The Dragon Queen

by J M Sanford

  A griffin’s heart is too noble to leave the fallen unavenged.

  Rose wasn’t the only one they’d left behind in the Flying City: there was the shapeshifter griffin Scarlet, who’d aided Amelia in her escape from Ilgrevnia’s dungeons. The griffins might have been able to fly to safety, even in the chaos of that terrible magical storm, but Amelia couldn’t know for sure…

  Somebody knocked at the door to the cabin, making Amelia jump. She doused the irritating pink fire and shouted “Go away! I’m busy!” while grabbing her spell book and laying it open at a random page.

  “Who is ever too busy for tea, Miss Amelia?” said Captain Bryn reproachfully from the other side of the door.

  “Oh! Sorry. Stupid, stop that,” she hissed, as she noticed the fire sprite had turned magenta in sympathy with her mood and her spell. “Please come in!” she called.

  The door opened just enough for Bryn to poke his head in. There was a book in Amelia’s father’s collection that filled the whole table when it was opened: one on the flora and fauna of exotic Mirendor, with beautiful painstakingly detailed gouache illustrations. Bryn always put her in mind of one particular illustration: of one of the long-legged hunting cats, with tawny fur and golden eyes, the biggest observable difference being that Bryn moved as comfortably and gracefully on two feet as on four. She’d been shy of him at first meeting, but he was one of the gentlest people she’d ever met. Amelia had the sudden odd curiosity as to whether he had sisters, thinking that he might, judging by the way he stood poised on the threshold, ready to dodge flung pillows or more dangerous missiles. Amelia had to admit that she’d thrown a thing or two in her time, when the sanctuary of her bedroom had been violated.

  Satisfied that the coast was clear, Bryn entered the cabin, bearing two tall, thin mugs that reminded Amelia of the ones Meg used on her travels. But whereas Meg made tea of dandelion, nettle, and chamomile, Sharvesh carried exotic spices filled with the powdered heat of the tropical sun, and her captain used them to mix the most delicious drinks, which scarcely resembled any tea Amelia had ever tasted before. The curls of steam enticed her at once and despite her mood, she found it hard to be cross with Bryn, who’d done nothing wrong and kept bringing her food and blankets and other comforts. “Smile, good lady,” he exhorted. “You are young and healthy, and a passenger on the best skyship to ever leave the shipyards of the Argea.”

  “Sorry,” she said again, smiling meekly. “I just thought you were Meg coming to check up on me. She didn’t send you, did she?”

  Bryn sat down, curling his tail neatly so that the tasselled end lay across his knees. “Your mother warned me you would most likely be sulking. I think you’ve had a nasty fright, so you need delicious things, and trips to beautiful places.”

  Amelia felt a twinge of guilt. Of course Meg had insisted on paying their way, in full, but what Bryn called simple hospitality was more like the attention and generosity of a good friend who has invited you to stay with him.

  She passed a hand over the top of her mug, and with a tentative sip discovered that her spell had cooled it exactly the right amount. She was definitely getting better. “It’s lovely, thank you.” She was just about to ask about the strange land he hailed from, and what family he’d left behind, but then she heard footsteps approach the cabin, and the familiar clank of plate armour. She heard Sir Percival’s voice – something about wind speed and flight times – and her mother’s answer.

  “So the City we want should arrive at the local node in three days’ time,” Meg was saying to her companion. She stopped at the open door. “The others can make their way back to Iletia from there, and we can head back to Springhaven.” She turned to Amelia. “Feel a bit better for a cup of tea, do you?”

  “Hmph. Springhaven, did you say?” Just the name of the place made Amelia long for home, for the sea breezes and solitude, for the crash of waves on rock and the cries of the gulls. The pull of the familiar was like a tide at work on her bones and her stomach. Strange to think of Springhaven with Meg there: her long-lost mother come home at last… Would she bring Sir Percival with her? Would he set aside his perpetual armour? “And will you stay around, this time?” she asked Meg. “Now there's no cursed princes to worry about?”

  Meg raised an eyebrow. “Funny, that. I was just about to ask you if you'd get out and travel a bit more, now that there's no more dragons after you.”

  “Well –” Amelia was annoyed to realise she had no sensible argument against the idea of travelling, besides the fact that she missed her father, her books, a proper room of her own. She even missed her stepmother the tiniest bit, though she'd never admit it. She just had one more thing she must do before she could return home. She’d spent so many nights memorising the spell for the snow globe perfectly, counting over and over again the skills that might aid her in her rescue mission:

  Her cat’s eye spell, so she could find her way in the dark.

  Her invisibility spell, so she could go unseen.

  Her doorway spells, so she could move about the palace freely.

  And should all else fail, her fireball spell, so she could defend herself.

  She could scarcely imagine needing anything else. She still had the White Queen’s sword – light as a feather, sharp as a razor – and she’d thought of asking Harold to teach her how to use it, but that would look suspicious, so she’d made up her mind to leave the sword behind and rely on her magic. She only needed the right moment to carry out her plan…

  Meg was looking at her oddly, as if her daughter’s mind was a page of bad handwriting she must decipher. “You’re looking a bit peaky,” she said. “Have you had breakfast yet?”

  Amelia nodded. She’d managed to force down some bread and jam before dawn, but her nerves made her almost physically sick at the thought of facing anything more. “I suppose I still feel a little worried,” she said, “about…” she glanced at the boards beneath her feet.

  “About our friend in the hold?” Meg guessed. “Don’t you worry about that: we’re just on our way to check on him.”

  ~

  Meg’s conscience hadn’t allowed her to forget about the prisoner stowed deep in the hold of the skyship, but she was no closer to deciding what she ought to do with him. She approached the dark statue of the finely dressed gentleman. One of Prince Archalthus’ men, who shortly after his capture had turned himself to stone either in self-defence or in protest, or for some other reason he hadn’t deigned to explain. Meg touched her fingertips to the glossy stone of his cheek, just long enough to check that he still felt cool to the touch; that he was not on the verge of reanimation. No sign, yet. She was nonetheless glad to hear the clanking behind her that meant Sir Percival had moved in close to protect her in case of any surprises.

  “You’re a good long way from your twin now,” she murmured to the stone figure, as she checked the lengths of sturdy chain binding him. She didn’t profess to understand exactly how the golem worked, how the script of instructions written inside him could animate the stone, why they went about in pairs. She’d seen these golem gentlemen turn to stone when injured, healing themselves back to perfection in a shimmer of dark stone, but this one she thought might be stuck. Their original plan in capturing him had hinged on the hope that he was one of a defective pair who turned to stone as one (something she gathered they weren’t designed to do) and now she suspected the twin to this one must be lying hurt somewhere, or dead. This remaining half of the pair could stand there for years, decades, probably centuries, with no need for food or water. Moss would grow on him, and lichens…

  “Have you decided yet what you have in mind for him?” asked Percival, no doubt with one gauntleted hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “Oh, this is men’s magic,” said Meg dismissively, not looking round. They could leave the stone gentleman in the middle of some remote forest, planted up to his knees in the earth, for the birds to perch on and the ivy to climb. “I wouldn’t want to play around with all that nonsense of
soul magic and scripts. We’ve got to find someone who can reverse the shrinking spell on Tallulah anyway, so better kill two birds with one stone, and hand this fancy gentleman over to a mage who can…” She tailed off guiltily. It was as if she could feel Sir Percival’s judging eyes on the back of her head. If he even had eyes. Often enough in the past she’d peered into the eye slots of his helm, only to be surer each time that no light could penetrate those shadows. Some days, she’d swear blind that it was just a man in there, same as any other. Some days, she was convinced that if you opened up the gleaming metal, you’d find nothing inside but roses and fairy dust. Meg snorted at the thought: now that was a pretty fairy tale, fit for her daughter. Still, she couldn’t say if it was simple compassion that made Percival upset with the idea of the golem’s destruction, or something more. Meg herself didn’t like the idea of handing the captive over to some Archmage clever enough to play executioner for a near-immortal stone man (for one thing, it hurt her pride as a witch to admit that this was beyond her powers) but what choice did they have? She had an idea that an Archmage who knew what he was doing could rewrite the golem’s secret instructions and turn him into something gentler. He could live out a quiet life baking bread or mending shoes. He’d be perfectly content, if that’s what his instructions told him. For the time being, though, Meg thought it best to keep a close eye on the state of the chains, and so far had checked on the golem every day of their journey.

  Meg was keeping a careful eye on Amelia, too. Quieter than usual, the girl had turned back into a stranger. So many years ago, leaving the baby Amelia behind in Springhaven had seemed very much the sensible option: Meg had set her heart on finding some way to end the legendary Queen’s Contest without giving up her life or her freedom, not to mention that of her daughter and hypothetical granddaughters. She’d been young and foolish, and thought she’d be back home within a year or two, returning triumphant to a hero’s welcome. Months had crept by as she flailed through her own maiden voyage, trying to learn what she could of the mysterious White Prince without being uncovered herself. Months had turned into years, and more than two decades had flown by before she realised that the daughter she’d left behind must be a young woman by now, a ripe and undefended target for the Prince if he should go looking for his intended bride… Finally returning to Springhaven – as a visitor, a wild adventurer who struck fear into her own daughter – had felt all wrong to Meg. It had stung to see Jonathan remarried to somebody else. She sighed, letting the jealousy go. She and Jonathan would only have made each other miserable. But leaving Amelia behind; leaving her baby to grow into a young woman in all those years which were irrevocably gone… that she regretted. She could only console herself with the thought that many years lay ahead. With the cursed prince gone, Meg could teach Amelia the good magic that belonged to hearth and home, instead of spells for battle and subterfuge. The adventure had been hard on Amelia, but they would take a leisurely journey back to Springhaven. Along the way, they’d visit some of the sights that Amelia had missed out on during her necessarily sheltered childhood, too. Meg just had to find some way to pull that girl out from under her personal black thundercloud.

  ~

  When she wasn’t busy practicing her magic, Amelia was determined not to rest entirely on Meg’s payment for their journey, so she’d taken up the chore of peeling and chopping the vegetables for a gammon stew. It was easier to cook a meal in the galley of Sharvesh than in Meg’s caravan drawn by battlesnails, and Amelia was glad to be doing something useful. She would not be the White Queen any more, and that was well enough. While she worked, she repeated that thought to herself every now and then, getting used to it. Bessie Castle would never be the Black Queen, either, and had turned back into a skinny schoolgirl in a drab grey uniform. Master Greyfell, who had been Bessie’s Black Paladin not so long ago, was once again just her teacher. Yes, he carried a sword and the scars of war, and they were on their way back to Iletia so that Bessie could resume her studies at a school for spies and assassins, but for now the two of them were quietly playing chess at the galley table. At Sharvesh’s most recent port of call, Master Greyfell had picked up a set like the one in Meg’s snail caravan, six-sided and with its own peculiar rules. Now he and Bessie had set up the board, after giving Bryn strict instructions to fly as level as he could – unlike Meg’s chess set, these pieces had no pins to hold them into the board while the vessel moved.

  Useful as it may be, chopping onions is no fun. At home Amelia would have kept the noxious fumes at bay by singing the Onion Song at the top of her voice, a clever trick that her stepmother had taught her years ago, but she would rather suffer the sting of the onions than the self-consciousness that came of singing where other people might hear. Mumbling the Onion Song half-heartedly under her breath, she soon had to step back and wipe her watering eyes on her sleeve, and when Meg chose that moment to appear at the door, Amelia glowered at her from behind a haze of onion tears. Stop following me, she thought, fiercely. Let me work in peace. She didn’t say it, though. “Why don’t you teach me a spell for chopping vegetables, since you’re here,” she said instead.

  Meg laughed. “Not a chance, my girl. What a waste of magic, to use it on onions.”

  “And potatoes. And carrots,” said Amelia, aware she wasn’t convincing Meg at all. Stubborn old witch. She’d taught Amelia spells to warm a cup of tea back to boiling, or freeze it to ice, and how was that any less frivolous than taking some of the work out of cooking dinner?

  “Not worth the bother,” said Meg, glancing at the array of vegetables needed for making a meal for six. “I can see I’d better leave you to it.” She spoke briefly to Master Greyfell, then disappeared again.

  Once Amelia had got dinner simmering, she couldn’t help but worry over the details of her rescue plan. She would set out that night, while everybody else was asleep…

  At the table, Master Greyfell swept the chessboard clear and pulled out a bag of extra pieces, emptying it out with a clatter. “Miss Lamb,” he spoke sharply, beckoning Amelia to join them. “Are you familiar with the rules of the game?”

  Amelia caught his fierce steel-blue eyes and quickly looked away. Mutely she nodded.

  “Good. Take a seat, if you will.” The rough-cut extra pieces were painted red, and he began setting out three miniature armies of wooden pieces – white, red and black – on the hexagonal playing field. “I’d like to show Miss Castle an ancient variation on the game, for which we will require a third player. As the White Queen, would you follow tradition and take the white side? And Miss Castle, the black?”

  The game began.

  A lot of the moves Amelia had used to good effect against Meg turned out to be useless with three armies crowding the board, or with essential pieces falling to the third player whenever she took her attention off of them. She hadn’t expected Master Greyfell to go easy on her – after all, Meg never had in their early games of chess – and it wasn’t long before he’d won the first game.

  “Not fair!” Bessie cried as he knocked down her black queen, “You’ve played with three sides before, and we haven’t.” She’d been putting up a good fight, making something of a recovery since Amelia’s white army had been obliterated, but it hadn’t been enough.

  “Of course,” said Master Greyfell. “I expect you to make a better showing of yourself in a second game.”

  Bessie wasted no time in setting up the board again. She’d been subdued lately, but the game was bringing her back to herself. As they played, she was constantly frowning or making little growls of irritation, deliberating over each move as if it the game had become a matter of life and death.

  Amelia tried her best, but in trying to watch both of her opponents simultaneously, she inevitably made a careless move, placing her white warship right in the path of Bessie’s black mage. “Oh no!” she whispered, her hand flying to her mouth. She’d already lost her own white mage, and to lose the warship as well would cripple her side… But, ignoring Ameli
a’s obvious mistake, Bessie marched one of her soldiers on one of Master Greyfell’s red pieces instead. What’s more, she left a good opening for Amelia to attack the red side, and in case the opportunity wasn’t clear enough, she turned to raise her eyebrows at Amelia. “It’s a bit like Ilgrevnia, don’t you think?” Her eyes were almost as black as those of a golem, but they sparkled impishly.

  Amelia supposed it was a bit like Ilgrevnia, where she and Bessie had worked together to escape the cursed prince’s dungeon, but if she knew Bessie then this could still be a trap…

  Between them, Amelia and Bessie decimated Greyfell’s red army, until his defeat was all but assured. While he considered how he might save himself from this two-pronged attack, the door opened, cold wind lifting stray hairs from Amelia’s neck and temple, and making her shiver. She squinted up at the figure in the doorway, the bright wintry sunlight glinting off plate armour.

  “Has anybody seen those books?” Percival called. “The ones that Amelia brought back from Ilgrevnia?”

  Amelia kept quiet, fiddling with the curling designs on the arm of her chair. She would have mistaken it for carving if she hadn’t known better, but she could see well enough that it grew out of the grain of the wood, and she inspected it closely while silence drew out in answer to Percival’s question. She knew exactly where the books were. After she’d copied out the spell she needed, she’d hidden the books and the satchel. For the time being, it suited her to have Percival and Master Greyfell each suspecting that the other had it, for although she wouldn’t need the book any more, she still needed the snow globe that the griffins had packed along with it.

  “Greyfell?” said Percival, “They can’t have disappeared into thin air.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Master Greyfell. “Given their source.”