“Close?” She sounded baffled—and thankfully unoffended by my lack of attention. “Of course not!”
I squinted up at the dragon woman. She’d dressed herself in relics for the tour, having wasted God knows how much magic on their restoration. A wide-brimmed hat embroideredwith water droplets sat atop her massive skull, while a shirt stretched painfully tight over what might either be breasts or prodigious pectorals, its smiling fish distorted into a boggle-eyed monster. Her baggy pants, which ended mid-thigh, burned an intense yellow-green that did not exist in nature. It felt cruel to ask someone so playfully dressed this question. “You are family. Shouldn’t there be some, you know, underlying love?”
This was rather pious, considering that my own father likely fell asleep each night thinking of creative ways to kill me, but she didn’t have to know that.
“He’s a walking knife,” came her growled reply.
“Well, yeah.” I kicked at a loose piece of pavement. Intervening in the sorcerer’s various moods had gone some way toward thickening my skin, but I still shuddered at the waves of displeasure radiating from Hydna. “He’s a lonely guy, I think.”
“He’d be less lonely if he weren’t such a piece of shit.” She met my eyes without blinking, and I found myself mesmerized by their reptilian scarlet.
“You have to . . . I don’t know. Meet him more than halfway? He does want company.”
“But is too much of a bastard for company to want him back.”
“Exactly!” I said, delighted that she’d completed my thought. My excitement faded at her expression. “That’s neat that you can raise one eyebrow like that. Good control of your, uh, facial muscles.”
Hydna pointed to a circle of unicorn-sized crabs, complete with saddles, welded to a roofed platform. No half-shoutedexplanation followed; I’d succeeded in puncturing her enthusiasm.
“Those are cool,” I tried lamely. Then: “He’s been kind to me when he didn’t have to be. Merulo, I mean. Not that everything’s been perfect. I didn’t much like the whole ‘torture needle’ thing, but—”
“The what?”
“Hang on, I’m coming to a point. Merulo might make a lot of insulting, degrading remarks, and he is overly obsessed with killing God—”
“This is adefense?”
“Hydna, please! What I mean is that, brushing aside all those little details, he’s always been there when I needed him most. Like when Glenda shot me full of arrows, or slit my throat, or—”
“Who the fuck is Glenda?”
“Hydna, come on, I didn’t ask you what a car was.” I rubbed at my stubble, wishing I could reach into my own head to pull my thoughts into order. “Merulo will be there for you, too, if you ever need him”—and I hoped that was the truth—“so, it’d be good if you could both . . .try.” At her contorted grimace, I added, “I’ll talk to him too, promise. Same speech!”
The dragon woman exhaled deeply. “You’re an annoying little man, Cameron.”
“Again, above average height.”
A hand landed on my shoulder, and she steered me with gentle force around a sunken pothole that could easily have swallowed a dragon. “You have any family?”
Damn. Forced to reveal my own hypocrisies. “Yes. A brother who idolizes me, and . . .” I hesitated. “A father who despises me.”
Skirting complete, she removed her hand. “Do you want me to kill your father and steal your brother?”
“No! Absolutely not.”
“I could do it, easy.”
“I know you could.”
“Painlessly, even.”
“Hydna!” I pleaded. At the furrowing of her brow, I remembered my manners. “Thank you. That is ah,very kindof you to offer. But the less contact I have with my brother, the better. I’d only stain him.”
We silently passed a towering metal track, which twisted high above in loops and dives. “S’pose it would be a bit much,” said Hydna. “To have two of you down here.”
I gave her my sternest frown. “I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
CHAPTER 33
