The Princess Who Flew with Dragons

by Stephanie Burgis

‘Out of the way!’

  Something short and blue hurtled so close in front of me that I stumbled back, gasping. My guards hurried forward, but my attacker was long gone, leaving a whole path of stumbling, complaining people in his wake.

  One woman, just past us, hissed the word like a curse, ‘Students!’

  Students?

  With my two guards flanking me, I strained my eyes and finally saw it: the flicker of a blue robe through the crowd. Of course! All the students in Gert van Heidecker’s classes at the University of Villenne wore robes, didn’t they? I’d seen them pictured in lithographs at the front of his bound lectures.

  They sat in beautiful marble lecture halls wearing floor-length blue robes to cover up any sign of where they’d come from, because while they were students, they were all equal partners in the pursuit of knowledge. And while I devoured van Heidecker’s printed words long after he’d spoken them, they heard his magnificent voice for themselves.

  They could ask him questions, and he would answer. They could express their opinions and debate the meaning of the world without fearing what might happen if their opinions weren’t considered ‘correct’. They could get fierce and angry and even bellow if they liked, because philosophers were supposed to be passionate in their debates. Students were supposed to develop real opinions, not just smile and mouth the practised words that would be safest for their kingdom.

  Student life was everything I’d ever dreamed of – and everything hopelessly out of my reach. The rules of my life had been drilled into me from the day I was born.

  A younger princess was to marry well and bear children when she was older. She was to smile at public ceremonies throughout her life and keep her true thoughts safely to herself. Whenever she was witnessed by the public, she was to judge her words with care, keep her appearance tidy and pleasing, and never offend anyone, no matter what the provocation.

  It was why I had always had to have all of my lessons on my own, without any other students to join me – and why I’d known that I could never attend university, no matter how desperately I wanted to.

  ‘That … that …’ Konrad swallowed visibly as he stared after my not-an-attacker. ‘That was a g– I mean, did you see? I think – I’m almost certain – that was a –’

  ‘Student,’ I finished for him. ‘Come along!’

  I strode forward without waiting for any answer, ignoring the agitated muttering between the guards in my wake.

  It was a good thing Lena had reminded me to bring a pouch of gold coins on this morning’s expedition. All three of us were about to acquire beautiful sky-blue robes of our own … because I knew exactly how to use my once-in-a-lifetime freedom after all.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jasper was going to be so jealous! As I took my seat two hours later on a long, splinter-filled wooden bench near the back of a slanted, narrow lecture hall, I planned out every delicious detail to include in my next letter.

  Walking into the ivy-covered Philosophy Building had felt like an initiation into a mysterious and exclusive secret society. But then the whole university felt like a magical world of its own. It filled an entire small island where no carriages or horses were allowed. To reach it, my guards and I had had to cross a narrow, arching, white stone bridge that shimmered in the sunlight. It was crowded elbow-to-elbow with hurrying, blue-robed students and pushy street vendors who shouted non-stop while white gulls cawed and circled overhead.

  ‘Essence of Amberdine to enliven your essays!’

  ‘Notepaper so thick you can use it twice!’

  ‘Enchanted ink to enspell your exams! Pass every course without an hour of study!’

  That last sales pitch had made me stop and frown. ‘It isn’t possible to enchant ink, is it?’ I’d whispered to my guards.

  I knew about battle mages and music mages. I even knew one food mage, Jasper’s grouchy sister Aventurine, who used her magic to transform between dragon and human forms – and was equally impossible in both shapes. Ink mages, though? My tutors had never mentioned those.

  ‘It’s a fraud, Your Highness,’ Jurgen murmured quietly. ‘Most of these vendors are selling false wares.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Konrad’s blue eyes looked bigger than usual in his freckled face. ‘Everything’s topsy-turvy in this city. I tried to tell you earlier, I’m sure I saw –’

  ‘Aha!’ I’d finally spotted a stand selling second-hand student robes and caps. I strode towards it as triumphantly as any of my ancestors conquering a new kingdom. ‘Perfect,’ I declared.

  And we did blend in perfectly a few minutes later as the wave of blue-robed students swept us up in its midst and carried us off the crowded bridge on to Scholars’ Island.

  Scholars’ Island! The name was amazing. And the place! Everywhere I looked, I saw ancient brick buildings devoted to the pursuit of knowledge instead of power or gold. Everywhere I looked, I saw blue-robed students – sprawled atop the long stone benches, seated with their backs against the big oak trees, or lying on the grassy lawns before each building. Some were reading, scribbling notes, or debating; others hurried in and out of the buildings, balancing piles of books in their arms.

  There was just one thing that they all had in common: full-length sky-blue robes covered all of their clothes and jewellery. No one could tell by looking at them who any of their families were, because while they were here it didn’t matter.

  It was astonishing. No, it was a miracle. For the first time in my life, I felt almost … comfortable. Was this how other people felt all the time? As if they weren’t standing out like a sore thumb, just waiting for everyone else to notice how wrong they were?

  I could have wandered around those leafy squares forever. I might have too, if it hadn’t been for the notice I found plastered on the back of a bench twenty minutes later: Today’s Lectures: Gert van Heidecker on The Nature of Power, Part II, Philosophy Building, Auditorium B.

  Thank goodness I’d followed that gorgeous cat’s lead and dared to come out on an adventure! I laughed out loud with wonder as I traced my fingers over the letters on the page.

  ‘Finally!’ I told my guards, ignoring their baffled looks. ‘Something’s going right after all!’

  And to think: if I hadn’t offended that haughty queen, I would have been trapped in tedious conversation with other royals right now. I didn’t care if my sister betrothed me to a dozen wicked fairies in punishment for my rebellion! This taste of happiness was worth anything.

  And I was still glowing with the truth of that as I sat waiting for the lecture to finally begin in the windowless lecture hall I’d hunted down at the back of the Philosophy Building. This might not have been the pristine marble auditorium that I’d expected from the lithographs in front of van Heidecker’s books, but that made it even better. I was discovering something new, something I never could have learned back in Drachenburg!

  And since no enemies would ever expect to find a princess of Drachenheim on an uncomfortable wooden bench surrounded by commoners –

  The door behind me slammed open, and my guards scrambled up from the bench on either side of me, reaching in unison for the swords hidden beneath their student robes.

  ‘You see?’ Konrad hissed. ‘I knew I’d seen a goblin!’

  Goblins. There had been so many goblins in my palace on the night of the invasion six months ago. They’d served the fairies who had tried to drag me underground to force my family into compliance. For all of their evil, those fairies had been shining and beautiful, their true menace hidden behind their gorgeous, inhuman glow. But their secretive goblin guards …

  I hadn’t even realised they were in our palace until it was too late. Lurking in the shadows with their murderously long knives, dark red caps, and long, sharp teeth stained with blood …

  One of the girls who’d saved me had managed to bargain with a goblin guard along the way, but their alliance had been so dependent on clever word choices and trickery, I’d barely breathed the whole time that he’d stoo
d nearby.

  The way his knife had glinted by his side as my palace burned …

  ‘I am not a goblin,’ said an insulted voice behind me. ‘Haven’t you ever seen a beautiful kobold before?’

  The words were so unexpected, they broke through my trance.

  That had been a girl’s voice.

  My guards were still struggling to pull their swords out from under their robes and overcoats as I turned and found three squat, green-skinned goblin girls in blue robes flanking a smaller, scowling fourth girl the size of a five-year-old human. She glared up at us with bright blue eyes under bushy blue eyebrows. Her long, ghost-white ears stuck out sideways at least four inches in both directions under her plain blue student cap, and her long, loose, snow-white hair fell down around her robe like an icy waterfall. I’d never seen anything like her in my life.

  She certainly wasn’t a goblin, and the others didn’t look like the goblin guards who’d served the fairies of Elfenwald. Not only were they dressed as students, but I couldn’t spot a single bloodstain on any of their sharp white smiles. Only a long, peppermint striped sweet stuck out from the wide mouth of the goblin girl at the far end. She kept sucking on it slowly as she grinned up at us with her robed arms crossed – a sight so disrespectful and so shockingly improper that my deportment tutor would have swooned.

  But I found myself infinitesimally relaxing.

  ‘A kobold?’ I could finally move and think again, so I waved my guards down. Heads were turning all around us. No one else seemed frightened by the new arrivals, but too many people were looking at us.

  ‘Obviously.’ The kobold girl snorted, and a puff of cool blue mist blew out of her pointed white nose. ‘Do I look like a goblin to you?’

  ‘Ha!’ said the goblin girl with the peppermint sweet. ‘You should be so lucky!’

  ‘We’re not supposed to talk about where we come from at all.’ The middle goblin girl spoke with prissy care, her green nostrils flaring. ‘We’re on Scholars’ Island, remember? None of that even matters. No one cares who or what anyone else is any more.’

  The other two goblin girls and the kobold traded one expressive glance … then burst into shrieking, jangling laughter that broke like jagged glass through the tension in the room.

  ‘All right, shove over.’ The kobold strode forward, miniature elbows jutting outwards. ‘Come on!’ she added impatiently as I stared at her. ‘We all have to squeeze in somewhere, don’t we? So if you don’t want us sitting on your laps through the lecture –’

  ‘How dare you?’ Konrad gasped. ‘If you think –’

  ‘Of course!’ I jumped to my feet, poking him hard in the shoulder. Princess Sofia moved aside for no one, as a point of principle, but Princess Sofia couldn’t be here today – and these were the last creatures in the world who could be allowed to learn my true identity. ‘We’ll make space,’ I promised.

  ‘Your H– my lady.’ Jurgen lowered his voice to a whisper as he leaned over me. ‘Perhaps it would be best to attend a different lecture today. Or –’

  ‘A different lecture?’ The goblin girl with the peppermint sweet shook her head at him as she settled comfortably on to the bench beside me. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Old Heidy’s about to get dragged off in chains. If you leave now, you’ll miss all the fun!’

  ‘Chains?’ I repeated blankly.

  Konrad tried to push between us, but I nudged him impatiently out of the way.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.

  ‘His arrest, of course.’ She rolled her eyes, sucking harder on her peppermint sweet and propping her elbows on the long desk shared by everyone on our bench. ‘Don’t you know anything? That’s why it’s so crowded here today. All the upper students have been laying wagers outside the library on whether he’ll punch a royal guard when he’s taken. I have five krügen on him tripping at least two of them on his way down.’

  ‘Pah.’ The kobold snorted as she threw herself down on to the bench. ‘It’ll never happen. The man’s tiny!’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been studying him.’ My goblin girl narrowed her dark eyes thoughtfully. ‘He may be small for a human, but he’s feisty.’

  ‘But … this is absurd!’ I shook my head in disbelief as I looked between them. ‘Gert van Heidecker is the most admired philosopher in the world! Why on earth should he be arrested? No one would ever dream of –’

  ‘Aha!’ The goblin girl beside me pulled the peppermint sweet from her mouth and used it to gesture towards the bottom of the room.

  A small, bald man wearing oversized spectacles and an outrageously bright orange coat stepped behind the battered-looking wooden lectern, fussily adjusting several pages of notes.

  ‘There he is, right on time. And now …’

  Her large green ears swivelled like a bat’s wings underneath her cap to point towards the door. I heard what she was listening to a moment later: booted feet marching down the corridor towards us.

  I knew that sound. I’d heard it many times before, back home.

  Soldiers.

  I exchanged a wild look with my guards. What is going on?

  They were already starting to their feet.

  ‘We must go.’ Jurgen seized my arm in a firm grip. ‘Now, my lady. Before –’

  ‘Too late!’ As the door to the lecture hall crashed open behind us, my goblin neighbour bit down on her peppermint sweet with a satisfied crunch. ‘Now the show is finally getting started.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Twelve armed soldiers in black-and-silver uniforms marched into the lecture hall and lined up against the back wall. Sharp swords glinted at their sides.

  Didn’t any of these people understand that Scholars’ Island was a haven of peace and knowledge? For goodness sake, even horses weren’t allowed here. How could they need weapons?

  ‘They’re blocking the door.’ Jurgen sank back down on to the bench beside me. ‘We can’t get past them now – unless …’ His voice lowered to the thread of a whisper as he leaned close. ‘If we tell them who you are –’

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ If I got myself publicly mixed up in an arrest, my sister would throttle me. ‘This is just a misunderstanding. It has to be.’

  ‘Nope!’ said the goblin girl beside me. ‘Just look at his face!’ She nodded at Gert van Heidecker, who was glowering at the soldiers through his spectacles. ‘He’s not planning to back down, is he? And the king issued a public warning yesterday – if Heidy goes through with his planned lecture, he’s heading for prison, and he knows it.’

  ‘For a philosophy lecture?’ Konrad demanded.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry.’ She winked. ‘He’ll have help on his side. Half the people here are planning to pile in and defend him as soon as the guards make their move.’

  ‘What?’ My incredulous gaze criss-crossed the room full of blue-robed students. None of them held anything but pens or books in their hands. ‘But –’

  She flipped up the wide sleeve of her blue robe to reveal a whole stash of piled sweets tied to her muscular green arm. ‘It’s amazing what you can cover up under one of these.’ She slid a meaningful look at my guards, whose swords were safely hidden underneath their own robes. ‘I only came to eat and enjoy the spectacle, but your two friends here aren’t the only ones who’ve sneaked in more dangerous toys with them.’

  Jurgen hissed out a curse I’d never heard before, his strong jaw squaring purposefully. ‘That’s it! My lady, you cannot allow yourself to be caught up in a riot. Your sister –’

  ‘Ahem!’ Gert van Heidecker barked from the front of the room. ‘Ladies and gentlemen … and honourable guests.’ His powerful, rasping voice turned into a snarl as his gaze fixed on the line of impassive soldiers at the back of the room. ‘We are assembled today in pursuit of a better world. We shall not be silenced by those who fear the truth! The rulers of our continent may be blinded by power and greed, but our minds are our own, and they may never be chained!’

  ‘Argh!’ Jurgen tipped his head into his ha
nds with a groan of despair, while Konrad simply stared, open-mouthed.

  My sister was going to cut off my pocket money forever. But since it was too late to leave now, I leaned forward on the bench to catch every single word.

  No one had ever talked this way in front of me. Not ever!

  ‘The rulers of half a dozen nations are gathered at our city’s Diamond Exhibition at this very moment, enjoying the fruits of our people’s labour as if it belonged to them by right of birth … and with as much pride as if they’d made any of those grand discoveries themselves.’ Gert van Heidecker lingered on those final words with disdainful emphasis.

  ‘Of course we all agree those inventions are remarkable. How can we not? With these new advances in technology, we will be able to create astounding new settlements in the iciest extremes of the frozen north, where no human has ever dared to go before. Incredible though it sounds, our rulers claim that our astonishing new weapons may soon render us fearless of the legendary ice giants themselves! So the Valmarene kingdom will spread further and further across the globe, heedless of ice and snow and giants alike …

  ‘But who, may we ask, gave our royal family the right to claim credit for the hard labour on display, while they drape themselves in jewels and finery and never lower themselves to a day’s work in their lives?’

  Ouch. I couldn’t help wincing at that question, my shoulders hunching defensively as murmurs of approval sounded around the hall. Perhaps I did have some inkling after all, of why the king of Valmarna had forbidden this lecture. Not that I approved of arresting philosophers, but …

  ‘As we come to the question of royal pride, let us ask ourselves: what is the true goal of this Diamond Exhibition?’ Van Heidecker tilted his head at an inquisitive angle. ‘Our rulers say we must dazzle the world with a display of our growing power. They say nothing else can prevent those greedy rival kingdoms with their terrifying dragon allies, their assembled battle mages and even the monstrous ice giants of the north from descending upon our wealth and good fortune like vultures at a stolen feast.