Light My Fire

by G. A. Aiken

  Annwyl nodded. “Aye. I know.” She reached down and pulled a piece of parchment from her boot. There was blood on that too. She shoved it into Dagmar’s hand. Not out of anger, Gwenvael guessed, but because she was too tired to be gentle.

  “What’s this?” Dagmar asked.

  “The alliance. With the Daughters of the Steppes.”

  Dagmar held the scroll tighter. “Wh . . . what?”

  “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Good.” Annwyl took another step toward the Great Hall doors but stopped again. “Oh. Here.” She pulled a very small bag off her belt and tossed it to Elina. “This is for you.”

  The bag hit the Rider in the face since it had been aimed more to her left than her right, but her sister caught it and placed it in Elina’s hand.

  “What is this?” Elina asked.

  Annwyl looked back at the Rider. “Your mother’s eyes. Do with them as you will. They’re yours now.”

  Shocked into silence, everyone focused on poor Elina as Annwyl finally made her way into the Great Hall.

  As for the Riders, for once, they were frozen, unable to speak or move. Not that Gwenvael blamed them. How could he?

  Brigida walked slowly up the stairs, but stopped to inform Elina, “If you want, Rider, I can put one of those eyes in your head. But you can’t take too long to decide. Them eyes dry up real quick and that eye socket of yours won’t be much better in another day or two. Can’t promise the new eye will look all that pretty, but it should work. But you’re a Rider. Your lot don’t care about pretty, do ya?”

  Then Brigida cackled at her own joke and followed Annwyl into the Great Hall.

  In silence, they all watched as Elina looked down at the small bag in her hands. She glanced at her sister, who replied with nothing but a shrug. A gesture that any sibling would read as, “It’s up to you.”

  That’s when Elina tossed the bag—without opening it—to the ground. She pointed at it and said to Celyn, “Burn it.”

  “Elina,” Brannie cut in. “Are you sure? I know it’s hard, but . . . if Brigida can fix—”

  Her one eye still on Celyn, Elina said again, “Burn. It.”

  Celyn blasted the small bag with nearly a minute of dragon flame until there was nothing left but ash.

  Elina let out a breath, and Gwenvael realized it was not of regret . . . but relief.

  Together, they all made their way back into the Great Hall. There they found Annwyl sitting on her throne. Her wounded leg was up on one arm of the throne and her head was bowed.

  Celyn looked at Izzy and saw the deep concern on her face. He understood that. How could she not be concerned?

  Dagmar slowly moved closer to the queen. “Annwyl?”

  “They think I’m insane, you know?” Annwyl suddenly announced. “The Riders. But they have such a low opinion of Southland politics that I don’t think it really mattered to them. I’m just one more mad Southland monarch.” She took in a deep breath. Let it out. “But better me than zealots who try to turn them away from the life they’ve always lived on the Steppes.”

  Dagmar reached out, placing her hand over Annwyl’s.

  “I lost another tooth,” Annwyl felt the need to share. “One of the back ones. I hate that.”

  “Annwyl?” Dagmar said, her voice very soft.

  That’s when Annwyl lifted her head and looked right at Dagmar. “I can’t be the queen you need me to be,” she told her. “I can only be the queen my people need. You do understand that . . . don’t you?”

  Dagmar gave a small nod. “Yes. I think I do.”

  “Good.” Annwyl patted Dagmar’s cheek. “Very good. Because I’d hate to rip the eyes from your head.”

  Then the queen leaned forward, kissed the shocked Dagmar on the forehead, and stood. She headed toward the stairs, where Fearghus caught up to her. He lifted her into his arms and carried her up to their rooms.

  “For imperialist dog,” Kachka stated, “she makes very good ruler.”

  Dagmar started to stalk over to the Rider, but Gwenvael quickly caught her around the waist and carried her out of the hall.

  “I will hunt for dinner,” Kachka said. “So we will not starve like dogs in street.”

  “I want to nap,” Elina stated quietly.

  But not quietly enough because her sister yelled from outside, “You are becoming lazy and decadent like these Southlanders!”

  Elina shrugged. “I still want nap.”

  Dagmar wildly swung her arms until Gwenvael placed her on the ground in a small room off the kitchens. She didn’t appreciate the laughter.

  “How can you laugh about this?” she wanted to know.

  “About your less than graceful ways?” Gwenvael asked with a grin. “I laugh about them all the time.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” She began to pace around him in a circle. “Do you see what’s happening here? That old hag has come in and made Annwyl crazier.”

  “Dagmar, really. Annwyl has always been crazy. All you’ve been doing the last few years is muffling it. You’ve never shut it off. Not completely.”

  “And did Annwyl just threaten me? Me?”

  “She threatens me and Briec all the time. I wouldn’t take it too personally.”

  “That, in no way, makes me feel better!” She stopped in front of him, stamping her foot. “Why are you being so bloody calm about this? Annwyl took out that woman’s eyes.”

  “I’m sure she took them only after she took her head. You know Annwyl does her dismembering in a very orderly way.”

  Beyond frustrated, Dagmar started wildly slapping at Gwenvael’s arms and chest.

  And again . . . she did not appreciate the laughter.

  Fearghus took care when he removed Annwyl’s chain mail. He had to. She’d been punched so hard in some places that the metal links were embedded in her skin.

  Once he got the shirt and leggings off, he stepped back and into his ancestor.

  Considering his back was to the window that overlooked a sheer drop . . . he found her sudden presence a tad off-putting.

  “I need you not to creep around my mate’s home.”

  “Is this not your home, too, boy?”

  “Our home is in Dark Glen. But this is the place my mate was raised, and where her kingdom sits. So I stay.”

  “To be close to her.”

  “I love her.”

  “You do know she’s”—Brigida tapped the side of her head—“tetched. In the head, I mean.”

  “There’s nothing I don’t know about Annwyl.” He stepped up to the old She-dragon, staring right into that somewhat horrifying human face of hers. “But there is much I don’t know about you.”

  “I’m sure you know enough about me not to cross me, boy. Just because you pretend not to be afraid of this human, don’t think you can—”

  Fearghus chuckled, cutting her off. “Do you think Annwyl and I are ill-matched? That I am merely here to calm her? To soothe her restless heart? That in some way, in any way, she frightens me?”

  Brigida shook her head, a little disgusted. “I understand now. Just like your father, ain’t’ cha?”

  “Now, now. There’s no need to be rude.”

  “You two unleash your females upon the world, grinning as you do so, and the rest of us need to clean up the nightmare they create.” Her eyes narrowed. “But then . . . why did you allow that Northland female to . . . ?”

  She snorted and slowly stepped away from Fearghus and the wide grin that had spread across his face. “You are smart, aren’t you, future king? Enough in you of your father and your mother to make you much more interesting than I first thought. You let the world believe there’s a collar on your mad dog so they all get close. Then they find out too late . . . that collar is nothing but an illusion. An illusion you orchestrated so that you can watch the carnage that comes after.

  “They were right about you, Fearghus the Destroyer. Them villagers that you wiped fro
m the earth all those years ago to get your name. You are a mean-hearted bastard.”

  “Oy! Hag!” Annwyl snarled from the bed. “Think this mad dog can get her wounds tended? Sometime this year perhaps?”

  Fearghus, happy to see Annwyl awake and alert, grinned again.

  That’s when Brigida hissed at him like a coiled snake. “Just like your father.”

  After a short nap, Elina walked down to the Great Hall. She stopped on the last step and watched her sister drag two wild boars toward the kitchens.

  They nodded at each other as Kachka passed; then Elina walked to the table—stepping over the double lines of boar’s blood on the floor—and poured herself a chalice of wine.

  “Where’s the boy?” a voice asked from behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw Bercelak, decided he wasn’t that interesting, and went back to sipping her wine.

  “Well?” the dragon in human form pushed.

  “I am not his keeper, dragon.”

  “Aren’t you his female now? Heard you two have been defiling the fur coverings together.”

  Elina faced Bercelak. “His female? I am no one’s female. I am Daughter of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. I just need to know where he is.”

  “I do not know. And I do not think I like you.”

  “I let you live, didn’t I? After you tried to kill my mate.”

  Elina thought on that for a moment, then nodded. “What you speak is true, dragon.”

  “What?”

  “You are right. I came here to kill your queen. The fact I failed means nothing. So you letting me live . . . very generous. I will never forget that.”

  “Oh,” he said, his frown suggesting he was confused. “All right.”

  She motioned to her chalice. “Wine?”

  “No. Uh . . . thank you.”

  They stood in silence for several minutes until Bercelak said, “Tell the boy I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  “Why leave when we can keep staring at each other in awkward silence?”

  “Uh . . . I . . .” With a brisk shake of his head, the dragon walked out.

  “Who was that?” Kachka asked as she returned to the hall and took the chalice from Elina’s hand, finishing off the wine.

  “Bercelak, the Dragon Queen’s husband.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Celyn. He called me Celyn’s female.”

  “Did you punch him in the face for that?”

  “Thought about it.”

  “Maybe you should get used to it,” Kachka said in their own language.

  “Why?”

  “We are in Southland territories now. They seem to think the females belong to the males here rather than the way the gods truly intended it.”

  Kachka waved the empty chalice at her and Elina poured her more wine.

  “We have to face the fact, Elina, that we can’t go back to our lives on the Steppes. Whether Glebovicha has her eyes or not.”

  “Glebovicha is dead.”

  “The queen didn’t say that.”

  “From what I’ve heard of Annwyl the Bloody all these years, she’s not one for leaving her enemies alive and blind. More like she took Glebovicha’s head and dug the eyes from them afterward.”

  Kachka shrugged. “Does it matter anymore? Whatever has happened, whatever alliance this queen has in place, means nothing to our situation. We can never go back again. Our people will never trust us now.”

  Frustrated, Elina tore off her eye patch and rubbed her damaged face with the palm of her hand.

  “Are you . . . crying?”

  Elina’s head snapped up. “Have you become as insane as the queen?”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Sometimes it feels like my eye is still there. But when I close the other one, to kind of test my theory, all I see is darkness. That’s when my face, from the scars on my forehead to under my chin, begins to itch like a demon. Sometimes I can’t stand it,” she snarled, rubbing her face harder and harder until Kachka caught her hand, held it. She finally pulled Elina’s hand away but still clutched it in her own.

  “Do you know why, sister, I have no husbands?”

  “You were waiting for perfect, perfect love, like the Southlanders do?”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” Kachka barked.

  “Sorry.”

  “With my record in battle, I could have at least ten husbands by now. But I choose none, because I knew that once I had one husband or a thousand, and the first child was born—I would be trapped there. In my heart, I’ve always felt there was more out here for us. For both of us. And perhaps, we will find it among these decadent, lazy imperialist dogs.”

  “I think we may have to stop calling them that. It seems to bother them.”

  “Which part?”

  Elina thought a moment before replying, “Dogs. I think the dogs part bothers them more than anything else. Even they admit they are decadent, lazy, and imperialist.”

  “Fair enough. Anyway,” Kachka went on, “we are now on this journey together. To see what the horse gods have in store for us. I do not regret that. Having you by my side. When Glebovicha sent you off that last time, Elina, when I thought you would never return—I felt . . . lonely. But now we can see this through as a team.”

  “It will be strange. Staying in these lands for good.”

  “True, but—”

  Talaith stormed from the back door leading into the hall, her dragon husband hot on her heels.

  “Piss off, Briec!”

  “What else haven’t you told me, insolent female? What other lies are you keeping from me about my perfect, perfect daughters?”

  Talaith stopped and spun around to face Briec, her finger ramming into his large chest. “You do understand, lizard, that I’m the one who bore these perfect daughters of yours? That without me your perfect, perfect daughters would not even exist.”

  “One was lucky enough to sidestep the inherent drawbacks of being terminally human and the other is here because I was kind enough to bless your low-born womb with my royal seed, which means you should be grateful to me.”

  “Grate . . . grateful?”

  “Is the screeching truly necessary?”

  Spinning on her heel, Talaith finished storming out of the hall.

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance!” she yelled back at him.

  “I thought that’s what you were trying to do!” the dragon yelled in return. “By talking me to death!”

  Briec, realizing he wasn’t alone, glanced over at Elina and Kachka. A wide grin split his face and he winked at them before going after his wife while yelling, “Don’t you dare walk away from me, little witch! We are not—don’t you dare throw dog shit at me, you crazed, heartless female!”

  “But,” Kachka continued, “I’m sure we will find much to entertain us.”

  She stepped away from the table, pulling Elina with her. “Come.”

  “Where?”

  “We need to find potatoes and a blacksmith.”

  “Why?”

  “If we’re going to stay in this decadent crazy place, we will need drink. We will need much drink.”

  Elina nodded her head. “As always, sister, you are right . . . but what is the blacksmith for?”

  Her sister smiled. “You’ll see.”

  Chapter Forty

  Celyn walked into his room and found Elina and Kachka sitting on the bed, several open and finished bottles of his uncle Bercelak’s ale surrounding them.

  “Good gods, you two didn’t drink all that, did you?”

  “It was a little weak—” Elina began.

  “We use this shit to clean our armor.” He snatched the half-empty bottle from Kachka’s grasp. “We have a few cousins near the ports who sell it as a barnacle cleaner to the pirates.”

  “I thought it was smooth,” Kachka said.

  “I leave you alone for a few hours . . .”

  “Speakin
g of Bercelak”—no, they weren’t—“your uncle came by looking for you earlier today.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Do not know. He said he would return tomorrow.”

  “Just great.” That would not be an enjoyable conversation. No matter the outcome of today’s events, Celyn had not only disobeyed his uncle’s command, but his first priority hadn’t been the queen. And he knew he’d have to hear about that from Bercelak. Hear about it but good.

  Celyn placed the bottle on a small table. He heard one of the Riders get up from the bed and cross the room, but he didn’t turn to look. He was too busy worrying about what his uncle wanted.

  He felt a tug on his chain-mail shirt and turned to face Elina.

  “Give me hand,” she ordered.

  Celyn did. And she turned it over so that the back of his hand lay in her palm. After pulling the sleeve of his chain-mail shirt up a bit, she gripped his wrist tight, then suddenly pressed a hot iron against his human flesh, searing it.

  Celyn let out a surprised roar, almost unleashing a flame that would turn the room and every human in it to ash. But he managed to keep it in. Somehow.

  “What the battle-fuck was that?” he bellowed.

  “Now,” Elina said calmly, “you belong to me. Not me to you. You to me. Understand?”

  Celyn’s rage slipped away with the sigh he released. “All right, what did my uncle say to you?”

  “He said I was your woman. I am no man’s woman. Remember that, Dolt.”

  Celyn rolled his eyes. “Kachka, can you leave us alone?”

  Kachka walked over to him and held out her hand. “Give me bottle.”

  “Kachka, I don’t think that’s such a good i—”

  “Bottle!”

  He returned Bercelak’s ale to her.

  “Thank you.” She walked to the door, but stopped, faced them. “Congratulations on your nuptials. You two make a beautiful, if unnatural, couple.”

  She walked out and Elina made her shaky, drunken way across the room, dropping onto the bed. She stretched out, fully dressed, and spread her legs. “Come. Service me like whore you are.”