Page 52 of River Dragon’s Song

He burned with shame again. “No. I did not know you.” He made himself hold her eyes. “My people spoke of it. When the one who answers is lost, the one who is left goes wild. I felt it coming, every night. I thought it had taken me.”

“And you would have let it.” Her voice shook, and he realized with a start that she was angry. “You sealed the only way down, Korrak. You didn’t know there was another one. You decided I was never coming back, and you decided it was right, and you never asked me. Again.”

“They were going to find the river.”

“I know. I know why you did it. I would have told you to do it.” She pushed herself up so that she could glare down at him, and her eyes were wet. “But you would have sat down here and gone out of your mind before you said one word to make me stay. Do you have any idea how much I wanted you to ask?”

He stared up at her. Water dripped slowly from the vines overhead. Somewhere inside him, a small, old word was waking. It was the first one she had ever given him, mumbled in her sleep on a silver blanket by the falls. He had liked the feel of it in his mouth long before he knew what it meant. He knew what it meant now.

“Stay,” he said hoarsely.

Her breath caught.

“Stay, Frrankie. Not because it is right. Because I want it. I want you here, in my river, in my arms. I wanted it when I told you to go.” He touched her cheek with shaking fingers. “I am asking.”

She made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob. “You stubborn, impossible dragon,” she whispered. “I already chose.”

Then she bent and kissed him, slowly and thoroughly, until he had no doubt at all about her answer.

“How?” he asked at last, softly. “How did you come?”

She lifted her head and gave him a smug little smile.

“You taught me,” she said. “Left at the second echo. Follow the warm water.” She propped her chin on her hand. “It took me all day to get down here, and I walked into a wall more times than I want to admit. But I did it.”

He stared at her incredulously. Then he laughed, a deep, startled sound, and pulled her back down against him and held her so tightly she squeaked.

“Korrak,” she said, muffled against his chest. “Korrak, wait. There’s something else. Something I need to tell you.”

He reluctantly loosened his arms. She sat up a little, straddling his hips in the warm water, and looked down at him. Her face was serious and nervous and excited all at once.

“When I went up,” she said slowly, “I found people who helped me. People who protect things like the river. They’re the reason I could come back. They found a way to keep this place safe from GenCon.” She took a breath. “And they told me something. Korrak, there are others.”

He didn’t understand at first. “Others?”

“Others like you.” Her eyes were shining. “Dragons. A golden one, and one made of ice. They woke up, just like you did. They’re alive, and they’re safe, and they have people who love them.” She put her hands on his chest, over his heart. “You’re not the last, Korrak. You were never the last.”

He lay quietly in the water and looked up at her. He thought of all the nights he had sung into the dark. All the nights he had listened, and heard nothing, and believed that there was nothing left to hear. That he was the only one. That his people were gone, and he had woken alone in a dead world to tend a river that no one would ever need again.

A golden one, and one made of ice. The colors meant something, but he couldn’t quite find it. It didn’t matter. Somewhere out there, beneath the stone and the dust and the ice, there were others. Others who had woken, as he had. Others who had sung, perhaps, into their dark, and listened for an answer.

And perhaps others had found an answer, he thought, looking up at the woman sitting in his river with her hands over his heart, just as he had. He reached up and drew her down to him, and pressed his forehead to hers, the way his people had done. He breathed her in slowly.

For the first time since he had opened his eyes in the dark, he knew that he was not alone. He had never truly been alone.

And he never would be again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Frankie had inspected more habitats than she could remember. She had crawled under dome extensions and through pressurized storage bays. She had condemned a greenhouse module on the far side of the equatorial belt. Then she had spent a week showing the crew how to fix it, and it was still standing four years later. She had inspected emergency shelters and mining barracks and a very small, very ugly clinic. The clinic had saved at least two lives in a dust storm, because she had made them reinforce the roof.

She had done it for GenCon and for whoever GenCon assigned her to and once, memorably, for a settlement council that argued about the color of the airlock doors for three weeks. She knew exactly how a habitat should be built. She had simply never built one for herself.

She sat cross-legged on a smooth shelf of rock at the top of the gardens with her tablet on her knees, and looked at the chamber in front of her, feeling ridiculously anxious.

It was a good chamber, and she had spent two full days finding it. It was a wide, dry pocket in the rock just above the place where the warm stream came trickling out of the wall. It sat high enough that no surge would ever reach it and close enough to the gardens that the air was still rich and green and sweet. The ceiling was a smooth, solid arch and the floor was level. A natural opening on one side looked out over the entire cavern. She could see the pools and the vines and the soft blue glow of the moss, all the way down to where the river ran out into the dark.

It’s the best view on Mars.