“The arena?” Cranberry asked. She shoved away a cow that was snuffling at her boots.
“This dragon queen likes to watch fights,” he said. “Mostly between dragons, but sometimes she sends humans out there, too.”
“How do you know?” Leaf asked.
“Yeah, if you’ve been here long enough to figure that out, why aren’t you dead?” Rowan crossed her arms and arched an eyebrow at him.
He chuckled unpleasantly. “I’ve been here five days. On day two, they split up the humans — three for the kitchen, three for the arena, far as we could tell. We haven’t seen the first three since, and I’m the only one that survived the arena.”
“By fighting a dragon?” Leaf asked.
“Ha! No, by lying down and playing dead until they dragged me out again,” he said with a snort. “Not a great trick, though. The other guy who tried it got trampled in the action and wound up actually dead.”
“Well, you’re good at horror stories, I’ll give you that,” Rowan said.
“Name’s Cardinal,” he offered. “But don’t get attached.”
“You can get attached to us,” Cranberry said defiantly. “We’re not going to die.”
Cardinal shrugged as if it wasn’t worth proving her wrong, since the world was about to do that pretty fast.
“Can we climb up there?” Rowan asked Cranberry, pointing at the grate overhead. “Or throw you up there?”
Leaf and Cranberry could toss each other pretty high, but the trapdoor was as far away as three dragons stacked on top of one another. They tried anyway, and they tried putting Cranberry on Rowan’s shoulders and Leaf on the very top, and they tried vaulting off cows, despite the cows’ objections, but nothing got them anywhere close.
Dragons kept stomping by overhead, rattling the bars of the grate as they walked over it. A long time after Leaf woke up, a dragon stopped to throw some food down through the trapdoor, but the mad scramble to get to it looked almost as deadly as the dragons themselves, so Leaf stayed against the wall and waited it out.
Another long time later, a tangerine-colored dragon opened the trapdoor and swooped down, dropping a bleating sheep and another deer into the muddle of animals before swooping out again.
“How did the dragons catch you?” Leaf asked Cardinal. “You’re not from Talisman, and I thought there wasn’t another human village anywhere near the palace.”
“Lots of folks wander without villages after theirs were burned,” Cardinal pointed out. “And the dragons can go a lot farther afield than your town — I met one person in here who lived in a village far down the coast. And then, of course, there are the idiots who show up here trying to steal treasure.”
Rowan and Cranberry exchanged a guilty look.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Cardinal said with a snort. He nodded at the man who slept on cows, who had turned out to be a very morbid, morose fellow named Arbutus. “That was our plan, too. I bet the dragons think it’s real funny how we just walk up and ask to be eaten.”
“I’m not here for treasure,” Leaf said fiercely. “I’m here to slay a dragon.”
Cardinal laughed. “Well, that’s even stupider,” he said. “But I guess if you end up in the arena, you’ll get a chance to try. Should be great entertainment.”
A chance to try. A chance. That was what Leaf needed.
“If I did win in the arena,” Leaf asked, “would they let us go?”
Cardinal squinted at him. “No. They would eat you. They’re drag-ons,” he said slowly. “You can’t reason with them or bargain with them. They’re giant mindless hungry monsters.”
That’s what Leaf had thought, but he was having trouble fitting together “mindless monster” with arena sports, elaborate castles, carefully drawn blueprints, and feast planning.
He could easily believe, however, that the dragons would never let them go. They’d thrown all the humans in with their other prey. No matter how much they played with them first, eventually the dragons were planning to eat them all.
He was not going to die without taking down a dragon first.
That’s right, imaginary Wren said cheerfully. I must be AVENGED! With VIOLENCE!
But how? he asked her. Where are they vulnerable?
In their stupid FACES, she guessed. Imaginary Wren still often talked like the seven-year-old he remembered.
She might be right, though, he thought. The mouth, perhaps. The eyes. Maybe their wings.
That made sense, but it only made the task more daunting. Dragon faces weren’t exactly at an easily stabbable level.
Leaf brooded about the challenge for days. Far above the trapdoor and the grate, they could see a window and the clear blue sky beyond, as it turned to night and back again. Leaf wished he had spent more time climbing to high places to watch the sunrise with Wren — it had been one of her favorite things to do, but he’d usually preferred to sleep through it.
Dragons came periodically to remove or add more prey and to throw food at them. They didn’t seem entirely clear on what all the different kinds of animals might eat, so there was a lot of raw fish and bundles of grass.
On the fourth day, the dragons took the guy who’d been whimpering when Leaf woke up, which was a little bit of a relief because he’d had screaming nightmares every time he’d fallen asleep. He’d refused to speak to anyone, so they didn’t know his name or where he’d come from or why he was there. Cardinal couldn’t guess whether he’d gone to the arena or the kitchen.
What if Cranberry threw me at a dragon? Leaf wondered. Would that get him high enough to stab it in the eye? But he’d probably be in the arena alone. He presented the problem to the others.
“Could you climb up a dragon’s leg to get to its head?” Cranberry asked.
“It would have to be either asleep or not very aggressive,” Rowan pointed out.
“I’m not climbing any dragons,” Thyme said. “I’m running in the opposite direction as fast as I can.”
“They like that,” Cardinal interjected. “It’s much more fun for them to chase their prey.”
“You don’t know that,” Rowan snapped. “You’re thinking of cats.”
He shrugged, unfazed. “Probably true of dragons, too, though.”
“Are we sure we can’t talk to them?” Thyme asked. “Maybe charm them into letting us go?”
That made Cardinal laugh for a very long time.
Finally, on the fifth night, the dragons came.
The sky through the distant window was lined with a sunset-red glow turning to purple dusk above. It had been a busy day overhead, full of dragons darting back and forth, roaring, crashing pots and pans, more roaring, the sound of things falling, and the smell of meat burning. Leaf wasn’t sure what was happening, but all the dragons in earshot seemed to be having a meltdown about it.
Three dragons threw open the trapdoor and descended into the pit. Leaf scrambled to his feet and tried to look fierce and interesting enough for the arena. Pick me! I’ll give you a memorable fight! Hand me a sword and point me at a dragon!
The biggest of the three dragons was crimson red, the color of fresh blood, with a slash across her face that had taken out one of her eyes. A thin gold chain was wound around her horns and neck, which made Leaf guess that she was one of the dragons in charge, at least of the kitchens or food supply or something. She snarled at the other two, jabbing her claw at the panicking mob of animals below.
One of the others, a burnt-orange dragon with a few missing claws, swooped down and seized a sheep, carrying it straight out the trapdoor. The last dragon, darker red with yellow eyes, grabbed one of the deer and flew away with it.
Was that it? Leaf wondered. Just dinner for the queen?
Then the dragons came back for a goat and the beaver, then again for a fox and the yowling bobcat. They came back again and again, until almost all the animals were gone.
“Told you,” Cardinal said, slouching against the wall. “Saving us for a feast. Maybe it’s her birthday.” H
e snickered.
“Yeah, right,” said his partner glumly. “Dragons who know their own birthdays. Ha.” Arbutus was long and angular and wore his dark hair in a waist-length ponytail. He didn’t talk very much; he seemed resigned to their fate as dragon food. Because he spent so much time sleeping on top of cows, he smelled even worse than any of the other humans.
“Maybe she has guests,” Rowan said. “I saw a dragon fly by the window earlier who was a different color than the others.”
“Sort of a pale yellow,” Thyme said. “I saw it, too.”
“Could be a sand dragon,” Rowan said to Leaf.
Like the one the Dragonslayer killed. I wonder if they’re easier to stab.
Oooo, let’s find out! Wren suggested with great enthusiasm. Let’s try stabbing ALL the dragons and then make a CHART of which ones are the squishiest and which ones go “CLANG OUCH GROWL” and then eat you.
Leaf glanced up at the one-eyed red dragon who was still hovering overhead. He was pretty sure they’d been picking out dinner — prey for the feast, as Cardinal had guessed. It seemed unlikely that the dragons were planning to watch a fox and a bobcat fight each other in the arena in the dark. So maybe they weren’t taking anyone for the arena today. And with only six humans left, maybe they weren’t taking any of them for the feast either. Maybe they’d all get to be in the arena tomorrow.
The carrier dragons returned. The one in charge barked something at them and pointed at Thyme. Before anyone could move, the orange dragon soared down, scooped him up, and flew away, as businesslike as it had been with the sheep.
“THYME!” Cranberry shouted. “No! Thyme! Hey, give him back! GIVE HIM BACK!”
Leaf was so stunned he couldn’t even call after his friend. He stared at the spot where Thyme had been a minute ago.
He can’t be gone.
Thyme can’t end up as a side dish at a dragon buffet. I came here to save people — not to lose more.
The next growl from above didn’t break through his daze. It wasn’t until Rowan shrieked his name and Leaf felt claws closing around him that he realized the one-eyed dragon had spoken again.
Choosing one more human for the feast.
Choosing him.
The main problem with finding the treasure Ivy’s father had stolen from the dragons was that apparently nobody had seen even a fraction of it in Ivy’s lifetime.
They figured this out slowly. Violet approached each of the merchants in Valor and asked, as casually as Violet could (not very), whether the Dragonslayer usually paid in gold, or precious jewels, or what.
Each of them chuckled, or looked nervous, or waved her away, but the general gist of their answers seemed to be: “The Dragonslayer doesn’t have to pay for every item like a lowly villager! He’s the lord of Valor! He has as much money as a dragon queen! We know his credit is good, ha ha!”
“So, wait,” Violet would say, “when did he last pay you?”
And then there would be mumbling, and more nervous looks, and soon she’d be shooed out of the shop without much more information.
There did seem to be an informal system of favors in place, Violet pointed out. If, for instance, the Dragonslayer decided on a tailor whose clothes he liked, he’d spread the word, and soon that would be the most popular tailor in Valor. Or if one candlemaker made a special Dragonslayer scent, she was likely to find herself upgraded to one of the biggest caves in the marketplace.
“As far as I can tell, he pays with power and influence instead of with money,” Violet explained.
“Huh,” Ivy said. “So … where is his money? What does he do with it, if he’s not using it to buy things?”
“Maybe he piles it up in a cave and rolls in it,” Daffodil suggested. “Not that that’s what I would do with a giant mountain of gold coins or anything.”
Ivy had been hoping to catch a glimpse of the gold the next time her father had to buy something big, but apparently nothing was too big for the Dragonslayer to buy on credit from one of his worshippers.
While Violet interrogated merchants, Daffodil was sent to talk to her grandmother, the oldest inhabitant of Valor.
That did not go well.
“She wanted to know where my yellow ribbons were,” Daffodil reported with indignation. “She said my uniform is boring and does nothing for my complexion and she told me to sit still, like, eight hundred thousand times and why was I even interested in the dragon attacks and of course she hasn’t seen the Dragonslayer’s treasure, how rude do I think she is, except of course when he first rode back from the desert and announced his heroic deeds in the town square.”
“That!” Violet asked. “Did you ask more about that?”
“I TRIED,” Daffodil said. “She said it was very exciting, bells ringing and everyone admiring the tail barb and cheering. And then WHOOSH and BOOM and ROAR and CRASH and everything was on fire, and Aunt Petal managed to get Grandma into the escape tunnels, and by the way have I heard about how Aunt Petal was the very best of Grandma’s children and no one else will ever measure up?”
“She did not say that,” Ivy objected.
“She absolutely did,” Daffodil said. “With Mother sitting right there! I swear, Aunt Petal sounds as dreadful as Daisy sometimes. Anyway, then I couldn’t get Grandma back to the treasure no matter what I tried, plus it was getting very boring, so I left.”
“Well,” Violet said sarcastically. “Good effort.”
“Thank you,” Daffodil said, ignoring her.
Ivy’s mission, of course, was to search the Dragonslayer’s home. She was often left alone, so finding a time to do it wasn’t difficult. She started with her parents’ room, then her dad’s office, then the dining cave where he hosted council meetings and parties. She reached into every nook and cranny and ledge and crack in every wall of the caves. She ran her hands along every fiber of their hammocks, looking for hidden lumps; she riffled through each book on the shelves. She took everything out of the cabinets and looked for secret compartments.
It was really odd and uncomfortable, trying to find her dad’s secrets this way. It felt like she’d been colored over with a drawing of a different Ivy — a braver but sneakier Ivy, with a different father, who couldn’t be trusted in any way. She could remember the harmless, charming dad she used to think she had, but now she could only see the shadows around him, the ghosts he ignored, the smile that said he didn’t care or think he’d done anything wrong.
Her heart pounded as she searched. If he caught her, what would she say? How would she calm him down? Would she be able to lie, or was he such a master liar that he’d see right through her?
She waited for the times when she knew they’d be gone for a while, and then she looked everywhere. They owned a lot of elegant carvings and small jewelry and gold leaf–painted vases, but those had all been made by human hands. There wasn’t a speck of dragon treasure to be found.
“That is bonkers,” Daffodil said from her perch in Violet’s hammock. They were meeting in Violet’s cave again, because Daffodil had recently had a new nightmare about the dragon tail barb — possibly prompted by the story of the dragon attack on the old village — and didn’t want to go anywhere near it. Violet also didn’t trust Ivy’s mother, and at this point Ivy wasn’t sure she did either. Violet’s dads were always at meetings or trials or arbitrations, so this seemed like the safest place to talk without being overheard.
“Heath must be really good at hiding things if you really couldn’t find anything,” Violet agreed.
“Or it’s not in our cave at all,” Ivy said. “Maybe he was worried someone would try to steal it from him, so he keeps it somewhere else.”
“But where would it be more safe?” Daffodil asked. “Everywhere else in Valor is public space — I’d think it would be harder to protect anywhere outside his own cave.”
They were all quiet for a moment. Violet was lying flat on the floor in her thinking position. Ivy was at Violet’s desk, trying to draw the ice dragon they’d see
n. All the spikes made it extra hard, but that helped her mind focus instead of rattling around in circles. Was there anywhere else her dad went and nobody else did?
“Oh!” she cried, dropping her quill. “Of course! Where is my brain? You guys! The old village!”
Violet sat up and Daffodil nearly fell out of the hammock.
“That’s probably why he made that law that no one else can go there!” Ivy rushed on. “Maybe Pine got too close to wherever he’s hidden it. Oh, oh, and that time I saw Dad leaving with a bag hidden under his shirt — maybe he was going to get some of the treasure. I bet that’s it! The treasure is hidden in the old village!”
“That’s brilliant,” Violet said, grinning. “You’re brilliant, Ivy.”
“I’m really not,” Ivy said. “I should have thought of that way sooner.”
“So let’s go get it!” Daffodil said. “Let’s go right now!”
“We can’t.” Ivy buried her hands in her hair. “I mean — we can’t. First of all, we don’t know where the village is. Secondly, there’s no way we’ll be allowed to leave Valor on our own — even our Wingwatcher friends don’t think we’re ready for that. And most of all, it’s so forbidden. I don’t think Dad would banish me, but he might banish you two, and I — that would — it would be the worst thing to ever happen.”
She couldn’t imagine life without Violet and Daffodil. She couldn’t imagine watching them get banished, knowing it was her fault, and she couldn’t imagine ever forgiving her father if he did that.
“I can solve all those problems,” Violet said. “Foxglove will take us there, and Squirrel will make sure no one catches us.”
“Violet!” Ivy threw a ball of paper at her. “Then Foxglove and Squirrel could be banished, too!”
“Well, that’s my five favorite people,” Violet said, “so if we’re all banished together, that’s fine by me.”
“Ooh, let’s get Forest banished, too, then,” Daffodil said.
“Daffodil, GROSS,” Violet said. “No. I forbid you to have a crush on FOREST of ALL PEOPLE.”
Dragonslayer Page 17