Chapter Eleven

Have fun tonight," Frank told Duckers as he watched him zip up his pack on Wisdomsday morning.

"Thanks." Duckers plastered on his usual upbeat exterior, but Twyla could see the way his worries over his relationship with Zeddie hung on him like a wet wool sweater. She walked him out to his equimaris to offer him what little encouragement she could.

"Get through the wedding. Be there for Hart and Mercy. When it's over, you can decide if you need to ask for some breathing room."

He shook out his shoulders, trying to release the tension building inside him. "You're right."

"You're a good person. If you weren't as kind and thoughtful as you are, you wouldn't be tied up in knots."

"Thanks for being my mom away from home."

"It's a privilege and an honor." Twyla patted him on the shoulder. "I bet your mom is so proud of you."

"She kind of is."

"Have a good time. Eat some cake. Drink some adult beverages. Everything's going to work out."

"See you tomorrow?"

"You bet."

Maybe she was overestimating her encouragement abilities, but she thought he seemed lighter when he mounted up and rode off. She returned to the campfire, where Frank had already poured her a cup of coffee. He handed it to her when she sat beside him on the log. In the distance, Quill crouched in the marsh grass, observing the adult dragons and their young on the water, tearing his eyes away from time to time to jot a few notes in his journal.

Frank indicated Quill with his cup of coffee. "He's all right, your fella."

"Yeah, he is," Twyla agreed, but her mind went to the moment when Frank saw them kissing and the look on his face and the uncomfortable feeling of having been caught, as if she weren't supposed to be kissing anyone.

She didn't want to think about Quill or Frank or romance, so she watched the dragons instead, the way they serenely glided through the water as they cared for their young. "They're so peaceful. I don't get it."

"What?"

"Why did a dragon attack Herd that night? He set off his flare, so he was clearly scared. He was covered in glitter, and we found that footprint, so we know a dragon was involved. Why would a dragon have gone after him? What was he doing?"

"Maybe he got too close to the nest?"

They both startled, each of them realizing what he'd said.

Twyla spoke her thought process out loud. "We know those goons we saw by the Mist somehow got into the dragons' eggs, but we had no idea where they came from. What if Herd got too close? And what were those people doing in a dragon's nest in the first place? They didn't seem to know what they'd found until the dragon came after them, so why were they there?"

"I can't believe we didn't think of this until now."

They rose and tossed their coffee. All this time, they had been looking for the nest in the mountains near the lake, when they should have been looking in the area where they had found Herd's body.

Frank jerked his head toward the place where Quill sat on the north side of the lake. "Think we should tell him where we're going?"

"I think we should at least leave Mary Georgina with him. Give him a practice run for tomorrow."

"Well now, I don't know if that's a good idea."

Twyla pointed at the dragon, who was now clinging to Frank's leg. "Barnacle." She pointed to Frank. "Hull. Time to start scraping, sailor."

He put the dragon on his shoulders and followed after her, but he dawdled so much on the brief trek to the north side of the lake that Twyla had to take him by the arm and drag him. "Quill is an adult. Better yet, he's a literal dragon expert. He is more than capable of taking care of Mary Georgina for a few hours, and he's going to have to handle this all day tomorrow and part of Allgodsday anyway."

"I know, but—"

"Quill!" Twyla waved her hand to get his attention before Frank could back out. He was worse than she had been the first day she dropped DJ off at kindergarten.

Quill sprang to his feet—an impressive achievement for a man of his age—and approached them with eagerness. He didn't kiss her or call her darling, but he brushed his hand down her arm, a gesture that made Twyla bristle, even as she felt herself to be unreasonable. She'd had sex with this man. They were dating. Of course it was appropriate for him to touch her. And yet there was a certain stamp of ownership in that brush of his hand, as if he were stating to the world—or at least to Frank—This is my woman.

It made Twyla less than forthcoming when she removed the dragon from Frank's shoulders and handed her to Quill. "We need to check out a lead. We'll only be a few hours. Please keep an eye on Mary Georgina for us."

"I hadn't planned on—"

"Thank you so much. You're a huge help."

Never give a man a choice, her grandma Eloise had advised her a few days before her wedding. Never ask. Always tell him what he's going to do. If you ask, you give him a choice, and if you give him a choice, he won't do it. It had taken Twyla twenty years of marriage to figure that out. And then Doug went and sailed the Salt Sea, so it didn't matter anymore. Today, she put her grandma Eloise's words of wisdom to good use and left Quill stammering behind her.

She and Frank mounted up and rode south to the rocky plain where Herd had sent up his flare weeks ago. There were no longer any signs of what had happened here, no glitter, no blood, no evidence that a man had died on this spot. The indifference of time sent a shiver up Twyla's spine. They picketed the equimares, and Twyla brought Frank up to speed on how much of the site she and Quill and Duckers had already searched, looking for scat or a living dragon rather than a nest.

"Quill said the terrain didn't scream dragon habitat, although maybe he's got some new theories now that he's seen them in the flesh."

Frank gave her a sage nod. "Dragon poodles."

"Dragon poodles," she agreed. "Duckers found the scat in those trees over there, so I think that's where we should start. We can keep circling outward from there."

"Makes sense."

It felt good to be working together again, Frank and Twyla, Twyla and Frank, partners in the Tanrian Marshals. But their first flush of excitement slowly dwindled as the day wore on and produced no sign of a dragon's nest. It was hotter here than it was by the lake, and the fine hairs that had escaped Twyla's low ponytail stuck uncomfortably to her neck. She took off her hat to fan herself.

"There's a pebble in my boot," she told Frank. She sat on a nearby rock to pull off her boot and shake it out. Without warning her seat lurched beneath her, and the next thing she knew, she was falling, down and down, darkness closing in around her until she hit dirt.

"Twyla!" Frank's voice came from a distance that didn't make sense.

She was stunned. Her entire body rang with the impact of hitting the ground. And then she realized, I can't breathe.

"Twyla? Can you hear me?"

She wanted to call to him. She wanted him to lift her up and make her breathe. She couldn't draw air.

"Fuck! I'm coming!"

She clutched at her chest and throat, panic setting in.

You've had the wind knocked out of you, the voice of reason in her brain begged her to understand. You're going to be okay in a minute. Calm down.

She willed her muscles to go lax before she drew in a quick, sharp breath. It wasn't enough.

"Twyla?"

She wanted to answer him, but she couldn't.

"Hang in there! Fuck!" He sounded as panicked as she felt.

She tried to breathe again and choked in a little more air. It was dim where she was, but not dark. She could see light overhead, a large hole sending down a shaft of sunlight. She could hear Frank clambering down to her—down, because somehow, someway, she had ended up underground. There was the sound of his boots hitting earth, and then he was kneeling beside her, brushing her hair away from her face, his hands moving along the length of her body, searching for injury.

"Where are you hurt?"

She wheezed for air.

"Fuck!" he spat, his hands trying to find a problem that wasn't there.

She took another wheezing breath. It was getting easier.

"Come on, darlin'. Stay with me." Frank leaned over her and put his hand over her heart. She felt something wet drop onto her face, and she understood that he was crying.

"I'm fine," she gasped.

"You're not fine!"

She pulled in another painful, juddering breath and choked out a few more words. "Got the wind knocked out of me."

His hands scanned again, feeling around her rib cage, frantic.

"I'm fine." She put a hand over his wrist and forced herself to sit up, grunting with ache and effort. She sucked in air until her lungs finally sorted themselves out.

In the faint sunlight filtering in from the hole above, she saw tears streaking down Frank's face. Horrible, strangled sobs caught in his throat. Her chest throbbed at the sight of his anguish, and she took his face in her hands and wiped at his tears with her thumbs.

"I'm fine. I promise."

Frank closed his eyes, his face a rictus, as if he were in physical pain. He grasped her shoulders and pressed his forehead to hers, and they stayed that way for a long, long time, and all the while Twyla repeated, softly, "I'm fine. I'm fine."

"Merciful Mother of Sorrows," Frank uttered at last. He wasn't a religious man, but it sounded like a prayer coming from his mouth. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against his barrel chest. They clung to each other, and Twyla couldn't imagine anything she would rather do less than let go.

Eventually, they had to put their minds to the task of getting out of wherever they were. They appeared to be in a sizable underground cavern with tunnels leading off to the left and the right. The hole through which she had fallen was an uneven circle of daylight roughly ten feet above them.

"Is that a ladder?" Frank asked, shuffling toward the cave wall to investigate.

"Bride of Fortune, seriously?"

"Definitely a ladder. I bet you knocked it over when you fell in. Someone's been here before, that's for sure. Can you stand?"

"Yeah, but oof, I'm too old to be falling like that."

He helped her to her feet but kept a hand on her arm, as if he needed to touch her to be sure she was alive and not about to crumple into a dead heap at his feet. "Gods, you scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry."

"No sorry about it. I'm just glad you're okay." He turned away to pick up the fallen ladder and prop it against the entrance.

"Think Herd put this here?"

"That's my guess. Probably marked the opening with that big rock you sat on. The mouth is wide, but it's in a depression, so it's hard to see unless you're on top of it. Maybe he found this tunnel on rounds and decided to go poking around on his downtime."

Twyla had taken several exploratory steps toward what appeared to be the mouth of a tunnel leading off to their right when she tripped on a pile of cylindrical objects and went spilling onto the ground again, this time bruising her knee.

"I'm okay!" she assured Frank before he had the chance to worry again.

"Salt Sea, woman, are you trying to kill me today? My heart can't take it."

She held up one of the tubes she'd sent scattering all over the place. She must have kicked a hole in its pasteboard casing, because a fine powder smelling of rotten eggs tickled her hand.

Frank bent over, hands on his knees, to squint at the object before shouting, "Put it down!"

Startled, Twyla dropped it immediately.

"Don't drop it, Twy!"

"You told me to put it down!"

"Gently!"

"You didn't say gently!"

Frank rubbed his chest. "This is how I'm going to die."

"Well, what is it?"

"It smells like gunpowder," he said as he gave her a hand up.

"Ope!" Twyla startled again, hopping away from the explosives and nearly knocking Frank over in the process.

He wrapped his arms around her to steady her, and here they were again, all wrapped up in each other. Her heart pounding for a variety of reasons, Twyla extricated herself.

"Does gunpowder work inside the Mist?" she wondered aloud. "Is that an Old Gods thing?"

"If it is, it's yet another reason to get out of here."

The connection between the tubes and the marshals' reason for investigating this area in the first place snapped together in Twyla's mind, like pieces of a puzzle revealing one corner of a larger picture. "Holy Three Mothers," she breathed.

"What's wrong?"

"Think about it. What could wake up a hibernating dragon?"

The blood drained out of Frank's face as he looked first at the pile of gunpowder-filled tubes and then toward one of the tunnels leading away from the main cavern.

"That's it. We're done here. And we need to get you to the infirmary."

"Are we sure this ladder is solid?" she asked him, staring up at the splintery wooden rungs.

"About to find out."

Frank held the bottom steady as she climbed up and out of the wide hole and into the light of day, her muscles aching the entire way.

There was no one on duty at the infirmary.

"How can no one be on duty at the infirmary?" an outraged Frank demanded of Fern at the weapons lockers.

"Hiring freeze. Maguire can't get permission to fill the opening, and there aren't enough doctors on staff to cover all the hours. You'll have to go to the hospital in Herington or wait until tomorrow morning. Are you hurt, Marshal Banneker?"

"I'm fine," she said, and she repeated herself, emphatically, to Frank. "I'm fine."

"You're limping."

"Hardly."

"We're at least getting an ice pack. Come on."

He strode off to the infirmary, and Twyla followed, because honestly, her right hip and butt cheek were mighty sore, and that ice pack sounded pretty good. And maybe some aspirin. He held the door for her, turned on the gas sconce, and patted the top of the exam table. She hopped up as he got an ice pack out of the icebox and handed it to her. When she pressed it to her lower back, he said, "Let's have a look."

"At what?"

"Your back, where you are clearly injured, because that's where you slapped that ice pack on."

"You sneaky bastard." She sighed and pulled her shirt up to the line of her brassiere with no embarrassment to speak of. Frank had seen a fair amount of her skin after eight years partnered up in the marshals, and he had doctored her in the field more times than she could count.

But then he touched her, softly, carefully, his fingers sliding across her ribs, feeling along the length of each bone, his fingertips dry and warm against her skin.

And Twyla wanted to purr.

Had she been so sex starved that messing around with Quill had awoken some randy beast within her? Or maybe it was the fact that sex with Quill had left her wanting? Why else would she be enjoying this completely innocuous contact with Frank as much as she was?

"Does it hurt when you breathe? Any sharp pain when you inhale?"

"No, I don't have any broken ribs," she said tetchily, eager to draw the examination to a close.

"That was not a short fall, Twy. Pull away the ice pack for a second so I can have a look."

His hand was smoothing slowly over her back, palm flattened against her, and Bride of Fortune, it felt good. Why did it feel good? And now he wanted her to take away the ice pack? When she was about to combust?

"Sure," she said casually, as if the man who was her best friend in the world wasn't presently waking up what she had considered her faltering libido all of five minutes ago.

I need to get this out of my system, she thought. It's The Rogue of Redwing Ruins and the fluorescent green vibrator for me tonight.

She set the ice pack on the exam table beside her and held her breath as Frank stared at her back and gently ran his fingertips toward her hip, which, as it happened, was located in close proximity to her butt cheek. So she was now inflicting on him a traumatic peek at her staggeringly not sexy granny panties. She felt the moment his fingers brushed the elastic waistband in her soul.

"Sorry, Twy, but I'm going to have to pull this down an inch or two. Is that okay?" he asked, indicating her underwear.

"Of course! Why wouldn't it be okay?" she shrilled.

He pulled on the elastic with one hand and gently smoothed over the tender flesh where her hip met her ass.

If he goes one inch lower, I'm not sure what's going to happen, she thought. As surreptitiously as she could, she picked up the ice pack and held it to her neck.

His hand went one inch lower.

She yelped, more from mortification than from pain, but Frank startled away in response. When she looked over her shoulder at him, he had his hands in the air, as if Twyla were arresting him.

"It doesn't hurt that badly, I swear," she assured him.

His eyes were wide, and his hands were still in the air. "You're going to have a nasty bruise, but as long as you're not pissing blood, I think you're okay."

"Hello-o-o? Mail delivery?"

Frank's hands fell to his sides, and he hung his head. "Salt Sea," he cursed as Hermia opened the infirmary door a crack, just wide enough to poke her black button nose into the room. "I have a letter for you, Marshal Banneker."

"Come on in," Twyla said in welcome to the nimkilim, who had unwittingly come to her rescue.

"I like your underwear," Hermia told Twyla as she handed over the envelope with Hope's handwriting on the front.

"Thank you," Twyla answered in humiliation as she opened the letter and read:

Hey, Mom, I know Wardensday is Mercy Birdsall's wedding, but Everett got a few days off and we're taking a quick trip to Halifax Island off the coast of Lyona with friends. Ms. Wilner is giving me some time off so I can go. Be back Sorrowsday. Love you! —Hope

Twyla loved having her daughter home, but she was thrilled to have the house all to herself for the next couple of days.

Frank had grabbed the prescription pad off the counter and was scrawling a note on it. "Hermia, can you take a message to Dr. Vanderlinden in Sector W-14? He's expecting us this evening, but as you can see, Twyla is hurt."

"I'm not hurt," Twyla protested.

"I'll write a quick note for Maguire, too. If she gets it before the wedding, great, but if not, that cave's not going anywhere."

"Aren't we abandoning our post, though?"

"You fell a good ten feet into an underground cave. I'm sure Maguire won't mind. We have the day off tomorrow anyway. It makes more sense for you to rest up at home than to ride back to W-14 for one night."

And with Hope gone, Twyla would be blessedly alone in her own house. As long as Wade didn't invade this evening.

"I suppose," she said, brought nearly to tears by the force of her wanting to be home right now, right this very minute.

"That's settled, then."

Frank took his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a twenty.

Twyla blinked at the biggest tip any nimkilim had ever received. "What are you doing?"

"Tipping this hedgehog to say goodbye one time and only one time and leave immediately to deliver these messages to Vanderlinden and Maguire."

Hermia snatched the crisp bill out of his hand and held it in front of her glasses, her black eyes gleaming. "Oooooooooooooooooh! Do you know how many Lulu's Grape Fizzies I can buy with this? But oh dear, Chief Maguire isn't on duty, and I can only deliver on my mail route."

"I'm sure you'll find a way."

The nimkilim slid the bill into her pocket, which seemed to have grown droopier since the last time they saw her. "I'll put it in the nimkilim box for you."

"Fine. Bye, Hermia."

"Bye," she said once and only once and made a beeline for the door, her rubber rain boots squeaking on the linoleum. That was as far as she got, however, because the door stymied her. She pulled and pulled on the handle to no avail, until bone-weary Frank had to push it open for her.

Hermia turned and raised her tiny hand in a wave.

"Don't," Frank warned her.

She slapped the hand over her mouth and walked away.

Twyla's disconcertingly heated response to Frank's examination continued to fluster her during the car ride home. The front bench of her autoduck felt unusually small and cramped as Frank drove along the empty country road. Desperate to quash the unwanted pants feelings for the man behind the wheel, Twyla dragged her attention away from his disturbingly appealing forearms and directed it toward the investigation. "Why do you think Herd needed explosives? And how has no one heard them going off? Except the dragons, I guess."

"I've been thinking about that. Remember the night we found his body? We heard thunder."

"That's because the storm came in."

"I know, but we were hearing thunder a while before the rain started. We assumed it was the storm. But what if it wasn't? What if everyone who's heard something go boom in Tanria assumed the same thing?"

"That makes sense, but it doesn't tell us why he wanted to blow stuff up in the first place."

Another piece of the puzzle tickled the back of Twyla's mind, but her tired brain couldn't remember what it was or figure out where it fit. And then everything that had happened over the past few hours caught up to her all at once, and she wound up conking out for the remainder of the ride home. She didn't wake up until Frank opened the passenger-side door.

"We're home, darlin'."

The weirdness of the infirmary dissolved like magic as he half carried her into her house. He offered to draw her a bath, and it wasn't weird, because Frank was her best friend, and he was trying to help her. That was all. That was all he was trying to do in the infirmary, too.

She said no to the bath and thank you for the friendship, and she fell asleep in her own bed in her own house without the assistance of The Rogue of Redwing Ruins or the fluorescent green vibrator.