Vulpine shook his head. "There's a difference between destroying Dragon Forge and reclaiming it."
Vulpine motioned with his head, inviting Balikan to follow his gaze. Dragon Forge wasn't a large town. The fortress was diamond-shaped, encompassing roughly one square mile of earth. Save for a few broad avenues, the interior of the fortress was cramped with buildings built on top of buildings, so that one dragon's floor was another dragon's roof. Three smokestacks dominated the skyline of Dragon Forge, belching plumes of ash high into the sky.
Outside of the walls there were hundreds of heaps of rusting metal dotting the low red hills, the raw material of the foundries. Amid these heaps were hovels where gleaners lived, among the poorest humans in the kingdom.
Threading through these heaps were four major roads. All were busy with traffic. In the absence of dragons, humans throughout the kingdom rushed to Dragon Forge. Some of this traffic, though, wasn't here for the rebellion. Mule trains hauling wagon loads of coal wound along the western road. They cared little who brought their wares, be it human or dragon.
Along the southern side of Dragon Forge there was a river; a canal had been dug long ago to divert water into the city, where a water wheel powered the bellows that fanned the foundries. The water also served to flush the gutters and sewers of the town-crude but effective sanitation. In addition to this water, Vulpine could see a large well at the center of town. The rebels wouldn't perish from thirst. "With the right eyes, you can see the city as a heart. The roads and rivers serve as arteries and veins, carrying in the lifeblood, carting off the waste. Choke off the roads and the city dies."
"But by now the rebels will have been stocking up on supplies. They could hold out for weeks, or months."
"And is the world suddenly in short supply of weeks and months?" asked Vulpine.
Balikan clamped his mouth shut, looking properly chastised.
"In any case, I don't think they will hold out for months," said Vulpine. "Humans lack the capacity for long term planning we sky-dragons possess. Presented with a blockade, with food and resources dwindling, they will likely turn on themselves in short order, especially once plague breaks out."
"If plague breaks out," said Balikan. "I must admit, it looks as if they are doing a fair job of keeping the town clean."
"This need not be something left to chance," said Vulpine. "Let's pay a visit to the Nest. It's only thirty miles away and a few dozen valkyries can easily blockade the western road and cut off the coal supply. The valkyrie engineers can also block off the canal feeding water into the town. After that, we'll follow the Forge Road back to the Palace to confer with Chapelion and get the authority to gather all the elements I need to truly solve this problem."
"We are slavecatchers, not soldiers."
"After I tell him his books are in the fort," said Vulpine, "he'll give me every last soldier in the kingdom."
CHAPTER FOUR:
PHANTOMS
Shay took a sip of the steaming sassafras tea. The licorice bite of it opened up his sinuses, clearing his ears so he could better hear Burke as he whispered to Anza. It wasn't Shay's intention to eavesdrop, but over the years he'd grown sensitive to hushed conversations. All the politics and intrigues that swirled around a dragon of Chapelion's station unfolded in whispers and nods. Thus, though he sat on a wooden stool by the fireplace across the loft from Burke and his daughter, he heard Burke's words as clearly as if he was standing between them.
"We had several groups of refugees report that the earth-dragons are raiding human villages." Burke slipped her a sheet of folded parchment. "It's only a matter of time before they strike the tavern. Take this to Thorny. There are tools in the hidden room I need, and my notebooks would also be useful. Have him bring them to me."
Anza scowled and made a hand gesture that Shay didn't understand.
Burke gave a weary shrug. "Thorny will just have to sober up. I need you to stay with Jandra and Shay. If anything happens to either of them, make sure their guns don't fall into the possession of dragons."
Anza's scowl faded.
"Thorny won't be coming alone. Tell the villagers it's time to join me here in Dragon Forge."
Anza nodded, looking serious. Shay found himself intrigued by the tall, dark-skinned woman dressed in black buckskins. He'd yet to hear Anza say a word. Ordinarily, he would have assumed she was deaf, or perhaps an imbecile. Yet she followed Burke's whispers easily enough, and she carried herself with an air that hinted of great intelligence.
Jandra sat cross-legged by the fire with Lizard in her lap. Lizard had numerous cuts and scrapes. She spoke to him in a soothing patter as she cleaned and bandaged his wounds. Shay knew Jandra by reputation-she was the human girl who'd been raised by the sky-dragon wizard Vendevorex. He assumed she'd been the dragon's pet. In general, slaves and pets despised one another. Both were legally the property of dragons, but slaves were regarded as little more than domestic animals, useful for certain labors, while pets were pampered and treated as children.
Having grown up as the pet of a wizard, it was said that Jandra had acquired supernatural powers. He'd heard she could turn invisible, and set things on fire by staring at them. Shay wondered if it was true. Chapelion had been a strict rationalist, dismissive of supernatural forces. Shay, however, had seen proof that magic had once been a powerful force in ages past. He was certain that Chapelion was too quick to ignore evidence of things beyond his understanding.
Jandra was currently eluding his understanding. She looked human enough, yet there was something unmistakably alien about her. Perhaps it was her voice; her words had an odd inflection, an accent that made her sound more dragon than human. There was also a strange quality to her posture, the way she carried herself. Most humans tended to keep their gazes toward the ground and walked with their shoulders slouched. Jandra had the unnerving habit of looking straight at people like Burke and Ragnar when she spoke, even though they were obviously her superiors. Finally, her fussing over the dragon child struck him as wrong on some fundamental level, that a human should be displaying such motherly behavior toward a creature covered with scales.
Jandra cradled Lizard in her arms and scratched him beneath his chin. The little dragon's eyes rolled up in his head and he made a soft humming noise.
"He doesn't need all that attention, you know," said Shay.
Jandra looked up. "What?"
"It's a waste to give him so much affection," Shay repeated. "Earth-dragon children are never coddled or cared for. They're regarded as little more than parasites by adult earth-dragons. They live like rats after they hatch, hiding in walls, eating scraps and bugs and their smaller siblings. They absorb the dragon language by spying. Earth-dragons raise themselves until they're old enough to hold a tool or a weapon, at which point they're put to work and treated like any other member of the horde. They don't get any mothering in their natural upbringing. They aren't even clear on what the concept of a mother is."
Jandra looked annoyed by his argument. "He's not a rat," she said. "He's an intelligent being who can talk."
"It's probably nothing more than imitation," said Shay. "I'd guess he's as smart as a parrot."
"If a parrot were injured, I'd treat his wounds too," said Jandra.
"Good boss," cooed Lizard, reaching up and stroking Jandra's cheek.
Shay turned away, shaking his head. He discovered their fourth companion climbing up through the trap door. This was Vance, a young man roughly his own age, with a wispy blond beard and close-cropped hair that looked as if it had been trimmed with a dull razor. Vance was dressed in the modest clothes of a farm boy; a simple brown wool coat and patched-up cotton britches tucked into boots badly in need of new soles. The only thing new in his possession was his bow-one of the now famous sky-wall bows, forged from steel, strung with wire, the tension tamed by a set of cams at each tip of the bow. Vance was short, barely five feet tall. A series of small white scars on his brow and around his lips, plus calluses covering his knuckles, gave Shay the impression that Vance was someone who'd survived many a tussle.