“Get up.”
So that it would be easier for him to hit me? No thanks. And there was the post. If I got up, they might notice how badly it was leaning. No, I was better off where I was.
He moved so quickly that my tired eyes refused to follow. Suddenly I felt an edge of cold, hard steel against my neck. Drakan’s sword.
“Get up,” he said. “Or I strike, right here, right now.”
He meant it. I could feel the force of his will, in his stance, in the way he held his sword. It was as cold and hard as the blade itself.
I got up. It wasn’t easy, but when your life depends on it, you discover that you can do many things—including standing on an ankle that is almost broken.
“Is he doing this? Is he leading them?”
“Who? Nico?”
“Who else?”
“Nico doesn’t usually lead people.” Not because they didn’t want him to, but more because Nico was Nico and did things his own way.
Drakan gauged me with his eyes, probably trying to decide whether I was telling the truth or not. Apparently he believed me, because he lowered the sword a fraction.
“You’re right,” he said. “Nico could barely lead a flock of thirsty sheep to the water. And still… and still they meant to set that clown on the throne instead of me.”
I had to bite my lip to stop myself from defending Nico. True, Nico didn’t like to boss people around, but that didn’t mean he would be a bad castellan, did it? At least he wouldn’t have ravaged towns and villages and killed people. Not Nico.
The sword touched my neck again. “So if he is not running around playing at being a robber chief, where is he? Where is he hiding?”
We had danced this dance before, hadn’t we? I knew the steps.
“I don’t know.”
“This is not a game, Davin. I am sick and tired of Highlanders melting into the dark each time we try to attack them. I am tired of hearing my soldiers complain of the cold and the fog and the ambushes. There is one reason, and one reason only, why I care one whit about this godforsaken place, and that is him. Give him to me, and the Highlands can molder away in peace for the next hundred years.”
Now it was my turn to try and gauge his truthfulness. But no. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t think he would meekly disappear and leave us in peace just because we gave him Nico on a silver platter. And in any case, we didn’t have Nico to give, on a silver platter or otherwise. But might it be a good idea to pretend that I believed him?
“Do you mean that?”
“What do I want with a lot of rock, a bit of heather, and a few sheep? No civilized people can stand to live up here.”
I pretended to consider.
“If I tell you, you will kill me anyway.”
“Why should I?” he said. “How does it harm me that you are alive?”
Quite a lot, I hoped. If it was up to me. But that might not be the wisest thing to say right now.
“Give me a little water,” I begged, “and I’ll tell you.”
I let my shoulders sag and tried to look pitiful. Not very hard at the moment.
Drakan lowered his sword and turned to the other men in the courtyard. One of the guards had eased the wounded man off his horse and was holding a cup to his lips so he could drink. Without a word of warning, Drakan seized the cup and passed it to me.
“Here,” he said.
There was blood on the rim of the cup. I wiped off the worst of it and drank down the whole thing. When one is thirsty enough, such niceties cease to matter.
“Well?”
“A bite to eat,” I said. “And a sweater. This cold is killing me.”
Again he was so fast that I didn’t see it coming. The blow hit me on the side of the head, knocking me sideways. My ankle buckled, and I collapsed at the foot of my leaning post.
“Do you know it, or not?” He set the point of his sword against my breastbone and put just enough weight on it to break the skin.
I don’t know where it came from. But suddenly I knew what to say.
“Skayark,” I said. “He’s at Skayark.”
Drakan hesitated. “If you’re lying…”
I shook my head. “It is the most impregnable fortress in the Highlands,” I muttered. “Where would you hide if you were him?”
He laughed. He actually laughed. “But of course,” he said. “Behind the thickest walls he can find up here. The little coward.”
And he turned and walked away, not looking at me or the post or even the wounded man, who suddenly moaned softly and collapsed on the ground.
“Let’s get him inside,” said one of the gate guards, “while there is still a bit of blood left in him.”
They carried off the injured messenger. I slowly sat up. Right now there were no other living creatures out here other than me and the dragon. I put my good foot against the post and shook it like a terrier shakes a rat, and finally it came loose. I jerked the chain out from under it and considered my options. Could I get away now, while there were no guards around?
No, I needed help. I couldn’t walk, my ankle would barely support my weight. I had to wait for Ivain and his men to do whatever it was they meant to do. I restored the post to its hole as best I could so that at least the guards would need to come fairly close to discover that I was no longer securely tethered. And during the wait, I might consider what would happen when Drakan attacked Skayark. I remembered those walls, those fortifications. Never yet had they been breached, not in all of the two hundred years Skayark had guarded the Skayler Pass. Let him try, I thought. That nut might crack even a Dragon’s teeth.
When the sun began to set behind the walls of Baur Laclan, I brought out the little bottle of dragon blood. I thought about it. Just a tiny swallow. Only so much as it would take to let me walk on that ankle without fainting with pain. If I didn’t drink more than a mouthful—
If he drinks it himself, he is mine.
If he was right, then the contents of that small bottle was a shackle far more cruel than the one I had just painstakingly freed myself from. But it couldn’t be that bad, surely it couldn’t. And if I didn’t do it, I was afraid that escape might be utterly impossible.
I drank. A tiny swig. And only the dragon saw me do it.
DINA
Back to Birches
Heavy and wet, the snow covered everything—the road, the branches, and us. I was glad of the hooded cloak the Gelts had given me, but it was still a cold, damp, and miserable journey. We kept to the marshes for as long as we could, but on the third day we had to pass through lands where more people lived—plowed fields and wet winter pastures and villages tucked in among the hills.
We had no horses. It was hard not to wish for them when we were in such desperate haste, and I kept thinking of Silky, who was probably still eating her head off in the Harbormaster’s stable. But after all horses weren’t very practical when one had to be ready to hide at a moment’s notice in ditches or shrubbery because a Dragon patrol was passing by.
“I thought you said they were all up in the Highlands,” I whispered to Nico.
“Apparently not quite all,” he said. “Come on. I think we can get up now.”
Carmian had already picked herself up from the ditch.
“Tonight we sleep at a proper inn,” she said, coughing hollowly. “And hang the cost. If I have to wade through one more ditch, I’ll end up with webbed feet.”
Apart from that outburst, she had been curiously quiet since we left the Gelter village. No, since before that. In fact, since she had her way in that business with the marriage contract. Perhaps she was just savoring her triumph. One never quite knew with Carmian.
“We’re not very far from Birches,” I said, having thought of little else for quite a while. “Nico, we could stay a night at the inn there.”
The mere thought of it made my chest hurt with longing. I had to remind myself that there was no Cherry Tree Cottage and no real home to long for. But there was the inn and the s
mithy and the village and all the rest, familiar and safe. Right then I thought I might be glad to see Cilla, even.
“They know who I am,” he said.
“But they wouldn’t tell anyone.”
He considered it. “Maybe not.”
Carmian took off her hat and shook the snow off the brim.
“If this keeps up, we’ll need a roof in any case,” she said, coughing again.
“Are you coming down with something?” asked Nico.
“No.”
“You’re coughing.”
“So? Sorry if it bothers you.”
What was going on? Why did she snap at him every chance she got? If this was the joy of victory, I would hate to be around her at a time of defeat.
Nico didn’t say anything, or not about that. A little later he turned to me. “How far is it to Birches from here?”
I looked around. What with the snow, one field looked much like the other, but I thought I recognized the poplars along the road.
“Another hour,” I said. “Maybe two, if the weather gets worse.”
“All right. Let’s do it.”
I stared at the pile of blackened beams and broken rubble that had once been our house. In the two years that had passed since Drakan burned it to the ground, no one had tried to clear the site or build anything new. The times being what they were, few people wanted to spare time, effort, and money on something that might be broken by war as soon as it was built.
Nico put his hand on my shoulder. I knew he had seen the tears in my eyes.
“Is this where you lived?” asked Carmian.
I nodded. “Since I was born and… until two years ago.”
She didn’t say anything else. But from that moment on, she stopped calling me Her Ladyship.
“Let’s move on,” I said. “Nothing here is worth looking at.”
Nico looked as if he might have wanted to spare me the sight, but he couldn’t. The house had been right next to the Dunark road.
On the last stretch of road the snow blew right into our faces, and there was so much of it that we could barely see where we were going. It was a good thing I knew my way around, or we might have lost our way entirely. It might be only a little more than half a mile from Cherry Tree Cottage to the village, but in this weather it was quite enough.
It was strange to be back in Birches. I stopped in the middle of the square, with the inn on one side and the smithy on the other. There were no sounds of hammer blows from inside, but it was late, almost dark already because the sky was so heavy with snow.
“Can we go to the smithy first?” I asked. Ellyn and Rikert had almost been a sort of aunt and uncle to Davin and Melli and me, and when Mama was gone on Shamer’s business or on a sick call, we could always seek the comfort of the smithy. Ellyn probably loved Davin and Melli better than me, particularly Melli. But I, too, had always been welcome in her house, and I felt sure that hadn’t changed. Once before, when Drakan had sought to revenge himself on the Shamer and her children, the smith and his wife had hidden my brother and sister, and even Beastie, our old dog, and kept them safe.
“Smithy or inn, I don’t care,” said Carmian, “as long as I don’t have to be cold and wet anymore.”
I don’t think anyone saw us. There was no one much about, which considering the weather was only natural. Out of habit I entered through the smithy where Rikert often stood, making nails or hooks or plowshares, or shoeing somebody’s horse. Right now it was silent and dark, but he had been at work that day; it was still warm in there and a few ruddy glows from the forge gave off enough light to see by.
I knocked at the door of the house proper.
“Ellyn? Rikert? May we come in?”
It took unusually long before the door opened. Rikert stood in the doorway, not as tall as some men—Callan, for instance—but wider than most, especially across the shoulders. He peered at us as if we had just woken him. It seemed to take him a moment to realize who I was.
“Dina! Holy Saint Magda, it’s little Dina.”
And then he did something he had never done before. He put both his powerful arms around me and gave me a hug that almost crushed the breath from me.
“Come in. Come inside.”
We followed him into the house, into the kitchen with the black iron stove that Rikert had made himself. But there was no Ellyn there, stirring her pans. Actually it looked as if it had been quite a while since anybody had cooked in that kitchen. And in all the time I had known Ellyn, I had never seen her kitchen so dirty.
“Where is Ellyn?” I asked.
Rikert’s shoulders drooped.
“Dead,” he said without looking at me. “Since… since four days before midsummer.”
It was like a blow to the stomach. Ellyn couldn’t be, not Ellyn. She had been here always, I couldn’t imagine her not—
“How?” I said. “Was it Drakan?” Because whenever something bad happened or somebody took something away from me, he was the first one I thought of.
Rikert shook his head. “She just got sick. Such things happen, Dina. She just got sick and died.”
Leaving Birches had been hard, but in a way the village and its people had stayed with me inside my head like a picture: Sasia from the inn, the miller and his large family, Ellyn and Rikert. They didn’t move much in the picture inside my head. It was as if they were just waiting for me to come back. And that was silly, of course. That I wasn’t here didn’t mean that things stopped happening. But Ellyn—
“How are you doing yourself?” I asked. He looked somehow untended. Like a horse no one could be bothered to groom. His shirt was dirty, and so was his hair, and behind the sharp sooty smell of the smithy there was a different odor, unwashed and not very nice. Nowhere near as bad as Carmian’s old hag, but still… it made me want to heat water and give him a nice hot bath.
“Oh, I do all right. There’s always work to do.” He looked helplessly around the kitchen. “I don’t know if there is anything to eat.”
“We can go to the inn later,” I said. “But perhaps we could make some thyme tea or something.”
“Yes,” he said. “There’s still some of that around somewhere.”
I stirred the embers in the stove into fresh flames and put a kettle on. And it was as if Rikert only now noticed that there were other people with me. He gave Nico a hesitant nod, as if uncertain whether he ought to bow instead. And when Carmian took off her hat and shook her hair, his jaw actually dropped for a moment. Then he rallied.
“Sit down,” he said, hastily pushing some of the clutter off the kitchen bench. Carmian graciously sat on the bench, and Nico perched on the stool next to the fireplace.
“I’m sorry about Ellyn,” Nico said. “That must have been hard for you.”
Rikert looked down at his hands.
“It was nearly fifteen years,” he said. “One gets used to having someone there. It’s so hard to find things without her.” Suddenly he looked directly at Nico. “Her hair was so soft,” he said so quietly that I could barely make out the words. “Like the velvet of a horse’s muzzle.”
The kettle was coming to a boil. Carmian coughed. I went to take stock of Ellyn’s pantry and felt like an uninvited visitor, because it had been the only place forbidden to us when we were children. She had rows of jars in there with berries and pickled greens like little pumpkins and beets, and also a generous store of dried herbs. Some of them might even have been given to her by Mama, I thought. I made the tea strong and good and put in some echinacea to ease Carmian’s cough.
“Do you see many Dragon soldiers here?” asked Nico.
“Last spring they came here, wanting people to work for them. Craftsmen of all kinds, carpenters and the like, but above all, smiths. I had to hide in the woods for some weeks, or they would have taken me whether I wanted to come or not. And Ellyn had begun to sicken even then.” He took the tea mug I offered him without raising his head. “It was hard for her on her own. But the village helped her.”
I nodded. When things got serious, the villagers stuck together.
“How did you manage in the woods?” asked Nico.
“Oh, there were folks who were willing to help.”
“From the village?”
“Yes. And others.” He threw Nico a sidelong look. “You would know them, I think.”
“The Weapons Master? He and his people?”
The smith was nodding. “They’re called the Foxes around here because they are hardly ever caught, and because they are hard to see even when you know they are there. The Dragon soldiers hate them.”
I knew what Nico was thinking. It was still a long way to the Highlands, and as we got farther and farther away from the marshes, there were fewer Gelts who might help. And we did need help. We had no real money, and in this weather it was necessary to secure food and shelter, and to be properly warm every once in a while.
“They would help us,” I said.
“Yes. Maybe.”
“Why not?”
Nico made an odd grimace. “Because the Weapons Master has his own ideas about me. And about how he wants to use me. And I don’t agree with those ideas.”
He was right. If the Weapons Master had his way, Nico would find himself at the head of an army of resistance against Drakan. But Nico didn’t want to be at the head of anything, especially not something that got people killed.
“You have no choice,” said Carmian suddenly. “If Drakan had still been at Dunark, then maybe. But not now. Now you need an army.”
But Nico shook his head stubbornly.
“Enough are dying already,” he said. “Why should I ask even more people to die?”
We drank our tea in silence. Not even Carmian said anything. Perhaps it was because Rikert was there, or else we were all just too tired to fight.
Finally I got up. We still had to eat and sleep, and it was clear that Rikert could barely feed himself, let alone a crowd of unexpected visitors.
“Stay here,” I told Nico. “The fewer people who see you, the better. And there might be a stranger or two at the inn.”
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