“You have birds who can reach all of these areas?” Linkon said, eyes fixed on the maps as if he was trying to memorize them.
“Falcons are always a problem,” Ashlyn said. “But yes.”
“I had no idea you’d expanded your reach so dramatically. Very impressive.”
That map only tracked her Almiran communication lines. She had another that was entirely dedicated to her Papyrian birds. She kept most of those birds in the castle dovecote, but there was currently a score of Papyria-trained birds scattered along the northern rim of the Dainwood. Ashlyn had moved them south several months ago so she could quickly communicate with Noko while traveling the Gorgon and surveying River Lurker populations. She kept meaning to send a few sentinels to collect them, but it had been a long time since she had riders to spare.
But Linkon did not need to know any of this.
“Lord Linkon, I don’t believe that you walked all this way to compliment my drawings or my pigeon routes.”
Linkon continued looking at the maps for another moment, then took a seat across from her.
“You are correct, my queen. I am here to acknowledge a struggle we both share. The other high lords think of me as a weakling child,” Linkon explained. “A green boy who has never fought in a war or cut a man’s head off in a duel over grazing rights. A silly way to measure a lord’s value in my opinion, but alas, this is the world we live in. It is not unlike the way they think of you.” He put his palms up in the air. “No offense intended, my queen.”
“I’m aware of the High Council’s perspective. What’s your point?”
“Their scorn toward me is an advantage. They drop their guard around me—speak more freely of their personal interests. Please, allow me to be your eyes and ears in the High Council when you are not present. Perhaps I can dig up some useful information that can be used to bring Cedar Wallace and his western lackeys under tighter control.”
Ashlyn leaned back in her chair. “And what would you expect in return, Lord Linkon?”
“A gift to the queen doesn’t require reciprocation, of course,” he said. “But if you were in a generous mood, awarding me Mudwall would be … very much appreciated. I promise that you’ll approve of the way I treat the land.”
Ashlyn raised an eyebrow. “Don’t make me play a guessing game with you, Linkon.”
Linkon smiled. “My lack of military experience is not the only way that I am different from the other lords of the High Council. Unlike them, I take great interest in your studies of nature. And more specifically, of dragons. If I were awarded Mudwall, I would be willing to sign a contract promising to only harvest sick or aging dragons from the countryside, just as you do for your private research. If my information is correct, the surrounding area is populated by a large number of River Lurkers—a very important aspect of the region. Almira must have healthy rivers, after all.”
“How did you come by that information?”
“Like I said, Queen, I take great interest in your studies. Most of your sketches and folios aren’t seen by anyone except your personal stewards and the eccentric court alchemists, but I have been making quite frequent visits to the archives. I think you’ll find that I am by far the most open-minded member of the High Council.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I could be a great ally to you, if you allow me to help.”
“And here I assumed that you already were a great ally to me.”
“Of course, my queen. And once again, I am not like the other high lords.”
“I won’t argue with you there,” Ashlyn said.
Linkon stood up. “I meant to ask, has there been new information discovered about that fire in the eastern tower?”
“It was a fire. What more were you hoping to learn?”
“A very strange fire. I’ve never seen stones melt like that. There must have been something quite flammable in there.” Linkon looked around the room, eyes rolling over the thin sheet that covered her alchemy station. “There have been a lot of strange events these past few months, in fact.”
Ashlyn didn’t say anything.
“The Balarians pop free of their shroud and visit with Almiran royalty,” Linkon continued. “A strange fire in the eastern tower melts stone like candle wax. A princess disappears. And then a famous dragonslayer is brought to the capital for the first time in fourteen years. The giddy scholar in me can’t help but feel like we are on the precipice of some great event.”
Her father had never paid Linkon much attention—he had never trusted the younger generation of Almiran lords, who hadn’t fought in the Balarian Invasion—but very little slipped past the young lord.
“As I’m sure you’ve heard, Bershad took a ship to Ghalamar under a request from the baron of Cornish. There’s nothing strange about a dragonslayer going to kill a dragon.”
“Nothing strange about a dragonslayer being called to the capital?” Linkon raised an eyebrow. “By that logic, there’s nothing strange about that tower fire, either.”
“There you have it, nothing strange at all. No precipice in sight.” She turned to her papers. “I’m very busy, Linkon. I will see you at the next High Council meeting.”
Linkon gave a little nod. “Until next time, Queen Ashlyn.” He threw one final smile at her. “That has a nice ring, don’t you think?”
“I don’t spend much time thinking about how my name sounds. Good-bye, Linkon.”
* * *
Ashlyn released a long breath when Linkon was gone. Rolled her shoulders in a few circles. Linkon was more subtle than the other high lords, but he wanted the same things. Power and money. Silas would have hated him.
“You did well, my queen,” Hayden said.
“Well enough for now,” Ashlyn said.
“They agreed to bring their wardens to Floodhaven. That is what you wanted, yes?”
“Agreeing to me in a room is one thing, delivering thousands of wardens to Floodhaven is quite another. I think Cedar Wallace is going to be a problem.”
“That man is a snake,” Hayden agreed.
“Everyone on the High Council is a snake. Wallace just doesn’t bother disguising it.”
“I could kill them for you,” Hayden said, keeping her face un readable. “Just blink your eyes twice, and I’ll slit their throats tonight. We could replace them all with women.”
Ashlyn couldn’t help but smile, but she made sure not to blink, just in case Hayden was being serious.
“Very well,” Hayden said after a moment. “But my offer still stands.” Hayden’s face broke into a rare smile of her own.
Ashlyn reached for the pitcher of wine on her desk and poured. If she drank too much, her mind would turn foggy and she wouldn’t get a bit of work done tonight. But a single glass helped loosen her thoughts after a long day.
“I didn’t think being a queen would feel like this,” she said.
“What did you expect?”
“I’m not sure, exactly. More freedom. More choices. But the past has decided so much for me.”
“A dependency on the past is something that queens, peasants, and everyone in between all share. The only thing you can do is work to create more options in the future.”
“That’s true. More widows in Floodhaven should help.”
“My queen?”
Ashlyn couldn’t help but smile.
“Empress Okinu has agreed to send three hundred of your sisters to Almira, along with the ships.”
“Getting that many widows from the empress couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t.”
Widows were far more precious than ships. There were only a few thousand of them in Papyria at any given time, and it took eighteen years to train one, whereas a ship was built in a few months. The larger obstacle, however, was the breaking of tradition. Ashlyn’s royal Papyrian blood earned her protection by Hayden, but that was it. The only Papyrian in the world who was protected by more than a single widow was the empress herself, who famously filled every shado
w in her palace with a black-armored guardian.
Offering so many widows to Ashlyn—and sending them out of Papyria—was an unprecedented gesture.
“When my father was alive, it would have been impossible,” Ashlyn continued. “But I am the queen of Almira now. This is what the empress wanted when she shipped her sister across the sea to marry Hertzog Malgrave—for a half-breed to sit on the throne of Almira. My work to repair Almira and Papyria’s relationship is finally paying dividends.”
“Agreed,” Hayden said. She lingered in the room, resting her hand on the hilt of the short sword on her hip and looking uncomfortable.
“Is there something else?” Ashlyn asked.
“There is, my queen.” Hayden hesitated. “I’m hoping you’ll stop lying to me about what happened in the eastern tower. If there’s a danger, I need to know about it.”
“Hayden, as I told Linkon—”
“Please, Ashlyn. Do not insult me with the same lie you gave that soft-palmed lord. I know there is more.” She stepped farther into the room. “Your mother was a woman of secrets, too. Even before she fell in love with Leon Bershad, I watched her being eaten away by the feelings she locked inside of herself. I never asked her to share them with me, though I often wanted to. I will not make the same mistake with you, Ashlyn. I can do more than protect you from knives and swords.”
“You don’t talk about my mother very often,” Ashlyn said.
“Neither do you.”
Ashlyn paused. She couldn’t carry her secret alone forever, and Hayden was the only person in Floodhaven she truly trusted.
“I’ll try to explain.” She began unwinding the dragon thread from her wrist. “Do you remember the last Ghost Moth that we rode out to see? The female.”
“Yes, the one that fell from the sky. That was over a year ago.”
“One year and three months. When I dissected her body, I found this barbed nerve string running down her spine. I’d never seen something like it before. I weighed and measured it, along with all her other organs. But unlike her heart and lungs and stomach, this string didn’t necrify. So I kept it. Tried to figure out what it was. First, I went to the archives to search for more information. I’d already read everything down there about dragons, most of which is focused on ways to kill them. But there have been a few stewards and alchemists over the generations who took an interest in the great lizards’ anatomy. Dissections. Drawings. That kind of thing. It was possible I’d missed something hidden within their research.”
“And?”
“Nothing,” Ashlyn said. “No mention of an errant nerve string or any kind of irregularity along the spine. So I expanded my search.”
She took a breath.
“While there isn’t very much useful information about dragons in the archives, there are hundreds of records of men and women accused of witchcraft, or consorting with demons. Their crimes and victims. The alleged spells.” She paused. “The methods and tools of their demoncraft.”
“Ashlyn…” Hayden said.
“I wasn’t looking for an actual spell,” Ashlyn said. “I was just looking for some mention of the nerve string. There was nothing recent, but two hundred years ago a goat herder on the northern edge of the Atlas Coast was executed for performing blood magic with a translucent thread she claimed originated in the body of a Ghost Moth. One hundred years before that, a shaman from the west was caught stealing children from nearby villages and sacrificing them beneath a tree-sized totem in the woods. After the wardens killed him, they noted in a brief report to their small lord that there was an odd, clear rope affixed to the altar where he’d been murdering the children.
“And lastly, deep in the annals of an obscure Gorgon Valley clan, a warlord’s wife was put to death for accusations of demoncraft. It was five hundred years ago, so that wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, but the details stood out. She was accused of calling down storms on passing riverboats with a blood-soaked rope made of dragon-skin that never went to rot.”
Hayden absorbed all of this. “The stories do share a certain similarity.”
“Yes.” Ashlyn nodded. “And in all cases, blood was mentioned. But when I drew blood from myself and put it on the thread, nothing happened. So I spent weeks treating the dragon thread with different combinations. I started with animal blood—one species at a time, then mixed together. When that didn’t work, I tried different amounts mixed at different temperatures. I pulled the blood from different veins in my body. Mixed it with other animals. Other people, too, which wasn’t easy to do in secret. I even tried my moon’s blood when the time came. Eventually, I realized there must be a missing element. Something to start the reaction.
“I began with alchemy ingredients, both healing and venomous. When those didn’t work, I tried adding rare herbs that were once thought to contain magical properties, thinking there might be a correlation. Alder. Foxglove. I went through weeks of trial and error, watching for changes in the thread. Nothing worked, so I tried another approach. Diet.”
“My queen?”
“Ghost Moths mostly eat medium-sized mammals,” Ashlyn explained. “Fox. Badger. The occasional bear if the dragon is large enough. If an external element triggered a reaction, it made sense for the source to originate from their food. So, I started reducing animal organs and testing them as reagents. Don’t ask me how long it took to arrive here, but I eventually tried the liver of a fox who’d prowled the wilds of the Dainwood for his entire life. After that, things happened very quickly.” She tightened her fist around the base of the thread. “You should step back, Hayden.”
Ashlyn snapped her hand down the length of the thread fast enough so the small barbs broke skin. A blue crackle of light sprang from the thread and transferred to Ashlyn’s fist. She held her arm up, palm facing Hayden, so the widow could see the charged tendrils snapping between her fingers as if a miniature storm raged in her hand.
“Black skies.” Hayden whispered the Papyrian curse with her eyes fixed on Ashlyn’s hand.
Ashlyn smiled. “All my life—even as a girl—I’ve mocked the rituals and totems to which Almirans cling. I’ve discounted their bone charms and muttered incantations as superstition and foolishness. But I realize now they were scratching at the surface of a much larger system—one that I hadn’t noticed, despite how carefully I’d been watching. There is a kind of magic in this world. I believe that now. It runs down the spines of dragons and connects to the animals and rivers and earth.” She paused, rolling the lightning across her fingers. “And, now, to me. The only way to activate the thread is with my blood. Believe me, I checked.”
Hayden frowned. “But that isn’t strong enough to melt a tower.”
“No,” Ashlyn said, shaking her hand so the lightning dissipated to nothing. “Adding more fox tissue has no effect. And more of my blood creates more tendrils, but they become no stronger. This is where the witches and shamans of the past stopped—with a spark and an incomplete understanding of what they’d discovered. But once I learned how to activate the string, I knew there was more. That’s when I moved to the eastern tower. I’d started the reaction, but I hadn’t completed it. So I spent months trying every permutation of animal organ and blood mixture I could conceive of in an attempt to create a stronger reaction. I must have fifty notebooks filled from the work. Nothing. And then…” Ashlyn trailed off. Cracked two knuckles on her left hand and stared at them afterward.
“Ashlyn?” Hayden asked when she stayed quiet.
“Emperor Mercer, of all people, is the one who made me consider warren moss again,” Ashlyn continued. “I’d obviously tried the warren mosses to activate the cord, but when they didn’t work, I wrote them off. That was a mistake, since I was now working on a different aspect of the reaction. During his visit, when Mercer proposed culling the dragons of the Dainwood, I pretended to be interested in the idea to keep him talking. I knew he had the means to extend the longevity of the dragon oil that he burned, but I didn’t know the method. When
Mercer saw an opening to Almiran warrens, he became far more forthcoming with me. Showed me the formula for refined dragon oil.” Ashlyn smiled. “I doubt he expected me to understand it at a quick glance, but I did. He’s using warren moss. Mostly Spartania and Crimson Tower, since they’re the most common. He combines the moss with several other reagents prepared in a specific order and temperature. Once I saw the formula, the principles of the reaction were obvious. And it was only logical that warren moss would react with the only other part of a dragon’s body that doesn’t necrify besides their oil.”
“The dragon thread.”
“Yes. It just needed to be activated first. I knew I should wait until the Balarians left before trying it.” She met Hayden’s eyes. “But I’d been working on the thread for more than a year and didn’t have anything to show for it besides a spark in my palm, and I felt foolish for missing something so obvious. So when we finished our negotiations for the day, I went to my personal alchemy stores. I didn’t have any Spartania or Crimson Tower on hand. But I always keep a vial of Gods Moss. So I used it.”
“That was the night the tower exploded?”
Ashlyn nodded. “Mercer had been mixing a quart of Spartania moss per barrel of dragon oil. I knew Gods Moss was more potent, so I only used a pinch. Just one pinch of Gods Moss added to a shallow tray. I mixed in the other reagents according to his formula, put it over a low heat, and watched. Nothing. So I drew a vial of my blood and began titrating it onto the tray, one drop at a time. I was waiting for a reaction when a steward showed up in the eastern tower, saying that Emperor Mercer was in a lower chamber and wanted to see me.” Ashlyn sighed. “At the time, I’d thought it was an unlucky coincidence, but not anymore. Mercer was baiting me into revealing my hand in the same way that I was baiting him. I found out later that he’d sent one of his envoys snooping around the eastern tower on several occasions before that night. That’s why he gave me the formula. He knew I’d try something, and he wanted to see what it was.
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