Cold Steel

30

In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt. When it is woken, all tremble in fear.

In the depths of the black abyss, there drift in a watery stupor the Taninim, called also leviathans, and when they wake, their lashing tails smash ships into splinters and drive the sundered hulks under the waves.

In the depths of earth, wreathed in fire, lies coiled in slumber the Mother of All Dragons. Her smoky breath fills the ocean of dreams. She stirs, waking, and the world changes.

So we are told.

But of all the great powers in this world, one thing was certain.

No one could screech as loudly as Bee when she was truly outraged.

“LET. HER. GO!”

Thumps hammered its body, small fists pounding the leviathan’s massive flanks.

“How dare you? After I almost died unearthing a nest, is this how you repay me?”

Then she kicked him.

I wasn’t sure how I knew she had done that, only that I was spat out amid a rain of pebbles. After a moment the hail ceased. A dog crept up to me, ears down, and apologetically licked my face.

“Pah!” I shoved the animal away when it looked as if it meant to lick me again. Grabbing my cane, I staggered to my feet and spun to face the monster.

Bee sat on a bench beside the headmaster as Kemal Napata hovered anxiously behind. The headmaster had his hands on his knees, looking winded. His seamed black face and tall, slender frame looked exactly as I remembered them from Adurnam: those of an elderly man of Kushite ancestry with a scholarly demeanor and a calm heart. Sparks of green lit his eyes before fading into brown. The hounds swarmed over to press close to his feet.

Bee was in full spate, like the spring flood.

“I don’t care if her sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt and if the spirit courts are the most ancient enemies of your kind. I never asked to walk the dreams of dragons! Someone else decided on my behalf! Furthermore, when you tricked me into crossing into the spirit world, I almost died to save those hatchlings! And after all that, I am meant to watch while my dearest cousin is eaten?”

“Maestressa, you cannot speak to the noble prince in such a tone,” said Kemal, aghast, for Bee was leaning toward the headmaster as if her next move would be to punch him.

“What do you mean, I can’t speak to him in that tone? I am speaking to him in that tone, now that I know he is not a prince of Kemet at all but rather an impostor slithering about the world with some manner of secretive plot in hand that involves the death of perfectly gentle, mild, and blameless young women!”

By the angry flush mottling his cheeks, Kemal appeared as if he might be reconsidering his infatuation. Trying to gather up enough breath to speak, I wheezed my way into a coughing fit.

Bee ran to me. She patted my face. “Dearest! Are you going to live?”

“Really, Bee,” I said in a hoarse voice, “I was quite impressed by that diatribe until you described yourself as gentle and mild.” I eyed the evidence of the broken branches.

The headmaster got to his feet. Bee and I jumped back. I raised my cane defensively.

“Maestressas, might we retire into the house for a cup of tea? The warm fire would be welcome to my old bones.”

Bee squeezed my hand. “Surely you can understand that we may be reluctant to enter a den within whose walls we may be devoured at your leisure.”

“I fear you have read too many lurid tales, Maestressa,” he said in so kindly a manner that I began to think he must have reached the little grove of trees just in time to banish the monster, for this harmless old man could surely not have been the monster himself. “You will be safe within the house. I do not eat human flesh.”

“I heard half of your manservants have died,” Bee said rudely. “Did you eat them?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

Bee opened her mouth and then, after all, could grapple no words onto her tongue.

I pushed her behind me and swashed with my cane. “Back away slowly and we’ll make a break for it,” I muttered.

“Yes, I ate them,” he repeated, “but they were not men.”

“What were they, then?” she asked. “Trolls? And why did you try to eat Cat?”

“I did not try to eat her. I hoped she might see a memory in the tides of the Great Smoke.”

I had always respected the headmaster because his easy demeanor and impressive erudition stood in such contrast to my Uncle Jonatan’s short temper and small-mindedness. I didn’t truly know what sort of older man my father Daniel would have become, had he lived, but I had liked to believe he would have been something like the man who had patiently satisfied all factions whose children attended Adurnam’s academy college, without giving way to any one.

Only evidently he was no man.

“How can we trust you?” I asked.

“A reasonable question, Maestressa. I apologize for our unfortunate way of meeting just now. You surprised me at a vulnerable moment.”

“Are you a dragon?” I asked.

“I find I am rather weary. Will you take tea on this cold day?”

Bee said, “You choose, Cat. I’ll do as you say.”

I had seen what I had been too young to understand at the time, that I had survived because I had accidentally fallen into and out of the spirit world.

“I think it is safe to go,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Strangely, I am sure.” I could forgive a lot for having been given the chance to see the loving way my parents had smiled at me and at each other, the way I had looked at them with such wholehearted trust. The way my mother had tried to hold on to me.

The house was a stately lord’s home with two wings and three stories plus tiny attic windows. It was set near the river’s edge flanked by a second band of trees. The gravel drive led to the imposing front entry but we walked around to the side, where a man took charge of the dogs and chivvied them away to a kennel.

We made our way through the house to a pleasant library. Bay windows overlooked a field of sheep-mown grass that sloped to the bank of the Rhenus River. A door opened onto a garden alcove. In the little garden, rosemary surrounded a flat granite rock where a sun-loving creature might bask in summer.

The walls were lined with bookshelves and enough mirrors that every part of the room could be seen within a reflection. There were two hearths instead of one, both fitted with the most modern circulating stoves; the room was too warm for my liking. Worktables were heaped with scrolls, books, and ridges of stacked letters, the usual detritus of a scholar. The chamber looked nothing like the study in Adurnam.

The headmaster sat in a chair situated by the windows and gestured toward a couch placed opposite. He shifted restlessly, as if he wanted to leap up again. Cautiously we sat. I saw no point in pleasantries, given everything that had happened. I asked what I needed to know.

“How did you drive off the Wild Hunt and save Kemal?” I asked.

He lifted a hand to indicate the nearest mirror. “In mirrors we can see the threads of magic woven through the worlds. Because of this, mirrors can be used to confuse and conceal.”

My hope crashed. He could not save me any more than a troll maze could.

“Ever since the day you and your cousin arrived at the academy, I saw that the threads of both worlds run through you,” he added. “I have always known what your cousin is, but I long wondered why your blood and bone are mixed of both mortal and spirit kind. The day the head of the poet Bran Cof spoke, I realized your sire must be a powerful spirit lord.”

“You had no idea before?” I asked.

His mouth parted as if he were about to hiss, but he coughed instead. “I know less than you might think about the spirit world. I cannot walk there.”

“But you hatched there,” said Bee.

“I hatched there, although I have no memory of the event. We have no thinking mind until we swim through the Great Smoke and come to land in this world. The creatures of the spirit world live in their place, and we live in ours. The two are not meant to mix.” He examined me as he might a curiosity. “Before I met you, Maestressa, I would have said someone like you could not exist. Everything you are and can do rises out of the mingling of two worlds in your flesh.”

“Not everything, Your Excellency,” I said. “I was given love and strength by the actions and example of the mother and father who meant to raise me and were killed because of me. I know affection and constancy because of the loyalty of my dear cousin Bee. My aunt and uncle fed and clothed me in the same manner they fed and clothed their own girls, so I learned fairness from them. We girls were taught deportment, fencing, dancing, and sewing, as well as how to read and write and do accounts and to use herbs to make the last of winter’s store of turnips and parsnips taste palatable. So I learned both a trade, and how to make do. I refuse to agree that everything I am is due to my sire breeding me on my mother. I am not a horse or a dog, to be described in such a way. Even horses and dogs can be raised poorly, or well.”

Perhaps, becoming heated, I had raised my voice.

“Passionately argued.” A faint smile calmed his face. “Very well. Your actions and your loyalty to your cousin have convinced me you are not a servant of the spirit courts, they who are our implacable enemies. I believe you have earned the right to have a few of your questions answered.”

Bee touched clasped hands to her lips, then lowered them. “From everything I have learned, it seems your people somehow bred or created the women who walk the paths of dreams. Your people infested us, if you will, with the curse of walking the Great Smoke in our dreams. You did so because you want us to walk into the spirit world and unearth a nest and guide its hatchlings into the mortal world.”

“That is correct.”

“But we can also glimpse meeting places in the future.”

“Your visions allow you to find a nest. All the rest is coincidental, not of importance to us.”

Bee’s expression sharpened to her axe-blow glare, and I was sure she was about to say something cutting, but instead she sat back. “Surely nests hatch without our help.”

“They do. And they have across the passing of many generations. Understand that we are far older than your kind. It is the way of my people that our mothers live in the Great Smoke. They lay their eggs on the shore of the spirit world. The eggs hatch in the spirit world, and hatchlings seek water, through which they fall into the Great Smoke. After a time swimming there, those who survive surface into this world, for it is here we must grow to maturity. Thus the cycle starts over. But in recent ages, our ancestors began to notice that fewer and fewer were reaching this world. We came to believe that the creatures of the spirit world were deliberately devouring the hatchlings in the hope of eating them all and thus causing us to die out completely.”

“Why would they want your kind to die out?” Bee asked.

I said, “Probably so there will be no more tides. That’s why the eru and other spirit creatures build warded ground, so they won’t be changed when a tide sweeps over the land.”

He smiled as he once would have at the academy, approving a pupil’s correct answer. “That is what we believe. We can only know what we have learned from humans who have walked there.”

“How did you make the dream walkers?” Bee asked.

“Only the mothers know. I do not.”

Kemal held open the door to allow a woman to carry in a tea tray. As she set down the tray on a worktable and poured, I recognized her. She had been the housekeeper for the dying man we had stumbled on while escaping from the Barry household, an old man who had exuded heat, sheltered loyal hounds, and asked Bee for a kiss. Now she was working for the headmaster.

“You may go, Maestra Lian. Kemal, you may also leave us. I will ring if I need you.” When the door had closed, the headmaster took a sip of tea. “For a very long time now our numbers have suffered, and we have become few. We have come to expect at best three hatchlings to survive from a mating swim. Two days ago, on the equinox, eleven hatchlings swam ashore from the nest you unearthed, Beatrice. They were all brought safely to the house. Quite astonishing, and a reason for us to hope our numbers may increase.”

I thought of how many had been eaten and crushed in their race through the spirit world. Truly, few if any would have survived if Bee had not been there to shepherd them into the river.

“Why would they only be coming ashore now when it was so long ago that Cat and I dug them up?” Bee asked.

“While they are swimming in the Great Smoke, hatchlings cannot sense the mortal world. However, here in the mortal world, a male announces his readiness to crown by marking a river’s shore with a scent. That mark attracts any rivals who wish to challenge him. The scent is so strong that it penetrates the Great Smoke as well. Hatchlings follow it into the mortal world.”

“What does it mean to crown?” I asked, for I could not help but wonder if the word was a euphemism for mating.

With a frown, he glanced out the window as if to suggest I had been rude for asking.

We sat in an uncomfortable silence. I did not know what to say, and Bee did not speak.

“Can it be?” He sat forward abruptly. An unexpected grin brightened his expression, and he rose. “What rich bounty showers on us! Yet more arrive!”

He limped into the garden and down the lawn. Bee and I ran to the window.

A spout of water swirled up from the river like an unraveling thread pulled off the fraying hem of a piece of cloth. The water poured into the headmaster. His human shape changed. I suddenly understood that his human form was nothing more than an elaborate illusion. The body absorbed the water and grew into a glistening dragon, one with a mouth large enough that it could eat me in one gulp. The slippery texture of its black scales swallowed light. Its head had a whiskered muzzle, and a shimmering crest ran down the length of its spine, waving like grass in the wind. Its body tapered into a flat tail more like a fish’s than a bird’s. Yet despite the creature’s perilous aspect and daunting size, it waddled in a remarkably ungainly way down the sloping ground.

A roil of movement stirred the river. Creatures surfaced.

“They’re mine!” Bee’s face had the shine of a mother’s smile. “Don’t you recognize them?”

She ran outside.

I halted in revulsion by the garden door. Eleven silvery-white eels the size of children humped up onto the shore, blowing and wiggling as they snuffled along the grassy bank. They were the ugliest things I had ever seen, except for their startling gem-like eyes. The dragon huffed a smoky breath that stopped them in their tracks and compelled their attention. Every pair of glowing eyes fixed on him.

A twelfth grub squirmed unremarked onto the shore farther down the bank, beyond a small wooden pier to which a rowboat was lashed. A hawk dove down to investigate its movement. The stray hatchling’s sapphire eyes tracked the hawk’s flight as the bird settled on the bare branch of a tree. The raptor and the grub studied each other. Then the hatchling lunged forward. In the time it took me to suck in a shocked breath, not sure who was going to devour whom, it changed.

As if the tide of a dragon’s dream swept its unformed body, it molted its ungainly larval form and rose as a large hawk, beating for the sky. The true hawk followed.

I dragged my gaze away from the birds to see the eleven hatchlings molting their ugly grub forms. They transformed into smaller versions of the scaled beast. The air around the headmaster shivered as if rippled by a blast of heat. The shining black body of the beast turned in on itself and became that of the man we knew, thankfully in his clothes. A brief circle of dense rain splashed around him, as if he were raining away the water he had earlier absorbed.

In a frenzy of imitation, the grubs also changed, although they did not change size.

Eleven youthful persons stood dripping wet and naked on the shoreline, with no thought for modesty. They had the size and features of innocent boys who are no longer children but not yet grown. They surged forward to crowd around Bee, touching her, patting her, sniffing her.

Maestra Lian came striding down the lawn. With brisk gestures and snapped words she herded them away from Bee and toward the house.

Bee ran to me, her face so opened by joy that she seemed ready to fly. “Did you see, Cat? They know I’m the one who hatched them!”

She glanced past me, and the brilliance of her gaze softened. I turned. Kemal stood in the garden door, watching the youths flock into the house. An expression of unimaginable grief seared his pale features.

“Maester Napata, I hope we have done nothing to disturb you,” said Bee in the same tone she might use to coax a wounded dog out of its hiding place.

He muttered, “What have you not done to disturb me?”

“Are you a dragon, too?” she asked, more lightly.

He flushed, glancing away, then took in a sharp breath and faced her. “This is the only body I have ever been able to wear. Since it is a man’s body, can I then call myself a dragon?”

Her frown usually presaged a scold, but she spoke in a mild voice. “If you hatched as these others did, out of a nest in the spirit world, then aren’t you a dragon regardless of what body you wear?”

“The others say I am too much of a weakling to change,” he muttered in a low, shamed voice.

“I hope they shall say no such thing where I can hear it!” she retorted. “I am sure there is some other explanation.”

The headmaster walked into the garden alcove. “There is an explanation.”

He ushered us back into the study. There he sat at the desk and sipped at his cooling tea as if our conversation had not been interrupted by the arrival of eleven—twelve—inhuman creatures out of the unseen smoke of the spirit world’s fathomless ocean.

“As with all that is born into the spirit world, our essential nature is one of change. When a hatchling first emerges into the mortal world from the Great Smoke, it does not comprehend that it has a true nature, the kernel of its being. That is why we must meet our young ones at the shore, so we can shepherd them into their true shape. Kemal came to shore among humans. It is remarkable he was not killed the moment he breached the water, for that is usually what happens if a young one wades onto land where no kinsman is there to aid it. But he was not killed. For all his childhood he thought he was human. I am not sure if the family that took in the small orphan child did so because they felt pity for him or because they knew in time they would be able to receive a substantial pension from the emperor. In the Empire of the Avar, any child with the white skin and hair we call albino must be handed over to the emperor. Those who bring such a child forward are rewarded, while those who try to hide such a one are punished. I found Kemal in a sacrificial lot being made ready for the Wild Hunt. It is known among the Avar that in rare cases these albino children are dragons, although most such albino children are perfectly human. However, that is why the empire exposes them on Hallows’ Night, because the Hunt will always kill one of us if it can.”

“How awful,” said Bee, glancing at Kemal.

“A maze of mirrors will always confound the Hunt,” the headmaster went on. “I rescued Kemal by this means, but I had found him too late. He had spent so many years in a human body believing himself human that he was too old to learn how to change.”

Kemal stared at his hands as if trying to pretend we were not talking about him.

“Your Excellency, just now on the shore, I saw one turn into a hawk and fly away,” I said. “What will happen to it?”

“It will live a hawk’s life and die a hawk’s death. It is impossible to find those of our children who are lost in this way. These examples illustrate how important it is that we be the ones who greet our own children and welcome them to this world. If they do not know we are what they can be, then they will never know and are lost to us regardless.”

“Can the rest of you change shape at will?”

“Yes. All except Kemal.”

“Then why do you live in human form, Your Excellency?” Bee asked.

“As your kind spread across the lands and began to discover our young ones and kill them out of fear, we discovered our best camouflage was to walk in the world in human form, and to live among you.”

“How do they know whether to be male or female?” I asked.

His smile reproved me. “It is not the same for us as with humankind. When we hatch in the spirit world and swim in the Great Smoke, we are grubs, neither male nor female. When we come ashore in the mortal world, we become male.”

“How do you breed and produce nests, then, if you are all male?” Bee demanded.

“Would I ask you such a intimate question? Do not presume to ask it of me.” The brown of his eyes flashed with the spark of emeralds, as if his control of his human shape was slipping. He spoke in an edged tone I had never before heard from the man who had famously not once lost his temper at the academy. “I am weary, and growing restless. Is there some favor you came to ask that you believe I can help you with?”

Bee twisted her hands together. Her hesitation surprised me, as did the way she chewed on her lower lip as if nerving herself to speak.

“Your Excellency.” Maestra Lian appeared at the door. “They are clothed and settled in the upstairs room for safety. A fifth claimant has arrived.”

He leaped to his feet with such a hiss that Bee and I both jolted back. I grasped the basket, wondering if I would need to throw the skull at him.

“We are done here,” he said in a hostile tone that killed the interview. “You must go.”

Bee sucked in a huge breath and let it out all in a rush.

“Your Excellency, how do I stop dreaming?”

“Bee!” I whispered, shocked by her words.

He shrugged his shoulders uncaringly. “How do you stop dreaming? In the same way you stop breathing. You die.”

“We must leave now,” said Kemal firmly, waving us out. “I will escort you to the gates.”

We walked out of the grand house in silence.

Once on the drive, Bee spoke. “Maester Napata, how many people know that dragons roam the earth in the guise of human beings?”

“In this part of the world, I should be surprised if anyone knows, for we keep ourselves hidden.”

A coach passed us, driving toward the house. A distinguished man of middle years stared at us from the coach. Was this the fifth claimant? Certainly he was an adult, not a hatchling. What crown was he challenging the headmaster for?

At the massive wrought-iron gates, the two guards cast sneering glances toward Kemal but allowed in an insulting manner that Bee and I might pass through the gatehouse. After a formal courtesy she and I departed.

“The guards must be dragons, too,” said Bee. “They were very rude to Maester Kemal.”

“You are his champion now! I wonder if any of the attractive men at the academy college in Adurnam were secretly dragons. How does it feel to know a dragon is infatuated with you?”

“It’s nothing to joke about,” she snapped. “Imagine being orphaned in such a way, and never even having a single memory of your parentage or what you truly are! You of all people should feel sympathy for the young man’s plight.”

“Blessed Tanit! This is a change of heart! I am sure it was you who first conceived of calling him the headmaster’s dog back in Adurnam.”

“I am sorry I was too selfish to remark on the sorrows and griefs of others. People must do better in being kind to others, for I am come to see that the temperament that looks suspiciously on any person who does not wear the garb they believe is proper, is the temperament most apt to punish the unfamiliar and least apt to see justice done. Do you not think so?”

I caught her hand. “Bee, do you really wish you could stop dreaming?”

“Of course I do! What has it brought me except trouble?”

“Is that why you wanted to see the headmaster?”

“The most pressing reason, yes. But it was a foolish question, wasn’t it? Even if there were a way for me to stop dreaming, no one would ever believe me if I said I had stopped. So I may as well keep my gift and learn to use it for our purposes, not theirs. Why should we be theirs to command? We belong to ourselves!”

At the hostel we shared a supper of thin gruel with a turnip for garnish. I offered a bit of turnip to the skull, then dug in. The appearance of the skull merely made our hosts think us visitors with arcane powers, for severed heads had a peculiar mystery and importance among those of Celtic lineage.

We hadn’t the extra coin to pay for a tallow candle, and without Vai we had no cold fire, so we retired to our tiny room at twilight. Bee and I sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other with knees touching and heads bent together. Rory stretched out beside us clad in trousers and shirt. Bee wore a practical night shift, and fortunately the women of White Bow House had gifted me with a pretty night shift decorated with lace, although this was the first night I had worn it. I was fretful, worrying about Vai. Did mage Houses have some secret means by which to imprison rebellious sons? Iron shackles and iron bars could not contain the most powerful of their kind. What could?

Bee twined her fingers through mine. “I miss Mama and Hanan and even Papa and wretched little Astraea. I miss the quiet life we had in Falle Square. Can you even believe I’m saying that? When I was there, all I could dream about was having a wealthy and handsome prince rescue me from the dreary poverty of our lives. Now a quiet life doesn’t seem so ill-favored.”

“It wasn’t as quiet as you remember. Aunt and Uncle were always scrambling to make ends meet. Not to mention the constant trouble they were in for buying and selling information. I expect they found the life more wearying and anxious than quiet, whatever it may have seemed to us. They kept us very sheltered, Bee. As I am discovering!”

“I wish I could have spoken to the hatchlings. I feel I am their midwife. All this time dragons have lived among us and yet we have never known.”

“I could have told you,” muttered Rory. “I expect the only reason the dragon didn’t eat you is that you taste sour, not at all to his liking. But who ever listens to me? Besides Vai, I mean.”

“Andevai listens to you?” Bee said with a snorting chuckle.

A board creaked in the passage. Fingers tapped lightly on the door. Rory rolled off the bed with unseemly haste, and slipped out. I heard the husband’s murmur, and they padded away.

“Does he do this everywhere he goes and every place he stays?” I asked.

“Yes, he’s incorrigible. But you know, Cat, he’s right. Andevai does listen to him in a way you and I don’t. Simpering Astarte, they’re actually rather sweet together, just as a man and his wife’s brother should be. Rory makes Andevai likable.”

“Vai’s not likable with me?”

She laughed. “Watching you soothe his ruffled feathers amuses me, considering if it were anyone else you would cut him to pieces with your tongue.”

“I tell him what I think!”

She squeezed my hand. “Yes, dearest, and he adores you for it. Still, I expect Andevai particularly likes Rory because he has discovered Rory can tell when you are fertile and when you are not. A useful sort of person to have around, don’t you think? Given that you don’t want to get pregnant yet but wish to enjoy sexual congress.”

“Blessed Tanit! Now that you mention it, Vai has conversed upon that subject more than once since he and Rory met. I ought to have suspected. Anyway, Rory has the knack of flattering people in exactly the right way, so that it’s true but not condescending.”

“Yes. It’s like he’s hunting for the kill, only the kill in this case is winning people over to like him. He always seems to leave them in better spirits than when he arrived. Don’t you think that is a rare gift, the ability to make people happy?” She sighed.

“Haven’t you been happy as a radical? Sleeping with the infamously handsome Brennan Du?”

She released my hands. “Yes, as for adventure and the admiration of men swept off their feet by my brilliant rhetorical abilities, I would say that the last nine months have been eminently satisfactory.”

“Goodness, Bee! Were there other men?”

A smack of sound against the windowpane startled me; someone was throwing pebbles at our room. I got off the bed and peered down to the street. With clouds overhead, no moon or starlight limned the street, and although the houses on this lane had night lamps burning on their porches, not a single flame now illuminated the dark. I recognized the shadowy form from the drape of his winter coat over his shoulders. Alarm leaped like a deer bolting from the scent of wolves.

“It’s Vai!”

I crept downstairs, unbarred the door, and let him in. In the back of the house the fire in the kitchen stove, sealed for the night, groaned with a resigned huff as the presence of a powerful cold mage sucked all combustion from the flames. We tiptoed upstairs.

“Andevai!” Bee whispered as he shaped a spark of cold fire into the shape of a candle. “Why are you here? What went wrong?”

He shook off the coat. He was wearing a rough workingman’s jacket and trousers we had smuggled into Five Mirrors House as cushioning for the cacica’s head, which he had pulled on over his other garments.

“I told them it wasn’t the first time you had run away from me, which statement has the added benefit of being the truth. I spent all day nagging at them to find you, thinking that would relieve their concerns about me. Then they paraded four women in front of me and asked which one I wanted in my bed.” He sank down on the bed and rubbed his head as if it hurt. “They were so insistent, reminding me of how every magister owed it to the vigor of the Houses to do his part. The only way I could get rid of them was to reduce them all to tears by enumerating their flaws and shortcomings at length.”

“That can’t have been difficult for you, Magister,” said Bee with a sting in her smile.

He looked up so quickly I thought he meant to cut her with an edged retort. She braced herself, ready to give back what she got.

“For over seven years I worked to become the magister they would accept in Four Moons House, so I could prove I was more powerful than them, smarter than them, better than them. It was so easy to become him again. But I don’t want to be that man.”

Bee’s mouth parted in astonishment. Mercifully she said nothing, for above all things I could not imagine Vai accepting sympathetic platitudes.

“Then you won’t go back, love,” I said.

He looked away. “None of that matters,” he went on in a curt tone that another might have heard as a rejection but that I knew came from pride. “As I was leaving the parlor after getting rid of the women, I saw a messenger wearing the colors and badge of Four Moons House.”

“The courier I saw leave last night can’t have gotten there and back so quickly.”

He nodded. “Yes, it seemed odd to me. I followed, but I’m not a skilled spy. I never discovered what the messenger was there for because I was caught just as the steward was ordering the captain of the House guards to start a house-by-house search of Noviomagus to look for you, Catherine. I pretended I had come to insist on that very thing, and demanded to go with them. I slipped the laborer’s clothes inside my coat and changed in a tavern.” He laughed mockingly. “I pulled an old cap over my head and slouched out past them. They look only at posture and clothes. They didn’t even see me go past.”

Sleet hissed along the roof. He glanced at the window.

“I expect their magisters are bringing down a storm to keep travelers off the roads. It will take some time to search, but they’re bound to check hostels and inns first. We’ve got to go.”

“Very well,” said Bee decisively. “We’ll return to New Academy and demand refuge. The headmaster was singularly unhelpful, but we are owed that much, surely!”

“What about Rory?” I asked as I began collecting our belongings. “He went to the innkeepers’ chamber.”

Vai’s amused grin was so rare a sight that Bee actually stared. “Ah. I take it he is out prowling. I shall fetch him while you dress.”

As we dressed, he descended the creaking stairs. I heard the hard rap he gave on a closed door and his voice raised without the least embarrassment. “I beg your pardon, but I need Rory immediately, for we’ve had urgent news.”

The baby woke and began sobbing disconsolately. Rory made apologetic fare-thee-wells as Bee and I got everything ready. We had a lot to carry, a bag each plus Vai’s carpentry apron, which he wore under his coat. Foul weather dogged us as we strode miserably along the road beneath a biting sleet that made my nose go numb. Not a single soul braved the road except for us. The night lay as dark as if pitch had been poured over the world, but Vai’s mage light lit our path.

Wind tangled in the trees with a rush like wings. Between gusts I heard hoofbeats. Bobbing lights approached from the direction of town, not lantern light but cold fire. Mages pursued us, riding with soldiers. Ahead the impenetrable hedge gave way to the academy gates, where a real lamp burned. We reached the gates before the troop got sight of us. A burly guard with a bored expression slouched out from the gatehouse. The gate lamp burned steadily despite Vai’s standing next to it.

“You must let us in!” Bee cried.

“You can’t enter.” The guard eyed Rory with a look that made Rory curl his lips back. “The master is dueling the last challenger. After that, the winner will banquet on the remains. Go away, and be grateful I do not eat you, which I do not do solely because of the nasty stink of your flesh.”

“Who do you think I am, that you speak to me in such a dismissive way!” Bee exclaimed. “What of all those youthful hatchlings for which I am sure your kind ought to be grateful, lest you otherwise die out like ash on a dead fire? Do not condescend to me. Take us to Kemal at once.”

“That hapless worm!” He grinned to show his teeth. I could not help but think of Chartji, whom I liked so much better! “He is no man. Or I should say, he is a man. A sad creature that makes him, so shrunken and weak he cannot become his own self.”

Bee lifted a fist, ready to slug him. He hissed at her in a way that made Rory snarl and me grab for my sword.

Vai stepped between them. “If you do not wish your master to be disturbed, you do better to hide us than to let the soldiers find us. If they do catch us here, we will tell them everything. Then the entire mage House will descend upon you.”

This argument, delivered with Vai’s magisterial self-confidence, so struck the man that he hustled us into the gatehouse and out the back way onto the grounds just as the troop rode up. We hid in the dripping shadow of the hedge as soldiers tramped through the gatehouse and back out again while the guard complained vociferously at being rousted from his warm hearth.

Soldiers and mage continued south, still on the hunt. Without waiting for permission Bee ran down the drive toward the house. That the guard did not chase her made me hasten after.

“We must be cautious, Bee,” I called, trying to grab her sleeve. She could really run when she wanted to. She slipped out of my grasp as she put on a burst of speed despite the pack bumping on her back. Rory was lagging behind, reluctant to press on, and weighted down with a bag in each hand. Vai had dropped back to prod him forward. They faded into night’s gloom. Ahead twin lamps burned.

A large shape passed so close over my head that I ducked instinctively. An exhalation of smoky mist spilled fiery sparks above my head. A second shape, bigger than the first, swooped down. I tackled Bee. Rising to my knees, I twisted the hilt of my sword to draw it, but the weapon hung inert in my hand, as heavy as lead.

“Down!” I cried.

With a dreadful smacking thunk, the second beast slammed into the first one and smashed it to the earth a stone’s throw away. The impact shuddered through the ground.

Bee staggered to her feet. “We’ve got to get to the house!”

Thrashing and roaring, the beasts rolled toward the drive. Claws and teeth flashed as deadly daggers, moist with fluids. A scaly tail thwacked down on the gravel drive no more than three body-lengths from where I was gaping like a lack-wit. Coming from out of nowhere, hands dragged me backward.

“Run!” Vai shouted.

“Where’s Rory?”

“I sent him back to the gate. We’re cut off. Bee! Move!”

We abandoned our gear as we bolted for the safety of the building. A harsh shriek scraped the air, curdling my blood. So frightful was the sound of teeth crunching bone that I staggered, for the vibration of the noise ground through my own bones in sympathy.

Dying.

I am dying.

My blood is hot and harsh, pouring into the throat of my remorseless rival. The strongest has won the right to the crown.

Vai did not let go of my hand as he kept us running. A gusting trumpet cry chased us. A dark shape launched into the air and, twisting, landed with a ground-shaking thud right in front of us. Together we stumbled to a halt and stared down Leviathan. Rory stalked up beside us, trembling but determined to stand with us.

The dragon was now far larger than it had been on the lawn earlier in the day. Although clouds shrouded the sky, stars glimmered in its scales like a vision of unknown shores. The head lowered to peruse us. Eyes like emeralds spun in dizzying circles. Through those spinning eyes I watched as through a window into a hazy mist where shadows of figures shuddered into view and melted away. Was that my mother, staggering through a chaos of battle, one eye bleeding and her lower arm horribly shattered so bone stuck through the torn flesh? I swayed at the sight of her blood and pain.

“Lord of All!” Vai shut his eyes so as not to be caught in the whirlpool. “The creature has cut the thread of my magic. I can’t touch the ice.”

He tried to push me behind him so it would eat him first, but I twisted out of his grasp and stepped forward. Bee yanked me back.

“Both of you, move away!” Stepping in front of the beast, she had the look of a scrumptious honeycake set before a ravenous dame.

“Salve, Your Excellency! Our apologies for interrupting your dinner. I am sure you recognize us as harmless bystanders. Please let us pass to the safety of the house. We will be perfectly happy to stay out of your way until the soldiers who are trying to arrest us have gone.”

The leviathan exhaled with a snort of smoke. Sparks glimmered before dissipating like cooling steam. It heaved itself one big flop toward us.

Never run when they have you in their sight. If you ran, they couldn’t help but chase you.

Its maw opened to reveal a predator’s teeth slimy with fluids and moist substances I did not care to name. Fetid carrion breath mingled with smoke to bring tears to my eyes. Vai’s hand tightened on mine, and I knew he was going to throw himself forward to give me time to escape, so I snaked my foot out, meaning to trip him as soon as he lunged.

“Don’t move, you idiots!” said Bee without looking at us.

A pale man crunched into view on the gravel drive, skirting the flank of the beast. “Move slowly off to the side so you do not stand between him and the challenger,” said Kemal.

We edged sideways onto the grass as Kemal calmly collected our abandoned gear. Vai had sheathed his sword and now had one arm around me and the other around Bee. My panic had ebbed enough that I guessed it soothed him to feel he was protecting us. I even leaned against him, and his hand tightened on my waist to comfort me. I was shaking, it was true. I did not mind a bit of manly comfort. Rory nudged up against me, and I caught his hand in mine.

Gravel ground under its belly as the beast squirmed forward. It nosed up to the steaming carcass of the beast it had just killed and began to feed, ripping and swallowing the tender flesh and sucking at streams of blood and internal fluids. Bee hid her eyes. Vai grunted, looking down.

“It can’t possibly still want to eat us after it eats all that,” Rory muttered, watching with a predator’s measuring interest.

Kemal set the bags and packs beside us. “My apologies, but you cannot stay here.”

Bee pleaded with a fervent gaze. “The mage House troops are going to arrest us. Please.”

Her pleading surely seemed like torment to him. “You cannot stay here.”

“The headmaster owes me a favor,” said Bee.

“The headmaster is gone. That he spoke to you earlier today is astonishing enough. It was the last time he appeared in human form. Any adult male who challenges for the crown does so in our ancestral form, what you would call a dragon. Those males who refuse to compete remain in the form of a man so they pose no threat. The flesh of each rival who is consumed strengthens and grows the winner. The last survivor earns the right to crown.”

Vai’s gaze flashed up. “Is that a polite euphemism for mating?”

I was pretty sure Kemal’s skin darkened with a flush. “We are not like you. The strongest male proves he has the strength and therefore the right to crown. To crown means to become female. Thus will he enter the river and become she, and thus she will cross by water into the ocean of dreams, what you call the Great Smoke. The mothers live there. Now I have told you more than I ought,” he finished, with a glance at Bee. “You must leave at once.”

Bee had not given up. “Is there some other refuge? A boat? Horses? A hidden path?”

“No.” He hustled us back up the drive. The noise of feeding mercifully faded behind us.

Lamplight winked as the gatekeeper peeped out. “I can’t open up. Trapped inside and like to be crushed and spat out is what you get for demanding the right to go where you ought not. Fools!”

“Let them out,” said Kemal.

“You’re not even worm enough to make me,” said the gatekeeper, with a laugh.

Perhaps the night’s fraught events had worn Kemal’s mild temperament threadbare, but I thought it more likely that he responded as a young man might who feels he has been insulted in front of a woman he wants to impress. Kemal punched him up under the ribs with a strong undercut from his right, followed by a swift uppercut to the jaw from his left. The man went down.

“That was bruising!” said Rory, shaking out of his anxious slouch. “Have you studied the science of boxing?”

A horn shrilled from the road. Behind, the leviathan trumpeted in answer to its challenge. Heat grew at our back. The dragon was dragging itself closer.

“Hurry!” Kemal pushed us through the open door of the gatehouse. Even in such dire straits, I could not help but notice that the hearth fire burned unstintingly as Vai passed. We tumbled out on the other side of the gate as the gatekeeper skittered back into the safety of the gatehouse and slammed and locked the doors. The bellows breath of the dragon sucked in and out like the rhythm of the forge. It was definitely larger than it had been before it had eaten the last claimant.

Worst, the soldiers were closer than we had realized.

“There is the Diarisso mage!” In the aura of the gate lamp, soldiers clattered out of the night even as the cold fire guiding them vanished as though blown out.

The mage House troops spread into a semicircle that pinned us in front of the gate. We were caught between the claw and the teeth, as in the old tale of the slaves fleeing ancient Kemet who were trapped between the pharaoh’s army and an uncrossable sea.

“How could you abandon us like this!” Bee cried accusingly at Kemal.

Rory muttered, “Eaten or shot, which ought I prefer?”

Vai swore out of bitter frustration as his magic failed him.

I could barely lift my cane.

“I can’t reach my magic!” cried the mage riding with the troop. “What power traps it?”

“Kill all but the Diarisso,” shouted the captain.

Soldiers dismounted and swarmed forward with swords raised. Anger kindled in Kemal’s face, like buried light cutting through a concealing veil. He feared for Bee, certainly, but the knowledge that he had unwittingly walked her to her death surely scoured his pride as well. Or maybe it was only years of frustration at being told he must not desire what was so completely out of his reach and which was now to be torn from him forever.

He forgot himself.

And became what he really was.

First a pale man flashed as if he had become mirrors all catching tomorrow’s sunlight. The iron of the gates crumbled and, in a rush as of wind, poured into an eddy that he began absorbing. The substance filled and changed him. A creature formed as of polished iron swelled out of the vanishing figure of the man. It grew so monstrously fast that as I took in a breath I still saw the man, and as I exhaled a dragon filled the open gateway. Its mouth could have swallowed a pony. Whiskers like ropes lashed in a wind I could not feel. A crest rippled along its ridged spine in a delicate lacework of steel. Its tail whipped around and toppled several of the cypress trees. Its roar crackled like the fury of a blazing fire sweeping over us.

The soldiers fell over each other in their haste to retreat. The horses scattered as one rider sounded the alarm on a horn: Ta-ran-ta-ta! A distant horn answered, echoed by a third.

Close at hand a trumpet cry shook the air. Huddled against the door of the locked gatehouse, we turned to see the black dragon rise to confront this new challenger.