Wings of Fire Part 32

The dragon did not move.

The prince stepped into the room. His sword was drawn. For a moment I could not help but see the scene as I might have described it in a tale for the tavern crowd. A handsome prince lifted his sword against a terrible monster. But I could see the scene in another way as well: a beast of unearthly beauty, an enchanted princess enslaved and transformed by her own pa.s.sion, dying for a kindness that had sapped her strength.

I pulled my dagger and stood between the prince and the dragon. The prince looked startled to see me. I could tell by his expression that this was not the way he expected the story to go. I have never heard a story in which anyone tries to protect a dragon.

"You must not kill this dragon," I told him. "She is an enchanted princess. She was weakened because she acted with great kindness. You must not slay her."

"Enchanted princess?" The prince frowned, staring at the sleeping dragon. "I'm not likely to kiss that. A woman capable of laying waste to a kingdom and driving soldiers before her like sheep is no wife for me."

Clearly he had heard too many stories of princes and enchanted princesses. I had suggested neither a kiss nor a royal wedding.

"I think I'd better just kill the beast," the prince was saying. "If you do not step aside, I will have to remove you."

I've told enough stories about princes to know that is what they are trained to do--slay monsters and marry princesses. This prince, like others of his kind, was not a man inclined to change direction quickly.

"I will not step aside," I said, holding out my dagger.

The prince was, however, trained to fight. I was not. With a flick of his sword, the prince struck my dagger aside, stepped in, twisted it from my hands, and tossed it into the corner. Then he lifted his sword.

I fell on the dragon's neck so that the prince could not strike the sleeping dragon without striking me. "Wake up," I murmured to Tara, my eyes filling with tears. It was too much; it was not fair. "You must save yourself." My tears spilled over, dropping onto the beast's neck, trickling over the dull scales.

Where the tears touched, the scales shone with a new brilliance, a blue-white light so bright it dazzled my eyes. The dragon shuddered beneath me. I released my hold on her neck, scrambling away.

The brilliant light--ten times brighter than sunlight on the ice fields--enveloped the dragon. I squinted through my tears at the light. I could see a shadow in the glare, a dark shape that changed as I strained to see what it was.

The light faded, and I blinked, my eyes still dazzled. A woman stood on the tattered rug. Her eyes were as blue as glacial ice. Her hair was the color of flames. She was dressed in an old-fashioned hunting tunic and breeches. Her hand was on the sword at her belt, and I was certain that she knew how to use it. Much experience with bandits, I suspected.

Tara sat by the fire that the soldiers had built, watching the flames.

"Of course, you can claim your reward," I told the prince. "The merchants asked that you do away with the dragon--and you achieved that end. Your men can testify to it: The dragon is gone."

"That's true," the prince agreed.

"It is the way the story had to go," I explained to the prince. "My tears melted the ice in her heart and she returned to her true form."

"And now what happens?" The prince was studying Tara thoughtfully.

Tara turned from contemplating the fire and met his gaze. "Now I return my kingdom to its former glory. With the dragon gone, my people will return." She smiled. "It will take time, but there's no rush."

"You will need help," the prince said. "Such a lovely princess should not rule alone. Perhaps...."

"Perhaps you should remember your own thoughts, as you prepared to slay a dragon," Princess Tara said, still smiling. "A woman capable of laying waste to a kingdom and driving soldiers before her like sheep is no wife for you."

She turned her gaze back to the fire. "My people will return, and so will the bandits. We will hunt the bandits in the hills and the merchants will pay a toll to pa.s.s this way."

"Perhaps you'd best not tell the merchants that part just yet," I advised the prince.

Is the story done yet? Not quite. There is still King Takla's horn to account for. That evening, I stood by the glacier and I blew that horn. I saw a flash of blue light over the ice, and then a beautiful woman wrapped in a white shawl stood before me. Her eyes looked familiar--a beautiful, piercing blue. Her hair was white, and she smiled with recognition when she saw me.

"You have called me," the ice woman said. "What do you wish?"

I held out the horn. "Only to return this horn," I said. "Nothing more."

The ice woman studied me. "No other wishes? You do not wish for wealth or fame or glory?"

I smiled and shook my head.

"You dress as a man, yet you are a woman. Would you wish to be a man?"

I thought about Princess Tara, a woman who hunted for bandits and claimed her own kingdom, and shook my head. "I have no wish to make," I said. Then I asked, "How is your daughter?"

"Very well," she said. "She was pleased to return to her home."

I nodded. "Of course she would be."

"How is your mother?" the ice woman asked.

"Doing well. Writing a ballad about Tara."

She took the horn from my extended hand. "You did very well," she said then. "I am glad that you could help my great-granddaughter, Tara."

I bowed to her. "I am grateful to have been of service." When I looked up, she was gone.

I returned to Sarasri's inn in Nabakhri, where my mother waited. I reached the inn early in the afternoon. I went looking for my mother and found her in the kitchen. Sarasri was kneading bread and my mother was playing the harp and keeping her company.

The kitchen was warm. A pot of lamb stew bubbled on the fire. The yeasty scent of bread filled the air. "Al is back!" Sarasri shouted when she saw me. My mother abandoned her music and hugged me. Sarasri heaped lamb stew in a bowl and insisted that I eat it all.

"My wonderful child," my mother said. "You must tell us all that has happened since you left here."

I shook my head, my mouth filled with stew. "Tonight," I said. "I will tell the tale tonight."

The tavern was full that night. People had heard of my mother's illness, of my trip to Dragon's Gate and my return with dragon's blood, of my return to Dragon's Gate to keep my promise.

I smiled at the crowd. Dressed in tunic and breeches, returning in triumph from Dragon's Gate, I knew the story that they expected. It was the story of Al, a heroic young man who confronts a monster.

"My name is Alita," I said. "And that means 'a girl to be trusted.' Some of you know me as Al and think that I am a young man. But the world is filled with illusions--as I learned when I met the dragon. Let me tell you my story."

In Autumn, A White Dragon Looks Over the Wide River.

Naomi Novik.

Naomi Novik was born in New York in 1973, a first-generation American, and raised on Polish fairy tales, Baba Yaga, and Tolkien. She studied English Literature at Brown University and did graduate work in Computer Science at Columbia University before leaving to partic.i.p.ate in the design and development of the computer game Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide.

Novik's first novel, His Majesty's Dragon, was published in 2006 along with Throne of Jade and Black Powder War, and has been translated into twenty-three languages. She has won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. The fourth volume of the Temeraire series, Empire of Ivory was a New York Times bestseller. Her most recent books are Victory of Eagles and the omnibus In His Majesty's Service, and coming up is new Temeraire novel, Tongues of Serpents.

Novik lives in New York City with her husband and a multiplying number of computers.

The diplomat, De Guignes, had disappeared somewhere into the palace. Lien remained alone in the courtyard. The pale narrow faces of the foreign servants gawked out at her from the windows of the great house; the soldiers in their blue and white uniforms staring and clutching their long muskets. Other men, more crudely dressed, were stumbling around her; they had come from the stables by their smell, clumsy with sleep and noisy, and they groaned to one another in complaint at the hour as they worked.

The palace, built in square around the courtyard, was not at all of the style she had known at home, and deeply inconvenient. While it possessed in some few places a little pleasing symmetry, it was full of tiny windows arranged on several levels, and the doors were absurdly small--like a peasant's hut or a merchant's home. She could never have gone inside. Some of the laborers were putting up a pavilion on a lawn in the court, made of heavy fabric and sure to be hot and stifling in the warm autumnal weather. Others carried out a wooden trough, such as might be used for feeding pigs, and began to fill it with buckets, water slopping over the sides as they staggered back and forth yawning.

Another handful of men dragged over a pair of lowing cattle, big brown-furred creatures with rolling eyes showing white. They tethered the cows before her and stood back expectantly, as though they meant her to eat them live and unbutchered. The animals stank of manure and terror.

Lien flicked her tail and looked away. Well, she had not come to be comfortable.

De Guignes was coming out of a side door of the house again, and another man with him, a stranger: dressed like the soldiers, but with a plain grey coat over all that at least concealed the rudely tight trousers the others all wore. They approached; the man paused a few paces away to look upon her, not out of fear: there was an eager martial light in his face.

"Sire," De Guignes said, bowing, "permit me to present to you Madame Lien, of China, who has come to make her home with us."

So this was their emperor? Lien regarded him doubtfully. By necessity, over the course of the long overland journey from China in the company of De Guignes and his fellow countrymen, she had grown accustomed to the lack of proper ceremony in their habits; but to go so far as this was almost embarra.s.sing to observe. The serving-men were all watching him without averting their eyes or their faces; there was no sense of distance or respect. The emperor himself clapped De Guignes on the shoulder, as though they had been common soldiers together.

"Madame," the emperor said, looking up at her, "you will tell these men how they may please you. I regret we have only a poor welcome to offer you at present, but there is a better in our hearts, which will soon make amends."

De Guignes murmured something to him, too soft for her to hear, and without waiting for her own answer, the emperor turned away and gestured impatiently, giving orders. The loudly bellowing cows were dragged away again, and a couple of boys came hurrying over to sweep away the stinking pools of urine they had deposited in their fear. In place of the trough, men brought out a great copper basin for her to drink from, bright-polished. The moaning of the cows stopped, somewhere on the other side of the stables, and shortly a roasting scent came: uninteresting, but she was hungry enough, after their long journey, to take her food with no seasoning but appet.i.te.

De Guignes returned to her side after a little more conversation with the emperor. "I hope all meets with your approval?" he said, indicating the pavilion. "His majesty informs me he will give orders that a permanent pavilion be raised for your comfort on the river, and you will be consulted as regards the prospect."

"These things are of little importance," she said. "I am eager, however, to hear more of the emperor's present designs against the nation of Britain."

De Guignes hesitated and said, "I will inquire in the morning for the intelligence you desire, Madame. His majesty may wish to convey his intentions to you himself."

She looked at him and flicked her ruff, which ought to have been to him a warning that he was lamentably transparent, and also that she would not be put off in such a manner for long; but he only looked pleased with himself as he bowed again and went away.

She stayed awake the better part of the night in the pleasant cool upon the lawn before the pavilion, nibbling occasionally at the platter of roasted meat as hunger overcame her distaste; at least it was no more unappetizing for being cold. The rising sun, painful in her eyes and against her skin, drove her at last into the shelter of the pavilion; and she drowsed thickly and uncomfortably in the stifling heat, dreaming of her prince's deep, controlled voice, reciting summer poetry.

In the late afternoon, the sun vanished behind clouds and she could emerge, only to find she had company in the court: three young male dragons of enormous size, all of them dirty, idly gnawing on b.l.o.o.d.y carca.s.ses, and wearing harnesses like carrying-dragons. They stared at her with rude curiosity; Lien sat back upon her haunches and regarded them icily.

"Good day, madame," one of them said after a moment, daring to break silence first. Lien flattened back her ruff and ignored him entirely, leaning over the copper basin. Several leaves had blown into the water and not been removed; she lifted them out of the way with the tip of her claw and drank.

The three males looked at one another, their tails and wing-tips twitching visibly with uncertainty like hatchlings fresh from the sh.e.l.l. The first one who had spoken--the largest of them, an undistinguished dark brown in color with a belly of mottled cream and grey--tried again. "I am called Fraternite," he offered, and when she made no response, he leaned his head in towards her and said very loudly, "I said, good day, I am--"

She blazed her ruff wide and roared at him, a short controlled burst directed at the soft earth before his face, so the dirt sprayed into his face and his nostrils.

He jerked back, coughing and spluttering, making a spectacle of himself and rubbing his face against his side. "What was that for?" he protested, injured; although to her small relief, he and his companions also drew back a little distance, more respectfully.

"If I should desire to make the acquaintance of some person," Lien said, addressing the small tree a few paces away, so as to preserve at least some semblance of a barrier to this sort of familiarity, "I am perfectly capable of inquiring after their name; and if someone is so lost to right behavior as to intrude themselves undesired upon my attention, that person will receive the treatment he deserves."

After a brief silence, the smallest of the three, colored in an unpleasant melange of orange and brown and yellow, ventured, "But how we are to be welcoming if we are not to speak to you?"

Lien paused momentarily, without allowing surprise to show; it required an abrupt and unpleasant adjustment to her new circ.u.mstances to realize that these were not some idle gawkers who had carelessly intruded: they had been deliberately sent to her as companions.

She looked them over more closely. Fraternite was perhaps two years out of the sh.e.l.l; he did not yet have his full growth, outrageously disproportionate as his ma.s.s already was. The orange-brown male was only a little older, and the last, black with yellow markings, was younger again; he was the only one at all graceful in conformity or coloration, and he stank of a markedly unpleasant odor like lamp-oil.

If she had been at home, or in any civilized part of the world, she would at once have called it a deliberate insult, and she wondered even here; but De Guignes had been so anxious to bring her. The rest of her treatment suggested enough incompetence, she decided, to encompa.s.s even this. Perhaps the French even thought it a gracious gesture of welcome; and she could not yet afford to disdain it. She had no way of knowing who might be offended by such a rejection, and what power they might have over other decision-making.

So she resigned herself, and said to the tree, rather grimly, "I am certainly not interested in friendship with anyone who cannot eat in a civilized way, or keep himself in respectable order."

They looked at one another and down at themselves a little doubtfully, and the black and yellow male, who had been eating a raw sheep, turned towards one of the men nearby and said, "Gustav, what does she mean; how am I eating wrong?"

"I don't know, mon brave," the man said. "They said she wanted her food cooked; maybe that is what she means?"

"The content of a stranger's diet, however unhealthful, is scarcely of concern to the disinterested onlooker who may nevertheless object to being approached by one covered in blood and filth and dirty harness, and stinking of carrion," Lien informed the tree, in some exasperation, and closing her eyes put her head down on her forelegs and curled her tail close to signify the conversation was for the moment at an end.

The three males returned some hours later, washed and with their harnesses polished and armor attached, which gave them the dubious distinction of looking like soldiers instead of the lowest sort of city-laborers, although they looked as pleased with themselves as if they had been wearing the emblems of highest rank. Lien kept her sighs to herself and permitted them to introduce themselves: Surete was the orange-brown, and Lumiere the black and yellow, who took the opportunity to inform her proudly he was a fire-breather, and then for no reason belched a tremendous and smoky torrent of flame into the air.

She regarded him with steady disapproval. After a moment, he let the flame narrow and trail away, his puffed-out chest curving uncertainly back in, and his wings settling back against his body. "I--I heard you do not have fire-breathers, in China," he said.

"Such an unbalanced amount of yang makes for unquiet temperament, which is likely why you would do something so peculiar as breathe fire in the middle of a conversation," Lien said, quellingly.

In forcing her to correct this and a thousand other small indelicacies in their behavior, their company soon made her feel a nursemaid to several slightly dim hatchlings, and it was especially tiring to have to correct their manners over the dinner the servants brought. By the end of the meal, however, she could be grateful for their naivete, because they were as unguarded in their speech as in their behavior, and so proved founts of useful information.

Some of it thoroughly appalling. Their descriptions of their usual meals were enough to put her off from the barely-adequate dinner laid before her, and they counted themselves fortunate for the privilege of spending the evening sleeping directly on the lawn about her pavilion, as compared to their ordinary quarters of bare dirt. Her prince had told her a little of the conditions in the West when he had returned from across the sea, but she had not wholly believed him; it seemed impossible anyone should tolerate such treatment. But she grimly swallowed that indignation along with the coa.r.s.e vegetables that had been provided in place of rice; she had not come to make these foreign dragons comfortable, either. She had come to complete her prince's work.

The prospects for that were not encouraging. Her companions informed her that the French were presently on the verge of war, and when she sketched a rough map in the earth, they were able to point out the enemy lands: all in the east, away from Britain.

"It is the British, though, who give them money to fight us," Fraternite said, glowering at the small islands; that same money, Lien thought, which they wrung out of the trade which brought the poison of opium into China, in defiance of the Emperor's law, and took silver out.

"When do you go?" she inquired.

"We do not," Lumiere said, sulkily, and put his head down on his forelegs. "We must stay back; there isn't enough food."

Lien could well imagine there was not enough food available to sustain these three enormous creatures, when the French insisted on feeding them nothing but cattle, but she did not see how keeping them behind would correct that difficulty. "Well, the army cannot drive enough cattle to feed us all," Fraternite said, bafflingly; it took nearly half an hour of further inquiry until Lien finally realized that the French were supplying their forces entirely from the ground.

She tried to envision the process and shuddered; in her imagination long trains of lowing cattle were marched single-file through the countryside, growing thin and diseased most likely, and probably fed to the dragons only as they fell over dead.

"How many of you go, and how many remain?" she asked, and with a few more questions began to understand the nonsensical arrangement: dragons formed scarcely a thirtieth part of their forces, instead of the fifth share prescribed as ideal since the time of Sun Tzu. The aerial forces, as far as she could tell, seemed nearly incidental to their strategies, which centered instead upon infantry and even cavalry, which should have only served for support. It began to explain their obsession with size, when they could only field such tiny numbers in the air.

She was not certain how it was possible this emperor could have won any battles at all in foreign territory, under these conditions; but the dragons were all delighted to recount for her detailed stories of half a dozen glorious battles and campaigns, which made it plain to her that the enemy was no less inept at managing their aerial strength.

Her companions were less delighted to admit they had been present at none of these thrilling occasions; and indeed had done very little in their lives so far but lie about and practice sluggish and awkward maneuvers.

"Then you may as well begin to learn to write," Lien said, and set them all to scratching lines in the dirt for the first five characters: they were so old they were going to have to practice for a week just to learn those, and it would be years before they could read the simplest text. "And you," she added to Lumiere, "are to eat nothing but fish and watercress, and drink a bowlful of mint tea at every meal."

De Guignes returned that afternoon, but was more anxious to see how she had received her companions than to bring her any new intelligence. However wise it might have been, she could not quite bring herself to so much complaisance, and she said to him, "How am I to take it when you send to me companions beyond hope of intelligent conversation on almost any subject, and of such immaturity? That among you war-dragons are of the highest rank, I can accept; but at least you might have sent those of proven experience and wisdom."

De Guignes looked somewhat reluctant, and made some excuse that it had been thought that she might prefer more sprightly company. "These are of the very best stock, I am a.s.sured," he said, "and the chief men of his majesty's aerial forces put them forward especially for this duty."

"Heredity alone is no qualification for service, where there is no education," she said. "So far as I can see, these are fit for no duty but eating and the exertion of brute strength; and perhaps--" she stopped, and a cold roiling of indignation formed in her breast as she understood for what duty they were meant.

De Guignes had the decency to look ashamed, and the sense to look anxious; he said, "They were meant to please you, madame, and if they do not, I am sure others--"

"You may tell your emperor," she said, interrupting wrathfully, "that I will oblige him in this when he has gotten an heir to his throne upon the coa.r.s.est slattern in the meanest town in his dominion; and not before. You may go."