Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  “And little girls shouldn’t wear their hair in that heathen style, and they shouldn’t be talking back to their elders,” the man added.

  Grandfather tore off another piece of bread. “I am what you would call a heathen,” he said mildly through his pepper-and-salt beard. “And in my home country, we allow women to shoot bows and arrows, and hold public office, and write books, and choose who they want to marry. If Fia were my grandson, you would be praising his aim and saying, ‘Boys will be boys!’”

  Grandfather’s friend grumbled, eyeing Fia darkly. “All the same, this city-state is under the sway of the Pope. The holy Church in her wisdom says no to all those things.”

  “Your faith is cousin to my faith,” Grandfather said. “I prefer my faith, for we treat our women as citizens, not chattel.”

  “And the girls can be assassins,” Fia said to Neva, just loud enough for the other man to hear.

  “I still think you shouldn’t have shot that arrow,” Neva whispered.

  Fia just bumped lightly against her side like they always did during Mass and they were bored. “Come on. Let’s go play the Elder of the Mountain and his Many Assassins. We can be just like my grandmother, my teita Anna. I promise I won’t make you shoot anybody.”

  “I want to be the old man of the mountain.” Neva pulled her blonde hair into two sections, then brought them around to the front of her face and held them under her chin. “See? Now I have a white beard. Whitish.”

  “The Elder of the Mountain should have had a dragon army,” Fia said.

  “You’re just saying that because you want to be a dragonrider,” Neva said. She fluttered her beard at Fia, still holding her hair in front of her face. “We’re assassins. We don’t need dragons. You can’t sneak around stabbing people with a dragon that’s fifty cubits tall standing right behind you.”

  Fia rolled her eyes. “I don’t care. I’m going to have a dragon. She will be a stealth dragon.”

  “Oh, so a fifty-cubit dragon is going to sneak around on its tiptoes?”

  BOOM.

  The great, hollow concussion reverberated in the air, a sound that Fia had never heard before. Her breath caught in her throat and she stopped in her tracks.

  Neva dropped her hair. “What was that?”

  All around the marketplace, talk died away and people raised their heads, looking around them. Even the sparrows in the trees around them stopped their chirps.

  Now a single-throated roar as of a thousand voices rang out from that direction of the boom. Fia stood frozen on her feet. Inside the walls of the market, she could not see what was happening in the distance. Neva clutched her wooden sword. Fia took her best friend’s hand as if to protect her.

  “Fia, Neva,” her grandfather called, leaning on the table for support as he got to his feet. “Both of you, go home at once.”

  “What’s happening?” Fia asked.

  “We’re in danger. Go.”

  BOOM. A second one, echoing through the houses and walls of the city. Another many-voiced shout.

  “It’s the city gate!” somebody shouted from the top of the market wall. “They’re breaching the gate at the Via Paloma. To arms! To arms!”

  “Who is breaching the gate?” Fia cried, but her voice was drowned in the chaos that broke out. Women screamed for their children. Shopkeepers started to their feet, drawing swords, some throwing their wares quickly back onto their mule carts. Heavy wooden shutters slammed shut over windows.

  Suddenly, at Fia’s back stood Teita Anna, her grandmother, so swiftly that Fia was startled. Teita Anna was barely taller than Fia, wearing her sand-colored scarf over her black hair. But her presence made Fia suddenly feel safe, despite the panic rising around her, despite another BOOM that shuddered the air, followed by screams.

  Teita touched a sash that she always wore as she watched the piazza intently. Fia knew that her knives were under that sash. Even all these years later, Teita kept several knives on her person, even though she hadn’t worked as an assassin for years.

  “What’s happening?” Neva said nervously.

  “The Sienese army is at the gates,” Teita said. “You must go home at once.”

  “The Sienese army?” Neva gasped, her eyes lighting.

  Fia quickly nocked a blunted arrow on her bow as the panic grew around them. If the Sienese army was here – another BOOM at the city gates chilled her blood – then that meant…

  “That means the exiles have returned,” Fia whispered.

  “Yes,” said Teita. “They are trying to force their way back into the city that had cast them out.”

  Neva clutched her hands together. “My grandfather is with them.” Enough people knew Neva’s family – some barely tolerated them, knowing their connection with the exiles – that Fia was sure Neva would be in danger.

  Teita clutched Neva’s hand. “Don’t show your joy,” she said urgently, gazing into Neva’s eyes. “If you want to get home safely, look afraid. Pretend to be frightened. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  Grandfather came hobbling up. “My leg will not let me run,” he said. “Hurry home. I’ll catch up.”

  Teita’s eyes gentled with worry. “Take my dagger.” She pulled her jeweled dagger. Even now, Fia marveled at the gleam of the ruby in its hilt, the keenness of its delicate silver blade.

  Grandfather shook his head, very serious. “Keep it. Use it if necessary. I want the children safe at home. God go with you.”

  Just then a mother next to them screamed. “Jacopo!” she cried, gathering her other two toddling babies to her, the bundles she was trying to carry falling to the ground. “He’s wandered away! Jacopo!”

  “I’ll find him,” Teita said, vanishing like the breeze.

  Fia seized Neva’s hand. “Let’s run,” she said. “Grandfather, can you keep—”

  “A Sienese bitch!”

  The shout cut through the chaos of the market.

  Fia turned with a great gasp. A man with a sword came running toward them.

  “Whelp! You will die for the sins of the exiles!” He lunged toward Neva, who stood wide-eyed and afraid, suddenly trembling to the ends of her blonde hair.

  It happened too fast for Fia to understand what she was seeing --

  Her grandfather leapt suddenly between the attacker’s sword and Neva, arms open.

  Blood. So much blood.

  Her grandfather crumpled to the stones of the piazza, choking out his life, a sword through his belly – but he was holding onto the sword’s hilt as the attacker tried to pull it out, his dark, baleful eyes fixed on the man who would have killed Neva.

  A cry wobbled from Fia’s lips.

  The next instant, a shriek like that of a bird of prey. It was Teita, screaming with a sound that Fia would never forget.

  Teita came flying across the marketplace like a hawk in the air. A flash of silver and ruby as her jeweled dagger went flying – and a gout of blood flew from the man who had killed her grandfather.

  The next instant, she stood over the man as he crumpled from the blow from her jeweled dagger.

  Harsh shouts, and two more men ran across the plaza at Neva, swords drawn, murder in their eyes. “You killed Lapo!” they screamed.

  Now Teita stood before both her dying husband and Neva. She reached under her sash, too quickly to see, pulled out something that glittered, and then swung her hand down hard. The first man cartwheeled in midrun like a rabbit that had been shot. He crashed to the stones of the piazza, twitching, a knife sticking out of his neck.

  The second man was nearly upon Teita. He spat at Teita and thrust the sword. Ducking the blade, she lunged into the man, using his running momentum to stab him deeply through the ribs. The next moment she shoved him back, stepping away as she pulled out her knife. The man’s body fell, and a great gout of blood leapt from his wound with every beat of his heart. He lay sprawled on the pavement, the fountain of blood from his heart growing less and less.

  Teit
a didn’t have a drop of blood on her.

  Her face crumpled with grief as she fell to her knees beside Fia’s grandpa, her husband. Their eyes met.

  Blood trickled from Grandfather’s mouth as he whispered, “You are my wild bird, the love of my life.”

  “You have always held my heart within yours,” Teita whispered, her tears flowing as she caressed his face.

  “God give you peace,” Grandfather said. Then a sigh flowed from his lips as if all the air went out of his lungs. His face went slack and his eyes left hers, and he slipped from her arms and collapsed.

  Fia pressed her fist to her mouth and screamed. She and Neva clutched each other.

  Teita pulled the sword free from her husband’s body, and with a moan of terrible grief she flung it aside. She turned her stricken eyes to Fia. “Go home now!” she screamed. “Protect your friend and take her home now! He gave his life to save hers!”

  Fia was crying too hard to see, but Teita’s voice galvanized her. The girls fled together, and Fia heard Neva’s sobs through her own. Neva stumbled, half-fainting, and Fia threw her arm around her waist. “Keep going. Keep going,” Fia sobbed, with no thought but the image of her grandfather crumpled over that sword. He was holding on to the hilt, she thought, so the man couldn’t pull it out and stab Neva ….

  “The tower,” Fia gasped. “We’ll go to my house … we’ll hide there …”

  Neva and her family lived across the courtyard from Fia’s house, on the other side of the courtyard where children used to play and a few storefronts opened into the street to sell meat and produce and a blacksmith kept his forge. She and Neva had played there in the courtyard all their lives, racing around playing tag or prisoner’s base or dueling knights with the other children.

  Neva and Fia ran into her house and up the dark staircase that spiraled into the darkness, lit only by the narrow windows that might have served as arrow windows in older times.

  Moments later Fia and Neva were standing upon the great tower of her parents’ home. Awash in misery, Fia crouched upon the stones, her head in her hands. She couldn’t stop sobbing. Neva sat next to her and gathered her in.

  “Mother hen,” Fia sobbed.

  Usually Neva would cluck like a hen when Fia called her this. This time she just held her friend tighter, and Fia felt her tears upon her scalp.

  “Your grandfather saved my life.” Neva was shaking.

  “I know.”

  “He was always so good to me,” Neva said. “Those conversations we had when he was sitting outside at the end of the day … it was like he was my grandfather too.”

  “I know.” Fia had always loved those easy conversations between the three of them as the sun went down.

  Just then, a hissing in the sky.

  “Look,” Neva said, pointing, her voice wobbling.

  Fia looked up. Over the parapets that surrounded them, Fia could see the dragons of the armies – more dragons aloft than she’d ever seen before.

  The dragons of the Fiorenza army now were rising into the air, their wings and scales flashing like jewels in the morning sun, and waves of billowing fire rolled out from them as they flew to meet the Sienese attackers in the air. The dragons that defended Fiorenza had asbestos banners with the picture of the lily upon them tied to their lower necks so the fighters and the armies on the ground could identify which side the dragons fought upon.

  Their riders on dragonback shot at each other with crossbows as dragons lunged through the air. And through this came another BOOM from the gates.

  Neva clutched Fia’s hand in a grip that hurt, her face going pale. “My grandpa,” she whispered. “He’s in the Sienese army. He’s come back.”

  Fia thought, My grandfather will never come back. But she wouldn’t grudge Neva her excitement and hope. Neva had missed her own grandfather since he was driven from Fiorenza into exile when she was a little girl.

  Fia looked into the skies as a phalanx of dragons from the Fiorenza army went roaring directly overhead. Topaz and garnet war dragons, their wingspans wider than the roof of the tower that she and Neva cowered on. Sparks blew back from their breathing, and the sun made their scales gleam as if every were a brilliantly cut gem. The sun shone through the dragons’ wings like the stained-glass windows at a cathedral, and the heat from their bodies as they passed overhead hit her like a blow. She’d always loved dragons and wanted desperately to be a dragonrider – but only men were allowed to fly dragons.

  “Grandpa’s come back,” Neva whispered again, peeking over the parapet to look out toward the armies.

  “He might not succeed,” Fia said. “The last time they tried this was…”

  “No!” Neva said fiercely. “They have to succeed. They have to.”

  “But my family will be forced from the city if they do,” Fia said, suddenly going pale, for her father was one of the twelve priors of the city.

  “My family will have to leave if they fail!” Neva said, as if suddenly realizing the same thing.

  The Fiorenza dragons came flying to meet the Sienese dragons – and, as one, the Fiorenza dragons went abloom with fire.

  The sky was aflame.

  Even at this distance, Fia felt the heat from the skyful of dragons breathing fire, as if a second sun glared down from above. She had to turn her eyes from the white-hot blaze.

  The heat slowly abated. She dared to look up then – and the Sienese dragons were falling from the sky, or fleeing the oncoming wrath of the Fiorenza army.

  Neva covered her mouth. “Oh, no, no, no ….”

  A great cheer went up from the city walls. If the Sienese dragons had been pushed back, then the Sienese army at the gates had no protection from the Fiorenza dragons.

  Screams from outside the gates as the conquering dragons flew down for the kill.

  Neva sobbed and put her face in her hands.

  Fia put her arms around Neva. “Maybe he’s not even in the attacking force,” she said, hoping against hope this was true. “Maybe your grandfather was sick and couldn’t fight …”

  Just then, a familiar black horse came galloping through the narrow streets.

  “Babbi!” Fia cried, leaning over the parapets.

  Ahead of him came Neva’s father on his own horse. “Get the wagon!” he ordered frantically as he came riding up to his house. “Get the wagon!”

  Through her tears, Neva’s eyes went wide. “The wagon? They’re not going to make us leave, are they?”

  “We can hide you,” Fia said frantically, throwing her arms around Neva. If the Sienese army was being slaughtered outside their gates, the authorities would be doubling down on exiling any relatives who still lived within the walls – including Neva’s family. “They can’t make you leave. They can’t. We can hide you … make you out to be my new sister …”

  “Where’s Neva?” Babbi shouted below them, in the street.

  “I have to go,” Neva said, her eyes filling with new tears.

  “Just hide!” Fia clutched Neva’s arm, frantic at the idea that she was going to lose her closest friend. And what would happen to a newly exiled girl and her family out there in the cruel world? Bandits and murderers were everywhere outside the safety of the city walls.

  Except at that moment, Babbi burst through the door at the top of the tower, a great, black-haired, imposing man in his robes of state. But his face was blanched with rage.

  Fia drew close to Neva, but he strode straight to Neva, grabbed her arm, and roughly dragged her down the stairs.

  Neva cried out. “Let go of me! Don’t hurt me!”

  “Daddy, Babbi, what are you doing?” Fia cried, running after them down the dark stairs. Neva was crying, a sound that wrung her heart. “Let her go! What’s the matter with you?” He’d never acted like this before, never.

  “Get out, get out, get out!” he said as he dragged Neva outside and flung her into the street.

  Neva’s father ran over to him, threatening Babbi. “What the fuck is wrong with you?�
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  “Your daughter is a Lamb! I don’t tolerate traitors in my home!”

  “Babbi, she’s not—”

  “We are locking up the house,” Babbi shouted at Fia. “Get inside, Fia, now!”

  Fia grabbed Neva in an embrace. It was all happening too fast, and Neva’s tears wrung her heart.

  “This isn’t fair – this isn’t supposed to happen—” Fia said into Neva’s shoulder as the girls clung to each other.

  “I love you, Fia,” Neva sobbed.

  “I hope your grandfather’s safe, Neva, I—”

  Something slammed into Fia’s shoulder, and she yelped with pain. A rock!

  “Get out of our city, you stinking Lambs,” somebody shrieked. “Join the rest of the exiles, you sons of pigs!”

  A stabler for Neva’s family came galloping up with a horse and cart, and their servants and family were piling their goods into it. People gathered around their courtyard, screaming and catcalling at Neva’s mother and sisters, hurling rocks at her father and laughing.

  Babbi grabbed Fia and pulled her away from Neva.

  “No!” Fia screamed, reaching back to Neva. “They’re throwing rocks at her!”

  “I said to get into the house, now!” He carried her in through the door. “Bar the door!” he shouted at the servants, who were already slamming the thick oak shutters all over the fortress, and the rooms darkened with every slam. Mami was busily lighting the oil lamps and sconces.

  Fia ran back to the door, fighting to lift the gigantic oaken bar, but Babbi scooped her up. “No. You will stay here.”

  “No! We need to help them. Help them, Babbi!”

  “We cannot,” Babbi said. “If I lift one finger to help them, this city will have you and the rest of this family on a cart and have me burned at the stake.”

  Fia struggled and kicked. “It’s not fair! It’s Neva! She’s my best friend!” If she could just get away from him, she could save them herself. She was going to shield Neva with her own body if she could. Anything to let her friend know that somebody, somebody in this stupid city still loved her.

  Babbi’s arms were locked around her, and all her kicking and struggling didn’t move them. Fia’s hair clung to her sweaty face. So she bit his arm.