Part 19 (1/2)
The dragons kept their heads down, docilely, as they followed the road; they left slushy footprints, huge and clawed, behind them. The prince and I followed in painful silence.
It gave me a lot of time to think. How had Imlann found us? Had he tracked us from the coppice, or had he been waiting for us to come back along the same road? How could he know we would return?
”Prince Lucian,” I began, drawing my horse up alongside his.
”I would rather you not speak, Maid Dombegh,” he said, his eyes upon the saar.
That hurt, but I plowed ahead. ”I suspect Imlann knew where we were going and that we were coming back. Someone at the palace may have told him-or someone at the palace is him. Who knew where we were going today?”
”My grandmother,” he said tersely. ”Glisselda. Neither of them is a dragon.”
I hardly dared suggest it, but I had to. ”Might Glisselda have mentioned it in pa.s.sing to the Earl of Apsig?”
He turned toward me sharply. ”If she had-which I deem unlikely-what are you suggesting? That he's a traitor, or that he's a dragon?”
”He came out of nowhere two years ago-you said so yourself. He takes no wine. He's got fair hair and blue eyes.” He'd discerned the scent of my scales, too, but obviously I could not include that detail. ”He was part of your uncle's last hunting party,” I hazarded. That wasn't evidence, though, so much as circ.u.mstance.
”You're omitting a substantial amount of counterevidence,” said Prince Lucian, finally engaged, even if just to refute me. ”I thought we'd concluded he was Lars's half brother.”
”You said it was a rumor. It might be false.” I dared not suggest what now occurred to me: if Josef was a dragon, he might be Lars's father.
”He plays viola like an angel. He professes to hate dragonkind.”
”Imlann might adopt such an att.i.tude strategically, to deflect suspicion,” I said. I couldn't address the accusation of angelic viola playing without bringing up my own mother, who'd played flute with an eerily human cadence, according to Orma.
The prince looked at me sarcastically, and I hastened to add, ”All I ask is that you consider the possibility. Inquire whether anyone saw Josef at court today.”
”Will that be all, Maid Dombegh?”
My teeth chattered with cold and nerves. ”Not quite all. I want to explain Orma.”
”I really don't care to hear it,” he said, spurring his horse a little ahead.
”He saved my life!” I cried at his back, determined to make him hear it whether he wanted to or not. ”Orma was my tutor when I was little. You recall that his family is flagged for scrutiny. Well, the Censors feared he might become too attached to his students, for he dearly loved teaching and was good at it. They sent a dragon called Zeyd to test him. She lured me up the bell tower of St. Gobnait's with the promise of a physics lesson, then dangled me out over the plaza, as if she might drop me. If Orma rescued me, you see, that would indicate that he was compromised. He should not have cared that much.”
I swallowed. My mouth still went dry, recalling the terror of my shoes falling, the wind roaring in my ears, the tilting world.
Kiggs was listening in spite of himself; my horse pulled up even with his. ”Orma arrived,” I said, ”and my first thought was, Hurrah, he's rescued me! But he leaned against the bal.u.s.trade, utterly unconcerned with my welfare, and began trying to convince Zeyd that it would be the end of her career-to say nothing of the peace-if she dropped me. She shook me around, let me slip a bit in her grasp, but he never flinched. He didn't care about me at all; he was just helping out his fellow saar.”
That part still hurt, frankly. ”She finally set me down on the walkway. Orma took her arm and they walked away together, leaving me alone, weeping and barefoot. I crawled down the stairs, all four hundred twenty of them, and when I finally made it home, Orma scolded me for trusting a dragon and called me an idiot savant.”
”But he's a dragon,” said Kiggs sensibly, fiddling with his horse's reins.
Cack. I supposed it couldn't matter if I told him. ”I didn't know back then.”
He studied me now, but I couldn't meet his eye. ”Why are you telling me this?”
Because I want to tell you something true, and this is as close as I can manage. Because I think, at some level, you will understand this story. Because I need you to understand it.
I said, ”I want you to understand why I have to help him.”
”Because he was so cold to you?” Kiggs said. ”Because he left you to walk home alone and called you an idiot?”
”Because he-he saved my life,” I stammered over my rising confusion.
”You'd think, as Captain of the Queen's Guard, I'd have heard this story before. A dragon almost killing someone is no small matter, and yet your father didn't jump right in to see her prosecuted?”
My stomach knotted. ”No.”
Kiggs's expression hardened. ”I wish I knew how much of your story was true.”
He spurred his horse forward, leaving me alone.
We approached the city at a crawl; dragons are not as fast as horses on foot, and these two seemed in no hurry. It was long after midnight by the time we reached the stable at the foot of the hill.
The dragons transformed in sight of the stable, cooling and condensing and folding themselves into a pair of naked men. They followed me in with the horses while Kiggs went to see what spare clothing John Ostler might have for them. Orma no longer had his false beard; I hoped he'd at least stowed his spectacles somewhere safe before transforming. ”I'm astonished you're not hurt,” he said through chattering teeth, a bit more sympathetic as a human. ”How did you contrive not to get yourself killed?”
I pulled him aside, away from Basind, and told him how I'd bluffed Imlann. Orma's eyes narrowed as he listened. ”It's lucky he believed you were a saar. I could not have predicted that your peculiarities could be so useful.”
”I don't think the truth ever crossed his mind.”
”The truth?” said Kiggs, who had stepped up right behind us, his arms heaped high with tunics and trousers. ”Don't tell me I missed it,” he said, pa.s.sing clothing to the saarantrai.
I could not meet his gaze. He snorted in disgust.
Basind, bless his thick skull, was the only one among us who seemed to be enjoying himself. During the long haul home he had kept asking Orma what was going to happen next, and whether we were there yet. Now, back in his saarantras, he croaked, ”Are they going to throw us in the dungeon?” He seemed almost gleeful at the prospect.
”I don't know,” said Kiggs unhappily, his shoulders sloping. He'd had only four hours' sleep the night before; exhaustion was catching up with him. ”I'm turning you over to the Queen and the Ardmagar. They'll sort out what to do with you.”
We obtained new horses and set off again, this time toward the city gate. Kiggs did not wish to reveal the sally port to dragons. The guards gruffly blocked our way but fell back when they recognized their prince. We wound our way through the untouched snow of the sleeping city, back up the hill to the castle.
Neither the Queen nor the Ardmagar was awake, of course, but Kiggs would not let us out of his sight. He kept us cooped up in the anteroom to the Queen's study under the watchful eye of three guards. Basind, seated by my uncle on an elegant velvet settee, dozed off against Orma's shoulder. Kiggs paced endlessly. His chin was gritty with stubble; his eyes glinted with an edgy, feverish energy, the last dregs of exhaustion. He couldn't keep his gaze in one place; he looked everywhere but at me.
I couldn't stop looking at him, even though something terrible threatened to rise in me every time I did. My body was filled with restlessness; my left forearm began to itch. I needed to get away from here, and I could think of only one way to do it.
I rose; the three guards leaped to attention. Kiggs had to look at me then. I said, ”Prince, I hate to be a nuisance, but I need the garderobe.”
He stared at me as if he didn't understand. Was garderobe not what they called it in polite society? What would Lady Corongi say? The chamber of unfortunate necessity? Urgency to be gone made my voice unnaturally high: ”I am not a dragon. I can't just duck down a ravine or p.i.s.s brimstone into the snow.” The latter referenced something Basind had done on the way home.
Kiggs blinked rapidly, as if to wake himself up, and made two hand gestures. Before I knew it, one of our guards was marching me down the hallway. He seemed determined I should be made as uncomfortable as possible: we bypa.s.sed all the relatively warm latrines of the inner keep and crossed Stone Court, through the snow, out toward a soldiers' jake-hole on the southern wall. We pa.s.sed the night guard, cl.u.s.tered around charcoal braziers, cleaning their crossbows and laughing raucously; they fell silent and stared as their comrade herded me past.
I didn't care. He could have marched me all the way to Trowebridge. I just needed to be somewhere away from Kiggs.
I shut the door of the little room and scrupulously bolted it. The latrine smelled better than I had feared; it was a two-seater and dumped directly into the defensive ditch below. I could see the snowy ground through the holes. An icy wind gusted up, enough to freeze the staunchest soldier's nether end.
I opened the shutter of the paneless window to let in some light. I knelt upon the wood between the dragon's eyes (as some call such holes). I rested my elbows upon the windowsill, my head in my hands. I closed my eyes, repeating mantras Orma had taught me to quiet my mind, but one thought kept buzzing around me, stinging me like a hornet, over and over.
I loved Lucian Kiggs.
I emitted a single, sour laugh, because I couldn't have chosen a more ludicrous place to have this realization. Then I wept. How stupid was I, letting myself feel things I should not feel, imagining the world could be other than it was? I was a scaly fiend; I could have confirmed it with a hand up my sleeve. That could never change.