Bad Faith by Jon Hollins

Author:Jon Hollins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2018-08-13T16:00:00+00:00

39

Thunderstruck

Quirk had dedicated most of her adult life to the study of dragons. There had, of course, been dalliances with other mega- thaumatofauna. She had spent a semester at university obsessing over the breeding cycles of Chatarran wyverns. She’d spent six months working on a paper about the social structures of Atrian giant tribes. But every time she had come back to dragons. Their legends. Their history. Their influence on human social structures. The contents of their hordes and the hidden ratios within their treasures. And then beyond simply studying dragons—actually fighting them. Interacting with their social structures. Battling their political machinations. And now here she was working alongside them—integrated, in a way, into their social fabric.

But never had any of her reading or research indicated to any reasonable extent exactly how much gods-hexed moaning there was going to be.

“We should have gone to the vineyard,” Pettrax grumbled.

“We should have burned it to the ground,” Rothinamax whined.

“We wait on a human.” Netarrax’s voice was full of disdain. “We are no better than we were.”

“We are working,” Quirk said as loudly as she could, “together. Cooperation is not the same as capitulation.”

“Cooperation is not being ordered about by creature of weak flesh.” Pettrax loomed over her.

It was a challenge, Quirk knew. An attempt to assert dominance. Because it always was. Because every time the dragons talked to her, it was an attempt to find weakness. It was transparent, and ever so slightly pathetic for its repetition.

It was also bowel-looseningly terrifying.

“If you want a say,” Quirk growled, imitating aggression in direct defiance of every impulse in her body, “come up with something worth listening to.” She let smoke waft out with her words.

Pettrax snorted fire, but it shot over her head. Then the dragon looked away.

“We wait,” Quirk shouted to the assembled horde of dragons, “because it is the smart play. We wait because information is valuable. And only after we have retrieved it can you dumb bastards go do the one thing you’re good for.”

And gods piss on it, that was not a message that would foster the cooperative mind-set she was angling toward. The problem was that when dragons were involved, cooperation seemed to involve one party getting its way and the other party becoming an appetizer. Quirk knew which side of the equation she wanted to be on.

Finally she risked looking away from the dragons, toward the hills that blocked the vineyard from her sight. And at the exact moment she did so, the massive figure of Barph suddenly lurched up into the sky and towered over everything.

Because … because gods piss on it. Because there were no reasons anymore. There was just the mockery of all she strove for. Every gods-hexed time.

“Okay,” she said, turning back to the dragons. “That you can probably rain death and destruction on.”

But they hadn’t really waited for her cue. They were boiling up into the air. Downdrafts battered her and forced her to her knees. Dust and dirt were a storm around her.

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