Dragon Master (Dragon Collector Book 2)

by Simon Archer

  “Martin!” Bailey-Sue said with a husky tone like she hadn’t used her voice properly in a long time. “Have you come to release Maria?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said, blinking and startled. “I’m only here to ask her some questions.”

  “To determine her innocence?” Bailey-Sue added. Her hope clutched on like a sticky piece of candy. It would do more harm than good to scrape it off the table, so I let her think what she wanted.

  “I just have a few questions,” I said noncommittally.

  “Maria did not do this, Martin,” Bailey-Sue said with squared shoulders. “You know she didn’t.”

  “I don’t know anything, Bailey-Sue,” I replied. “I only know that we found the plants that she took care of to be corrupted.”

  “Someone else did it,” Bailey-Sue persisted. “They are framing her.”

  “It doesn’t look that way,” I tried to ease her gently, wanting to kiss away those tears that were starting to form in the corners of her wide eyes.

  “You do not believe in her innocence?” Bailey-Sue said breathlessly.

  Considering I was the one who had put Maria in here, who had laid out all the evidence against her, I wasn’t wholly convinced. But I didn’t say that aloud to Bailey-Sue. My silence answered her question loud and clear.

  She rolled her lips over her teeth and sucked. The noise squeaked out into the stone walls and vibrated off them. Bailey-Sue’s face narrowed, and I desperately wished that we were not in this situation, that I could pull her into an embrace without her trying to fight me, that I could kiss her and steal her breath so that she didn’t feel the need to cry. Instead, a voice broke through our standoff.

  “Bailey-Sue, leave Martin alone,” Maria advised from her cell.

  “He is just like the rest of them,” Bailey-Sue said, spitting the words out as sharply as a slap in the face.

  “Let me speak with him,” Maria asked, her voice softer than before.

  “Not if he is just going to accuse you of this nonsense,” Bailey-Sue replied without taking her watery violet eyes off me.

  “I want to talk to him,” Maria said with a plea that both Bailey-Sue and I recognized. “Please.”

  It took Bailey-Sue nearly a full minute before she shoved herself against the wall to let me pass. I nodded my thanks, but she didn’t respond. A small pang of guilt nicked my heart. I didn’t want to lose Bailey-Sue over this or any chance at a future I could envision with her, but her friendship for Maria blinded her.

  I took Bailey-Sue’s stool and stuck the torch in a holder on the wall. The light bled into Maria’s cell, revealing her state since I’d seen the guards drag her out of the ballroom. She was in the same ball gown as before, but now it drooped around her like a wilting flower. Her curls exploded into a tangled mess while her make-up had been smudged and washed away, presumably by her own tears.

  The cell was one of the smallest in the whole place. While Maria was a shorter woman, she barely had enough room to lay down on the straw patch provided, especially if she avoided the hole in the corner. There were no remnants of food or drink that I could see. Suddenly, I had the horrible thought that they weren’t taking care of the girl, letting her punishment be dehydration or starvation.

  “Are they feeding you?” I asked, with more care than I wanted to reveal right away, though my heart hurt at seeing this beautiful girl in such a state.

  “Yes,” Maria said with a stiff nod. “Not anything of substance and not nearly enough, but I have eaten if that is what you are asking me.”

  That was a small relief, but out of courtesy, I didn’t say that to Maria. Instead, I looked at her and sighed.

  “What do you want to know, Martin?” Maria asked, taking the words right out of my mouth. “Why are you here?”

  “I want to know why,” I admitted, figuring if I wanted the truth, I should give her some in return. “Why did you do it?”

  “Do what?” Maria replied with raised eyebrows. “Because I did not do what they are accusing me of.”

  “Maria,” I muttered, knowing that we weren’t going to get anywhere if she continued to deny it. “No one else has access to the greenhouses save for the other two gardeners. They already admitted to the honeysuckles being your plants.”

  “They are my plants, that I will not deny,” Maria said, almost proudly. “I did provide the honeysuckles for the wine for the ball, but I did not poison them. None of my plants are poison.”

  “The honeysuckles were,” I protested. “I tested them myself.”

  “Fine,” Maria relented, “but I was not the one to poison them. I would never harm my plants that way. I could never do that to another person.”

  “Why should I believe you?” I snapped back, suddenly revealing more of my hurt and pain.

  “I do not know,” Maria said, surprising me. “It is not as though I have given you a reason to. I have been known to go against my promises, like how I hurt Em at the tournament. Or how I told Diana and Alona I would never go through the introduction process when they could not participate.”

  Maria hung her head and placed her folded hands in her lap. “Those mistakes I admit to, those friendships I wrecked with my broken promises and lies. But there are two things I will never admit to being mistakes. The first one is our time together in the greenhouse. The second is this… this treason… I would never resort to this. I cannot tell you why I did it because I did not do it.”

  The blonde noble sat in front of me and almost looked to be in prayer. I examined Maria, but I could not trust myself to believe her. She was right in how many times she had tricked others in her life. At the same time, I admired the fact that she admitted to those incidents. And at her mention of the greenhouse, I was reminded of her passion and how she willingly bared herself before me. Was her sincerity something genuine or just another trick?

  “I would also like to think,” Maria said as she lifted her head and gave me what was left of her dazzling smile, “that if I were to poison the entire court, that I would be smarter about it.”

  “How do you mean?” I said, my eyes narrowing on their own with cautious suspicion.

  “Well, I would like to think I would not make it so obvious,” Maria reasoned. Her smile brightened. “I would have at least tried to pin it on someone else.”

  “That is what you think this is,” I translated. “You believe someone is letting you take the fall.”

  “Yes,” Maria said definitively. “Then, once I am good and dead, and you have wasted all this time healing everyone, they will come out and strike again. Another innocent will take the fall, and the cycle will repeat until the entire court is wiped out.”

  I watched Maria’s face as she said this, but nothing twitched, nothing moved save for her mouth. She flattened her eyes, giving nothing away. Irritation flared in my belly. I didn’t appreciate being played like this, even if that irritation was paired with longing.

  “That is how I would do it,” Maria added. “If I had done it.”

  Her argument pounded in my brain. It smacked the walls like a paddleball, repeatedly hitting until my temples grew sore. I wanted to interrogate Maria more, press her for more details until I could see something through her defense. What I did see was that Maria was done talking to me. She confirmed my suspicions by calling out to Bailey-Sue.

  “Bailey-Sue, are you still there?”

  “Yes,” Bailey-Sue appeared at my side, looming over me.

  “There you are,” Maria said with a cheeky grin. “I just wanted to see your face once more.”

  I took that as my cue to leave and excused myself. Bailey-Sue immediately resumed her spot on the stool and proceeded to talk to Maria as if I had never been there. I left my torch so I wouldn’t have to step awkwardly around her. Instead, I called to the light and asked it to guide my way.

  The light replied generously and lit up my path back out of the dungeons. As I retraced my steps, I decided to send a message to Ffamran.

  “Ffam
ran?” I asked. “Are you busy right now?”

  “Not at the moment,” the dragon replied with a sigh. “I am just outside, resenting the snow.”

  “Great,” I said, ignoring his complaint. “I need your help.”

  44

  I met Ffamran at the greenhouses. He was not happy, to say the least.

  “You know it is freezing out here, right?” The dragon reminded me as if I couldn’t see the snow littering the grounds or feel the chill cooling the air.

  “You are such a beach dragon,” I teased as I stomped my way towards him.

  “I do not know how much help I will be here,” Ffamran said honestly. “From what you described, these greenhouses are much too small for me to do much searching.”

  “I just need you to look in them,” I argued. “I need to know if there are any more corrupted plants.”

  “I thought you already looked for more and did not find anything.” Ffamran raised a furry eyebrow at me with apparent skepticism. “What are you really doing?”

  “I…” I started, but nothing came out. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I don’t know. I just have a feeling.”

  “Ah, your specialty,” Ffamran joked.

  “Shut up,” I shot back. “The sooner we get done here, the sooner you can get back to your bonfire.”

  The guards had helped set up a large fire pit in the center of the hedge maze so the dragons could cozy up around it during the colder months. Most of them ventured out to the Marked Woods to find caves to hunker down in, but Ffamran refused to leave me, so we did what we could to make him comfortable in court.

  “Alright, my lord,” Ffamran replied, full of snark. “Where do you want to start?”

  “With the greenhouse that had the honeysuckles in it,” I said as I pointed to the center greenhouse.

  The structure was coated in a light layer of snow. However, one of the panels was covered by a large cloth strapped down. Two nights ago, when I sent Alona to burn the honeysuckle, the smoke wasn’t escaping fast enough, so they had to break open one of the panes of glass.

  Further evidence of their wreckage was more apparent on the inside. The honeysuckle vine that once grew alongside a corner of the greenhouse was now a pile of ash, an obvious gap in the design of the room as not even the skeleton of the plant remained. Other fauna had retreated into the cold soil for the winter or wilted beforehand. It was a stark contrast from the lush gardens that Maria had displayed proudly a couple of weeks ago.

  I closed the door behind me and gazed about. Above me, Ffamran brushed the snow off with his tail and hovered the top so he could look down into the long room.

  “What do you see?” I asked him in my mind.

  “A lot of dead plants,” Ffamran replied unenthusiastically.

  “Come on, Ffamran fon Desca,” I said, using his full title as a plea. “There has to be something here. If not in this one, then in one of the others.”

  “I do not sense any presence of the corruption,” Ffamran said. “Do you?”

  I spoke to the light and asked it to come to the surface. My fingers glowed, and I extended them out, feeling like a metal detector. I walked up and down the deserted isles, willing something to pop out at me.

  “Martin,” Ffamran interrupted, “why are we really here? I thought we had tied this up already. We caught the traitor, the people are being healed, and the corruption is contained. What more is there to do?”

  “Something’s bothering me,” I confessed, still waving my hands slowly over the pots.

  “Something or someone?” Ffamran asked with a knowingness in his voice.

  “Honestly?” I stalled.

  “Always.”

  “Two somethings,” I continued. “Something Hennar said, and something Maria said. He told me that his time in court was just beginning, and there would be more corruption. Then Maria said that if she had been the traitor--”

  “Which she still denies,” Ffamran jumped in.

  “Which she still denies,” I confirmed before continuing. “That she would have done a better job covering her tracks.”

  “All criminals would like to think that,” Ffamran offered as a simple explanation.

  “I know, but I think in Maria’s case, it’s true,” I confessed the thought I had been harboring since speaking with her. “I think she is smart enough not to lead us so clearly back to her. I mean, the evidence is so overwhelming. If she had been so careful and so quiet for this long, why would she change tactics now?”

  “Maybe she got impatient,” Ffamran suggested.

  “Or maybe she was framed,” I countered.

  “Oh, I really hope not,” Ffamran lamented. “I was starting to enjoy the thought of having a quiet, lazy winter.”

  “I don’t want to be right!” I protested. “I would love it if the whole thing were this simple. But...”

  “I agree,” Ffamran interrupted. “It is too simple.”

  “Thank you!” I rounded the corner and started my way down another aisle. “It’s definitely suspicious. It’s worth another look.”

  “And that is why we are here,” Ffamran concluded. “Having another look.”

  “Exactly!” I stuck a triumphant finger in the air, trying to play into the positivity.

  “And if we do not find anything?” Ffamran challenged. “What then?”

  “I do not know,” I said, slowly lowering my finger back down so that my arm was parallel with the other.

  “Well, let’s hope we find something,” Ffamran said skeptically.

  After a silent minute, Ffamran moved on to one of the other greenhouses, but I only had one more row left in this one, so I decided to finish clearing it completely before following my Merkin. I wandered over empty pots and half-full bags of soil. Dried leaves crunched under my feet as I stepped slowly, one foot over the other, so as not to miss anything. I crouched lower to snoop under the tables and walked, crab-like, down the row.

  Finding nothing, I decided to go. I went to open the door when I noticed a plant near the entrance. Normally, that wouldn’t be out of place. However, this plant was in full bloom. It was a short flower with round purple petals and a red center. I had never seen anything like it before and quickly wrote it off as another one of those Insomier anomalies that didn’t exist on Earth.

  However, the color combination made me pause. While I knew I had never seen this flower, something about it struck me as familiar. My head spun with a wild sense of deja vu. Something clicked in my memory, and I realized it wasn’t the colors I had seen. I hadn’t seen any of this before. I had heard it from Maji when she spoke of the vision she had of me.

  Then you opened your hand, and everything flashed purple with red at the center.

  Right now, my hand was open, palm facing the flower, the purple flower with the red center.

  My memory fought to remember the rest of the vision, the warning she had given me, something about not going back. While my mind grappled with the bits and pieces, my eyes caught a new image.

  A small insect appeared from behind one of the purple petals and rested gently on the center. Its wings buzzed as it hovered delicately over the flora, and then the bee began to pollinate the lavender flower.

  Several thoughts collided in my head at once. I wondered why there was a bee in the greenhouse in the middle of winter. I wondered how the bee even got in here. I wondered if bees pollinated honeysuckles, and then I wondered if there were other honeysuckle plants in the court. I blinked rapidly in an effort to clear my clogging thoughts.

  “Ffamran!” I shouted out into the cloud of thoughts.

  “What?” he responded instantly. “What is it?”

  “Something doesn’t add up,” I said, starting slow. “There is a bee in here.”

  “Are you really terrified of those?” Ffamran criticized. “They are harmless, really, unless there is a swarm of them.”

  “A swarm,” I repeated, almost in a daze. “That’s how they got infected.”

  �
��What got infected?” Ffamran asked appropriately.

  “The flowers,” I said, still halting my stream of thoughts. “The bees infected the honeysuckle. The bees infected Em. But why would she…?”

  “Martin,” Ffamran said before hesitating a moment. “What are you getting at?”

  “I don’t think Maria’s the traitor,” I admitted. “I think she was framed, just like she said. I think it’s Em. Or at least Em’s bees.”

  “Her bees?”

  “Think about it!” I held out my hands, pretending to visualize the whole thing in front of me. “If the bees are corrupted, they can spread it through pollination. That would be how they tainted the honeysuckle without anyone noticing. I saw them when Maria took me here… and that could be how they infected the honeysuckles at the Dyers house! The bees roam freely, and they’re so small, no one would suspect them. They are just doing their natural duty.”

  “I think you are right,” Ffamran agreed, his own voice coming in slowly now. “It would make sense, especially with how Diana got infected.”

  “You know how Diana got corrupted?” I asked incredulously.

  “I think I do now, anyway,” Ffamran continued. “She was stung by a bee.”

  “That has to be it!” I threw my hands in the air like a referee at a football game, calling the kick good. “We have to go tell Em.”

  “Martin, wait,” Ffamran called out, but I was already out of the greenhouse door. I spun around and walked backward, not wanting to waste any time.

  “What?”

  “You need to be careful,” Ffamran warned.

  “I will,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

  “No, you do not understand,” the dragon landed down in front of me, and I stopped walking. “If it is the bees, I presume that they reside with her in her chambers?”

  “I’ve seen them,” I assured him. “There’s a whole… swarm.” I finished off the words with a soft terror crawling up my throat.

  “If they are the source of the corruption, she can release them into the world, and they will be much harder to catch,” Ffamran reasoned. “You have to keep them contained.”