After the Dragon

by Wendy Palmer

  A light flared, red tinged and centred in Mizzle's hand. The red light made it hard to see but Mizzle did not need it.

  'You bleed,’ she said.

  Trick coughed up a laugh. ‘I die.’ He lost his grip on Bet's saddle.

  Hitting the ground threatened his vision with black stars and sank teeth into his side and through his body. He moaned, not meaning to. Faustus and Mouse went to their knees beside him and Faustus grabbed his hand. Mizzle knelt at his other side.

  'Cousin?’ Faustus said. Trick looked up at him and past him. He looked down again at the arrow, sticking obscenely out of his side in the eerie red light. He had half-wanted something like this. Linnet had wanted it.

  He had watched that last fall of arrows out of morbid panic and never noticed the stray one hit. Maybe he truly hadn't had the chance to get out of the way. Or he had turned towards the arrow as if it was borne by Linnet with her bright child's-drawing-red hair. Pain made him forget a decision that had not been conscious. The pain and Linnet were all mixed in his head until he could not tell them apart.

  He looked up and saw Linnet sitting cross-legged at his feet, not the cold-armed creature that had held him all these months, but his wife as she had been in life, and she shook her head at him so her red hair swung. She was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes. Mizzle leant forward, blocking her from sight. He moaned again in protest and Faustus clutched at his hand harder. He could not feel the grip through the pain, jagging out from his side where the arrow buried its head.

  Dust sifted down around them, making their dark hair grey. Linnet was gone. ‘Better go through,’ he said. His mouth was full of blood.

  'Lie still, Trick,’ Faustus said, as if he thought Trick might survive.

  Trick closed his eyes and could see red, and an edge. That was the edge where Linnet had gone and he moved to follow her, never mind her shaking her head at him, never mind Faustus squeezing his hand and calling his name.

  And something shifted. The edge went away, the pain went away, and he opened his eyes to see Mizzle holding the damn DarkStone.

  'What are you doing?’ He spat twice to clear his mouth, turning his head to the side.

  Mizzle set her hand to the arrow and he tensed, terrified, now the pain was gone, that it would come back.

  'I have to push it through,’ she said. ‘It has to go through.'

  'You have to go through,’ Trick said. ‘You don't have time for this.’ He didn't want her to have time for this. He wanted Linnet. He had been close. He had seen her.

  And she had turned him away, with a smile and a shake of the head.

  Mizzle snapped the fletching from the arrow. ‘Lift him.'

  Faustus and Mouse rolled him up and Mizzle shoved hard on the arrow. It tore him inside and went through and out, all with a disorienting absence of feeling. They let him slip back into a pool of his own blood. He felt it soaking into his cloak and shirt. Mizzle could make the pain go away, but she could not save him, not from this brink.

  She could not, but did not know it—for she raised the stone again, a focus on him intense and frightening.

  'I don't want this,’ he told her. ‘You keep your gift, Elvish, I don't want it.'

  His wants had never been Mizzle's concern. She laid the stone over the wound, and he had a sensation of sound without noise, a change inside him. She took the stone away and he slipped hands under torn and grisly cloth to touch no wound where a wound should be.

  Mizzle tucked the stone away and got up without a word.

  He watched her walk to Skye. He sat up and pulled up his shirt to examine his side in her dim red light. He saw inflamed skin, raw scar, and no wound. He touched his back and found nothing there at all, no exit wound, no scar.

  Faustus and Mouse were staring at him. Now the mortal crisis had passed, he could sense hostility in Faustus's steady gaze as that touchy jealousy re-asserted itself.

  Without looking up, he said, low, ‘She doesn't like me any more than she likes you, cousin.’ Which was to say, not at all. ‘She just needs me, that's all.'

  Faustus got up and went over to Coal, following Mizzle's lead. In this, she was right, with dust sifting down and a creaking threat that suggested the rocks above them were moving.

  He levered himself to his feet, with an anxious hand from Mouse. He expected pain and had none, not even a residual twinge from the fresh scar. He went over to Bet with Mouse beside him, and the big mare laid her ears flat and circled away from his outreached hand.

  Bet, staid creature, never did that. But animals did do that, didn't they, when they encountered soulless creatures? Had that been the price Mizzle had paid to pull him back? Small sacrifice for her.

  He turned on Mizzle, standing beside Skye. ‘What have you done to me?'

  She stared unblinking.

  Faustus said, ‘You smell like blood, Trick.'

  Trick looked down. His shirt was drenched in it, it dried on his skin. Bet skittered from him for more prosaic reasons than he had suspected.

  He was embarrassed in himself and not willing to show it. He took off his cloak and his old bloody shirt and tried to rub the dried blood off his stomach.

  'No time,’ said Mizzle, and Faustus threw him a clean shirt from his own pack.

  Trick jerked it on over his head, left behind his own ragged shirt and the blood-soaked cloak, and went after Bet. Mizzle and Faustus were already leading their horses down the tunnel. They couldn't ride without grazing their heads, but Mouse at least was small enough to risk it. Trick got hold of Bet's reins and boosted Mouse up. The boy almost smacked his head into the ceiling.

  'Get your head down,’ he said, and Mouse leant forward over the saddle. It couldn't be comfortable for him, but quicker to make him ride than let him walk a child's pace through a tunnel in danger of collapsing.

  Mizzle kept that red light aglow ahead of them as they went fast down the tunnel, straight and angling downward. Trick found himself short of breath and tried not to touch the new and impossible scar.

  'It will be a time before you heal fully,’ Mizzle said, suddenly walking beside him.

  He looked at her, having discovered a limit in the DarkStone's power and a perceptiveness in Mizzle he had not suspected. He noticed then a rent in her upper sleeve, blood soaking through from a cut, gory in the red glow.

  She followed his gaze to it. ‘My mother,’ she said. ‘She was ever faster.'

  'Your mother attacked you?’ Faustus said while Trick said, ‘You brought the roof down on your mother?'

  'She knows what she raised,’ she said to both of them and walked on ahead.

  The question to ask, Trick thought, was not what mother and daughter would do to each other, but why the DarkElves would bring the mother in pursuit of the daughter. Punishment, that spoke of, and exploitation of ties.

  The darkness began to fade around them and the red of Mizzle's light leached away. They rounded a gentle curve of the tunnel and saw sunlight arcing into the tunnel in spills and needlework. They had reached the far end but a thick prickly bush blocked their way.

  The rocks groaned again. Trick hacked urgently at the barrier with dead San's sword and Faustus joined in, Mouse watching them from Bet's back.

  Mizzle stood with her back to the light, staring down the tunnel with the stone to hand.

  Finally they went free, leading the horses out into bright daylight and smooth glittering snow. Trick squinted, his eyes dazzled after the dim light of the tunnel. He saw Mizzle's eyes watering profusely as she came out. She drew her hood up and hid the DarkStone away again.

  Behind them, the tunnel collapsed, a sharp crack and echoing disaster that billowed dirt and small flying debris out over them and the snowfield and set the horses moving, milling sideways in panic.

  Trick turned to give Mizzle a sharp rebuke for letting the tunnel go too early and could not. The balance of power had shifted to her, if she had ever not held it. He could not cling to his anger at her, and suspicions slid away
and skittered around her but would not hold to her. He could follow her and nothing else.

  The snowfield, greyed with dust and peppered with small stones, sloped down sharply to a heavy green forest.

  They went down the hill into Livania.

  Chapter Six

  Livanian soldiers are all through the streets of Port Told. They have never seen a DarkElf before and Jacoby kills several before they learn to leave her alone. Kintore keeps to the inn, meeting with the king of Bourchia and avoiding Jacoby.

  He cannot avoid her forever. ‘The Emperor must be worried,’ she remarks when they pass in the hallway.

  'He should be,’ says Kintore, unguarded. ‘Bourchia wants nothing less than its independence.'

  'The king risks much to meet with you,’ says Jacoby. She leans closer.

  He does not move back, even though he stands close enough to stir her hair as he breathes. ‘I thought DarkElf females practised a more subtle espionage.'

  Jacoby shows her teeth in a vicious smile and lays a hand on his wrist. ‘Do you wish it?'

  Kintore sighs in a long gust. ‘Of course I do.'

  She blinks. ‘Your honesty disarms me.'

  'I doubt it,’ says Kintore, in his dry rueful tone.

  Jacoby's smile becomes gentler. ‘The king anticipates help. Have you promised it?'

  'No,’ says Kintore.

  'Your lying improves,’ the DarkElf says, slanting an amused glance his way.

  'I assure you, it is truth.'

  'Counting chickens, then,’ Jacoby says, and looks smug when Kintore gives her a puzzled glance. ‘A human expression.'

  'How native of you.’ Kintore shifts his weight so they stand even closer. ‘Why do you insist to speak Bourchian?'

  'Ancient lends itself to old arguments.’ Jacoby lets her hand run up his arm.

  Kintore's eyes half-close. ‘I cannot, ‘Coby,’ he says even as he sways against her. ‘Unless—’ He opens his eyes. ‘Use your glamour.'

  'Give you the excuse?'

  'I need the excuse. Otherwise, I cannot.'

  Jacoby takes her hand away.

  'Then do not,’ she says, and goes into her room.

  * * * *

  They made camp at the bottom of the slope, near an iced-over stream sheltered by the trees. Trick broke the crust on the stream and let the horses drink. They needed unsaddling and feeding but he could not wait that long to wash himself, dried blood making him itchy and sick. Mouse took the horses’ reins and Trick started off further into the forest.

  Mizzle took the horses from Mouse. ‘Stay close.'

  'I have to get clean,’ he said, half into the trees

  'Stay close.'

  Could she possibly still fear DarkElves? ‘Have you not put paid to pursuit then?'

  'Not even half,’ she said. ‘They cannot return empty-handed. They will follow.'

  But not the way the four of them had escaped. The DarkElves faced a long climb up a pass Trick had been reckless to attempt so late in winter. They had been Lucky Mouse had remembered the tunnel or been forced to tell them about it. Surely they had time now. But Mizzle knew the endurance and persistence of her own people and Trick went back to where he had already broken ice.

  He stripped off his shirt and boots. He had intended to go further but could not bring himself to do it under Mizzle's impassive stare and could not bring himself to ask for privacy either. He went in, freezing water creeping to his knees and soaking his pants. He bent over, scooped up great handfuls and sluiced himself down, chest and stomach, face and hair, shivering violently against the icy water and air on his wet skin. He washed out his mouth until he couldn't taste blood any more.

  None made him feel clean. Finally, he went to knees and soaked himself. He lay there until he was too cold to bear it anymore, and then clambered out, teeth chattering. He took one of the blankets and dried himself, standing in front of the fire Mizzle had built while he was bathing. She had left Skye to Faustus. His cousin had taken care of the horse, apparently without complaint, and now worked on Bet, with Mouse's help.

  Trick could not stop shivering. He pulled the borrowed shirt back on and wriggled his toes almost into the flames to keep his bare feet warm and dry his pants, wrapping up in the damp blanket in lieu of cloak. Mizzle got him a dry one and brought a bag of food over.

  He shared out four rations and looked up to see Mizzle naked and Faustus and Mouse open-mouthed. He had to have the same expression.

  She went into the stream and sank down as if into a warm bath, scrubbed herself over while Trick tried not to stare and Faustus and Mouse didn't even make an attempt. Trick debated the morality of letting the boy be ruined for human women and decided it was too late to make a fuss.

  Mizzle combed out her hair and soaked that down, and came out again to sit by the fire and dry herself with her cloak with never a curtesy to modesty, while Trick stared off into the forest and silently asked Fortune what he had done to deserve this.

  Finally she dressed herself and laid her cloak out to dry. Faustus and Mouse came over and sat by the fire, and they ate in silence. Mizzle had embarrassed them all to quiet and did not seek to fill the breach.

  Trick looked at her, with her hair loose and flowing. Her swords, ever present after the Giant, were gone again, shrunk down with that sharp DarkElvish word and hidden under her tunic. She bordered on humanity and it made him more nervous than her nakedness had.

  It came to him then. She must have felt as unclean as he had, to plunge into an icy stream in winter. And now she took away the trappings of her people, the braided hair, the swords, the cloak with the stone in its pocket. San's death had brought her to a decision. Could she possibly think that if the swords had not been at hand she would not have killed him? Could she atone for murder by unbraiding her hair?

  No. She could certainly, in her own view, make amends for the death of one human by saving the life of another. That must have been behind her unkind gift in the tunnel, not a thought for him after all. She acted with compassion for no compassionate reason and set aside everything that made her DarkElvish by the same logic.

  It could not help her, and she would learn it.

  Faustus spoke then, breaking a long silence. ‘Trick,’ he said.

  From the hesitancy in his voice Trick knew he was just making conversation to distract himself.

  'Tell me why you don't like Ullwyns.'

  Forcing an argument to distract himself. Trick needed his own distractions tonight, having slid closer to the edge that day, seen Linnet and come to a shaky equilibrium with the DarkElf. ‘The forced priesthood isn't enough?'

  'You should be honoured.’ Faustus was in deadly earnest. ‘Chosen as the favoured child of the Goddess.'

  'Favoured,’ said Trick, all flippancy. ‘And yet surprisingly unfortunate.'

  'If you resist her wishes, you cannot expect perfect protection.'

  He had not figured Faustus for a devotee, but then his cousin had dragged him into this journey on the basis of a visitation from Fortune. Still, it galled to hear himself blamed. ‘Taking an arrow in the gut at the Livanian border when I should be in Port Told is my fault too?’ He looked down to see his fingers tracing the scar and jerked his hand away. He had not been aware of doing it.

  Faustus turned it around. ‘You don't think yourself Lucky to have survived?'

  Trick fell silent. Mizzle was listening, pushing her hair out her face with a tilt of the head and an intense look through the fire at him. She had to know he thought it decidedly bad luck and he still did not say so aloud.

  'But you hated us long before Fortuna Chose you.’ Faustus leant forward. ‘Why don't you like us?'

  Trick looked around to see both Mizzle and Mouse waiting for an answer along with his persistent cousin. He had a mind to refuse the question just to be contrary but that would serve no purpose. ‘I was six years old, Faustie,’ he said. ‘And you made my mother marry someone else to purge the shame of her association with my father.'
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  Faustus looked down. ‘She wanted to re-marry,’ he said. ‘Your father had gone and she needed protection.'

  Gone. ‘My father died,’ he said, because he got that subtle inflection and he wasn't going to let Faustus slip it past. ‘He was killed on the road to Lsuana and when my mother got us there alone she found her own mother's house burned to the ground because the Ullwyns wanted to make sure she had nowhere else to go but them.'

  He didn't remember his father's death the way he remembered almost everything else since he was two years old. Instead, the memory was a sparse painting sketched from his mother's terse words inside of a blankness like the blackness that had descended after Linnet's death. Still, he put the force of flat conviction into his voice.

  'Patrick,’ said Faustus, on a condescending note. ‘We don't do things like that.'

  Tell that to Lorelei, his outsider grandmother, despised during her husband's life, exiled home to Livania on his death, and universally blamed for the wild streak her daughter had shown. His mother sent her money, he knew, secretly by necessity. That was the last of her spirit; everything else they had crushed out of her.

  Did Faustus hold cherished hopes of his family's nobility? ‘You know they forced an abortion on her, don't you, cousin? You know that?'

  He said it to be nasty but it was true enough. And Faustus just gave him a sly and superior look. ‘Fortuna does not allow such things.'

  Fortune expressly forbad such things because any child of an Ullwyn had the intermingled blood of a Goddess and a Dragon, no matter how thin it might have spread. Forbad it in rhetoric and threat and never took a hand to help his mother when Matriarch Predyer ordered her grandniece stolen from her pirate husband and handed over to an alley witch-woman happy to perform a blasphemous operation.

  'My mother lay bleeding to death after the Ullwyns were done with her and they told her she would survive if that was Fortune's will. Tradus told her that.'

  He finally hit home by naming Faustus's father as part of the whole sordid deal. Faustus went white and strained. ‘At least my father has never deserted us.'