“Oh darn,” said faux-Elhared, dropping his shovel with a clatter.
“What?”
“I don’t think this is going to work.” He reached into the hole and pulled out a severed head that was little more than hide covering a skull. It seemed remarkable that enough hair remained for the pseudo-wizard to maintain a grip. “I’m afraid it’s broken.”
He tossed it at me, and I caught it by reflex. It felt lighter than it should have been. As decayed as it was, I could still see recognizable traces of my own face in it.
It had been my body, but Elhared had been living in it when he had died. When I had killed him.
I dropped the skull.
“Never goes wrong in the way you expect, eh?”
I looked up and stared dully at the dragon wearing Elhared’s skin. He should be in an elf prison somewhere, where I had left him. Some knowledge this was a dream leaked back into my awareness.
He continued. “But it’s not just you, is it? No one’s plans go the right way, in the end.”
“What are you trying to do?”
He laughed and said, “Be careful what you wish for, Frank.” The false Elhared faded as I became aware of the reality wrapping Lucille’s body.
I felt a throbbing headache that I couldn’t decide was mine or hers. She had been awake longer than I had been, and the sun was disorientingly low in the sky. I watched in mute confusion as she ordered a bunch of stable hands around, without knowing what time of day it was, or where we were.
By the time I figured that it was late evening, and we had stopped by a town to swap our exhausted mounts for fresh horses, we were back on the road to Lendowyn Castle. Lucille was awake now, and shared the carriage with Laya and Thea, both in exhausted sleep from driving the horses all day.
We rode hard another six hours to reach the walls of Lendowyn Castle sometime after midnight. Lucille dismounted the carriage under a waxing moon and looked up at the castle walls wrapped in wooden scaffolding.
Now the fun begins, I thought.
• • •
Alfred the Strident, my father-in-law and king of Lendowyn, met us in the throne room. Even here wasn’t completely free of signs of the work being done to the castle. The tapestries, along with every horizontal surface, were coated by a veneer of fine gray stone dust. Stacked against one wall were long, freshly hewn timbers. The room smelled as if a kingdom’s worth of stonemasons and carpenters had decided to air out their aprons simultaneously.
When Lucille entered, our four handmaids trailing her, King Alfred the Strident, Monarch of Lendowyn, was already waiting for her. He leaned against the throne rather than sitting on it, right hand massaging his temple under the band of a somewhat canted circlet. He stared, eyes unfocused, into the middle distance. I’d never seen him look so old.
I dislike the nobility on general principles, and I save the largest portion of my distaste for kings and their ilk, but for once I felt sorry for the man. Lucille brought herself up short when she saw him, and I knew that his pained appearance affected her as well. For a moment I thought seeing him like this might just dissuade her from her ill-advised plan to impersonate me.
However, she had inherited a stubborn streak from her father. No one else heard her subvocalize, “Remember, you’re Frank.”
A heavy silence followed us in, and made itself at home as uncomfortably as an unwanted relative. King Alfred left the quiet unbroken for a full minute at least before he turned his head toward us. His eyes smoldered at us, ringed with red, sunk into wrinkles that the dim torchlight made into crevasses.
“So, Frank, since when do you lean so heavily on formality? We’re family here.” I think I heard him choke a little on the “f” in family. “Don’t wait on a doddering old man to give you leave to speak.”
I felt Lucille wince at the words. She opened her mouth, and I felt her almost say, “father.” She caught herself and began, “Your Majesty, I come with dire news.”
“Of course you do, Frank.” He rubbed his temple again. “What disaster have you plunged my kingdom into this time?”
Krys took a step forward and said, “Your Majesty, this was not Princess Frank’s faul—”
The king stiffened as if his spine was a cable suddenly drawn tight. I almost heard the crack of the air as his finger snapped up to point at Krys. “Silence! Do not presume to speak here. My daughter’s wife might coddle your insolence, but speak out of turn in my presence again, young man, and I’ll have you in irons!”
Lucille looked back and forth between her father and Krys as she took a step protectively between the two. She raised a hand, but it seemed to take her a moment to unravel the gender confusion packed in King Alfred’s outburst. It wasn’t completely his fault. Krys didn’t dress the part of a handmaid—warrior order or not—but it did make it a little easier not to sympathize with him.
In the end Lucille just ignored it and pressed on. “Lucille was attacked!”
That got his attention. “What?”
“One of the guests, Prince Daemonlas, cast some form of magical—”
“My daughter, is she all right?” All emotion leaked out of his voice, and he enunciated every word as if each one threatened to spin out of control.
“She’s alive.”
I could see in his eyes that he understood the magnitude of what remained unsaid between those two words. He lowered his hand, which he still had raised in Krys’s general direction. I could hear his knuckles pop as he made a fist.
“What happened?” He left a space between the two words with room enough for even more left unsaid.
“A magical attack from Prince Daemonlas,” Lucille said. “He rose to present his toast and read from a scroll that held some form of enchantment. The magic was aimed at Lucille.”
Lucille described what happened in detail beyond what I could have seen. I realized that, unlike me, she had suffered no blackout. She had witnessed the rampage as the dragon prince had torn apart the banquet—starting with trying to roast her and/or me. An attack that would have been fatal if not for Brock’s timely but ill-advised intervention. The king stood in stony silence as Lucille related the disaster; the scion of Lendowyn royalty laying waste to counts, barons, and diplomats before crashing through the remaining stained glass to fly off into the night, Sir Forsythe in pursuit.
When she was done, he asked, “The elf is dead?”
“Run through by Sir Forsythe.”
“And the knight was the only one to pursue my daughter?”
“Yes.”
He nodded and walked slowly around to collapse into his throne.
“Your Majest—”
King Alfred silenced her by raising his hand. “No more,” he whispered. “You’ve said enough.”
He glared at nothing for a few moments before clapping his hands sharply. A servant came out of nowhere and the king snapped, “I want all my ministers in here, now.”
The servant clicked his heels and withdrew before I was aware of him as much more than a shadow against a dusty tapestry behind the throne.
King Alfred said, “You can go.”
“What?”
“I have a war to plan.”
“Your Majesty?”
He sighed. “Go.”
“But what about your daughter?”
“Do not . . .” His voice snapped violently, but trailed off as he stared into Lucille’s face. He shook his head. “You don’t understand, do you, Frank?”
“Understand what?”
“You can’t unswing a sword.”
“But she’s under some kind of geas. A magical compulsion—”
“That matters to no one outside this room. To everyone else, Lendowyn has begun a war. And once in a war, your only options are win or surrender.”
I felt Lucille freeze and I wished I knew what she was think
ing. I felt certain that she had not anticipated her father’s reaction. I didn’t blame her. She may have grown up noble, and may have a much greater talent for leadership than I had ever shown, but she was still young. Friction with reality hadn’t managed to smooth off all the rough edges of idealism in her. I don’t know if her experience as a dragon accelerated or retarded the natural growth of cynicism, I just knew that, from where she stood on that journey, her father had traveled beyond the horizon ages ago.
She gathered herself and said, “Your Majesty, let me take an expedition to Fell Green. If we have a wizard examine Prince Daemonlas’s scroll, we might find out how to reverse what happened to Lucille.”
“Frank, I don’t want you anywhere near any wizards right now.”
“But, Lucille—”
“Frank, I don’t say that plan lacks merit.” He held out his hand. “Give me the scroll. I will have it examined. You will remain in Lendowyn Castle, safe and out of mischief.”
Lucille froze again. I imagined that she ran a series of arguments through her head, and they all ended the same way. She had been so used to winning arguments with her father that she hadn’t thought through the implications of having such an argument as Princess Frank. Not that she was wrong in her reasons for the deception. I’m quite sure that if King Alfred thought that the one in dragon skin was yours truly, he’d at the very least write me off completely to concentrate on his new war—if not go out of his way to find the resources to hunt me down.
“Uh,” she said, “I will have it brought up as soon as everything’s unloaded.”
The king frowned and closed his hand. “Make sure you do. And no magic, understand? We do not need things becoming more complicated.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” She bowed her head and backed out of the throne room.
She left the king to have his emergency war council with his ministers, the elf-prince’s scroll still tucked into her belt, where she had stashed it when we had left the Northern Palace.
CHAPTER 5
Lucille threw herself down on the mattress in my—our—bedchamber and groaned.
“Your Highness?” Krys had followed us into the room. Rabbit and the others hung by the still-open door. “I’m sorry for speaking out of turn.”
“What?”
“To the king, interrupting—”
“Oh, that?” Lucille sighed, rolling onto her back to stare into the shadowed canopy above us. “Don’t worry about it.”
“If I hadn’t angered him . . .”
“You think that had anything to do with—” Lucille laughed. “You don’t know my father. This was my own doing, outsmarting myself.”
“Outsmarting yourself?”
“By posing as Frank. Sure, I’ve kept Father from ordering the head of the dragon. I just overlooked the fact that Frank doesn’t have much chance of convincing him to do anything.”
“You could tell him the truth.”
Lucille shook her head. “Except he’d just see it as Frank attempting to manipulate him. No, we’re going to leave him be, for the moment. At least he doesn’t seem more ill-disposed toward Frank than he usually is.”
“There’s nothing we can do now?” Krys asked.
Lucille looked back at Krys and the three others. I felt the hint of a smile on her face. “Now what would Frank do in my position?”
The girls looked at each other, but didn’t say anything.
“Honestly,” Lucille asked them.
“Honestly?” Krys asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you know?” Laya asked from the doorway.
Lucille swung her legs down so she sat on the edge of the bed and nodded. “We’ll need five horses prepared, provisions to get at least as far as Fell Green.”
Rabbit grinned.
Laya patted Rabbit on the shoulder. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time we had to slip out of this castle in a hurry,” Krys said. “It’ll be even easier with all the workmen and supplies going in and out.”
“We’ll need a few other things,” Lucille added.
“The scroll,” Krys said.
Lucille pulled the parchment from her belt. “We have that.”
“You didn’t give . . .” Laya started to say, trailing off. Next to her, Thea giggled.
“You were already planning this,” Kris said, a hint of admiration in her voice.
“Frank has been a bad influence on me.” Lucille tucked the scroll back in her belt. “However, we’ll need two other things.”
“What?”
“First off, Dracheslayer—”
“That black sword with the glowing red writing?” Laya asked.
“The one that protects against dragon fire,” Krys said.
“Yes. It’s locked up in the armory but—”
Krys nodded. “If we hunt down the dragon—Frank or not—having that makes sense.”
“I can get into the armory,” Thea said, still giggling excitedly.
Laya tilted her head at the young girl. “She’s good with locks.”
“I’m sure,” Lucille said. “Just take someone who can carry the sword, it’s rather large.”
“I can carry it.” Thea’s lower lip came perilously close to a pout.
“I’ll go with her,” Laya said. “You said two more things.”
“The other thing we’ll need is the Tear of Nâtlac.”
NO! By all that is holy, unholy, or ignored by the gods! BAD IDEA!
I screamed at the top of my mental voice. No way should we be anywhere near that thing. Even if the spell that the elf-prince cast hadn’t been obviously of a piece with Nâtlac’s evilness, there was no predicting how that jewel would react to whatever had happened to Lucille, much less myself or whoever the dragon was now.
Right then, I might have started thinking about who now currently inhabited the dragon’s skin, if I hadn’t been overwhelmed by the effort to make Lucille hear me.
Listen! I’m here! Don’t touch that thing! Think of how badly things went last time!
Of course, Lucille didn’t hear me. Worse, of the four girls, the only one who even looked as if she might realize how bad an idea it was happened to be Rabbit. She looked at Lucille with her head cocked like she couldn’t quite understand the crazy words coming from her mouth.
I kept screaming in our skull to no effect as they solidified the plan to slip away from Lendowyn Castle.
“The horses will be the easy part,” Krys said. “The stable hands pasture them early in the morning when they clean the stables. If five of them are led off, it will be hours before they’re noticed missing.”
“They won’t be pastured with saddles on,” Lucille said.
“No,” Krys answered. “But we have the rest of the night to grab those, saddlebags, provisions, and stash them in the woods out by the royal pasture. With Rabbit, I think we’d be ready to meet you off the main northern road about an hour after dawn.”
Lucille looked at Laya and Thea, “Is that enough time for you two?” The girls looked at each other and Thea nodded enthusiastically.
“I think we can manage,” Laya said.
“Good.” She looked at Krys. “We’ll meet up with you and Rabbit an hour after dawn.”
“We’ll have the horses ready.” She turned to go with the others.
“Krys?” Lucille asked.
“Your Highness?” She paused.
Lucille looked at the girls by the doorway and said, “Give us a moment alone.”
Laya and Thea looked at each other while Rabbit reached out and closed the door. Krys turned around uncertainly, a worried look on her face. “Is there a problem? Did I do something wrong?”
“No. Nothing like that. I just wanted to apologize for my father.”
“Really? I did speak out of turn.”
“Not that. I wanted to apologize about him calling you ‘young man.’ He’s older, and his vision isn’t . . . are you laughing?”
Krys snorted and shook her head. “No, Your Highness.” She spoke through a very tight-lipped expression that tried not to be a smile.
“You are laughing.”
Krys sucked in a breath and said, “You don’t have to apologize for him.”
“Am I missing something?”
You just haven’t spent much time with Krys.
“You do notice how I look?” Krys said.
“A lot of girls look boyish.”
“And dress? And cut my hair?”
“Well . . . You’re trying to look like a boy?”
Krys suppressed another laugh.
“I’m sorry,” Lucille said after a moment. “I didn’t realize.”
“It’s fine,” Krys said. “Sometimes I think Frank’s the only one who understands me.” The mention of my name drained all the levity out of Krys’s voice and her expression went slack and pale.
Lucille grabbed her shoulder. “We’ll get him back.”
You don’t have to. I’m still here!
Krys nodded and gave an unconvinced, “Yes.”
“You go and get things ready so we can help him.”
Krys took a step back and nodded. “Yes, Your Highness.” Her grim smile contrasted with eyes that were shiny and red. She turned on her heel and left us to go with the others.
Lucille paced around alone in the bedchamber lost in her own thoughts. I wished there was some way I could comfort her, hold her hand, or at least tell her I was still around.
She stopped at the window and looked out at the northern night sky. “I wish you were here, Frank.”
I wish you knew I was here.
“You know more about this thieving outlaw stuff than I do.”
The girls know what they’re doing.
“You could tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
Like taking evil magical artifacts?