“No,” Omar said after a brief hesitation. “Erick didn’t do anything wrong or say anything. I like your cousin. I haven’t been avoiding him, not on purpose at least. But it’s true that I’ve been…exploring, I guess you could call it. I haven’t been staying in here all day.”
“I told him it was probably a misunderstanding,” Gerald said with relief. “So nothing’s wrong?”
Again there was a hesitation, as if Omar had to decide how to respond.
“You can tell me if there is,” Gerald said.
Omar rubbed his nose and sighed. “It’s not… It’s nothing serious.”
“Nothing serious isn’t the same as nothing.”
He hesitated and then said, “I don’t want to leave, okay? Nedi just decided she and I would go off to those far-flung towers and get everything started there. Even as fast as the dragons fly, it’ll be weeks before we’re back here to drop off the first royals and check in. And Dragon, our dragon, won’t be the one taking me, it won’t leave while you’re still here. And I don’t want to leave either.” He crossed his arms as if expecting Gerald to argue. When he didn’t, Omar added, “I mean, I know it’s not like before, I can leave without worrying you’re going to die before I get back. But, all of this, it’s your idea, it’s your plan, you started it. It doesn’t seem right for me to go off and leave you here. Not when it’s not really time-sensitive.”
“Well…why don’t you stay, then? It’s going to take weeks anyway, delaying a little more isn’t going to make a difference. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can travel, but if you want to stay until then, well, it’s not like anyone can make you go.”
“You want me to stay?”
“You’re my friend,” Gerald reminded him. “I wasn’t crazy about the idea of you flying off and leaving me behind either.”
“Nedi won’t like it.”
Gerald shrugged. “And you and I won’t like it if you do go. So it’s two to one in favor of you staying. And I bet Erick would side with us, if only because he’ll be relieved you’re not mad at him. He gets all upset when he can’t charm people.”
That made Omar smile. “He does like to be liked, doesn’t he? All right, then. But I’m going to let you tell Nedi.”
Gerald had hoped to be able to ease into that conversation, but as soon as they were all gathered for dinner, she announced, “We’ll be leaving tomorrow.”
Omar shot Gerald a look and he set his fork down. “About that…” Gerald started.
“Everything’s ready,” Nedi said. “And they’re long flights. There’s no reason to delay.”
“Well, Omar and I were talking,” Gerald said, “and since the two of us and Dragon started all this together, and Dragon is waiting for me to get better, Omar wants to wait too. So the three of us can…pick up from where we left off.”
Erick smiled like a cat that had gotten into the cream, but Nedi looked scandalized. “But we’ve planned it for two of us to go at once! The more tracking spells we disable, the more obvious the gaps will be. If I go by myself, it will be easy for the Council to track my flight path by looking at where the spells are going dark. They won’t need to scry to find me!”
“But it’s going to take you at least a week to get to your first tower,” Gerald pointed out.
“And it will take him a week to get to his first tower! There will still be time when I’m the only one disabling the trackers! And we can’t count on the Council taking time to notice, not when you and Erick have already been playing with them. They might already be on high alert.”
“You’ll still be mounted on a dragon. Surely that gives you an advantage.”
Nedi gave Gerald a withering glare. “We’ve already seen the Council can get the better of dragons. Isn’t that why we’re here in the first place? No. I don’t care to take the risk of implementing this scheme by myself. And I don’t care to delay here unnecessarily.”
“It’s my scheme,” Gerald pointed out, taking a firm hold of his fraying temper. “It’s because of me you’re involved in it at all. Maybe that should count for something here.”
“Now, now,” Erick interjected. His smug look had faded as Nedi’s voice had gotten louder. “Let’s look at this calmly, shall we?”
Nedi glared at him as well and fingered the dagger sheathed at her hip in what Gerald hoped was an unconscious habit and not an implicit threat. “Fine,” she said. “I’m calm. I’m calmly seeing all my planning go to waste. I’m calmly seeing all my schedules fall to pieces. I’m calmly seeing—”
“Oh, relax!” Omar interrupted. “This isn’t the kind of thing you can schedule to the hour, or even the day. There’s too much ground to cover, too many variables in terms of weather and royal temperaments and types of guardian and all the rest of it. If you don’t want to go that far afield by yourself, why don’t you go rescue someone closer and recruit them to help you?”
“Or,” she said, “You could stop being selfish and do what we agreed on.”
“I don’t actually remember agreeing to anything,” Omar snapped. “I remember you telling me what I was going to do.”
“And? I’ve spent my whole life being told what I was going to do. My kingdom is more conservative than most. I’m the oldest, but only the oldest son inherits. I was raised to be given away to forge an alliance. I’m better than my brother at statecraft and weaponscraft, both, and yet I wasn’t permitted to take an active role. I was told to go sit in a tower and wait. Well, I’m out of that tower now and I’m tired of being told to wait.”
The venom in her voice silenced all of them.
Then someone cleared their throat delicately from the shadows and all four of them jumped. It was Calin. “I couldn’t help overhearing,” the piedling said wryly. “In fact, I suspect a good deal of the dragonlands overheard… But that’s beside the point. Gerald’s leg isn’t mended, but it’s mending. Even if the healing spells were to be removed, he would stay on the road to recovery. He won’t be lapsing back into fever. It’s my professional opinion that—while Gerald shouldn’t be traveling just yet—there’s no reason why Erick couldn’t.”
The princes exchanged looks. Erick raised an eyebrow at Omar, who shrugged and looked at Gerald. Gerald looked at Calin, at his leg, and then at Erick. “If she says it’s all right, then it’s all right. Assuming you want to go?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to fly around on a dragon?” Erick retorted. “Even setting aside all the rescuing and fomenting rebellion… This is perfect for me, meathead.”
“There,” Omar said with relief. “Erick and I will switch and all your plans and schedules will remain intact. Everyone’s happy. Everyone’s happy, right?”
There was a murmured chorus of agreement and the rest of the meal passed in a much better temper.
THE NEXT MORNING, Omar woke Gerald early. “Nedi’s chomping at the bit to get out of here,” he said. “You’d better get up if you want to say good-bye.”
“What time is it?” Gerald grumbled, but he was sitting up even as he asked.
“Time to leave, according to Nedi,” Omar said. Then, when Gerald glared at him, he said, “I don’t know, exactly. But I’d be surprised if it’s much past dawn.”
“Can’t we get some windows in here?”
“I’m sure there’s a spell for that,” Omar said. “I’ll suggest it. Do you need a hand?”
“No. Well, probably. But no.” Gerald swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He paused then, half expecting Calin to pop out of the shadows to scold him. When the piedling didn’t make an appearance, he took a few limping, awkward steps and nearly fell.
“Whoa!” Omar reached over and steadied him. “Let me get your chair, okay?”
“I’m not going to get better at this if I don’t try.”
“You’re not going to get better at it until your leg’s better!”
“I don’t want to wait here for weeks! If I can just get around a little… I can stay on the dragon’s back most
of the time. But I have to be able to get on its back. I have to be able to walk.”
“There’s no rush, remember?” Omar said softly.
Gerald waved his hands in an aimless, frustrated gesture. “Nedi’s tired of being told to wait. I guess I’m tired of it, too.”
Omar looked at the chair and then at Gerald. He sighed and shrugged and said, “Lean on me, then.”
With Omar next to him to keep him from listing too far to the side, Gerald was able to make it as far as the reception area, which was once again crowded with dragons.
He swallowed nervously.
He wasn’t afraid of their dragon, or the healer. He hadn’t even realized until right then that he was afraid of other dragons…strange dragons.
They’re not going to burn me.
“Gerald?” Omar murmured.
“I’m okay,” he said, swallowing again.
“Uh-huh… You know, I think you’ve done enough walking,” Omar said. Gerald didn’t argue and let Omar half guide and half carry him to the nearest chair. He kept an eye on the new dragons in spite of himself and he relaxed when their dragon moved in between him and them.
“You’re ambulatory,” it observed.
Gerald breathed out a laugh. “In a manner of speaking. Where are Erick and Nedi?”
“Nedi is checking harnesses. Erick was here a moment ago…” The dragon trailed off as he looked around for the magician. “Hmm.”
“I’m here,” Erick said, panting slightly. “I had to get something. Where’s—oh, there she is. Nedi!”
She hurried over. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
“Yes. But here, take this. And you two, too,” he said, distributing packets of parchment to each of them.
“Paper? I already have paper,” Nedi said skeptically.
But Gerald was smiling. “It’s enchanted,” he told her. “Instant two-way communication.”
“What?”
“Whatever you write on it will show up on the paired pages we have,” Erick explained. “And if any of us write to you, it will chime to let you know you have a message. Just drip ink on it and it will appear.”
“Oh!” she said. “That’s what you were talking about before, when you said you would need to mute it in the Enchanted Forest…”
“That’s right,” Erick said. “And I even color-coded the paper so you’ll know who you’re writing to.” He fanned his packet out to show them colored dots in the upper corners. “Orange for Omar, green for Gerald, purple for me, and black for Nedi.”
“Purple for Erick and black for Nedi kind of messes with your mnemonic,” Omar observed.
“Purple like eggplants and black like night,” Erick responded, grinning. “Look, there aren’t a lot of colors that start with e and n, all right? I think I did pretty well. And there’s also a page that’s not color-coded, that will send your message to everyone simultaneously. So we can stay in touch, coordinate our schedules”—he said that with a wink at Nedi—“and you know, just generally gossip.”
“It does sound useful,” Nedi admitted. “I’ll be sure to test it out once we’re underway.” She put a not-so-subtle emphasis on those last three words and Erick grinned again.
“We better get going, then.”
That was all the excuse Nedi needed to say hasty farewells and mount the waiting dragon. Erick followed at a slightly more decorous pace, and then Gerald and Omar were waving as the dragons launched out of the mouth of the cavern, out into the amphitheater, and then away into the open air.
“Now I just have to heal enough that we can follow them,” Gerald said with a sigh.
Omar patted him on the shoulder. “Soon,” he promised. Gerald looked at his leg and didn’t reply.
Chapter Seventeen
THE NEXT FOUR weeks sped by and dragged on by turns. Under Calin’s close supervision, Gerald worked to regain his mobility, a process that left him sore, tired, and frustrated, while Nedi and Erick swooped in and out with royals and progress reports. By the time he was able to get around the caverns independently—albeit with a pair of canes—they had both come and gone several times, and there were now close to thirty royals in the dragonlands.
Gerald tried to avoid them. They stared. He was tired of their stares, and he was also tired of Calin fussing at him to not overdo, not least because he knew she was right; although he had snapped at her that muscles atrophy without use, he knew as well as she did there were a right and a wrong way to rebuild his strength. The burns had healed as well as he could have hoped—quickly, cleanly, without infection, and without pain.
But Erick’s spells couldn’t rebuild the muscle that had been burnt away, and they couldn’t remove the thick bands of scar tissue that pulled at his knee and kept him from straightening his leg. Calin gave him ointments to rub into the scars to help improve their flexibility, but he hated touching them; the nerves were dead and the scars were disturbingly numb under his fingers, although they itched ferociously along the edges where they met less-damaged skin. He hated seeing them, too; raised and knobby, purple and red, they were ugly and lumpy and the only reason he kept applying the ointment Calin gave him was he knew she would do it if he didn’t and he couldn’t stand any more poking and prodding.
When Calin let him start walking again, he seized the opportunity to reclaim some of his modesty as well; a robe was good enough when all he was doing was lying in bed, but getting back on his feet meant wearing real clothes again—and that had meant having to take off his pants whenever the bandages on his leg needed to be changed. So he had taken a pair of scissors and needle and thread and transformed the solid seam along his right pant leg into a long row of buttons. Calin had rolled her eyes when she saw what he was working on, but she had to admit the finished product didn’t interfere with her tending the wounds or changing the bandages, and it made Gerald much more comfortable with that tending—even now that he was the one doing it.
He was tired of other people seeing his scars, and when Omar came into their room while Gerald was treating his leg, he jumped and yanked a blanket over it.
“You know you don’t have to hide that from me,” Omar said softly.
“I’m not hiding it,” Gerald said defensively.
Omar looked pointedly at the blanket and raised an eyebrow.
“I’m—oh well, fine. I’m hiding it. So what?”
“I mean, if you want to cover it, that’s one thing. But you’re… You’re staying up here instead of mingling with the other royals or helping get the amphitheater ready for the showcase. You’re hiding from everyone. Not just hiding your scars, but flat-out hiding. I don’t want you to feel like you have to hide from me.”
“I’m not hiding from you,” Gerald said.
Omar looked pointedly at the blanket again. “Gerald…” he said. “I don’t care about your scars. Believe me, no one will ever take as much notice of them as you will. And scars fade. Mine aren’t nearly so impressive, but I have scars too—and so does everyone who’s ever wielded a weapon.” He held his arms out to show Gerald the dozens of small scars that marked his hands and forearms, which Gerald had seen before without ever really noticing. “I’m not hiding them.”
“If mine were on my arm, I wouldn’t hide them either,” Gerald said. “I mean, look at this,” he said, gesturing to the buttons along the seam of his pants. “I did this with three different pairs of pants, just because I couldn’t be comfortable exposing that much skin to anyone. To Calin! Who’s not even human!”
“If that were all it was, you wouldn’t be avoiding everyone as well as covering your leg,” Omar said flatly. “No one can see the scars when you’re dressed.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“Because you’re brooding about it! You’re constantly chewing on your lip, you won’t go into any of the common areas because you’re ashamed of your limp, and the dragon said you’re not even sure if you want to go on another rescue!”
“I’d only be in the way,” Gerald mumbled,
looking away. “I can walk now, but I’m slow, and I’ll be useless setting up a camp or climbing a tower or anything like that.”
“So you’d need a little help. So what? You needed help before, in the snowstorm or when that princex was threatening you, and you took it without being ashamed of it. What’s the difference now? Look,” he said, softer. “I don’t care that you got hurt. I don’t care if you limp or if you need a hand. I’ll set up the damn tents, I’ll climb the towers. But you’re going to be there with me. So you better get comfortable with that. And with me.”
“I am comfortable with you,” Gerald protested.
“Then stop hiding your scars. You’re giving them too much importance. You’re making it a bigger deal than it is.”
“They’re ugly,” Gerald said, feeling childish even as he said it.
“They’ll fade,” Omar said again. “You need to stop thinking about it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
Gerald opened his mouth to protest, but Omar kept talking. “Look…why don’t you come swimming with me? You’ve barely left the caves here. There’s a lake, not too far—close enough for you to walk—and the piedlings have swimming outfits, so you can’t use that as an excuse.”
Gerald bit his lip.
“I’ve seen your scars before,” Omar reminded him. “What do you think is going to happen if I see them again?”
Unable to think of a good response, Gerald just scowled at him, but when Omar held out a hand, he let Omar pull him to his feet. “It better not be far,” he grumbled as he limped after Omar.
It was easy enough to move around in the caverns, where the ground was smooth and level and kept clean and free of debris. It was another thing entirely to navigate the path to the lake. The grasses and rock-clinging shrubs had been beaten down by hundreds of piedling feet, but the exposed gravel slid out from under Gerald’s feet and canes and Omar kept him from stumbling and falling a dozen times.
Royal Rescue Page 20