“I’ve got you,” he shouted, hair whipping in the breeze.
I swallowed and swung my leg over the saddle, finding the leather loop with my toes. My leg trembled violently the lower I went, but then Rush’s hand was around my ankle, steadying me.
“Take your foot out,” he called. “I’ll guide you down.” His other hand braced against my thigh.
I did as he said and held my weight in my arms, letting his hands guide my foot to the stock car’s roof. My arms gave out and I thunked onto the roof, less silently than we’d planned. I teetered, but he wrapped his arms around me and righted me.
“Thank you,” I said, clutching his jacket. The train beneath us rattled and shook.
“All right, we’ll check on Myth, then we need to?—”
A pistol fired. I dropped to the roof of the train, slamming down so hard I lost my breath. A second pistol fired, and I crammed my hands over my ears. Rush was pointing his pistol at the lip of the roof. He’d suspected a guard would ride in the car with Myth. He’d been right. My noisy landing must have alerted him to our arrival.
“Is he…?” I shouted.
Rush knelt and shoved the gun over the side of the train, then he peered down. He fired another shot, and I screamed. He leaped up, then grabbed my arm, helping me up. “He’s fine,” he said, reading my terror.
“My dragon or the man you just shot?”
He jerked his head toward the edge of the stock car’s roof. There were no handles, as Prescott had thought, but there were slats in the wood, and I used them like a ladder as I followed him over the edge. He kicked at the already open door—whoever had shot at us had been foolish enough to unlock it—and slipped inside. I dropped into the dark train car, grasping Rush for balance.
I yelped.
A man lay sprawled on top of Myth’s long tail, his arms splayed, pistol still in his grip. I couldn’t see any blood.
“You shot him.”
“He’ll live.” Rush knelt and pulled at Myth’s eyelid. It opened, but the dragon didn’t stir. “Heavy dose, looks like.”
“Will he…?”
“Your dragon or the man I just shot?” he said, standing.
“Both.”
“The man will wake up in the morning with a bruised rib, nothing more.” He kicked at the man’s chest. A dullthunksounded. “Dragon scale armor. Oldest trick in the book. My father outfits his best men with it.”
Dragon scale armor was a thing of the past, from the days of knights and castles with keeps. The stuff was inordinately expensive, considering it could only be made from the scales of dragons who died at over one hundred years old. The scales of young dragons didn’t harden to the point of being able to withstand gunfire until at least a hundred moltings, and it wasillegal to take the scales off a living dragon. Only collectors bothered with it now, or so I’d thought.
I dropped down and stroked Myth. He was folded up like a coiled rope, his tail draped over his legs, his neck curled around uncomfortably. “I’m so sorry, boy,” I muttered. I slipped a small emerald from my pocket and set it in front of him. I couldn’t make him wake up, but when he did, he’d swallow the stone, which I hoped would give him the energy he needed to fly back to Treston.
“We need to move. Those shots alerted anyone else on board that trouble’s here.”
I let Rush lead me from Myth. Using our fingers and toes, we edged along the outside of the stock car once more, then stepped across the clanking coupler bolt to the thin balcony on the back of the coach. No one had lunged out at us, which I found odd. Clarence, who’d been waiting for us, dropped down from the car’s roof and joined us on the narrow walkway.
Rush lifted his pistol, nodded, and burst into the train car.
Opulent interior, smooth wooden bar, plush chairs.
And in one chair at the far end sat Lord Merlon Fairfax, with a gun pointed at Vanya’s head.
CHAPTER 41
“Pleased to see you, Arivelle,” said Fairfax. “Ah, ah, ah,” he said as Rush aimed at him. He twisted the pistol’s thin barrel in Vanya’s hair. She cringed.
Rush lowered his weapon and set it on a small round table affixed to the floor between two chairs. Clarence moved around me and did the same.
“You too, Arivelle,” demanded Fairfax.
