“Freelance or bonded?” I mused.
“We don’t know, but we’d better find out.” Cody’s expression be unusually grim. “We’re going to try to sneak in a scan on him tomorrow.”
Tyrez nodded. “All the bonded Guild members have trackers.”
From what I knew of the Guild, they hid their secrets well. “Their trackers will be hard to trace.”
Cody nodded. “Ryan picked this scanner up from a reputable, albeit shady, dealer. It should be up for the job. And we have put a call out to Jacques,” the Sabre added. “He will nose around and see if he can ferret out the guy’s backstory.”
If anyone could find out what be up with the Dragon, Jacques could. “Have you consulted with Amadeus?” I didn’t like even asking the question.
Cody squirmed on the bench. “Uh, no. I don’t think that’s an option. Not until we know more, anyway.”
I privately agreed. The headmaster be not someone likely to take a balanced approach unto an underworld Dragon he didn’t want in the academy to begin with.
I ground my teeth. “If this Dragon be Guild, be sardding careful. And if that be the truth, do we evict him, or contain him?”
Cody and Tyrez exchanged a look.
“It really depends, I guess,” the Sabre said, “on just why he’s here.”
32
Anna
By the time we finished supper, I was swaying on my feet. I had a long, hot shower—serenaded by a tone-deaf ogress—and dragged myself to my bed.
I lay on it and took stock of my body. I’d be black and blue if I were still capable of maintaining a bruise for longer than an hour. And as I assessed that fact, I also concluded that Trix must weigh at least a hundred pounds.
She didn’t, of course. But as my dog sprawled across me, it certainly felt like it. She also had extremely pointy elbows. I gazed into her eyes.
“You’re having a better time here than me,” I said.
She blinked. I hadn’t noticed before that her brown eye also had flecks of blue in it. How had I missed that?
A groan from my roommate rattled the ceiling. Took me a moment to realize it was merely sound waves from an ogregarian set of lungs, and not her talent manifesting itself.
“No way I could have done the second run,” Mari confessed.
I had to agree with her. “Although Sebastian’s idea of taking it easy was far from it,” I said.
Mari lay quiet for a few moments. Then she asked, “I don’t know if I can learn how to fight. It goes against everything ingrained in me. Do you think I can still fit into the team?”
It was a valid question—we might have to protect each other while in the field. I decided honesty was the best approach. “I think it is too early to answer that, Mari. Debating it while we are lying here in bed doesn’t come close to what you may decide to do out on a mission. But if you don’t train for it, you won’t know what to do when the time comes to make the decision, anyway.”
She thought about that. “Honing my ability doesn’t mean I have to use it.”
“Exactly. It just means you can if you need to.”
The bed creaked beneath her weight as she shifted position. “So I will train,” she decided. “And then we will see.”
I respected her determination to try when she was so clearly out of her comfort zone. But if the chips were down, could the other team members trust that she would do what it took to help them?
Only time would tell. And Mari’s natural size and strength made her formidable, even standing still.
When I assessed everything across the board, all the team members, and their various talents, I came to a single rather devastating conclusion.
The true weak link in the team wasn’t Mari. It was me.
