuttoned his coat. He couldn’t imagine the snow and winds this place would withstand come winter. Already, preparations appeared to be under way. Chopped wood lined each building in great stacks. The faces of these hearty humans spoke of survival. Deep wrinkles were born of squinting against snow and ice made into beacons by the high mountain sunshine.
Kavya lead them deeper into the crumbling neighborhood, to a few rickety buildings. This city itself was a destination known for attracting adventurers who sought guidance up the valley toward the infamous Rohtang Pass. The natural wonder, which was so dangerous that humans closed it from November to May, was a temptation to those whose lives lacked mortal thrills.
Tallis resented them, pitied them, envied their innocent cares.
But this was no tourist area. They approached a small pine building. It was daubed with mud and listed toward where the valley continued its downward slope. Kavya closed her eyes. Although he heard nothing, Tallis felt a pulse of energy flow from her body. Why had no one ever talked about that facet of the Indranans’ gift? It didn’t have to be audible for him to know it was there.
A man appeared in the doorway of the listing little building. He matched the pine shelter that surrounded him, as if a rough wind would send him twirling into the sky. He had to be pushing the upward limit of a Dragon King’s life span.
“A Mask, eh?” He rubbed a chin covered in bristly gray hair. “That will cost you.”
Kavya nodded. “It always does.”
—
The man’s name was Nakul. Kavya had known of his existence in Kullu for several years, because she’d thought she might need him one day.
“You’re really going through with this?” Tallis asked.
He stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather coat, so Dragon-damned handsome that she was dazzled. People called her the Sun, but nothing compared to how the dawn graced him. Pink and gold were blessings that washed over his features. His skin was luminous. The cold ocean blue of his eyes was lightened without dissipating any of his intensity. Even his lashes were tipped with a silver sheen that matched his thick hair.
The berserker rage had spun everything about him into a wild creature, ragged and worn, but with so much strength that his casual posture couldn’t disguise his vigilance in watching the trees, houses, and high mountaintops. He wore the weariness of a man who’d been at war for years. A man without faith. A man without allegiances or a home. A man who’d seen something terrible, unspeakable, and would never be the same again.
She wanted to hold his head to her body and stroke his hair until it was free of wild tangles and his mind was free of old, sad pains.
Frustrated by her capacity to be distracted by Tallis, she turned to face Nakul.
The old man scared her.
How many Masks had he dispensed through the decades? How many had he cleanly installed? Would age affect his work? Her mind already verged on having been soaked in too many artificial details. It would take a patient, skilled Masquerade to pick through those false touches and places new ones in between.
Pashkah would find her. She would never be able to reverse the damage to her people. Out there, women had been kidnapped. The Dragon only knew what was being done to them. The Dragon only knew what repercussions would come of their abuse.
“Yes, I’m really going through with this. You can step inside, or you can stand watch.”
“I don’t want to see any more witchcraft. I’ve had my fill for ten lifetimes.”
Head high, she walked the small distance to Nakul’s half-falling awning of tattered, dirty canvas. He’d bring it in before winter. Some internal sense of being in tune with her homeland said the snows would be soon in coming.
“I know who you are.” Nakul’s voice reminded her of his gnarled old bones. He was stringy with exposed tendons and veins. Whatever was left of his flesh hung in saggy pantomimes of a man’s muscles. “The whole of mankind and the Dragon Kings would lie here in the dark, confused and freezing to death, if the Sun abandoned us.”
A shiver turned her skin into a field of goose bumps. She didn’t know which sun he meant.
“I will give you anything you like.” Her peripheral vision found Tallis edging slowly closer. Skepticism tainted the air around his lithe body. “Just name the price.”
“Come inside.”
The interior of the shack was no surprise. It matched the slumping, resigned way the outside seemed ready to tumble down the mountain, consequences be damned. A tiny cookstove was all he had to fend off the chill. Behind the stove, in the scant space between it and the far corner, were blankets and stuffed burlap. Puffs of wool and cotton poked out from the rough stitching like a seeping wound. There was no order to his living space. Even aligning her knuckles did nothing to alleviate the tension festering along the path of Kavya’s spine.
I shouldn’t be here.
No choice.
“My price is, I want to leave this world.”
Kavya’s heart picked up speed. Tallis entered through the only door. Negative judgment was written over his face, shadowed by the shack’s grim, slimy darkness and obscured by the floating dander of neglect.
“I can’t do that,” Kavya said. “I have no Dragon-forged sword, and I have no intention of taking a life.”
“You have other ways. We have other ways. You’re the first Dragon King to seek my aid in more than ten years. That’s ten winters of a chill I can’t get out of my blood. I face another ten at least.” His voice grew more impassioned. “I’ll be a madman. A telepath alone with one’s thoughts is a pathetic thing.”
“Hey, now,” Tallis said. “What does he mean that you have other means?”
Nakul looked as if he were already dead inside. He only needed a means of making it happen.
“We’re Indranan, and we have our ways. I want Kavya to turn off my mind. Leave me uncaring. Let the elements ravage my body, but without the faculties to drive a Dragon King mad. I’ll live out the rest of my life with frostbitten limbs and a stomach begging for food, but I won’t be of this earth.” He nodded firmly. “That, Kavya of the Indranan, is the payment you will give to me.”
CHAPTER
TEN
Tallis grabbed Kavya’s arm, which was honed of slender, resilient muscles beneath the sleeves of her sari. “Especially now, you can’t consider this. A Mask is one thing. Lobotomizing a fellow Dragon King is repulsive.”
With a sour mouth and rebellious amber eyes, she looked him up and down. “Better to kill them outright, Heretic? Your sins precede you.”
“Sins that haven’t been of my making.”
“Bathatéi.”
The worst curse a Dragon King could spit sounded particularly vicious when coming from a soul as placid as Kavya. Part of him was glad she possessed that much fire. They would both need it.