Dragon Princess (11 page)

“Lendowyn can afford a militia?”

“They’re volunteers that fight for the king in exchange for whatever goods they can liberate from the battlefield.”

“I see no way that could go badly.”

Those were the three main forces. To that was added at least seven smaller groups of two to three armed adventurers. All converged to save Ravensgate from the invading dragon.

From the way she said “save,”
I began to understand exactly what must have happened. She confirmed my thoughts when she explained that, from all appearances, the dwarves had been drinking for most of the prior evening, and possibly the three nights prior to that.

“Their judgment was not in the best of shape. Not to mention their aim.”

“Their
aim?
They missed . . .” I trailed off, because what I was about to say would have been terribly unflattering to a normal princess—even though, at the moment, Lucille was literally the size of several of the proverbial barn doors.

“First blood I saw was a small throwing axe embedding itself in the backside of the captain of the Greencoats.”

“That . . . couldn’t have been good.”

It wasn’t.

The Greencoat Raiders, being little more than officially sanctioned pirates, had pretty clear views on how to deal with that kind of insult, and engaged the dwarves in a counterattack that was not quite as badly impaired as the dwarves’. Lucille suspected they had only been drinking about half as long as the dwarves prior to battle.

Of course, once the dwarves and the Raiders engaged in open warfare in the streets of town, the Lendowyn Militia had to make all efforts to suppress the fighting, pushing the two forces into the merchant areas where the battle could be more profitable.

“They forgot me completely. By the time I flew away, half the town was on fire.”
She sniffed.
“I should have tried to stop them, but I was so scared . . .”
She buried her face in her arms and her whole body began shaking.

I walked around in front of her and strained to reach up and touch her on the side of her face I could reach over her scaled forearm. “It’s not your fault.”

“I should have tried to stop them.”
Even a sobbed whisper into her folded arms had a booming quality I felt in my chest.

“How, exactly? They wouldn’t have responded to reason—and would it have been better to stick around to claw them or set them on fire?”

She paused, and after a few long moments said,
“
No.”

I don’t know how she managed to sound small and frightened, but she managed it.

“Leaving the situation was the best thing you could have done.”

She lay there, still and silent, for a long time. Then, her eye opened and she blinked at me. I looked back at her dinner-plate–size reptilian eye, dwarfing the hand I’d placed on her cheek, and I realized that my heart wasn’t racing anymore.

“Thank you, Francis.”

“It’s the truth. You did the best you could with a bad situation.”

“It’s awful.”

“And call me Frank, please.”

“Frank.”
She inhaled and raised her head from her arms, pulling away from my hand gently so I didn’t have to scramble back. She moved with more grace than you’d expect of someone who’d just become a multiton lizard.
“I don’t want to be a dragon.”

“I understand. I don’t really want to be a princess either.”

Her head snaked around and faced me.
“Why not?”

“I’m sure it’s wonderful and all, but I’m a guy.”

She sniffed and turned away, her nostrils loosing small curls of steam.
“I’m sorry, it’s just . . . you’re still human.”

“Uh—” I stopped short because she was right. Princess Lucille had really gotten the worst of this deal. By comparison, I was suffering a minor inconvenience. “I want to fix this too.”

“I know.”

I walked around in front of her until we were facing each other again. “So let’s talk about how we do that.”

She tilted her head in a nod, and lowered it until her chin touched the ground near my feet. White steam still curled from her nostrils, and I caught the slight scent of brimstone. I wasn’t nearly as frightened as I should have been.
“How? The book wasn’t there.”

“I know. But I was planning—before the court of Grünwald sidetracked me—to return to your father. Do you think he could help us?”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea to travel to my father’s castle together when every would-be prince in a hundred miles is looking to save you from me?”

I sighed myself. “It seemed more plausible when I assumed that you were running around in
my
body.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“I don’t like the way that sounds.”

“Do you know anything about the Lendowyn legal system?”

“I’ve been in this kingdom for less than a week.”

“Well, there was a royal proclamation offering my hand in marriage?”

“Yes, to whoever brought you back, along with the head of the dragon that took you.”

“Of course.”

“Well, if we get to your father and explain—”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because proclamations like that are enchanted and magically binding, to prevent the parties—my father, King Alfred in this case—from reneging. The only way it can be voided is by the hand of the wizard who drafted it for the court.”

“Elhared?”

“Elhared.”

“That does complicate things.”

“There’s more.”

Of course there was.

It was bad enough that while Lucille was in the dragon’s body, her own father had a price on her head, an offer that Elhared would have made difficult, if not impossible, for the king to rescind. The old coot seemed too smart to allow the king to muck up his plans that way.

No, the worst part was the structure of the Lendowyn legal system in regard to the nature of spells of the type Elhared had employed against us.

Some legal scholar in the mists of Lendowyn prehistory had made the observation that it opened too many cans of worms to provide a separate status to someone or something possessing the body of a Lendowyn citizen. Should someone be able to opt out of their taxes because they happened to suffer demonic possession? What would one do when the twelfth son shows up claiming all the inheritance because Dad decided to take up residence in his body? Then all manner of crimes could happen and the perpetrator could just claim that something or other was using his body when he set fire to his neighbor’s sheep.

It was easier for everyone just to ignore the whole soul thing.

That meant, despite any evidence to the contrary, Princess Lucille had no real legal status at all except as an enemy of the state. For all intents and purposes, I was currently the princess and heir to the throne of Lendowyn.

She stared at me as she told me about that legal wrinkle, and watched as the implications of it sank in.

I wasn’t just wearing her body. I
was
her in every important respect. If I walked into the Lendowyn court and was entirely truthful with them about what happened and who I was—they would still have to treat me as Princess Lucille. Legally, even though I stood here in front of the
real
princess,
I
was the one who was a member of the Royal Court of Lendowyn.

I patted the tip of her nose. “I need a moment.”

I took a few steps away, and half-sat and half-collapsed on the ground.

“Are you all right?”

I raised a hand. “A moment.”

She had told me just how easy it could be for me to escape most of my problems. If I was willing to stick with the changes in my body—and Lucille was right in that it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been—all I needed to do was present myself to the Lendowyn court to get most of what Elhared had promised me. I would have just as much protection from the ritual angst of the Nâtlac cultists of Grünwald
as
the princess as I would have if I’d been married to her. Then there were all the perks of being royalty, even in a bankrupt kingdom.

All I had to do was abandon the princess to her fate.

A deep, shameful part of my brain whispered to me,
“She’s a big girl. She can handle herself.”

“Frank?”

I couldn’t look at her. I hugged myself and stared at the ground, my stomach churning with a toxic mix of self-loathing and self-pity.

“I don’t blame you.”

“What?” I turned my head to face her, suddenly terrified I had said something out loud.

“This isn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”

“What?”

“You didn’t know what Elhared was planning.”

“I should have.”

“You risked your life to save me.”

“Well, after pulling me off of that altar, I think we’re even on that score.”

“Frank, you faced a dragon for me. You’re still my knight.”

“Uh . . . There’s one thing . . .”

I wanted to tell her the truth. I really did. But when I looked into her face, and saw the gratitude peeking from behind her reptilian features, the words disintegrated in my mouth. I couldn’t tell her that her knight was just another fraud in this whole fraudulent mess.

“What one thing?”

I stood up and tried to compose myself. “I don’t care what the law says. You’re still the Princess Lucille.” I bowed to hide how ashamed I felt.

“Thank you.”

The way she said it made me feel worse.

 • • • 

Later on in the evening, the topic of conversation had thankfully traveled far away from myself and exactly how much of this debacle I had been responsible for. She had flown off to find us a meal, which gave me enough time to berate myself in private so I could devote my thoughts toward planning something potentially more productive than self-recrimination.

As we ate, I told her what I had come up with.

She lifted her nose from the roasted flank of her second wild boar and looked at me. “
So we don’t go back to Father?”

I shook my head. “No, not right now.” I took what was left of the boar’s leg she had given me and tossed it back to her. It must have been dragon reflex, but her head jerked and her jaws snapped shut on it way faster than something that size should have been able to move. I jerked back in shock.

She swallowed, bones and all, then turned her head to face me.
“I’m sorry, were you done with that?”

“Y-yes.”

“You were saying?”

I was still not quite sure about how to read her expression most of the time, otherwise I would swear she looked amused.

“To get this reversed we need the book, and we need to find my body.”

“I suppose I can’t have my body back until you have somewhere to go.”

“Right, and it seems that if we find Elhared, we’ll find both.”

“Elhared? Didn’t he blow up?”

“I thought so too. But someone came and took the book from the cave. Someone who wore the same size boots I used to. And hijacking my body was more or less what the old coot intended when he cast the spell of doom.”

“You think it was him?”

“Yes, and I think he ran afoul of the same emissaries of the Grünwald court as I had.” I explained the things I’d overheard when I was being taken for the sacrifice, especially the reaction of everyone when they heard that I was Frank Blackthorne.

“That explains the other one
.
”

Of course, she asked the inevitable question.

“What does the Grünwald court have against you?”

“I—ah—disrupted one of their ceremonies.”

“Disrupted?”

“I sort of . . . accidentally . . . stole the queen’s virgin sacrifice.”

“Accidentally?”

I swallowed and forced myself to bear the whole ugly truth. “Well the Ziggurat was supposed to be abandoned. But there they all were, chanting and waving sharp things around. I couldn’t leave the poor woman there . . . Elhared used that whole mess to con me into—”

“I’m sorry.”

“Trying and—What?”

“I misjudged you. I thought you were just trying to save me because of the so-called reward.”

“That’s what I was trying to say. I was in the Ziggurat because—”

“She wasn’t a princess, was she?”

“No, but what I’m trying to tell you is that I’m—”

“You’re a good man, Frank Blackthorne.”

“Uh, thank you?” I wanted to finish, I really did. But my courage fled me. I couldn’t bring myself to contradict Princess Lucille’s image of me. And it made me feel even worse for weighing the option of abandoning her.

“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “if we find Elhared and drag him before your father, then I think we can fix this.” I
wasn’t
a good man, and the sooner we unraveled this mess, the better.

“That makes sense.”

“Unlike us, he has no reason to return to Lendowyn Castle—not without me—you—in tow to get his reward. He’s probably laying low trying to figure out a way to make that happen.”

“So how do we find him?”

I had an answer, but I didn’t much like it. We had to talk to the last people who saw Elhared wandering around in my old body.

“Do you have any idea where the Grünwald diplomatic mission would be hanging out when they’re not making sacrifices to their Dark Lord?”

 • • • 

The Grünwald mission made its home in the northern palace, which used to be the summer home of Lendowyn royalty until the costs of upkeep became more than the treasury could handle. For the last decade or so, the property had been rented to various other kingdoms—Grünwald being the latest and most lucrative tenant.

My response upon hearing this was to ask if the king had any idea how they spent their spare time. Lucille responded with a massive shrug. They paid well.

Of course they did.

Lucille flew us there just before daybreak the next day, to avoid the rather obvious sight of a dragon flying across half the kingdom in broad daylight. She landed us on a wooded hillside overlooking the palace. Our timing was fortuitous, as dawn had barely begun to break when a caravan of men and exhausted horses came down the main road toward the palace.

There was no mistaking the horseman in the lead. Sir Forsythe the Good was the only member of the company who didn’t look dirty, exhausted, or wounded.

“That bastard’s still alive?”
came a terrifying whisper from behind me. Lucille’s breath burned the back of my neck. I was about to say something about Sir Forsythe leading some sort of charmed existence, when I saw that the “good” knight was not who she referred to. In the midst of the party, Prince Dudley lay in a cart, bandaged from the waist down.

“I’ll incinerate him.”

I turned to her and said, “Not subtle, My Princess. Though I appreciate the thought.”

“He was going to rape and kill me.”

“I know, but he’s the best lead I have on Elhared. We need to talk to him, not slaughter him.”

“How do you intend to do that? Just sneak in there?”

“That’s pretty much my plan.”

“You’re kidding.”

I turned away from the palace to face Lucille. She had done her best to conceal herself behind the tree line, flattening her body against the ground so from a distance she’d just seem to be a small hillock nestled behind the trees. Her head lay on the ground next to me, tilted slightly in my direction, eyes staring right at me.

“I’ve broken into more secure places.”

“Maybe, but you aren’t built like a knight anymore, Frank.”

Was I ever?

I had the urge to try and tell her again who I really was, but this wasn’t the time for that. Instead I told her, “Sneaking, not fighting. And I think your body is better built for skulking around than my old one was.”

She said
“Oh,”
as if she wasn’t quite certain how to take my comment about the usefulness of her body.

“Be ready to fly us out of here if we need a quick getaway.” I didn’t give her a chance to talk me out of it. I just started climbing down toward one of the rear walls of the palace.