Page 69 of Backpacking through Bedlam

“So, since it sounds like you have my husband behind that door, it would be awesome if you could let us through of your own free will, before I have to make you let us in against your will,” I said, almost cheerfully, and with a visible swallow, Kitty stepped aside and let us pass.

Verity moved to put herself ahead of me again, maybe concerned that I was going to stab the next person who got in my way, and pushed the door open, revealing a room almost identical to the office we were going to be using as our “bedroom” for the duration, save for the absence of the bed and the inclusion of a folding table. Several dragons were standing around it, all of them attempting to interrogate Thomas at the same time. Thomas, for his part, was looking at them calmly, with no sign that he was disturbed in the slightest by their behavior, hands folded neatly behind his back.

Verity pulled in a small, sharp breath. I gave her a curious look. She shook her head. “Annie stands just like that when she’s mad at us,” she said, voice low. “I just didn’t expect that kind of family resemblance.”

“It’s like we’re related or something,” I said.

The telepathic hum had gotten louder as we worked our way deeper into the building, and in this room, it was so loud that I almost couldn’t focus on anything else. I frowned, looking around the room, but saw no sign of Sarah. What I did see was a bunch of highly upset dragons who seemed to have decided that blaming Thomas for all their problems, back to the dawn of time, was going to make those problems go away.

If I still couldn’t see Sarah, she was actively shielding herself as hard as she could. I did inherit some of my mother’s resistance to Johrlac influence, which meant that for her to stay unseen, she had to really be focusing on her shields. She was upset, probably because everyone else was upset, and it’s hard for telepaths to avoid that sort of thing.

No way was I going to stand by while these people upset my granddaughter and blamed my husband for things that weren’t his fault. I stepped over to his side, close enough that our shoulders were brushing, and smiled a bright, unnerving smile at the dragons around the table. “Hi,” I said, voice bright and a little vacant, the way it had been when I was a children’s librarian who didn’t want to worry anyone. “It looks like you’ve started without me. Oopsie. I’m Alice, this nice gentleman’s wife, and he’s not a traitor, and we’re not the ones who led the Covenant to your doorstep. You did that just fine on your own by making speciesist assumptions about humans, which is a reasonable thing to do, since we’re kind of awful sometimes, but works against you when you never take other factors into account.”

The dragons looked at me blankly.

“Humans are primates. It’s part of why we have such a wide range of facial diversity across the species; we evolved from animals that form strong social bonds, need to be able to avoid accidentally impregnating a direct descendant, and tend to travel in groups. We recognize each other almost purely visually, with no dependence on scent cues or psychic signals. That means even closely related humans will have some morphological differences, to help us tell each other apart. Dragons aren’t all identical, but your differences are more subtle than ours, so sometimes we can be assholes and mistake you for one another. And then you assume we’re incapable of telling you apart. But humans will even figure out ways of telling cuckoos apart, if you give us enough time, and the Covenant team that’s been watching the area has had plenty of time.”

“Then how do you explain them attacking just as you arrived?” demanded one of the dragons.

I shrugged. “Shitty coincidence? The universe trying to make sure everything happens at once so we don’t get too comfortable trying to deal with it? The Covenant being smart enough to move when they saw an opportunity? If they saw us show up—and that’s a big ‘if,’ but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen—then they may have thought this was their best shot at acting without attracting the attention of the whole Nest.”

“Why?” asked another dragon.

“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up. “I can’t speak for the Covenant. I was never a member. I’ve never been in one of their strongholds. But I know they’re reasonably clever people, or they wouldn’t have been able to keep causing problems for this long, and they would be aware that new people coming into an established group almost always leads to a period of adjustment. Strike during that period, and your chances are better than if you wait for things to stabilize. One thing’s for sure: you’ve all been complacent and arrogant.”

“I don’t like your tone,” said the first dragon.

“Well, I don’t like the fact that one of the first things Verity said to me was that the Covenant could use temperature sensors to pick you out of a crowd, and you’re all clustered here in a target-rich environment, and there’s no possible way the Covenant hasn’t flagged at least one of you coming or going. They haven’t attacked because they don’t know Verity and Dominic are in here, and because someone let slip about your husband. They must be hoping you’ll lead them to him.”

The dragons looked collectively horrified. Finally, in a stiff tone, one of them said, “That’s a wild accusation.”

“Is it? Because I just met a group of yong who knew you had a male of your species somewhere in this city, but not exactly where. And the dragons in Los Angeles know about him. It was the biggest secret possible. You can’t be blamed for not keeping it perfectly.”

The dragons muttered but didn’t say anything. I took that as a good sign.

“Look,” I said. “They probably think they could wipe you out whenever they wanted. Sometimes the thing to do with a nest of vipers is to leave it alone, since at least then you know where they are. You can always come back and clean it up when the time is right. Your husband, though? He’s a much bigger, better target. They’re trying to find their way to him. They’ve probably been watching for weeks to see how you’re getting the kids in and out of here, and today was just the day they decided to strike.” I didn’t know much about how routewitches viewed time, but if they could bend it like they did distance, even a little bit, the timing of this attack explained why Apple had been in such a hurry to get us out here.

A little warning would have been nice.

“Cara will never talk,” said one of the dragons, hotly.

“Can you say the same about the kids?” I asked. When none of them said anything, I asked, “Does this Cara do the pickup runs very often?”

“She’s our primary driver,” said another dragon.

“Okay,” I said. “Look, we know the Covenant has been looking for you. It’s pretty clear at this point that they know about William, or they know that people believe in William, and they’ve been hunting for dragons. That part isn’t conjecture. We know that’s happening. So if they’ve been trying to find dragons, what makes you think having identical physiognomy was going to be enough to keep you anonymous and safe here? Sure, they can’t tell you by your faces, but they can recognize you by your hair. By your favorite jacket. By your shoes.”

Hair is actually a lot more important than most people want to think it is. Mine had always served me as a form of camouflage, long and tidy when I was playing the good little children’s librarian, short and styled with a literal knife when I was trying to convince the universe that I was a badass bounty hunter who could handle anything it wanted to throw at me. Maybe it’s the shallow human in me, but if I can put the right costume on, I can play the role.

“Sally and I were snatched by a group of yong when we went out for pizza.” So much for not letting Thomas know what had happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn to stare at me. “Okay, well, Sally was snatched, Mary and I tracked her down.” Good thing she’d already declared herself family and hence trackable through phantom means. “They were watching the door before we got here. When they saw Sally, they assumed she was the representative for a different Clutch of yong who’d been allowed access to your Nest for some reason, and they didn’t approve.”

“If you were going to let me in, they thought you should be letting them in, too,” said Sally. “They kinda sucked.”

The dragons were getting visibly upset. “They shouldn’t have been poking around here,” said one of them, sharply. “They had no right to take you.”

Several of the dragons nodded, and it was clear where their thoughts were trending. I decided to cut this off before they could get all the way around to declaring some sort of draconic feud against the local yong Clutch. As badly off as European dragons tended to be in the modern, human-dominated world, all the other kinds have come off even worse, which is sort of funny when you consider that it was European dragons who inspired the creation of the Covenant in the first place.

Sometimes the world puts a concerted effort into not being fair.