The Bird and The Dragon

The separatists gathered in the mansion were a group of people from varying backgrounds, bound together by the political unrest during the war years. Indira introduced Kvenrei around as the Bird, beaming with pride. The separatists raised a glass for him, shook his hand, patted his shoulders, and asked for details, which Kvenrei denied.

The Kandens had been the driving force in the underground work of removing the ties between the government and the end-of-the-world beliefs. The work was far from done as in Khem such actions were rebellious and the rebellion was what the separatists were still planning. Tonight’s ‘rebellion’ was more an academic discussion than decisions on any concrete steps.

Jenet had also arrived. The separatists used male pronouns and the name Aldermei Veringe when addressing the young man in a stylish dark suit. His presence made Kvenrei’s neck hair stand up from fear and expected violence. Jenet postponed their meeting after the initial introduction until later in the evening, when Indira had abandoned Kvenrei by the windows. The dark time was on, and the indoor lights drew out only the nearest decorative trees, leaving the rest of the garden in darkness.

“I understood you are here with the navigator,” the memory living in Aldermei Veringe’s body said. The too-old look was present in Aldermei’s brown eyes.

“She is an old friend of mine. She has nothing to do with the ainadu.”

“Have you accepted the dragons’ laws? You got out with your life and the estate.”

“You should have left Jesrade alone.” Kvenrei looked around, but Indira was nowhere to be found. “Can we talk about this outside?”

“Your sister was an active participant and misusing the matrixes, not a passenger like you,” Jenet answered calmly. “Show the way please, I assume you have arranged an ambush for me?”

“I would have loved to, but Bladewater informed me the locals frown upon such endeavors.”

They walked over the terrace to the soft grass. “What Ikanji’s crime was?” Kvenrei asked.

“It was his mother’s crime, but Asindora taught her skills to Ikanji,” Jenet answered mildly. “The matrixes are intended to be directed outwards. Focusing them on the great matrix is unsafe because it unbalances the system. Such actions are forbidden and he didn’t follow the law.”

Kvenrei nodded, he understood what this was about.

“The matrixes in your bones are a long step in that direction. They are a borderline case, but I don’t accuse you as you didn’t do them yourself. Jesrade stepped over that border, don’t you follow your family, Kvenrei. Don’t break the dragons’ laws.”

“I’ll take care. How did you know about my bones?”

“The murder in the palace and how difficult it was to focus the resonance to you. I have seen similar matrixes in action and I recognized their effect.”

“You work for Agiisha now?”

“No. I continue serving the lord of the lost ones, my dragon lord Saa. The principles don’t change, they withhold time and place.”

“Agiisha probably disagrees,” a female voice said. Jenet turned to face the direction keeping Kvenrei in front of him, reaching for a chokehold. Kvenrei prevented getting choked on his arm but ended up having Jenet’s arm on his throat. Khiandri was approaching from between the decorative bushes handling an ancient firearm from the library wall like she knew how to use it. A dim red light was visible on the barrel, marking the weapon of the past world as potentially functional.

“Lady Khiandri, a pleasant surprise,” Jenet said. Kvenrei considered his options, Jenet and Khiandri were ready to sacrifice him to hurt each other.

“Exile was supposed to be the punishment. You have no reason to be here,” Khiandri said.

“But here I am,” Jenet tilted his head in a feminine movement. Jenet’s balance shifted ever so lightly and Kvenrei reacted by putting his left foot behind the memory’s leg and using the leverage to sweep him. Jenet didn’t fall but lost enough of his balance that Kvenrei escaped from the hold.

Khiandri triggered the pistol and a hot jet of air pushed past Kvenrei. There was no noise from the weapon, but Jenet exhaled, holding his side and Khiandri cursed her malfunctioning gun.

Khiandri ran towards Jenet to hit him. The memory barely dodged as his left leg didn’t hold the weight. At the same time, Khiandri dropped to the ground as she collided with something invisible. The black-haired woman raised her pistol, alive again with the red light, and pointed it to Jenet who was having a heavy nosebleed while leaning on a tree.

“This world needs no servants of the past powers,” Khiandri said, grimacing as the weapon didn’t fire.

Kvenrei was circling Jenet with a tile removed from the flower bed in his hand.

“You’ll need me if you wish to find your daughter. Stay, Kvenrei,” Jenet gasped, and the tile exploded filling Kvenrei’s eyes and nose with dust.

“What do you know about her?” Khiandri stood keeping her weapon directed at Jenet, who had trouble standing upright.

“Your daughter is on the planet. Put that machine away if you wish to meet her.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“I found the girl when I was searching for Ikanji. She named you as her mother. She is of your blood, but grown in the orbit, with the dragon. I’ll give you a chance to explain this extremely irregular exchange with the dragons.”

Kvenrei spitted the dust from his mouth and stepped between Jenet and Khiandri. “Move this show away from the windows. We don’t want a gang of drunken Khem rebels to see their member fighting Greinwell’s secretary with ash-demon powers. By the way, what girl are you talking about?”

“Your half-sister. Mine and Ikanji’s only child,” Khiandri said.

“The dragon’s daughter. I assume Agiisha has started to create a company to populate her isolation,” Jenet added.

“To the library? It is empty,” Kvenrei suggested trying to dust his clothes. “May I?” He took Jenet’s hand leading him to the door. Jenet followed stiffly and the glow in Khiandri’s pistol faded.

“Are you saying the dragon is mad?” Khiandri asked when they reached the library.

”She has spent a long time alone in a small, empty shard of the great matrix. She has developed towards a direction of her own, without her peers, without the pressure to keep inside a defined role.” Jenet chose a chair opposite Khiandri. Kvenrei found the cabinet with drinks. He picked three glasses and the first bottle he found. It was a kind of distilled alcohol, smelling of smoke and spices.

“Assuming you are right, what are you going do about it? Thanks, Kvenrei.” Khiandri smelled her glass and took a cautious sip.

“I am gathering the evidence. For that, I’ll need your story.” Jenet took a glass.

“In the end, my rebellion with Ikanji was tears and madness,” Khiandri said slowly. “I talked with Agiisha and she offered me peace and a place to consider my options. I was pregnant when I fell asleep and there were dreams about the dragons, machines, and the worlds. I woke some eight months ago and my womb was empty.”

“I found a child fourteen months ago. She was maybe twelve, but her mind is older than that,” Jenet looked at Khiandri calmly. “I am sorry, children should never be used this way. I know your history.”

“Thanks, from you it means a lot. What that worm has done to my daughter?”

”The girl calls herself Marci. She looks like a human, but she carries the seed of a dragon’s mind, still dormant. This is against all the binding rules, the blood is theirs, nothing else. Agiisha has stepped over the borders.”

“That snake. I thought she was on my side. Where is Marci?”

“The dragons stand on a side of their own and your Agiisha was damaged before reaching Watergate. This whole incident is so rotten I removed the girl from the dragon’s reach. She is with the Three, but they don’t know what she is.” Jenet sat on his chair eyeing Kvenrei, estimating if his silent presence in the discussion was a threat.

“You hid her? I don’t know how to thank you, this is unexpected from a sworn enemy like you.”

“I am not an enemy. I only oversee that the principles are fulfilled. And I watch both parties; the ainadu and the dragons. What Agiisha has spoken to you?” Jenet asked Kvenrei.

“She wants me to find one Jenet of Ardara and bring him to meet the dragon. Alive and relatively unharmed.”

“Indeed. Do you know why?”

“Agiisha considered Ikanji as her equal in some ways. I think she wants you as a company now that Ikanji is gone. Loneliness would also explain why to woke Khiandri,” Kvenrei said.

“No, it explains nothing. Dragons don’t operate like that.” Khiandri interrupted.

“It sounds like an error. But your awakening took place after I had met Ikanji. I assume you know about his death, he drowned himself in the great matrix.” Jenet kept his voice calm, but Khiandri was staring at the liquid in her glass.

“Are you saying Ikanji’s death changed something in the dragon causing Khiandri’s awakening?” Kvenrei said filling the glasses.

“It is possible,” Jenet agreed.

“It sounds like Ikanji I knew. He was a devious man, but he had a spark for the chaotic greatness,” Khiandri said, an echo of proudness in her voice. “He used whatever was necessary to achieve his goals. We must meet Agiisha, but on our terms, there is a hidden meaning in all this.”

“I’ll join you,” the navigator stepped in carrying her notebook. Kvenrei cursed softly, of course, she had hidden from the drunken social pressures downstairs into her investigations. Bladewater was quite fluent in the ainadu language.

“Nothing else would come into question,” Jenet said softly, but Kvenrei felt the memory holding the resonance.

“I am navigator Thomms, Bladewater if you prefer. Yes, I heard your discussion, and I will not let you destroy Watergate’s only chance to reach the orbit.”

“You heard too much,” Jenet continued and Kvenrei stood up to shield the navigator.

“It was not news to me. The man from the orbit talked about those items. The nocturna know other things. We have ways to improve the planet, to unify it if we only could rise to space.”

“You are not an ainadu,” Jenet said. “What are you?”

“Don’t hurt her,” Kvenrei said standing in front of the navigator.

Bladewater put her hand on Kvenrei’s shoulder and squeezed calmly. “I’ll tell, let me just sit down. I understand you are not killing this Agiisha at this moment, so we have time to talk. Give me a glass too. Be a good bird, please.”

Bladewater sat and took the glass Kvenrei gave her. The man didn’t even try to find a clean one, he gave his glass and took a sip from the bottle. No one seemed to mind.

“As I said, I am a navigator. Born, grown, and sailed my time under Abyss. My tattoos are inked with the ash of the fallen orbital cities. I have drunk the water from the sea worms. I have stared at the hidden lights under the waves. The sea has flowed into me and I have joined the wind and the waves. I know the flows of the world and I can open the routes for ships to sail safely. I am Bladewater anh Abyss, a navigator in the twelfth generation. My ancestors guided the starships.”

“You will have many occasions to prove your words when we leave this place,” Jenet said.

“First we go to Marci,” Khiandri stated.

“That would not be wise. The dragon does not know her location. It can’t read your mind for the knowledge that doesn’t exist there.”

Khiandri stared menacingly, but she was thinking. Jenet was not threatening, if anything she was sorry.

“I hate to agree, but you are right. I must confront the dragon first,” Khiandri decided.

“Wait, we can’t just walk there. The dragon wants you both as her tools,” Kvenrei said.

“I am not going to meet Agiisha and you will not take me there, no matter what you have promised,” Jenet said.

“I must talk to her. Marci’s location is our only ace,” Khiandri said.

They discussed the plan for a while. There was no trust between Jenet and Khiandri, but the experience of the dragons and lost daughters connected them. Bladewater mentioned her points and the conclusion was that Agiisha was after something.

All the paths seemed to lead towards the north and the dragon. Khiandri, Kvenrei, and Bladewater would travel there to return later to Jenet. The memory would wait for them in a city called Saharan.

“No one is above the justice,” Jenet said, a glass in her hands.

“For the knowledge, the new and the rediscovered,” Bladewater added.

Khiandri emptied her glass and gave a tiny kiss on Kvenrei’s cheek. “For your family, it is always found in the core of the trouble.” Kvenrei felt the touch on his toes and hid the feeling by drinking a little more. Nothing in Indira made him feel like this, but Enidtha had been dead only for a year, and feeling anything at all seemed still wrong.

”Of course, you will stay,” Indira said when Kvenrei mentioned he planned to leave.

“I have my items to take care of.” Leaving Indira again was not easy and Kvenrei considered taking Hadryn with him.

“Sure, you can go and move your things to Giza. The separatist movement needs you here. The spokeswoman has proven impossible to convince and I need your skills to deal with her.”

It had become evident that Kvenrei could never be himself to Indira. She cared about the separatists and her own family above all. Indira saw and wanted only the Bird, the man who ignited the war as a medallion among her other achievements.

“Yes, Indira. I’ll do that,” Kvenrei said, but he was not sure if he would ever return.