altar. Luco’s giant shining blade arcs skyward. All eyes follow but Paia’s. She has seen one too many small creatures bleed their innocence away on the rough, stained stone. For this reason, and for this reason only, she spots the brief flash among the crowd of priests and acolytes to the other side of her. She is already ducking away from the smaller knife when it slashes across the empty space where her throat has just been. The throng presses around her. She cannot see her attacker, only a robed arm and a moving blade, thin and deadly. Beside her, Luco swings hisgilded curve of steel, down, down, and completes a perfect stroke. Blood sprays outward. Paia, fumbling for her hidden gun, falls against a First Daughter behind her. She thinks for a moment that the blood is her own, particularly when the young priestess screams and snatches at Paia’s stained limbs in horror. The formation at the altar breaks rank and erupts with shouting and outrage. Luco is jolted out of his post-sacrificial trance. He leaps to Paia’s side with the holy blade at the ready. Paia points. The attacker is spotted forcing a desperate path through the worshipers crowding the Plaza. He gets nowhere. The Faithful grab him, bring him down, sucking him into their maw with cheers and wild eyes and raised fists.
And then, a vast shadow sweeps across the hot sky, across and back, fleeter than any cloud, nearing, descending. The throng stills as the shadow circles and drops with a flare of scales and sun and golden wings onto the paving stones in front of the altar.
The throng of the Faithful draws back with a gasp of reverence, then spits out the attacker, sprawling and facedown. The terrified man mewls and grovels at the feet of the God, who pins him to the stones with a single golden claw at his neck, then lifts his great horned head and roars to the heavens until the air itself vibrates. The Faithful moan as one and fall to their knees. When silence has settled again, the God returns his attention to his groveling victim. He snarls and unleashes a sudden blue-white gout of flame that sears the man to a spasming cinder.
The crowd sighs. Their God has returned.
Paia’s knees buckle. Son Luco catches her.
“Look sharp, now,” he murmurs in her ear. “Everybody’s watching.”
C HAPTER F IVE
A woman laughs and calls out a name. A last set of footsteps fades. A door shuts softly. N’Doch feels the house empty out below him. He inhales the silence in long slow breaths. They’re all out there now, in the snow, probably crowding around the dragons, petting and cooing like women do. Something in him disapproves of that. Like, the fact of dragons is amazing enough . . . why make a big thing of it, let it go to their heads? What he’d never admit is that he might be a little jealous. She’s
his
dragon, after all.
N’Doch shifts his weight and stares resolutely out at the falling snowflakes. He sees they’re starting to blow around a little, and for a moment he thinks how he’d really prefer to be one of them, floating free in the crystalline air. He hates this feeling of being caught, of being seduced and repulsed simultaneously. But he knows he can’t spend the rest of the day halfway down the stairs, like the clever, witchy Rose woman ribbed him about. That would be even more ridiculous. Ought to take a look around. Ought to get this patched-up body moving.
Right.
This gets him down the stairs and partway across the dim, low-ceilinged room at the bottom, where he’s stopped dead by the undeniable reality of everything he sees. How could he have thought that VR was an equal substitute for the real McCoy? For these heavy wooden chairs with woven seats, those long tables, or that stone fireplace half the width of the wall. Or this neat stack of wood, that bucket of twigs for kindling. That one lantern burning on a stool at the far end.
Of course it’s real, he tells himself. The girl came from here, and she’s real enough. But
And then, a vast shadow sweeps across the hot sky, across and back, fleeter than any cloud, nearing, descending. The throng stills as the shadow circles and drops with a flare of scales and sun and golden wings onto the paving stones in front of the altar.
The throng of the Faithful draws back with a gasp of reverence, then spits out the attacker, sprawling and facedown. The terrified man mewls and grovels at the feet of the God, who pins him to the stones with a single golden claw at his neck, then lifts his great horned head and roars to the heavens until the air itself vibrates. The Faithful moan as one and fall to their knees. When silence has settled again, the God returns his attention to his groveling victim. He snarls and unleashes a sudden blue-white gout of flame that sears the man to a spasming cinder.
The crowd sighs. Their God has returned.
Paia’s knees buckle. Son Luco catches her.
“Look sharp, now,” he murmurs in her ear. “Everybody’s watching.”
C HAPTER F IVE
A woman laughs and calls out a name. A last set of footsteps fades. A door shuts softly. N’Doch feels the house empty out below him. He inhales the silence in long slow breaths. They’re all out there now, in the snow, probably crowding around the dragons, petting and cooing like women do. Something in him disapproves of that. Like, the fact of dragons is amazing enough . . . why make a big thing of it, let it go to their heads? What he’d never admit is that he might be a little jealous. She’s
his
dragon, after all.
N’Doch shifts his weight and stares resolutely out at the falling snowflakes. He sees they’re starting to blow around a little, and for a moment he thinks how he’d really prefer to be one of them, floating free in the crystalline air. He hates this feeling of being caught, of being seduced and repulsed simultaneously. But he knows he can’t spend the rest of the day halfway down the stairs, like the clever, witchy Rose woman ribbed him about. That would be even more ridiculous. Ought to take a look around. Ought to get this patched-up body moving.
Right.
This gets him down the stairs and partway across the dim, low-ceilinged room at the bottom, where he’s stopped dead by the undeniable reality of everything he sees. How could he have thought that VR was an equal substitute for the real McCoy? For these heavy wooden chairs with woven seats, those long tables, or that stone fireplace half the width of the wall. Or this neat stack of wood, that bucket of twigs for kindling. That one lantern burning on a stool at the far end.
Of course it’s real, he tells himself. The girl came from here, and she’s real enough. But
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