CHAPTER 2

Cade

Since it wasn’t going to be the kind of night that I really wanted, I figured I’d better make the most of the little time I had to myself after dropping off Jenna at Elliot’s place.

While I was in the cage, there wasn’t much to do besides start sorting out my life and the reasons I was locked up in the first place.Once I was out, Byron invited me to stay with him while I finished sorting things out.Living with him meant having access to all the amenities of his upper-nest life—including being his guest at the best gym in Pendrake City.

The way we were stripped down to just codpieces, elbow pads, and knee pads, it reminded me of Elliot at one of his wrestling matches that we’d bet on so many times.This practice room that we were in now was the kind of room that Elliot, who was also a member here, probably used to keep his wrestling skills sharp.It was a wide space with a high-vaulted ceiling like the inside of a church, a scaffold with lights across the ceiling, and padded walls and flooring.Byron had started coming here regularly after everything that went on in Reptos, which was interesting.It seemed like he wasn’t the only one who’d turned a page in his life since we met Jenna.

“So,” said Byron, facing me, “do you want to do this human or dragon?”

As an answer, I let the horns come out on my head and the scales break out on my skin.

“Dragon it is, then,” Byron said, starting to morph himself as we both went to a rack above a long bench against one wall.Resting on the rack were two sword-like foils and two masks, specially molded to fit over dragon faces.By the time we got to the rack, we had both taken full dragon form, our tails twisting behind us, our wings folded tight against our backs.We each took a mask and slipped it over our snout and eyes.The tough scale plates up and down our chests and abs would protect us well enough from the foils.The codpieces and pads would do the job for other critical spots.Once masked, we each took a foil and walked back to the center of the room.

Byron raised his foil in front of his masked face and called out, “Stand to!”He sounded like some high-born, noble dragon in some old story that I hadn’t paid attention to in school.I hissed behind my mask.Considering Byron’s upbringing, this really was like a noble dragon dueling with a commoner.

” ‘Stand to,’ yourself!” I called back, and raised my own foil and, each of us taking the fencing start position—foil forward, free hand raised, we went at it.

The air was filled with the clattering, slashing noises of our two blades hitting against each other as we lunged and thrust and parried, Byron making me back up first, then me getting more aggressive and slashing and swishing faster at him, and Byron backing up in response.Byron started moving faster then, and soon the two of us were making little leaps forward and back and feints to one side of the other, searching for weaknesses, finding openings, blocking or being blocked.

It really got my blood pumping.Fencing like this was such an upper-class kind of sport, the kind of thing you did in a place like this when you belonged to the kind of society that came here.On the streets where I grew up, we didn’t live in the gutter.There was no such thing as a “gutter” in our world, the way it was since humans and scalers united and learned to live together and share the Ambience.But there were always more and less ambitious people, and people who made more of a fortune and more of a social standing.Unlike my friend here, I was a street kid.We had our own kind of “fencing,” which we did with our tails holding sticks or mop handles, or at closer quarters with just our tails thrusting and slapping.This was more of a refined kind of play than I was used to—but I was still good at it and so was Byron.

He’d gotten really good.He was moving his foil so fast, my dragon ears picked up the sound of it swooshing in the air.The clatter and slash of blade against blade got louder; the back and forth and side to side movements of our bodies got faster.Byron hit my foil to one side; I looped it up and over and went for the opening that he left.I stabbed hard and fast at his chest, but he was just a fraction faster.He lunged back, taking his chest plates out of the space where the point of my foil entered, then slashed hard again, knocking my blade away.Byron made a lunge of his own for my chest, but I twisted to dodge his foil and slashed it to one side.I leapt back and got ready for his next attack.

Byron and I started to circle each other warily on the padded floor.Our tails twitched, anticipating what we’d do next.He went into a standing pose with a hand on one hip and his foil raised.It was as if time stood still for a second.Then I moved in with a leap forward and my blade stabbing forward while Byron just stood there like a statue.In a split-second I realized what he’d done.He’d lured me in, invited me to try something, and as soon as I attacked, he moved his blade arm as fast as a striking snake.The next thing I knew, he knocked my foil to one side, swiveled with his own foil, lunged fast, and connected the point of his blade with my left chest plate.

His foil drew no blood and didn’t hurt—except my pride.Damnit, he’d gotten me.I leapt back and whipped off my mask, my tail curling with the feeling of defeat.“All right,” I said, “that one’s yours.”

”Good one, though,” said Byron, removing his own mask.“Well played.”

I chuckled.“Maybe soon I’ll be good enough to take on some of the other stuffed-scales in this place.I might even get good enough for something else.”

”What else?” Byron wondered.

Morphing back to human, I screwed up the courage to tell him something that had been on my mind.”Since Reptos,” I said, “you know I’ve had a lot of time to think about things, about what I’m gonna do with my life from here forward.I’ve been getting some ideas about what I might do.”

”Let’s hear it,” said Byron, going human again himself.

”I liked how it felt, helping Jenna.I kind of like how it feels, helping someone else and maybe caring a little about someone besides just me.I’ve been thinking maybe I could make some kind of life out of it.Maybe with someone like…the World Justice Bureau.”

Byron raised his eyebrows at that.“Really?You—a World Justice Agent?You’d really want to go out for that?”

”I know it’d be hard,” I said.“And I know with my recent record they might not even take me at all.Someone who’s been in the cage for theft isn’t exactly their first pick.But maybe someone who’s been in the cage and has some good connections and can vouch for him…”I trailed off, letting him take the suggestion.

He rolled his eyes, looking as if he were rolling the idea around in his head.“You—a Justice Agent,” he repeated.“I’ve got to admit, I never would have thought of it, with your background.No offense…”

”No, that’s what I’m saying.With my background, my record, I’d need someone to put in a good word about me.If they were my friend, you know, and they were willing…”

”Well,” said Byron, “someone is your friend and someone, I think, would definitely consider it.Come to think of it, it might be good for you.”And he reached over and put a friendly hand on my shoulder.“Maybe so.Let’s take a breather before we go again.”Byron walked over to the bench.I followed him.

“We probably only want to do one more,” Byron said, sitting down, resting his foil on his lap and his mask on the bench beside him.“You don’t want to get too tired before your shift later tonight.”

Sitting down next to him, doing the same with my foil and mask, I said, “Probably right.I expect I’ll spend tonight buffing floors at the Museum of History for community service.Which won’t be as much fun as what Elliot is probably doing right now with Jenna.I’d sure rather be boffing than buffing.”

”Be thankful you’re not still in the cage, and you pulled this particular assignment,” Byron said.“Museum cleanup is one of the nicer things you can be doing to work off the rest of your sentence.”

”True,” I agreed.With a crooked grin, I added, “Still not as nice as what must be going on at Elliot’s place.”

Byron nodded with a faraway sort of smile of his own.“Between you and your community service, and me with my legislative staff business tonight; neither of us is going to have as much fun as Elliot is having.I was lucky to get away long enough for a workout here.”We had a pause of silence, each of us quietly envying our friend.Then, Elliot went on, “I like how this feels, though.Almost as much as I’d like how that feels.It’s better than the way I felt in Reptos.”

”Hey, don’t feel bad about that,” I said.“Maybe you hung back out of the action because you weren’t practiced enough to take on those Gorgonite goons.But if you hadn’t been there to arrange my legal help, I could have gotten myself a worse sentence than I did.”

”You were a first offender,” Byron recalled.

I reminded him, “It was my first time getting caught at something and it was something pretty bad.”

Byron argued, “You weren’t actually handing off stolen goods.The Intercross made up a fake of that data box with the plans for the weapons tech.”

”Yeah, but I was the one who stole the damn thing—pushed into it by my cousin and the elders.It was a bad enough mess, and thanks to you, it could have gone a lot worse for me.”I offered him my hand, which he slapped and clasped.We shook like brothers.

Byron said, “If we’re ever in a spot like that again, I want to be good for something more than calling in the lawyers.I want to be able to help—really help.I want to be able to protect Jenna better.I need to know I can do something for her if there’s more trouble, which there could be.”

”I get it,” I said.

We were quiet for a minute.Then, suspecting our minds were wandering to the same place, I said, “You know how it is between them, don’t you?”

”Elliot and Jenna?”

I replied, “Yeah.Elliot and Jenna.You know how they are, right?”

Byron shrugged his shoulders and let out a sigh.“Yes.I know.”

”It’s not like she doesn’t care about us,” I said.“She’s too good to be with anyone she doesn’t really care about and when the four of us are together, she’s enjoying all of us.Jenna likes and trusts and enjoys all three of us.She has real feelings for all three of us.But with her and Elliot—you can feel it, can’t you?”

”Yes,” said Byron, and I could tell he was picturing them.

”When you watch her with him,” I said, “you just know.”

”They do,” Byron agreed.

I said, “The four of us have got something together.But the two of them…The two of them…”I trailed off.The distant look on Byron’s face said he knew just what I was saying.

“It’s not that they’d want to hurt us, or shut us out,” said Byron.“The four of us are exactly that—the four of us and I don’t expect that to change.But Elliot and Jenna…are the two of them.”

”You’re all right with that, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Is Elliot still our friend?Will he always be our friend?”

”Yeah.He is.”

”And do we both care about Jenna?”

”More than I ever expected to care about anything,” I admitted.

”Well, then,” said Byron.“They’re okay with us and we’re okay with them; and we’re okay with the four of us.Right?”

”Right,” I agreed, nodding, more sure about that than I was about anything else in my life just now.Then I mentioned, “You know, after I’m done with my shift and you’re done administrating with the legislators tonight, we could go on over to Elliot’s and…”

”No,” said Byron, clapping me on the shoulder again.“Not tonight.They don’t get many nights without the two of us.We’ll have lots more time with them.Let’s let the two love lizards have the night to themselves.”

”Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.

He picked up his foil and his mask and said, “Ready to go one more?”

I took up my own gear and answered, “One more time.”

And together we went dragon and masked up again for another round.Before the foils started swirling again, for a second I wondered at the back of my mind how many rounds Elliot and Jenna had gone so far.