After the Dragon

by Wendy Palmer

  The LightElf female eyes him. ‘The humans say a DarkElf stays here.’ Jacoby stops again and raises an insouciant eyebrow at Kintore.

  'You know these humans,’ says Kintore, with a grim smile. ‘They cannot tell the difference.'

  Jacoby reaches her door. She stretches out a careful hand and, watching the LightElf female's back all the while, turns the doorknob.

  'The Light wants you home,’ says Jennacubbine. Her suspicious look has not faded. ‘I also, as your fiancée.'

  The slam of the door makes them both jump. Jennacubbine turns but there is no one in the hallway. ‘The wind,’ says Kintore. ‘Soon, Jennacubbine.'

  * * * *

  Mizzle was silent the next morning, but Trick saw guards everywhere as they stood in the courtyard waiting for the stablehands to bring their horses.

  Did Lithia actually think human guards would help? Perhaps she was not so sorry now to see the back of them. She stood on the steps, muffled into furs and still looking cold.

  The horses were sleek and shiny from care. Trick touched Bet on the nose, stroked Skye's mane. Soon they would be as matted and skinny as they had become on the way here. Soon the weight he and Faustus had managed to put back on would slough off, and the haircut Lithia had made him have would give way to shagginess.

  'Will you not take the guard?’ asked Lithia.

  She spoke to Fillip, who had surprised them by coming down with them that morning. He had only a single pack to show for his three years in Livania.

  'I don't need them in Livania and I can't use them in Bourchia,’ he said.

  His road was straight north, a route not troubled by bandits and soon into Bourchian territory. Mizzle's logic for declining the same offer southward went unheard and unquestioned. She took only the clothes Lithia gave her, softer and better fitting greys.

  Faustus stood beside Trick, sullen and unapologetic. Trick might have thought even less of him if he had tried to apologise for his murderous intent. Mouse leant against him on the other side, still yawning. Jarrett had disappeared again.

  Trick hoped he would leave the palace when Mizzle did, like they expected all the DarkElves to do.

  Fillip mounted and rode his horse over to the steps. He held a hand out to Lithia and she took it. Just that, the handclasp between them, and then he turned the horse and headed out the gates.

  Trick could not get away with such. Lithia held him fiercely. ‘Come visit me, Trick.'

  He could not promise it. He just hugged her back and let her go. ‘Take this,’ she said, and pushed her token, an ivory piece embossed with the Imperial seal in gold, into his hand. He slipped it into his pouch and heard it clink against the tiny ruby bottle that had held his Livanian brandy. He had forgotten that bottle, and was surprised it had survived both the Giant and the arrow.

  Mouse and Faustus got the same embrace but shorter. She did not dare with Mizzle, not even a handshake. She bowed to her, slow and formal and fully—a DarkElf habit. Perhaps she had been reading up on her strange ally.

  Mizzle returned the bow and got up on Skye.

  Trick still shared Bet with Mouse, who had refused the gift of a horse. Perhaps he had Mizzle's logic and would not be beholden, or perhaps he doubted his ability to ride one of the high-spirited Livanian horses. Trick helped him up. Faustus was last to mount, and then they rode out.

  They went fast, knowing the DarkElves were close. Lithia had provided sacks of food, which were tied to each of their saddles, and she had given Trick and Faustus a purse of gold each. Trick could not remember when he had been so honestly rich, and yet had no need to spend it, eating the food Lithia had given them and not stopping to sleep at any inn.

  They went a day and a night and another day like that, stopping only for short breaks. By the evening of that second day, Trick was so sore he almost fell out of the saddle when Mizzle finally allowed them to rest. She had a terror about her now, that set them all away from her, as if she were wrapped in mist none of them could penetrate.

  They wrapped themselves in their cloaks and slept, he and Mouse and Faustus, while Mizzle watched over them. Trick woke up first, with the weight off her gaze on him. Mizzle did not look away when he sat up and returned her stare.

  'They are so close.’ Her fingers twined themselves into her cloak. He could feel her wanting the stone.

  Did she know Jarrett was her enemy, just like the rest of the clan he had once been convinced that one DarkElf was so different from?

  He sought to distract her. ‘How did your mother touch the iron bars?'

  Her attention came full to him, and he got a jolt through his stomach. ‘We have been acclimatising ourselves.'

  He barely heard her words. She was in the same mood as when she and Trick had gone after the old couple's son, on that plain, Bourchian, Livanian and Bourchian again. He recognised it now as a sort of agitation brought on by the call of the stone amidst constant pressure. That call had to deafen her now, when she had already lapsed back to it once without ill effect except his hypocritical disapproval.

  She hunched into herself. ‘We thought if we could so adjust to iron's burning we would have an advantage against the LightElves in the next war. It was my mother's idea.'

  'Did you win?’ he asked.

  Mizzle gifted him with a rare smile. ‘The war still comes.'

  Was that was why she had left when she did, to keep out of a war with the people she hoped to join? Trick felt Mouse stir next to him but he wanted to exploit this mood of hers for his own curiosity. ‘Was it your mother's idea for you to leave the DarkElves?'

  He got her attention again. ‘She tried to teach me what was right.'

  Trick bit his tongue. How in the name of Fortune could a DarkElf even know what was right, let alone think to teach it to her daughter? Mizzle stood and went to Skye, and Trick took that as signal to shake the other two awake in the darkness.

  They went on their way again, sometime towards midnight, with the breath of the DarkElves on the backs of their necks. Trick watched Mizzle like she had watched him while he slept.

  'Do you regret it?’ he asked at last. She had set the Giant on the DarkElves and collapsed the cave on them and then at the third opportunity, that magic number, he had turned her. He thought of that firelit darkness and the terror of the roof coming down as they fled for the walls and his throat went dry. He could not regret it.

  'No,’ she said. ‘But if they catch us now I must turn the stone on them.'

  He could call the cleansing quick fire a better death than slow suffocation and crushing, except he knew Mizzle shivered on the edge of a precipice. If she destroyed them now she would destroy any part of herself that could crave the LightElves. ‘They won't catch us,’ he said. Never had a lie come harder.

  He could not have picked the moment she had started trusting him. It had happened as gradually as he had stopped thinking of escape. Now she nodded in full acceptance of his assurance. But her hands held the reins so hard her knuckles went white and Skye tossed her head in protest.

  Trick's resolve faltered and he almost told her to use the damn stone, pour her tenseness and checked rage into it, making herself a blank shell. But he couldn't believe that was better. Did she not have some other small magic at her disposal, like the way she made her swords shrink away and spring back? Even he, as a child under Finger's tutorage, had performed DarkElvish magic. It was a frame of mind, hard-won through training and self-control, and a single DarkElvish word spoken with intent. Perhaps, so tense, she could not compose herself into the patterns that would allow her words to have power.

  That was the price the DarkStone exacted, to be so easy to use and depend on and so to strip away the discipline to do what was difficult. Only the manipulation of her swords and the spark of light from her finger were so ingrained they could not slip from her.

  Thinking of it, Trick felt his mind try to fall back into the pattern Fingers had so painstakingly taught him. Grieving and angry, he had not used it since t
he DarkElf had been swept from the deck of the ship. Now Fingers presented himself as Jarrett, who Trick could not discover affection for.

  He would think he was mistaken in naming them the same person, except Fingers had trained him into a DarkElvish memory too.

  He blinked and shook himself. Fortune's eyes, he could not stop brooding. Was it so shameful he did not like as an adult someone he had loved as a child? Any adolescent could empathise.

  Faustus disturbed him. ‘Why is Fortune letting this happen? She sent me a vision so that I would help Mizzle but She isn't helping us.'

  Trick looked at him. How easy to bring the true believer to doubt, when it had taken Linnet's death to make him turn his back to his Goddess.

  'We're Lucky to still be alive, aren't we?’ he asked, with just enough insouciance to annoy his cousin again.

  'We're Her children,’ said Faustus. ‘Direct descendants of the triplet sons. It should be worth more than this.'

  Mizzle asked, ‘Who were the fathers?'

  She would not know. ‘A Dragon,’ said Faustus.

  'Triplets,’ she said. ‘Who were the other two fathers?'

  He was bewildered and Faustus mirrored his own expression. But Mouse held up his slate. Rural legend

  'Oh,’ said Trick. ‘No, Miz, more than one child doesn't mean more than one father.'

  'It is often the case in DarkElves.'

  That was not something Fingers had ever mentioned. ‘Not with humans.'

  Mizzle shrugged. Her interest had been momentary and had already passed. Faustus lapsed back into his own gloom, muttering under his breath. Trick could not tell if he was praying to Fortune or cursing Her. Perhaps She was deaf in the territory of the Moon-Goddess and it didn't matter.

  He himself did not think they had had such bad luck. Whether by Fortune or just Mizzle, they had come through largely unscathed.

  Even as he thought it, his hand crept to his side where the scar of the arrow wound that had killed him still lingered, and Faustus's gaunt face before the storm near Kitira flashed into his mind. Even Mizzle had to be carrying invisible scars. Only silent, clever Mouse was coming through unharmed, and he had had his share of grief before he had ever met them.

  That made Trick think of Linnet. He pushed it away and turned his mind to small distractions.

  * * * *

  Day after day they went, sleeping in the saddle if at all, with those glances Mizzle sent behind her putting such fear into Trick's heart that he could not even argue with Faustus when his cousin deigned to talk to him.

  At last, early one morning, the fields of Livania gave way to the great forests of Ardmore. South and east of them spread Wyvern Forest, home of the LightElves.

  The day had clouded over in that sudden way Livanian weather had, and Mizzle sent glances to the sky now as well as behind her. She had reason to fear the storm. ‘Will we make the trees?’ she asked.

  'I think so,’ he said. Fortune, but if they made the trees, maybe she would let them rest. He was sure Mouse dozed, leaning against his back.

  The rain started before they got there, and thunder rumbled, ominous and heavy. Mizzle threw her hood up as the lightning flashed. The main front was to the north and behind, maybe over the heads of their pursuers. Maybe they would be as unaware of lightning as Mizzle had been. Maybe the storm would blind and deafen them and give Mizzle time to get away.

  He hoped for it but it seemed doing so brought the storm down on them, rain pelting down so hard it hurt his bare skin, wind trying to tug him from the saddle until the only warm place on him was where Mouse rested.

  Thunder cracked again, followed hard by the flash of lightning. They rode for the shelter of the forest for their own benefit as much as Mizzle's now, who huddled under her hood, shoulders bowed in deference to the lightning.

  Lights beckoned ahead, a tiny village nested under the very eaves of the forest, glowing in the flood of water in his hair and over his face. Trick wiped it away and looked to the lights. An inn roof made a much more inviting prospect than a tree and he veered Bet towards the village. He expected Mizzle to protest but she followed him without a word.

  They rode in indecent haste through the open gates and to the inn. A boy, even younger than Mouse, came out into the rain to take the horses, and they hurried inside.

  Faustus sank shivering to the first empty table, shedding water everywhere. ‘Are we safe to stop?’ he asked, in a voice that insisted the answer was yes.

  Mizzle obliged him with a sharp nod. Trick caught a dirty look from the innkeeper who could not be pleased with puddles all over the floor. He went over and bought a round of mead and four bowls of stew in reparation.

  Only one other group was in the inn this early in the day and with the storm keeping people at home. Trick gave them a quick once over as he ate his stew. He guessed they were locals, a group of men gathered around the fire, loud and laughing at some story one of them was telling. They were safe enough to ignore, though they went silent for a moment when Mizzle slid off the hood.

  Trick was thoroughly warmed by the hot stew and the cup of mead he shared with Mouse.

  When he was done, he laid his head on the table, pillowed with his arms, and dozed. The rain on the roof drowned out Linnet, drowned out all thoughts. He heard Faustus ask Mizzle if they could hire a room here, and Mizzle tell him no. He heard the laughter of the men across the room. It meant nothing in this warm content cloud he was in.

  Then a voice, raised in merriment, pierced him to his heart. He lifted his head and stared at the group by the fire. Mouse looked up at him. Mizzle and Faustus fell silent as he stared past them, and turned to see what had so wrested him from sleep.

  He knew that voice. He looked closer and knew the face of the man who had the attention and laughter of the gaggle of local men, a face so like his own, except the hair was blonder, more Livanian, and worn long in the latest Livanian style.

  The man didn't notice Trick staring at him, but one of the other men nudged him and he turned.

  His gaze locked with Trick's, the same light brown eyes. He had to recognise his son, just as Trick recognised his father, older and alive when he should be dead. The air between them grew thick.

  Trick was tempted by his sword, so he got up and walked out into the rain.

  The Ullwyns had insisted Ben Matray had deserted his family. Trick's mother had told him they were wrong, that his father had died to save his family.

  And his memory, so flawless before then and most of the rest of his life, had given him only a dark spot where the event should be, just like the time after Linnet's death.

  That was a child's tactic, to hide what he did not want to see and listen to a mother's lies instead.

  Trick had spent months wishing he could have been like his father for Linnet, and now he knew he had. He had not died for her sake, but deserted her in her hour of need. Linnet and the newborn son he had never met.

  On the steps of the inn, his legs went out from under him and he sank down, half in the rain and not caring. He bent his head to his knees and let water run over his face and down his neck, chilling him. The siren song of the sword whispered in his ears. For the first time since he had heard it, it called for blood other than his own.

  He had his hand on the hilt and was standing to go back in when the door opened.

  He expected Mouse, or perhaps even Faustus. But Mizzle came out and shut the door again behind her.

  He stood on the steps in the rain looking up at her. ‘Of all the things for Faustus to be right about.'

  She looked past his light tone to his hand on his sword. ‘Do you wish it?’ she asked. ‘I will kill him for you.'

  She turned him, quick as that. He could not bear to see his father die at the hands of this fragile, struggling creature, and so he could not do it either.

  'Who?’ he asked, striving to feel as flippant as he sounded. ‘Faustus or my bastard of a father?'

  She got that quirk of a smile. She was about to ans
wer, when suddenly she turned as if dragged by some invisible rope. She bounded past him, giving his heart another shock, and ran down the street, splashing through mud without a care to her boots.

  He had to think that was odd, and ran after her. He heard Faustus call from behind him.

  So his cousin had not been able to bear Mizzle talking to him, and had come out. Let him follow now, into the forest.

  Mizzle's trail was clear, trampled into mud and leaving broken branches behind her as she went in great haste off the path and into a clearing. The light in the forest was eerie, a sick yellow cast back by the trees and the rain. Lightning flashed far off and impotent.

  Trick arrived in the clearing, panting and scratched. Not a bit of him was dry. He saw a woman struggling, muffled cries and weak thrashings, held against a tree by a man who tore at her clothes.

  Mizzle grabbed him by the collar and threw him backwards. He crashed head first into a tree and crumpled to the ground. Mizzle took a few steps towards him and stopped. She turned back to the woman.

  She was a LightElf. Trick only saw that as she stooped and grabbed up the sword her attacker had apparently knocked away from her. She said something in strident LightElvish.

  Mizzle did not answer, just stood still. The LightElf feinted at her with her blade, but Mizzle still did not move.

  Would she let herself die then, rather than resort to sword or stone against one of the people she hoped to join?

  He could not let her. He stepped between them.

  The LightElf, very young, he thought, gold hair and gold-blue eyes, raised the sword at him. ‘She saved you,’ he said, in Livanian.

  The sword wavered. He thought she understood him, the panic in her subsiding. But Faustus burst in on them, with a shout loud even against the thunder.

  Trick never knew which of the two Elves threw him aside. He stumbled to his knees and saw the sword flash at Mizzle again.

  It touched her. She had darted back and flung up her hand to protect herself, and the blade sliced the tips of her fingers, all the same length. Drops of blood welled up and ran like the rain, like tears.