by Naomi Novik
“I think so,” I said, and he slowly eased his hand from mine, leaving me to keep up the wild sprawling rosebush. Without the rigid frame of his casting, it half-wanted to collapse like a vine with its trellis gone, but I found I could keep hold of his magic: just a corner of it, enough to be a skeleton, and feeding the spell more of my own magic to make up for its weakness.
He reached down and turned a few pages of his book until he came to another spell, this to make an insect illusion, as diagrammed as the flower one had been. He spoke quickly, the spells rolling off his tongue, and made half a dozen bees and set them loose on the rosebush, which only confused our first bee-visitor further. As he made each one, he—gave them to me, with a kind of small push; I managed to catch them and hook them into the rosebush working. Then he said, “What I intend to do now is attach the watching spell to them. The one the sentinels carry,” he added.
I nodded even while I concentrated on holding the spell: what could more easily pass unnoticed in the Wood than a simple bee? He turned to the far-back pages of the book, to a sheaf of spells written in his own hand. As he began the working, though, the weight of the spell came heavily down on the bee illusions, and on me. I held them, struggling, feeling my magic draining too quickly to replenish, until I managed to make a wordless noise of distress, and he looked up from the working and reached towards me.
I grabbed back at him just as incautiously with my hand and my magic both, even as he pressed magic on me from his side as well. His breath huffed out sharply, and our workings caught on one another, magic gushing into them. The rosebush began growing again, roots crawling off the table and vines climbing out the window. The bees became a humming swarm amid the flowers, each of them with oddly glittering eyes, wandering away. If I had caught one in my hands and looked closely, I would have seen in those eyes the reflection of all the roses it had touched. But I had no room in my head for bees, or roses, or spying; no room for anything but magic, the raw torrent of it and his hand my only rock, except he was being tumbled right along with me.
I felt his shocked alarm. By instinct I pulled him with me towards where the magic was running thinner, as though I really was in a rising river, striking out for a shore. Together we managed to drag ourselves out. The rosebush dwindled little by little down to a single bloom; the false bees climbed into flowers as they closed, or simply dissolved into the air. The final rose closed itself up and vanished, and we both sat down on the floor heavily, our hands still entangled. I didn’t know what had happened: he’d told me often enough of the dangers of not having enough magic for a spell, but he’d never before mentioned the risk of having too much. When I turned to demand an answer, he had his head tipped back against the shelves, his eyes as alarmed as my own, and I realized he didn’t know any more than I did what had happened.
“Well,” I said after a moment, inconsequentially, “I suppose it did work.” He stared at me, outrage dawning, and I started laughing, helplessly, almost snorting: I was dizzy with magic and alarm.
“You intolerable lunatic,” he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.
I didn’t properly think about what was happening even as I kissed him back, my laughter spilling into his mouth and making stutters of my kisses. I was still bound up with him, our magic snarled up into great messy tangled knots. I didn’t have anything to compare that intimacy to. I’d felt the hot embarrassment of it, but I’d thought of it vaguely like being naked in front of a stranger. I hadn’t connected it to sex—sex was poetic references in songs, my mother’s practical instructions, and those few awful hideous moments in the tower with Prince Marek, where I might as well have been a rag doll as far as he’d cared.
But now I toppled the Dragon over, clutching at his shoulders. As we fell his thigh pressed between mine, through my skirts, and in one shuddering jolt I began to form a startled new understanding. He groaned, his voice gone deep, and his hands were sliding into my hair, freeing the loose knot around my shoulders. I held on to him with my hands and my magic both, half-shocked and half-delighted. His lean hardness, the careful art of his velvet and silk and leather lush and crumpling under my fingers, suddenly meant something entirely different. I was in his lap, astride his hips, and his body was hot against mine; his hands came gripping almost painfully tight on my thighs through the dress.
I leaned down over him and kissed him again, in a wonderful place full of uncomplicated yearning. My magic, his magic, were all one. His hand slid along my leg, up beneath my skirts, and his deft, skillful thumb stroked once over me between my legs. I made a small startled huff of noise, like I’d been shocked in winter. An involuntary glittering raced over my hands and over his body, like sunlight on a moving river, and all the endless smooth buckles running down the front of his jerkin opened themselves up and slid free, and the lacings of his shirt came undone.
I still hadn’t quite realized what I was doing until then, with my hands on his bare chest. Or rather, I’d only let myself think far enough ahead to get what I wanted, and I hadn’t let myself put that into words. But I couldn’t avoid understanding now, with him so shockingly undone beneath me. Even the lacings of his trousers were open: I felt them loose against my thighs. He could push aside my skirts, and—
My cheeks were hot, desperate. I wanted him, I wanted to drag myself away and run, and most of all I wanted to know which of those things I wanted more. I froze and stared at him, wide-eyed, and he stared back at me, more undone than I’d ever seen him, high color in his face and his hair disheveled, his clothes hanging open off him, equally astonished and almost outraged. And then he said, half under his breath, “What am I doing?” and he caught my wrists away from him and heaved us both back to our feet.
I stumbled back and caught myself against the table, torn between relief and regret. He turned away from me already jerking his laces tight, his back straightening into a long stiff line. The unraveled threads of my magic were gradually coiling back into my skin, and his slipping away from me; I pressed my hands to my hot cheeks. “I didn’t mean—” I blurted, and stopped; I didn’t know what I hadn’t meant.
“Yes, that’s patently obvious,” he snapped over his shoulder. He was buckling his jerkin shut over his open shirt. “Get out.”
I fled.
In my room, Kasia was sitting up in bed, grimly struggling with my mending-basket: there were three broken needles on the table, and she was only with enormous difficulty making long sloppy stitches in a spare scrap.
She looked up as I came running in: my cheeks still red and my clothing disheveled, panting like I’d come from a race. “Nieshka!” she said, dropping the sewing as she stood up. She took a step and reached for my hands, but hesitated: she had learned to be afraid of her own strength. “Are you—did he—”
“No!” I said, and I didn’t know if I was glad or sorry. The only magic in me now was mine, and I sat down on the bed with an unhappy thump.
Chapter 12
I wasn’t granted any time to contemplate the situation. That very night, only a little past midnight, Kasia jerked up next to me and I nearly fell out of the bed. The Dragon was standing in the doorway of the room, his face unreadably stiff, a light glowing in his hand; he wore his nightshift and a dressing-gown. “There are soldiers on the road,” he said. “Get dressed.” He turned and left without another word.
We both scrambled up and into our clothes and went pell-mell down the stairs to the great hall. The Dragon was at the window, dressed now. I could see the riders in the distance, a large company: two lanterns on long poles in the lead, one more in the back, light glinting off harness and mail, and two outriders leading a string of spare horses behind them. They were carrying two banners at the front, a small round globe of white magic before each one: a green three-headed beast like a dragon, on white, Prince Marek’s crest, and behind it a crest of a red falcon with its talons outstretched.
“Why are they coming?” I whispered, although they were too
far away to hear.
The Dragon didn’t answer at once; then he said, “For her.”
I reached out and gripped Kasia’s hand tight in the dark. “Why?”
“Because I’m corrupted,” Kasia said. The Dragon nodded slightly. They were coming to put Kasia to death.
Too late I remembered my letter: no answer had come, and I had forgotten even sending it. I learned some time after that Wensa had gone home and fallen into a sick stupor after leaving the tower. Another woman visiting her bedside opened the letter, supposedly as a kindness, and she’d carried the gossip of it everywhere: the news that we had brought someone out of the Wood. It traveled to the Yellow Marshes; it traveled to the capital, carried by bards, and there it brought Prince Marek down upon us.
“Will they believe you that she’s not corrupted?” I said to the Dragon. “They must believe you—”
“As you may recall,” he said dryly, “I have an unfortunate reputation in these matters.” He glanced out the window. “And I doubt the Falcon has come all this way only to agree with me.”
I turned to look at Kasia, whose face was calm and unnaturally still, and I drew a breath and caught her hands. “I won’t let them,” I told her. “I won’t.”
The Dragon made an impatient snort. “Do you plan to blast them, and a troop of the king’s soldiers besides? And what after that—run to the mountains and be outlaws?”
“If I have to!” I said, but the press of Kasia’s fingers on mine made me turn; she shook her head at me a little.
“You can’t,” she said. “You can’t, Nieshka. Everyone needs you. Not just me.”
“Then you’ll go to the mountains alone,” I said defiantly. I felt like an animal penned up, hearing the butchering-knife on the whetstone. “Or I’ll take you, and come back—” The horses were so near I could hear the drumming of their hooves over the sound of my own voice.
Time ran out. We didn’t. I gripped Kasia’s hand in my own as we stood in a half-alcove of the Dragon’s great hall. He sat in his chair, his face hard and remote and glittering, and waited: we heard the noise of the carriage rolling to a halt, the horses stamping and snorting, men’s voices muffled by the heavy doors. There was a pause; the knock I expected didn’t come, and after a moment I felt the slow insinuating creep of magic, a spell taking shape on the other side of the doors, trying to grasp them and force them open. It prodded and poked at the Dragon’s working, trying to pry it up, and then abruptly a hard fast blow came: a shove of magic that tried to break through his grip. The Dragon’s eyes and mouth tightened briefly, and a faint crackling of blue light traveled over the doors, but that was all.
Finally the knock came, the hard pounding of a mailed fist. The Dragon crooked a finger and the doors swung inward: Prince Marek stood on the threshold, and beside him another man, who despite being half as wide across managed to be an equal presence. He was draped in a long white cloak, patterned in black like the markings of a bird’s wings, and his hair was the color of washed sheep’s wool but with roots of black, as though he’d bleached it. The cloak spilled back from one shoulder, and his clothes beneath were in silver and black; his face was carefully arranged: sorrowful concern written on it like a book. They made a portrait together, sun and moon framed in the doorway with the light behind them, and then Prince Marek stepped into the tower, drawing off his gauntlets.
“All right,” he said. “You know why we’re here. Let’s see the girl.”
The Dragon didn’t say a word, only gestured towards Kasia, where she and I stood a little concealed. Marek turned and fixed on her at once, his eyes narrowing with a speculative light. I glared at him fiercely, though he didn’t get any benefit of it: he didn’t have so much as a glance for me.
“Sarkan, what have you done?” the Falcon said, advancing on the Dragon’s seat. His voice was a clear tenor, ringing, like a fine actor’s: it filled the whole room with regretful accusation. “Have you grown completely lost to all sense, hiding yourself out here in the hinterlands—”
The Dragon was still in his chair, leaning his head against his fist. “Tell me something, Solya,” he said, “did you consider what you would find here in my hall, if I really had let one of the corrupted out?”
The Falcon paused, and the Dragon rose deliberately from his chair. The hall darkened around him with sudden, frightening speed, shadows creeping over and swallowing the tall candles, the shining magical lights. He came down from the dais, each step striking like the deep terrible ring of some great bell, one after another. Prince Marek and the Falcon backed away involuntarily; the prince gripped the hilt of his sword. “If I had fallen to the Wood,” the Dragon said, “what did you imagine you would do, here in my tower?”
The Falcon had already brought his hands together, thumb and forefingers in a triangle; he was murmuring under his breath. I felt the hum of his magic building, and thin sparkling lines of light began to flicker across the space framed by his hands. They went faster and faster, until all that triangle caught, and as if that had provided an igniting spark, a halo of white fire went up to wreath his body. He spread his hands apart, the fire sizzling and crackling over them, sparks falling like rain to the ground, as if he was making ready to throw. The working had the same hungry feeling as the fire-heart in its bottle, as if it wanted to devour the very air.
“Triozna greszhni,” the Dragon said, the words slicing out, and the flames went out like guttering candles: a cold sharp wind whistled through the hall, chilling my skin, and was gone.
They stared at him, halted—and then the Dragon spread his arms in a wide shrug. “Fortunately,” the Dragon said, in his ordinary cutting tones, “I haven’t been nearly as stupid as you imagined. Much to your good fortune.” He turned and went back to his chair, the shadows retreating from his feet, spilling back. The light returned. I could see the Falcon’s face clearly: he didn’t seem to feel particularly thankful. His face was as still as ice, his mouth pressed into a straight line.
I suppose he was tired of being thought the second wizard of Polnya. I had even heard of him a little—he was often named in songs about the war with Rosya—although of course in our valley the bards didn’t talk overmuch about another wizard. We wanted to hear stories about the Dragon, about our wizard, proprietary, and we took pride and satisfaction in hearing, yet again, that he was the most powerful wizard of the nation. But I hadn’t thought before what that really meant, and I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close. It was a forcible reminder now, watching how easily he smothered the Falcon’s magic, that he was a great power in the world who could make even kings and other wizards fear.
Prince Marek, I could tell, liked that reminder as little as the Falcon had; his hand lingered on his sword-hilt, and there was a hardness in his face. But he looked at Kasia again. I flinched and made an abortive grab for her arm as she stepped away from me, out of the alcove, and went to him across the floor. I swallowed the warning I wanted to hiss, too late, as she made him a curtsy, her golden head bowed. She straightened up and looked him full in the face: exactly as I had tried to imagine doing myself, all those long months ago. She didn’t stammer. “Sire,” she said, “I know you must doubt me. I know I look strange. But it’s true: I am free.”
There were spells running in the back of my head, a litany of desperation. If he drew his sword against her—if the Falcon tried to strike her down—
Prince Marek looked at her: his face was hard and downturned, intent. “You were in the Wood?” he demanded.
She inclined her head. “The walkers took me.”
“Come look at her,” he said over his shoulder, to the Falcon.
“Your Highness,” the Falcon began, coming to his side. “It is plain to any—”
“Stop,” the prince said, his voice sharp as a knife. “I don’t like him any better than you do, but I didn’t bring you here for politics. Look at her. Is she corrupted or not?”
The Falcon paused, frowning; he was taken aback. �
��One held overnight in the Wood is invariably—”
“Is she corrupted?” the prince said to him, every word bitten out crisp and hard. Slowly the Falcon turned and looked at Kasia—really looked at her, for the first time, and his brow slowly gathered with confusion. I looked at the Dragon, hardly daring to hope and hoping anyway: if they were willing to listen—
But the Dragon wasn’t looking at me, or at Kasia. He was looking at the prince, and his face was grim as stone.
The Falcon began testing her at once. He demanded potions from the Dragon’s stores and books from his shelves, all of which the Dragon sent me running after, without argument. The Dragon ordered me to stay in the kitchens the rest of the time; I thought at first that he meant to spare me watching the trials, some of them as dreadful as the breath-stealing magic he had used on me after I had come back from the Wood. Even in the kitchens, I could hear the chanting and the crackle of the Falcon’s magic running overhead. It sounded in my bones, like a large drum played far away.
But the third morning I caught sight of myself in the side of one of the big copper kettles and noticed I was an untidy mess: I hadn’t thought to mutter up some clean clothes for myself, not with the rumbling above and all my worry for Kasia. I didn’t wonder that I’d accumulated spots, stains, tears, and I didn’t mind it, either; but the Dragon hadn’t said anything. He’d come down to the kitchens more than once, to tell me what to go and fetch. I stared at the reflection, and the next time he came down I blurted, “Are you keeping me out of the way?”
He paused, not even off the bottom step, and said, “Of course I’m keeping you out of the way, you idiot.”
“But he doesn’t remember,” I said, meaning Prince Marek. It came out an anxious question.