Dragon Flight (21 page)

Under the orders of Princess Amalia of Roulain, dragons had descended on the King’s Seat, burning everything in their path.

Miles had been abducted and held hostage by the Roulaini, while Luka barely managed to escape. Their father had been cornered in the caves beneath the city, fighting for his life. Needless to say, the gown had had a rather dramatic debut.

“I don’t have anything else grand enough to wear to a royal wedding,” I said quietly. “And it isn’t cursed.”

I only hoped that the changes made to the gown would be enough to convince the wedding guests that it wasn’t cursed. Or even better, that it was a completely different gown.

I had ripped the old underskirts out and replaced them with layers of filmy blue silk, the edges of which I had singed with a candle rather than hemmed. It kept them from fraying and made them look like flower petals. The bodice needed refitting (the bust had to be loosened, much to my secret delight), and I added more abstract embroidery to cover the stitches.

The heavy overskirt, shorter than the underskirts, had a long slit in the front and back that I decided not to mend. Marta had made the cuts, and she had carefully cut between the panels of embroidery to preserve my handiwork. I finished off the edges, leaving the skirt in
two broad sections that parted when I walked to show off more of the rich blue silk underneath.

Washing the scarlet sash I had originally worn had resulted in the poor scrap of cloth coming completely unravelled at the ends, and I had thrown it in the rag bag. I took a narrow length of green silk and wound it around my torso from waist to short ribs, tucking in the ends in the Citatian fashion.

“Gah!” I looked in the mirror and put my hands to my face. “I look like a peacock! Take it off!” I reached for the sash, frantically wondering what I could possibly wear instead. During the past week of feasts and dancing, I had worn my only three suitably formal gowns and then had had to resort to borrowing two of Alle’s.

“You look like a queen,” Alle said.

I had messily bundled my hair up on top of my head with a couple of pins, and now she pulled it down. The multitude of tiny braids I had been wearing had kinked it, possibly permanently, into a wild frisson of straw-gold. That blue Citatian dye was definitely not going to wash out any time soon. I had been wearing the braids woven into one big plait and wrapped around my head, but Marta had ordered me to wear it in a looser fashion for the ceremony.

Now Alle shook it out, letting it fall around my shoulders and back. It went well past my hips, and in the dry summer air it crackled around me. She used a green ribbon to hold it back from my face, and fastened a gold
brooch shaped like a coiled dragon to the ribbon just above my left temple.

The brooch, like all my other jewellery, was a gift from Luka. The necklace that Alle was now handing me had been a good luck gift to wear to the Merchants’ Ball. The matching earrings had been a present for my last naming day. The brooch had arrived earlier in the week, a memento from Citatie.

When the jewellery was in place, I took another look at myself. I definitely looked … startling. I’m not sure if a queen would dress quite like this. But I certainly did not look like a country girl or a mere shopkeeper.

“You shall quite take the attention from the bride,” Alle said with glee. “Not that Lady Isla isn’t lovely and deserving of admiration on her wedding day, but you …” Her voice trailed away.

Marta bustled into the room and then froze. “Oh, my!” She put a hand to her mouth. In a gown of apricot satin brocaded with gold, she looked radiant and made me feel even odder. But her next words reassured me. “You look magnificent!”

“Are you sure that it’s … all right for me to wear this?” I bit my lip. Perhaps it was too bold.

Marta came over and joined me at the mirror. Standing side by side, we made quite a pair. With her strawberry-blonde curls cascading from gold ribbons and her vibrant, fiery gown we looked very well together.

“Just as long as we stay together,” she said with a
laugh. “We won’t look too out of place among all the pale pink- and yellow-gowned ladies.”

“And I’m sure we’ll be at the back,” I agreed.

But we weren’t.

When we arrived at the Royal Chapel, adjacent to the rebuilt New Palace, we followed a footman all the way up the centre aisle to the bench reserved for the royal family. Tobin was already there, along with the Duke and Duchess of Mordrel, who greeted us warmly. Before I could protest that we didn’t belong there, a trill of flutes began and we all turned to watch the bridal procession.

First there were the flute players, coming up the aisle with their instruments winking in the jewelled light of the stained glass windows. Then came the lutenists and finally a lone drummer. After him strode King Caxel, who did not look pleased to be taking his place beside me. Luka strode up the aisle next and squeezed between me and his father, much to my relief. Isla’s family came next, to sit across the aisle from us, and then the priest led in the happy couple. They were radiant in their white clothes and smiling at each other as if no one else existed.

I thought wistfully that it might be nice one day to have someone look at me like that. Realising that Luka was staring at me, I gave him a quizzical look, straightening my sash nervously.

“Is my gown too gaudy for the wedding?” I asked as low as I could, and he bent slightly to hear me.

“You look … wonderful,” he said.

I blushed at the praise and turned my attention to the ceremony, which had just begun. The Ur-priest of all Feravel was performing the ceremony, of course, since it was the crown prince getting married. The aged priest was well into the first prayer, an exhortation that Caxon, the greatest of the Triune gods, smile down on the couple. I did my best to pay attention, and not think about how Luka’s hand was very close to my hand, his fingers twitching as though he were going to take my hand.

But then something happened that took my attention off Luka, and off the bride and groom as well. The window at the front of the chapel, behind the altar, went dark. It might have been clouds suddenly obscuring the sun, but it was not yet noon and the sun was streaming through the windows to our left without a hint of shadow.

The light came back but the window was dark again a second later. Glancing around, I saw that I wasn’t the only one staring beyond the droning priest at the massive circle of glass behind him. Luka was now gripping my hand in a most unromantic fashion. On my other side Marta was whispering to Tobin and he was pointing discreetly to the front.

“This isn’t good,” I said under my breath.

“What?” Luka leaned down to listen, but his eyes were fixed on the window.

“I think my gown is cursed,” I whispered to him.

With a cracking of wood and a squeal of twisting nails, the front chapel window was pulled from its frame. A dragon bellowed, and the expected crash of breaking glass was replaced with a
whump
and someone swearing “by the First Fires!”

There was not a sound inside the chapel. Even the Ur-priest had stopped to look at what had happened. A dragon head appeared where the window had been, and the wedding guests began to scream and panic.

“Hello,” said Feniul cheerily. “I’m sorry about the window. I assumed it would just swing open. Is this a bad time to talk to your king?” He spotted me a beat later. “Creel! Hello! What a lovely gown!”

Finding that we were in the middle of a rather important wedding ceremony, the dragons at first politely agreed to wait. But then it was pointed out by Luka that no one, least of all the white-faced Ur-priest, was paying attention to the wedding any more. So King Caxel agreed to meet Shardas and Feniul out on the lawn behind the chapel and hear their news.

Miles and Isla insisted on being included, and so did Luka and I. Earl Sarryck, who was roaring for the guards to surround the dragons, followed us without an invitation. Shardas lay on the lawn contemplating the window, with Feniul at his side fidgeting with his tail.

I ran to Shardas and would have embraced any part of him I could reach – foreleg, muzzle, tail – but something in his expression held me back. Feniul bent down, though, and I stroked his nose.

“Shardas is very angry, isn’t he?” I whispered.

“He’s very worried,” Feniul said in his grating whisper. “We have not had an easy time.”

“This is some fine work,” Shardas said presently, and
carefully leaned the window against the wall of the chapel. “Merrun, I believe.”

“What?” King Caxel looked baffled.

“It looks to be the work of the artisan Merrun,” Shardas clarified.

“I really wouldn’t know,” the king replied, but he did so with rather more tact than he had previously shown with the dragons. I suspected that their withdrawal from Feravel had improved his feelings towards them.

“May we ask why you are here, disrupting my eldest son’s wedding?” Caxel sat on the bench that had been brought by one of the footmen, and regarded Shardas and Feniul with a stern eye. “I thought you agreed not to enter Feravel again.”

“We are sorry to interrupt the wedding, but we came to speak to you about our exile from human lands,” Shardas said. “With guards on the palace rooftop ready to shoot us, we didn’t dare wait for the ceremony to finish.” He took a deep breath. “In the past weeks my people have been flying over the world, seeking a place to live. We started with the areas that we knew, looking for places that were uninhabited and large enough to accommodate us. But there was nothing on this continent, nor on the southern continent.”

“What about the Citatian desert?” Miles spoke up. “Luka tells me that no one lives there. Perhaps the new king will cede the land to the dragons, as reparation for what they did to your people.”

“A nice idea,” Shardas agreed. “But the parts of the desert that are truly uninhabited – for the Citatians live in all but the most inhospitable areas – are too harsh for even dragons to survive in. We do require water, shelter, and a place to grow our food.” His words were not unkind, merely a statement of fact, and Miles nodded thoughtfully.

“I will not cede any of my lands to you,” King Caxel said. “I don’t care how Milun the First hurt you.”

I really came close to punching my king at that moment. His stupid, stout red face loomed in my sight, and I balled up my right fist without even thinking about it. Luka grabbed my arm, though, before I could step forward, and Isla took my other hand in a tight grip. Her hand was cold and I looked at her. She was pale and there was a dried track from a tear on her cheek. I realised that her beautiful wedding was being put on hold because of all this, and I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. I wouldn’t break her future father-in-law’s nose.

At least not today.

Luka did not let go of my other hand, and I didn’t try to release his grip.

“I am not asking you to cede anything,” Shardas said. “But I am asking you, and all the other human kings, to stop with the lands you currently occupy.”

“Meaning?”

King Caxel wasn’t the only one confused. I looked at Luka and Miles, and saw a dawning comprehension on
their faces, but Isla, Caxel and I were all in the dark until Shardas continued.

“The Far Isles,” Shardas said pointedly. “No human nation has yet laid claim to them, though ships have been dispatched to explore them.”

“That’s because there’s nothing there but rocks,” Luka said. “Shardas, sir, surely we can find another place for you.”

“Now, son,” King Caxel said almost sweetly. “If that is where the dragons want to live, who are we to argue?”

Luka loosened his hold on my hand, and for a second I thought he was going to punch his own father. He steeled himself, though, and turned to Shardas instead.

“Are you certain that you can survive there?”

Shardas nodded courteously. “I would not have gone back on our agreed exile if I were not.”

“Dragons are hardy creatures,” Feniul said. Then, turning so that the right side of his face was hidden from King Caxel, he winked at me and Luka.

Hope blossomed in my breast. They had found an island that was habitable, perhaps more than one. I controlled my expression, keeping my excitement from showing on my face. It would make King Caxel much happier to think that the dragons were huddling on a barren island, scraping moss off the rocks for food, than that they were living in a paradise that he had given up all rights to.

“Very well, I will not attempt to claim the Far Isles for Feravel,” Caxel said with an airy wave of one hand.

“I would like that in writing,” Shardas said promptly. “Also, I believe that there are ambassadors here from other human nations: Roulain, Citatie, Nalen, Moralien. I would like their signatures on a document declaring the Far Isles to be the realm of the dragons in perpetuity. And my people require safe passage so that they can collect their belongings from our previous places of abode.”

Caxel looked rather aggrieved at this, and I wondered if he had planned on having the dragons’ abandoned lairs searched for the treasures Shardas had described at their last meeting. But Caxel sent footmen to summon the ambassadors and a scribe with parchment and ink, while we waited awkwardly in the hot sun.

The first ambassador to arrive was Tobin, with Marta by his side. He was, I was startled to learn, the cousin of the Clan-Chief of Moralien, the closest thing that harsh nation had to a king. Royal weddings in foreign nations with foreign religions did not interest the Moralienins, so Tobin was, by default, his country’s representative at Miles’s wedding.

He approached Shardas and greeted him formally, with Marta translating his hand signs. After greeting (and being greeted by) the dragons, however, Tobin went on.

“The Clans of Moralien have no argument with dragons,” Marta interpreted, her voice clear and carrying. “You will always be welcome on our islands, and may settle on any of them that you like, as long as none of our people are displaced.”

I thought that King Caxel’s face looked even redder at this. At first I wondered why he would care if the Moralienins welcomed dragons, since the northern sea separated Moralien from Feravel anyway. Then it occurred to me that it made King Caxel’s exile of the dragons look even worse.