Dragonskin Slippers (24 page)

And what would happen to me, if I were standing nose to nose with a dragon controlled by Amalia.

As though reading my thoughts, which both he and Marta had the disconcerting habit of doing, Luka came to my side and crouched down. “Creel, don’t worry. It will work. And you will help Shardas put his cave back in order. I promise.” He laid one hand on top of both of mine, stilling my frantic movements.

“But if it doesn’t?” Tears pricked my eyes and my nose started to run, much to my embarrassment.

“It will,” Marta said firmly, and passed me her handkerchief. It was snowy white and embroidered with roses.

As lovely as it was, I used it to blow my nose, then gave them both tremulous smiles. I would make it work. For Shardas’s sake.

Here I was, being sacrificed to a dragon yet again. My aunt would be thrilled. Well, perhaps not. She
would
be thrilled, though, to know that I was guarded by a prince, a duke, an earl and two dozen strapping soldiers. She would pack her things and move to the King’s Seat right away, in order to help negotiate wedding plans with any one of them.

That was assuming, of course, that I survived the next hour.

I was standing in a field a league or so east of the King’s Seat, with a pile of ancient scrolls and hand-illuminated books around my feet. Hanging over my left shoulder was a wide, stiff length of waxed silk woven with herbs that made my nose tingle. My guards and the assorted nobles were all carefully concealed beneath loosely piled hay or overturned wagons, leaving me to the fate I had volunteered for. I had experience with dragons, I had argued
when Earl Sarryck tried to put one of his soldiers in my place. I didn’t flinch when a dragon approached me, and I was less threatening than a soldier.

Plumes of smoke rose here and there from the King’s Seat, but it was grey smoke, which signalled cooking fires. Half the New Palace was gone, but the other half still stood, ragged and proud and stained with smoke. The duke’s scouts said that the intact parts of the palace were occupied by the Roulaini ministers, already settling into their new apartments, despite the rubble and the dragons circling overhead.

“Cheeky mugs,” the duke had said upon receiving this news.

“Here, dragon-dragon-dragon,” I said to myself now, thinking of how my mother used to call our barn cat to the kitchen door for scraps.

I prayed to the Triunity that my mother was so busy enjoying paradise she couldn’t see me standing here, waiting to try to fasten a collar around the neck of a fire-breathing beast the size of our old house.

“Here they come,” one of the hidden soldiers called out.

The sweat slicking my forehead and back turned cold and then froze, and I started to shake. Looking up into the brittle blue sky, I could see two forms swooping towards me like very large eagles, or the black omen-clouds that were said to have descended upon the god Caxon and his lover, shortly before she was slain by –

No, don’t think of that, I told myself firmly. Just think about the here and now.

“You mean the dragons swooping down on my head?” I said aloud, my voice rising with panic.

“Beg pardon, mistress?” I thought I saw a man raise his head from behind a nearby hay bale.

“Nothing,” I shouted back, over the sound of flapping dragon wings.

And then the dragons landed: first Feniul, who had led the other here, then our prey.

It was Amacarin, Theoradus’s friend whom I had spoken with in the enchanted pool back in the hills above Carlieff Town those long months ago. Feniul had told us that Amacarin was rather small for a dragon, and might be an easy catch to try first. He collected old books and scrolls of poetry, and so the Duke of Mordrel had been persuaded to loan us a portion of his own treasured collection.

The duke had looked nearly as blue-grey as Amacarin at the thought that the priceless manuscripts might be burned to ash by the dragon, should things go badly. I felt much the same, thinking about what would happen to me in that situation.

Feniul and Amacarin had landed, one on each side of me and my hoard of books. Feniul had his wings neatly folded and was looking calm – eerily calm, in fact, considering that Feniul was usually dithering and fidgeting about
something
. Amacarin’s head moved sharply as he tried to read the spines of the books, watch me, and keep a lookout for danger at the same time. It was reassuring to see that he
was
smaller than Feniul, though still the size of a small cottage.

“Greetings, Dragon Amacarin,” I said politely. “You probably don’t remember me –”

“By the First Fires! It’s that human maid of Theoradus’s!” Amacarin reared back his head, gazing down at me with loathing. “Do you have any idea of the trouble you have caused? I’m being forced –
forced
– to do the bidding of some irritating human maid. And why? Because you tricked those slippers away from Theoradus!” He snorted a gust of steam at me, but I stepped out of the way. “And now, in the capricious and foolish way of your kind, you have just given them away, causing no end of suffering to my people. And yours as well, might I point out!” Amacarin fanned dust at me with his wings to underline his displeasure.

Coughing, I shook my head to clear away the grit and thought fast. Flattery and offering him the books seemed senseless now. He knew who I was, he knew what was going on, it made better sense to just be honest.

“Amacarin, put this collar on,” I said, taking the charm off my shoulder and holding it out to him. “It will make you immune to the slippers. You won’t have to fight any more; you can go home to your cave and read poetry.”

“Do you really think that I’m going to listen to you?” Amacarin’s voice was quite rude. He reached for the manuscripts with his foreclaws. “These are very nice, and you don’t deserve them. I shall take them.”

Feniul’s foreclaws scratched the ground. “No, no! You must put the collar on!” He looked helplessly at me.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort. I’ll take these and –”

“And what?” Luka had left his concealment and now strolled up to stand beside me, making Amacarin lash his tail in surprise and fear. I had been startled myself, but covered the “eeping” sound I made with a cough. “You’ll take the manuscripts and go back to the King’s Seat? And there you’ll wait for the next time Princess Amalia commands you to go out and burn something, or chase someone, until eventually you get fired on with a hail of arrows and plummet to your death?”

“That’s a rather vivid picture,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. I thought I saw him wink, just barely.

“It’s really none of your business, human, what I do,” Amacarin said. He swung his head back and forth, sniffing the air. “How many of you are there here?” he hissed.

“Enough to riddle your soft underbelly with arrows before you can blink,” Luka said in a conversational tone. “Now put on the collar.”

“No, I must get back.” Amacarin spread his wings. “She is wondering where I am, I can feel it. I must get back.” His eyes were wide and the swinging motion of his head now looked mechanical and unnatural. “I must get back.”

“Creel,” Luka whispered. “Do it now.”

Everything I had felt standing outside Theoradus’s cave with Hagen whispering in my ear came back to me. My trembling knees locked, my breath whooshed out of my body, and the sweat thawed and began to pour from
my brow and back once more. I made a small whimpering sound from between stiff lips.

“Creel! Do it now!” Luka poked me in the ribs.

Amacarin cupped his wings, preparing to take flight. His eyes looked glazed, and his head was still moving in that stiff way.

I lunged just as he jumped into the air. The collar slapped around his neck; I grabbed the dangling end as it came swinging underneath his throat, and clung to the trailing scarlet cords as he flew off with me hanging down his chest like a pendant.

It’s no easy thing to tie two pieces of cord together when you’re hanging from them. Particularly if you are sweating, and the cords are made of silk. I could feel myself slipping, and knew that I hadn’t a chance in this life or the next to tie a knot. But I had a sudden blaze of inspiration: did the collar have to be knotted, or simply closed?

With my eyes squeezed shut and a prayer to all three gods on my lips, I kicked out with my legs, hitting Amacarin squarely in the chest. The force of the kick caused me to swing wildly, and I twisted my body as I went.

As I spun around to face away from the dragon, the cords I was holding twisted together, closing the collar into a loop. Amacarin gave a great shudder and we began to plummet downward. I couldn’t help myself, I screamed for all I was worth, even after I felt my feet hit the ground with a painful jarring.

It wasn’t until a huge hand clapped over my mouth
and an arm like a band of iron encircled my waist that I stopped screaming. My eyes were still closed, but I went limp and let whoever it was half-carry me away from Amacarin. When the hand moved away from my mouth I opened my eyes and saw Tobin looking down at me with concern. I gave him a faint smile.

Then I leaned over and threw up.

One hard hand patted my back while another held my braid out of the way. When I felt better, Tobin offered me a large handkerchief. It seemed that I was always accepting other people’s handkerchiefs these days.

“That was amazing!” Luka came running over. “Are you all right?”

“I can’t do that again,” I said, my voice shaking and my eyes watering.

“That’s all right; we can take care of the rest. Now that the men have seen a freckled slip of a girl do it, I think they’ll manage the others,” he told me. “You were incredibly brave. I don’t think many men would have had the courage to do that.”

“That wasn’t courage, that was blind fear and stupidity,” I said. Then my knees buckled and I collapsed to the ground, Tobin’s handkerchief still clutched to my mouth. The soldiers had burst from concealment and were cheering and chanting my name, making Amacarin lash his tail nervously.

“Whatever it was, it worked,” the duke said, coming over to join us. “You are a wonder, Mistress Creel. Do you think you can pull off that stunt a few more times?”

“What?”

“I have just been speaking with these two dragons,” the duke said. Then he gave a small laugh, shaking his head in disbelief. “I never thought I’d say
that
, did I?”

I would have laughed, but I was too busy shaking.

The duke must have sensed that the rest of us were not as amused. He sobered, and glanced back over his shoulder at the dragons.

“The dragons have agreed that you are the best choice to collar their kind. They would like you to keep doing it.”

“No, no, no!” I shook my head, putting my hands over my ears. “I am never doing that again.”

“I think you should feel flattered,” Luka said, trying to jolly me out of my terror. “It’s not every young lass who has a pair of dragons admiring her.”

“They can jolly well admire you and Tobin. I am not doing that again.”

“My dear girl, we do need you.” The duke squatted down beside me. “You have more experience with dragons than anyone else living. With the possible exception of Princess Amalia,” he amended. “What you did was heroic and dangerous, and we need you to do it just a few more times.”

“I could have died!”

The duke put a hand on my arm, his face grave. “Creel, I hate to manipulate you in this way, but I’m afraid I must.”

I stared at him, dreading what I knew he was going to say next.

“You were there with me in the Winter Palace. So many people died, and have died since, because of the attacks. We must stop them, or even more will die. We desperately need your help.”

I sighed so deeply that when I exhaled I blew Tobin’s handkerchief out of my hand. It caught on the crushed wheat beside me, and I fixed my eyes on it. I thought about the dragons. About Shardas. Did I really want anyone else trying to put a collar on my friend? Could I really walk away from all this, knowing that innocent people were dying in the fires of dragons? The dragons themselves were besieged – forced against their will to become the fiercest, most ruthless warriors in the Roulaini army. Could I turn my back on my country, and let Amalia and her father take control?

I sighed again. “Bring out those tapestries,” I said. “Tell Amacarin and Feniul to look for a large dark green female. She’s the one who likes tapestries.”

“Thank you,” the duke said sincerely. He stroked my hair in a gentle, fatherly way and then stood up, groaning as his knees creaked, and walked over to the dragons.

“Don’t worry,” Luka said with a grin. “By our last count, there are only eleven more.”

After Amacarin, I thought that surely things would get easier. After all, we had two dragons on our side now, and some experience. We knew the collars worked, we knew that luring them with the things they collected worked. Simple, right?

Perhaps it had occurred to some of the others, and they just didn’t want to worry me. I’m quite embarrassed to say that it failed to cross my mind: but it would be rather difficult not to notice if a dragon suddenly went missing, wouldn’t it?

The large green female, whose name was Niva, landed beside me not a quarter of an hour after Amacarin had been sent to get her. He had told her that someone fleeing the King’s Seat had dropped an heirloom tapestry in a field and she, being released from duty for the moment, had come to see. Much shrewder than Amacarin, she bartered with me for the tapestry.

“But don’t you want to be free of the Roulaini?” I clasped my hands and gave her a pleading look.

“Of course I do,” she retorted. “But how do I know that being under your power will be any better?”

“But you won’t be under my power,” I protested. “You just won’t be controlled by the Roulaini. The collars block the pull of the slippers, nothing more.”

“So
you
say,” Niva said. “But how do I know for certain?”

“You make a very good point,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “So, if it will put your mind at ease, you may take one of these tapestries.” I indicated the three gorgeous wall-hangings spread out around me. “They belong to the Duke of Mordrel, but I’m sure he can spare one for your fine collection.”