Voyages of the Flying Dragon Read Free Page B

but Lenis knew he would never exact such revenge. Not really. He didn’t have it in him to intentionally hurt someone and, he had to admit to himself, Shujinko was helping him learn to fight. Maybe he didn’t want to help Lenis. Maybe he took a little too much pleasure in pummelling Lenis senseless. Maybe he didn’t like Lenis at all, but whatever he felt, however much he punished Lenis during their training bouts, Lenis was still getting stronger. He grinned as he imagined the day when it was Shujinko who had to limp to the doctor’s cabin.
    Lenis suddenly cried out as a sharp pain erupted in his earlobe. Suiteki had soon learned the most effective way to get Lenis’s attention.
    â€˜Come here, you.’ Lenis reached up and grabbed the baby dragon around the midriff. She allowed him to pick her up, hanging limply from his hand as he held her above his face, her tail wrapped around his forearm. She didn’t seem to be growing at all, though at the rate she was eating Lenis had expected her to be as big as her mother by now. Suiteki scrabbled against his hand, and Lenis brought her down to his chest. Her tiny claws dug through his robes and into his skin. ‘You can’t be hungry again.’
    But she was. He could feel her hunger as an ache deep in his own belly. He’d never known a Bestia to be so hungry so often, but Suiteki wasn’t a Bestia. She was a Totem. The rules Bestia Keepers usually followed in the care of their charges were, he suspected, largely irrelevant when it came to caring for an infant Totem.
    With a sigh, Lenis hauled himself off his bunk and headed towards the galley. The Bestia radiated what Lenis could only describe as a parental tolerance and affection for the baby dragon. They barely stirred in their hutch as he passed them by. Ignis raised his head and flicked one of his ears before settling back down amongst the pile of furry bodies. Suiteki gave a high-pitched squawk in response to the flame Bestia’s attention. Briefly, she struggled against Lenis’s grip, suddenly overcome by the desire to bury herself amongst the Bestia and their warmth, but then Lenis’s stomach growled, re awakening her own hunger. Caring for her, Lenis decided, wasn’t all that difficult. How hard could it be to keep her warm and fed?

Missy startled as Andrea Florona, the Hiryū ’s lookout, called down through the airship’s speech tube. ‘There’s smoke to the west, Captain Shishi, over the shoulder of that peak, three points from the northwest.’
    Kenji Jackson looked up from his map table. ‘That’d be Fronge, down on the coast. Nothing to –’
    The lookout cut the navigator off. ‘There’s a lot of it, Captain. Too much for household fires, and it’s black.’
    Arthur Knyght, the HiryÅ« ’s first officer, frowned and crossed his arms over his massive chest. ‘Could it be factory smoke?’
    There came a rustling of papers from the navigator’s desk. ‘There’s no record of any factories in Fronge. It’s a mining town, but they ship all of their ore to the mainland for processing.’
    Missy’s curiosity got the better of her. While the others discussed what the smoke could mean, she threw herspirit-self out of her body and went to take a look. Her awareness sped west, up to and over the snow-topped shoulder of the mountain Andrea had pointed out. She saw the smoke immediately. It was everywhere. Great billowing black masses of it obscured an otherwise white and blue world. Soon everyone on the HiryÅ« would be able to see it, even if they kept their northern heading. Even this far away Missy could feel the acrid tang of it stealing into the back of her throat aboard the bridge.
    If Missy had been relying on her eyes she would have been blinded by the smoke and soon lost her way, but her spirit-self didn’t see with physical eyes, so she was soon able to pass through the