by Maria Grace
“No, not at all. It just seems that perhaps it is a different form of ceremony that you favor. Dragon introductions and greetings have a great deal of ceremony to them. At least, so it seems to me.”
Castordale lifted his tankard with his jaws and somehow managed to take a sip of tea without spilling it. The cup must have been especially designed for the purpose. A normal cup would have tea running down his face and neck. “I suppose you could consider that ceremony, if you look at it in a warm-blooded sort of way. But really, it is not. It is about—”
“Establishing dominance and precedence. I know, but is that not what most human ceremony is about?”
This time he threw back his head and laughed a deep, full-bellied rumble. “So it is, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. So it is.”
“Why are you laughing at me?” She shook her fists at her sides.
“I am not laughing at you. Truly I am not. I am laughing at others who are not here.”
“Pray forgive me. I do not follow.”
“Ah, dear girl, I am sure there is a great deal you do not follow.” He shifted into a position which resembled nothing so much as a large man settled comfortably into his favorite chair. “You and your little friend,” he flicked his tongue at April whose head was still in the jam pot, “have caused rather a stir among the Order. I might add, it is not a bad thing. Sometimes things need to be shaken up a bit when they have gone old and stale.”
“Papa does not approve of things being shaken, as you call it.”
“I am not surprised. However, his opinion is not the only one, thankfully. There are those who wonder how a girl of just over a decade can possibly be trusted with the weight of the truth about dragons.”
“Papa has made me very aware of that.” She wrapped her arms around her waist and crumpled in on herself just a little. Appalling posture, Mama would call it, but clearly Castordale did not care about such things.
“I can imagine. Forgive me, but he has all the subtlety of a basilisk.”
She sniggered under her breath. “From Greystoke’s, Blair’s, or Edmonton’s bestiary?”
Castordale’s expression shifted into something very serious, even troubled.
She bit her lip and winced. Perhaps that was not an appropriate jest.
“There is no Edmonton’s Bestiary.”
She blinked several times. “Excuse me? That cannot be possible. Was I not asked specifically—”
“Yes, you were, but there is no such book.”
“But why then? I do not understand.”
“Of course, you do not. You have not been alive long enough to understand the wiles of living in a world such as ours.” He took another long sip of his tea, slurping just a bit. How did one make that sound without lips?
“I may not understand very much, but I would like to understand this.”
“We live in a very precarious balance, dragons and men. Those who cannot hear dragon voices look upon us with fear and loathing. We must protect ourselves from them. The Blue Order exists to give us a way to do so while sustaining a mutually-beneficial peace with the warm-bloods and other dragons with whom we must share this world. But even within the Order, there have been those who sought to take advantage of dragonkind, who were not committed to maintaining the Pendragon Accords.”
“Have there not been dragons with the same problems, though?”
“Indeed, there have.” Now it was Castordale’s turn to seem thoughtful. “But it seems we have a better record in managing those individuals than humans do.”
She winced. “You mean you do not hesitate to send a larger dragon to dispatch them quickly.”
“A crude way of putting it, but essentially true. It is difficult for men to grasp the nature of solitary creatures with predator-prey relationships.”
“I suppose so. But do not drakes often form communities? That is what the book I found in the reading room said.”
Castordale laughed again, so it was probably best she just resign herself to it at this point. “I knew you were going to say that. The rest of the group assured me I was wrong, but I knew you would say that.”
“Excuse me?”
“Had our conversation in St. John’s office continued, someone would have brought up the matter to see how you responded.”
She pressed her temples hard. “You mean they would have picked an argument with me over the matter, rather like over the characteristics of a basilisk?”
“Exactly like that.”
“But why? It does not make any sense. It even seems rather cruel.”
“On that point, I will have to disagree.” He downed another gulp of his tea. “When you consider the grave importance of the sort of decision we have been asked to make, I am quite comfortable that our tactics have been entirely appropriate.”
“How is my admission to the Order that important?”
“Every member presents another potential source of danger to dragonkind, so they must be considered carefully, especially one as unusual as you. Doubly so when that one is in line to be a Keeper.”
“Me, a Keeper? You jest. Women are not Keepers. We may be given the title as a courtesy, sometimes, but I hardly think it has any substance to it.”
“Longbourn has asked for you.”
“He is a very dear creature, though I am not even supposed to know him yet.” If only he were here, he could take her through the fabled dragon tunnels back home and let her be done with this awful chapter.
“He had told us so, and a great many other things, including how he believes you are a very fitting member for the Order.”
She swallowed past the aching lump in her throat. “I am sure he will be most disappointed to learn I have failed.”
Castordale leaned back and cocked his head, studying her. “What do you think you were to be tested on?”
“A great many things, according to Papa: the Pendragon Accords, the genealogies, the bestiaries—”
“You think that is the core of our concerns?”
“I thought it was … but now I do not know what to think.”
“But I do.” He pulled up straight, almost tall enough to brush the top of the chamber with his head.
She worried her hands together.
“I have never seen such a thing as what you did with that garment of yours. And spitting at the wyrm!”
“Pray do not remind me. It was horrid and unladylike.” She covered her face with her hands.
“And utterly spectacular! A truly splendid demonstration of greeting etiquette, the likes I have never seen before.”
“What did you say?” She peeked through her fingers.
“We had heard your understanding was superb—a bit unrefined perhaps, but truly a cut above, and we were not disappointed.”
“But my behavior was shocking.”
“Only to warm-bloods, I am sure. We found it quite refreshing. And perhaps more important to you, quite acceptable.”
“But the panel—”
“They will rail about it, to be sure. They always do. It is their way of trying to assert dominance. But I know that more than one agrees with us already. We will prevail—after all, we have teeth.” He bared his fangs in rather a playful way. By Heavens! They were enormous!
Wait—what had he just said? “Acceptable?”
“It is clear, that you think like a dragon—even though you may have a great deal to learn yet. And anyone who thinks like a dragon belongs in the Order.”
∞∞∞
Castordale escorted her upstairs to the reading room, still the comfortable, happy, welcoming place it had been days ago. Storm, Cloudy, Mist, and Thunder were only too happy to chaperone her and teach her to play their favorite card game, a variant of whist that was both delightfully complex and full of draconic nuances of dominance and territorial claims.
Many rubbers later, Rustle winged his way into the room. Storm invited him to play. Surprisingly, he did. Who would have thought Rustle could play cards, much less want to? Moreover, he
proved quite adept, beating the drakes rather soundly.
At the end of the rubber, though, he said, “I was sent to escort you back to Cheapside.”
“Without Papa or Uncle?” Longbourn estate was the only place she had ever walked alone.
“They are both needed in meetings at the moment. We may take the dragon tunnels all the way to your Uncle’s warehouse. From there, I will persuade a shop assistant to walk you home. We will tell your mother that an unexpected shipment has arrived. Your father will be assisting Gardiner with it all night.”
“The meetings are expected to go on that long?”
“Indeed, they are. It goes that way sometimes. There are those who like to be stubborn for the power that it gives them. Another form of dominance as it were.” Rustle winked.
Dragons winked? It made sense that they could, but seemed a little surprising that they actually did.
Elizabeth nodded. There was little she could do and asking questions would be considered untoward—at least her father would say so. Dragons might feel differently, but after such an agreeable afternoon, it was not the sort of thing one wanted to take a chance on. And it meant she would have the opportunity to see the fabled tunnels that ran under the city. Certainly that was something to celebrate.
Rustle led her down a small staircase, one she would have thought to be a servants’ stair in a typical building, but the Blue Order Hall was anything but typical. Many, many steps followed before the staircase finally ended, but at last it did, in a narrow, dimly-lit corridor, near a plain door. The corridor extended a long way to the left, disappearing into the distance.
“That leads into the Great Courtroom. That is for another day. Come.” Rustle flapped to the door and pulled the latch rope with his beak. Just inside the door, a barrel held unlit torches. “Take one and light it from the candles in the hall.”
Elizabeth obeyed. The torch was heavier than she had expected, and burned a little hotter than candles did, releasing an odd, somewhat unpleasant smell as it burned, unlike anything she had smelt before.
“Quickly now. You must get back to Cheapside before sundown.” Rustle beckoned.
The hewn stone walls of the tunnels were large enough to admit a firedrake, or at least she imagined they would, having never seen one herself—yet—she could not be certain, but it certainly seemed so. Several small dragons, or people, could walk abreast in the cool, dark expanse. The smooth walls and floor set the tunnels apart from a naturally-formed cave, but only a fool would believe that made them safer for one who became lost in them without light. Even without the hazards of steep drops and collapsing floors, the darkness would be very difficult for one who could not see in the dark to find their way out. Most dragons possessed other senses that enabled them to get around underground, or at least so she had read. Someday, it would be interesting to talk to one directly about it.
The tunnels twisted and turned, splitting off at multiple forks. Which signposts did Rustle use to navigate? Obviously he knew where he was going, never hesitating to make a turn, but Elizabeth could not make out any markers which would allow an unfamiliar traveler to identify one turn from another. And he flew so fast! By the time he stopped at a small doorway, Elizabeth was panting hard and nearly out of breath.
The doorway—of course—led to a long, narrow, steep staircase that seemed like it might never end. At last it did, with a large barrel—probably for her torch—near a narrow door. Rustle pecked the door open. She extinguished the torch, and followed him out. They emerged in a dark cellar with large crates blocking their view. Skirting around them, she heard noises and voices above. They were underneath Uncle Gardiner’s warehouse!
Though it was said that cockatrice were not as good at persuasion as other dragons, Rustle was quite effective in convincing one of the shop assistants of Uncle Gardiner’s supposed whereabouts and of the message he was to bring—along with Elizabeth—to the house at Cheapside. Elizabeth and the dispatch were delivered to Uncle Gardiner’s housekeeper in short order.
It was hardly surprising that Mama was unhappy with the news she would be deprived of adult company that evening, but with a few suggestions from April and Rustle, she decided that an evening spent playing parlor games with her daughters might not be such a bad thing after all.
The next morning, the housekeeper woke her with the news that she was wanted at Mr. Gardiner’s warehouse immediately and that she would take Elizabeth there on her way to do the morning’s marketing. Rustle met them just outside the kitchen and accompanied them to the warehouse where he managed the few necessary persuasions to allow Elizabeth into the cellar and thence to the stairs into the dragon tunnels.
It would have been nice if Rustle had permitted her to catch her breath a bit when they arrived at the offices, but he immediately insisted they trek up the long, long, staircase as soon as they arrived. How was she ever going to make it up the hundreds of stairs up? And why was everything so hurried? Unless they were hungry or threatened, dragons almost never rushed.
Happily, they stopped at a landing that must have been only two-thirds of the way up. She clutched the railing.
“Wait here. Do not go anywhere. I must announce your arrival.” Rustle flapped away, up the stairs, disappearing around a corner.
He really need not have ordered her to stay, for her feet were so heavy that she could do little else but sink into the nearest hall chair and gulp in deep breaths of cool, slightly damp air.
Her heart had just slowed to a normal pace when Rustle landed on the oak railing nearest her. “The committee will see you now.”
She was to face them again? It would have been kind to have warned her of what was about to happen, but that was not the way dragons tended to think. If one could not see what was coming up ahead, one probably deserved to be eaten, or at the very least surprised. Not the most appealing of dragon traits, but so it was.
Rustle led her up the remaining stairs to a room she had not seen before. He rapped at the broad oak door with his beak. Though finely-crafted, the door bore no carvings, no name plaque to announce what might lie behind. It swung open into a large, oval room, lined with candelabras and mirrors working hard to cast light into the dark chamber, but there was no discernable furniture within. What kind of a room was this?
She blinked several times as her eyes adjusted. The dragons from the committee, including Castordale, gathered in a loose group along one side of the room. Maybe four other dragons joined them, but it was difficult to tell for certain how many there were in the dim light. Across from them, no less than a dozen blue-robed figures milled about. Some seemed vaguely familiar—probably the committee who had bombarded her with questions the day before. The rest were totally unknown. Probably just as well, for they all seemed grumpy and irritable and would probably be most unpleasant. But why were there so many here?
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet,” that was Mr. St. John’s voice booming from the middle of the room.
“Yes, sir.” She tried to hold her voice steady, but she may as well not have tried. Her tone was high and thin, anything but confident. Exactly the way one should not sound around dragons.
“Step forward.” Mr. St. John gestured as the dragons gathered on one side and the blue-robed figures on the other, making a loose ring around him.
With an encouraging chirrup from Rustle, she pulled her shoulders back and stepped toward Mr. St. John. If she could show confidence she did not feel, it could only be a good thing. Or so Longbourn had told her.
Mr. St. John folded his arms and cleared his throat. “Despite debate which has extended all night, the committee remains undecided about what should be done with you, Miss Bennet. In cases such as these, it has always been the way of the Blue Order to err on the side of caution. Therefore, your petition will not be—”
A roar echoed from the large entryway at the back of the room. A very familiar roar.
She looked over her shoulder at Rustle.
He shrugged his wings and muttered s
omething about not everyone who had a say in the matter had been given proper voice. He kept his face carefully turned away though, not quite disingenuous, but definitely suspicious.
The dragons in the room froze in their places while the Order Members turned toward the tunnel, jaws gaping. Castordale slithered toward the entry, tail tapping the stone floor. He was annoyed, but it was not entirely clear at whom.
Another roar, this time much louder, and much grumpier, and the heavy thumps of angry, hurried footfalls. Longbourn burst into the room, nearly running over Castordale who blocked the entry.
“You have not been invited to this meeting,” Castordale declared rather mildly, given the circumstances.
Dragons never reacted to surprises well. Did Castordale have something to do with this?
“My Keep is involved. It is an insult that I have not been invited.” Longbourn stomped and slapped his tail at the same time. He was very, very annoyed. What joy there would be now. Annoyed dragons were hardly sensible.
“The child is not your concern.” Mr. St. John walked slowly, deliberately toward Longbourn.
“According to whom? She is my Keeper’s and is the oldest child who hears. She is to be the next Keeper.” Longbourn pulled up as tall as he could, towering above everyone in the room.
“She is a girl! Estates are inherited by men.” Mr. St. John rolled his eyes.
“She can marry the heir and be my Keeper.”
“The Blue Order no longer arranges the marriages of its Keepers.”
“Since when?” Longbourn’s tail swept the floor, forcing a number of blue-robed figures to dodge.
“It is changing now. All the more reason that you should not be here.”
“That does not change her fitness for the Order, and that is why I am here.” Longbourn bellowed, softly for him, but it still left her covering her ears and cringing.
“What makes you think she is a fit member?”
Longbourn sidled past Castordale and thumped into the center of the room where he nudged Elizabeth. She scratched behind his ears. “You know you should not be here. You should not get yourself into trouble over me.”