Part 31 (1/2)
”I know.” He took my hand, squeezed it. ”I can't bear that you'll be alone.”
”Not alone. There are others of my kind. I'm going to find them.”
”Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?” His voice was slow, drowsy.
”You never did,” I said, trying to tease him. ”You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that.”
”Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.”
”Hush. You're talking nonsense now.”
”Not nonsense. This is important!” He struggled to sit up straighter and failed. ”Your mother once told me something, and I need to tell you ... because you need ... to understand it ...”
His eyes fluttered shut, and he was quiet so long I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he said, in a voice so soft I could barely hear: ”Love is not a disease.”
I leaned my forehead on his shoulder, all the words I'd never spoken to him rus.h.i.+ng my throat at once, forming a terrible lump there. Hesitantly he stroked my hair.
”I'm not completely certain she was right,” he murmured. ”But I cannot let them cut you out of me, nor her either. I will cling to my sickness ... if it is a sickness ... I will hold it close to me like the ... the sun, and the ...”
He faded away again, this time for good. I sat with my arms around him until Eskar returned. I smoothed his hair off his forehead and kissed him lightly. Eskar stared. ”Take good care of him, or I'll ... I'll bite you!” I told her. She looked unconcerned.
The sky outside was blue, cold, and very far away; the sun was too bright to look at, let alone hold close to me. ”But I will try, uncle,” I murmured, ”though it burns me. I will keep it close.”
I hurried homeward through the slushy streets. I had a prince to find.
When I reached the palace, there was a great crush of carriages at the gates. The city magistrates, the bishop, the Chapter, the guild leaders, the Queen's Guard-every important person in the city had arrived at once. Indoors, I was carried toward the great hall by a crowd of people, more than would comfortably fit inside, it turned out. Half of us were diverted back out to Stone Court.
Apparently the council had been short. We were about to hear the official results.
A balcony halfway up the wall was opened up to both the hall and the courtyard, such that someone with a loud voice could be heard in both places. Glisselda appeared there, waving to the roaring throng. She acted on her grandmother's behalf, but everyone who saw her that day, clad in white for her mother, her golden hair s.h.i.+ning like any crown, knew they were in the presence of the next Queen. She awed us into silence.
She handed a folded letter to a herald, a particularly vociferous fellow, whose voice rang out clearly over the hushed crowd.
Generals of the Tanamoot: Goredd rejects the legitimacy of your claim to sovereignty over the Dragon Lands. Ardmagar Comonot yet lives; petty threats will not induce us to turn him over, nor do we recognize the validity of these trumped-up charges against him. He is our proven friend and ally, author and champion of the peace, and the legitimate ruler of the Tanamoot.
If you push this toward war, do not foolishly imagine we are helpless, or that your own people will choose to fight for you rather than for continued cooperation between our species. This peace has been a true blessing upon the world, which is changed for the better; you cannot drag it back into the past.
Devoutly hoping we may settle this with words, I am,
Her Highness Princess Glisselda, First Heir of Goredd,
On behalf of Her Majesty Queen Lavonda the Magnificent
We applauded with heavy hearts, knowing that this was all the pretext the generals would need for war. Another conflict was coming, whether we willed it or not. I saw smirks on faces in the crowd and feared that some among us willed it in fact.
It took forever for the crowd to disperse; everyone wanted a chance to pet.i.tion the princess or the Ardmagar, swear loyalty, argue. The palace guard managed the crowds as best they could, but I did not see Kiggs anywhere. It wasn't like him not to be right in the thick of things.
Princess Glisselda had also contrived to disappear. I suspected Kiggs might be with her. There were two places outside the royal wing where someone like me could look. I had just set foot upon the grand stair, however, when a voice behind me stopped me short: ”Tell me it isn't true, Seraphina. Tell me they're lying about you.”
I looked back. The Earl of Apsig crossed the atrium toward me, his boots echoing upon the marble floor. I didn't ask what he meant. Ninys and Samsam had spread the news to every corner of the court. I gripped the bal.u.s.trade tightly, bracing myself. ”It's no lie,” I said. ”I am half dragon-like Lars.”
He neither flinched nor rushed up to hit me-as I'd half feared he would. His face went slack with despair; he flopped himself onto the broad stone steps and sat with his head in his hands. For a moment I considered sitting beside him-he looked so sad!-but he was too unpredictable.
”What are we to do?” he said at last, throwing up his hands and looking up with red-rimmed eyes. ”They've won. Nowhere is exclusively human; no side in this conflict is ours alone. They infiltrate everything, control everything! I joined the Sons of St. Ogdo because they seemed to be the only people willing to take action, the only ones looking the treaty in the eye and calling it what it was: our ruin.”
He ran his hands through his hair, as if he might pull it out by the roots. ”But who connected me with the Sons and urged me to get involved? That dragon, Lady Corongi.”
”They're not all out to get us,” I said softly.
”No? How about the one that tricked your father, or the one that deceived my mother and made her bear a b.a.s.t.a.r.d?”
I drew a sharp breath, and he glowered at me. ”My mother raised Lars as if he were my equal. One day he began sprouting scales out of his very flesh. He was only seven; he showed us all, innocently rolled up his sleeve-” His voice broke; he coughed. ”My father stabbed her right through the neck. It was his right, his injured honor. He might have killed Lars, too.”
He stared at the air as if disinclined to speak further. ”You didn't let him,” I prompted. ”You persuaded him otherwise.”
He looked at me as if I were speaking Mootya. ”Persuaded? No. I killed the old man. Pushed him off the round tower.” He smiled mirthlessly at my shock. ”We live in the remotest highlands. This sort of thing happens all the time. I took my great-grandmother's family name to avoid awkward questions if I went to court in Blystane. Highland genealogies are complex; none of the coastal Samsamese keep track of them.”
So that's what he was: not a dragon, but a parricide who'd changed his name. ”What about Lars?”
”I told him I would kill him if I saw him again, and then I set him loose in the hills. I had no idea where he went until he popped up here, an avenging ghost sent to haunt me.”
He glared at me sullenly, hating me for knowing too much, never mind that he himself had told me. I cleared my throat. ”What will you do now?”
He rose, straightened the hem of his black doublet, and gave mocking courtesy. ”I am returning to Samsam. I will make the Regent see sense.”
His tone chilled me. ”What kind of sense?”
”The only kind there is. The kind that puts humans first over animals.”
With those words he stalked away across the atrium. He seemed to take all the air with him when he left.
I found Glisselda in Millie's room, weeping, her head in her hands. Millie, who was rubbing the princess's shoulders, looked alarmed that I had entered without knocking. ”The princess is tired,” said Millie, stepping toward me anxiously.
”It's all right,” said Glisselda, wiping her eyes. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and her blotchy pink cheeks made her look very young. She tried to smile. ”I am always pleased to see you, Phina.”
My heart constricted at the sight of her sorrow. She'd just lost her mother and had the weight of an entire realm thrust onto her shoulders, and I was a bad friend. I couldn't ask after Kiggs; I didn't know why it had ever seemed like a good idea.
”How are you holding up?” I said, taking a seat across from her.
She looked at her hands. ”Well enough in public. I was just taking a little time to ... to let myself be a daughter. We have to sit vigil with St. Eustace tonight, the eyes of the world upon us, and we thought a quiet, dignified sorrow would be most fitting. That means taking some time to bawl like a baby now.”
I thought she was referring to herself in the plural, as was her royal right, but she continued, ”You should have seen us drafting that letter after council. I would weep, and Lucian would try to console me, which started him weeping and made me sob the more. I sent him to his beastly tower, told him to get it all out.”
”He's lucky to have you looking out for him,” I said, and meant it, however torn up I felt.