After the Dragon

by Wendy Palmer

  Mizzle tilted her head, watching Lanerol.

  The half-Elf did not fail her. ‘Some might say the same about my mother and her human husband.'

  The LightElf looked abashed. ‘I did not mean, sire—'

  'I know what you meant, Qualen.’ Lanerol turned back to Mizzle. ‘I am prepared to consider whether you should be allowed into Wyvern to present your case to the Light.'

  'Sire,’ said Qualen. ‘That such a thing should even be considered—'

  Lanerol asked, ‘Are you willing to violate the LightElves’ treaty with King Rouen and Ardmore?'

  A murmur of voices rose up, and Qualen replied through gritted teeth. ‘No, sire. But the Council should be allowed—'

  'Then you will abide by my decision in this matter.'

  'Sire,’ said Qualen, bowing, face flushed the palest rose.

  Trick relaxed a little then, and shot a smirk at the LightElf. That brought Lanerol's attention down on him.

  'And are you her lover?’ the council president asked.

  Trick kept his mask in place while Sparrow winced beside him. ‘No.'

  Lanerol looked him over with heavy-lidded eyes. ‘You want to be?'

  Trick folded his arms. ‘I'm not under her glamour, if that's what you're asking.'

  'It wasn't, quite.'

  Trick saw Sparrow flinch again out of the corner of his eye and knew this was not the way Lanerol usually acted. Mizzle flicked—incitement—at him, by which she surely meant provocation and he signalled back an emphatic—yes—without looking at her or her hands.

  Lanerol did not seem to notice. ‘Who are you, boy?'

  'Trick.’ He stopped. ‘Ullwyn.’ It stuck in his throat and tried to choke him but he got it out.

  Mizzle shot him a fast look and Lanerol raised an eyebrow. ‘Ullwyn?'

  He looked nothing like an Ullwyn and Lanerol had to think he was lying. Trick never thought he would search his pockets for proof of that.

  He came up with Lithia's chit instead and offered that to Lanerol. ‘And she has the support of Tal Lithium.'

  Lanerol took the gold and ivory piece and examined it. ‘We had heard a DarkElf was aiding her. We assumed it was the fingerless one.'

  So Jarrett had his reputation even here. Trick wondered if it was good or bad. Lanerol's inflection gave no clue.

  Lanerol tossed the chit back and looked sharply back to Mizzle. ‘The allure coming off you,’ he said, with a shake of his head. ‘You hardly need glamour, do you?'

  The half-Elf had not been diverted for a moment. Mizzle tilted her head, the light shining off the swords in her hair, and stayed silent.

  Trick was moved to defend her. ‘She can't help that. And LightElves have allure just as much as DarkElves do.’ It was the glamour that gave the DarkElf females the edge in all encounters, when the allure played more to human weakness.

  He had almost forgotten their audience.

  Qualen snorted, an ungracious sound from such an elegant creature. ‘We'll see how she fairs against the Light, another female.'

  He reminded Trick a little of Rissun, and the human came off favourably.

  Lanerol ignored them both. ‘The boy is covered in it. I can see it in his eyes.’ Trick felt himself flush before he realised the council leader meant Mouse. ‘Even Sparrow and Brieti here have been touched.'

  Trick was glad Faustus was not here to be judged, and dreaded the moment Lanerol's gaze fell on him.

  But Lanerol said, ‘This one is touched but lightly. Just enough for what comes after.'

  Trick tried not to understand what he meant.

  Qualen broke in. ‘And if she is so strong in it, sire, can you call yourself unaffected?'

  A smile touched Lanerol's lips and made him look more human. There lay Qualen's fears. He nodded at Qualen and spoke to Mizzle. ‘Can you set the glamour on him?'

  Qualen took a step away and the Rangers started up a shocked murmur.

  Trick was dismayed to see the arrows come back to bear on her. Lanerol was not only trying to provoke the DarkElf, it seemed.

  Mizzle did not flicker. ‘I am not strong enough to so subvert a LightElf.'

  Lanerol raised an eyebrow while Trick chafed at her honesty. She was weak indeed, when glamour was the DarkElf females’ main weapon, against their own men and against the LightElves.

  'Your power lies against humans, is that it?'

  'Yes,’ she said. Trick suspected then that the DarkStone lay behind all her allure and mind-numbing glamour that she turned on him, on Yuri, on other humans.

  Lanerol directed his attention around the room and the murmuring died. ‘I have a task for you,’ he said into that silence. ‘If you do this, I will grant you permission to go to Wyvern.'

  It was outcry, then. Many of the LightElf Rangers attending the council session leapt to their feet and came forward with swords bared. Some of the humans followed suit. Qualen rushed at Mizzle with his sword flashing and she swung away from him, the tiny swords glittering in her hair a mute testimony to what she might have done.

  Trick stepped in front of the furious LightElf, daring the blade.

  Mizzle's cold hand landed on his shoulder and she pulled him away and went backwards with him towards Lanerol's table.

  'He is murchuri to me,’ she said. ‘You may not touch him.'

  That was a LightElf word and he didn't recognise it. Qualen faltered, because plainly he did.

  Lanerol said, ‘You will all be calm.'

  Trick had a sense of him now. ‘Don't want her blood on your own hands, LightElf?'

  Lanerol shot him a superior look and banged on the table again. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You too, Qualen.’ He looked to Trick again and then around at the LightElves. ‘If she is harmed, the culprit will be arrested.'

  Trick didn't quite believe him but Mizzle nudged his shoulder and he had to back down and pretend to be calm.

  Lanerol stopped glaring at the room and turned back to Mizzle. ‘Do you agree?'

  'Tell her what the task is first.’ Trick did not think Mizzle was a trusting fool, but she could surprise him. Her slight smile warned him she knew what he was doing.

  'We need you to rescue you a damsel in distress.'

  Trick knew what he meant. Lanerol was as bad as Fillip for turning a situation to his own advantage. ‘That's an impossible task.'

  'Trick,’ hissed Sparrow.

  'You tried to take Shier back from Moraine,’ said Trick. ‘If the full force of the Rangers couldn't do it, how can you fairly ask us to try?'

  'The task is not being given to you, boy,’ said Lanerol. ‘You're not the one who wants to join the LightElves.'

  Mizzle stood perfectly balanced and he thought he saw her hands twitch towards the deadly tiny swords glinting in her hair. Lanerol flirted with disaster provoking both her and his own people.

  'If you show me where this Moraine is,’ she said, ‘I will bring Rouen's daughter back.'

  Another murmur went through their audience. Trick had a sudden flash of memory, of himself, clasping his hands together so he would not throttle Faustus.

  That was where Mizzle was, now, agreeing to a foolish proposition because to argue would take her past the boundaries of her control.

  He blinked and Mouse held his slate in front of his eyes.

  He read, I must speak to King Rouen.

  Mouse, Trick remembered, had a message. He wavered, unwilling to push an issue he could not see as important, and Mouse went towards Lanerol with his slate held high. Trick pulled him back. ‘He wants to see King Rouen.'

  Something changed in Lanerol's eyes. ‘He can't.'

  Mouse pulled a dirty, torn, but sealed letter from his tunic and held it out to Lanerol in mute appeal, but when the half-Elf tried to take it, he darted back.

  'Give it to me,’ said Lanerol. ‘I'll take it to him.'

  Mouse looked to Mizzle but she gave him nothing so he glanced at Trick.

  Trick did not trust Lanerol or his motives but he wanted
this to end. He nodded and the boy handed the letter over.

  Lanerol tucked it away. ‘Sparrow, take them to the guest quarters and get them some food. Do it personally.'

  They went from the hall.

  Sparrow sagged as the doors shut behind them and Trick had to take a couple of breaths. He had not realised how oppressive the atmosphere had been until the weight of all the hostile gazes was lifted.

  Sparrow led them fast and in silence up a flight of stairs and along a hallway. He stopped at the first door and opened it. ‘Is this suitable, Mizzle?'

  She took a glance, nodded and went in.

  Trick watched her take the swords from her hair and hide them in her clothes before she closed the door.

  Sparrow moved Trick and Mouse to the door across the hallway. ‘I'll get food. Maybe you should keep the door locked.'

  He was already going back to the hallway, worried and distracted. Trick called him back anyway. ‘What does that word, murchuri, mean?'

  He took it for granted Sparrow had to know a few words of LightElvish, just like a few DarkElvish words had slipped into Bourchian.

  Sparrow shrugged. ‘Not sure. Something like obligation, or perhaps responsibility.’ He turned and kept going.

  That was as Trick had thought. He stood obliged to Mizzle because she had saved his life from the arrowstrike. Therefore she protected him as long as his debt remained unpaid—had he not done enough for her?—not because of any soft or companionable feeling.

  It hurt him more than he thought it would. He had not known how warm her shield made him, even after that moment by the river when he had shaken off her infectious allure. He sat on the bed and Mouse perched on the chair opposite him, watching him.

  The boy looked concerned.

  'He'll take it to Rouen, Mouse,’ Trick told him.

  Mouse just shook his head. Trick realised the boy was worried for him and not his own message, and made an effort to get his mask of bored neutrality back in place.

  Mouse was not fooled, and sat with downcast eyes.

  Trick had to smile then. The boy was a fussing hen, worse than his mother.

  He sat up. He had forgotten his mother was at the Ullwyn Manor outside of Kiara Valley. Faustus's angry accusation, that he didn't care about her, came back to him; it brought in the same instant a kind of shame that he had just cursed Mizzle for her own lack of compassion.

  She had already proved herself all kindness at the oddest of moments. He stood accused and had nothing to defend himself with.

  Trick got up and walked out of the room, and back down the hallway. Mouse watched him go but didn't try to follow.

  The courtyard was crowded as Rangers returned from the forest and stood in clumps to hear that Lanerol had gone insane and a DarkElf lodged in the guest quarters.

  He went as if he was allowed to and no one tried to stop him.

  That brazenness got him out the gate, on foot because he didn't quite dare the stables and a stolen horse. The manor was not far out of town, set in rolling parklands.

  When he reached the manor, he was tired and hungry and sweating, and regretting his own hastiness. He slipped through the ornate gates and behind the trees lining the sweeping driveway.

  All the Ullwyn manors, scattered in Bourchia and Livania, and this one lonely outpost in Ardmore, were modelled exactly on the original Port Told mansion.

  Trick walked in the shelter of the trees down the east side. His mother had her bedroom on this edge of the mansion in Port Told and she had visited here often before her marriage. He guessed they would assign the same bedroom to her. He risked it.

  Trick climbed the wall, clinging to the vines and scrambling for footholds in the rough wall. He was out of breath by the time he got the window opened and stepped into the room, hidden behind heavy drapes.

  He peered past the cloth into the room.

  It was dim, with only a big bed, an armchair and a dresser. Trick thought he had made a mistake and went soft-footed towards the door before he realised the bed was occupied. His mother slept there, her dark hair a splash of colour on the pillows. Her face was so deadly pale and her body so slight he hadn't even seen her against the snowy pillows and linen.

  He forgot his worry about being discovered and sat in the armchair.

  She was always ill, he told himself that. But this was different. She wasn't always this ill, and she wasn't left alone to sleep in a dark room, to waste away.

  After a few minutes, she stirred and opened her eyes as if she had felt his gaze. Her dark blue eyes looked almost black in her white face and in the bad light.

  'Ben?’ she said, and bid fair to break his heart.

  'It's Trick, Mother,’ he said.

  She blinked once and twice, and raised her arms to embrace him.

  It had been half in his mind to demand if she had known that his father was still alive, to demand if she lied to her six-year-old son, taking advantage of the one memory he had not held on to. He couldn't do it when he saw her quiet pleasure and felt the bones in her arms as she hugged him.

  She dropped back to the bed, letting go off him as if she had simply lost her strength. Trick brushed the hair from her forehead. She was dying. He believed that now.

  'Faustus is here,’ she said, her voice low. He wanted to think she sounded so weak because she too did not want him to get caught while he visited her. Faustus's safety barely touched him, just as his disappearance hadn't.

  Her eyes slipped closed, and he had a moment of pure panic. But she said, ‘Will you bring your wife to see me, Trick?'

  Last time he had risked coming to see her, travelling up from Carolide in Livania into Port Told, Linnet had been alive, pregnant, and begging not to be left alone. Or perhaps by the time he sat in Port Told telling his mother he was married and about to be a father, his wife and son were already dead at the hands of the Cult.

  He had gone to his mother, when Linnet asked him not to, because he had known something was wrong, feeling it deep down inside. So he had gone, and found her no more ill than usual, and never realised until he got back to Carolide that that feeling of wrongness came from much closer to home. The Dragon had come through Carolide, and torn its victims apart.

  But now his mother lay dying, and he hadn't even thought of her until Mouse reminded him. He had taken the tension in Carolide and rumours and sightings of the Cult and turned it into a premonition about his mother as if he had a talent in that area, and ignored every fear of Linnet's.

  Fool, he thought. ‘Not right now,’ he answered at last.

  But she seemed asleep again. Trick leant back in the armchair, her hand resting in his, as light and fine-boned as a baby bird.

  After a time, she stirred and opened her eyes again, and again he was startled by their darkness in her pale face. She had her mother's eyes, his grandmother's—she who was always blamed for the wildness Emily had shown in her youth.

  Her father had been a true Ullwyn, with the eyes of the Goddess, just like Faustus, pale blue like chips of ice. But he had committed the crime of falling in love and marrying outside the family, and his only daughter's eyes showed that impurity.

  And Trick himself was worse, Livanian hair and features, and eyes not even remotely blue. That hadn't stopped Fortune from Choosing him as Her Favourite but the Ullwyns would sit priestless for a hundred years before he bowed to that decision.

  As fickle as Fortune could be, he did not think they would have to wait so long. She had Chosen him, he was sure, on a whim, certainly as punishment to the Ullwyns for destroying his mother's first pregnancy. Not that the Goddess cared about the pain they had caused her, but about their arrogance in presuming to decide which Ullwyn child was worthy enough, pure enough, to be Chosen.

  The Goddess had to regret that whim by now. He had come back to the family as an angry six-year-old and nothing they did improved his perspective of them. They married his grieving, heartsick mother to an older Ullwyn who cared nothing for her, and wanted a son when s
he produced only daughters. He got three half-sisters in five years to attest to that determination, while his mother got sicker and weaker.

  He had not even felt the moment of his Choosing. Predyer, matriarch of the clan, had informed him he would be ordained as soon as he came of age on his sixteenth birthday, and made High Priest as soon as the current holder of the title died. In the intervening years, he would be taught every scrap of lore there was about Fortune and the Dragon sire.

  Trick had gone over the wall that night, and never been back for longer than a half-moon before escaping again. He might have died on the streets except for Sparrow Saint-Beauve and his softhearted Mermaid mother. She fed him and clothed him and when the family went out from Port Told, he went with them. That had been his longest stretch of freedom from the Ullwyns, living far from Port Told and any country manor.

  By the time Trick had met Sparrow, the Saint-Beauve family had already lost their oldest daughter, she who was now Priestess Zircon.

  Her name had been Kittiwake and her father had thrown her out for some misdeed. The family had left Bourchia for good after the oldest son, Hawk, was killed during a bar brawl and second son Raven drowned while working the docks. In Livania, Trick had paid them back by leading Sparrow into the Company. Sparrow had ended up with a permanent gimp to his elbow—Trick had not missed the significance of the way his arm twisted now, after his jump from the balcony—and Linnet had ended up dead. Only Kestrel and baby Rhea, youngest daughter by a good twelve years, stayed safe.

  He was lost in his thoughts, sitting by his dying mother as night fell. Her low, dreamy voice startled him when she spoke again. ‘He said I was like a cornflower in a field of black-headed irises.’ She was telling a story she had told many times before, when he had been the one drifting to sleep and she had sat beside him stroking his hair. Ben's pirate ship had overhauled the Ullwyn ship on its way home from the valley; supposedly it had been love at first sight and Ben had protected every Ullwyn daughter on that ship from rape and kidnap and let them all go because of pretty brown-haired Emily.

  'We met again in Port Told,’ she said, her voice sinking to a murmur. ‘Met again in Port Told. He found me. He always found me.'