Heart of the Dragon's Realm

by Karalynn Lee

  “I can see why,” she said quietly, realizing how fortunate she was. People might have looked at her askance when she learned writing and swordplay, and her stint as a soldier had raised a cloud of scandal, but Dereth had always defended her, and she had been allowed to do more or less as she willed.

  There was a sudden hush as the mountain-king’s broad frame filled the doorway. Looking about at the guards’ faces, she almost regretted her offhand invitation. Clearly no one had expected him here. Then someone leaped to his feet and said, “Sit here, my king,” and Cheyrit went to fetch him cider, and people began talking and joking again. But although they accorded him every friendly gesture, there remained a distance between him and the others. Even the irreverent Yerra was quick to refill his cider when he finished his first tankard, when she’d earlier drawled at one of her fellows to take care of his himself.

  One of the guards had brought a recorder and began playing a lilting melody that stirred the others to stomping out the rhythm and singing the lyrics. She couldn’t make out the words, but she tapped her foot along.

  Yerra stood and pulled one of the guards up with her to cries of encouragement. They began a dance that seemed to involve a great deal of spinning and many quick steps. The two guards never missed a beat, and even when others joined them there were no collisions, only sly exchanges of partners in midspin. It was nothing like the formal court dances Kimri was used to, where the nobleman would ask a woman to dance after a few gilded compliments, then slowly guide her through stately, choreographed glides.

  Before she could change her mind, she walked over to the mountain-king, who sat alone. When he looked up at her, she held out her hand, not quite brave enough to grab and pull as carelessly as Yerra had.

  He took her hand and then came to his feet. “Do you know our dances?”

  She grinned at him. “Teach me.”

  He turned out to be an excellent teacher, not through words but by the subtle pressure of his hands against hers or on her back, signaling where they were going or which way she should twirl. As she’d noticed earlier, he was light on his feet for a man of his size. Even as the musician mercilessly played faster and faster, his fingers flying along his instrument, the king never misstepped. It stole her breath, how they moved in such harmony. This is what it can be like with him.

  They whirled until she became too dizzy to do anything but hold onto him and laugh. When she tried taking a step on her own, the world lurched and he grasped her elbow to steady her. “Careful,” he said, laughing himself.

  It was the first time she’d heard him make the sound. She smiled up at him. “Thanks. Dances in Anagard are only half as fast—and as fun.”

  He smoothed back a sweaty strand of her hair. His finger brushed her ear. Something made her inexplicably reckless: the cider, the music, her dizziness— No, it was all him. She raised her face, daring him to lean down and close that small distance between them. Then Meliah seized her hand. “Come on, Princess, you can’t just stand there!” She found herself pulled into another dance. Another guard soon snatched her away, and she traded partners half a dozen more times before she was allowed to beg off from sheer exhaustion. She looked around the tavern, but the mountain-king was gone. She would have to make him laugh again some other time.

  Chapter Four

  Jakkis had to pound on the door for some time before she lifted the pillow from her head. “Coming!” Her voice emerged as a croak. She blearily pulled on her clothes and then staggered out. “Extra mint,” she muttered to the boy who fetched her tea in the kitchens. She glared at her instructor when he made a sound of amusement. “You were up later than I was!”

  “And clearly you should have left the tavern even earlier.”

  Her lesson started out in shambles. The cold of the encroaching winter numbed her fingers so that she didn’t hold the sword in her left hand properly, and when she righted it, the other one drooped. She even clanged the blades against each other once, a near-unforgivable transgression. Jakkis’s face grew more and more thunderous.

  Beatris crossed the mountains to learn from this man. She finally found her focus. She concentrated on completing each exercise slowly with the proper form instead of rushing through it halfheartedly.

  “Better,” was all Jakkis said.

  Her lack of sleep led her to tire early, but he at last took pity on her and had her hand over the swords so he could demonstrate the wild horse style of sword-dancing. Watching him flow through the movements was inspiring even without an opponent present. Perhaps someday she’d be half as graceful.

  As soon as he dismissed her, she headed for the northwestern tower. She took the steps two at a time in her eagerness to see the king, only to be intercepted by Rendel at the top. “The king won’t be there today, Princess. He had to depart the city unexpectedly.”

  Just when we were getting somewhere. “Where did he go?”

  “There was a matter in the mines he needed to look into. Your breakfast has still been set out, though.”

  As though her food was what mattered. “How are the miners?”

  His expression softened. “They’ll be fine now that he’s taking care of them. He’ll be back as soon as he can.” With that vague but confident reassurance, he moved on.

  She went out to the terrace and surveyed her breakfast as a snow-kissed gale swirled past her. It would have normally looked appetizing. But there should be a magpie here. And twice as much food. After a moment, she bundled as much of it as she could into her cloak, made her way down the stairs and then up the watchtower.

  She found Herrol in his room. “Breakfast?”

  He spread his hands in apology. “I already ate.”

  She glanced out the window. It was still early morning. “Does everyone here rise before the sun?”

  “My father believed people shouldn’t waste any more time sleeping than they had to. Of course, it’s not as though there’s much I can do here in Helsmont while I’m awake. I’ll keep you company, if you like.”

  So she spread out her appropriated breakfast and began eating. It was nice to breakfast indoors and out of the cold for once. And despite his earlier claim that he was full, Herrol stole some of her cheese and ate it with a chunk of her bread.

  “Thief.” She tossed a berry at him in mock anger.

  He caught it and popped it into his mouth. “Look, you’re giving me food. So it can’t be stolen.”

  She groaned. “You could’ve just said that you’re still hungry.”

  “I didn’t realize then that your breakfast was better than mine.”

  “It is?” She looked over her spread of food. It would make sense for the mountain-king to feed his betrothed better than his prisoner, but she hadn’t expected dramatic differences. When she was young, the son of one of Anagard’s lords had been held as a ransom-prisoner at court, and her father had treated him much the same as Dereth—somewhat to her resentment, since that was more than she received.

  “Not really,” he admitted. “It’s just that food tastes better with company, I think. I might even get a tad more variety than you—they give me fresh milk every day.”

  She didn’t bother to explain that she’d abandoned her mug in the northwestern tower, unable to carry it and her cloak. “It must be easier to keep milk from spoiling up here where it’s colder.” She’d never really considered the climate as having any advantages before.

  “I suppose.” He shrugged away her revelation. “Anyway, they’re really not trying to starve me. There are storage rooms right in this tower, so I could even take food whenever I wanted.”

  “But you couldn’t eat it unless you had your own mill and oven.” That reminded her, though. “Do you know what’s in the closed room?”

  “It’s closed, remember?”

  “Aren’t you curious?” It was the only place she could recall that didn’t invite entry. Most doors were left open during the day.

  “I wouldn’t give a ransom-prisoner free rein of my keep
, ether.”

  “Well, I’m not a ransom-prisoner. Come on.” She brushed the crumbs off her skirts as she stood.

  “Kimri…” But he followed as she made her way down the stairs to the mysterious door.

  “If it wasn’t supposed to be opened, it’d be locked,” she pointed out.

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Is it?”

  She pushed it open. “No.”

  To her disappointment, it held nothing glamorous—no cache of gold, no passage leading underground, no captive dragon. Herrol came to peer over her shoulder and she heard his sharp intake of breath. “A library!”

  She stepped across the threshold and was almost shouldered aside by Herrol, who ran reverent fingers over the spines of the nearest volumes. His lips shaped the titles.

  “You like reading, I take it.” She looked about. “I suppose the mountain-king must as well.” Books were expensive, and here were amassed more than she’d ever seen in one place.

  “There isn’t much else to do in winter, I imagine. Although some of these are rather old. They might have been collected by his predecessors.” He went to a desk in the corner, where an open book lay. He flipped through it, revealing blank pages at the end. “And some are being newly written.” He glanced up at her. “Can you read?”

  “And write too.”

  “Then you must realize what a treasure trove this is.”

  “Yes, of course.” But it was a treasure for others. Dusty tomes didn’t call to her. They contained little life compared to letters written by people she knew and cared about.

  He must have heard it in her tone of voice. He let go of the page he’d just been turning. “I’ll explore later. I’m staying in this very tower, after all.”

  “No, browse away.” But he saw through her unenthusiastic protest. He herded her out the door and closed it behind him.

  In good time, for they could hear the footsteps of someone making his way upward. Although she’d been flippant about opening the library door, she was relieved not to have been caught snooping inside. The books were valuable and clearly not intended for anyone’s perusal.

  A guard came around the turn of the stairs and rocked back on his heels, startled to see them there, but he recovered quickly. “Prince,” he greeted Herrol.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re having some practice bouts in the courtyard with wooden wands. The commandant was wondering if you’d like to join us.”

  Herrol gave him a surprised smile. “I would. My thanks.”

  The guard gestured down the stairs, and the two of them descended, leaving her there.

  The mountain-king must have taken her concerns about Herrol’s isolation seriously. Kimri was pleased, even though she hadn’t received an invitation. Of course, she got plenty of practice with real swords. She massaged her left arm, where the ache had subsided into a familiar lingering soreness, and ruefully admitted to herself that right now, she probably couldn’t even lift a wooden wand, let alone spar with one. Still, this meant she was left to entertain herself again. Dereth would be receiving a great many letters.

  She headed back to her room, only to find an older girl sitting at the desk. She’d folded one leg under her, and she was short enough to swing the other freely from the chair. Her face brightened when she saw Kimri. “I’m Merinee, Princess. I’m to serve as your maid.”

  She vaguely recalled Rendel mentioning such a person. “Weren’t you sheep-herding?”

  “Tending goats. But my brother’s making his way around on two feet again. He’s still hobbling a bit, but he’s a cranky invalid and we’d rather he be out of the house and limping than inside and carving pieces off of us with his tongue. I’ll be spending some days here and some there, so that I can keep an eye him but also stay sane.”

  Had her own brother ever felt the need to escape her? “He must have been fun to take care of.”

  “The best,” Merinee assured her. “Although the goats follow him as meek as goslings. So both they and I are happier now.”

  “What do you usually do, if you don’t always herd goats?”

  “I’m a messenger. I ride out if we need to send word to the mines or one of the hamlets.”

  She looked at Merinee again in amazement, this time seeing the lean muscles in Merinee’s slight frame. She was older than Kimri had thought, just small for her age. Her light weight must be an advantage in her position. “They don’t need you now?”

  “I’m off duty from riding for a time. There are other messengers covering my routes.”

  “Are you being pulled away just to take care of me?”

  “No, I’m helping train the new ponies. So it’s not because of you, although I’d say Rendel could use the help.”

  Admittedly, she’d been consulting the seneschal often, hunting him down for the slightest of questions. Everything was handled so differently here than in Anagard, and she trusted him to always have the answers. “So you’re more of a guide than a maid.”

  Merinee dimpled. “Whatever I can help with.”

  There wasn’t much call for a maidservant’s traditional duties, but she did find Merinee useful in locating a good weaver who helped expand her winter wardrobe. Merinee laughed at how she gravitated to the thickest, heaviest fabrics, but Kimri was perpetually cold and welcomed as many warm layers as she could wear. Merinee showed equal patience in explaining mountain customs, like how a ruined piece of merchandise—say, by dropping it and stepping upon it with muddy boots—shouldn’t be bought outright with money, but claimed in exchange for a generous gift. Kimri could see why Rendel had picked her out as a foreign princess’s maid. She had a rare diplomatic touch in smoothing over misunderstandings, and it was hard to be belligerent against the sheer force of her cheer.

  Kimri was more in her element when she accompanied Merinee to the stables for her training sessions with the mountain ponies.

  The trainer was an older man, given to few words and just as phlegmatic as the animals he handled. He used Merinee as a rider to accustom the ponies to a messenger’s weight and signals. After ascertaining that Kimri knew her way around a horse, he showed no compunction in ordering her to take a lead, or even into the saddle of a companion animal. She liked the ponies too much to object.

  Over the next several days, Merinee began to focus on a particular pony with a white blaze down his muzzle. He had an eagerness to his manner that had him trotting up to her with his halter in his mouth at the start of each training session. The trainer also started directing only Merinee to work with him. Kimri wasn’t even allowed to rub him down.

  “You’ve got a favorite,” Kimri teased her.

  “I need a new pony for delivering messages,” Merinee said. “My last one…well, we got caught in a rockfall. Most of us prefer to work with a specific pony. It can be a hard journey, and you want a familiar beast with you.”

  Like Redwing. “I can see that. You want a friend.”

  “That, and when you’re in a tough spot, you want to know all the habits and quirks of your mount. You have to know exactly how hard you can push him, if speed’s important.”

  She didn’t think Anagard’s messengers ever thought through their rides quite so thoroughly. They commandeered mounts as needed instead of favoring a particular one, preferring fresh legs to familiarity. But the riverlands tended to have less treacherous terrain. “Do you have to deliver urgent messages often? The pace of life here seems slower.” Especially as Helsmont wasn’t at war.

  “Not often. But there are times when the king has to send word to the other side of the mountains quickly.” Merinee gave her a mischievous look. “They say that after he treated with the king of Anagard, he sent a message to the mines straightaway, to ask for the supply of iron earlier than usual.”

  “To forge the swords for my bride-price.”

  Merinee nodded. “I think the messenger would’ve ridden there just as fast so he could be the first to bear the news about our king’s betrothal. We all l
ike a little excitement now and then. There’s so much you have to learn when you train as a messenger that you never end up using.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, how to set a bone and build a snow-shelter. The location of every hamlet and all the alternate routes to get there in case there’s a rockfall or avalanche. Plus the obscure dialects they speak. And you have to know the secret ways out of the city, in case Helsmont ever comes under siege.”

  “Secret ways?”

  “The postern behind the eastern hawthorn tree, a tunnel from the wine cellars and a point in the keep’s outer walls where if you whisper, someone on the other side will hear you.”

  The city’s builders had been paranoid, but with reason—a siege in the mountains would be disastrous. Helsmont imported much of what it needed, and wouldn’t long survive being cut off from trade. “When’s the last time Helsmont was attacked?”

  “Oh, hundreds of years ago. Back when dragons roamed the earth.”

  She eyed Merinee. “Don’t they say there are still dragons?”

  “But they don’t roam about anymore. They settle in one place and because they can hide anywhere, most people never see them.” Her voice dropped into the tones of someone telling a child her favorite story.

  Kimri arched her brows. “Like the one that guards Helsmont?”

  Merinee smiled. “Like the one that guards Helsmont.”

  “We have one like it sleeping in the river between Anagard and Kenasgate,” Kimri offered. “There’s a bridge that people stand on to drop offerings into the water, so that it won’t rouse. The dragon’s spine, we call it. You’d think that in the midst of war, one side or another would have burned it by now, but it’s still standing.”