To be swept up in Poppa’s arms. “None of that, my lad,” as he squirmed. To his surprise, instead of scolding, Poppa pressed a kiss into his hair. “You’re to stay right here, in bed,” he ordered, his voice strange too. “We’ll have the cook send a tray later.”
Werfol tried again as he was put down, looking past their father to their mother. “I feel fine.” Her expression being a little too thoughtful for comfort, he looked back at Poppa. “I need—I have to go the mews. JoJo—” He couldn’t use the house toad as an excuse, though having forbidden it the pigeons he owed the creature provisions. Most of all, he had to write—
Semyn tossed back his pillow. He wore his mature face, the one that made adults pay attention. “I’ll do it for you, Weed.”
That face didn’t work with him. It was annoying and smug, as his brother knew full well, but Werfol could hold in his temper if he tried. “Surely your time would be better spent with our new tutor.”
Momma sat on the bed and put her hand on his knee. “What can you tell us about Master Setac?”
It was only a hand, warm and affectionate. And their tutor—Werfol grew uneasy, thinking about Setac. There’d been—had there been faces?
Suddenly, her hand had weight, like a dragon’s clawed foot, pressing him down—
Why had he thought that? How did he know how a dragon’s foot felt? Why did it make him afraid? He loved Wisp—
Who wasn’t here, Momma was, but where was here and—Werfol’s stomach lurched and he hunched over, quite sure he was going to be sick.
Strong slender arms drew him close. He held on with all his strength, burying his face against Momma as if he were a babe again, taking in her scent with deep racking gasps. “Werfol, sweetling. Listen to me. This is real.” He clung to the words too. “This is real and you are safe.”
“Lila—” Poppa’s voice, edged with strain.
“Go. Show Semyn your engine. He can care for the mews.”
No, Werfol tried to say. Don’t take everything away. He was the one who loved Poppa’s machines. The mews were his special place. Whatever he’d done wrong, it wasn’t fair, to take everything away and give it to Semyn—
Home was supposed to be safe—
“Peace, Werfol,” he heard. “Slower breaths. Feel the air moving into your lungs and out again. Feel what’s real. There.”
The breaths she asked of him shuddered and fought.
“That’s good.” Her arms tightened. “This is real. It’s over. You’re back.”
Back? He hadn’t been gone. He’d tried too hard to see the truth about their new tutor. He remembered now. He’d worn himself out, that was all. There was nothing wrong, nothing strange, except that he couldn’t catch his breath to speak.
Then could. “Mo-momma—”
She eased him away to see his face, keeping hold of his shoulders. “Welcome home.” Though she smiled as if nothing was wrong, her eyes glistened as if full of tears. “You fell into a truedream. Do you understand? They can be confusing, I know.”
Because Momma truedreamed too. He’d followed her in dreams, then she’d followed him in his, then brought him out or led him out—confusing wasn’t what he thought. Truedreams were horrible and he’d never do it again. Not. Ever.
“That’s not what happened,” Werfol protested. “I swear it. I don’t do that anymore, Momma.” He needed an answer and seized on what his brother had said. “Semyn—he was right. Not that I was scared, because I wasn’t, but I tried too hard to see the truth about Master Setac and fainted. Maybe I hit my head on the floor,” he added hastily, not seeing belief in her face. “Or on the chair. There was a chair nearby.”
“There were chairs,” she conceded, though doubtless remembering Poppa had caught him, as Werfol did, all at once.
After a long pause, during which he did his best to look like someone who’d suffered a blow but was now altogether better and able to resume his day, Momma nodded. “All the more reason for you to rest in bed,” making it an order. “I’ll have Dutton come sit with you.”
Making it impossible to disobey. Werfol sighed and let her tuck blankets around him.
Momma stood looking down at him, her face unreadable. He tried a quick smile. Her lips quirked to the side in what wasn’t. “Ancestors Witness, you’re just like your uncle was, aren’t you.”
Who was a hero and tremendously brave, yet somehow she made it sound a difficulty.
Werfol had the sinking feeling Momma planned to pay greater attention to him from now on.
He resolved then and there to be good forever.
Or as long as possible.
* * *
During Emon’s grandfather’s sojourn as Vorkoun’s baron, the summer estate featured an elegant guest house nestled in the pines some distance from the main building, offered to those desirous of the rugged beauty of the Westietas’ estate who, more often than not, required privacy for clandestine meetings. The list of those housed there made, as Lila put it, as fine a record of doubtful dealings and outright scandal as anywhere in Rhoth. Prince Ordo’s grandparents. Ansnan nobility. The infamous smuggler barons of Avyo and even a delegation from Mellynne, their names prudently left blank.
The secrets those thick stone walls could whisper were long gone. There’d been an accident with a fireplace. Or with an oil lamp. The guests had escaped with their lives. The building?
Burnt to a hollow shell, abandoned until Emon’s father, noticing his son and heir’s predilection for combustibles, had it rebuilt into a workshop.
Emon left the latch on the side door untouched, sliding his gaze left, then right before reaching up to depress hidden catches. The door swung open, exhaling the aromas of metal and oil. Stepping inside, he closed the door and paused, tipping back his head, eyes half closed. He loved his family more than life itself, but here? Trouble slipped away. Concern and worry faded. If there was anything good about his exile, it was more of this.
No need of lamps. Sunlight poured through rows of tall windows on every side, their intricately wrought iron shutters a reminder of a former life. Light and air came as well through the broad vent along the high point of the roof. Brass and copper glowed; rainbows sparked from glass.
The nearest workbench held components for a mechanical horse, a project with Werfol neglected by both since their return. The next was covered with trays of clockworks and gears. To the untrained eye, a daunting and impressive assortment. Or a fool’s pursuit.
Either assumption satisfied Emon. Locks, however clever, could be broken; he relied on other means to hide his true interests.
He removed the trays to expose an opening the length of the bench filled with shadowy metalwork. Putting a bar into its slot, he operated the crank to raise his current project into the light.
An engine.
It wouldn’t pull train cars of ore up a mountain, but the fundamentals were there. Not a copy of the Eld design, though Lila had obtained eyewitness reports of the blueprints. This was his own. He called it a pistol engine, which made Lila laugh, for the inspiration for it had come from hours firing the modern weapons. Not to become proficient. He was a terrible shot. No, Emon had been drawn to the chemical reactions; how black powder, spark, and air resulted in motion. From the beginning, he’d been convinced such force could do more than drive a bullet through flesh and bone.
His initial quest for a chamber to contain explosions had charred the rafters and blown glass from the windows. Familiar consequences to the staff; his then-new lady wife had surveyed the damage and dryly suggested he view subsequent experiments from behind a shield.
A shield that had grown thicker.
This latest version of his engine was very different from those early ones. The black powder had been replaced by refined light oil, misted through air. Sparks were provided by electricity and the force of those repeated contained explosions pushed pist
ons, not bullets, a motion captured and passed along by gears.
In operation, it was deafening and filled the workshop with fumes, even as it fired Emon’s imagination with possibilities. Some alarming, hence the secrecy. Despite his wife’s occasional doubts, he was no dewy-eyed dreamer, to believe everyone would use such power for the good of all.
He stroked the still-cold combustion chamber, the heart of his engine. No longer his secret, given the Eld’s train would rumble through eastern Rhoth as well as Vorkoun and on into Ansnor. What Mellynne’s government thought of the arrival of what could be power-shifting technology to its less civil neighbors wasn’t hard to guess. He’d met with those already deeply alarmed.
Mellynne, where magic itself rained from the sky, to be collected and used by those with the right knowledge. Emon drummed the metal gently, smiling to himself. Magic properly named mimrol, he’d learned, leaking from the mysterious Verge where it belonged into the edge, the space where this world and that one somehow touched.
He’d a map of Shadow District. Had been there more than once, unaware its irregular boundary within Channen marked nothing so innocent as mist-shrouded canals and markets. No, there, in plain sight, was where this edge existed and where anything could happen.
The edge was elsewhere too, Marrowdell being another place fraught with wild magic and who was to say where else the Verge encroached? Bannan had asked for a map of the lands beyond Marrowdell for his love, Jenn Nalynn.
Emon longed to ask her for a map of the edge, if such existed—
A light knock, pause, then three more brought him back to here and now. Leaving his engine in view, Emon went to the door, opening it to his eldest son. He smiled a warm greeting. “Welcome. How were Weed’s birds?”
“Well tended, Poppa.” Semyn didn’t smile back. “What do you wish to show me?”
Werfol would have spotted the engine at once. Would have run to it by now, full of questions and wild surmise, but Emon understood Semyn’s interests followed Lila’s, engaged most by what people were doing or had done. The boy already knew more of Rhoth’s history—and influences—than most of his elders. When the time came, he’d make a far better politician than his father.
A long time yet, Emon vowed, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Come over here.” He led the way to the bench. “This is an engine, similar to what pulls the Eld’s train.”
Semyn regarded it dutifully.
“I’m going to teach you the terms used for its components and function,” Emon explained.
Eyes brightened with interest. “The words we’re to listen for and report.”
“You are, yes.” If he had his way, Emon decided, Weed would stay safely in his room, far from their guests. “I’ve something more in mind for you, Semyn. If, as I hope, one or more Ansnan engineers accept our invitation? I want them to see my heir is familiar with such machines.”
Other than a brief raised eyebrow worthy of his mother, Semyn didn’t react to the news of this addition to the guest list. “I’ll learn the words, Poppa, but—” Semyn’s forehead creased.
“What is it?”
“Weed would understand them. He’d see how your engine works.” Semyn looked up, eyes pleading. “And it would be good for him—to care about something real for once.”
Emon leaned a hip on the bench, gazing down at his son. “What’s this about?” he asked gently. “Werfol won’t get in trouble,” he added, knowing these two.
“Maybe he should,” Semyn said, confounding expectation. “He’s been embellishing—lying—more and more. I didn’t want to tell, but since he broke Vorkoun, he keeps being mad all the time and running off.”
The words spilled out in a flood of anger and frustration. There was hurt there too, deeper than the bruises from their latest scuffle. Betrayal.
Lila felt the root of the problem wasn’t Weed’s gifts, but how well the younger boy had fit into Marrowdell and its magic. How could he not miss both? And how much worse, Emon knew, that Weed remembered each and every fantastical detail while, like most, Semyn couldn’t.
Oh, they’d tried to explain to Werfol, as best you could to a precocious not yet quite six year old, why he mustn’t speak of magic and dragons to his brother. The boy understood, but it wasn’t a fair burden and Emon had feared the result might be this: a schism between brothers, mistrust going both ways.
“This is a difficult time for Weed,” he began. Ancestors Witness, it was for them all.
“I’ve tried to help, Poppa. He doesn’t always listen.”
There was an understatement. He nodded. “Thank you. We know you do, Semyn, and we rely on your helping your brother more than we should perhaps.”
Shoulders sagged. “I don’t think I’m helping at all,” Semyn said sadly. He reached under his coat and produced a notebook, corners worn with use, its brown faded. “I found it lying on top of the food bags. This is why Weed’s been going to the mews. To write. It’s—” His lips pressed together. He took a sharp breath, nostrils flaring, then looked up, eyes clear and determined, all trace of child gone. “I made the decision to read it, Poppa. I wanted to understand what’s going through his head.”
Being Lila’s son, Emon thought, but said only, “And do you?”
Instead of answering the question, Semyn held out the notebook. “I think you and Momma need to read it too. There’s something wrong in what he’s writing. It’s more than Weed getting back at me or wanting things different. Sometimes—sometimes, he sounds afraid, Poppa.”
“Of what?”
“Read it, please, and see for yourself.”
A Just Reward
William, being the bravest prince in all history, knew it was up to him to command his dragon. You couldn’t have something dangerous running rampant through the kingdom. Or in their bedroom. No, it was time he gave proper orders.
William went to the kitchen and ordered the cook to bake the biggest cheese bun ever made. It took a week’s worth of butter and cream and four huge wheels of cheese, not to mention a cartload of flour and other ingredients. Cook and her helpers built a giant oven in the courtyard. Why just mixing the dough took a machine and three donkeys, and baking it took two days.
But in the end, William had the biggest cheese bun ever made. He had it hoisted to the top of his tower and chained in place. Oozing cheese covered the upper windows and butter dripped over the stonework. The smell was mouthwatering. People across the kingdom took to sniffing the air, just to enjoy the aroma.
William ordered everyone out of his tower, especially Simon. Who whined and complained about having to go until William gave him a new pony. Once he was alone, William climbed to the top of his tower and sat on a stool beside the giant cheese bun.
His mouth watered. Unable to resist the smell, William got up and cut himself a crumb the size of his head from an inconspicuous spot. After all, he shouldn’t offer a treat if he hadn’t tested it himself. It was very hot and delicious.
After eating all he could, William sat back down and whistled for his dragon.
A dark shape appeared in the sky, big enough to mistake for a cloud if you didn’t know they were wings with a body between. Also, clouds didn’t move toward a person when the wind blew the other way. And weren’t green.
William wished he hadn’t tasted the cheese bun.
If he hadn’t been the bravest prince in all history he might have wished he wasn’t sitting on a stool, atop the tower, watching a dragon fly toward him, but he was.
The dragon stopped in midair, looking at the cheese bun with its rainbow eyes. What is this, my William?
“It’s a reward,” William said.
A claw gripped the top of the tower, where it didn’t drip with butter or ooze with cheese. What is a reward?
Knowing what someone else, especially a powerful dragon, didn’t know made William smile. “A reward is a treat, somethin
g nice I give you to thank you for doing what I want you to do.”
The dragon’s great head came closer, gusts of its hot breath making William squint. You have not given me a reward before, dear William.
“This time I will. The biggest cheese bun in the kingdom is yours. If you do what I want you to do.”
The neck curved, lowering the dragon’s head alongside William until he could see himself and the stool in one eye, with the bun behind like a volcano of melting cheese. What is it you wish done? Should I chase away another army? Shall I destroy your enemies? The lid came down in a bizarre wink. Eat your brother for you?
William was very glad he’d sent Simon out of the tower, because that’s what dragons could do and enjoyed doing and mustn’t ever do. “None of those things,” he said firmly. “What I want you to do is go back to your home and stay there.”
And my reward is you’ll come with me, won’t you, precious William, declared his dragon, and before the prince could say no, that wasn’t it, the dragon swept the biggest cheese bun in the kingdom from the tower, chains snapping, to splot in the courtyard below.
There came a choked-off cry followed by screams, because his little brother hadn’t gone far enough and the biggest cheese bun in kingdom had just crushed him and his new pony into jelly.
And then his dragon wrapped a claw around him like a cage of cold iron, and William understood something at long last. He’d been horribly horribly wrong.
The dragon wasn’t his—
He was the dragon’s—
Seven
He woke with a gasp. When a huge shape cut across the light, he yelped and wriggled back until he hit the wall.
“Easy, lad,” came a familiar voice.
But he didn’t relax, not one bit. How could he, when he could feel bands like cold iron tightening around him? About to take him—
He had to write the words. Now. Once he did, it wasn’t real and couldn’t be because it was just his imagination then, just words in a story—but where was his pencil? He looked around wildly but couldn’t see. Where was the desk he shared with Simon? There’d be pencils and paper in the drawers—but Simon was dead—crushed—he heard a sob—
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