Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

by nature rather than hot,” Baltic said, his eyes still on the figure of his dead grandfather. “He had sane moments, but it was the madness that drove him on and kept him attacking the black dragons when others would have ceased.”
    “And now?” I touched Baltic’s cheek, drawing his attention away from tragic memories. “Is he being coldly mad now?”
    “No. I thought at first he was, but I see now that the act of being raised as a shade has changed him, leached the madness out of him.”
    Behind us, present-day Constantine yelled, “You call me a douche canoe? I am not the douche canoe-you are. No, you are more than that-you are a douche speedboat!”
    “ Most of the madness,” Baltic qualified.
    Savian laughed, then immediately looked guilty. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make light of a somber occasion.”
    “It matters not,” Baltic said briskly, turning with me and striding out of the tower. “That event was long in the past. Constantine paid the price for his actions of that day.”
    “By sacrificing himself for me when I was killed?” I asked, trotting after him.
    “That was later. He suffered most when I threw him and his followers out of the sept.”
    I stopped so quickly that Aisling, directly behind me, bumped into me, immediately murmuring an apology. “You threw them out? No, that’s not right. Gabriel told me that the silver dragons left the black sept.”
    “Gabriel was not there. I was.” Baltic stopped, saw the look on my face, and sighed one of his highly perfected martyred sighs. “I can tell by your expression that you are not going to let this rest in the past, where it should remain.”
    “Damned straight, I’m not.” I approached him, searching his face for signs of distress, but he had once again mastered his emotions. “Are you sure you kicked them out? Because everyone else seems to think that Constantine left the sept because he didn’t want to be a part of it while you were wyvern.”
    “That’s what Drake told me,” Aisling said, looking to Drake for confirmation.
    He shrugged. “It is what Constantine told us when the silver dragons joined the weyr.”
    “Now, just wait a second,” I said, stopping Baltic when he would have continued. Dimly, the noises of Constantine and Kostya yelling at each other were still audible, letting us know they were still engaged in their battle. I wanted badly to ask him about whether Pavel was right in hinting that Constantine had taken Baltic’s talisman, but I didn’t feel right mentioning it in front of Drake. Instead, I went back to the main point of my confusion. “From what I’ve gathered, all along Constantine has made a big deal about the silver dragons forming because they didn’t want to stay in the sept while you were running it into the ground.” I made air quotes about the last few words. “Which is stupid, because you did no such thing, but that’s always been Constantine’s big thing ... they left to form their own sept.”
    “They formed a sept, but only after I removed Constantine and the dragons who attacked the rest of our sept.” Baltic’s eyes were unreadable. “You have some memories of Constantine. Do you expect that he would have made it known to all that he had been made ouroboros?”
    “No,” I said after some thought. “He always did have a bit of a sensitive ego.”
    “Just playing devil’s advocate, I’d like to point out that no one knew Baltic was kicked out of the black dragons, too. At least I don’t think anyone knew. Sweetie?”
    “No,” Drake said, his face as placid as ever. “That fact was not known to me until just a few minutes ago.”
    Baltic shrugged. “I did not hide it, the way Constantine has hidden the truth. It simply did not matter, since Alexei reinstated me as his heir.”
    “I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it very interesting that Constantine got the boot,” I said, stumbling after Baltic when he took my hand and returned through the complex tapestry of the past to the present day.
    The battle was over by the time the last few tendrils of the vision had faded away into distant memory, at which point, Kostya soundly beat Constantine ... or he would have if Constantine hadn’t suddenly run out of energy.
    “No!” the spectral voice of Constantine howled, echoing through the half-dead trees as he faded from our view. “Not now! I cannot lose power right when-”
    Kostya picked himself up from the ground, where he’d been thrown by