The Broken Knife

Kaz backtracked toward the den, looking for an area with evidence of recent gathering. Gatherers usually went a little further from the den each day, until the earliest patches of plants had had time to recover. Then, they started over again, working in a pattern. If Kaz could figure out where they’d been the day before, he could simply wait nearby, and they would come to him.

This was a much, much safer plan than either entering the den or following the gatherers when they left, and he blamed the fact that he hadn’t thought of it before on his desperation and loneliness. Kobolds were pack creatures, and while Li’s presence was keeping him sane, he still longed to be with others of his own kind.

He had to veer away from Lianhua’s lingering scent in order to follow the smell of pups, but he finally ended up in a wide, low cavern that he had to crouch to enter. All of the stalactites had been broken off, undoubtedly to make sure none of them was a lopo, and to make sure any lopo that tried to move in would be noticed immediately.

The cave was a good one, with several shallow pools and mounds of moss and mushrooms. Several patches were already picked over, but it was clear that there was still plenty more to do. It wouldn’t take a group of experienced gatherers a whole day to finish, but they would start here when they arrived.

Kaz had no idea how long it would be until the Copperstriker’s day began, but this was a perfect opportunity to get some rest. He sniffed out a narrow crack in the wall farthest from the scent of kobolds and crawled in, though not without some difficulty. Once he arranged himself as comfortably as he could, he felt a deep lethargy begin to steal over him, and blinked sleepily at Li, who was curled up on his lap.

“Will you watch?” he asked her.

Agreement. Blue kobold with closed eyes, sleeping while a great golden serpent coiled around him, protective.

He smiled and gently stroked the tiny back, so much smaller than the mental image. Beneath his fingers, he felt stiff fur and soft scales, illusion and reality, and fell asleep.

The sky was limitless. His wings stretched, muscles groaning with relief at their release. He twisted, long tail trailing behind him as he dove into a cloud, which parted before him, far more insubstantial than he would have imagined, having only seen them from a distance. Cool moisture gathered on his nose and trailed into his eyes, and he blinked, flapping awkwardly as he shook his head.

He dropped out of the cloud, and looked toward a sense of deep amusement, seeing the golden dragon flying lazily beside him. He felt a distant sense of concern - should she be here? - and then she dove at him, snapping playfully. He jerked his tail away from the sharp teeth, and the chase began. Two dragons spun and twirled in the sky, diving through the clouds in bursts of puffy white mist, while warm light burnished their scales to gilt and sapphire.

Kaz jerked awake when he heard voices, and opened his eyes to see Li watching him, head tilted to one side. Seeing that his eyes were open, she turned to peer out of the crevice in which they hid, and ki cycled through her body at an increased rate.

Kaz tried to shift, just enough to move the arm that was cramping uncomfortably, pinched between his body and the rock wall, but found that he couldn’t, at least not without some part of him protruding into the cavern beyond. Where kobolds now stood.

Pups chattered, voices quiet but cheerful. There was much discussion of breakfast, and several grew very excited when one pup found a good patch of rougu, a rare and particularly tasty mushroom. A few pups wandered closer to him, but they said nothing of interest, and Kaz was beginning to think that his effort was going to be wasted when the guards came close enough for their voices to rise over those of the pups.

The two males, one with a gruff voice, while the other sounded younger, talked for a while about monsters they’d seen near the den recently, and then turned to the younger one’s attempts to convince a female to make him her mate. The older male laughed, and told the younger not to be in such a hurry, then barked at a pup who was getting too far from its partner. There was a pause, and when they began speaking again, the subject had shifted.

“Do you think those things are really humans?” the younger voice asked.

The gruff one responded, “I don’t know. The females say so, and they look like the stories. Does it really matter?”

A sigh. “No. I just wish they’d go away and leave us alone.”

That was all. Such a brief exchange to make so much difference to Kaz. Was it possible that the humans were still here? Were they in the Copperstriker’s den right now? Had they told the kobolds to watch for Kaz? If Kaz just climbed out of this crevice and told the guards who he was, would they take him to Lianhua and the others?

He had very nearly made up his mind to try it when the young male’s voice reached him again. It was very quiet, even frightened.

“Do you think Litz will grow tired of waiting? If she challenges while the humans are here-”

A guttural growl cut him off. “Not here. Even pups can yip.”

Kaz froze in place. The warriors earlier had mentioned Pilla, and these were talking about Litz. Of the three males, only Bek, the older male from the stairs, had seemed supportive of Pilla. That was… concerning.

There were many things that could destroy a tribe. A monster attack could decimate them to the point that they were forced to join another tribe. They could fail a luegat with the lives of their chief and other females on the line, which was what had happened to the Broken Knives. They could become victims of vara. Worst of all, they could turn on each other during a challenge for the right to be chief.

Most of the time, when a chief died or grew too old to keep her position, she passed on the role to her most powerful daughter. This was rarely challenged, and when it was, the majority of the tribe members supported whoever the previous chief had selected. Technically, what males thought of their leader didn’t matter, but the opinion of these males was an indicator that their female family members might also support this Litz, rather than Pilla.

Kaz was beginning to suspect that the reason the Copperstrikers had risen from the mid-levels was because their former chief had died. If Pilla was new, especially if the previous chief hadn’t had a chance to officially select her as successor, then the tribe might still be in turmoil beneath the surface.

Sometimes two females were so close in power that even the other females couldn’t make a clear choice between them, and if those two also had very different ideas about how to run the tribe, it became much more complicated than a simple battle between the two. It was unusual, but if females felt strongly enough about one chief-candidate over the other, then during the challenge for position, the whole tribe could begin to fight.

Was it possible that this tribe was at the boiling point, but the human’s presence was just enough to keep them from doing anything about it? Why would it matter, and were the humans aware of it? Kaz doubted Gaoda would care, other than possibly being entertained by the idea, but Lianhua might.

More importantly, if Kaz did reveal himself to the wrong group, they might decide that he was more useful to them dead than alive. If the humans were supporting Pilla, intentionally or otherwise, her supporters might kill Kaz, hoping the humans would stay longer while they waited for him. On the other hand, Litz’s supporters might do the same, hoping that if they delivered his body to the interlopers, they would immediately go away. Of course, bringing him to them alive could achieve the same thing, but did they dislike the humans enough to hurt Kaz just to thwart them?

The risk was too great. He needed to go back to the den, but instead of trying to sneak in, he needed to make enough noise that everyone would see him, including the humans. He couldn’t give anyone a chance to hide his presence, or make him disappear.

And if he was wrong? If he’d misunderstood, and the humans either weren’t there, or weren’t guests? If he drew so much attention, and the Copperstrikers either killed him or made him join them? What would happen to Li?

Kaz sat in his cramped little crevice until the gatherers finally finished and moved on. He overheard a few more snippets of conversation about ‘strangers’, and once, a pup mentioned Litz, and then yelped immediately afterwards. His mind spun as he tried to decide what to do.

When the cave had been silent for several minutes, Kaz finally moved. He stretched one leg out, extending a paw into the open, then the other followed. When he started to roll over onto his belly, Li flew away, and by the time he managed to back into the open space, she was already flying circles around it, clearly as happy as he was to be free.

As Kaz watched her, he realized that he couldn’t risk her life along with his own. He would have to find someplace to leave her and his pack, so at least if he wasn’t killed outright, he’d have a chance to come back and get them. And if he did die, and their bond breaking didn’t kill Li as well, at least she’d have a chance.

As soon as he came to this decision, Li bit him.

Kaz yipped and clapped a hand to his ear before turning his head to glare at the dragon settling onto his shoulder.

“Why did you bite me?”

Image. Dragon and kobold, distance growing between them. A sense of angry denial.

“It’s for your own good,” Kaz insisted. “If you-”

A flood of images Kaz had seen before. The dragon flying off to check one tunnel while the kobold went the other way. Dragon flying across a pit to see if it was worth the risk of climbing down or around it, while the kobold waited in safety. Each time, the kobold reached an impossibly long arm out, pulling the dragon back.

Kaz sighed. “I know I said we needed to stay together, but that was-”

The same images, repeated, but each time the dragon snapped at the kobold’s hand.

Kaz rubbed his snout. She was right. He had refused to let her go when she wanted to explore, and though he knew this was different, he didn’t have the heart to tell her no.

“All right,” he told the dragon, “but you have to stay on my shoulder. You have to be a fuergar!”

Li’s head bobbed, and Kaz sighed again, then untied the pack from around his waist for the first time since leaving the woshi’s den. No matter what happened, it would be safest to leave the knife and the hilt here. The gatherers were done in this cavern, and would only pass through for the next several weeks. This little crack should be as safe as anywhere else, and it wasn’t too far from either the den or the stairs.

That done, he turned back toward the den and began to walk, though he was even more cautious this time. There could be other groups gathering around here, and now certainly wasn’t the time to get caught. At least his pathfinder ability was working, and he was sure he could now find the shortest path between this cave and the den, rather than having to circle around as he’d done before.

It was time to make some noise and escape the limbo he’d been stuck in for far too long.