Page 14 of The Queens and the Kings
She would have hugged him, if the idea wouldn’t have repulsed the taciturn, distant curmudgeon. She tilted her thumb the other way.
“I need to find someone.”
Rolf nodded.
“Ta.”
Anxiety followed her into the undermountain, where controlled chaos rippled. Kapurnickkians striding with purpose,their robes billowing around their pants. Workers whispered, kids scuttled by, wide-eyed and squealing over the wyvern. Rainwater surged through trenches in the mountain side and sloshed into storage containers.
Moisture streamed off Britt with each step toward the main corridor. Her thoughts tangled twice as fast as her feet. Where was Henrik?
Instructions barked by General Helsing filtered up from the ground floor. Calm, firm, yet fast, she commanded the crisis with her usual aplomb. Britt veered to the left to avoid her aunt. It would take longer, but prevent . . . complications.
To her relief, a familiar baritone shouted her name.
“Britt!”
Henrik jogged toward her, Einar and Agnes at his side.
“Come with me.” She grabbed his arm, tugging him with her because she wouldn’t stop moving. “We need to find Pedr. Right now.”
Chapter Five
PEDR
The acrid,smoky fireworks that shot out of a hollow metal tube lingered with a gritty scent similar to gunpowder. Pedr wrinkled his nose at the horrible smell, intensified by the humidity.
Whatever. He could deal.
Anything to get that bastid creature out of the air and away from his ship.
As the last embers dissipated, Pedr studied the sky. The tension that crackled through him rivaled lightning. He scanned, throat heavy, for another flash of wings. The whip of a violent tail. Nothing.
“C’mon,” he growled, “you bastid piece of?—”
The litany of curse words cut off as a hint of wing, heading west, caught his attention. His eyes shot over to see the wyvern fading out of sight, lost in a thunderhead. Pedr clenched the wheel in his palms.
West?
A wyvern heading west wasnota good sign.
Pain shot through his jaw as he ground his teeth, shoved away from the wheel, and headed down the stairs. His stepsthudded against the sea-warped boards until he shoved inside his quarters. Without light, he moved by instinct and feel, fingertips searching the edges of book spines.
Too thick.
Too thin.
Too papery.
There.
He paused, breath held, and listened over a crack of thunder. That sound was only thunder, not the wyvern. No, the confounded, daring beast headed west. West, west, west.
Which meanteverything.
Pedr tipped his fingernail on top of the book, slid the spine closer, and grasped it in his palm. With a slap of his hand on a knotty protuberance in the shelf, then a two-note whistle, a lamp illuminated across the way.
He fanned the pages of an old diary, stopping at the end. A sentence splashed with rainwater commanded his immediate attention. The haphazard, scribbled letters required contemplation because they were his own atrocious handwriting.
