LMS: Perfect Machine 4

Einar had not been so humiliated since his notebooks had been snatched and passed around the drinking dens to be mocked and jeered at.

He, a ferocious hangdog killer, had been beaten into submission by none other than the Queen's daughter and her mastery of magic. He lay at her feet like the bruised corpse of the shot fox at the farmer's feet, watching her thoughtfully palming the dragon's key - the one thing Einar had clung to for so many years alone, plotting. Being without its

Her boyish frame bent over him and stretched a hand out to help, fingers quivering like spiders' legs coaxing the naïve to their deaths. He growled and batted her hand away, pushing himself up from the ground while stifling a groan as his injuries protested. White-hot pain seared like a rash over his ribs and arms as he steadied himself on his feet and refused to look at Kara. Instead, Einar fixed his gaze on the haunches of the dragon as he wiped his grassy hands on his coat.

"Where do you live?" Kara asked, looking down the hill to Fjordheim. They stood on the grass and soft pine needles off to the side of the cobblestone lane that lead down through the affluent suburban cottages, with the sky low and dark as it swept over them. Beyond the curve of the hill, the city glowed orange in the light rain and the smog, illuminating the gaunt curves of her face as her eyes and the crinkles around her lips as she talked. Kara slipped the key under her dress, tucked flush against her cleavage as she began to talk with him as if they were not enemies like rain and fire, though Einar could not at that point decide who was the rain and who was the fire. His spine bristled with hot ice-shards of anger as he felt her eyes on him, expecting.

"I live near the canal. It's North of the slums. You don't have to come - you can go if you want to," Einar offered.

"I want to see how the commoners live. I have the key, remember?" Kara began to smirk again, twirling the lace hem of her dress in her hands. "And the magic. I'm untouchable, Einar, untouchable."

Einar growled at her, a terrible habit he'd picked up from the starving dogs who scrapped over food nearby to his flat. He shut his eyes and stopped to breathe, revelling in the feeling of the wind in his hair, cold and biting like the steel of a bear trap. He opened his eyes: quaint timber cabins lined the lane in front of them, sat behind elaborately twirled oil lamps and pruned hedges. As a boy, Einar had looked up to the South Pass and dreamed of owning one of those pine-log houses with the dragon curled up by the fire, and perhaps a lover or two lying with him on the sofa. The aspiration had died a long time ago, almost too far back to Einar to remember - before his first stint in prison, before his first real betrayal, before so many things. Now, all he dreamed of was the dragon, perfect as always, and the Queen lying dead at its feet.

Einar approached the machine and patted its bronze hull. The curling-up of his lips was involuntary as he trailed his fingertips down its warm spine.

"Okay, then, untouchable -" Einar grunted as he pulled himself onto the dragon's back and more pain stung through his body, "- come here and let's get the dragon back before the goddamn Royal Guard get here. I drive the dragon, you keep the key."

Kara pulled a face and clambered up onto the dragon behind him. Einar felt her slide down its neck and end up pressed against his back. The unpleasantness of such an insolent, arrogant creature so close to him made every one of Einar's muscles ache to shy away from her as disgust writhed over his skin.

"But your magic -"

"My magic wont get it far, for God's sake, brat. It's not like I'm going to leave - you have the key, and I want your mother dead before I leave this shitty town."

"My mother?" Kara asked, her voice muffled in the rain and the wind. "You mean the Queen?"

"Yes," Einar hissed as he bent over the controls, his back arching like a cat's as he rested his hands on the control pannel. It was built into the metal behind the horns and the back of its neck, a series of switches and dials that he'd memorised the uses of.

Kara went silent.

"Key," He demanded.

"What?"

"Put the key in the keyhole."

"Oh."

Einar listened to the clunks of the key being pushed into place clumsily by unskilled fingers. For a moment, there was nothing but the sounds of the wind in the conifers, and the mellow industrial crashes from Fjordheim below. He started to adjust the settings, and the dragon creaked into motion. It hauled itself up, planting its huge legs into the ground to lift them up. Kara threw her arms around his middle as the dragon clambered out of its crater, its metal hide bunching and pushing beneath them like the hindquarters of racing stallions.

He shrunk away from her embrace; she was so close he could smell the subtle wisps of incense rolling off of her body. He recognised the smell - it was the perfume merchant traders bought up from lands of carved temples, papyrus rivers, and endless seas of sand. Einar grabbed her wrists and pushed her back roughly.

She made one curt comment: "One more thing, Einar: try to throw me off of the dragon and I'll slit your throat. I'll do it, I swear."

"Of course, brat, of course." Einar huffed in reply and guided the dragon out onto the cobblestone lane, checking its body for damage as it walked and he prepared it for flight. The machine was almost unscathed, save for one crumpled wingtip on its left side. Just as he'd thought - his father had done an almost-perfect job, though the metal creases made his heart ache as he looked at them. It was as if the dragon was quietly blaming him for its hurting. Of course, it could easily be restored to its perfection; unlike his flesh, which would take weeks to heal fully.

He thumbed the controls for the wings and glanced over his shoulders as they opened. Einar gripped the controls and felt the dragon's hind legs crouch before its wings powered down and the claws pushed back against the ground. The dragon pushed him up and he instinctively crouched over the machine's back, clinging to the neck with his legs and the horns with his hands. He heard Kara's cry of surprise as the dragon whisked her away, and then he felt her hands grabbing at his coat for, he presumed, security. This time, he didn't shove her away.

Einar could feel the wingbeats, he felt the dragon's jolts and strains as they climbed higher. He felt the stooping in his stomach as he angled the machine's climb steeper. Every hair stood on end, exhilarated, as he drank in the crisp deliciousness of the air flowing over him and the perfect machine carrying them higher. He allowed himself a small smile that grew into a giddy grin. He felt more alive than he had done in almost a decade. Below them, the lane, the crater, the cabins and the beginning of the conifer forest had fallen away. He peered over the side of the dragon as they reached the bottom of the clouds, bringing the nose down and levelling out the flight.

He could see the lights of the Royal Guard galloping up the hill with their oil lamps. Einar could imagine the clatter of the spiked horseshoes on the cobbles, the low rumblings between the soldiers, and the thuds of their rifles on their backs with every one of the stallions' strides. Einar shuddered, remembering very well what they did to scum like him, and steered the dragon into a bank up the valley, North.

The last thing he needed was another brand on his back.