A Dragonbird in the Fern

by Rueckert, Laura

  I smiled back at him. If only I could ask him everything. About the tattoo artist, about the prisoner from Stärkland.

  Raffar gestured to my chair. Once I sat, he started talking. I watched his expressions, tired, then, as he spoke and ate, more energetic. When our meal was finished, I told him about my week, in Azzarian, of course. About the walk with Freyad, about how Geord’s shouting had worried me, about how seeing the river made me feel, about failing to find the right tattoo so far and my plan to visit the tattoo artist. He didn’t understand, but he watched me and listened.

  There was one word I remembered. “Devsiin,” I said.

  Raffar’s eyes shot to mine. “Devsiin?” he repeated. He traced the lines on his face, then he reached out and brushed a thumb over my cheek.

  All the breath left my lungs. Did he think I wanted a tattoo? I’d been around them long enough that they didn’t seem alien to me anymore. The whorls and lines were fascinating, told stories even, and my fingers longed to touch Raffar’s again. But that man in the alley . . . it looked painful.

  I shook my head, and my eyes must have shown my panic because he smiled and shook his head too.

  Raffar asked a question, but the only word I caught was Aldar. So, he probably wanted to know how my language lessons were progressing.

  I ignored the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had learned a few phrases.

  “Hello. My name is Jiara,” I said in Farnskag.

  A grin split his face. “Hello, Jiara. My name is Raffar,” he answered—and tears pricked my eyes. Our first conversation.

  To prolong it, my thoughts scrambled for something else I could say. I pointed to the rice on the table. “I like rice.”

  My face warmed. Such a boring sentence.

  But Raffar dragged his chair closer. He pointed to the orange mush. “I like sweet potatoes.” He pointed to several of the other dishes and said he liked them, but I didn’t catch their names.

  I couldn’t make him understand the laundry rain or the smiles of the friendly children who’d allowed their curiosity to rule them as they fingered my hair, but I could let him know I was happy with my personal guard. “I like Freyad.”

  “Good . . .” he said and garbled a phrase I didn’t get. My confusion must have been obvious. He held up a finger. “Freyad.” Then he mimed throwing an object. “Freyad. Good.”

  When I still didn’t understand, he held his hands out about four feet apart. He pretended to throw again, then clutched his chest as if he’d been hit there.

  Oh. Freyad was good at throwing a weapon. A javelin based on the size Raffar had mimed. That was important apparently. Especially with how violently the Grand Council members argued.

  I considered the other people I’d met. “I don’t like Geord.”

  Raffar waved as if brushing away a fly. He hesitated, his brow wrinkled. Carefully, he said, “Geord. Not bad. Geord loud.” Then he spoke several sentences, while pointing to his heart, then sliding his hand up to his mouth and out into the air. Geord let what was in his heart out his mouth. So, he was passionate?

  I was probably saying it wrong, but I asked, “You like Geord?”

  Raffar’s eyebrows rose and fell. He laughed deeply. And he didn’t answer the question, which was answer enough.

  A servant came and cleared the table for us. Raffar set out a square piece of nearly black wood inlaid with golden stars and white diamonds. Then he set white stones on the diamonds and dark stones on the stars.

  “Vansvagd,” he said, pointing to the game.

  He moved a black stone, then gestured to me. A game that I didn’t know how to play. Well, he’d stop me if I was wrong. I pushed a white stone to an adjacent free space. He moved one of his. It went back and forth until he pushed a stone and smiled at me. There were no free spaces next to any of my stones. I was trapped.

  I tried to remember the word for again, but couldn’t, so I slid the stones back to their original places. I moved the first one randomly. Once more, we shoved the pieces around, one space at a time. Raffar commented constantly, and I realized he was teaching me words, so I repeated them. Black and white, stone and board. Star. You.

  By the end of our fourth game, I’d learned the words for I win . . . even if I hadn’t been able to say it myself.

  __________

  Two days later, Aldar had not yet arrived for our lesson when the door to the suite banged open.

  “Jiara!” The lines of Raffar’s tattoos were distorted by his smile. He held out both hands, and the eager gleam in his eyes made me grasp them and follow him down the stairs.

  His gruff voice flowed over me as he stopped at the kitchen to accept a bag, then he tugged me out of the house and down the road to the western side of town. His gait was quick and his hold on my hand never loosened. After about twenty minutes, we passed the last houses and reached a field bordered by people of all ages, all quietly staring into the grass. I craned my neck to see what was so captivating. Multicolored flower petals appeared to bob in the breeze, but other than that—

  Raffar pointed to his eyes and then the field. When I nodded, he raised his arm to get everyone’s attention. Then he dropped it. A loud clap echoed from across the field, and the sky came alive with thousands of butterflies. White, yellow, blue, and orange exploded in the air.

  Children raced onto the field and began sprinkling something on the ground. Laughing infectiously, Raffar dragged me after them. He took apple slices and tiny white and larger yellow flowers from the bag and placed them in a pattern on the grass. The butterflies fluttered above us, but they flew lower and lower, heading for the field again.

  With the gradual landing of the butterflies, Raffar’s pattern began to make sense. The blue butterflies landed on the apples. The white ones were drawn by the yellow flowers, and the orange and yellow to the white flowers. Raffar dropped the last apple slices and stood back next to me. He raised a hand for me to wait. We held perfectly still, and the butterflies sought out the offerings. A couple even landed on Raffar and me. The sight of a delicate orange butterfly on his shoulder, so close to the rock shard in his ear, made me want to grab hold of his face and kiss it. I swallowed and turned my gaze to the field.

  Mostly children, but also a few adults had created these living pictures. A smiling face made of white and blue butterflies, then one with a thick orange tongue sticking out, the wings fluttering up and down as if the tongue wiggled in anticipation of a tasty morsel.

  “Jiara,” Raffar’s finger drew my attention back to his picture.

  My breath caught.

  A boat, the same shape as the tagarro boat we’d used to tour the canals back in Glizerra, floated in a sea of blue butterflies. As their wings opened and closed, the water lapped at the yellow and orange boat, with tiny tufts of white in the blue signifying waves.

  The field, the butterflies, the forest surrounding us . . . it wasn’t anything like home. But Raffar’s picture was a thoughtful way of trying to make me feel at home.

  Raffar pointed to the boat. “I like . . .” I didn’t understand the last word he said, but I nodded.

  “I like too,” I breathed.

  His hand grasped mine again, and he squeezed it. I wanted to say so much more. I like you. And despite not knowing the language or the customs . . . I’m glad we’re married.

  Scilla’s face flashed in my mind, smothering my gratefulness and joy. I was only here because she was dead. I wasn’t supposed to have Raffar as my husband.

  His smile tugged a sense of acceptance over my bruised heart. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be here, but I was. I drew Raffar closer, and when I leaned into his side, he nuzzled the top of my head. We watched our boat as the breeze blew and the sun moved overhead, until finally the butterflies flew away, filling the sky with brilliant color.

  The townspeople gave up their vigils at the edges of the field, wandering hand in hand or with friends back toward town. Raffar tilted his head toward the others, and I nodded. It was time to g
et back.

  He flinched and slapped the back of his neck. “Ow!”

  His palm came away bloody; it was apparently some kind of insect. I pulled his head down to see how bad the bite was.

  But there was no bite. Just two deep, crossed lines that made my stomach clench and my hope wither as I thought of the servant woman as a young girl, her grandparents brutally murdered with crisscross cuts. Mother had definitely been wrong. Scilla could travel this far. My heart thudded faster than butterfly wings could beat as my gaze darted around the field, searching for the danger I knew I wouldn’t be able to see. Nothing could protect me from her now.

  I pressed the hem of my sleeve against Raffar’s cut to stop the bleeding. His injury was far worse than the scratches Scilla had inflicted on Llandro and me so far. For once, I was glad of my weakness with the language. How was I supposed to explain Scilla’s behavior? Especially when Farnskagers didn’t believe in earthwalkers at all?

  We’d always thought earthwalkers didn’t leave Azzaria, but my heart iced over as I realized we’d never know if a ghost killed someone visiting another country. They would just disappear, and we’d assume they’d built a new life for themselves far away. No, the distance wasn’t going to protect me—my breath caught because that meant Zito wouldn’t be safe either, if Mother sent him to live with me.

  And now Scilla was drawing Raffar into her vengeance. I couldn’t allow that. I had to stop her from hurting all of us. I had to.

  __________

  The next morning, a letter from Pia lay on the table in our suite. A warm glow enveloped my heart—she wrote! She was fine, less exhausted than during our trip, and she was getting along with Marro’s family.

  Writing back to her, sharing my life here would mean so much to me. I made three starts, but between my worries about the people who disagreed with Raffar and my unsuccessful attempts to find the tattoo artist, concentrating on letters wasn’t working. At the top of the page, I drew a butterfly, and that gave me an idea. I wrote a few words, but then drew Raffar and me, surrounded by butterflies. I smiled. It wasn’t a perfect letter, but Pia’d know I was thinking of her.

  The evening before, I’d asked to see the tattoo artist again, but she was out of town for the day. Until I could interrogate her, I was out of ideas regarding Scilla’s killer. All night I’d pondered it and come to a decision. A cut on his skin was only a tiny thing. Scilla would need more time walking the earth to strengthen her anger, to truly wield it as a deadly weapon. But that didn’t mean Raffar was out of danger. Who knew what Geord was capable of? Or the Stärklandish queen, who’d said she’d sent an emissary, but the only person they’d found was the man who had attacked Aldar’s party. Luckily, my translator was an excellent source of information.

  “Tell me more about the prisoner from Stärkland,” I said as Aldar extracted the slate from the drawer.

  He tsked. “Your Majesty, you are only stalling your lessons.”

  I glared at him, overdramatically. “I am not. Or, I am, but I want to know, and I’m the queen. Where is he?”

  He chuckled and bowed his head in a supremely deferential pose in response. “Of course, Your Majesty. There’s a prison on the far side of town, past the square and the ironfern wood artisans’ workshops. Since he’s a political prisoner, the cell is in a corridor underground. Don’t worry—he’ll never get out. Unless Raffar releases him.”

  Aldar’s deliberately bland expression didn’t hide the fact that he still believed the king was foolish for entertaining such thoughts.

  “Why do you say Raffar is too trusting?” Ever since my husband had told me Geord was not a bad person, I’d been wondering if Aldar might be correct. Maybe Raffar wasn’t careful enough.

  Aldar tossed the slate and the slate pencil on the table. He scratched his chin. “That he’s even considering talking to them. They sent a troop of killers.”

  I wished I could hear Raffar’s side of the argument. Aldar talked like Raffar wasn’t thinking at all, and my hackles rose automatically. I held back the unfounded defense forming on my lips. “Do you speak Stärklandish?”

  He stretched his arms and folded them behind his head. “It is not as good as my Azzarian, but it’s not bad.”

  My heart sank a little. Aldar could speak, read, and write in three languages. I could barely read my own. I pushed away those thoughts. My stupid, bruised pride wasn’t the important thing here. “So, you could translate for me.”

  Aldar’s arms were in the process of coming forward from his relaxed pose, but he froze. “Has King Raffar requested that you speak to the prisoner?”

  I pictured my mother, calm, sure of herself. “No, but as queen, there should be no reas—”

  “This man and his people killed three of our soldiers. Eight others are still recovering from serious wounds. I will not take you to speak to him.” He glared at me, and following several silent heartbeats, he tacked on, “Your Majesty.”

  Fire crept up my face and the back of my neck. I gave him my hardest stare. If I were in Azzaria, I’d just go myself. I’d order my way in or manage some kind of deception, like I had when I’d viewed the commander’s tattoo sketches. And I would talk to the man on my own. But now, even if I found the prison, I couldn’t speak enough Farnskag or Stärklandish to extract any useful information from him. I was dependent on Aldar to get anywhere.

  His shoulders drooped, and he sighed in a drawn-out way. “I’m sorry, Queen Jiara. It probably sounds so disrespectful when I say that. I heard your sister was not far from the Stärklandish border when she was killed. It’s understandable that you’d try to leave no stone unturned. But don’t forget—she was even closer to the Loftarian border.”

  Mother must have given Raffar’s people more information about Scilla’s death than I’d thought. It was true, she’d been in the vicinity of both borders.

  He continued, “I’m sure you want to find out who is responsible, but I can’t imagine the prisoner knows anything about the assassin. What kind of coincidence would that be? Given the years of contention, it was most likely someone from Loftaria, trying to prevent an alliance between our two countries. Someone who was, luckily, unsuccessful. It’s a good thing for Farnskag that Raffar is so stubborn.” He smiled and picked up the slate.

  Letters appeared, and Aldar said words, which I repeated, but try as I might, they just wouldn’t stick in my head. All I could think about was how helpless I was in this country. I was like one of those fancy, rainbow-colored birds from the southern continent, repeating, but understanding nothing. Word after unknown word built up until I had to think of something else or I’d cry in front of my tutor. I pictured the map Mother had hanging in a corner of her office. Scilla had been in the upper northwest of Azzaria when she’d died. We’d all concentrated on the Loftarians, since they’d always been openly hostile. And then, on the Farnskagers, because of the witness’s description.

  It sounded like the Stärklandish prisoner had been arrested shortly after Scilla had died. I’d never considered it before Aldar had mentioned it, but what if Scilla’s murder and the arrival of the Stärklandish scouting party were related? If it had been politically sanctioned by the Stärklandish government, the prisoner might even know details about the assassin.

  She’d only been a half-day’s ride from Stärkland. Close to Stärkland, close to Loftaria. An Azzarian witness of Loftarian origin. A Farnskager tattoo.

  I buried my hands in my hair, trying to imagine how the puzzle pieces could fit together.

  Because there was one fact no one was privy to but our family and Pia.

  We’d told everyone that Scilla had been traveling on behalf of the queen, checking the health and prosperity of our western regions. But in reality, none of us knew what Scilla had been doing. She’d left without telling anyone, without servants, without soldiers or her gurdetta.

  What if her trip really had something to do with Stärkland? What if the prisoner possessed information about it? What if my only chance
to talk with him was a translator who refused to do my bidding?

  Chapter 15

  The next day was a disaster. After a tour of the hospital, where I’d consoled patients with my few Farnskag words and the gakh greeting until my aching back had screamed, I’d slipped away to try and find either the tattoo artist or the prison myself. Not taking into account that I couldn’t read signs and wasn’t even certain how I’d communicate once I got there, within an hour, I’d drawn the laughter of a dozen men by begging for help with a fire when it was only a smokehouse with the door accidentally left open. Worse—my shouts had scared the owner’s dog so much it had nipped at my leg. As a souvenir, I now sported a purple bite-shaped bruise. I was lucky it hadn’t been worse.

  The only consolation for the horrid experience was my dinner alone with Raffar in the evening. Maybe the kitchen staff had heard of the day’s ordeal, because the table held a unique sight for Baaldarstad: a fried fish on a platter. My mouth watered as I imagined which of the sea’s fish it would taste like most. One bite, and I thanked the gods we weren’t surrounded by townspeople in the dining hall, so no one could see my reaction. My teeth sank into what felt like an old sponge, and a thick juice leaked out, a fetid mud on my tongue.

  I took a deep breath. No wonder they never ate seafood here.

  Raffar had waited while I took the first bite. Before I could warn him, a morsel of fish disappeared into his mouth. Two jaw movements later, his chewing slowed dramatically. His throat jerked as he forced the mouthful down. He sucked in a large gulp of ale and looked from the fish to me as if unable to comprehend how I could adore a food so vile.

  “I don’t like the fish,” I said. I pointed at it, keeping my fingers inches away. “That bad fish.”

  He coughed and sputtered, “Very bad fish.” He pushed the platter away, I covered it with a napkin for good measure, and we filled ourselves with bread and potatoes and a bright salad of green leaves and juicy beets.