by Anne Leonard
He tumbled backward onto the roof, landing with a painful jolt, and the darkness vanished. There was no Tai. The ice on his lashes melted and ran into his eyes. His face tingled. He sat up, felt light-headed at first but steadied. His fingertips were stinging. Oh God, he thought, please let her have made it back to Mycene. Damn you, dragons, damn you. Whatever Hadon might do now was not as bad as what waited in the darkness.
He tried to rub some life into his white cold hand. Bron knelt beside him and rubbed it methodically between his own until Corin shook it free, feeling the blood moving again.
Only then did they look at each other. “What did you see?” Corin asked.
“A dragon. A black dragon. It came and was gone like that. It was cold.” He was obviously shaken.
“They move faster than our eyes can see,” Corin said. “That’s all.”
“Yes, sir.” The captain did not sound convinced. But he probably would not want to pry too deeply. There were things men preferred not to know.
Corin stood up. He thought that he smelled fire. He knew what uncontrolled fire looked like, long smears of brownish-grey along the sky, pillars of smoke seeming as substantial as stone. Nothing. The sky was clear. He went to the wall and stared down at the garden. Yesterday it would have been full of gaily dressed people. Now the only color among the different greens was the flower beds.
He longed for Tam. She was going to have to wait. It was time to go and report failure to his father.
It was dark when he finally went to his rooms. He sent one of the guards to let Tam know he was free, then shut the door and sank tiredly into a chair. Aram was sending his mother and sister off tomorrow, someplace he would not reveal. Bron was to go with them; when Corin went, he would go alone. Corin wanted Tam to go too, but he knew she would be happier at home, and safe enough with Joce. He had seen her briefly at midday, long enough to tell her what had happened, but no more.
Tam took longer than he expected to come. When she did come in, she smelled of the stables. She wore a knife in a plain leather sheath, as well as trousers and a peasant-style shirt that was too big for her. She had her hair in two girlish braids and looked about fifteen.
“What,” he said, “have you been doing?”
“Making friends with a horse. That is your father’s fault. Should I go bathe?”
The trousers showed the shape of her buttocks, hips, and legs as no skirt ever could. There was a lovely curve at the top of her thigh. “You can bathe here,” he said. “But your boots go in the hall. Sit down. Have you eaten?”
“Yes,” she said. “Riding isn’t the only thing I’ve been learning. Look.” She handed him the knife. He drew it and looked at the blade. It was light for his hand, the sort he had carried when he was a dozen years younger. The steel was good, not the very best Cylician but much better than the blades worn by most men.
“Is someone teaching you?”
She struck a pose. The position of her arm brought her breasts forward temptingly. “Joce,” she said.
“Good.” He was not sure he would have trusted any other man to do it, not when she looked like that.
She flopped into a chair. He knelt and pulled her boots off. She wiggled her feet. He resisted temptation, took the boots out into the hall, gave a few orders to the guards. There was a curtained alcove farther down the hall where Joce could sleep. When he shut the door he bolted it. Then he went to the bathroom and began to fill the marble tub.
Tam came in. There was still a scent of hay and sweat about her, but that was almost pleasant. “I don’t have anything to change into,” she said.
He stood behind her and cupped her breasts. “You can wear something of mine,” he said. He ran his hands down her sides and then back up under the shirt. He kissed her neck. “Silk, velvet, the finest royal robes.” He squeezed her nipples.
She turned around and kissed him for a very long time. “I love you,” she said. She leaned over and felt the water. “Now go away.”
Reluctantly he went out, shutting both the bathroom door and the bedroom door behind him, and looked for something to do in the sitting room. He paced. He picked up books, turned pages, put them down. He swept the hearth clear of ashes three times.
He was on the verge of opening the door and talking to the guards when he heard the bedroom door open. Her feet were soundless on the carpet. He turned.
Her hair was down, damp and shining. She wore a dark red silk robe of his. It was too long for her, the sleeves falling past her wrists and the hem trailing on the floor. She had belted it tightly, but it gapped at the top. It clung to her body at waist and hips. Her legs were shadows in the robe. Her breasts were loosely covered, undefined, tantalizing fullness. He had never seen anyone so beautiful.
She put her arms around his neck. She smelled different now, yet familiar. He puzzled over it, then realized it was the soap. She had used his, not her own. He gave silent thanks that he had not been in the habit of keeping lavender soaps and rose creams and other such womanly things in his own bathroom for his lovers that would have made him think of someone else. He put his hands on her hips.
She kissed his chin. He wished he had shaved.
“Tam,” he whispered.
“Corin.” She was so confident. He did not know where she got it, she who blushed when looked at. Her fingers were at his placket, unbuttoning his shirt.
He reached down to untie the robe, but she shook her head, so he contented himself with running his hands along the silk, feeling her body underneath. She finished with his shirt and pulled it off, kissed his collarbone. “I love your shoulders,” she said.
Then she slipped away and went to the bedroom door, leaned seductively against the frame. He turned off the glowlamps, leaving only a candle for light. He picked it up to carry into the bedroom. He had barely put it down when she was coiled around him.
“You are like a hungry cat,” he said.
“I am hungry.”
“Do as you wish,” he said. How was she so sensual, so knowing, when she had been a virgin two nights ago? “We have all the time in the world.”
“I think you need to show me what there is to do,” she murmured.
“With pleasure.”
“Isn’t that the point?” she asked, and he burst out laughing. She was grinning too. He could not remember ever having had such amusement in the midst of lovemaking. Other women had always been a little cautious, a little deferential, even in the fullness of passion. He supposed he had made them so.
“Behind you, my love,” he said, “is a most useful tool in the conjugation of the sexes. It is called a bed.”
She looked demurely at the floor. “What do you do with it?”
He started to speak, then stopped. “Tam, I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“I just spent three hours on a horse,” she said. “I don’t think you can do anything that hurts more.”
She wasn’t going to be able to walk tomorrow. “Don’t let me,” he said. “There are plenty of possibilities. Now, I believe I was about to tell you of a bed.”
“So you were.”
“Sit down.” This time when he tried to untie the robe she did not stop him.
A dog was barking, loudly and repeatedly. Corin sat up slowly, puzzled even through his drowsiness; there should be no dog here. Beside him Tam was asleep on her side, turned toward the wall. It sounded like his father’s dog. And as soon as he had that thought, he was awake and tense, fear cold in his belly. He could feel the dragons heavy in the air, approaching. He blazed the candles into light without thinking.
He dressed rapidly in riding leathers and shook Tam. “Wake up.” While she was still making her way up from sleep he looked for her clothing. It lay discarded in the bathroom. He grabbed it and went hastily back to the bedroom.
She was sitting, the blanket clutched in her hands. “
Corin?” She sounded scared. “Corin, what is it?”
“Get dressed,” he said, tossing the clothes at her. He found some loose coins and swept them into a money pouch. He never carried much, but it should be enough for her. A cloak for each of them. His gloves and knife. His sword. Her knife.
She was dressed. She fumbled with the knife belt but had it on soon enough, awkward but secure. He put his sword on while she pinned the cloak. There were people running in the halls, he could hear them. She looked small and lost and fierce.
He gave her the money. “We have to run.”
“What’s happening?”
“The dragons,” he said. “Hadon is sending them against us.” He took her hand and pulled her toward the bedroom door.
“My boots,” she said.
“They’re outside.”
They were out of the bedroom by now, a few paces from the door to the hallway. Someone pounded on it from the other side. He slid the bolt free and jerked the door open.
There were three guards and Joce. The barking dog was loud and coming closer. Tam’s boots, freshly cleaned and polished, stood in the hall. She picked them up and tightened her grip on his hand.
He ran with her to the entrance hall to the wing. Mari was already there, looking haggard, holding the baby. Bron carried her small son, who was still deeply asleep with his head against the captain’s shoulder, and the nurse had an armful of blankets. A dragon was landing on the roof, its hum insistent. It was calling him.
Tam sat on a bench to put her boots on. He saw her hands shaking. A short staircase went to the upper level of the royal apartments, and several soldiers were coming down it. Aram was behind them, one hand gripping Sika’s lead, Talia on his other side.
Corin looked at Tam. She stood up. Everything had happened so fast, already he had only snatches in his memory. He wished time would stop so he could hold this moment forever.
“You’re leaving,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What should I do?”
“Go home. Be careful.”
She flung her arms around him. He had nothing to give her but exile. He tipped her head back and kissed her. The grief was beginning in his throat.
“I love you,” he said around it. The forbidden words rose to his lips. He did not push them back. “Marry me.”
“I love you,” she said, hardly more than a whisper. “I will.”
He kissed her again. When he looked up, Mari was standing beside him with her betrothal ring in the palm of her hand. “For now,” she said.
He slid the ring on Tam’s finger. His father was next to him. Aram said, “Do you mean it, both of you?”
“Yes,” said Corin. Tam nodded. A single tear was sliding down her cheek. He could see her forcing the others back.
“This may be my last official act,” Aram said. “Clasp hands. Do you, Corin, take this woman, Tam, to be your lawful wedded wife?”
“I do.”
“Do you, Tam, take this man, Corin, to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“I do.”
“Thou art wed. Now go, Corin, get out of here, now.”
He looked at her. I will come for you, he thought. He did not say it. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. He kissed her one last time, then ran. He heard the king command the guards not to follow. Up the steps, the hallway, the next steps, the roof. The dragon.
Kelvan was standing midway between the dragon and the stairs. “My lord!” he called, his voice sharp and rich all at once.
On the dragon now, the straps, the helmet. The crouch and leap, the loud wingbeats. The surge of joy at flying, quickly tamped down. Below, the city was darkness blotched with fire, and there seemed to be dragons circling everywhere, fire falling from them in hissing rushing showers of white light and sparks. Kelvan was flying up, and west, the ground rapidly falling away, the fires diminishing to tiny glowing embers. It was getting very cold.
Kelvan twisted in his seat and made a gesture that seemed to indicate safety. Corin slumped as the driving fear rushed out of him. Below was a vast and sweeping plain of darkness, the fallen kingdom.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tam stood quiet and still as Corin raced out of sight. She had no thoughts, no feelings, not even a sense of herself. Then the moment cracked. The baby was whimpering. Go home, he had said, but she had no idea how to do that.
Aram had given the dog’s lead to Talia, who was rubbing its ears. The king was speaking to Joce. They were talking about her, Tam was certain of that, but it did not matter. She knew she should say something to Mari, but if she spoke at all she was going to completely fall apart. So she waited.
The men came to her. Aram put his hands on her shoulders. She looked numbly at him, and the intensity of his gaze pulled her into presence. She bent her head, and that other Tam said calmly, “My lord.”
“Go with Joce,” he said. “Be safe. This isn’t the end.”
Joce was beckoning. She went. Two guards followed.
It was all movement again, not running but quick paces, many glances behind. Down many short flights of stairs, through an old and heavy door, into a narrow and ill-lit corridor that seemed to go on forever. Doors opened from it on the left but not the right, which was only plain unplastered stone. Their feet were loud and echoing, except for Joce, who was quiet even in boots. She was afraid to say anything, and no one else spoke.
And then, finally, another flight of steps, up this time. They were old and crooked and an ugly mottled yellowish-grey. The door at the stairs’ top opened into a stone guardroom, several men alert within. Each of the three other walls also had a door set into it, all with new and heavy bolts and shiny hinges. The one on the left was open, more steps descending into darkness. She moved toward it.
“Not that way,” Joce said. He caught her by the hand and pulled her to the door opposite the one they had come in. She followed him out into the night.
Not darkness: there was a reddish-orange light everywhere, and thick stinging smoke. Bits of ash drifted through the air. When she looked up, she saw more fire pouring down, and she could hear the keening screams of the dragons, like a hunting hawk’s but so much louder and harsher. The hair on her body stood up, and her skin pimpled.
Joce was still pulling her. The guards had not come. She jerked her hand free and caught up to him. They were going toward the stables. He started to run as soon as she was with him, and she ran as well. He did not outpace her as they crossed a stone courtyard to the stable gate.
When they reached it he looked around. “I’ll bring out the horses,” he said. “Wait. If anything happens, yell.” It was a quick commanding voice that would have brought resentment boiling up if she had been elsewhere. As it was, she leaned against the gate, clutching it tightly, wishing she had something else to think about.
It was impossible to ignore the fire. The city would be burned to nothing within hours. The palace still stood, massive, stone, unshakable. But there were lights in many windows, and fearful voices. Her eyes were burning miserably from the smoke. The flames compelled her. She took a step forward. Cina was in there, and Jenet.
“No,” said Joce from behind her, startling her. He was leading the horses out, the ungirthed saddles sliding on their blankets. He had a water flask slung over his shoulder.
“Cina—we can’t leave her,” she said urgently.
“The king sent men,” he said. “There’s nothing you or I can do better.”
She shook her head, acknowledging the truth of it, and went to help him with the saddles. They had to get out quickly. There was no one to linger for. If Corin was out on a dragon, he was miles away. Joce helped her up, mounted himself, said, “Stay beside me or behind me. We’re making for the North Road, if we get separated keep going.” Then he put his heels to his horse.
I don’t know how to get to the North Road,
she thought.
They took the usual track from the stables to the gates of the grounds. Amazingly, two guards were still standing at their entrance post. Joce pulled up sharply, said, “The prince got out. The king was on his way. Make sure the people know that, know they’re not dead.”
They were able to gallop through the streets surrounding the palace, which were wide and well maintained. Most of the large buildings were dark, and there were few other people on the streets or outside at all.
A dragon screamed. Tam’s horse put back its ears but did not stop or rear. There was a sound like a crack, and then a hiss, and then brightness; a mansion half a block behind them had gone up in flames. Tam peered over her shoulder and saw a tree black against the orange, its leaves waving in the fire’s wind. Already the air was hotter. It frightened her; she kicked the horse forward until she was right beside Joce, and then they both went faster.
But all too soon they were in narrower and more crowded streets, thick with people fleeing in all directions like ants whose nest had been disturbed. Most were on foot, some were on horse or even in a coach. Tam tried to stay beside Joce, but several times he had to reach over and pull at the reins himself to keep them together. The horses were not panicking, but she was having difficulty controlling hers; it had been trained for a better rider. The buildings were all dark against the reddish-orange dusky sky.
They came to a street so crowded that they had to walk the horses. In the eerie glow the faces did not look human; they were masks, or paintings, or they belonged to some other kind of creature altogether. They all had the same numb expression, they all looked alike in mute disbelief. Tam supposed her own face was like that. Joce’s was not; his was hard and dangerous. She knew that he had been a spy among the Sarians, and it was easy now to see that he had probably done it very well. If Corin had not so obviously trusted him she would be fleeing from him too.