Dragon Flight (22 page)

“We thank you,” Shardas said formally to Tobin. “This is an unexpected kindness. Please know that your people will also be welcome in our lands. We hope one day to establish trade with humans, once we have a surplus of goods to trade, and look forward to having the mighty ships of Moralien visit our shores.”

Tobin bowed and stepped aside to make room for the other ambassadors, who were told of the proposal by Shardas. They all readily agreed: it would solve the “dragon problem” once and for all, and the document was drawn up and signed.

“Now, may we continue with our wedding?” Miles looked around at the assembly with a trace of asperity. At his side, Isla was still looking tearful.

“Please forgive us,” Shardas said. “Had we known –”

“Not at all,” Miles said briskly. “In fact, forgive
me
for not thinking to invite you.” He paused to smile slightly. “As the sovereign of a foreign land, you have every right to attend, or to send an ambassador.”

“This is true,” Shardas agreed.

“Now that there is a convenient opening in the front of the chapel,” Miles went on, “you and Feniul are more
than welcome to lounge here on the grounds and observe the ceremony through the, er, window.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Shardas said.

“Yes, thank you!” Feniul beamed at Miles. “And how is dear Azarte?” The dragon had given his dog, Azarte, to Miles, after the first war.

“He’s well, fat and happy,” Miles said, smiling with more genuine feeling now. “A father many times over.”

“Excellent! Pippin is also well. She is soon to be a mother, you know. Being so small, we are expecting only one puppy, perhaps two,” Feniul said. Then he … blushed.

It was a strange sight. A bright pink tinge coloured the edges of his green scales as the blood rushed to his cheeks. He half-lowered his eyelids, looking demure.

“And … we think … that is, Ria and I … we might have eggs … within the next year.”

“Feniul!” I hugged his foreleg with delight. “You’re going to be a father?!”

“Well, yes,” he said modestly.

After all that, the royal wedding of Crown Prince Milun to the Countess Isla was almost dull.

After the meeting on the lawn between two dragons and the ambassadors to all neighbouring nations, the wedding really was anticlimactic. I felt bad for Isla and Miles, but once they got back into their places before the triple altar, they seemed to forget the interruption and ignore the dragons peering down at them. The Ur-priest, though visibly rattled, managed to conduct the ceremony with all due reverence and at last Miles and Isla were married.

Shardas and Feniul took their leave, saying that they would go to their respective caves to gather any belongings they wanted. They promised to meet me later at my shop, to talk, though this was said with great discretion. King Caxel was wild-eyed enough as it was, and Earl Sarryck was clutching his ornamental sword with white knuckles.

The wedding banquet and subsequent ball, which I otherwise would have enjoyed, seemed interminable. It helped that I got a multitude of compliments on my gown, and on Isla’s, which meant that business would be
good for at least another year. It also helped that nothing else unexpected happened, thus settling my fears that my gown was cursed.

“You see,” Luka said, after hearing about my paranoia, “nothing else has gone wrong, and it’s nearly midnight.”

“A dragon
did
take a window out of the Royal Chapel,” Marta said. “But not for destructive purposes. And it has nothing to do with the gown you’re wearing.”

“You’re just vain,” Luka teased, and I threatened to pour my lemonade down the back of his tunic.

He took my goblet away and led me into the figures of a dance, grinning at his father’s furious expression while I tried not to stumble. Luka’s hand at my waist was sending waves of giddiness through me.

When midnight had come and gone, when the ball was over, when the newly married couple had been danced to their chambers and the musicians’ instruments had been put away, I finally left the New Palace. A royal carriage took me and Marta through the darkened streets to our shop, while we dozed on each other’s shoulders. But the carriage had to stop at the end of the street because Shardas was completely filling the space in front of Marisel’s Fine Dressmaking. The horses snorted and tossed their heads, and the driver swore, making us blink groggily.

“Oh, it’s all right,” I told him after I peered out of the window at Shardas. “We’ll go on from here ourselves.”

The man had the horses turned around and trotting back to the palace before Marta had even put both feet on the pavement. She stumbled and I caught her, and then we went to greet Shardas. He politely asked if Marta wanted to come with us, but she declined, and so I alone climbed on to his neck and was flown to the familiar chapel roof.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?” As soon as he landed on the roof I sprang off his back and all but shouted the question. “I was worried!”

“I’m sorry, Creel.” Shardas’s voice had its old, mild tone, but I could sense an undertone of weariness. “These past weeks –”

“Months!”

“This has not been an easy time for me and my people.”

This deflated my anger. “I know. I’m sorry.”

He swept a coil of tail around, and I sat on it, arranging my skirts. They had held up well despite the dancing and the ride on his back, and I really was quite pleased with this newest incarnation of the gold gown. Now that I was relatively certain that it wasn’t cursed.

He sighed heavily. “We had to decide our fate. The fate of an entire race of very large, very diverse creatures. It wasn’t easy. We’ve hidden in the desert, and in the mountains to the north of Feravel.” A little huff of laughter. “Yes, we rather violated the exile imposed on us, but where else to go? We couldn’t float on the open
sea for days on end, and there are precious few places in this world that do not already belong to humans.”

“So you found the Far Isles.”

“We did. Or rather, Velika did. She, Amacarin and Gala undertook to explore them.”

“So you’re going to live on some rocks in the middle of the ocean?” Descriptions from an adventurous duke during the banquet had not painted a pretty picture of the islands.

“Humans give up too easily.” Shardas snorted.

“Ahem?” I cleared my throat and twitched my skirts.

“Most humans,” he amended. His blue eyes looked down his nose, sly. “There is a ring of very bleak and inhospitable islands, like rough pearls strung on a necklace. But go beyond them and you find … paradise.” His voice had an almost dreamy quality. “Lush forests, fields of flowers, strange fruit hanging off the trees as far as the eye can see. Wild pigs, beautifully plumed birds – it’s a sight that brings joy to the heart.”

“Oh!” I slumped down further on the coil of his tail. “So you’ve found a paradise to live in? I would like very much to see it,” I said wistfully. “But I suppose I won’t ever.” Sudden tears came to my eyes as I realised: this was farewell. For good.

“You
shall
see it,” Shardas said decisively. “That is another reason why we returned. We wanted to have it in writing that the islands shall be the domain of the dragons, lest any greedy humans discover our secret. But
to our select friends: you, Luka, Marta, Tobin, even Prince Miles and his bride, we wish to extend a special invitation.

“I will be arranging speaking pools throughout the islands and we plan to have speaking pools set up in the human lands. One day, as I told our Moralienin friend earlier, we hope to establish trade. I refuse to give up my stained glass so easily, and most of my people feel the same way. We shall have to do without for a time, but if we can find things to trade: fruits, animals, even our own shed scales and other items of alchemical interest, we might be able to barter for the luxuries we long for.”

“But what if someone realises your secret? Tries to take the islands by force?”

A rattling sigh. “We can fight. There are thousands of us, gathered together, and fighting on our home ground we are formidable, as much as we dislike it. But to avoid that, we will set up a trading post on one of the outer, barren islands.”

I caught the idea. “And if you wait a few years before you start selling these fantastical fruits and animals, people will assume that they can be grown only by dragons!”

A rumbling laugh. “Precisely. How are they to know that the seeds aren’t part of an ancient legacy of my people?” Another rumble. “It will be a few months before we are settled, and the winter storms will make the flight across the ocean impossible. But in the spring,
if you like, I might fetch you for a visit …” He gave me a wistful look.

I threw my arms around his muzzle. “Oh, Shardas! I’d like nothing better!” Then I rooted around in the pockets of the light silk cloak I wore against the evening chill. “Here, I have a present for you. I sent a footman to the shop to fetch it during the banquet.” I pulled out a packet wrapped in oilcloth. “A gift for your new home.”

“What is it?” He nuzzled it, snorting and sniffing.

“A little something my brother, Hagen, sent me from Carlieff,” I said smugly. “Two dozen peach pits ready for planting.”

The sudden gust of laughter from the king of the dragons caused the chapel bells to clang once, loudly, and sent up a flock of disgruntled and sleepy pigeons.

“Marta must be freezing,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “No shoes in this weather?!”

“And this is the mildest autumn in years,” Luka added, trying not to move his lips. “You should come here in the winter.”

“No, thank you,” I whispered, shivering despite my long fur cloak and fur-lined boots, worn with an embroidered velvet dress.

Marta looked radiant in spite of the temperature, standing on the edge of the promontory in her blue-and-green Moralienin wedding gown. Her feet were bare, and almost purple with cold, but she never shivered. Tobin stood facing her beneath the stone arch that was the symbol of the Moralienin religion. I felt even sorrier for him: he was wearing leather pants and heavy boots, but his chest was bare beneath a harness ornamented with a variety of weapons. The tattoos on his scalp extended down his neck and on to his chest and back. It looked as though an entire clan of blue sea serpents were writhing about him.

“Why are they shoeless and, er, shirtless?” I leaned closer to Luka, not wanting to distract Marta from the recital of her ancestry. She had told it to me at least half a dozen times, but since I had been busy trying to sew not one but two wedding gowns for her and finish Isla’s bridal tour wardrobe at the same time, I hadn’t given it my full attention.

“The bride says that she comes to her new life with nothing but the gown she made herself –”

I interrupted Luka’s lesson to snort at this. Despite her intention to do things just right for her wedding, Marta had started to panic a few weeks ago. She had begged my help on the Moralienin gown, throwing centuries of tradition out of the window. I wondered how many other brides had done the same, over the years. Probably quite a few.

“The gown she made herself,” he repeated with amusement, “and the bread that she baked as a gift for her new husband’s family.”

“Please tell me they won’t actually eat it,” I said, nodding towards the ceremonial loaf in its white linen cloth that Marta held. In Feravel, brides held flowers. Seeing my friend hold her bridal
loaf
was rather odd. “Marta is a terrible cook, and I swear she added a cup of salt instead of a spoonful.”

“Ugh! I believe that it is placed on the family’s table at the banquet, but I don’t know if they’ll eat it.”

“Let’s hope not.” I sniggered, thinking of the look on
their faces if they tried. “And Tobin? Can’t he have a shirt?”

“The groom’s vows say that he can offer her only the strength of his arms to protect and watch over her.”

“I see.”

I glanced up and saw Marta’s mother glaring at me. I blushed, embarrassed at being caught talking.

“Creel,” Luka said, jabbing me with an elbow, “your turn.”

“Oops!” I leaped forward to where Tobin and Marta were waiting for me. No wonder her mother had been glaring, I thought, blushing again.

Lifting the wreath of spiky evergreens and small star-shaped white flowers high, I held it out to Tobin. As clearly as I could, I recited in Moralienin the words that I had been told were the traditional welcome of a new son and brother to a family. Since Marta had no sisters to perform this, she had asked me to do it, to my delight. I set the wreath on Tobin’s shaved head and stood on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks. He grinned at me and I grinned back as I stepped aside.

Tobin’s sister, Ulfrid, came forward and solemnly greeted Marta, placing a wreath on her head and kissing her cheeks. She even smiled faintly as she did it, and brushed my hand in a friendly way as we returned to our places.

Putting his arm around my waist, Luka pulled me close as the Moralienin patriarch began the last part of the ceremony. “We should do that,” he whispered.

“Wear flowers in our hair?” I was watching the ceremony and not really paying attention to Luka, despite the warmth of his arm.

Tobin’s eldest brother, the head of the household since their father’s death some years ago, had come forward. Skarpin had surprised us by being as garrulous and emotional as Tobin and Ulfrid were silent and controlled. His red beard was a sharp contrast to his shaved head, and he had six earrings in each ear, a sign that he was a wealthy landowner. He took the loaf of bread from the priest and began the traditional praising of the bride’s skills.

“No,” Luka said. “We should get married.”

Now I gave him my full attention. “What?” My heart started to beat its way out of my chest. “Now? Here?”

“Why not? We can always get married again in Feravel if Father demands it.” His eyes sparkled down at me. “Say yes?”

“You’re a prince, I’m a dressmaker!”

“You’re only a commoner because you choose to be,” Luka whispered fiercely. “For everything you’ve done in the past two years, you could have been awarded a title ten times over! You keep turning them down!”