The Dragon Chase: A Tale of the Everburning City

Interlude II: Natalina

Note: If you haven't read the prequel, Burning Night, you may want to before you get to this chapter. There are some spoilers.

"Then I call this meeting of the Council Privy to Hushed Whispers to order," Benden Tammerlane said, silencing the room. His voice was easily audible, even from the far side of the door.

"I know we're missing faces," Sun'il Tavore said, just as Natalina pushed the door open. "But we can't pull the entire council from their jobs, even for this. Oversight is present, all of the Guild's members are here, and every other interest is represented. What we decide here will be our final word."

It was hard to have anything less than profound respect for Parliament's Speaker, the stately woman who somehow commanded the room just by being in it.

She was thin, her uniformly grey hair was partially artifice, and her bearing was absurdly regal. Every inch a Parliamentarian, she had made herself embody the authority of the City's citizens, and her words carried enormous weight.

Even here, in this council of deadly secrets that deliberately undermined the woman's office.

Natalina scoffed in derision and stepped inside. Her chair scraped along the stone floor just as the Speaker was about to continue, which brought nearly every eye in the room to her.

"Courtesy is expressed in different ways, Speaker Tavore," Natalina said. "Pretty speeches and the formality of the Agora don't belong in a dank basement while we plot sedition."

Sun'il's anger twisted her face, and the woman gripped the table like she was trying to break a piece of it off. "Then what, Mrs Casper, would you regard as a courtesy?"

"Blunt and simple honesty," Natalina replied, as she noisily clanged her chair one more time before she down. "Who are we conspiring to kill?"

As Natalina spoke, she watched Sun'il carefully. She mentally marked the clenched jaw and the slightly pursed lips; little tells of checked emotions that would show as full facial expressions on someone less versed in politics.

"Are you that eager commit the deed, Mrs Casper?" Sun'il asked.

"Still despise courtesy for its own sake, Tavore?" Natalina asked her in response, careful to nettle the woman.

Natalina already knew whose life was held beneath this council's sword.

*****

Two days earlier, on a stormy night that, like every weather, didn't quite reach her new apartment on the fringes of High Central, Natalina awoke to the screech of a whistling kettle.

"Nat?" Argente asked loudly, pushing himself up on the bed and reaching for the wall lamp switch. Despite the light from the moons shining through the wall-sized windows, Argente was nearly blind without daylight or firelight. "What are you doing up?"

Natalina blinked and covered her eyes with her arm, groaning as she sat up.

"Sorry, love," Argente said. "I thought that was you boiling water."

"The kids?" Natalina asked.

Her face fell when she saw the expression on her husband's face. "I've never seen them drink tea if they weren't forced," Argente said.

Natalina moved for the doorway, and stared at the light shining through for a moment. "I think I know who it is. And if I'm right, this might be the second time work has come home."

Natalina opened the door and stepped through. Argente followed, a police truncheon clutched in his hand. Together, the crossed the short hallway into their kitchen.