The Dragon Prince

by Patty Jansen

  One of the boys bowed at her. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty, he will calm down.”

  “Does he scream like that often?” Did her face show her unease so much that even a boy could see it?

  “He does, Your Majesty.” He nodded. He was a blond lad, very skinny. “He drives off the bad spirits that threaten all of us and lead us into temptation.” He curtsied. “Your Majesty. You are second only to the Triune itself. We are your servants.”

  Johanna had no idea what to say to that, so she made a lame smile, stood back and watched him snuff the candles.

  They were good candles, too, made from wax, not tallow, and they didn’t smoke. Like everything else in town, wax was scarce and the candles had probably cost a small fortune. Obviously someone in the church had money. More money than the palace.

  Second to the Triune or not, Johanna was glad for the darkness. When she continued down the aisle, she trod on the hem of her dress, and the fabric she was holding in place slipped from her fingers. Something said crack and cool air flowed over her exposed side through her thin underdress.

  She managed to scramble into the coach, but by the Triune, she would have to stop somewhere to fix the damage because there was no way that she could walk like this from the forecourt up the stairs, through the foyer in the palace—where there were always lots of people—and down the corridor and past the guards who stood there. There were always lots of people about and everyone was always watching her, especially the maids.

  Where could she check the damage and make a quick fix?

  Father’s office.

  As fas as she remembered, some of her knitting work was still in a basket in the corner of the reception room. It would be very dusty and might smell of fire, but there should be a needle in the basket, even if it was a fat and blunt one, and maybe she could thread some wool through the edges of the split seam so that she could at least walk without attracting too much attention.

  She notified her guard that she needed to pick something up at the office and he spoke to the driver.

  The coach set off through the dark streets. The horses’ hooves went clack-clack on the cobblestones. Most of this part of town had been damaged by the fires, but there were signs that the families who had some financial reserves were starting to rebuild. Ruins had been cleared, materials delivered, foundation work started. Workmen had broken down the remains of burnt walls, chipped the stones clean of mortar and stacked them neatly for reuse.

  In fact there were so many piles of building material in the street that the driver had to go slow to pick a path between them.

  Occasional pedestrians shouted greetings. “Good evening, Your Majesty!”

  The coach with the white horses had become synonymous with the queen under Queen Cygna.

  Johanna waved at the window, although it was probably too dark for people on the street to see her in the cabin.

  The coach stopped at the quay, in front of the steps to Father’s office. The guard opened the door.

  “Do you want me to go first and light the lamp?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  He went inside and lit the oil light on the shelf in the hallway with the flame from storm light that hung from the coach’s driver seat.

  Johanna managed to clamber out of the coach and to the door without tripping over her loose skirt. She scrambled inside and pushed the door shut.

  She took off her cloak to investigate the damage.

  By the Triune, the whole side of the dress had come apart. It was an old garment, but there was no reason it should have happened other than that it had been much too tight and it had not been up to the task normally reserved for a corset. With the split seam, part of the skirt had come loose, too, and it was those folds hanging down that caused the dress to drag over the floor.

  But did she have anything here that she could use to fix it? She carried the lamp into the reception room, but couldn’t see the basket with her abandoned knitting things. She went into Father’s office at the front, where she found it on top of the bookcase. It was indeed dusty, but there was a needle and some wool. The wool was thick and not suited to sewing, and it was hard to push the fat needle through the fabric and pull the wool through without breaking it. Johanna only managed a few coarse stitches. They were so ugly they would give Nellie nightmares, but at least they stopped the dress unravelling further. It would have to do. By now, her fingers were so cold she could barely hold the needle. It had been a long time since anyone had lit the fire in this room.

  Father did not use the office very much anymore. He’d taken up a room in the palace to conduct his business. He still owned only the Lady Sara, and it never ventured far from port. These days, it made a lot of small trips around the local farms.

  Through the cobwebbed window, she could see the coach waiting in the pale moonlight.

  Behind it, Li Han’s ship lay dark and menacing in front of what remained of the warehouses. A faint light burned on the deck, but otherwise there was no sign of the many crewmembers who were on board. The ship had no mast, but a fat chimney from which smoke belched when it moved.

  The dark shape next to it was the Lady Sara—wait, what was a person doing on the deck of the Lady Sara in the dark? With a torch, no less?

  Johanna flung the basket back onto the top of the bookcase, blew out the lamp and went outside.

  The coachman and guard were waiting for her.

  “Let’s go home, Your Majesty. It’s going to be very cold tonight.”

  “In a moment. Can you go and check out what a man is doing on the deck of the Lady Sara?” she asked the guard.

  “Certainly, Your Majesty.” He bowed and walked down the quay. His footsteps echoed in the stillness.

  The glow of torchlight on the deck had disappeared. Johanna climbed on the coach driver’s seat, but couldn’t see it from there, either.

  Had the person extinguished the torch when he heard people? Maybe he had gone down in the hold, whatever he was doing there. He was without a home and had nowhere else to sleep? He wanted to steal things? He wanted to set fire to the ship?

  She hadn’t heard Father speak of any unloading activities today. If it ever happened that the ship needed to be unloaded at night, there would be a lot more people.

  Johanna waited, her heart thudding.

  Her breath steamed in the glow from the light that hung on the front of the coach. One of the horses snorted.

  The guard’s voice rang out over the quay, followed by the sound of someone running, a thud as the guard jumped onto the wooden deck and then a big splash.

  By the Triune!

  Johanna climbed down from the driver’s seat and made her way along the waterfront to where the Lady Sara lay as fast as she could without running.

  “What was that?” she called to the guard on the ship’s deck. At least she hoped that the man standing on the deck carrying a burning torch was the guard.

  “Seems like an intruder, Your Majesty. Found this torch in the hold.”

  By the Triune, had this man tried to set fire to the ship? “What was he doing there?”

  “No idea.”

  “Is there any damage?”

  “If there is, it’s not major. We’ll have to wait until daytime to be sure.” He jumped from the deck onto the quay.

  By now, another person was coming down the quay from the other direction, carrying a light on a stick that swung to and fro with his footsteps.

  An accented voice said, “Is there a problem?”

  Li Fai.

  He carried a kind of storm light, with a frame that held finely-woven silk that glowed in the light of the flame inside. The orange glow barely lit his face with those strange and fascinating dark eyes. He bowed. “We meet again, Your Majesty.”

  “There was an intruder on my father’s ship,” Johanna said.

  “Our guards said they heard a shout and a splash. That was why I came to look what is going on.”

  “The intruder fell or jumped in
the water.”

  “Can he swim?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know who it was.”

  They peered wordlessly into the inky blackness of the harbour. A breeze whipped the surface into little waves that lapped at the quayside. If there was someone swimming in the harbour or climbing out further down the quay, the sounds would be impossible to hear above the singing of the wind in the ropes and the slapping of rigging against the masts.

  “I did not see or hear anything,” Li Fai said. “But the ducks did. They were nervous. They are never nervous for nothing. That’s why we keep them on deck. As soon as they hear something, they go quack-quack-quack—”

  He did such a good imitation of duck quacks that Johanna couldn’t help laughing. “You have ducks aboard the ship?”

  “Ducks, pigeons, parrots and a cat.”

  She restrained a chuckle. It was like an animal park.

  “If you don’t believe me, I can show you. But not now. My parents have gone to sleep.”

  “Sorry. I wasn’t laughing because I didn’t believe you, I was laughing because of the duck noise you made.”

  He smiled. “I spend a lot of time on deck with the ducks. I learn their language.” His eyes twinkled with mirth.

  “You mean it’s boring out at sea?”

  “It’s never boring when you have ducks.”

  What an odd conversation. She searched his face for signs that he was having her on, but only succeeded in attracting his dark-eyed, penetrating, intense gaze. By the Triune, what did he mean by looking at her like that? Her cheeks glowed.

  “I’m serious about a visit to the ship,” he said. “I understand that people are afraid of it. We are happy to show our friends. But not now. At daytime.”

  “I would love to, thank you.” She didn’t think anyone, not even Father, had been invited aboard the metal ships.

  “I will send an official invitation.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  He bowed. “Tonight, I will ask our guards to look out for thieves and trespassers.”

  “Thank you.”

  Li Fai returned to the ship with his swinging lantern. Swish, swish, swish down the quay and swish, swish, swish up the gangplank.

  Johanna waited around for a bit more while the guard walked along the quay looking for signs that anyone had climbed out of the water, but he found nothing.

  The cold was starting to bite, and Johanna returned to the coach. When she got back to the palace, she would send a few guards down here to help keep an eye on the quayside and the ships.

  The Lady Sara was a precious relic of the glory of Saardam before the fires. They’d lost the Lady Davida and the queue at the shipyards for new ships was long.

  The precious few other ships in the harbour were the sad remains of Saardam’s large trading fleet. They had lost so much and could not afford to lose any more ships.

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  IT WAS ALREADY quite late, and Johanna managed to slip into the palace unnoticed by anyone except the guards. She even managed to avoid Nellie and her inevitable I told you so speech about her ripped dress. Likely, Nellie had already gone to bed. There was always so much work to be done, and not enough people to do it. Poor Nellie.

  Johanna tiptoed into the royal bedroom.

  The bedroom, where no one except she and Roald and Nellie came, was one of the poorly-appointed rooms in the private wing of the palace. It contained a large bed, a dressing table with a cracked mirror and two chairs and little else.

  At least it was warm.

  The fire burned low in the hearth. The heavy curtains that covered the window and a door onto the balcony resembled a set of ugly rags. Nellie had washed them when they first moved in, but some of the dark mould stains would probably never come out.

  Roald lay on his stomach on the carpet in front of the dying fire and was engrossed in drawing something with his brushes on a sheet of paper. He had placed an oil lamp on the floor next to him—Johanna forgot how many times she had reminded him not to do this—and a box of brushes and paint, and a bowl with water to rinse the brushes stood to his other side. Johanna came up behind him until she could see what he was drawing: a ladybeetle.

  The subject of the drawing lay on a gold-rimmed royal breakfast plate and was quite dead. Its legs stuck out at a strange angle that didn’t allow it to sit belly down, but Roald’s drawing showed it crawling on a leaf in exquisite detail.

  “I like it,” she said. “It looks like it could just walk off the page.” Getting no reaction from him, she walked around him and sat down on the rug facing him.

  He kept drawing.

  “It’s very pretty,” she said again.

  Roald never responded to compliments, so she continued, “The eastern traders came to visit today. They want to set up an office at the quayside.”

  Now he looked up. The glow from the fire made his grey eyes look golden. “I must ask Li Han to bring me some exotic creatures from his travels.”

  If she needed a confirmation that Roald was not stupid, this was it. Not only had he learned the eastern trader’s name, he had listened to how it was pronounced. She must find out when and where the two had met.

  “Roald, listen.” Johanna shuffled closer to him. “You know that day when Alexandre still ruled and we led the procession to the markets where people were going to be burned at the stake, and where we raised all our wooden rakes and shovel handles and they grew into a tree that captured Alexandre and locked him in? And when the nobles who had supported him fled but their ship caught fire and they had to swim to safety?”

  He gave her a blank look.

  “Well, those nobles survived and some of them are still around.” Although quite a few had left the city. “They’re claiming that Li Han burned their ship with magic, and they’re claiming that he has fire dragons and that they live inside the belly of his ship—”

  “I already told them that it’s a machine that works on the pressure of steam locked in a vat.”

  “I know you did.” He had told, too, a big group of people who had been waiting in the palace forecourt back before they got the soup kitchens going. Those people were all homeless and hungry and had merely stared at him. They didn’t care. They didn’t believe a word he said.

  “See? I did tell them.” He nodded. For him, the matter of belief did not come into the question. Things were or they were not.

  “Those nobles who survived don’t like Li Han’s presence in the city,” she continued.

  “But he can teach us a lot.”

  “Yes, he can, and that’s why it’s important that people like Johan Delacoeur don’t get to control what goes on in the city. He was made regent, Roald, and I will certainly not be able to perform any duties for a while. You must come to our meetings, so that you can continue our quest to be a truly independent country. Father will help you.”

  He looked confused. “You can’t preform your duties? What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m having a child, the heir to the throne.” She cringed while saying that. She couldn’t bring herself to saying your child, while she very much doubted that the child was Roald’s.

  A frown. “You look healthy enough to me. Why can’t you keep going to the meetings?”

  “Because I’m with child. It’s not appropriate.” And she cringed saying that, too, because it went against everything she had stood for in her life. “The nobles will say that it’s not appropriate for the queen to perform duties while she is with child. Roald, I’m not going to have any arguments against them and I’m not going to be able to hide it for much longer. You must come to the meetings. You must show them who is the king.”

  He stared at her. “I don’t like meetings, and those men don’t like me.”

  Johanna spread her hands in frustration. “This is not about liking you. If you’re not there when I can’t be present, they’ll decide things that you like even less. These meetings are very important for the future of Saar
dam. I want to write to every country and company that uses our seaport to ask if they want to invest in rebuilding the harbour. We need the money, and if all those countries have invested, they won’t attack us anymore and risk their projects.”

  He blinked at her. “That’s a good idea. You should do that.”

  “But I need your help!”

  “Those men won’t listen to me.”

  “You’re the king! You can tell them what to do.”

  He gave her a blank look.

  “Roald, I need you to come to the council and tell them that you think my idea is good and that they should listen to me.”

  But as she already knew, it was pointless getting angry at him about not doing his duties. He just did not understand. King Nicholaos and Queen Cygna had bypassed him and appointed his younger sister as successor to the throne. Every day, Johanna was reminded of how sensible a decision that had been. Roald was present in person, but he was never really responsive to what went on around him, unless it concerned beetles or frogs, or, heaven forbid, Rinius.

  She stared at the exquisite drawing he had made. He would have made an excellent monk or a student of the natural arts. He would have been good at many things, but not at being a king.

  “Let’s go to sleep.”

  “Yes.” Roald gathered his paper and brushes and dumped them in the box. “I want to look at you tonight.”

  Johanna cringed.

  He hadn’t asked for a while, and she had been quiet about it. Being prodded in sensitive places was honestly something she could do without right now. It made her belly tense up. Sometimes it hurt. Yet she didn’t dare say no.

  Johanna undressed, first her poor old ripped overdress. She placed it on the chair with a feeling of melancholy, doubting that Nellie would be able to fix the damage. Then she pulled her underdress over her head. She watched herself in the dressing mirror as a pale form in the darkness. Her stomach was very obviously swollen, and anyone who saw her would have no doubt about her condition. She ran her hand over the firm bump and lifted her heavy breasts. They, too, felt very solid and tender.