Dragon Flight
JESSICA DAY GEORGE
For my own curious little monkey, who already
loves books and whose naps made it possible
for this one to be written
Linen Bandages and Mirrored Silk
Wings of Scarlet, Wings of Gold
There are three truths I have come to learn in the year since the Dragon War. The first is that both humans and dragons have the capacity to be good or evil. The second is that even if you’re doing something you love, you can still become bored with your work. And the third truth is that my business partner, Marta, will never be finished with her wedding gown.
Either one of them.
“It’s so
white
,” Marta complained for the thousandth time.
I tried to put my head in my hands, and nearly poked myself in the eye with a needle. I jerked back just in time, and glared at the needle. “Marta,” I said.
“Yes?”
I had no idea what else to say, so I shook my head instead. My gaze fell on some blue fabric that lay on the cutting table in front of me. “Your gown for the Moralienin ceremony isn’t white,” I offered. Of course, we had had this conversation so many times that I knew exactly what was coming next.
“But that’s a
set pattern
,” she said, as she always did. “No room for us to experiment, to really make it special.” She flapped her hands in agitation. “And I have to sew every stitch myself, it’s tradition.”
I put my needle down and ground the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Maaarta,” I wailed.
“Oh, I’m sorry, does this
bore
you?” She threw a spool of thread at me. “Just because it’s
my
wedding, and not yours!”
That hurt, but I didn’t let it show on my face. I knew that Marta hadn’t meant it to be unkind. I had never confided my fears to her – that I would end up a lonely spinster, running the dress shop by myself after she was long wed. After all, I had had the audacity to fall in love with a prince, and princes do not marry shopkeepers.
“Don’t worry, Creel, you’ll be married soon enough.” Alle, our assistant, came in with a bolt of cloth in her arms and a mischievous twinkle in her eye. I was sure she knew exactly what we had been talking about.
“No, I won’t,” I protested.
“You get more letters from Prince Luka than his father does,” Alle said, unintentionally causing me another pang. “And he’s supposed to be passing along information to the king about Citatie.”
“Where is Citatie, anyway?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.
I really did want to know about Citatie: I had never dared to tell Luka that I had no clue where he was. All I
knew was that it was very hot there, and that their king was very odd. Although Luka and I were just friends – how could we be anything more than that? – I hated to look foolish in front of him. The schoolmistress in Carlieff Town, where I grew up, had been a bit vague about the geography outside Feravel’s borders.
“It’s to the south, across an ocean,” Marta said, sounding just as vague as my old teacher.
Alle shrugged. It seemed that we had all had the same level of schooling. I sighed.
“If you’ve finished fussing over Marta’s gowns, which needn’t be ready for
four more months
,” Alle said, “I believe that it’s time to open the shop. The invitations to the crown prince’s wedding were sent out two days ago; there should be quite a few wealthies wanting new gowns for the feasts and the ceremony.”
“And that’s another thing,” Marta said as we took off our work aprons and straightened our hair in the mirror on the wall. “We’re making the clothes for the royal bride-to-be, we’re friends with both princes, yet where’s our invitation to the wedding?”
“Marta,” I said, even though secretly I was a little hurt by this as well as by their teasing, “we’re commoners.”
“Be that as it may,” she said severely, “you’re still the Heroine of the Dragon –”
I whirled around. “Don’t say it,” I told her. “Don’t even think it. I own a dress shop and girls from small
northern towns who own dress shops do not go to royal weddings. I’m not some mythical warrior woman.”
That was what I told myself every day. King Caxel had once offered to have me marry Miles, as a reward for my part in the Dragon War, and I had refused. I truly had no desire to be a queen or a princess, but it still pained me that in refusing Miles I had cemented my status as a common merchant with no chance of becoming one of Marta’s wealthies, who had the right to dance with princes.
Or to marry them.
Her eyes filled with sympathy as though guessing at my roiling emotions. We opened up the shop in silence.
My hurt deepened as the day wore on and just as Alle had predicted, customers poured in to demand gowns for the royal wedding. It seemed that everyone with the least title, the least bit of wealth, had been invited. But I
know
Crown Prince Milun, I cried out inside. Marta and I were among perhaps a dozen people who had permission to call him Miles. And yes, Luka and I could never be more, but we were friends, after all.
I steeled myself with the thought that Marta and I wouldn’t have enough time to make ourselves new gowns, anyway. We had more than two dozen orders by the end of the day, and would have to hire temporary help to measure and cut the fabric. This was cheering, since it meant continued profit and success. If things continued in this manner, we would be able to take on a permanent apprentice or two in the next year.
By the time the shop closed I was exhausted. I didn’t want to see one more ribbon or bolt of cloth, and I certainly didn’t want to attend any feasts or ceremonies. But before I could lie down for some much-deserved sleep, I had one last thing to do.
In my bedroom above the shop I had two washbasins. One was painted with flowers and birds, and had a matching pitcher beside it. I washed my face and hands in it morning and night, and it was quite lovely. Across the room from this basin was a small table bearing another washbasin. This one was a heavy, gaudy thing, made of beaten gold and set with roughly cut crystals. There was always water in it, which I never changed.
The gold basin had come from the hoard of a dragon, and the water in it had been alchemically charged.
I pulled up a tall stool. Why stand when you can sit, as my mother used to say. I leaned my elbows on the table, one on each side of the basin, and yawned at my reflection.
“Lovely,” rumbled a voice from the water.
During my yawn, the reflection of me looking tired had been replaced with the image of a large gold dragon.
Shardas the Gold had big blue eyes and blue horns, and the scales down his nose were so new and bright that they put the golden basin to shame. His horns, I noticed, were ragged and needed trimming.
“Sorry,” I said. I yawned again; I couldn’t seem to stop. “You look well.”
“You look tired,” Shardas said kindly.
“The invitations to Miles’s wedding have just been received,” I explained. “All the wealthies need new gowns.” The bitterness in my voice surprised me.
“Oh.” He sounded disappointed.
“What’s wrong?”
I wondered if he and his mate, Velika, felt snubbed. Of course, no humans but Luka, Marta and I knew that Shardas and Velika were still alive, so it made sense that they wouldn’t have been invited. They were believed to have died along with the horrid Princess Amalia of Roulain a year ago.
“I had thought that you might have time to visit us soon, but if you are busy …” He sighed, and it stirred the water. Seeing ripples form under the surface of the water was fascinating, and I thought about re-creating the image in embroidery.
Bringing my mind back to the present, I pursed my lips. “Hmmm. I
would
like to take a break from the shop,” I said. “If I brought some pieces to embroider with me, I could do them at the cave. And we’ll be hiring extra help, so Marta and Alle should be all right.”
Shardas grinned, showing off his impressive teeth, and his tongue, which was the length of my arm.
“You look just like Azarte,” I told him, naming the leggy hound that had once belonged to his cousin Feniul and now resided with Miles at the palace. “His tongue is almost as long.”
Shardas pulled his tongue back in and rolled his eyes at me. “I will tell Feniul to fetch you from the usual spot at the end of the week,” he said.
“Perfect.”
“Bring a sheep.”
“What?” I imagined trying to tie a bleating sheep to the back of Feniul, Shardas’s dog-loving cousin. “Absolutely not. I’ll bring you peaches and apples and perhaps some sweet figs. No live animals.”
“Smoked ham?”
“Fine.”
“And Velika likes sausages.”
“Since they don’t squeal and relieve themselves on my shoes, that sounds just fine as well.”
“You were brought up on a farm,” Shardas reminded me with a laugh.
“Precisely why I now live in the city and have no livestock,” I countered, drily. “If we get enough temporary help, I can stay for a week this time,” I said.
“Excellent. We shall look forward to seeing you.”
I smiled at my old friend, but I almost felt like crying. Shardas, I knew, did look forward to seeing me. But his mate was another story. She was more badly injured than him, and had not been well prior to their plunge into the Boiling Sea to stop Princess Amalia and her horrible dragonskin slippers. In the times I had visited Shardas and Velika, I had rarely seen her, and never heard her speak. I would bring her bushels
of sausages if it would help, but I doubted that it would.
“Until the end of the week, then,” I said warmly.
His image rippled and was replaced by my reflection. I slithered off the stool and went to bed.
Two weeks later I was sitting on a rock on the shore of a blue lake, coaxing a tune out of my wooden flute, when Shardas came out of the cave to complain about the noise. Luka had given me the flute and tried to teach me to play it, but he had been sent away to Citatie before our lessons had gone very far. Still, I didn’t think I sounded all that bad.