In the Time of Dragon Moon (26 page)

Princess Augusta's Castle, Dragonswood, Wil
d
e Island

Dragon Moon

October 1210

P
RINCESS
A
UGUSTA
SAT
again. I felt the barge moving mysteriously, following her gaze as if her eyes directed it. We drew north against the river's current, then toward the trees until the barge bumped against a short dock in the riverbank.

A small steep-roofed castle made of river stones waited in the woods. The two dragon sentries, curled up tail to snout on either side of the entryway, leaped up as we approached. They bowed to the princess, one using his talons to pinch the door handle and let us in.

I hung my filthy cloak on the hook next to Jackrun's, keeping my herb basket and kea bundle with me. Lifting the hem of my bloodstained skirt, I followed the princess to the large central room. A fire bloomed in the hearth as we came in. I'd seen no one light it, but this was Dragonswood after all, a magical place. As soon as we took the chairs by the hearth, will-o'-the-wisps flew in and flitted about Augusta's head like little jewels, straightening her wind-tangled hair.

The wisps and dragons serve her as if she were queen of Dragonswood. A queen is used to giving orders, getting what she wants.
I thought again of the triumph I'd seen on her face earlier at the mention of Desmond's death, and glanced away, my temples pounding.

Jackrun watched her, his face tense in profile, his hands gripping the armrest. I wanted to reach out and run my finger along the small smooth hills of his knuckles. My chair was close enough to his. I kept my hands in my lap.

Golden firelight danced around the large high-roofed room, and illumined the glass sculptures on the shelves and the mirrors hanging on the walls. Light swirled about the room like stirred honey. A fey child of five or six entered and set down a tray of steaming mugs. Her curls bounced as she skipped off and shut the door.

Now that it was fully dark outside, the wolves began to howl, a chilling sound even in such a sturdy dwelling. My eyes caught Jackrun's before he turned his to the fire. I took a sip from my mug, saw my hand shaking, and set it down again.

The wisps finished grooming the princess and flew back down the hall in a flurry of small shooting stars. If the will-o'-the-wisps could go dark, they would be perfect little messengers—or spies. How much had they overheard? Were any silent wisps hiding in the shadows now?

Princess Augusta rose and shut the hall door firmly. She leaned forward when she sat again, her eyes shining bright as polished copper coins with black slits down the center. “Now we are alone,” she said quietly. I hoped she was right. “Tell me what you meant by murder.”

“I don't know where to begin, Augi.”

“Begin with the day it happened unless you can think of a better place.” Her look was all too intense. What did she know already? What was she expecting to hear?

Jackrun described the picnic on Faul's Leap. When he reached the place in the story where he forced Prince Desmond to his knees in front of me, his aunt interrupted him.

“Did Desmond do something grievous to Uma?”

Jackrun glanced at me.

Princess Augusta turned. Her sudden look of sisterly understanding surprised me.

“Do you want to tell her?” Jackrun asked me. I did.

“And Desmond called
me
a monster,” the princess said in a ringing tone when I was done. “After he attacked you, you still served as physician to his mother, the queen?”

“I had to, Princess.”

“No one has to do anything, Uma Quarteney.”

“You're wrong,” I said. “Some of us are not given any choice.”

“What illness does she suffer from?” Her searing eyes were on me. I nudged the kea bundle with my ankle facing her.

“The queen is not right in her mind,” Jackrun interjected.

“She never was,” Augusta said shrilly.

“Well, she is even worse than you remember her to be, Augusta.”

“That is hard to imagine!” She lifted her brow and turned her face from me. I'd gone silent under her interrogation. “Go on and finish your story, nephew. I'm anxious to hear why you think your cousin's death was not an accident.”

I watched her closely while she listened, narrowing her bright eyes one moment, pressing out her chin the next. Night slipped away as he spoke. When he was done, she sat in silence with her elbows on her armrests, her fingers forming a steeple under her chin.

“Sir Geoffrey telling the prince not to jump so he would do the opposite, and jump. A rogue wind, possibly stirred by fey power.” She tapped her fingertips a few times. “From what you have told me, I would still say it was most likely an accident. Desmond leaped a moment too late.”

Jackrun would not let go that easily. “Sir Geoffrey might not have done this all on his own,” he said. “He may have had help.” He fixed his eyes on her. “Have you lived here the whole time since you went away?”

“Yes. What does that have to do with anything?”

“You've come to know my grandfather Onadon?”

“As much as anyone can come to know someone with such power. He is king once more, Jackrun. He earned the crown again when he challenged the former king to magical battle, and won.”

“What?” I asked.

“The fey monarchy isn't like our own, Uma,” Jackrun said. “Kings are not born, they earn kingship through battle. The one with the strongest magic rules.”

It was like that in the animal kingdom. I thought of elk locking horns, fighting for dominance in rutting season, of the alpha wolf who ruled the pack. The princess came to a stand and jabbed the logs with her poker. “You don't think Onadon is behind Desmond's death? Your own grandfather?”

I saw she was shivering.

“I don't know, Augusta, but he'd had his eye on me from the beginning. Mother said he wanted his grandson on the throne. She told me how angry he was when she married the wrong prince.”

She stiffened. “The wrong prince?”

“Not wrong by me, Augi, I love my father; wrong by fey standards, since he was the youngest and not the one who would be king.”

“The fairy prophecy never said the one with three bloodlines would be a king.”

“Maybe not, but that's what they were hoping for. Tell me I'm wrong.”

She was silent, poking the fire.

I watched Jackrun's alert expression. It struck me that he'd taken the chair closer to the fire than mine. He had never done that before. It used to be he didn't need the warmth, but now with his fire gone . . .

Jackrun said, “The fey here in Dragonswood must have noticed how Prince Desmond was turning out. They must have thought if I were king, I would protect this sanctuary, I would stand up for the fairy kingdom in the future, and Desmond would not.”

She turned. “Even when you were a little boy we played the game where you were king. Now you have a chance, Jackrun.” Her voice was soft, expectant. A striped cat padded up and clawed the hem of her crimson gown. She ignored it.

“It was a game, Augi. We were children. And you played the part of queen, remember? I knew I'd never actually become king. And even if I dreamed of it as small boys do, I learned I wasn't suited to it. There are reasons why I could never perform the daily duties of a king.”

“Reasons?”

“Reasons,” he repeated, snapping his mouth shut.

She nudged the cat away. “Whatever you want, you will do your duty, Jackrun. You will become a king if you must.”

“I can't let that happen. It would be the end of Uma and her people.”

“What do you mean?”

I stared at the kea bundle near my feet. All I had to treat the queen with, and it was not enough. I still needed huzana for her fertility cure. I didn't know how I'd find it now. Or what would happen to me upon my return, having been gone so long with no one to care for the queen.

“Queen Adela holds Uma's people captive until she helps her get the child she wants.”

“You would help this queen have another heir?” Princess Augusta asked, pointing her poker at me, the tip glowing.

“I have to, Princess.”

She was rigid a moment, the poker aimed at me. I rose from my chair. I was exhausted, needed sleep, but . . . “If you want me to leave—”

“No.” Jackrun jumped up and stood between the two of us, shoulders back, hands at his sides. Protecting me from her or her from me, I did not know which.

At last Princess Augusta hung the poker on the hearth. “It's getting late,” she said, scooping up her cat. “We all need some sleep.”

Jackrun didn't move. “I have to see Onadon, Augusta.”

“Tomorrow,” she said. “You are recovering from your injuries. Rest tonight. I'll take you to him myself in the morning.”

I wasn't sure I liked her plan. But I saw no way to change things just now.

The princess showed us down the hall, cat in her arms. She opened the door to my room, then took Jackrun farther down the corridor to his.

I was storing the kea under the bed when I heard a tapping sound and opened my door. Jackrun leaned against the doorframe. I wanted to tell him I didn't trust his aunt. Ask him what he thought of her, if she might be setting a trap. His face was pale. He moved his arm and winced.

“How are your injuries?”

“Don't ask,” he said, stepping quietly inside.

“I'm a healer. I have to ask.”

“They're no worse than the ones I've gotten in the weapons yard, Adan.”

“Liar.”

He smiled, drew me close, and kissed me, running his hand down my back and tugging the ends of my hair. Once, his lips tasted moist and salty from his night swim in the sea; once they tasted of smoke, but not now. Tonight his kiss was sweet.

We broke apart when we heard footsteps coming toward us.

“Good night, Uma Quarteney,” he whispered, his lips tickling my ear.

I watched him limp past a fey girl in the hall. The candelabra in her hand lit her heart-shaped face, her red hair, so like my mother's, and her green eyes. She carried herself like a young woman, but looked no more than twelve.

“I'm Tanith,” she said with a curtsy. “The princess said you might wish to bathe.”

“I do,” I said immediately. A door closed somewhere down the passage. Jackrun's kiss had sent my rational mind flying in all directions like startled birds. I'd meant to talk with him about his aunt. He was too trusting. Princess Augusta might be connected to the murder. I was sure he hadn't seen that, or hadn't let himself see it. I'd have to catch him in the morning if I could.

Tanith led me around the corridor at the back side of the castle to a room of smooth gray stone with an enormous copper tub in the middle set on clawed feet. As soon as I stepped in, the large window near the ceiling flew open. I reared back and clung to the doorframe as Filalda poked her head through. She breathed a long stream of fire engulfing the large copper tub, heating the water that filled it to the rim.
So this is how the princess bathes,
I thought with wonder. I waited with Tanith, feeling the heat of Filalda's steady blaze until steam rose from the water and she withdrew her head again.

“Thank you, Filalda,” I called out the open window. Black talons gripped the casing and it shut again.

I placed my knife and dragon belt on the side bench and carefully removed the bandage from my left hand. The cloth strip was filthy; still, I felt a little sad discarding it. Jackrun had torn his shirt to make me the bandage.

“Come,” Tanith said, easing me out of my soiled gown and small clothes before she helped me into the deep copper tub. The steaming bath felt as soothing as the volcanic pools back home. The wolf bites stung, but I held my hand under the surface until it grew less stiff and gave in to the cleansing water. I hadn't felt this warm in days.

Tanith washed my back, scrubbed and rinsed the dirt from my dark hair, pouring pitcher after pitcher of water over my head and letting it stream down my back. “Thank you, Tanith,” I said reveling in the unexpected luxury. “Please thank the princess for me, and Filalda too. I don't think she heard me.”

She lit a second candelabra on the bench, using a candle from her own, then pointed to a soft tan robe hanging from the wall. “You may wear this when you're done. I will lay out a fresh gown for you to wear tomorrow, a gift from the princess. And this?” she asked, pinching my gown between her fingers. It was the gown I'd worn the day Prince Desmond attacked me, the day he died, and the day Master Ridolfi burned. The bloodstains on the bodice and long skirt were mine and Sir Giles's, Jackrun's, and the wolf's whose throat I'd slit.

“I never want to see it again.”

Tanith looked relieved. “I'll destroy it then, shall I?”

She left me alone to soak awhile. Steam rose and coiled around the high crossbeams on the ceiling. I eased back in the tub and relaxed for the first time in a long while. My parents joined and conceived me in water. I had heard my mother tell the story so many times. She always began with,
Your father never meant to marry,
saying it with a wry smile that told me it was not a mistake, that it was meant to be.

I pictured Mother now, the way she tipped her head so even her eyes seemed to smile. She had been so certain of her place, even in the early days when she wasn't fully accepted by the tribe.

She'd found me weeping the day Father caught me taking the evicta for my cramp pain. Resting her hand on my back, she said,
You are not a mistake.
I didn't know what she meant. I thought my femaleness was a terrible burden, the thing that prevented me from my life's desire of becoming an Adan.

My skin tingled in Filalda's fiery water. I traced my lips where Jackrun kissed me, slid my finger down my chin and neck and along the fox mark under my collarbone; my breasts were twin hills on the landscape of my body. The cloth I'd used to wrap them and press them flat was gone, discarded like the bandage I'd just taken off.