In the Time of Dragon Moon (15 page)

Graveyard, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

J
ACKRUN
STEPPED
OUT
of the copse down the hill. Vazan must have scented him. So that was why she'd taken off, screeching. He climbed toward me in his fighting gear, a short sword strapped to his side.

I tucked Father's book deep in my herbing basket and shouldered it again.

Jackrun looked around, making sure we were alone before he glanced skyward. It had stopped drizzling. “A beautiful red,” he said. “Desmond mentioned your father's red dragon. I've never seen that breed before. I wish she'd stayed.” He hooked his thumb in his belt still looking up. “Desmond claimed he rode her once,” he added.

“No one but my father has ever flown with her,” I said. “Vazan is a free red.”

“Vazan.” He tasted the name and toed the grass with his boot. “I was pretty sure Desmond lied about it. And the other dragon, the one he mentioned?”

“We just buried your cousin. Why does any of that matter now, Jackrun?”

“It matters, Uma. He told us he'd ridden dragons often before he tried to jump. If that's not true, I want to know.”

“Desmond didn't lie about riding the other dragon, the one called Sorgyn that used to live near the king's stables.” He'd seemed to care for the beast, bringing him prized meat slices from the kitchen.

“Where did Sorgyn go? No sign of any dragons near the stables now.”

I pointed toward the dragon-sized mound by the yew.

“They . . . buried him?” He shuddered. “That's not right. Dragons burn their dead.”

“Sorgyn didn't live as other dragons do. He lazed about and ate kitchen scraps. Vazan would have nothing to do with him when he died. She called him a winged pig. She refused to waste her fire on him to give him proper dragon rites.”

“I don't blame her.” Jackrun hurled a stone at the bushes. Starlings burst upward in a black shawl and flew toward the distant orchard on the grounds above Pendragon Castle.

Jackrun turned and read the name I'd carved on the driftwood headstone. “Estruva Quarteney. Adan—Healer. So
Adan
means ‘healer'?”

I nodded, my head feeling too heavy for my neck.

“What happened to your father? How did he . . .” Jackrun cleared his throat. “Did Desmond do something, I mean did he . . . ?”

“Kill him?” I said. “No.” I looked down, remembering the moment I found Father's body. A distant raven's caw broke the silence that had stretched out between us.

“I know my cousin's death has made your task that much harder,” Jackrun said. “Her Majesty wanted a child, now she relies on you to help her have an heir. You had good reason to keep Desmond alive.”

“I also had reason to want him dead. I was his dog to kick around at court. In private he liked to watch me being whipped. And . . . other things.”

Jackrun clenched his fist. “The bastard. He never . . . overpowered you? He didn't—”

I shook my head. “I managed to fight him off. The one time he nearly . . . you crashed through the window and knocked him flat.”

“I was glad to do it. The best cut arm and split lip I've ever had.” He licked his lip, dropped his brows. “If you had told me
why
you needed the key—”

“How could I? A girl does not speak of such things
.
”
Neither in my village nor in the English court
. “And we had only just met. I hardly knew you.”

“You know me better now,” he said.

I looked at him, wondering how much I really knew.

He was studying the name again. “Your father must have been proud of you,” he said. “Are there many female healers where you come from?”

His question was too close to the wound of truth. “My father wanted a son to train up as was our custom.”

“But he didn't follow custom himself.”

“What?”

“Well, is it customary for an Euit healer to marry an English woman?”

I shook my head, gripped the folds of my blue velvet skirts. The gown was far more costly than my mother could have ever afforded growing up as an ironmonger's daughter. Jackrun was staring.

“I'm guessing your mother's a redhead.”

“How do you know?”

“Sometimes the torches or the sun catches red highlights in your black hair.”

I knelt, hoping my dark skin would guise my blush as I pulled weeds from the edge of the grave.

There was so much Jackrun didn't know about me. From the beginning he'd assumed I had chosen to serve as the queen's personal physician. That it was an honor I had wanted, perhaps even fought for. I'd let him think that, liking the respect it lent me. But I shouldn't let him believe any of those lies here at my father's grave. Here, if anywhere, I should tell the truth. “Father and I were abducted and brought here against our will, Jackrun.”

“What?”

I pulled more weeds. He fell on his knees across the grave from me, yanking up weeds there and tossing them to my growing pile. “Tell me,” he said.

“The queen heard about my father's fertility cure and wanted it, wanted him to treat her. She did not invite him to come north. She sent her husband's army down to capture him. She left an army there to hold the tribe captive until he succeeded. After he died—” My hand froze in a stranglehold around the weed stems. “After that, she kept me in her service. My father's tonics work better than those of her other physicians. They calm her moods, ease her stomach—the powder takes away her pain. She knows the Adan's medicines are powerful. She's willing to wait a little longer for his miracle cure to work. She won't let me go home until she is with child.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

I wanted to put my face against the earth. “I wasn't ready yet.”

Jackrun started digging too, not just pulling. “She sent an army down,” he said, fishing for more.

I told him about the day the king's army rode into our village. I dug deeper, more savagely, avoiding his eyes as I detailed the terrors, Prince Desmond slashing an elder's throat, the soldier killing my uncle in front of my father and me, our miserable trip north in the jail cart.

Jackrun's breath grew louder as he listened. Smoke trickled from his nose. Before I was done, he turned aside, a retching sound lengthening to a roar. The fire that poured from his mouth was silver orange as molten metal. Damp as the weed pile was from the morning drizzle, the weeds hissed and caught fire.

We did not speak for a long while. The crackling sounds of his fire filled my ears, the heat warming me. I could not burn away the ugly memories I'd just revealed to him, but his angry fire helped heal the ache.

“Sorry,” he said, nodding at the fire.

“Don't be sorry. I wanted it. I needed it. It . . . helps.”

He shook his head half in disbelief. “Do you mean that?”

“I do.”

We watched the blaze blowing sideways now in the breeze. “You sound like my aunt Augusta. She didn't mind my fire either.”

I thought of Lady Tess's painting of the girl and boy on the beach. “Where did she go?”

He shook his head. “She never told us where. Just somewhere far from us.” He threw a hard glance toward the castle. “When you have so much dragon in you, it's almost impossible to live walled in with other people.”

He's speaking about himself,
I thought, wiping my hands on the damp grass.

Jackrun stomped out the flames and dumped the remains of the burned weeds behind the nearby bushes. Returned and took my arm to help me up. His hand clasped the blue velvet a moment longer, feeling the blade strapped under my sleeve. “Good,” he said before letting go.

“Do you mean the gown or the knife?”

“Both.”

I smoothed my soft skirts. I'd told Vazan the gown was fighting gear. But just now I was glad I wasn't dressed as mi tupelli, or in scribe's clothing. Some part of me liked how the dress pleased him.

“So raw,” Jackrun said, looking at my red fingertips where I'd chewed the nails down to the quick. “You are worried,” he added.

I was always worried, but less so when he was near me. I couldn't tell him that.

Jackrun said, “Uma, I have to go. They're expecting me in the weapons yard. I've stayed too long already. Don't head back right away,” he added. “It's better if we are not seen together.”

“Why?” I asked, hurt. “You said that once before when we were on the ship and didn't tell me why.”

“Uma, just . . . Will you meet me this time tomorrow?” He pointed downhill to the grove he'd emerged from earlier. “In the trees. We can talk then. Maybe then I can, we can . . .” He did not seem able to finish. He left me with dirt on my hands, questions in my mouth, a dull aching behind my eyes. He was gone before I could argue more.

Elm Grove, Wil
d
e Island

Wolf Moon

September 1210

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
, I found Jackrun in the elm grove. The sentries on the outer curtain wall could not see us through the foliage.
This is why he wanted to meet here,
I thought as he saw me approach. The air was heavy with the threat of storm, but for once it wasn't raining.

“Uma?” he said. A greeting and a question both.

“Jackrun.” I drew back my hood, the chill September air nipping my cheeks. I was late to meet him, too busy with the queen to get away until the last moment. I feared I'd miss him, but he waited. He was dressed in fighting gear, sword and all.

“What do you remember about the day Desmond fell?” he asked.

“I don't like thinking about that day.”

“Do you think it was an accident?”

“Yes, of course. What else could it have been?”

“Murder.”

“Murder? It's not possible. We saw it happen in front of us. No one pushed him off or—”

“A very clever murder,” he said again.

“No.” I stepped back and leaned against an elm trunk for support, pressing my hands against the coarse, ridged bark.

“Tell me you didn't feel something wrong about that day,” Jackrun said, his eyes boring into me. “Tell me what made you come to Faul's Leap in the first place.”

“I . . . It was the last day of Egret Moon. A treacherous time some elders call the Murderous Moon. I knew you were all going to Faul's Leap. I sensed something might happen there.”

He nodded. “Something like murder.”

“Not murder, not especially murder, just . . . something bad. Some mishap. What happened was an accident,” I said again more firmly. “Prince Desmond stood at the edge, Jackrun. He insisted on trying the leap. You tried to warn him. Even Sir Geoffrey stepped out to try and stop him.”

“But do you remember what he said?” Jackrun asked.

I closed my eyes a moment. “I think so.”

“I remember all of it,” Jackrun said, “because it concerned me at the time and I've thought about it ever since. He said,
You should not take such a risk. You do not have the skills or training to do it.
”

Jackrun leaned against a tree across from me, bent his knee, and rested the sole of his boot on the trunk. “If anyone said that to me, I would have jumped to prove him wrong. I think he said it so Desmond would defy him, and jump.”

“Why?”

“I think Sir Geoffrey wanted him dead.” Jackrun crossed his arms. “I have an idea why.” He frowned. “But I'm hoping it has more to do with the way Prince Desmond threatened Sir Geoffrey the day he broke up our fight. When he turned on him and said,
Breathe a word of this, and I'll let what I know about you slip, and you'll be hanged for your own filthy sins
. You remember how he said that and how Sir Geoffrey blushed crimson?”

“Would that be reason enough to kill Desmond?”

“If what he knew was vile enough to get Sir Geoffrey hanged, I'd say so.”

I thought of the spit boy they'd hanged for murder before we left for Dragon's Keep. “There was a murder here at Pendragon Castle before we left.”

“What? Who was killed?”

“A lute player. His throat was slit. An innocent boy hanged for the crime.”

“How do you know the boy was innocent?”

“I saw him after the palace guards tortured him. He'd confessed on the rack just to make the pain stop, but he didn't do it, I'm sure.”

“If Prince Desmond knew Sir Geoffrey killed the lute player, that would be a compelling motive for Sir Geoffrey to—”

“Wait. Now you're accusing Sir Geoffrey of not just one murder, but two.”

“I'm looking for a strong motive, Uma, otherwise . . .” He paused, glancing at some twisted roots.

“Otherwise what?”

A silence had fallen on him. I thought of Sir Geoffrey, weighing the broad-shouldered knight who'd rescued Father and me from starvation against the one who'd informed on me later, telling Lady Olivia he'd caught the prince embracing me in the ship's galley. Then there was the man I saw in the cave, the man who'd threatened me with his knife; he'd kept his blade close even after he knew who I was, as if . . . as if, what? As if he was more than ready to kill me if he thought I'd give him away?

My eyes fell on Jackrun's dagger. I shivered, remembering Sir Geoffrey's feral look. The man was trained to survive. Prince Desmond knew something vile enough to get the man hanged. Had he killed to keep him silent?

“There is something you should know. I saw Sir Geoffrey once after he ran off.”

Jackrun stepped in front of me. “You found him? Where? How?”

“I don't know how to explain. I had a dream. I packed food and medicines, and when I went to the cave the dream had shown me, he was hiding there.”

“You are not only a healer; you are a seer, Uma Quarteney.” I heard the awe in his voice.

“I am not a seer. It felt like”—I rubbed my damp hand on my skirts —“like Sir Geoffrey drew me there himself.”

“You mean by some power?” Jackrun asked, his expression changing. “Yes . . .” He reached up and plucked a leaf. “That's what I've been afraid of. There's another reason Sir Geoffrey may have killed my cousin, a more radical one—something to do with me.” He took a long breath and heaved it out. “I'd rather not believe that, but if the man had the power to draw you to him . . .” He stared at the elm leaf veined with autumn's gold and green.

“What?”

His head was still bent. Dark hair covered his forehead and eyes. “He would have needed some kind of magical power to bring you to him when he needed your medicine, Uma, powers like the fairy folk have.” He looked up, his face wary now as a hunted creature caught outside its lair. “I think Sir Geoffrey was fey. He could have killed my cousin acting under orders.”

“Fey? Why would the fey want to kill Desmond? Who would give him such orders anyway?”

“My grandfather Onadon, for one. I think he wanted Desmond out of the way so I would inherit the crown. If the fairies devised a way to remove Prince Desmond, it would put me in line for the throne.”

He tore the elm leaf in his hand down the middle, renting the heart-shaped leaf in two.

We'd talked before about the fairies' hopes for Jackrun, Son of the Prophecy. I tried to imagine Sir Geoffrey involved in such a plot. “But Sir Geoffrey did not even look fey.”

“He could have used glamour magic to guise himself. Even the broken nose could have been a guise.”

“The king trusted him enough to give him the responsibility of keeping an eye on Prince Desmond,” I argued.

“Or the clever Sir Geoffrey convinced the king to entrust him with that job, waiting for his moment to set up a murder and make it look like an accident.”

I took off, walking right then left in the pathless glade, the trees crowding in on me.

“Uma?” Jackrun called. I ran.

Jackrun caught up with me at the edge of the knoll where tree roots met the grass in the graveyard. He stopped and waited, breathing hard behind me.

A watery sun came out above. “I don't want to talk about murder anymore.”

“We have to,” Jackrun said. “I need to.”

I turned and saw him framed by woven branches. Copper leaves fluttered in the breeze behind his back. “How long have you been thinking this way without telling me?”

“We've both been busy since we arrived here. Tell me you weren't.”

“I was, but—”

Jackrun stepped closer. “I'm not here to convince you. Only we must talk together and share what we know.”

I swallowed; his closeness drove argument from my mind. I blinked at his strong, resolute face in the half-light of the autumn sun and tried to regain my footing. “I don't think Sir Geoffrey could have killed the lute player. Whatever sins Prince Desmond knew about, whatever offenses the knight committed, I don't think it was that.”

“So there could be more than one murderer about,” Jackrun said.

“Or the same murderer?”

“How? There wasn't anyone else up there with us that day.”

“I know, but . . .” I was trying to remember something. What was it?

“I still don't want to believe it was murder,” I said.

“I knew you would argue with me about it. I wanted you to. Part of me still hopes it isn't true, because if the fey committed the murder, then it was done for me, because of me.”

A gust blew up the hill; he fingered his sword hilt, looking left and right as if preparing for action, but there was just the two of us using sharp words that hurt in bloodless ways. “I've wondered about Lady Olivia.”

“What?” I asked, startled. “Why ask about her?”

“I noticed her speaking with Sir Geoffrey a lot. She and Sir Geoffrey both seemed very interested in my cousin. She kept a close eye on him.”

“Lady Olivia had every reason to keep the prince safe,” I said. “She was hoping her daughter, Bianca, would marry the prince and become the next Pendragon queen.”

“Oh,” Jackrun said, raising a brow. His face changed. “Bianca. I've noticed her.”

“You could hardly have missed her.”

“That's true,” he agreed.

I clamped my jaw a moment. Bianca and the prince had seemed happy together. She was giddy the day he'd generously given her one of the loveliest chestnut mares in the king's stable. She wept when she learned he was dead and had come to me often, begging for evicta to ease her headaches.

“So we are back to where we began,” Jackrun said.

I thought of Sir Geoffrey's words on the cliff. “I can see how Sir Geoffrey could have insulted Desmond's pride so he would want to jump to prove himself. Still, we all agreed it was the wind that pushed him off the cliff in the end.”

Jackrun was silent a moment. “That wind was the thing that got me thinking of murder to begin with,” he said. “Do you remember how it felt? The sudden power of it? The smell of it?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “The wind smelled different—not a sweet summery scent of August, but a thick smell, like pungent rotting leaves. And it blew in so powerfully, I called out a warning.”

“My cousin was on the edge. A blast of wind was all that was needed to push him off, and the fey have power to stir the wind.”

“But,” I said, beginning to believe. “Sir Geoffrey was standing there with us. We would have noticed him doing it, wouldn't we?”

“He stood
behind
us,” Jackrun reminded.

I fingered my embroidered waist pouch. “Can you . . . stir the wind?”

He tipped his head to the side and closed his eyes. Fingers spread, he moved his raised hand to and fro. Nothing happened at first. I felt a small dip of disappointment, then the leaves began to speak in whispers, a soft, cool breath crossed my skin. It was not human breath. No ordinary wind either, a green scent of living magic on it.

Elm leaves trembled, some flew off the branches and twirled down to my feet. As more spun down, Jackrun plucked a coppery leaf from the air, put it in my hand, and curled my fingers around it. He kept the other hand moving, wind swirled around me, finding its way under the eaves of my clothes, the walls of my skin until it hushed and the last of the green and golden leaves shuddered at my feet.

“I cannot make more than a small breeze like that,” Jackrun said. “Tabby can stir up a gale,” he added.

“And she hated him.”

“What do you mean by that? Tabby would never—”

“I didn't mean to imply she'd stirred up the fey wind that day. Only you said she had the power to stir the wind. I'm sure she would rather see you, her brother, on the throne than her cousin who insulted her.”

“Of course he insulted her! He insulted everyone. Tabitha might have girlish dreams, wrong ones, but she would never commit murder and neither would Griff. No matter how much fey power they have, no matter how much they care for me.”

“Yes, of course, but this whole idea of murder . . .” I took a breath and looked out at the graveyard. “You told me you knew I would argue with you about it. I have questions now and you have to let me ask them.”

“This was my free hour before I fight in the weapons yard. I'm expected back now. I can't stay much longer.”

“Wait. You said your grandfather might have ordered Prince Desmond killed so you would inherit the throne, but that won't happen if Queen Adela has another child.”

He studied my face a moment. “Yes, that would end their plans.”

My mouth went dry. “Do you think the queen might be in danger?”

“They wouldn't risk killing her, Uma. Then my uncle could remarry a younger woman and sire an heir through her. I think she is safe for now. But you should watch out for yourself. Trust no one in the castle.”

The elm leaves stirred again. We drew back, looking up, then he whipped his head around, hand on his hilt before saying in a hushed whisper, “I'll come to you again when it's safe to talk.”

“I will want to argue more.”

“I'm counting on that.” Jackrun turned to go.

“Wait, take this.” I pulled the small hand-sewn pouch I'd made the night before from the purse at my waist and held it out to him by its long leather straps.

“What is it?”

“I sewed wolfsbane inside. Wear it around your neck.”

Jackrun slipped it on. “I used to carry wolfsbane back home.” He pressed the calfskin pouch to his nose, breathing in the pungent scent.

“This bane is fresh,” I said. “But it's not much against the feral packs in Wolf Moon. I have seen you ride out alone sometimes, you—”

“You watched me?” he asked, lowering the pouch, revealing a crooked smile. “From what window?”