Chapter 40: The Desert Orchid

“It took Dust long enough. Have him wait in the second guest room,” Nahana whispered to the servant, still partially obscured by the curtain. Sylph stopped her pfod from grabbing another piece of fatty meat. This could be her chance to talk to Dust, perhaps the only one. She glimpsed at her mother and the guards behind them, already forming an idea for her to get to the visitor rooms.

“What will happen to the saved eggs?” Sylph grabbed a pfodful of heavily spiced meats and swallowed them down with a mixture of tangy fish and sweet fruits. Even to her dull senses, it was a strange mix of tastes, and she made sure that Nahana saw her commit these culinary misadventures.

Her mother gave no indication of concern, as perhaps Oasis would have at her food choice. “We give them up for adoption. A portion of us can’t have offspring themselves, and those eggs need a good family.”

Sylph had expected a lot of answers; Indoctrination as servants, guard training from hatching, but not giving them to loving families. Even Nahana cared about some things, as long as they were not human and not against her ideas.

From the arena, the announcer’s voice echoed over their conversation. “Bring up the next challenger.” Sylph stole another look down. “Caught on the outskirts of our town, Dave!”

“Dave?” Sylph stared at the entrance and saw a human. He was armed with an old spear and a small wooden shield and wore a thin brown tunic and pants held up by a simple piece of string. The iron grate fell closed behind the frail looking elderly man. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“You’d be surprised. Appearance can deceive.” A statement that Sylph was all too familiar with and yet she did not see Dave winning.

She wanted to watch this bout, but had to set her plan into motion. Sylph slowly forced water to gather under the scales on her head as she conversed with her mother. While her face grew bloated and sickly, she feigned less and less enthusiasm about the prospect of Dave winning until Nahana finally looked concerned. “Do you feel alright?”

“I think I ate a bit too much, too quickly,” Sylph said and clutched her stomach with one pfod.

Nahana’s eyes widened, and she flicked her tail to the floor to signal the guard in the corridor. “Show her to the bathroom and be quick about it.” Sylph had to repress a smile, but did nothing to suppress a convenient burp.

The guard lead her towards the bathroom with hurried steps and placed himself right next to the door. “You might want to step back. This will not sound pretty,” Sylph said, and pressed her frilled tail against her side. “All these new spices and strange fruit disagree with my poor insides.”

The guard seemed less impressed than the bronze Metia this morning. Nahana probably instructed them about not leaving their posts for her shenanigans. But Sylph had another card up her nonexistent sleeve; Empathy. Her facial expression softened and voice became a little higher pitched than normal. “Look,” Sylph pressed through her teeth, “There is no way out of this hallway. The bathroom has a single window the size of my arm. Would it hurt you to wait at the end, please?” Sylph fixated him with helpless eyes.

The guard inspected the window, the one-way corridor, and then Sylph. “Guess you are right,” he grumbled and stepped back to the start of the hallway with hastened steps.

The door closed behind her. However this would play out, it was surely the last occasion she could convince a guard to leave their post. The layout of the room was identical to the one near the baths, but the polished clean surfaces all around her made it look more like a small pfod bath instead. Which thankfully made her idea slightly less disgusting.

She approached the stream of water in what her head told her was very much the wrong way around and stepped into it. A pleasant cold enveloped her legs as she found her grip on the slick rock. She crouched down to the drain and exhaled, filling her lungs with water.

Grabbing the sides, she pulled herself into the drain. After her entire body was squeezed into the corridor, she noticed the distance being far longer than the one in the bath. Not impossible to pass through for dragons that needed to hold their breath, but feeling around in the dark while a constant current pushed you forward would have sent her into a panic. The rock scraped her sides and wings and her horns locked into outcroppings over three times until she broke free into the underground sewage stream.

She did not dare to surface. In the dark, underwater, she was invisible to any passerby’s, not that she expected any. The baths had to be downstream. Drifting a few meters forward, she felt another outlet in the wall. A cloud of warmth passed over her arm, and she grabbed onto the surrounding rock. The water passing her stomach was cold, then suddenly warm again. She pushed herself backwards when she realized her mistake, fighting the assortment of meats threatening to rise from her stomach. Perhaps it was the kitchen, her mind liked that idea.

Fumbling for the next outlet, she dragged herself on the slippery ground until a rush of steady, warm water brushed past her. She was certain it was the bath, climbed upwards and resurfaced in the dimly lit caverns.

Her ears flicked around as she floated motionlessly, trying to discern any dragon among the sounds of splashing water. She heard nothing. Sylph stepped out of the bath and did not even let a drop of water hit the floor. There would be no proof that she was here.

Reaching the door, she pushed her ear against the wood. Some happy splashes mixed with idle conversation from the servants’ baths down the corridor. Sylph lifted her claws and walked on the back of her paws to soften her steps even further. She had seen no Aer guards in Nahana’s service, but remained cautious anyhow. She did not want to experience the paralysis down on punishment alley for herself.

Her heart silently pounded, expecting a guard at every corner as she moved alone through the deserted palace. The arena distracted the servants and guards, a lucky coincidence. Cheering and yells sometimes echoed through the halls, but not a single guard was stationed in the foyer. The path to Brandon’s room was free. The room next to his must be the second visitors’ room.

Sylph looked around one final time as she climbed the spiral staircase, before she slipped through the large door. The door fell closed and Dust nearly jumped in surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

The smell of alcohol permeated the room, and Sylph spotted the two empty bottles of wine behind him. “You owe me an explanation! You know what happened the day I was stolen.” Sylph sat down right in front of the large Sol and coiled her tail around her legs.

Dust swallowed and peered at the door. “You should really not be here. Mistress Nahana will be furious.”

“Trust me, I know. I also know that me telling the truth about these eggs would be bad for you. So let’s talk quickly before she notices I am gone.” Sylph stared him down, or rather up. Despite their size difference, Dust had lost quite a lot of his fierce impression when compared to Nahana. Sitting on his mat, he looked old, his scales dull, and his gaze had no fire.

“That night? That’s why you are here?” He reached for his bowl. “Your mother does not like to talk about it. You probably asked her, didn’t you?”

She shook her head. “I doubt I would get an answer.”

He took a gulp. “First, we have to go back further. To the time that Nahana was a slave to the arena, as was I, and another Sol named Dard, her best friend. One I doubt she would ever mention.”

“Nahana had a best friend?” Sylph found that hard to believe. Her mother did not seem like the type to make close connections.

Dust emptied his bowl and carefully set it back down. “You learn to stick together. Dard was a promising fighter, but he’d been set up to lose.” Dust sighed. “And you know what that means.” He made a slashing motion with two of his claws.

“They killed him?”

Dust stopped, then shook his head. “I forgot, you did not grow up here. Our owners, they were obsessed with breeding the best. The more you won, the more you were worth.” He paused with a distant expression and downed the remaining wine. “The more your eggs were worth. But lose too often and they deemed you unworthy to bear any offspring.” He repeated the slashing motion with his claws and a shiver raced up Sylph’s tail as Nahana’s earlier words about families being unable to have offspring echoed back through her head. “That is sick.” She looked back up. “This was before you were champion, right?”

Dust refilled his bowl with more wine, and his voice trailed off as he stared into the bowl. “The champion gets freedom. They keep their word. That is how this desert operates. When you are young and naïve, all the wins, the wine, the food, and, of course, the dragonesses, you think life is not so bad because you achieved all these with your own claws. Until you realize your cage merely got gilded and that the dragoness in front of you is not your prize for winning, but your obligation to your owner.” His voice went near silent. “That realization does not change a thing. They want what they deem their property, even if they have to tie you down to get it. I realized that winning my freedom was the only way out of it. So I played their game. Looking back now, I do not wish to know how many daughters and sons of mine they forced into this life and that I should have been more like Nahana.”

He took another big gulp. “Your mother broke the cage.” His eyes shimmered with a renewed fire, if only for a second, as he recalled more memories. “She had to watch Dard succumb to his infected wound from behind bars. No amount of begging and offering made them care for their losing combatant. They discarded him the next day, like a piece of trash. She played their game much like I did. But, compared to me, she had a plan.”

Sylph could not quite grasp the history. Nahana did not look like a duelist. “Was my mother a good fighter? She lacks the scars and muscle.”

Dust laughed. “Our fights are not duels. Not a sport. Aer are agile and deadly, Nahana leveraged that fact. One touch is all it took. Graceful and extremely dangerous, the Desert Orchid promised to be all that.” Dust emptied the next bowl in one go. “Unknown to all of us, she put her plan into motion the day they set her up to impress some wealthy individuals, big names in the arena business.”

A shiver coursed through Dust’s body. “Her wing bindings suddenly broke away as if they were paper. What followed was pure carnage. She cut through the audience like a sickle through grain.” His tail shot up to his side and coiled around his legs as he seemed to grow smaller. “I- I have never seen somebody kill so many so quickly. They watched on the tribunes, bystanders, visitors, and she cut them all down before they could even react.” Dust grabbed the whole wine basket but set it back down. “I don’t want to, but I remember how she snatched the mayor of the town, held him up from the same balcony she now resides on. ‘This is for Dard,’ she yelled before she opened his guts with a single swipe and threw him off. She helped us out of our chains as the guard rallied and at that point, it was them or us.”

Dust exhaled. “The city stood no chance. Nobody got out. We celebrated an entire day, sure that we were all dead once their army arrived. They would take revenge and that was it. And then, through Mistress Nahana’s words and acts, they never came. I could not even imagine how she managed that. But it was sure odd how quickly unfamiliar names took over business in Prina.”

“And in that celebration, I came into being. I heard that before. But how does that relate to me? How did I get all the way to Linz a year later?” Sylph’s ears swiveled backwards at the sound of footsteps in the corridor, but nobody appeared.

“A small band of smugglers, looking to make some quick cash. Who knows who told them to come straight here for Smoke.” Dust took a long look at one of his claws. “After what I saw in that arena, all that death, I took pity on them. They had been set up to fail much like Dard. Little did I know they would steal someone’s child to make up for their losses. I could not stop them.”

Sylph listened in silence. “That’s why? Some random smugglers looking to make up for their idiocy? That is why my life happened the way it did?” The embers in her chest ignited. The answer was simply awful, finding out that there was no goal or idea behind stealing her, simply making money. “And then you tracked down Mariny.”

Dust cocked his head. “Indeed, it took me a few months to track their ship, but I found her. We found out that they sold you and our search was far from over.” His gaze wandered. “I suppose she did not last long in Nahana’s prison after that.”

“Hold up,” Sylph perked up. “You are telling me that Mariny was in that cell for over eighteen years?”

Dust’s tail twitched forward, barely missing Sylph. “She is alive?”

“Not anymore. Nahana gifted her to me this morning. And then executed her a few minutes ago.”

“By the gods, that girl had endurance, never gave up her brother too I suppose.” Dust shook his head. “Our search ground to a halt when the war came. I was sure you were dead, the whole north was infested with undead wasn’t it? But Nahana never lost hope that her firstborn heir was out there.”

“I can’t believe you actually looked for me. And never found me,” Sylph scoffed.

“The war left chaos in its wake. To think that you hid right under my snout as Void’s daughter.” Dust gestured something into the air and broke into a hollow laughter. “I have been to Carthia. I have watched the Silver Spear fight, and I saw you standing right next to her. Never would I have thought that Void’s daughter turned Veria’s daughter would be Nahana’s daughter.”

“And it did not seem weird that none of us were the same species? Or that I was the exact age you were looking for?” To think that the stupid storytellers were also at fault for hiding her from her mother by accident, it was- she held that thought. She could have met Nahana far earlier in life. But seeing how she acted now, would she even have wanted that?

Dust gave her a stare that asked if she was serious. “Hatchlings that age look all pretty similar.”

Sylph focused on the door again. “You wouldn’t know who my father might be, would you? Blue eyes like mine, Aer?”

Dust shook his head with a small smile. “I gave little attention to the dragons involved.”

“I’m thinking that every Aer in a ten island radius could be,” Sylph scoffed and Dust broke into laughter once more. “Actually, I do recall sharing a bowl of smoke with an Aer who had grand plans of exploring the continent. He had blue eyes, I think.” Finding her father seemed impossible at this point, she could not simply ask every Aer.

“Brandon and I need to leave,” she blurted out and waited for his reaction. She hoped it was the right decision, that Dust was not as loyal to Nahana as everybody else. He had made mistakes, but she felt as though he tried to do the right thing.

Dust lowered his head with a sorrowful stare. “Really? All this painful past and now you wish to leave again?”

She spread her sorry wings. “Look at me. I am not made for this place. I don’t want to be an heir and I doubt Nahana will be happy with me as hers. We don’t fit together.”

Dust sighed deeply. “Actually, you remind me quite a lot of her when she was young.”

Hearing that hurt. “I am nothing like her. I wouldn’t torture humans or blame them all for what some people did.”

“Perhaps you are right. Nahana back then would not have gotten along with her present self. I thought I did the correct thing, but I brought together two very headstrong dragons that may be better off going their own paths.”

Claws scratched through the corridor in a hurry. “I gotta go!” Sylph spun towards the door, but it burst open.

“Sylph!” Nahana barged into the room, teeth bared.