Queen of Dragons

CHAPTER TWO

He'd never liked tea. It seemed somewhat ridiculous to him, to interrupt his day with miniature cakes and dry, crustless sandwiches, and fragile china that always seemed about to snap in half between his fingers. Tea, Kimber reasoned, was a feminine invention, ruled by females of a certain type: ruffled, beribboned, and iron-willed.

At least it was here at Chasen. It was the hour his sisters always paired to outflank him.

"But Kim," Joan was saying in her pretty, reasonable way, "you do realize how impractical it has become. We still have scarcely any idea of even how many of these other drakon there are. If they're as scattered as Lia's letter suggested, we'll waste a good deal of resources merely locating them."

"We have already," Audrey pointed out, taking a sip from her ridiculous, dainty cup.

"And to what results?" Joan responded, a perfectly timed counterpoint. Kim knew from experience they could go on like this for hours. "Rumors and hearsay. A smattering of frightened peasants who can barely string together a full sentence in French. No castle. No certain means of even ascertaining how the letters from the princess had managed to reach us, or ours to her. It's as if they manifested from thin air."

"Like smoke," said Rhys quietly from his corner chair, and returned Joan's glance with innocently raised brows.

Kimber regarded his siblings in silence. He supposed it did him some good to be challenged, even in such a sugar-coated, sideways manner. If nothing else, he could count on these Wednesday afternoons to sweep away the illusions of his station from his mind and remind him, quite firmly, that although he was the leader of his tribe, to these particular three people he was still family.

And that was good, he told himself. He eyed the tepid Ceylon in his hand. Surely it was good.

Very gently, he set the flower-painted teacup upon the table at his feet. The butter yellow of the cinquefoils was an exact match to the edging of the Westmorland rug, and the Swiss applique curtains that framed the parlor windows and glass garden doors. Everything in this chamber, in fact, was premeditated and coordinated, right down to the iced cakes—also yellow, with tiny pink marzipan roses swirled on top.

Chasen Manor was nothing if not vigorously well planned.

He longed for water. Or wine. Or even cider. He longed for plain bread and cheese and a decent slice of meat.

Joan, seated beside him on the settee, leaned forward to pour fresh tea into his cup, then added a wedge of cucumber sandwich beside it. Beneath her lace cap her curls glinted in the light of the candelabra; like Kimber, she had inherited their father's coloring, green eyes and dark golden hair.

Unlike Kimber, she usually cared enough about what other people thought to take the trouble to powder it.

"I am merely suggesting," she was saying, "that before we commit further to the council's scheme of finding and controlling these Zaharen, we take a breath, so to speak, and consider all the implications."

Rhys spoke again. "You act like he has a choice. You act like Kim controls the council."

"Well," countered Joan, "he is Alpha, since Father is gone. He could tell the council at their next meeting—"

"What," interrupted Rhys, impatient. "Tell them what? That until this princess decides she wants to trust us enough to send us her direction, we'll just have to sit on our hands and simply hope none of them decides to reveal to the world exactly what we are? Where we live? That we should wait for bloody Lia to show up, or Mother and Father to come home, and all our secrets will be safe? The tribe is teetering at the edge of reason as it is. You know damned well the council made the best decision possible given the—"

"Sending three of our men over to the Continent with little or no information on how to navigate to this castle—forbidding them to use their Gifts to help discover these other drakon—" "We've only done what we've had to do to survive—"

"You say that because you're on the council, so it's very well for you to claim you know what's best for all of us—"

"Stop fighting," Kimber enunciated, very calm, but it silenced them both like a bullwhip cracked across the room.

The lives of every single drakon, male or female, young or old, were bound tight with rubric and tradition. It was necessary; with their many Gifts came also many enticements. But they had endured the centuries by learning to hide. They had endured by following their own rigid laws and by vigorously punishing anyone who defied them. Once upon a time, everyone knew, their kind had been hunted nearly to extinction. It was only by pulling order out of their chaos, by banding together here in Darkfrith, creating their own careful universe, that they had managed slowly, slowly to thrive.

They had an Alpha to lead. They had a council to govern. They had rules upon rules, the first and foremost of which were: loyalty to the tribe. Silence.

Confinement.

It was bred into their blood and into their bones. Confinement meant continuance. It meant farms and orchards, mills and smiths and schools, and black-deep mines laden with silver. It meant crops, and trade. It meant the drakon could mingle with the Others when necessary, that they could be simple country folk to anyone who didn't look too long or too deep at the pastoral perfection of the shire.

Some people did. Only a few. A very, very few.

And then had come that letter from Lia—runaway Lia—along with that of the princess. And on that day the tribe had realized that everything they had worked for, all the generations of struggles and sacrifices, might soon be for naught.

There were more of them out there, running free and uncontrolled. There were more drakon, foreign and wild, and no one in Darkfrith had ever known.

The news had struck a tremor of fear through the shire like nothing else in their history.

Two years ago the Marquess and Marchioness of Langford had broken their own rules and vanished into the human world in their final hunt for their youngest daughter, an act that had very nearly managed to rend the tribe into pieces. Before the Zaharen had come to light, runners were considered the most dangerous of all possible threats. A drakon who fled the shire without permission was desperate, unpredictable. It was nearly inconceivable that the established Alpha of the tribe and his wife would do such a thing, even in search of their child.

Kimber had been left behind, just like Audrey and Rhys and Joan. He had stepped into his father's role because it was what he'd been born to do, what he'd been trained to do, and to ignore the crisis of the tribe would have been, quite simply, unthinkable.

He'd been granted rights and privileges not given to anyone else, not even his brother and sisters, because he was the eldest son. He'd been shipped to Eton as a boy, then to Cambridge, had mingled with nobles and thieves and, five times, the king himself, all because of who he was destined to be. He was a leader and a lord, shaped for this role the entire sum of his life. And his family, his comrades and kin, had been shaped as well.

The Alpha ruled the drakon. Kimber was the new Alpha. When he spoke, his kind obeyed. It was their way.

Joan had lowered her gaze to the teapot, a sullen slant to her lips. Rhys had subsided back into his chair, his hair a brown tangle against the damask, his arms crossed, and was staring up at the painted cornices along the ceiling. Only Audrey, Kimber's twin, fixed her dark gaze to his and then pursed her lips to speak.

"I saw Zoe Lane in the village the other day," she said, matter-of-fact.

Zoe Lane. Kimber didn't need to scan his memory to place her: She was the fiancee of Hayden James, young, striking. Blond, like most of their kind. Pale, like all of their kind. He remembered her stoic face as she'd bid Hayden farewell a year past, on the manor drive that unspooled to the outer world. He remembered seeing her later that evening at her sister's tavern, where sometimes she worked, and how red her eyes had been, even by candlelight.

Like Jeffrey Bochard, the man sent out two years before him—and Luke Rowland before him —Hayden James had simply disappeared.

Just like Lia. Just like Kim's mother and father.

"No one blames you," Audrey said softly. "It isn't your fault, of course."

And as soon as she said that, Kimber knew she thought it was.

She was right.

He rose from the settee and walked to the beveled-glass doors, gazing out into the garden, the woods spreading thickly beyond.

If his home was as tranquil and studied as a great deal of money could ensure—and it was—at least the weather was yet beyond the control of the drakon. It was a stormy day, not miserably so, but with a cool, steady spring shower that drenched the earth to black and jeweled the trees and plants that were only waiting for sunlight to bloom. A soft blue fog crept through the vales, winding in fingers and curls along the low-slung hills that surrounded the shire.

He imagined himself out there in that wet. He imagined breathing it, and then becoming it, smoke misted with rain.

He heard Joan straighten on the settee, the firm scrape of her pumps against the floor. "I must be off. Erik can't control the twins for long, and Cook always feeds them too much pudding before bed."

"Yes," said Audrey, also rising. "It's time for me to go as well. I promised the boys a game of backgammon. Rhys?"

"No, thank you. I live here, if you'll recall."

"I meant, dear, will you see us out?"

"No. That's what the footmen are for."

"Such a brute."

"Aye, but at least I'll be dry."

Both his sisters approached and Kim turned around, accepting their brief, rouged kisses upon his cheek. They had houses to return to, families, husbands. They had their fine and ordered lives.

"Next time," he said suddenly, as they were crossing to the door. "Next Wednesday, let's take tea outside, in the pavilion."

Everyone looked surprised, even Rhys, but it was Joan who could switch from tears to smiles in a trice. She gave a bubbling laugh. "Why, Kimber—it's April! It's been raining practically every day. What a mad suggestion."

He looked back at them without speaking, then lowered his lashes and offered half a smile, to let them know he was in on the jest. From behind their sisters, Rhys gave a soft snort.

Then they retreated into the shadows, Joan and Audrey arm in arm, their footsteps measured, striped skirts and fans and cashmere shawls, venturing out into the main hall, and then the graylit storm.

The footmen would only walk them as far as the end of the drive. After that, his sisters would find their own way to their homes. They didn't truly require an escort at all. The thought that someone—anyone—would dare harm them was far-fetched enough to be laughable.

He'd seen them fly, both of them. He'd seen their claws and their deadly stealth. Individually they were remarkable enough, the only two females still in the shire who could Turn. As a pair, they were formidable.

Rhys waited until they were gone, until they both heard the massive wooden doors of the mansion close with their particularly well-oiled click.

"They're getting worse," his brother said.

"I know it."

"Soon they'll be demanding seats on the council." " That," said Kimber, "would be worth seeing."

They shared a look. The council was governed by men—in Kimber's mind, a majority of ancient, surly men—and always had been. Females weren't even allowed to attend the meetings, something Kim's mother had found particularly galling. But like every other aspect of life here, the rule was ironclad.

He wondered if anyone else knew what he did: that Rue Langford had taken to knitting during the council sessions, her chair positioned close to the hearth in the Blue Parlor, which shared a common wall with the council's private chamber. Kim had received more than one lopsided scarf in his packages from home while at Eton, and a great deal of understated irony in his mother's letters.

They should have let her join, he thought suddenly. Perhaps she might have stayed if they had.

The rain began to intensify. It speckled the glass and slid downward in silvery tears, smearing the fog and the trees and the grass into plots of muted colors. The light from the candles lent a warm soft circle to their little corner of the room.

Rhys flopped back into his chair. He was two years and a lifetime younger than Kim's thirty-one, handsome, poetic in the way only a second son could be; a single, flawless emerald dangling from one ear; a pirate's heart beating beneath white lawn and a waistcoat of Italian silk.

"Tell them I'm going," he said. "You can do that. Tell the council."

"No." "Kim—"

"I am not having this conversation again with you."

"Actually, you are. Look here, I speak French, Italian, and German; I fence; I'm a deuced fine shot, as you know. I've pored over the maps and I think I have a fair idea of where this castle might actually be. There are only a certain number of roads that lead to—"

Kimber's patience snapped. "Pray do not be an idiot. Mother and Father are gone—the marquess and his mate missing without word, their youngest daughter allegedly wed to a human and nowhere to be found—three tribesmen have vanished—even if I wanted to let you go, the council would never permit it. Too many of our family have disappeared already. We've effectively lost six members of the tribe due to our charming little princess. I don't fancy the headache of convincing the council that you'll be the one to miraculously return."

Silence took the room; the patter of the rain grew louder and then softer. From somewhere deep inside the labyrinth of the manor, someone started to cough.

"Sorry." Kim closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with stiff fingers. "I think perhaps I'm delirious with hunger."

His brother's response was carefully light. "It would be pleasant to dine on something larger than my thumb."

Kimber dropped his hand. "Let's try the kitchens. I'd gnaw on boiled leather at this point to get the taste of sugar out of my mouth."

He waited until nightfall to fly. It was difficult, because the need to shed his skin had become a persistent itch, growing stronger and stronger as the day wound on. They could Turn at any time, of course, but they were supposed to wait for dark. The night was their best domain, full of secrets and shadows that tricked the human eye.

Darkfrith was deceptively ordinary by day. By night, her skies glistened with scales.

Tonight was especially ideal; the clouds were still low and heavy like tufts of wet fleece, easy to pierce. It would be just like shooting an arrow through a blanket.

From the balcony of his unlit quarters, Kimber watched the skies. He watched as the men of his tribe dissolved, one by one, into gusts of smoke that drifted upward from houses and farm-steads, up to that billowing mass, churning and fading. He felt them Turning again above the haze, becoming more than smoke. He cocked his head, and he could hear the very air above the earth sliced into rivers by wings and tails.

His blood began to pulse in harmony. His heart in his chest began to hammer, a gilded beast poised to break free.

He removed his garments. He stepped forward, closing his eyes in appreciation, expanding his lungs until they hurt. The rain perfumed him, it cleansed him, sent anticipation along his bare body in slick beaded welcome.

He opened his eyes and at last became smoke.

The first time he'd Turned, pain had flamed through his being like the molten core of the sun. The initial Turn was always the most treacherous—too many young drakon perished in that first instant of disintegration—but the subsequent joy of breaking free of his human form had been akin to nothing he had ever known. And after all these years, there was nothing still to compare to it: not food or drink, not power or money, not women. Nothing.

He let the rain pour through him, effortless. He willed himself to rise and he did, another plume of gray, another drifting coil, until he grazed the edge of the clouds, learning their cold sapphire weight, pushing through, merging.

He did not wait to Turn again. Kimber became a dragon right there, still cloaked in rainclouds, and did a spinning loop that swirled the mists. He stretched his neck and his wings and charged higher, breaking free all at once, an arrow indeed of scarlet and blue, and talons of bright hard gold.

His tribe was about, hunting and diving. Sinuous, lustrous as polished steel, the other dragons instinctively swerved away, letting him soar where he wished.

The moon was an ivory pearl encircled with stars, ever tempting. The land below the clouds was soft and living, and his.

His people, his home; every aspect, every atom of the air, every heart that beat.

He could not imagine wanting to leave. He could not imagine a more perfect place.

Kim bared his teeth and pumped his wings to climb higher, until his memories of the day had blown clear, until there was nothing of him left but the harsh, animal ache of straining muscle and breath.

The second body was found in a mine. A mine that the princess—and every other dragon of the mountains—knew well, in fact. It hadn't been dragged very far inside, but the winter had been long and even more frigid than usual. It had snowed nearly every week from November into February, and the winds had pushed great mounds of leaves and powder into every cranny of the world. By May, the snows were beginning to let loose their grasp to rain, and a peasant boy, a sheepherder, had ventured into the tunnel entrance by chance to escape the hammering downpour.

Once it had been a great and prosperous mine, as all the mines stabbed through the Carpathians were. Once, it had yielded cart-loads of ore riddled with copper, and dragon-men and human men had worked together to empty it of its wealth. But that was centuries ago. On this day it offered only one fresh discovery to the drenched shepherd: the remains of a man with a hole in his chest, and fair hair that had frozen into icicles, slowly thawing beneath a blanket of snow.

And a ring made of gold. A signet ring.

The news reached the castle that afternoon. By four o'clock Sandu had tracked Maricara not to the mine—he wasn't surprised she wouldn't go there—but to the high and bleak peaks of the most remote of the mountains, higher than any of the Others would go. Higher than trees, higher than hamlets or monasteries, higher even than Zaharen Yce.

She stood alone with her feet planted in the snow, her arms folded over her chest, gazing out at the cloudy tors of stone and ice that stretched as far as he could see. He knew she sensed him, although she really didn't move. Only her eyes cut to him, that pale and penetrating stare finding the curve of smoke he took to funnel down to her side.

She did not stir as he coalesced. He became human with his back to hers, not touching. Neither of them turned around.

It was damned cold up here, and blustery. She was always doing outlandish things like this, going off to stand naked in the snow atop a mountain. Sometimes he wondered if she did it just to test him, to see how far he truly would push to follow her.

"The situation is poor," Alexandru said.

"Yes. I imagine so."

"No, Mari, I mean poor. The worst I've ever seen. The Others are frightened, and they're angry. They're no longer complaining about their sheep or pigs. They're hiding their children. Great God, Maricara. Even the serfs have heard whispers of what's been happening in France."

Her hair whipped his back with the wind, a brown so deep it was nearly black; loosened grains of snow whipped with it, embedding in his skin.

"I don't know what to do," Sandu confessed, hearing the frustration in his voice. "Tell me, Princess. What should I do?"

She was silent a long while, and just when he was beginning to suspect she wouldn't answer him at all, she did.

"You must go back to them and tell them the truth. Tell them that men have decided to hunt us again. They should take all precautions."

"Men?" he echoed, and in his astonishment turned his head to see her. "What are you talking about?"

She glanced back at him, sober, her cheeks pink with cold. "I didn't kill anyone—at least not those two. They were drakon, and English. If they'd wished to, they might have killed me in a fight. No doubt they would have been bigger and stronger. But they died in human form, which means they were taken by surprise. There were no claw marks on the body, just that one wound to the chest."

"You saw the new body?"

"I did." His lips pressed tight, and she sighed, looking away. "This afternoon, first thing. I flew there as soon as I heard."

"Oh."

Sandu faced away too, his eyes tearing. His feet were numb to the ankles. He crossed his arms and clenched his fingers into his elbows to control the shivers, but Maricara only stood there like a rock, like a statue, unmoving. Her hair curved around him once more, a cloak of dark wind.

"I don't think they'll believe me," he said softly, and blinked to rid the salt from his vision. "I don't know. I don't know."

"Then they are going to die," she answered. "The proof will come to you soon enough. I'm leaving. If the killings continue, you'll know it wasn't me."

Deep in his heart, Sandu had braced for this moment. He might have even been searching for her to tell her so himself. But it was a relief that she said it aloud instead of him. He felt lighter at once, guilty and thankful in a rush of warm confusion. The snow, the jagged peaks, the relentless blue and white of his world all came together, all crystallized into a new and clarifying sense. She was leaving, and all would be right again.

When the air cleared from his exhalation, he spoke to the ice on the ground.

"Where will you go?"

She reached up to tuck her hair behind one ear, a girlish gesture, one that made her seem both younger and more ordinary than she really was.

"To the west, I think," Maricara said. "I have a message to deliver."

"Mari—"

"You'll do fine. Keep your head up. Keep your eyes open. You're the prince now, and the people will want you to be ruthless. Never forget it."

How could he? Because of her, the gilded wires of Alpha caged every second of his life.