Shadowed By Wings by Janine Cross Page A

answered slowly, carefully. “Kratt killed my father. Temple took my brother away just after his birth. Kratt crushed her face beneath his boots.”
    “Whose face?”
    “Mother’s.”
    A pause. Then: “People die. All the time.”
    “Our clan sold Waivia as kiyu, Dono.”
    That penetrated his facade of indifference. Emotion worked over his face, then he turned aside and spat.
    “You think being an apprentice is a safer life?” he growled.
    “I can change things.”
    “What things?”
    “The way things are. Temple laws.”
    He stared. “You’re talking revolution.”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re cracked. You’re a woman , Zarq, a woman. You can’t start a revolution. Look at you. You can’t even bring yourself to strike down a fellow apprentice. You don’t have what it takes to be an apprentice. Shit, you don’t even have the strength to rebuild a latrine.”
    Anger came then, from somewhere hot and unwanted deep within me, from the hole gouged in my spirit from all I and my family had suffered and lost, a hole I’d filled with the promise of vengeance, a promise I now had turned my back on with the outrageous hope of achieving something greater.
    “Give me the shovel and I’ll build that latrine,” I said, and I snatched the tool from his hand and jumped from my hammock, causing him to step back as my chest struck his.
    “Watch me, Dono,” I said, and I pushed by him, hoisting the shovel up, and strode to the dragon stall adjacent to mine.
    The dragon within was sleeping, standing with snout brushing the ground. At my footsteps, she awoke, slitted pupils dilating, nostrils flaring, head rising. I stood outside her stall’s gate with my hips butted against the stout iron.
    “Hey-o, dragon,” I murmured. “I’d have you know me.”
    The forked tip of her tongue quivered from her gums. Slowly, I set aside my shovel. Slowly, I unknotted my cape.
    From the corner of my eye, I saw Dono lurch out of my stall. He stopped at my stall’s threshold, stunned, as I untied the remaining knot in my cape.
    “What’re you doing?!”
    “Obtaining the strength to build a latrine,” I snapped, and I let my garment fall to the ground, snatched up my shovel, and jabbed it lancelike at the destrier.
    She rose up on her hindquarters, and the domed slope of her crown butted against the ceiling as talons the color of newly minted steel shredded the air. Her tongue shot out, thick with venom, straight for me.
    Dono tackled me just as she lashed out. Her tongue glanced off my neck with brutal strength as Dono threw me sideways, and I landed hard on the ground, Dono atop me.
    He launched himself away from the dragon’s reach, knees and feet scrabbling over me; then I, too, scrambled on hands and knees away from the destrier’s stall.
    Talons slashed air and scaled muscle slammed against stone. The bitter reek of agitated dragon fogged the air like smoke from burning oil.
    I collapsed across Dono’s calves. The violence of the dragon’s strike and the strength in her tongue shocked me. Numbness blazed up my throat, and my neck instantly began swelling with great bruises.
    “Idiot,” Dono gasped, and he shoved me off his legs and swiftly rose to his knees. With one broad palm he swiped the welt of venom from my neck. “They’re trained to go for the face; they’re destriers.”
    I couldn’t breathe. The swelling bruises were acting like a garrote. Wide-eyed, I clawed at my throat.
    “Hold still!” Dono barked, and he whipped off his loincloth and scrubbed furiously at my neck. “Don’t die on me, hear? The Komikon’ll kill me. Don’t die on me, Zarq.”
    His words became a roar. My vision tunnelled into darkness.
     
    I regained consciousness. Warm lips pulled away from mine. The taste of someone else’s breath lingered in my mouth like broth-scented steam.
    A face floated above mine, floating, fading, a strange demon moon.
    “Don’t move. Y’agitate yourself and your throat’ll close over