by J. M. Frey
As soon as he gets his breath back, Kintyre begins to yell invectives, which the drakeling volleys back with fervor. Kintyre wriggles around until he gets his hand on Foesmiter and raises it to slash at the drakeling’s arm, but Pip snarls, “Don’t you dare, Kintyre Turn!” and he pauses like a guilty child.
“Don’t hit it! For fuck’s sake, talk to it!” Pip orders. “Both of you! Enough of this phallic weapon waving! Pretend for five fucking seconds that you are civilized, sentient creatures and talk!”
The drakeling’s lips pucker in a strange way, and I realize that this is the serpentine version of a moue of confusion. “I am talking,” it says.
“I mean, to each other.” Pip sighs, arms thrown upward in exasperation. “With each other.”
The drakeling looks to Kintyre, and there is a moment that should not be as comical as it seems to me right then as they both shrug. I clap a palm over my mouth and try to keep my shoulders from shaking. It must be the hysteria.
“Let Kintyre go,” Bevel shouts, when nobody else seems keen to end the silence. “And give us the Chalice. Or . . .” He whispers his sword against the boy’s scalp and a soft pile of dark hair flutters to the ground.
“No, no!” the drakeling says, clearly torn between the Chalice in one hand, Kintyre under its other claws, and Bevel’s sword at the boy’s neck. “He’s mine! He’s mine! You can’t hurt him!”
A delicate sound, like coins clinking together, catches my ears, and I try to figure out if we’re being ambushed by someone else. Keeping the drakeling in my periphery, I search the shadows, but there are no tell-tale glints, no rustling foliage. The glade is still and silent, save for us.
“I will,” Bevel says, voice like gravel. “I will if you don’t hand Kintyre the Chalice and let him go.”
Another soft, metallic plinking sound breaks across the air, and I blink as reality tilts ever so slightly, one more veil of mystery about how the world works cut from its mooring and fluttering away. Realization creeps in to take its place.
“Dragons don’t hoard gold,” I say quietly. “They weep it.”
“Weep gold?” Pip echoes, and follows my line of sight to the small pile of gold shards that is collecting beside Kintyre’s head. They fall as liquid, and then, somewhere between the drakeling’s cheek and the ground, turn hard and sharp.
“Don’t look!” the drakeling shouts, mortified. “Don’t look!”
Bevel makes a noise that sounds very much like a strangling fox. “So, dragon hoards of stolen gold, crushed and fragmented as the dragon claws through isn’t . . . shredded coins and bars and jewelry, it’s . . .”
“Tears,” Pip whispers. “Dragons literally sleep on a hoard of their own tears.”
Kintyre takes in the height of the pile before him, bottom lip between his teeth as he clearly compares it to the hoards he has seen in the past. “Dragons must be extremely lonely creatures,” he says at last.
It is like a punch right under my ribs, and I can’t help the gasp.
“Let me up,” the rogue lad cries, and squirms. “Please!”
Bevel, struck with the same sudden weariness as the rest of us, releases the boy and sheathes his sword.
“Sweeting,” the boy croons to the drakeling, scrambling to his feet and plastering himself along the dragonet’s neck. “Let him up, come on. I told you this was a bad idea, didn’t I? Come on, now, my sweet.”
“But . . . but . . .” the dragonet sniffles. “Mother.”
“Oh my god . . .” Pip whispers. “Drebbin.”
“What?” Kintyre thunders, pushing at the drakeling’s paw, but its claws are too embedded in the turf for him to budge them. “That foul old dragon that I—”
“Silence!” the drakeling roars into his face, and Kintyre goes still and meek again, stunned, as we all are, by the raw anger, the terrible pain that one word carries. “She was my mother, and you killed her!”
“She was eating innocents!”
“She was not!” the rogue lad snarls, snapping a finger in Kintyre’s face. “She was recruiting egg-sitters! We volunteered! All of us!”
“But . . . the magistrate said . . .” Bevel stops, then scratches the back of his neck, baffled.
The lad turns his sharp finger to Bevel. “Do you think the magistrate would let people know that he was such a tyrant that the youths of Drebbinshire would prefer the freedom of being a dragon’s minder over being chained to the whiskey still?”
“Chained?” I ask, just to be clear. There’s business enough for the Shadow Hand when this adventure is sorted, if it’s true.
“Chained!” the lad snarls. “But you never thought to ask, did you? The great Kintyre Turn, hero and fool!”
“I’m sorry,” Kintyre blurts, and every pair of eyes swings his way just in time to see him flush red with shame. “For what it’s worth, and I know it’s not worth much, I am sorry about your mother.”
Pip makes the same strangled-fox sound Bevel made earlier. Bevel is watching both rogue and drakeling warily, clearly wishing he hadn’t sheathed his sword just yet, fingers wrapped white and hard around his pommel.
“I made a mistake,” Kintyre says. “I struck first and asked no questions, and I am learning . . . I am learning that bulling one’s way through is not always the . . . the wise way.” Here, he tilts his head back in the dirt and meets Pip’s eyes. His glance is so thankful, so pleading, that it takes everything in my power not to turn away, jealous of their momentary communication, their connection.
With agonizing slowness, the drakeling lifts its paw. Instead of scrambling out from under it, Kintyre waits until the dragonet has left him enough room to sit up. He does so, then stands and immediately reaches out to touch the drakeling’s snout. It is a soft, kind gesture—an apology and an offer of sympathy all in one.
The rogue sobs and wraps his arms around the drakeling’s neck. The drakeling drops the Chalice in order to balance itself, curls its head around to rest on the boy’s heaving back, and, just like that, we are dismissed.
Our roving band of adventurers are superfluous.
Quietly, we sheathe our weapons, gather the Chalice, murmur our apologies, and go.
Dauntless is waiting patiently by the path where I left him, Karl nickering and pawing beside him. Pip unties his reins and buries her head in his mane, murmuring soothing nothings to him in order to disguise the way her own eyes have grown red around edges, glassy with unshed tears. The tense but jovial mood of the morning is gone.
“We need to make camp,” Bevel says softly, as he and Kintyre look to repacking the bags and securing them to the horses. “It’s too late to go back to the forest’s edge, now.”
“What about the clearing?” Pip asks, still not looking up.
“The dragon—” Kintyre begins, but then stops himself, mouth twisting in disgust. It is aimed mostly at himself, I’m sure.
“Probably gone,” Pip says. “I’d take off if I was them, too.”
With little nods and total silence, we make our way back to the clearing in the last of the amber, slanted sunset. As Pip predicted, it is abandoned. Fascinated by my new discovery, I let the others take responsibility for setting up the fire and preparing to make dinner, and focus instead on the small pile of tears the drakeling left behind. I have been taking notes on our adventures since we left Lysse, for my own edification and not, of course, with the intent of fictionalizing them as Bevel does. So, in the dying light, I sketch what I can and make notes along the margins of the paper, and then fashion it into an envelope and sweep the shards inside, sealing it with a bit of pine tar.
“No wonder dragon-riders never seem to need payment,” Bevel says as I join him by the fire, plopping down onto my bedroll. Pip and Kintyre are collecting firewood together and talking in tones hushed enough that it makes me think they are talking about me. “What other precious metals do you suppose the rest of their bodily fluids crystallize into?”
“Ugh,” is my only reply, along with an artfully scru
nched nose, so he knows how very little I think of his bawdy humor and curiosity.
Bevel laughs and holds his hands up. “All right, you prude. I withdraw the question.”
“I’m not a—” I protest, but his laugher amplifies into guffaws, and I snap my teeth down on the rest of it.
“Apologies,” he chuckles as he at last runs out of air. I grumble an acceptance and put away the pouch of gold while he makes culinary magic in a use-blackened frying pan and stew pot that looks well scrubbed and cared for.
As he stirs, I think on the rogue and his dragon.
“Do you suppose they were a Pair?” I ask. “In the sense of a Binding?”
Bevel shrugs. “I’ve heard of a woman Paired with a faun, so possibly. Not that strange, as long as everyone is happy with it. It doesn’t even have to be a romantic Pairing. Maybe it’s like it is in the army for them—shield Pairs.”
“Maybe,” I murmur, and look away, hoping the shadows conceal that I am doing my best not to seek out Pip’s shape in the darkness.
“Oh, Forssy,” Bevel says, and it is filled with such pity that I want to scream.
“Do not,” I caution him. “I will not talk about it. No more talk of women, or love, or Pairs, please, I beg you.”
“Do you think you’re not capable of a Pairing? Is that it? Or is it that that you think don’t deserve one? That you don’t deserve a wife, and happiness?” Bevel asks me, softly. Before I can answer, he says, “You know, I asked Kin the same Writer-be-damned thing. Do you know what he said?” He coughs once, tucking his chin against his chest and puffing up his shoulders in an approximation of my brother. “The things I’ve seen, Bev. The places I’ve been. The deeds that I’ve done. It lives inside me, a shadow in my soul. An evil stain that I can’t scrub away, that looks out through my eyes when I am at my angriest, my most hateful. Who would want that beside them, in bed? Who would want to wake in the morning to that?” He releases his stance and a puff of self-deprecating laughter. “My beautiful idiot,” Bevel says, with a long sigh. “I’m no blushing maiden or inexperienced farm boy. I think he forgot that I was there with him. That those things live inside of me, too.”
“They live in me and Pip, as well,” I say, too embarrassed to want to hear him actually say it out loud. “But Pip’s darkness . . . Pip’s pain—” I sigh and cannot go on.
Bevel just nods, smiling softly. “You will sort this out.”
I am not as certain as Bevel, and I have no other reply to give, so I take the tuber he offers from his bag, and the paring knife, and let my brother’s lover teach me how to prepare fried gilly-root for dinner. Later, Pip says it reminds her of her grandmother’s cooking, and says nothing else for the rest of the night, wrapped small and alone in her bedroll, refusing all offers of comfort.
✍
The ride to the mountains which shelter the Eyrie takes another day. Unfortunately, having heard my conversation with his lover the night before, Kintyre decides that, by daylight, it is his turn to impart romantic advice to me. I do not want his advice, especially since it’s taken him the better part of two decades to actually come to terms with his own inclinations, but it seems that I cannot avoid it. So, I linger at the rear of our troupe with Dauntless, pulling the gear from his back and loosening the saddle so that I may remove it. It will be an arduous trek up the dry riverbed course, and we’ll have to leave our horses behind. I won’t leave them saddled and chafing, to boot.
“Give it time,” Kintyre says softly from where he is knelt beside me in the scrub, checking over our water supply.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.
“Women always need to think about things,” Kintyre says, full of blustery confidence, as if he’s imparting some great secret. “You’ll see, she’ll give you a goodbye tumble if nothing else.”
I resist the urge to tell him off, tell him what he got wrong, that he has to change his attitude, change his outlook—all the things I usually do, and all the things my eavesdropping has revealed he despises. Instead, I take a deep breath and say, “I don’t think she will. But thank you for trying to cheer me up.”
Kintyre blinks at me, deflating a little, clearly wrong-footed by the lack of the verbal assault he expected to receive from me.
“You don’t think so?”
“No,” I say, and turn back to the task of relieving Dauntless of his saddle.
“But she loves you,” Kintyre insists. “They always come around if they love you.” He looks at Bevel—I can see it from the corner of my eye—and his gaze is soft, introspective. His eyes are the same soft blue as our mother’s. “Even if it takes a long time, even if it’s someone like me. Love them enough, and they’ll get it. They’ll come around.”
“I don’t think P-Pip lo-love-loves me,” I admit, and bite my own tongue for the sin of stumbling over that. That word, of all things!
Kintyre’s gaze sharpens and swings back around to gauge my expression. “Doesn’t she?”
“Y-you n-never saw us in the middle of th-things,” I say. “Don’t make judgments based on what you think ought to ha-happen between a man and a maid on a quest.”
Kintyre grins and reaches up to rub Dauntless’s nose. My horse whickers and allows it, and I have to quash down the urge to call the beast a traitor.
“I did see the way she looked at you in Turn Hall,” Kintyre says. “I am not entirely blind.”
“No, you were entirely drunk,” I hiss. “And trying to get your hand up her skirt!”
“And why do you think it didn’t work?” he asks. “Because she already preferred you. She wanted you.”
“We’re not an either-or!” I snap, keeping my voice down so Bevel and Pip cannot hear us fighting. They would both scold us. “You know, women are allowed to be platonic. They don’t have to be in love with one of us!”
“I know that!” Kintyre bristles back. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Then why would you say that she was too in love with me back then to look at you! That doesn’t make sense!”
“It does if it’s true!” His voice rings back at us from the foothills. There is little vegetation and cover here, and sound carries too easily. Kintyre is not being careful.
“Shh!” I hiss. “By the Writer, Kintyre, have some discretion!”
“And there we go!” he snarls. “I wondered when you would start telling me what to do!”
I open my mouth to retort, to say something vicious about him being a big dumb animal who needs orders, but at the last minute, I snap my teeth closed on the words. No. One of us needs to try to repair our relationship.
Instead, I shake my head and haul off the saddle, setting it on the ground and turning my attention to the blanket, the bridle, and a currycomb.
“She did,” Kintyre says. He takes the comb from me and works the tangles out of Dauntless’s mane sulkily. He winds the hair into braids like the ones that he used to give Stormbearer. I always thought it looked a bit silly on a hero’s horse, but now I can see the advantage—no briars. “I’m not lying.”
“I know you’re not lying,” I reply. “I just don’t know how to make you see that it wasn’t Pip who was looking at me like that. That lust, that flirting, that wasn’t her. That was Bootknife, and through him, the Viceroy.”
Kintyre frowns. “Why would they pick you, then?”
I pause, comb hovering above Dauntless’s flank. He pushes into my hand, and I begin brushing again, needing the repetitive motion while my mind is processing, tumbling over itself, trying to figure out what it was in Kintyre’s question that has filled me so suddenly with such a cold, tight dread. I cannot figure it out.
Finally, I ask: “What do you mean?”
“I just . . . I’m not as clever as you, but it seems to me that if the Viceroy wants me dead, then why would he have Pip turn me down when Bevel and I offered? Wouldn’t it be a better plan for her to go with us, than go with you?” He shakes his head and mumbles, “It’s probably just something I
don’t understand, I know, but it just seems to me that the Viceroy must be up to something.”
“Or . . .” I say softly, and lick my lips to buy myself a few moments of contemplation. “Or it was Pip’s own will that prevailed. She told me they were more passive at first—that she didn’t even realize they were in her head, making her act, until later. What if . . . wh-hat if-f-f . . .”
“What if she was of her own mind that night?” Kintyre finishes for me, because the thought of it has my tongue too tied up to complete the sentence.
I nod.
Kintyre shrugs. “Then maybe you have a chance of winning her back.”
“But su-su-surely sh-she doesn’t-t lo-lo-love me anymore,” I say softly. “N-not af-af-after all tha-that.”
“You only have a few days left to figure it out,” Kintyre says. “So don’t waste them.”
He leaves me to Dauntless, to my thoughts, to the ache in my chest that feels like my heart has suddenly become swollen, inflamed, and more tender than the cut on my cheek.
And I have several hours to prod at both. The climb is as difficult and hot as I predicted. There is no shelter from the summer sun save for the occasional boulder, and the angle of the incline is steep. Our packs, even reduced to essentials, weigh on us greater and greater as each hour passes. Pip’s hair has now grown long enough for her to tie it back. This leaves the skin of her neck vulnerable, and she slathers on some of the healing ointment to keep away a burn. The scent of lemon and menthol mingles with the smell of Pip, sweating with exertion and glistening with ointment, and it is too much, I cannot walk behind her, not with such a tender, intimate part of her so exposed. My favorite little leaf remains unkissed.
I speed up when the riverbed widens enough for us to walk two abreast and ask her how she is faring.
“I’m fine. You don’t have to coddle me,” she says.
“I’m not. I genuinely want to know.”
“Well, now you do,” she huffs.
“Pip, please—”