Dragonseed by James Maxey Page B

tremble. Something deep within the guts of the building exploded with a deep bass rumble and the entire structure fell in upon itself. Jandra stepped away from the tunnel entrance as a jet of sparks shot out into the night air.
    “Good light!” Lizard said, excited. The sparks swirled up into the winter sky like some sort of reverse snow. Jandra did have to admit that, stripped of all the horrors of the night, the sparks possessed a sort of primal beauty.
    Shay stared down the tunnel, his face forlorn. “All those books,” he whispered. “Have I been cursed? Why does every book I touch lately go up in flames?”
    “It’s just bad luck,” said Jandra.
    “It’s more than bad luck,” said Shay. “It’s the end of my dreams. I had no plan but to escape to Dragon Forge. Now that I’m not welcome there, I don’t know where I’ll go. I had thought perhaps, with a few books, I could find some village that would want my services as a teacher. Without books, what do I have to offer?”
    “You could come with me the rest of the way to the palace,” said Jandra. “If I get my tiara back, we can move freely through the place since I’ll have full control over my invisibility again. You can take all the books you can carry.”
    “So… you admit you’re a wizard?”
    “No,” said Jandra. “I’m a nanotechnician.”
    “I don’t know what that word means,” said Shay.
    “It means I command unimaginably tiny machines,” said Jandra. “At least, I used to.”
    Shay looked at her skeptically, as if judging whether she was putting him on. He held the shotgun he carried out toward her. Jandra shook her head and loosened her gun belt, offering it to him.
    “You keep it. You have a talent for it.”
    Anza had laid Thorny on the grass after she’d carried him from the tunnel, but now the old man was back on his feet, his cheeks tarnished with soot. “Damn,” he said. “I didn’t get a tenth of the stuff on his list. If I were younger, or my hands a little stronger…”
    Anza flashed him a few rapid hand gestures.
    “You’re right,” he said. “I’m alive. That’s what counts.”
    “You understand Anza a lot better than I do,” said Jandra.
    “She grew up in my company,” said Thorny. “I’m like an uncle to her. By the time she was seven or eight, I never even thought much about the fact she didn’t speak. Once you know how to read her, she gets her thoughts across just fine with her eyes and her hands.”
    “She’s never talked?” Shay asked.
    “She made some noises as a baby, but stopped when she was about a year old. After that, she didn’t even make sounds when she’d cry. Some of the townsfolk whispered that she might be an imbecile, but anyone who knew her could see that she was smarter than other kids her age. Burke used to tell anyone who asked about her that it’s better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”
    Anza crossed her arms, looking uncomfortable with this discussion.
    “I guess I should go talk to the rest of the townsfolk,” Thorny said. “Tell ‘em what I know, have them get ready to head to Dragon Forge. Get Burke his notebooks and those gauges. The note said the rest of you were heading on to the dragon palace. We can probably find somewhere in the village where you can rest up for what’s left of the night. Get you washed up, too. Anza, you look a fright.”
    Anza shrugged and brushed back a loose lock of her hair from her cheek, leaving a streak of dark blood like war paint.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN:
    SUCH IMAGINATION

    IT WAS DAWN when Vulpine arrived at the Dragon Palace. The ancient structure loomed like a small mountain near the banks of a broad river that gleamed like silver in the morning mist. The human city of Richmond lay nearby, the docks already bustling with laborers. The rebellion at Dragon Forge must seem very distant to these men, thought Vulpine. Richmond was a bustling center of trade, a gateway between the