Queen of Dragons, page 11
part #3 of Drakon Series
Maricara sliced at the stems of her asparagus. She’d donned again the bare sheath of satin she dared to call a frock; the diamonds in her hair caught the smoky light in dim, scintillating glimmers. She’d taken the chair at the end of the table, close to an open window and far from the four of them. He supposed she still thought they might rush her, or trick her, even amid a semipublic evening supper. And she had a point, he had to admit. He was at the head; she was at the foot; silver salvers of steaming roast and potatoes and boiled carrots dotted the bleached holland between them. It put him in mind of what they might look like together in the formal dining hall of Chasen Manor.
As husband and wife.
She took a bite, chewing carefully. She seemed tired. Even with her beauty, even with her diamonds and obvious displeasure, her movements had noticeably slowed. There were faint circles under her eyes he hadn’t noted before.
Perhaps it was just the lighting. It was gloomy as a tomb in here.
She glanced up at him without lifting her head, catching him staring. Kim was held in a gaze darkened to stone and felt something in his chest begin to squeeze.
Yes, whispered the cold, cold dragon, turning over in his heart. She’s Alpha, and she’s untamed, and still she belongs to you.
He knew, logically, that it was true. He knew what had to come. But when she looked like this, smaller and more fragile than before, her perfect poise beginning to fracture, just a little…
He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to force her. He didn’t want her to be thinking about the window behind her, of men and guns, and how soon she might be rid of him. He damned sure didn’t want her anywhere near livestock again.
The world offered a rich and intoxicating mélange of aromas to their kind, at times so many it could confound even the most acute of warriors. But Kimber had spent years learning how to separate the nuances; he could smell the difference between river water and pond; between an owl on the wing or a hawk; between a butterfly quaking over flowers and a moth over leaves.
Everything around the windmill today had reeked of blood and days-old animal panic—and of Maricara. There could be no question she had been there before. The combined scent of mud and animal and her had been so strong it had very nearly drowned out something more important, something he had not at first even recognized was significant: the more pervasive odor of men. Many men. And something else with it, something mild and elusive…not unpleasant, not unfamiliar. But he’d never encountered anything like it before; Kimber didn’t know what it was.
The smell rippling around the ox had been primarily of dust and hay and more sweating fear. The princess once again. The oak tree had the correct bouquet, as did the grass, and the pile of manure not far off. But this time he’d noticed at once the stench of man. The same men, in fact, as the ones from the windmill, which seemed bloody unlikely indeed. The trail there had been fresher, much fresher. Someone had scraped his hand on the rough knot of the rope not more than two hours before; perhaps the man in the woods. Kim had smelled the human skin on the hemp. The barest thin whiff of human blood.
Emanations of hammered steel, when there had been nothing of metal about. Cotton drenched in dye. Leather and perspiration. A great deal of saltpeter and flint.
And once more, it had all been accompanied by that elusively familiar scent of the Unknown.
He rubbed a finger over his lower lip, considering it.
“It was a stupid thing to do,” his bride-to-be said now.
“Pigheaded,” Kim reminded her.
“That too. I took you there only so you could see what the hunters had done. If they’d been any closer—”
“But they weren’t. There was just the one fellow, and he was taking his time in the woods. It’s not as if they could follow us, after all. It was a clean getaway.”
“For their lure, as well!” Her cheeks began to flush. “They were waiting for a drákon. You might as well have left a calling card.”
“You don’t know it was a trap for a drákon,” said Joan.
“Of course I do.”
“The papers said wolves.”
“The papers,” commented Rhys, who was on his third glass of wine, “are run by gin-guzzling fatheads. They’re hardly going to print the word ‘dragon,’ are they?”
Audrey intervened before Joan formed her retort. “Why did you free the ox, Kimber?”
He shrugged, uncomfortable. He wished the deuce his twin had stayed out of it; she alone probably guessed that he’d no good reason.
The ox had been afraid. That was really all there was to it. Perhaps he shouldn’t have Turned, but he did, and once he had, he’d had no cause not to set it free.
It had been afraid. Through no fault of its own, through an accident of birth and circumstances, it had been tethered to its death.
“What’s this?” Rhys sounded amused. “Tenderness for a mere beast?”
His brother had found the one spot in the chamber that held no light. Shadows crossed back and forth around him in layer over layer; even from here Kim could hardly make out his face. But there was that note to his voice, that particular hard tone that sent a dull warning across Kimber’s skin.
“In the end,” Kimber said, “we’re all beasts.”
Silence fell. It took nearly a minute before the clinking of silver sounded again against the china. When Kimber raised his eyes it was to find Maricara now staring at him, unblinking.
“Speaking of beasts.” Rhys lifted his drink; the ruffles at his cuff fell back in ghostly folds. “What was it you called these men before, Princess, in the council meeting? You had a name for them, these human hunters.”
She looked away, the spell broken. “Sanf inimicus.”
“What does it mean?”
Maricara sighed, examining an asparagus tip at the end of her fork. “Something like…‘soft enemy.’” She returned the asparagus to her plate without eating it. “Or, some of our kind prefer to call them delis inimicus, instead.”
“Delicate?” guessed Joan.
“More like ‘delicious.’” The princess looked up at the sudden hush around the table. “Oh. Not I, of course.”
“You have no guard here,” said Kim, laying down his utensils. “Do you?”
She lifted a brow. “How very perceptive, my lord. It only took you all this while to riddle it out.”
Audrey made a sound of disbelief. “You came to England unaccompanied?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? You’re a princess, to begin with, or so we’ve been told.”
Kimber murmured his twin’s name; her voice only rose in response.
“No, Kim, honestly, I want to know—she arrives unannounced, she’s placed us all in danger—how did you book passage? Who acted as your maids? Who handled your meals, and your lodging, and your clothing and jewels? I doubt very much indeed you managed all that by yourself. You’re what—nineteen? Twenty? Was there not one reasonable soul among all your retinue who perhaps mentioned it was not a fine idea to ravage the countryside?”
“No passage,” said the princess. “No maid, no retinue. I flew here alone.”
Joan set her wineglass upon the table with a thump; the Riesling inside sloshed like liquid amber. “You…flew?”
“Yes.”
“Brilliant,” said Rhys, from his dark place.
“Or just bloody insane.” Joan forgot herself so much as to lean forward with her elbows on the holland. A pair of side curls from her wig skimmed right above her plate. “You flew as a dragon across entire countries? What if you’d been seen? What if you’d been shot? I cannot conceive your people allowed you to leave your land without escort.”
“Well, that’s the difference between us, isn’t it? You English have rules to confine yourselves. My rule is only to be free.”
“Brava,” said Rhys.
“Free to kill cattle,” retorted Audrey, with a flick of her fingers. “Free to consume hapless geese.”
“Stop this,” hissed Kim, and his family lapsed back into silence.
Maricara placed her napkin upon the table. Kimber tensed, prepared to push free of his chair. But she didn’t rise, and she didn’t Turn. She only took a heavy breath, the bodice of her gown straining, gleaming satin.
“Maricara,” he said softly. “We’ve all had a long day.”
“No,” she said, first to him, then to the rest. “No, she’s quite right. It wasn’t well-done of me.” She offered a shrug and then a small, tight smile, her gaze angled downward. “I don’t even like goose.”
The swinging door creaked open; the maid reentered, carrying a tureen of what smelled like curried lamb. As if on cue, everyone resumed eating, even Maricara, although Kim did see her throw a subtle glance to the night beyond the window.
The maid served them in silence, the sound of the ladle tapping against the plates painfully sharp in Kim’s ears. Only after the girl had curtsied and backed out of the room did Maricara break the silence, speaking very, very quietly.
“Because of the kills, because of the publicity, the sanf were able to find my last-known location. They were able to secure bait, and set the trap, and no doubt right now they’re still out there waiting with another ox, or a cow or a pig. And also because of all of that, we now know they’re in England, searching for our kind.”
He’d been watching the princess, her downward look, the shaded contours that defined her face. But an instinct he couldn’t name turned his gaze to Joan: All the blood seemed to drain from her cheeks. He didn’t need to read thoughts to know what she was thinking: She had a crippled husband who could not fly, two little daughters. And Audrey—with three boys and a girl, all of them audacious and merry—looked even paler.
He’d told them. He’d told everyone. But it hadn’t been real until this afternoon. Until the specter of knives and blood and the black, terrified eyes of the ox—it hadn’t been real.
“Did the drákon you sent to me carry anything of you on their persons?” Maricara asked Kimber. “Bank notes, letters of introduction?”
“No.” Kim took a swallow of cold, tart wine. “We didn’t know what your circumstances might be, who knew of you, who would not. We don’t even openly say the word for what we are here. I wasn’t going to risk writing anything down. The only introduction I assumed you needed would be in realizing who—and what—these men were.”
“So, these hunters, they’re not there yet,” said Audrey, still stricken. “Not in Darkfrith.”
Kimber wanted to answer her. He drew breath for it, felt his lips shape again the solid and reassuring word no—he could speak that word with all the firm resonance of any absolute leader; he could make it sound like truth without even trying. But instead, Kim cut himself short. Like his brother and sisters, he looked back at Maricara, who once more dropped her eyes. She picked up her soup spoon, examining the curve of the bowl as it caught the dark yellow light.
“What is it? What now?” Audrey demanded.
“It’s commonly known that years ago…not quite a decade ago, a stranger came to us, a new sort of dragon, who upset the balance of my people. It’s known that she was English, from the northern aspect of your country. Your sister Lia was a guest in my castle for eight months. Her true name was openly spoken. It would be no great ordeal to discover her birthplace, I would think. All one would need is a rudimentary knowledge of English, and a map.” She tapped the spoon lightly against her plate, her lips pursed. “I did come to warn you.”
“Oh, God,” said Audrey, even whiter than before.
“Aye,” said the princess.
“Why didn’t you warn us before? Why wait until now to—”
“I didn’t wait. By and large they’ve left us alone until now. It’s been almost a century since they’ve last hunted us, my grandparents’ time. I don’t even know why they’ve started again.”
“We can return home tonight,” said Joan, resolute. “We can take care of this.”
“They’re not there tonight.” Maricara lifted her gaze to Kimber’s. “They’re here. The sanf have set the trap here.”
Joan pressed a fist against her chest. “You can’t be sure—”
“I am sure. This is the place. This is where they believe we are. At least, where they think I am. It is a most excellent distraction from Darkfrith.”
“But—”
“We have a rotating contingent of our finest warriors patrolling our territory,” Kim said under his breath, tensed in his chair, leaning forward to be heard over all the noises of the people dining in the next room. “We have traps of our own in place, and an entire shire of the most fearsome creatures ever to live ready to defend our home. At any given time, there are over thirty drákon in the air, and another two dozen on the ground, in the village, all of them willing, all of them eager, to safeguard our tribe. And as for all of you—remember what we are. Remember how we are. I don’t give a damn what these so-called sanf think they can do to us. If they come to our shire, I very nearly pity the bastards. We’re going to slit them end from end.”
A new hush took the chamber. The draft from the open window sent a spiral of black smoke from the nearest candle coiling in a long, snakelike arm across the table.
Rhys stirred in his chair. “I have another question. What was it today in those places? What was that thing lurking behind the human smell?”
Maricara cocked her head. “That thing?”
“That scent. Not human, not animal. Never smelled it before.”
“Yes.” Joan straightened. “I caught it too, almost like perfume, but not. What was that?”
“I don’t understand,” Maricara said.
“Didn’t you sense it, Your Grace?” Audrey’s voice was still not quite back to normal, a shade too brittle and bright. “Or are your Gifts not as keen as you’ve portrayed?”
“It was drákon,” Kimber realized, when Maricara only continued to stare at his sister. He had been watching her, the changing light over her face, the shadows hollowing her cheeks, the uncharted depths of her eyes. When she blinked and angled them back to his, he felt the truth of his words strike like a punch to his gut: drákon.
So Kimber held very still. He kept his features composed, as if he’d known all along, as if the new and awful comprehension rising through him didn’t exist; he was the Alpha; he was his father’s son; so of course he had known. But the wine burned sour in the back of his throat.
He swallowed the sour. “It was the scent of drákon, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She lifted a shoulder, almost helpless. “Of course it was. That’s how I knew it was the sanf, and not merely people. You’ve never encountered such a scent before?”
“Not like that.”
“How can that be?” said Audrey. “It wasn’t anything like us!”
“It was something like you. A small something, not a full-blooded dragon, but someone lesser. Didn’t you know? It’s how they find us. They’re only Others. So they use someone of dragon blood, not too powerful, just enough to track us. Just enough for the kill. It’s how they’ve always done it.”
“A victim,” Kimber asked. “Or a collaborator?”
“Both. Either. The sanf inimicus don’t care.”
Joan had her hand back at her throat. “But—who has blood like that? There’s no one of the shire so diluted that we couldn’t tell what they were.”
“None of you are like that?”
“No,” said Kim. “Some of us are stronger than others, but everyone has Gifts of varying degrees. It’s—it’s how we breed. Our lines are carefully kept.”
“Ah.” The princess picked up her spoon again, rolling the edge back and forth against her plate. She spoke with that small, tight smile that sharpened the curves of her face. “Yet where I come from, I assure you, there are bastards aplenty.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was going to rain. She could feel it in her bones, most particularly the smallest finger of her right hand. It had been broken when she was ten, and had healed before the human physician could even make the trip up to the castle from his hamlet three days away. It had healed straight, of course. There was hardly a bump at all from the fracture. But it still ached occasionally, a phantom pain to remind her of what it had once been like to be ten, a newlywed alone in an echoing palace, in a chamber leafed with gold and studded with diamonds, and a husband who chided her for trying to lock the door to her room against him.
The dark English clouds were seething over the dark English sea. The moisture saturating the air was enough to feel like slime clinging to her hair and skin. Maricara was a creature of the cool, arid alps. Rain was not her element.
“You should stay here tonight,” she said to the earl. He had followed her nearly into the hotel bedchamber, was standing silently near the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. Sconces of candles behind cut glass adorned the walls, their flames burning dim but steady.
Kimber’s position kept him from the light. She wondered if he did it deliberately, if he had begun to realize how much she could fathom from his eyes.
She crossed to the nightstand, holding on to a corner as she removed her heels. She could hear Rhys and the sisters in the parlor beyond, the three of them caught in an unspeaking circle, everyone waiting, it seemed, for the rainclouds to rupture, for the weight of the water to fall.
“You’re most generous,” said Kimber. He spoke his native language exactly the same way he had spoken French: with effortless elegance, as if the words themselves were made just to be shaped by his lips, to resonate with his low, agreeable voice.
“The roads will be too muddy tonight to return, in any case.” Mari stripped off the right pump, balancing a moment with her arm out, then the left. “The bed is large and comfortable. If you try, the four of you might fit.”
His brows lifted. “That’s not quite how I envisioned it.”
“Well, I suppose a gentleman would offer it first to his sisters, but they seem hardy enough.” The looking glass on the nightstand caught her face in a square of pewter; she began to remove the diamonds from her hair. “Frankly, were it a matter between me and the brown-eyed one—”
