Shana Abe - Queen of Dragons

The hallways down here were more narrow than the rest of the mansion; the earl walked ahead of her a few paces. From time to time he'd glance back as if to make certain she was still there, even though she had not the slightest doubt he could sense her in every single way.

She was vivid enough in her red silk gown. She was sick of dark, sick of deadened air. She needed color like she needed that taste of brisk morning that clung to him, and so when they passed a set of garden doors she merely turned to them, opened them, and stepped out into the day.

It wasn't sunny. It was cloudy, the sky a lovely jumble of blue and purple and slate. A fine, thin haze misted the air, not strong enough yet to be rain or drizzle.

"We should break our fast here," Mari said, lifting her arms to the mist.

"Yes," agreed the earl, not even sounding surprised. "Good idea."

There was a Greek pavilion set atop a very gentle hill nearby, the woods spreading dense and mysterious beyond. It had tall marble columns stained with green lichen, and benches beneath a wide, vaulted roof. When she looked up she saw the ceiling had been set with tiny glass tiles, thousands of them. As she tilted her head, light glistened along the concave curves, revealing colors undimmed by time or weather. It was a mosaic to represent the four seasons.

She took her seat under Autumn. It had the best view of the forest.

Kimber was still standing on the grass below, speaking to one of the footmen who had followed them out. When he was done he ascended the stone steps to the pavilion and found his own seat. Winter, just next to hers.

For a while they did not speak. Mari was concentrating on absorbing the day, on unlocking that small, evil knot in her chest that had budded as soon as she'd opened her eyes to a black morning. That had grown with every hour that passed while she'd remained alone, her voice unheard, her calls unanswered.

But it was better now. She could uncurl her fingers. She could relax her shoulders. She'd returned to the light.

No crickets chirped today, no birds, no dragons watched from overhead. It was more than peaceable. It was carefully, unnaturally calm.

The earl sat with his arms crossed, his profile sharp against the green and gray and marble day. He kept his gaze fixed on some distant point of the horizon, his brows drawn flat and his mouth faintly grim. Only his hair moved, rebellious still, stirring with the mild coming rush of an afternoon rain. He seemed both part of this moment and alien to it; a fixed force within a man, beautiful in the way that some men were, without embellishment, without kohl or padded coats or jewels. He was solid as the carved pillars, scintillating as the glass tiles. And Mari knew, deep down, that he was also as dark and deep as the forest that tangled over his land. In his heart, just as untamed. Beyond this manicured place, beyond the sun or moon or any confines of civilization, dwelled the true creature inside him. A hidden shard of some secret core of her seemed to throb to life every time she looked at him.

So she looked away. She looked at the lawn, at the waves of shadow and shade that rippled across the grass with the racing clouds.

It occurred to her that although she had flown with him, and Turned with him, and slept at his side, she didn't know what he looked like in his animal form. Surely he knew how she looked, but all Mari could recall of Kimber Langford was man and smoke. She frowned to herself, struggling for an image, anything, but all she could summon were a pair of blinding green eyes—human or dragon, she could not tell.

"I wonder," he said suddenly, lifting a booted ankle across his knee, "Maricara, King of the Zaharen. Who do you feel right now in the shire?"

"Who?" She dragged her thoughts back with a guilty start, swiping at a lock of her own hair that had begun to tickle her neck. "What do you mean?"

"Can you feel everyone?"

"I could hardly know that. If someone was here whom I didn't sense—"

"Yes, yes, I understand." The earl flicked hard at some grass stuck to his boot. "I suppose what I'm asking is, is it possible for you to sense a drakon you've never met? To pick her out?"

"Her," said Maricara, feeling her heart hook again. "A girl. About fifteen. She disappeared last night."

"Oh." And then, more softly: "Don't you really mean to ask me if the sanf are here?"

"They're not. There are no human men in this shire. I'm damned certain of that."

She lifted her face to the air, closing her eyes. "Yes, I agree," she said. "No Others. No animals. Not even the thrush, not any longer."

"And no missing dragon-girl."

"Can you describe her to me?"

"Somewhat. I've met her, of course, but there are quite a few maidens in the tribe. Let me think. Strawberry-blond hair, pretty face. Roundish. Blue eyes, like her mother.mostly I know her scent. Here." Kim reached for the square of cloth he'd tucked into his coat pocket.

Mari accepted it. It was a buffon, ordinary in the way that most handkerchiefs for young ladies were, stiffened muslin edged with lace, lacking even her initials embroidered upon a corner. The edges were deeply wrinkled, as if she'd had it tucked into her dress just the day before.

"I've got men hunting up and down the shire," Kimber said. "I've got Rhys and the council spread out to the nearest towns. But I thought."

Mari raised the muslin to her nose and winced, looking back at him from over the wilting folds.

"She likes vanilla."

"I noticed."

Clouds, moisture, day: everything as it should be atop the surface, everything ordinary. The pulsing drakon of the shire, the sultry warmth of the unseen sun, the alloys and rocks of Chasen Manor and the ground beneath her feet. The sickly sweet extract of vanilla syrup flooded her senses; she had to work around it to discover the more subtle nuances. Young woman. Starch and innocence.

Maricara closed her eyes and once more lifted her chin. For an instant—the briefest flicker of a second—she almost caught something new.a hint of something both disturbing and known.a person? A stone? It swept over her in thin eldritch notes, a thorn in her memory. When she turned her head to hear it better it vanished as swiftly as it had come. Try as she might, she could not pinpoint it again.

She felt nothing of the maiden who had worn this modesty piece. Either she had managed to hide herself so completely that even her emanations were disguised, or she was well and truly gone.

Mari shook her head, lowering the cloth. "I'm sorry. I don't think she's anywhere nearby. Not for miles and miles."

Kimber nodded politely, rising to his feet. He stood motionless, gazing at the same far-off, cloudswept point, then bent down and picked up the heavy marble bench behind him with both hands and threw it against the nearest pillar.

It exploded into noise, taking out half the column, everything shattering into pieces, chalky dust, minuscule chips that ricocheted back and stung her chest and arms. She made no sound; she did not move except to save her face with her hands.

When it was over she lowered her fingers, glancing instinctively up at the roof, but nothing there toppled. No creaks or groans. There were seven more pillars still to go.

The dust settled around them like thin, glinting snow, sifting back into that unnatural silence.

"Imre had a temper." She spoke indifferently, shaking the grit from her hands, and then her skirts. "He very much enjoyed flogging the serfs whenever the notion took him."

Kimber gave a small savage laugh, his lips drawn back. "Charming fellow. I'm sure we'd have much in common."

"Only me."

He glanced back at her, his gaze still a little too green, a little too feral. The mist beyond his fine, darkened figure began to thicken into raindrops, silvery blue, just as a line of footmen emerged from Chasen, carrying a table and baskets and covered salvers, winding toward the two of them like determined, gray-powdered ants.

She said, "Perhaps the girl ran away on her own. She's young, fair, with all her shining years ahead of her. Who knows the story of her heart? Perhaps she fell in love, and ran away."

"Perhaps," he said.

But the rain wept down, and they both knew it wasn't true.

Three days of rain, steady, driving rain, that obscured any footprints through the mud or long-stemmed meadows, and buried the aroma of drakon and houses beneath that of drenched wood and sodden earth. It barely even managed to lower the temperature; it felt like steam more than rain, as if Darkfrith had become enmeshed in some odd, equatorial confusion, and somewhere down near the middle of the planet was a tropical jungle enjoying clear English days and kind balmy nights.

Kim knew those days and nights very well. Every able-bodied adult of the shire was involved in the search for the missing girl; everyone understood what had been stolen from them, what they had to get back. They worked in teams, men above, women below, and the children, the elderly, confined to their homes with sentinels stationed in the streets.

Except for Audrey and Joan. And the princess. They flew with the men.

Every night, Maricara retired voluntarily to the Dead Room. Since it could be neither opened nor shut from the inside, Kim would escort her there, thank her for her help, and bid her a civil good evening. He did not kiss her again. She would look at him with her grave shining eyes and he did not even try. When he fell asleep at last he would dream of that look, over and over. He would dream of her lips on his, and her breath, how she'd melted in his arms; he'd wake so rigid and ready for her that his body cramped in actual pain.

Every morning at precisely eight o'clock he'd stop what he was doing—flying, speaking, striding through his fog of fatigue—and let her out. A bow, good morning. No kiss.

He would not frighten her again. He would not descend into violence without provocation, he would not be unchaste. He was not her former husband, but her next one. He was a goddamned bloody saint.

Outside the manor house Kimber didn't try to pair with her too often. She made it clear she was used to hunting on her own, and God knew he wanted success however it came. But he stayed near as he could without hovering. He couldn't help that; she soared and the men of the tribe Turned with her. She was smoke, she was dragon. However she traveled, she carried a halo of distant admirers like stardust around a comet.

At least he knew she was well watched. If she should need him, if she should happen to discover that one tiny clue that none of the rest of them could...

But she did not. There were no clues left to find. There was only the rain, storm and the moon or storm and the sun. If there were sanf nearby, those strange, partial drakon, none of them detected it, not even Maricara.

The most trusted of his men had been allowed to branch out into the cities. On the fourth day one of them flew back from Harrogate as smoke, telling Kim he thought he'd felt something there, something of a dragon-girl. Alive.

It was Rufus Booke, one of his father's old cronies, stout and wily and not prone to exaggeration. Kim had immediately accompanied him into the air.

Less than a league out, with the sun beginning to slump from the thickened sky, a band of sullen yellow marking the thin, watery brink between heaven and earth, a new twist of smoke drew near.

Kimber knew her, of course. He knew her every shape, how she slipped along the wind—easy, lovely movements, feminine still, even when just a sheet of vapor. He knew her awake and asleep, because even as the tribe verged upon panic, even as he pushed and pushed to find the girl, to find a solution to the sanf inimicus and the prospect of extinction—she was there with him. She was always there, in his thoughts, if nothing else.