Dragon Flight (6 page)

What I didn’t want to tell Marta was that I wasn’t so much concerned about whether or not it was immodest to wear trousers, but with how the Citatians would receive us. Luka had assured us that the Grand Market was always full of foreign women, and that we would only be two more wealthy shoppers in the crowd. I couldn’t help but remember my first day in the King’s Seat, however.

Dowdily dressed, I had been looking for work at a dressmaker’s shop, asking directions of strangers and wandering the streets until curfew. I had trodden on a small dog (Feniul’s Pippin), and nearly caused a diplomatic incident with a Roulaini princess, the evil Amalia. I had been jeered at, ignored, and threatened with prison for violating a curfew I hadn’t known existed. If our experience here in the Grand Market was at all similar, I didn’t know what I would do.

All around us were Citatian men with tanned faces and pale hair, wearing conical red or purple or yellow hats, depending on their occupation. Every so often we saw a blue hat worn by someone working at a booth. Women in bright silks strolled in pairs with bare-chested bodyguards at their heels. The women held square sunshades to keep their skin from being tanned like their husbands’, and their pale braids were often dyed fanciful colours: royal blue, scarlet and deep green.

But there were also women and men with tattooed hands wearing dark robes, shoppers in high-collared, lace-trimmed Roulaini gowns and suits, and some people wrapped head to toe in long, seamless draperies that left one shoulder bare. Many of the women had small pet monkeys with jewelled collars frolicking along beside them, attached to their mistresses by long chains that fastened to a bracelet on the women’s wrists.

“We should get a monkey,” Marta said. “It seems to be the accessory of choice.”

“Absolutely not,” I disagreed. “Don’t you remember Lady Katta’s pet monkey? It shredded two of her gowns with its little fingernails, and when she scolded it, it flung its own waste at her!”

Marta made a face. “Bleah! I’d forgotten that.”

We went to a booth that sold bolts of silk embroidered with tiny silver mirrors. Far from sneering at us, the proprietress scrambled to show us her finest wares, bowing and smiling and communicating to us in broad gestures. She wore mirrored silk twisted and draped around her stout figure, leaving both arms and one shoulder bare. I was hard-pressed not to stare at the tattoo of a snake on her naked shoulder.

While the merchandise was appealing, it was clear that she spoke not a word of Feravelan or Roulaini, which I knew a few words of. Marta also tried Moralienin, Tobin’s native tongue, but got nothing more than nods and smiles. Still, I resolved to come back another time and
buy a bolt of the mirrored silk. It would be a wondrous addition to Isla’s trousseau. We would just have to look elsewhere for someone to gossip with.

It was Marta who spotted a trio of Moralienin men coming out of a low building near some leather workers. Their shaved heads and gold earrings hardly looked exotic in the sea of strange clothing that we were walking through, but people gave the heavily armed, fierce-looking men a wide berth nevertheless. Marta immediately took my arm and dragged me within earshot of them, much to our bodyguards’ horror. As we strolled by with false casualness, Marta began to jabber in Moralienin, while I nodded and smiled as though I understood every word.

The ploy had the desired effect, and one of the burly men stopped in surprise. Addressing Marta, he bowed to us and then apparently introduced himself and his men. Marta introduced herself using Tobin’s sister’s name, Ulfrid, and then called me something that sounded like “Hime-trout”.

Releasing my arm to gesture effusively, she chattered (as near as I could tell) about the market and the strange clothes and then grinned broadly, seeming to invite the men to add their own opinions. I groaned inwardly. Tobin and his sister were so taciturn that I had thought Ulfrid was also mute when we first met. I couldn’t imagine that these men would really believe us to be their countrywomen, the way Marta was babbling on.

Much to my surprise, the men were excited to hear their mother tongue and replied with equal fervour. They went on at some length, with Marta and me nodding and smiling and me hoping ardently that Marta understood. Then Marta started up again, and judging by her flapping arms, she was talking about dragons.

The Moralienin men all nodded gravely. Then they bowed and walked away, leaving us standing with our bodyguards in the middle of an empty space in the market.

“Well.” She put her hands on her hips. “How rude!”

“I’m guessing that they didn’t want to talk about all the dragons flying overhead,” I said in a low voice.

“Apparently not,” Marta said, still sounding put out. Then she bit her lip. “How was my accent, though? Did it sound like theirs?”

“Marta, we’re trying to stop a war with the Citatians.” I pointed at the dragons flying above us. “Remember?”

“Yes, but when this is all over, I have to meet Tobin’s mother, and then recite my lineage in Moralienin, and I’m nervous.”

“Don’t worry,” I said with false cheer. “If we don’t find someone to talk to us soon, you’ll never have to meet Tobin’s mother. We’ll all be dead.”

She punched me in the arm. “You’re horrible.”

“Gaal matto!” A Citatian man in a merchant’s blue hat shoved a monkey between us. “Gaal matto?”

“No monkeys!” I shook my head emphatically. “We don’t want a monkey!” Then I got a good look at him. “You!” I rudely pointed my finger right in his face. “You lived in the King’s Seat! I saw you!”

On my unfortunate first day in the King’s Seat, shortly before treading on Pippin, I had been asking directions to the cloth-workers’ district. I was certain this was the same man I had first asked, but he hadn’t spoken Feravelan. Still, that had been almost two years ago.

“You,” I said again. “Remember me?” I pointed to my chest. “Where is the cloth-workers’ district?” I smiled and nodded. “Then, little dog, bark, bark, and princess.” I waved my hands around my head to indicate lots of curly hair. Meanwhile, Marta and our bodyguards were staring at me as if I’d grown two extra heads.

“Ah, pretty maidy! Hello!” The monkey seller beamed at me. “Little dog, woof, woof!” He laughed like a maniac. “Little dog, pretty maidy, cruel maidy. Pretty maidy buy monkey?” He brandished the little black-and-white creature on his arm in my face.

“No, no monkeys,” I said, but I smiled while I said it. I reached out and stroked the monkey’s head. It was quite a darling, really, mostly black with a wild mane of white hair. Then I thought of Lady Katta’s pet and withdrew my hand. “Why are you here?” I opened my arms to show puzzlement, then pointed to the ground.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Dragons, much fire, whoosh,
whoosh!” He blew out his cheeks and flapped his arms, nearly flinging the monkey into Marta’s face. “Monkeys all go, poof.” It wasn’t clear if they were killed, or if they simply fled in terror, but his smile didn’t waver so we continued to smile back. “Come home, wives happy, mother happy. Buy monkey?” He thrust the creature at Marta, who took it and held it at arm’s length.

“But dragons
here
,” I said, waving both hands in the air. “Many more dragons.”

“Hee-hoo,” the monkey seller said, rolling his eyes and flapping his hands. “Dragons here good. Fly all day, lay eggs, eat bad dogs. Not burn houses. Nice dragons.”

“Oh, yes, very nice,” I said. Behind me, one of the soldiers snorted and I put my hand behind my back and snapped my fingers for him to be quiet. “But why do the dragons want to burn Feravel?”

He threw up his hands in ignorance. “King angry?” He turned his attention to Marta. “Monkey like you. You buy.”

The monkey had crawled up Marta’s arm and was busy unravelling one of her braids. “Er, all right.” She pulled some coins out of her purse and handed them to the man. “Thank you.”

“Nice, nice, pretty maidies,” the monkey seller said in delight, and then trotted a few paces away to a booth where there were cages with more monkeys and a few exotic birds. He put the coins in a carved box, guarded over by a hook-nosed woman a foot taller than him.
Another equally broad-shouldered and grim woman sat by knitting.

“Which one is his wife?” Marta whispered as we smiled and nodded and strolled away.

“Probably both,” I said. “He said ‘wives happy.’ Luka told me it’s the fashion to have at least two.”

“Ugh! I wouldn’t allow Tobin to have another wife,” she said.

“I’m not sure I want
one
,” the soldier behind Marta said. We both glared over our shoulders at him.

“Why do you think the king is so angry with Feravel?” Marta asked, freeing her hair from the monkey’s grasp and moving him to the crook of her elbow.

“Let’s ask him,” I said. I went back to the first booth we had stopped at, the one that sold mirrored silk.

It was quite exquisite. The silk itself was heavy and slick, almost like satin but with a luscious depth to the colour. The mirrors were tiny bits of polished silver, sewn into the fabric with silk thread.

Marta jostled my elbow. “Ask him? You mean the king?”

“Yes. No use dancing around the cart when you want a ride, as my mother used to say. Just hop in and whistle.”

Using my fingers and a range of exaggerated facial expressions, I had the beaming woman cut several yards in red, gold and green silk. I pulled the Citatian coins Luka had given me out of my belt pouch, and laid them on the table one at a time until the woman nodded, satisfied.

Marta watched me buying cloth with a stunned look. “How do you plan to ask the king?”

Complacent, I gathered up my purchases, now safely wrapped in coarse broadcloth. “First we’re going back to our cave to do a little sewing, and then I’ll show you,” I told her. “But if that monkey ruins anything …” I let my voice trail off meaningfully.

“I hear that you can eat monkey,” one of the soldiers supplied.

“Delicious,” I said.

Back at the cave, Marta shrieked in horror as I proceeded to cut the mirrored silk into long strips. “Creel! What are you doing? You’re ruining it!”

“Just wait and see,” I said. When I had made several long ribbons out of the edges of the mirrored cloth, I opened my baggage and pulled out a blue satin riding dress. With a pang, I started to cut the divided skirt free of the bodice.

“Now I know you’ve gone insane,” Marta said. Her hands fluttered, as though she was debating snatching the gown away before I did any more damage.

There was a scuffling and the sound of voices at the mouth of the cave, and Luka and Tobin came in with a soldier and the dragons hard on his heels. “Luka,” Marta appealed to him. “Creel’s gone mad; you have to speak to her.”

I looked up to assure Luka that I hadn’t, suppressing a thrill of delight at being near him again, and saw the expression on his face. I cast aside my work. “What happened?” Then I saw that there were only two dragons with them, and my heart shuddered. “Where’s Niva?”

Marta gasped and ran to embrace Tobin, who I now saw had a long cut down the sleeve of his white Citatian uniform. Red stained the edges of the cut, but he seemed calm enough. Of course, he always seemed calm.

“Female dragons do not fly in formation here,” Luka said.

He helped Marta strip off Tobin’s tunic so that she could look at his arm. There was a long, shallow cut on his forearm, but it looked like it wouldn’t need stitching. We all breathed a sigh of relief and Marta set about washing the wound.

“I had no idea,” Luka went on. “I can’t tell the difference between a male and a female unless I hear them talk.”

“Neither can I,” I admitted.

“We were flying above the city and half a dozen other dragons surrounded us. The soldiers have brass trumpets, to make their voices louder. I tried to steal some when I took the uniforms, but I couldn’t. Anyway, the soldiers started to shout at us: why did we have a female, where were her eggs, who was our commander.” Luka made a face. “What were we to do? My Citatian is fairly good, but it was hard to keep my accent correct while I was shouting. I told them that we had orders from Commander Toukas, the only commander whose name I know, and they followed us all the way to the palace.”

Luka sat down on a bed and began rubbing his face. He yanked off the spiked steel helmet he wore with his
uniform and threw it on the ground. “We landed in the courtyard behind the palace, where the royal dragons land. Toukas himself came out to meet us. He recognised me at once and shouted for the guards. We started to take off again, but the dragon patrol threatened to burn us. They threw a net over Niva, saying something about her being uncollared.”

“Didn’t she have her collar on?” I checked Feniul and Amacarin, and they were both collared. We had put the alchemical creations on all three dragons before leaving Feravel, just to be safe.

“She did, but the Citatian collars are leather – ours don’t pass muster. Tobin cut himself free of the net, and tried to make the hole larger for Niva. But you know how she is: she started shouting that we should go, go at once. Feniul snatched up Tobin and we fled. It took two hours of some pretty fancy flying before we lost them and decided it was safe enough to come here.”

Feniul leaned in. “I’m sorry about your arm,” he said to Tobin. “Is it bad?”

Tobin shook his head as Marta bandaged it with some linen one of the soldiers gave her.

“Scraped him with a claw?” I patted Feniul’s foreleg. “I’m sure it was an accident.”

“Of course it was,” Amacarin said haughtily. “And isn’t anyone going to ask what my human and I discovered?” The soldier standing beside the blue-grey dragon looked disgruntled at being called Amacarin’s “human”.

“You weren’t with them?” I asked at the same time as Luka said, “Sorry. What
did
you find?”

Amacarin puffed out his grey-blue chest. “We found a
massive
hatching ground,” he announced, clearly expecting an impressive reaction.

He got it, but from Feniul alone. We humans just looked puzzled.

“Oh, my! How many hatchlings did you see?” Feniul’s eyes gleamed, and he lashed his tail in excitement. “A dozen? Any sign of other eggs?”