After the Dragon

by Wendy Palmer

  That was when they had run away together, eloped and hidden away in a loft on the outskirts of Port Told, resolved to be different people than they had been. That was when Emily got pregnant the first time, and was stolen back by the Ullwyns—but how had they found her? The same way Faustus found Trick? Or had Ben tired of his bride by then and given her away to her family a-purpose?

  But Trick was being cynical. Ben had come for her, saved her life after the botched abortion, took her away to sea. And had loved her, loved her, loved her, until the moment she made him leave the ship.

  His mother's eyes blinked closed and then opened wide. ‘You should go,’ she whispered. ‘They'll bring food soon and I don't want you caught here.'

  He squeezed her hand—gently, gently, in case the bones should break—and stood. As he did so, the door opened. Trick backed away, hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

  But it was Faustus. ‘I thought you might come,’ he said. His tone was flat and uncaring and he didn't meet his cousin's eyes. ‘Is she with you?'

  'No,’ said Trick. His hand dropped from his sword. The arrogance and the fury had dropped from Faustus. He was a dulled knife, harmless, no matter that he had shoved Trick back into the flood—Trick doubted his cousin even remembered doing that.

  'You're not free of her, are you?’ Something sly came over Faustus's face. ‘She let me go because she has you now.'

  The bluntest knife could shatter into bitterly sharp shards. Trick turned from him, kissed his mother's forehead and climbed back out the window. By the time he reached the ground, he knew what he needed to do. Linnet was dead, and now he stood to lose his mother too. One thing could prevent that.

  His hand slipped to the scar at his side.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jacoby and Kintore share milk and bread in her room, the first meal they have eaten together. Downstairs, the tavern is as noisy as it had been when the Ullwyn triplets were born. Bourchia has declared independence from Livania, and the Emperor has bowed to that reality, with LightElves and the Goddess Fortune standing in the shadows behind the throne of the Bourchian king. The only reprisals have been minor skirmishes on the new border.

  'You got your way,’ Jacoby says.

  'We shall see.'

  Jacoby takes a long sip of milk and sighs. ‘I leave tomorrow.'

  'I, also.'

  They are silent again. ‘Come away with me, Jacoby,’ Kintore says suddenly.

  'Leave my people for you?’ she asks without a trace of a smile.

  'And I will leave mine for you.'

  'Where do we live?'

  'Here,’ he says. ‘Joshe accepts us.'

  'Our people know we are here.'

  He takes her hand across the tiny table, spilling breadcrumbs and threatening the milk jug. ‘There are other places. Or we could join the rogues south of Wyvern.'

  'I cannot.'

  'Please,’ he says softly.

  'No.'

  'You say you cannot but you will not.'

  Jacoby leans forward. ‘I must return or they will send someone to fetch me. Wherever I am, they will find me. You do not wish for that.'

  Kintore remains stubbornly silent, his mouth set. Jacoby adds, ‘And we cannot avoid the war between us forever.’ She looks pointedly at his eye patch.

  He releases her to touch it. He nods. ‘I have a gift for you.'

  Jacoby looks at him slyly and he half-laughs. ‘Not quite.’ He hurries across to his room and back again. He lays the iron bar on the table.

  The milk jug does go over, as Jacoby shoves back hard. ‘You threaten me?’ she asks, on a rising note. ‘I come to you weaponless—'

  'Jacoby, stop,’ says Kintore. ‘Does it hurt?'

  'Should it not?’ says Jacoby, backed into the corner.

  'Wait,’ he says. ‘Does the pain lessen?'

  Her hands are balled into fists. But she takes deep breaths and after some time she nods.

  'This is how we do it.'

  The DarkElf takes a step forward and instantly reels back again, hissing.

  'You cannot hurry this,’ says Kintore. ‘Elvish patience, not human haste.'

  'How long?’ she asks. ‘How long?'

  'A hundred years before we could touch iron. A hundred more must pass before we can stand to use it in weapons.'

  Jacoby nods. She sucks air in, steps forward and lays hands on the iron. ‘A fine gift,’ she says fiercely, before jerking her hands back. The smell of scorched flesh fills the air.

  Kintore pales in the face of her ferocious glittering eyes.

  'A fine gift.'

  * * * *

  On the way back into town, Trick found Skye waiting by the side of the road. The mare had lost her saddle but was unharmed. She tossed her head at him in that way she had when she wanted to gallop. This was one of those strokes of Luck he had grown not so much to expect, because you never knew with fickle Lady Fortune, but to accept.

  He rode her through Kiara Valley and back to the Keep.

  Light spilled from the windows but the courtyard was deserted, dark and cold. He was looking for somewhere to tether Skye near the stairs when he saw Sparrow coming down towards him. He must have been watching out for him.

  Perfect.

  Sparrow's look was mildly accusing but he just said, ‘I think Mizzle's ill.'

  Trick's head was full of what he had to do and that overturned him. ‘Ill?’ His first thought was suspicious.

  Sparrow confirmed it. ‘I got her food...'

  Trick's stomach growled while he took a breath. He took two more. Sparrow had fetched it himself and it could not have been poisoned. He told himself that while he fought the urge to run upstairs and see exactly what Sparrow meant by ill.

  'What was it?’ he asked.

  'Stew,’ said Sparrow. ‘Meat, fish, vegetables.'

  He almost missed it in Sparrow's shame-faced mumble. ‘Fish?’ Both Mizzle and Jarrett had pushed their lobster away at Lithia's celebratory feast. ‘She doesn't eat fish.’ He had another flash of memory. ‘Give her milk. Or cream if you've got it.'

  He didn't know if it would help. He guessed he would have to wait until tomorrow to do what was in his head to do. But as Sparrow turned to go back up the stairs, he added, ‘I'm leaving, Sparrow. I came back to say goodbye to you.'

  Sparrow sent a reproachful look over his shoulder as he went.

  Trick waited, holding Skye, breathing deeply and composing his mind into the patterns Fingers had taught him. It had been many years since he had even thought of trying this, and yet it flowed back into his mind frighteningly easily.

  He held it, breathing into the pattern and pretending to adjust Skye's reins until Mizzle came, stopping halfway down the stairs. Her face was flushed and she had a cup of milk. Sparrow had not failed him, but she had to come closer than she was.

  She leant against the wall, clutching her cup in both hands. ‘You go?'

  'You don't need me.'

  Mizzle stayed very still, looking at him as if she would let him go. He thought for a moment she would, and saw his plan crumble.

  But she stirred. ‘You may not.'

  He had waited to hear it, and turned immediately, leading Skye for the gate but staying by the wall. She came after him, in that slow, awkward and sore way that would only make this easier.

  She put a hand to his shoulder and he turned willingly enough, shivering under her touch.

  He told her the truth then. ‘I'm going,’ he said. ‘And I'm taking your stone.'

  Mizzle recoiled slightly, frowning. He focussed the pattern and shouted the DarkElf word. ‘Zenzou.'

  It was the command she had used in Livania to grow Lithia's crowns slowly back to full size. He had had another choice.

  Mizzle was suddenly and fatally distracted as her swords expanded under her shirt. She dropped the cup and her hands came up to push them away. Her gaze dropped from Trick. It was enough. He seized her braid and yanked her head into the wall with full force.

&
nbsp; She staggered and her hands fluttered against his wrists. He did it again, harder, and this time she went down.

  Trick reached down and into her cloak to where she kept the DarkStone.

  It was there.

  He tucked that into his pouch with the ruby bottle and Lithia's token and pulled her full-sized swords away as well.

  For only one second, he contemplated her lying unconscious at his feet with those blades in his hand, but then he turned and flung them across the courtyard.

  He threw himself up on Skye and galloped out the gate. He spurred the mare full-flight towards the manor until she was lathered and labouring and still he did not rein her back. The shadow he had once called the ghost of his dead wife had fallen upon him again and he fled as if he were chased by demons. He had not doubted his plan would work until it did. Now he did not know how he would use the DarkStone to save his mother's life, and yet he spurred Skye on.

  He could not turn back now.

  He jerked his mind away from the memory of Mizzle's head slamming into the wall. He would not allow himself to regret it. He was likely to regret, before this night was done, that he'd left her alive. He could have used that other DarkElvish word, Gekizou, the one that flicked the swords back to full-size instantly—then he would not have needed to stand over her with her swords in his hands fighting the worst side of himself. It would have already won.

  Skye was slowing. He let her. The track here ran close to the forest and the night was overcast and moonless. He didn't want to break her leg by galloping her, tired, in the dark.

  Out of the darkness, a white figure rose suddenly, crying out in a harsh voice.

  Skye laid her ears back and bolted, twisting off the track and into the forest.

  Trick struggled to bring her back under control as branches slapped at his face and scratched his arms. One hit him in the gut and knocked him clean off the mare. He got back up in time to see her disappear through the trees, as ghostly white as the thing that had accosted them.

  Trick, holding his stomach and gasping for breath, loosened his sword. His heart beat faster in his chest. His Livanian half might insist they had seen a ghost, but his practical Bourchian blood knew better. That had been one of the Cult, all dressed in white and waiting on the track to force travellers into the forest.

  Trick would see how the coward handled a soldier with a sword rather than a hapless merchant.

  * * * *

  He had assumed the man was alone until he woke up and realised from the protest his head was making that he had been hit from behind. He sat up and rubbed his skull. His stomach still hurt too, where the branch had winded him.

  'See what we've come to,’ said a voice.

  Trick looked around. He was in a large empty hall, lit into gold by lamps around walls, with wide shuttered windows. The wind soughed endlessly through the trees outside.

  A woman he recognised sat on the steps of a wooden dais a few feet from him. Behind her, the only furniture in the hall, a tall thick oaken throne, lay overturned. He was deep in Wyvern Forest with Zircon, First Priestess of the Moon Cult and Sparrow's lost sister Kittiwake.

  She had his sword beside her and sat alone with him, watching him with green eyes. Perhaps it had been she who had spooked Skye and she with a cudgel.

  But she said, ‘I am reduced to sending my people out to rob travellers. We have become what we despise.'

  Trick said nothing. She looked so much like Linnet, but he saw Kestrel in her Mermaid eyes. Fortune, his stomach burned. He lifted his shirt and saw that the scar where the arrow had hit had split open and wept blood. His fall from Skye must have ripped it open again, no matter it had seemed healed and years old when Mizzle was done with it.

  'What's this?’ Zircon held something out to him.

  Trick looked up and saw she had the DarkStone. Only years of practice kept his face a mask. ‘What happened here?'

  She dropped the stone back into her lap. ‘Tal Lithium has outlawed us.'

  Trick's heart leapt. Lithia had never given any indication she would do so. But she must have done it almost as soon as they were out of sight; Zircon had made even better time than Mizzle to reach Ardmore just as they did.

  Zircon went on. ‘Run out of Lsuana like criminals. I could do nothing because my cursed priests turned against me. They tried to take the child.'

  Trick frowned but did not interrupt.

  'I ran to our southern stronghold with my last loyal worshippers and our dam burst and drowned us.'

  Trick remembered the masonry debris scattered along the riverbank. He had thought he felt joy when she had told him of Lithia's edict. Now he felt something so savage it tore him inside. He bowed his head over his knees so she would not see it in his eyes.

  'I thought my Goddess had turned against me.’ Zircon stood and walked towards him. ‘So I fled here and took poison while my surviving bodyguards were elsewhere finding supplies.'

  She looked so much like Linnet and she was dying. She had not been Priestess when the Cult slaughtered the Company during their Dragon rampage, but she had to have been in a position of power to have assumed the role when Hesperus fell. He could no longer restrain himself. ‘Good.'

  She didn't seem to hear him. She held the DarkStone in both hands and he thought he saw it flicker with red pulses under the glossy black skin. ‘But then you come to me and Livana whispers in my ear about this.’ She thrust it out to him. ‘Tell me how to use it.'

  'It's a toy,’ he said. ‘Just a toy.'

  She backhanded him. ‘Don't lie. I feel its power.'

  The red pulses came faster. Trick had not realised that anything other than a DarkElf could set it off, though that had been his ill-formed intention with his scant control of DarkElf magics.

  He didn't touch his stinging face. He smiled at her. ‘How long have you got before the poison kills you, Kitti?'

  She recoiled at the sound of her birth-name but jerked forward again, wrapping a long-nailed hand around his throat. ‘Long enough to make you talk, boy. Then I shall use it to heal myself, and then I shall kill that upstart Empress.'

  'And put another Mikcul on the throne?’ Trick's breath was short but he didn't try to pull her hand away. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the stone. Was it glowing? ‘Or dispense with the deceit and rule outright?'

  'Hesperus was a fool,’ Zircon whispered, tightening her hand. ‘Oh, she has her dalliance with Mikcul and thinks that makes her Empress? She should have killed him and taken his place.'

  'So you exposed her and her son and took her place.’ It was a guess, a wild one. She flung him away. Trick got up, backing away from her and the mad look in her eyes.

  'She went soft at the end and tried to free the child. But I have him,’ she said. ‘I kept him even when those traitors tried to steal him from me. Tell me how to use this and I will give him to you.'

  She assumed he knew this child. ‘I don't want him.'

  'No one else knows where he is,’ she said. ‘If I die, he will starve.'

  He spoke nothing but the truth. ‘I'll see a hundred children starve before I help you resurrect the Cult.'

  'Tell me!’ She screamed it at him and those pulses burned his eyes.

  He slapped her away and ran. A surge of red light and wind enveloped him, knocking him flat and shaking the walls. Trick covered his head as rubble fell around him.

  When all was still again, he got up and shook dust off himself, coughing. Zircon lay where she had fallen, a charred corpse. It sickened him but he knelt beside it and pried the DarkStone from the roasted fists.

  'Be glad you were not holding it.'

  He stood and turned to see another woman in the doorway. Again, he recognised her, this time from the painting over the altar in the Port Told Cathedral. It wasn't a woman after all.

  His Goddess had come to him.

  All thought was lost. Trick dropped back to his knees, the stone in both hands.

  He looked down at it as she walked acr
oss the dusty cracked floor towards him. It was mute, spent.

  'Give me the stone, Trick.'

  Her voice sang in his ears. He had never thought to meet her, though she had Chosen him. He had even begun to doubt her influence, no matter that Faustus claimed she had sent him to Mizzle and after Trick.

  'It's too dangerous for you,’ she urged. ‘Give it to me.'

  His head buzzed. He lifted his gaze from her feet and made himself look into the face of his Goddess. She was ethereal and beautiful and his entire body ached to stare at her. Her bright green eyes glowed.

  She held her hand out. ‘Give it to me.'

  Her voice echoed. He lifted the stone to give her what she wanted. He could not deny her.

  But then he realised it. Her eyes were the wrong colour.

  He jerked the DarkStone out of her reach at the last second, and crawled backwards away from her. Faustus had the eyes of the Goddess—palest blue. He held the stone to his chest, staring up at the bright eyes, green not blue.

  For a second, he was disoriented, unable to understand what was happening. Then he remembered that Mizzle had said an Illusion was always given away by a flaw. ‘Who are you?'

  The Goddess paused and blinked and shrugged. ‘Your cousin never looked above my knees,’ she said with Jarrett's voice.

  He knew he was in trouble then, and went crawling away while the Goddess shrugged again and her aspect melted away. He faced Jarrett now, and the DarkElf wanted Mizzle's stone.

  'Be careful, Trick.’ Jarrett came cat-like towards him and he scrambled further away. ‘You don't want to end up like your friend here, do you?'

  Trick glanced down at the stone to see the red pulses starting again. Not anger this time, but fear. His hands were shaking.

  'Just give it to me, Trick.'

  The DarkStone had been icy cold when he picked it up. Now it warmed his hands. Trick wanted desperately to drop it but could not so give it to Jarrett.

  'You know me, Trick.’ Jarrett circled to his right and Trick watched him, ready to jump away if the DarkElf lunged at him. ‘I can do so much with that stone.'

  'It's not mine to give to you.’ The stone was almost too hot to hold now. He had to distract himself. ‘Why did you tell Faustus to help Mizzle?’ It had been Jarrett in Fortune's guise who had appeared to Faustus and sent him into the street to find Mizzle.