Patterns in the Dark Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Patterns in the Dark

  (Dragon Blood, Book 4)

  by Lindsay Buroker

  Copyright © 2014 Lindsay Buroker

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for coming back for another adventure in the Dragon Blood series. Patterns in the Dark picks up right after the events in Blood Charged (I don’t think our poor heroes have even gotten a chance to shower yet). I hope you will enjoy helping Tolemek find his sister (and maybe a dragon, as well!).

  Before you jump in, please let me thank my beta readers Cindy Wilkinson and Sarah Engelke for helping me make this a better story, and also my editor Shelley Holloway for putting up with my disdain for commas. Lastly, let me give a nod to the cover art designers at Deranged Doctor Design. Thanks to them, the first three novels are now available as paperbacks, as well as ebooks.

  Chapter 1

  The two-man flier settled onto a recently harvested taro field, the wheels sinking so deeply into the mud that Tolemek wondered if they would be able to escape later. Granted, the jungle-filled Mavar Island didn’t offer anything as sophisticated as airstrips—or roads—but this seemed a dubious alternative. This thought was reinforced when brown-skinned men in grass skirts ran out of the village bordering the far side of the field. More than one carried a spear.

  Tolemek leaned forward to touch the shoulder of Lieutenant Cas “Raptor” Ahn, the pilot and the new love in his life, though there had been precious little time for loving of late. “Should we be readying weapons, or is that the welcoming committee?”

  Not surprisingly, Cas’s Mark 500 sniper rifle already rested between her legs. He had gotten used to the idea that she slept with it sometimes; after all, he had been known to sleep with a few vials of incendiary goo under his own pillow, at least in enemy territory.

  “The colonel’s dad is supposed to have been here for a couple of months,” Cas said. She looked over at the flier that had touched down ahead and to the right of theirs.

  Her commander, Colonel Ridgewalker Zirkander, appeared to be too busy rummaging for something in the cockpit to notice the villagers’ approach. His passenger, the raven-haired sorceress Sardelle Terushan, was paying more attention to their surroundings and had her eyes on the approaching villagers. The young man piloting the third flier, Lieutenant Duck, was watching them, as well, and tapping his fingers on the firing mechanism for the craft’s machine guns.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Tolemek said. “There are plenty of men who’d like to shoot Zirkander. His father may be every bit as loathsome to these people.”

  “Loathsome.” Cas snorted.

  Zirkander sat up, waving a postcard in the air. “Found it.” When he smiled, the chin strap of his leather cap dangling down to his white scarf and pilot’s jacket, he admittedly didn’t look much like a despicable villain. He was more the dashing sort whom women wanted to bed and whom men wanted to drink with, but Tolemek still had a tendency to find him irritating. Zirkander had been shooting down Cofah dirigibles for longer than Tolemek had been in the Cofah military, and during Tolemek’s years as a pirate, Zirkander had shot down plenty of those airships too.

  Sardelle leaned forward, touched Zirkander’s shoulder, and whispered something.

  “Ah, yes,” Zirkander said, nodding toward the villagers. No less than a dozen of them were navigating the muddy field, grass skirts flapping about their legs as they ran. They would be close enough to throw those spears soon. “It’s possible this isn’t a sanctioned landing strip.”

  “It’s possible they’ve never seen a flier before and think we’re demons, here to pillage their homeland,” Sardelle said.

  “Demons? I was hoping for children of the gods.” Zirkander threw a leg over the lip of the cockpit and jumped to the ground, mud spattering in all directions. It hardly mattered; the whole team was grimy after surviving that volcanic eruption on Cofahre. “Watch my back, will you?” he called up to Sardelle, then strode toward the approaching villagers, carrying nothing more than the postcard.

  Cas shifted in the cockpit, emitting a grunt of irritation.

  “Problem?” Tolemek wondered if he should get out or remain in the flier. His own reputation as the “Deathmaker” was even more loathsome than Zirkander’s, at least among some peoples. But the pirate fleet he had been a part of had never visited this remote island, and he doubted the natives would know of him.

  “He usually asks me to watch his back,” Cas grumbled. She rested the barrel of her rifle on the windshield, clearly intending to do so whether Zirkander had asked or not.

  “He probably doesn’t want the natives perforated with bullets,” Tolemek said, trying not to let it bother him that Cas felt some possessiveness toward another man. Zirkander had been her commander far longer than Tolemek had been in her life. It was natural that she cared about keeping him alive. This logic only partially reassured him.

  “I wouldn’t perforate a random native,” Cas said. “Give him a shave maybe, but not perforate him.”

  At Zirkander’s approach, the villagers had slowed down, with three breaking away to go up and talk to him. The others kept their spears to their shoulders, poised to launch. Not all of those wood-and-stone weapons were pointed at Zirkander—Cas and Duck were being targeted, as well. Or maybe it was the fliers in general that had the natives spooked. The Iskandians styled their aircraft after the dragons of old, with bronze hulls, outstretched wings, and propellers at the noses of reptilian snouts painted with flaring nostrils and rows of fangs.

  Tolemek was positive Zirkander didn’t know the language, but that didn’t keep him from talking copiously as he gestured to the volcano at the center of the island, the jungle stretching inland, and the sea beyond the fields and the village. He finished with holding the postcard out to the villagers.

  “Is his dad’s picture on there?” Tolemek guessed. He had seen a few mass-produced mailing cards, but that one looked hand-painted.

  “Yes,” Cas said.

  “You’re certain because you’ve seen it before or because your eyes are better than mine?”

  For an answer, she merely smiled over her shoulder at him. Her impish, freckled face was dirty with ash and engine grease that had a tendency to fly back and spatter the pilots as they flew, but attractive, nonetheless. Her smiles were rare, and they always warmed his heart—and other things too.

  Zirkander turned his back on the natives—either bravely or foolishly so, given the spears still pointed at him—and strolled back to the fliers. “I didn’t understand a word that fellow said,” he announced, “but we’ve either been invited to dinner or to be dinner.”

  “Did they recognize your father?” Tolemek asked.

  He didn’t care about dinner or the natives. The only reason they were making this stop was because Zirkander’s father might be able to identify the flowers that Tolemek’s sister, Tylie, had painted on the door of her asylum wall before being dragged off to… wherever the Cofah had taken her. That mural, and the message painted in red, were burned into Tolemek’s mind: Help me. They are taking me here. Unfortunately, the tropical setting and the foliage in the painting were the only clues he had as to where here was. If Zirkander’s father couldn’t tell them, this trip would have been
a waste of time, and Tolemek didn’t know how much time he had.

  “Yes,” Zirkander said brightly as he reached his flier. He lifted a hand to help Sardelle down. She touched it briefly on her way over the side, but hopped into the mud without assistance.

  “Did they seem happy about it?” Cas asked, her rifle still resting at the ready. Several of the villagers were heading back across the field, but a few were waiting. Guides or guards? It was hard to tell.

  “They gave each other long looks that were hard to decipher.”

  “So long as they can decipher what our rifles can do,” Cas said.

  Tolemek climbed down, looking toward the jungle beyond the cleared fields and pulling a roll of paper out of his inside vest pocket. Even though he had memorized his sister’s mural, he had also taken the time to painstakingly draw a reproduction during the flight, something he could show to people they encountered. Tolemek doubted he would be so lucky as to find the spot on the first stop, but he scanned the surrounding foliage, nonetheless, hoping to spot the flowers from the painting. The vine-draped trees, plants with huge leaves, and dense green canopy were appropriate, but he didn’t see any of the purple, blue, or red flowers from the image.

  “Do you want me to wait with the fliers, sir?” Duck asked. “Those shifty fellers there look like they might have naughty thoughts on their minds.”

  The remaining natives did appear interested in the fliers, and not in an oh-what-fascinating-new-technology-has-come-to-our-island way. One kept pointing at the wheels, and another was frowning at the snout of Zirkander’s craft while shaking his spear in an agitated manner.

  “You sure you’re not just looking to avoid that possible confusion over dinner, Duck?” Zirkander asked.

  “’Course not, sir. But I could keep watch and mosey around in the jungle a spell, see about replenishing our stores. There’s a lot of fruit hanging on those trees back yonder. Might be besyluch, eh?” The lieutenant had apparently grown up in a very rural area of Iskandia. Though Tolemek’s understanding of the language had improved tremendously since meeting Cas and spending time with these people, he still struggled to grasp some of Duck’s slang.

  “Let’s wait until we talk to my dad,” Zirkander said. “He can tell us what these people think of strangers foraging in their jungle. Besides, even though I gave those men my most affable and charismatic smile, I’m not convinced they fell in love with me.”

  “Because they weren’t women,” Sardelle said dryly, giving him a playful swat.

  Tolemek hoped he and Cas reached a degree of familiarity where she felt comfortable swatting him in public. He didn’t know if that would happen, though. Sardelle wasn’t hugely flirtatious, but Cas was so reserved that she could make almost any woman seem wanton in comparison.

  “Oh? I’ve been told men find me charismatic too. Isn’t that right, Tolemek?” Zirkander wriggled his eyebrows.

  “No.”

  “Damn. I’ve been lied to.” Zirkander stepped toward Sardelle, took her hand, and waved at the fliers with the other as he asked her something softly.

  She nodded. “I will. We don’t want anyone stealing our special cargo.”

  The vials of dragon blood. Most of it had gone back to Iskandia with Apex and Kaika, but Tolemek was glad they still had some with them. He didn’t know if it would be of any use in finding his sister, but he hoped to keep some to study in his lab once this was all over.

  “Good.” Zirkander extended a hand toward the villagers. “Now, I believe our escort is waiting for us.”

  Duck looked longingly toward the jungle, like he ached to go exploring, but he jogged to fall in behind his commander. Sardelle squinted at the fliers for a moment—setting some magical booby trap?—then joined them. Tolemek and Cas took up the rear, she with her rifle cradled in her arms and he with a few handmade weapons and vials of useful concoctions tucked into the various inside pockets in his vest. He had left his tools and microscope case in the flier, but he still clanked softly as they navigated the mud. Cas quirked an eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything. She was too busy glowering at the way the natives surrounded them, muttering to each other and pointing with their spears toward the village. Two men remained behind to watch—or guard?—the fliers. Maybe they thought the dragon-esque aircraft could move and cause trouble of their own accord.

  “Thinking of you having a dad is stranger than a she-wolf with extra teats, sir,” Duck told Zirkander as they plodded across the muddy field, dead leaves and a few dud plants rotting where they had been cast aside.

  “Yeah, I hear that a lot.” Zirkander gave his lieutenant a bemused smile.

  “I just mean that you’re the boss. At least, you have been since I joined Wolf Squadron. You’re the big hero in the hangar, so it’s hard to picture you… Did he bend you over his knee and paddle you when you were a bad boy?”

  Cas snorted—at least Tolemek thought that was what the noise in her throat signified.

  Zirkander coughed. “I… don’t think that’s an appropriate question to ask your commanding officer.”

  “Can I ask it?” Sardelle asked.

  “Not in public, no.”

  “Later?”

  “Maybe. To answer your question, Duck, Dad wasn’t around much when I was growing up—or after that, either. Mom handled most of the discipline.”

  “Oh.” Duck scraped his fingers through his short dark hair. “Did she paddle you?”

  Zirkander gave him a baleful look—or what passed for one from him. Tolemek hadn’t seen him truly irked very often. The night Zirkander had thought Tolemek had been a threat to Sardelle—and the Iskandian capital city—had been one such time.

  Even though Zirkander didn’t answer, Sardelle was grinning. This image must have tickled her.

  Oh, we’re all tickled, spoke a voice in Tolemek’s head. Jaxi. He hadn’t heard from the sentient soulblade since the battle at the volcano and had thought she might be done talking to him.

  I was napping. I had to work hard to keep you alive back there.

  Yes, I understand you were invaluable. Tolemek glanced toward Sardelle’s waist, where the soulblade hung in an innocuous-looking scabbard that didn’t hint of the special nature of its occupant. He had never considered himself quick to flatter, but it seemed wise to stay on the good side of a powerful magical artifact.

  It is. And I’m just hopping into your head to warn you to keep an eye out. They have a shaman in the village, and these people do not like the fliers. They’ve seen Iskandians and Cofah before, and even a dirigible or two, but they worship dragon gods here, and they think the fliers are positively blasphemous. Sardelle and I are watching out for magical problems, but you should ask sniper girl to watch for the mundane.

  You can’t ask her yourself? To Tolemek’s knowledge, Jaxi had never “spoken” to Cas, but he wasn’t positive.

  Sardelle says I shouldn’t pop into people’s heads without warning.

  You didn’t warn me first.

  We considered you an enemy then. One doesn’t have to be as polite with one’s enemies. Besides, it’s easier to talk to those with dragon blood.

  Tolemek didn’t respond to that. It had been a surprise—and a blow to his ego—to learn that some of his inventions worked not entirely because of science, but because he had unknowingly caressed them into working using his latent magical talent. In hindsight, it made sense, since he had known his sister had magical talent. In her case, he had never seen it as anything more than a curse—it had made her mentally unbalanced, and their father had put her in that asylum “for her own good.”

  We already told you, dragon blood doesn’t make anyone crazy. Something else is going on there.

  I know. We’re almost there. Let me talk to Cas.

  They had reached the end of the field and were walking up a path that meandered between the mud and thatch huts. A few double-hulled canoes were tied to a single dock that stretched into the lagoon beyond the village, but it was a foregone conclusion
that these people didn’t get off their island much. All of the inhabitants wore the simple grass skirts, with most of the women walking around as bare-chested as the men. They whispered from the doorways of the huts and pointed at the strangers.

  Tolemek was relieved that most of the points went toward Zirkander and not him. He didn’t know if it was because Zirkander was leading or because they saw a similarity between him and his father, but the fact that Tolemek’s face wasn’t known here was a good thing. There were numerous ports where the Deathmaker was wanted dead or alive. But mostly dead.

  “Sardelle thinks we may have some trouble,” Tolemek murmured to Cas as their guides slowed down, holding up hands to stop the group. “Apparently, there’s a shaman.”

  “The sword talking to you again?” Cas murmured back.

  “I think she likes me.”

  Don’t flatter yourself. I talk to Sardelle’s soul snozzle too.

  Tolemek blinked. Her what?

  The pretty boy the grass-skirted girls are ogling.

  A trio of teenage girls hiding behind clothing hung to dry were indeed looking in Zirkander’s direction and giggling. Tolemek decided it had more to do with that goofy leather cap than any superior handsomeness.

  Whatever you need to think to feel virile, Deathmaker.

  Does Zirkander find your interjections as charming as I do?

  Doubly so, I assure you. I’m his favorite sentient sword.

  Cas nudged Tolemek in the ribs and tilted her chin toward the doorway of one of the bigger huts. A gray-haired man with numerous necklaces and bone needles piercing his nipples walked out utterly naked, aside from his jewelry. He carried a carved bone cudgel that made the hair on Tolemek’s arms stand up. Another older man walked out, this one bald and carrying a rifle nearly as nice as Cas’s.

  “Hope that wasn’t something taken from the colonel’s dad after they ate him,” Cas muttered, her finger resting lightly on the trigger of her weapon. The idea of starting a fire fight from within this growing crowd of people made Tolemek uncomfortable. He had come for information, not to slay people—and he wasn’t looking to be slain, either.