Much to my surprise, the men were excited to hear their mother tongue and replied with equal fervour. They went on at some length, with Marta and me nodding and smiling and me hoping ardently that Marta understood. Then Marta started up again, and judging by her flapping arms, she was talking about dragons.
The Moralienin men all nodded gravely. Then they bowed and walked away, leaving us standing with our bodyguards in the middle of an empty space in the market.
“Well. ” She put her hands on her hips. “How rude!”
“I’m guessing that they didn’t want to talk about all the dragons flying overhead,” I said in a low voice.
“Apparently not,” Marta said, still sounding put out. Then she bit her lip. “How was my accent, though? Did it sound like theirs?”
“Marta, we’re trying to stop a war with the Citatians. ” I pointed at the dragons flying above us. “Remember?”
“Yes, but when this is all over, I have to meet Tobin’s mother, and then recite my lineage in Moralienin, and I’m nervous. ”
“Don’t worry,” I said with false cheer. “If we don’t find someone to talk to us soon, you’ll never have to meet Tobin’s mother. We’ll all be dead. ”
She punched me in the arm. “You’re horrible. ”
“Gaal matto!” A Citatian man in a merchant’s blue hat shoved a monkey between us. “Gaal matto?”
“No monkeys!” I shook my head emphatically. “We don’t want a monkey!” Then I got a good look at him. “You!” I rudely pointed my finger right in his face. “You lived in the King’s Seat! I saw you!”
On my unfortunate first day in the King’s Seat, shortly before treading on Pippin, I had been asking directions to the cloth-workers’ district. I was certain this was the same man I had first asked, but he hadn’t spoken Feravelan. Still, that had been almost two years ago.
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“You,” I said again. “Remember me?” I pointed to my chest. “Where is the cloth-workers’ district?” I smiled and nodded. “Then, little dog, bark, bark, and princess. ” I waved my hands around my head to indicate lots of curly hair. Meanwhile, Marta and our bodyguards were staring at me as if I’d grown two extra heads.
“Ah, pretty maidy! Hello!” The monkey seller beamed at me. “Little dog, woof, woof!” He laughed like a maniac. “Little dog, pretty maidy, cruel maidy. Pretty maidy buy monkey?” He brandished the little black-and-white creature on his arm in my face.
“No, no monkeys,” I said, but I smiled while I said it. I reached out and stroked the monkey’s head. It was quite a darling, really, mostly black with a wild mane of white hair. Then I thought of Lady Katta’s pet and withdrew my hand. “Why are you here?” I opened my arms to show puzzlement, then pointed to the ground.
“Ah. ” He nodded. “Dragons, much fire, whoosh, whoosh!” He blew out his cheeks and flapped his arms, nearly flinging the monkey into Marta’s face. “Monkeys all go, poof. ” It wasn’t clear if they were killed, or if they simply fled in terror, but his smile didn’t waver so we continued to smile back. “Come home, wives happy, mother happy. Buy monkey?” He thrust the creature at Marta, who took it and held it at arm’s length.
“But dragons here,” I said, waving both hands in the air. “Many more dragons. ”
“Hee-hoo,” the monkey seller said, rolling his eyes and flapping his hands. “Dragons here good. Fly all day, lay eggs, eat bad dogs. Not burn houses. Nice dragons. ”
“Oh, yes, very nice,” I said. Behind me, one of the soldiers snorted and I put my hand behind my back and snapped my fingers for him to be quiet. “But why do the dragons want to burn Feravel?”
He threw up his hands in ignorance. “King angry?” He turned his attention to Marta. “Monkey like you. You buy. ”
The monkey had crawled up Marta’s arm and was busy unravelling one of her braids. “Er, all right. ” She pulled some coins out of her purse and handed them to the man. “Thank you. ”
“Nice, nice, pretty maidies,” the monkey seller said in delight, and then trotted a few paces away to a booth where there were cages with more monkeys and a few exotic birds. He put the coins in a carved box, guarded over by a hook-nosed woman a foot taller than him. Another equally broad-shouldered and grim woman sat by knitting.
“Which one is his wife?” Marta whispered as we smiled and nodded and strolled away.
“Probably both,” I said. “He said ‘wives happy. ’ Luka told me it’s the fashion to have at least two. ”
“Ugh! I wouldn’t allow Tobin to have another wife,” she said.
“I’m not sure I want one,” the soldier behind Marta said. We both glared over our shoulders at him.
“Why do you think the king is so angry with Feravel?” Marta asked, freeing her hair from the monkey’s grasp and moving him to the crook of her elbow.
“Let’s ask him,” I said. I went back to the first booth we had stopped at, the one that sold mirrored silk.
It was quite exquisite. The silk itself was heavy and slick, almost like satin but with a luscious depth to the colour. The mirrors were tiny bits of polished silver, sewn into the fabric with silk thread.
Marta jostled my elbow. “Ask him? You mean the king?”
“Yes. No use dancing around the cart when you want a ride, as my mother used to say. Just hop in and whistle. ”
Using my fingers and a range of exaggerated facial expressions, I had the beaming woman cut several yards in red, gold and green silk. I pulled the Citatian coins Luka had given me out of my belt pouch, and laid them on the table one at a time until the woman nodded, satisfied.
Marta watched me buying cloth with a stunned look. “How do you plan to ask the king?”
Complacent, I gathered up my purchases, now safely wrapped in coarse broadcloth. “First we’re going back to our cave to do a little sewing, and then I’ll show you,” I told her. “But if that monkey ruins anything …” I let my voice trail off meaningfully.
“I hear that you can eat monkey,” one of the soldiers supplied.
“Delicious,” I said.
Linen Bandages and Mirrored Silk
Back at the cave, Marta shrieked in horror as I proceeded to cut the mirrored silk into long strips. “Creel! What are you doing? You’re ruining it!”
“Just wait and see,” I said. When I had made several long ribbons out of the edges of the mirrored cloth, I opened my baggage and pulled out a blue satin riding dress. With a pang, I started to cut the divided skirt free of the bodice.
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“Now I know you’ve gone insane,” Marta said. Her hands fluttered, as though she was debating snatching the gown away before I did any more damage.
There was a scuffling and the sound of voices at the mouth of the cave, and Luka and Tobin came in with a soldier and the dragons hard on his heels. “Luka,” Marta appealed to him. “Creel’s gone mad; you have to speak to her. ”
I looked up to assure Luka that I hadn’t, suppressing a thrill of delight at being near him again, and saw the expression on his face. I cast aside my work. “What happened?” Then I saw that there were only two dragons with them, and my heart shuddered. “Where’s Niva?”
Marta gasped and ran to embrace Tobin, who I now saw had a long cut down the sleeve of his white Citatian uniform. Red stained the edges of the cut, but he seemed calm enough. Of course, he always seemed calm.
“Female dragons do not fly in formation here,” Luka said.
He helped Marta strip off Tobin’s tunic so that she could look at his arm. There was a long, shallow cut on his forearm, but it looked like it wouldn’t need stitching. We all breathed a sigh of relief and Marta set about washing the wound.
“I had no idea,” Luka went on. “I can’t tell the difference between a male and a female unless I hear them talk. ”
“Neither can I,” I admitted.
“We were flying above t
he city and half a dozen other dragons surrounded us. The soldiers have brass trumpets, to make their voices louder. I tried to steal some when I took the uniforms, but I couldn’t. Anyway, the soldiers started to shout at us: why did we have a female, where were her eggs, who was our commander. ” Luka made a face. “What were we to do? My Citatian is fairly good, but it was hard to keep my accent correct while I was shouting. I told them that we had orders from Commander Toukas, the only commander whose name I know, and they followed us all the way to the palace. ”
Luka sat down on a bed and began rubbing his face. He yanked off the spiked steel helmet he wore with his uniform and threw it on the ground. “We landed in the courtyard behind the palace, where the royal dragons land. Toukas himself came out to meet us. He recognised me at once and shouted for the guards. We started to take off again, but the dragon patrol threatened to burn us. They threw a net over Niva, saying something about her being uncollared. ”
“Didn’t she have her collar on?” I checked Feniul and Amacarin, and they were both collared. We had put the alchemical creations on all three dragons before leaving Feravel, just to be safe.
“She did, but the Citatian collars are leather – ours don’t pass muster. Tobin cut himself free of the net, and tried to make the hole larger for Niva. But you know how she is: she started shouting that we should go, go at once. Feniul snatched up Tobin and we fled. It took two hours of some pretty fancy flying before we lost them and decided it was safe enough to come here. ”
Feniul leaned in. “I’m sorry about your arm,” he said to Tobin. “Is it bad?”
Tobin shook his head as Marta bandaged it with some linen one of the soldiers gave her.
“Scraped him with a claw?” I patted Feniul’s foreleg. “I’m sure it was an accident. ”
“Of course it was,” Amacarin said haughtily. “And isn’t anyone going to ask what my human and I discovered?” The soldier standing beside the blue-grey dragon looked disgruntled at being called Amacarin’s “human”.
“You weren’t with them?” I asked at the same time as Luka said, “Sorry. What did you find?”
Amacarin puffed out his grey-blue chest. “We found a massive hatching ground,” he announced, clearly expecting an impressive reaction.
He got it, but from Feniul alone. We humans just looked puzzled.
“Oh, my! How many hatchlings did you see?” Feniul’s eyes gleamed, and he lashed his tail in excitement. “A dozen? Any sign of other eggs?”
“A dozen?!” Amacarin snorted in disdain, nearly setting my sewing alight. I pulled it out of harm’s way as he went on. “Over a hundred, at a rough count. And eggs everywhere! I counted fifty clutches, and that was only before the patrol over the grounds chased us away. ”
“What news! What news!” Feniul was ecstatic. “Hundreds of hatchlings! More than fifty clutches! How wondrous!”
I cleared my throat loudly. “Excuse me, but what does this mean? Why are you so excited?”
Amacarin and Feniul both studied us, clearly shocked at our lack of enthusiasm. Finally, Feniul enlightened us.
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“Have you ever seen a hatchling, Creel?”
“No. ” I shook my head. “I hadn’t really thought about baby dragons until Niva said she had a … clutch. ” I guessed that this was the word for a group of dragon eggs.
“Precisely. Niva’s clutch is the first to hatch in Feravel in ten years. ” Feniul bared his teeth in some draconic emotion I couldn’t fathom. “Ten years. ”
“But why?”
“You try finding a mate when you’re hiding in a cave praying the humans don’t discover you,” Amacarin snapped.
“Oh. ” I exchanged embarrassed looks with Luka and Marta. Tobin just nodded as though it made perfect sense, and one of the soldiers whispered something that sounded rather lewd to his fellow. “I’m so sorry,” I told the dragons, shooting a dirty look at the soldiers.
“It’s not your fault,” Feniul said kindly.
“Not directly anyway,” Amacarin added.
“So the dragons here don’t have that problem, I suppose. With finding mates. ” I found myself blushing, and tried not to look at Luka. He was not, nor ever would be, my mate. He was a prince, I told myself firmly. A prince.
“I believe it’s more sinister than that,” Amacarin said. “I think these humans are forcing them to mate, breeding them like dogs. ”
“I don’t force my dogs to breed,” Feniul protested.
“You aren’t a human,” Amacarin said. “You don’t share humans’ insistence on meddling with other creatures’ lives. ”
Tobin gestured to his prince.
Luka nodded agreement and translated for our benefit: “We’ll free Niva tonight. ”
“This time I’m going with you,” I said firmly. “But until it gets dark, Marta, I need you to help me make this skirt and these mirrored bits into a coat. ”
“A coat?” Luka looked confused at the change in topic. “Is that necessary? I thought you were too hot. ”
“It’s not for me, it’s for King Nason,” I said. “Marta and I are going to be the new royal tailors. ”
Eggshells Underfoot
“Can you see anything?” I leaned as close to the edge as I dared, and the rock beneath my hand crumbled a little, sending sand and scree pattering down the edge of the ravine. “Oof!” I drew back.
Tapping me on the shoulder, Tobin pointed to his right, and Luka and I followed him, crawling on our bellies along the edge of the ravine where the hatching grounds of the Citatian dragons were located. Feniul and Amacarin were scouting overhead, each with a soldier on his back, but there was no way for them to contact us discreetly, so we were on our own. We would have to climb down, find Niva, and, we hoped, fly her away, all before the patrol dragons caught us. With any luck, I’d be back helping Marta sew trousers for King Nason by midnight.
What Tobin had spotted was a jagged set of natural steps in the side of the cliff. Some of them were less than a hand’s width, but it looked to be our best option. Again, I praised the sensibleness of the Citatian women’s garb: there would be no possibility of me making the climb in skirts, even divided riding skirts. But a tunic and trousers wouldn’t impede my progress.
Tobin went first, and I slithered down after him. Then he suddenly released my ankles, and I heard a dull thud.
“Tobin!” I looked over my shoulder. Luka kept coming and trod on my hands, making me cry out briefly before I stopped myself. “Stop. Tobin fell,” I whispered as loudly as I dared. Again I tried to look over my shoulder to see Tobin, but couldn’t. Then I heard a scuffling sound. Feeling very daring, I leaned away from the rock wall, as much as I could, and looked straight down. Tobin was standing on a larger ledge below me, signalling frantically. I realised that he had jumped, since there were no footholds between my position and that ledge, and now he was gesturing for me to drop down to him.
Taking a deep breath, I let go of the wall. I had braced my feet for the impact on the rough ledge, but Tobin snatched me out of the air and set me down lightly beside him.
“Oh, thank you,” I whispered, and moved to the side so that Luka would have room. He climbed down as far as he could and then jumped the rest of the way. Tobin put out a hand to steady him when he landed. From our now-crowded ledge, there was only a short climb down to the floor of the ravine, where our feet crunched oddly in some debris at the base of the cliff.
We all crouched down to feel what we were walking on. I recoiled as one of the sharp things sliced my index finger. Sucking on the wound, I held up the offending object to the moonlight.
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“Eggshells,” I breathed, pulling my finger out of my mouth.
“Dragon eggshells,” Luka agreed, picking up another piece. “The place is littered with them. ”
Tobin made a motion, and a face.
“It??
?s going to be cursed hard to go quietly,” Luka agreed, tossing the shard aside.
We were almost tiptoeing our way across the hatching grounds, holding our breath in the hopes that we wouldn’t step on a large piece of shell and give ourselves away. The grounds were filled with shallow craters holding clutches of eggs, and beside each crater was a sleeping female dragon. In the moonlight, I could only tell if they were dark or light coloured. All the dragons were quite large, as though they had been carefully bred for size, something which made me feel ill. I wondered what happened to the smaller dragons, like Feniul.
Realisation dawned on me and I grabbed Tobin and Luka’s arms. “Niva won’t have any eggs,” I said. They had started to creep around the hump of a sleeping dark coloured dragon to look at her face.
Tobin smacked his forehead and Luka covered his face and shook his head, embarrassed. We backed away from that dragon, and headed towards a cluster of beasts that had no eggs. I frowned at this, too. Why were they sleeping outside? Dragons needed a roof over their heads just like everyone else. To see them sleeping without the protection of a cave was one more unnatural thing in a whole slew of unnatural dragon behaviours.
My indignation was interrupted when I tripped on something that turned out to be a dragon tail the length and width of my arm. Peering down, I saw that it belonged to a hatchling. I studied the creature in wonder. It was the size of a horse, and its scales looked soft and sort of crumpled. All over its head there were round little nubs that I assumed would one day be horns. It curled its tail up tight to its body, and snuggled closer to its mother.
I crept over to another dragon. “Niva? Niva?” I called for her in a loud whisper. “Niva?”
The dragon in front of me raised her head. It wasn’t Niva. Her horns were short and blunt, and I realised with horror that they had been sawn off. She was darker than Niva, and her muzzle was wider.
“Ma’am, I’m looking for my friend Niva,” I said politely. “She just came here today. ”
With one foreclaw she plucked at the collar around her neck. She fidgeted for a moment, then sighed and lay her head back down, closing her eyes.
“Something’s wrong with her,” I said to Tobin, who was standing near me in a protective stance.