Dragon Soul by Jaida Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

letters at first, and shared the responses willingly enough with Rook, until he’d pointed out that he didn’t give two shits whether Ghislain had bought a ship or not, or what classes Adamo was lecturing in. After that, it seemed best to keep both my letters and my theories to myself.
    Rook had left Thremedon, and, it seemed, all thoughts of Thremedon as well.
    All that, however, had been before I’d been foolish enough to get myself involved in Rook’s business as though it really were my own. The delicate throbbing in my hand told me it was too late to retract my support and, what was more, I’d spent enough time stalling.
    I could hear his teeth grinding together in impatience from where I sat.
    “Well,” I said, clearing my throat when my voice came out too dry for my liking. “During the last attack on the capital, there were only four dragons that made it back to Thremedon…And then
you
came back, of course, but not…” Rook grunted and I switched gears immediately. “What I mean to say is that, assuming things progressed as they’d initially been decided, the Esar would have had what remained of those four surviving dragons…destroyed, in keeping with the provisional treaty. And if that’s the case, that still leaves ten dragons that went down in or around Xi’An’s capital. I’m sure they would have done their best to recover and destroy the majority of the…ah, bodies. I hear from Balfour that most of those vital remains have been recovered. And it’s my understanding that after the destruction of the dome, the population of Ke-Han magicians was considerably depleted. I’d imagine that’s their chief concern right now, as opposed to gathering up the fallen pieces of dragons. However, it’s possible that pieces here and there went overlooked. In war and in recovery, there is always something left unaccounted for.”
    “So,” Rook said, and I fell silent once again. “What you’re
sayin’
is that there’s a chance someone out there’s got pieces of our girls all carved up to auction off to the highest bidder.”
    “Not exactly,” I said, fingering the scale while I thought. Its edges were sharp, whereas Magoughin had been all blunt corners. It was strange for me to have such vivid memories of men I’d never considered my friends—sometimes far too vivid for my liking, infiltrating my waking hours as well as my dreams. Thinking about them made me feel strange, like missing the bottom step upon a staircase or returning to a series of notes I’d made, only to find them all in disarray, the contents shuffled and some missing entirely.
    I couldn’t imagine how Rook felt to think about it, but I hadn’t yet worked up the courage to ask.
    “You gonna elaborate on that thought, or are you just waitin’ for me to come over there and
extract
it?” Rook turned around, features ablaze, lip curled in a snarl.
    I put the scale down quickly. Fortunately, I was too frightened of the consequences to drop it.
    “I think it’s likely that…certain smaller parts, such as this, may have escaped the initial cleanup,” I explained. “I’ve read from certain accounts that there are often scavengers who turn a profit on rare items like these, and that’s likely where our friend downstairs obtained his piece. It seems to me that such tasks would be best accompanied with a liberal side of secrecy, however, since if the emperor were to get word of such a business getting under way…But no doubt it has a great deal to do with rumor, authenticity, that sort of—”
    “I don’t give a shit about any of that,” Rook snapped, looking as though he was regretting not throwing me out the window. He stalked back over to me, picked up the box that held the scale, and slammed his other hand down onto the table for emphasis. “What I want to know is if some rat bastard is out there with bits and pieces of
her
, showing ’em off for kicks in some backwater shit hole like this. That question plain enough