Up in Smoke - Katie MacAlister [26]
“You have learned, I think.”
“I am simply taking an unnecessary precaution, nothing more.” He hesitated again, then quickly whisked all the knives from the table, depositing them unobtrusively in an urn on the sideboard just as Aisling opened the door.
“What did I miss?” she asked as Gabriel roared with laughter. “A good joke? I love jokes! Is it the one about the demon and the nun? That one always makes Jim wheeze.”
I waited until Drake had helped her into her chair before addressing Gabriel, who was dabbing at his eyes with his napkin. “Who is going to be at this meeting? Bastian or Fiat?”
“Possibly both. The sárkány was called by Bastian to address the issue of Fiat, who will probably show up claiming he’s the blue wyvern and thus has a right to be there.”
“I see. Will Kostya be there, as well?”
“Probably,” Gabriel said, “although he has yet to petition the weyr for recognition.”
I waited, but he didn’t add anything else, despite seemingly wanting to. I wondered what had been going on between him and Kostya while I was in Abaddon but figured he didn’t want to discuss it in front of Drake. While Drake had apparently never been particularly close to his brother, I assumed a blood bond was a hard one to break.
“And the other dragon sept? The red one?”
“Are you finished?” Gabriel asked. I nodded and pushed back my plate. “We have much to do before the meeting this afternoon. The red dragons will likely send a representative, although who that will be is unknown. We are unsure of what the wyvern Chuan Ren’s fate was after Aisling cast her into Abaddon.”
“That reminds me! I meant to ask you if you’d heard anything about Chuan Ren while you were with Magoth,” Aisling said, turning to me. “I have no idea where she ended up, or even if she stayed there long. No one’s heard a thing from her, or the red dragons.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t hear anything about a dragon being imprisoned in Abaddon.”
“Well, crap,” Aisling said, looking at her husband. “You don’t think she could be dead?”
“I do not know,” Drake answered slowly. “It may be that she has yet to return from Abaddon, but that no one has stepped forward to claim her position. She ruled the red dragons for more than a millennium and would have seen to it that any competition within the sept was eliminated before it became dangerous.”
“It will be interesting to see who shows up at the sárkány,” Gabriel agreed, standing and holding out his hand for me. “We will see you there. But first, I promised May I would take her shopping.”
I smiled and thanked Aisling again for the loan of her clothes.
“Oh, no problem; nothing fits me now but bed-sheets anyway,” she said, tugging at an oversized shirt. “I’ll see you two at the sárkány, later. I’m looking forward to having another mate there!”
“Er . . . about that,” Drake said slowly as we exited the room.
Gabriel paused and nodded at the porcelain vase at the opposite end of the room. “You might want to take that out before you tell her,” he said brightly. “It looks valuable.”
“Before you tell me what?” I heard Aisling ask. Gabriel quietly closed the door and took my hand to lead me down the hall.
We made it to the front door before we heard the sound of a raised voice, followed shortly by that of porcelain crashing against a hard surface.
“I did warn him,” Gabriel said, shaking his head.
“You’re a healer,” I said as he tried to pull me out the door and into the Parisian sunshine. “Shouldn’t you go and see if Drake’s all right?”
“There is no treasure that could tempt me into the same room as Aisling right now,” he answered, kissing the tip of my nose before trotting down the front stairs to where Tipene was leaning against a car.
I followed him, wondering what it was Aisling could do to instill such respect . . . and whether someday I would be able to command the same.
Chapter Six
Shopping with Gabriel was a slightly stressful experience—not because it was an activity we hadn’t done together before, but because he