Assassin’s Fate

‘I don’t understand,’ I growled at Rapskal and he shook his head in shared bewilderment. ‘Nor do I! I was mining for memories when Heeby summoned me urgently to protect you here. And then she vanished from my awareness as if she were slain! It terrified me, but here I am, to do her will. I will protect you or die.’

‘Enough of your chittering!’ Tintaglia did not roar at us but the force of the thought attached to her words near stunned me. Heeby kept her watchful stance between the immense blue dragon and me, but it was little shelter. Tintaglia towered over her and she could easily have spat acid at me if she had chosen to. Instead she cocked her head and focused her gaze on me. I felt the full impact of her presence as her huge spinning eyes fixed on me. My walls could not deflect completely the wash of dragon-glamor that surged over me.

‘I choose to allow the changes you have made. I will not kill you.’

As I basked in that bit of good news and my guardians hastily sheathed their blades, she tilted her great head, leaned close, and breathed deep of me. ‘I do not know the dragon who has marked you. Later, perhaps, he will answer to me for your wilfulness. For now, you need not fear me.’

I was dizzied with gratitude and awe at her magnificence. It took every scrap of will I could muster to lift my voice. ‘I strove only to help those who needed my help. Those neglected by their dragons, or changed but not guided in their changes.’

She opened her jaws wide and for a heart-stopping moment, I saw teeth longer than swords and the gleaming yellow and red of the poison sacs in her throat. She spoke to me again. ‘Do not press me, little man. Be content that I have not killed you.’

Heeby lifted then, her front paws leaving the ground so that she was slightly taller than she had been before. Again, I felt the force of an unheard communication.

Tintaglia sneered at her, a lifting of lips that bared her teeth. But she said to me, ‘You and those like you may interfere with the ones claimed by no dragons. This I grant to you, for they are nothing to me. Change them all you like. But leave to me what is mine. This is a boon I grant you because you and yours were of service to me in the past. But do not presume to think I pay a debt to you.’

I had almost forgotten Motley on my shoulder. I do not think a crow can whisper, but in a low hoarse voice I heard, ‘Be wise.’

‘Of course not!’ I hastily agreed. Time to move away from my ill-considered remark. I took a breath, realized that I was about to say a worse thing and said it anyway. ‘I would ask a second boon from you.’

Again, she made a display of teeth and poison sacs. ‘Not dying today,’ Motley said and lifted from my shoulder. My protectors cowered against me but did not flee. I counted that as courage. ‘Is not your life enough of a boon, flea?’ the dragon demanded. ‘What more could you possibly ask of me?’

‘I ask for knowledge! The Servants of the Whites sought to end not just IceFyre but all dragons forever when they sought his death. I wish to know if they have acted against dragons before, and if they did, I wish to know why. More than anything else, I wish to know anything that dragons know that can help me bring an end to the Servants!’

Tintaglia drew back her immense head on her long neck. Stillness held. Then Heeby said in a child’s timorous voice. ‘She doesn’t remember. None of us remember. Except … me. Sometimes.’

‘Oh Heeby! You spoke!’ Rapskal whispered proudly.

Then Tintaglia gave forth a wordless roar and it horrified me to see Heeby crouch and cower. Rapskal drew his sheath knife again and stepped in front of his dragon, waving the blade at Tintaglia. I had never seen a stupider or more courageous act.

‘Rapskal, no!’ an Elderling cried but he did not halt. Yet if Tintaglia noticed this act of insane defiance she gave it no heed. She put her attention back on me. Her trumpeting was a low rumble that shook my lungs. Her anger and frustration rode with her words. ‘This is knowledge I should have, but I do not. I go to seek it. Not as a boon to you, human, but to wring from IceFyre what he should have shared with us long ago, rather than mocking us for a history we cannot know, for no dragon can recall what happened when one is in the egg or swimming as a serpent.’ She turned away from us, not caring that humans and Elderlings alike had to scatter to avoid the long slash of her tail as she did so. ‘I go to drink. I need Silver. When I have drunk, I shall be groomed. All should be in readiness for that.’

‘It shall be!’ Phron called after her as she stalked majestically away. He turned back to his parents, and his Elderling cheeks were as pink as their scaling would permit. ‘She’s magnificent!’ he shouted aloud, and a roar of both laughter and agreement echoed his sentiment.