by Terah Edun
Ciardis heard the distinctive click of Raisa’s mouth as she closed it. The kind of click that came from severely sharp canine teeth grazing against each other as they struggled to fit in a still-human-shaped mouth. She had been almost licking the air with a tapered and twisting tongue—perhaps for a taste or scent on the currents in the bedroom. Whatever the case, it held the ambassador’s attention no more.
Raisa looked at Ciardis.
Ciardis looked at Raisa, and her stomach flipped. She couldn’t be sure what the dragon would do to whomever was on the other side of that door.
“Let me answer it,” Ciardis caught herself pleading. Far different from her commanding voice toward Cedric just minutes earlier. But then again, he hadn’t been about to commit murder against an interloper.
Fashion murder, maybe, Ciardis thought uncharitably. But not death by fire or bludgeon.
It was really unfair. Cedric had had no mercy when critiquing her wardrobe contributions, but his ability to mesh his sense of style and her desire for at least some comfort had made that irrelevant. He spoke his mind and he got his work done, and there was nothing Ciardis appreciated more in a man.
Or at least that man.
As she waited with bated breath for Raisa’s answer, Ciardis was unwilling to provoke her with another query. Her anxiety rose like a wave waiting to crest.
“No,” the dragon said abruptly and walked forward.
A wave that broke with those words.
Against her better judgment, Ciardis darted forward herself, almost in front of the dragon but not quite. Instead, she dared to touch her, gripping her forearm with an intensity that showed just how anxious she felt. Ciardis almost didn’t notice the hardened scales that were palpable under her grip. Almost.
It was hard to miss something that felt like armor plating underneath the tunic of someone she had thought was a friend.
Speaking quickly, Ciardis said, “I’ll tell them to go away. No one else needs to die.”
Raisa paused and looked at her with what Ciardis would later swear was reptilian amusement in her eyes…if such a thing existed.
“You? You are afraid of death?” Raisa asked.
Ciardis stiffened in affronted pride. She didn’t really like the ambassador’s tone at the moment. Not that she could do much about it. Raisa was a dragon, after all. First and foremost. She had to remember that.
But that didn’t stop Ciardis from answering the dragon’s almost sarcastic query.
“Yes, I am,” Ciardis said through gritted teeth. “If afraid is not the correct word, then weary would be quite the apt substitute.”
“And yet you have been the cause of so much death.”
Ciardis didn’t deny it. “Yes, but I do my utmost to make sure this is never true of the innocents among our society.”
“Your society,” the dragon corrected pointedly.
“My society,” said Ciardis, still not letting go of Raisa’s arm.
Ciardis’s words were true and so was her emphasis on her need to protect what was hers. Her people. Her city. From its Emperor. From this dragon.
Ciardis didn’t think Raisa feared her. In fact, she was certain the dragon didn’t fear her. But one didn’t always need fear to get through to an opponent. Sometimes stubbornness would do just fine. And Ciardis Weathervane was nothing if not bullheaded.
As their eyes met and Ciardis tensed, feeling the bunch of muscles in Raisa’s arm—lean, sinewy power that was as natural to her as breathing—she had to wonder if being bullheaded would be enough this time. She realized the possibility that it very well may not be. But the ambassador didn’t move. Didn’t jerk from her weak human grip as she so easily could have. She may have, in fact, respected the infamous Weathervane’s level of determination. One would have to, after going through so many trials and tribulations with the lady known for her golden eyes. Until the return of Lillian, her mother, the only one in the entire imperial courts as well.
They were still frozen in a friendly rictus as a firm knock sounded again. This time, the matron who had come so abruptly into her rooms yesterday morning spoke through the door. “Lady Companion Weathervane, is everything all right? May I enter?”
“No!” Ciardis had the presence of mind to shout. “You may not enter. Take your leave, and take the gentlemen with you. I will not need your services today.”
Ciardis assumed the gentlemen were there. If they weren’t, then the woman who had come with them just yesterday morning would know where to find them.
“But—” said the woman in a quailing voice.
“Now!” Ciardis shouted, growing weary for once of not being given immediate obedience. She was trying to save the woman’s life, after all. And all those outside the doors with her.
“Very well, milady,” the woman quavered.
Soon there was blessed silence. But Ciardis could only guess that the woman had actually followed her instructions. She couldn’t really know if she’d left without opening the door. Her mage abilities didn’t extend to bat-like extrasensory perceptive abilities.
Or like Thanar, Ciardis thought with no little anxiety. She wished he were here. She wished she could reach out. Somehow.
She eyed Raisa gingerly.
The dragon snorted but turned away from the doors with curt words. “She’s walking away. You’ve saved the seamstress, Weathervane.”
There was something to be said for keen dragon hearing.
“Thank you,” said Ciardis quietly.
“They weren’t worth my time. Neither were you,” Raisa growled out.
Ciardis took words that were neither compliment nor derogation in stride. They were merely facts.
“Now drop your grip before I’m forced to rip your hand limb from socket with a twitch of my arm,” continued the ambassador.
Ciardis hastily did so. “Would you have really killed her?”
“Would you really have tried to stop me?” lobbed back Raisa.
They both left those questions unanswered in silence.
26
“So what now?” the Weathervane asked with a wrinkle of her nose.
“Now,” Raisa said with a thin purse of her rapidly scaling lips, “we close that damned spy gate and I teach you some new tricks.”
Ciardis followed Raisa as she wandered from corner to corner. The dragon was still looking for something, but the addition of the word gate sounded a lot more like concrete facts than spies did. In fact, Ciardis was starting to go from wondering if Raisa had journeyed into the realm of the insane in the last week to thinking that maybe she knew something they didn’t.
Which wouldn’t necessarily be a shocker.
Everyone seemed to have secrets, especially a dragon representing the land that would most delight in the Algardis Empire’s fall. Every citizen of Algardis knew that the dragons despised humans. Had even enslaved them within the lifetimes of some of the more long-lived of the mages in the care of the esteemed mage school at Ameles.
Ciardis just wondered what boat this particular secret would upend in her life. Her stomach flipped thinking about it.
Just what I needed, more revelations, she thought, almost bumping into Raisa’s shoulder as she followed far too closely behind the dragon.
But she knew in her heart of hearts that having a revelation was better than having a mystery. The latter made you a perpetual target for a barrage of surprises. At least if she knew what was happening, she could steel herself, even prepare if it was unavoidable.
Which made Ciardis admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as angry as she could be. Oh, she was pissed off. Especially at the senselessness of Cedric’s death. But she was also intrigued.
I don’t know why I’m surprised, she thought, bemused. Curiosity got me into this mess of a life in the first place. A less curious girl would have stayed in Vaneis and made an excellent housewife to someone. Anyone, really.
Ciardis conveniently disregarded that she’d left the small town in disgrace
as the jilted female suitor of a baker with more lovers than sense. She might have rued that day, but Ciardis had since grown.
Besides, she thought gleefully, I’ve done him one better. Whoever said a laundress couldn’t marry a prince heir?
When Raisa stepped forward and snapped a bedpost clean in half without so much as a by your leave, Ciardis jolted out of her musings and focused on the incident at hand with more clarity.
Staring in dismay at the marred structure, Ciardis asked, “What makes you think there’s a gate in my bedroom?”
Then, unable to help herself, she added eagerly, “And what tricks?”
Curiosity, after all, was her forte.
Raisa gave her a smirking look over her shoulder as she heard the enthusiasm in the Weathervane’s voice that even Ciardis wouldn’t admit to.
“Awake now?” the dragon asked in a mocking voice.
Ciardis crossed her arms and glared at Raisa. “Just about. I’ve had no choice. After all, an exciting morning will do that to you.”
Raisa made no comment as she stopped in front of a heavy mirror framed in interlocking lilies of gold, which currently sat above Ciardis’s mantel.
Ciardis, for her part, eyed the mirror dubiously. It looked like plain glass to her. No ripples of magic. No wards of occlusion. Ciardis had had the ability to lightly sense both of those since her training with Vana, and she sensed not a drop of magic.
Raisa raised a finger and traced it along the mirror’s face.
“This is it,” the dragon purred. “This is your gate.”
Uncomfortably, Ciardis moved forward to look closer. Doubt dripping from her voice, she said, “You’re sure?”
When she turned away from the mirror to look at the ambassador standing to her left, Ciardis took a hasty step back. Raisa didn’t look at all friendly or diplomatic at that moment.
Slowly the dragon dropped her finger. In the still air, she said in an angry and scornful voice, “Am I sure?”
“Well,” Ciardis stammered, “I just meant—”
“You meant,” said Raisa, “that you, a novice who has barely gotten her clothing diaper wet in magic studies, shall tell me, an adept, what is and isn’t a gate.”
“I didn’t sense anything…” Ciardis said weakly.
“And I sense everything, young sarin,” said Raisa. “So listen and you shall learn. You might even live longer than your pathetic human lifespan if you’re careful.”
Ciardis wisely shut up…again.
“I know you’ve been sadly lax in your studies,” Raisa said while rubbing her head in irritation. “But it is a critical juncture for you now as you ascend the human throne alongside your bondmates.”
Someone sounds like they picked up a course on condescension from my absent mother, Ciardis thought resentfully.
She’d always hated that tone. The tone that said, You’re not good enough, no matter what. Even if the lack of knowledge of the subject in question wasn’t Ciardis’s fault! She hadn’t grown up at court like her mother. She hadn’t been tutored by the finest magic practitioners like her fiancé. And she certainly hadn’t learned the art of court diplomacy at the dragon court like the individual currently lecturing her.
But it doesn’t matter, Ciardis thought grimly. I will learn. I will absorb. I’ll surpass them all.
“Since you didn’t garner this instruction earlier,” the dragon continued, “I’ll give you a short and free preview.”
Raisa emphasized the word free with the baring of a sharpened smile and a hard glint of interest in her eyes.
That definitely sounded more like the dragon she knew oh so well. A dragon’s nature was to be both morally superior and unwilling to part with anything without a price.
Rather like the daemoni race, Ciardis mused as she looked at the floor almost demurely. Except for the morally superior part.
She was trying to give herself time to calm down. To slow the frantic beating of her heart. To speak with some decorum. It didn’t work.
Because in the next second, Ciardis’s mind flashed on the other part of Raisa’s sentence that she had objections to.
Thinking of the daemoni, Ciardis snapped her eyes up in horror and demanded, “What do you mean, ascend the throne with my bondmates? It’s not both, it’s singular!”
Raisa eyed her with a mouth of dagger-like teeth and a pissed-off expression on her face, which Ciardis tried hard to not imagine opening up and devouring her in the next five seconds. But she didn’t back down, nor did she rescind her question. This was important.
Raisa, for her part, answered with a cluck of irritation. “You should have studied that contract more.”
“What contract?” Ciardis asked in desperation. “The engagement contract at the Companions’ Guild had nothing to do with Thanar!”
“Of course it didn’t,” said the dragon dismissively. “But your seeleverbindung did.”
“Explain,” demanded Ciardis Weathervane.
“No,” said Raisa, “I am not your tutor, and unfortunately for you, the mage gate is the only reason why I’m here, so I have no time to review this. Instead we’re going over something critically apparent now—a particular bit of oversight you’ve managed to make.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me about that oversight,” Ciardis said derisively.
Raisa leaned all the way forward. This time, wisps of smoke slowly drifted out of the corners her mouth. “I will. If you stop interrupting me.”
Ciardis swallowed harshly, and the terrified beat of her heart was so overwhelming that she couldn’t hear anything else. So she settled back as quickly as she could, wiped any hint of emotion off her face, and bit her tongue. The dragon didn’t seem to be at all open to expanding on her vague reference to the daemoni prince, and Ciardis couldn’t push her any further on the topic.
Realizing she looked like a scared child with her trembling arms folded in front of her, Ciardis stood straight and took two careful steps back.
Enough to give Raisa space.
Then she waited for the dragon to continue speaking.
To no avail.
The glowing eyes just watched her as the smoke stopped emanating from between her sharp dagger-like teeth.
The sight was as unnerving as Ciardis was sure Raisa intended it to be.
Trying to get back on track, Ciardis asked quietly while trying to keep some semblance of quiet assurance about her, “So?”
It was hard. She wanted to do nothing less. She mostly wanted to quake in a corner. But Ciardis also wanted to push for more information about Thanar. She wanted to beg Raisa to expand upon her point. But a dragon was as stubborn as a mule, and this dragon had reached the end of her rope and clammed up on that particular topic, apparently.
“What is it, then?” Ciardis asked finally, dropping her arms with a tiny hint of exasperation.
Ire flashed in Raisa’s own eyes as she took a step forward and a clawed hand twitched. Not so much a threat, but an involuntary response. Which was even scarier. The dragon was losing her grip on her human nature— or more accurately her human presentation—the angrier she got.
But she didn’t close those clawed fingers around the Weathervane’s throat.
For which Ciardis was absurdly grateful.
Instead the ambassador snarled, “This oversight could spell your entire palace’s doom. The grounds’ magical defenses have been down since you murdered your Emperor.”
The dragon’s tone almost sounded accusatory.
In her dreams! Ciardis thought. This is not all on me.
“You were there too! I didn’t see you protesting,” Ciardis snapped.
“Heat of the moment,” Raisa sniffed. “There are things beyond the connection to the land that you should have assured transference of beyond the…abrupt…demotion of your leader. But what is done, is done.”
“I would only wish,” Ciardis muttered as she thought of Thanar’s forthcoming plan.
Raisa eyed her sharply but didn�
�t comment on Ciardis’s aside. Ciardis was startled to remember then that Raisa hadn’t been there for the conclave gathering.
As so many others hadn’t either. Others who had been by her side longer.
Terris.
Lillian.
Meres.
Friends lost in time, she thought grimly, finally alighting on the worst of Thanar’s plans. But not forever.
Ciardis squared her shoulders as the somber thoughts overtook her.
No more whining, she thought. Just get it done.
To Raisa, with direct eye-to-eye contact, Ciardis said, “So who is spying through my bedroom mirror?”
Raisa smiled.
The anger seemed to dissipate from her face as easily as a breath of fresh air coming through the window. Which was both as disturbing and reassuring as it sounded. It told Ciardis that Raisa had a much more mercurial personality than she would have ever given her credit for. It also told the Weathervane that the dragon perhaps wasn’t as angry as she had seemed, despite the clear physical markers of such an emotion.
I have a lot to learn about dragons, Ciardis thought.
Luckily for her, it wasn’t a required subject for a citizen or a Companion. But she had to wonder if it was something the future Empress should know.
Assuming I live long enough to assume the throne, and the empire isn’t eradicated before then, she added dryly.
But whether it was or wasn’t, no one had thought to brief her on the subject. Besides, Raisa was still the only dragon at court, aside from the brief appearances of her brethren, including the black dragon who had so abruptly attacked Ciardis and Thanar in midair last spring, and they were the luckier for it. Ciardis had the sneaking suspicion that a cacophony of dragons was the last thing the court needed, and would have only pushed their destinies toward destruction all the faster.
Raisa, however, wasn’t party to her thoughts at the moment.
Or at least she chooses not to be, Ciardis thought. She was well aware Raisa could read her mind if she so chose. Just like she had been choosing to block Ciardis’s connection with Thanar and Sebastian for the last twenty minutes.