Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

hurts. “You were all acting like idiots. You didn’t honestly expect us to stand there and watch you beat each other up, did you?”
    “A proper mate knows that her place is at her wyvern’s side,” Drake said, pushing past Baltic into the room. He limped slightly, and appeared to be missing a tooth.
    Aisling tsked and hurried over to him, wiping at the blood on his mouth.
    May raised her eyebrows as Gabriel, also limping, followed Drake, a little groan escaping him when he sat in the spot I vacated. “ ‘Physician, heal thyself’ has a particularly fitting ring to it right now, but I suppose you don’t want to hear that, do you?”
    “No,” he said, wincing as he flexed the fingers of one hand.
    Kostya staggered in last, striking a pose at the door that lasted for three seconds before he crumpled and collapsed.
    I looked at Baltic again. “I imagine you’re proud of yourself.”
    “I have nothing to be ashamed of, if that is what you are implying.” He nodded to where both Aisling and May (who had evidently given in to Gabriel’s pathetic appearance) were murmuring softly as they tended their men. “Aren’t you going to cosset me as the other mates are doing?”
    “I don’t think you deserve any cosseting, since it was you who started the whole thing by jumping Kostya.”
    A groan came from the direction of the floor. “It was completely his fault. He’s wholly to blame for everything. Oh, god, I think I’m going to puke.”
    Baltic looked at me out of his one good eye, the sadness in it sufficient that I pulled out a tissue and dabbed gently at the blood from his nose. “Sit down,” I said, pushing him into the overstuffed chair Aisling had been sitting in.
    “Careful,” he warned, easing himself into the seat. “A couple of my ribs are broken.”
    “They are?” I whirled around, suddenly furious. “All right, which one of you broke Baltic’s ribs?”
    Drake and Gabriel pointed to the floor.
    “He dislocated my shoulder and broke my collarbone, if that makes you feel any better,” Kostya said in a pained voice.
    “Tough noogies. You and I are going to have a little talk later on, Konstantin Fekete,” I said, glaring at him.
    “If I survive, you’re welcome to try,” he said in between groans.
    It took us a few minutes to get everyone patched up and relatively hale, although all four men had to be provided with dragon’s blood, an extremely potent spicy sort of wine that only dragons and their mates could drink, before their regenerative powers kicked in and healed the worst of their hurts.
    “Now perhaps we can get down to business and talk about this ridiculous war,” I said after everyone was comfortably situated. “I want to discuss the death of all those blue dragons, and what actual proof you have against Baltic regarding them.”
    Drake’s phone buzzed. With a cross between an oath and a groan, he got to his feet and moved stiffly to the far end of the room to take the call.
    “The proof was laid before you at the last sárkány ,” Gabriel said wearily, sipping carefully from his glass. “Baltic was in the area at the time of the murders. He was seen by one of the survivors. He is known to have been working with Fiat, who we know also had a hand in the murders.”
    “Really? Then why haven’t you put a death sentence on his head the way you did mine?” I asked, more than a little riled at the thought of the way the entire weyr had jumped to erroneous conclusions.
    “Fiat is . . .” Gabriel glanced across the room at Drake.
    “Nutso.” Aisling finished the sentence. “Mad as a hatter, or so Drake and Bastian say. Jim would say he’s cracked, and for once, I agree with it. Drake tried to talk to Fiat last month, but he went off about a woman plotting his downfall, and how she’s arranged to have him killed after using him for her own purposes.”
    “Chuan Ren? I can see her wanting him dead after he stole her sept, but how has she used him? He has to be mad if he’s making paranoid claims like that. But perhaps he’s not so far gone that we can’t reason with him. Maybe we should talk to him again,” I suggested. “Maybe someone could get through to the rational part of his mind.”
    “That’s doubtful,” Drake said, returning to us with only the slightest hint of a limp.
    “You think he’s that mad?” I asked him.
    “No.” He stood before Baltic, giving him a long, cold look. “You can’t question Fiat because he’s gone.”
    His words