Dragon Heart (8 page)

“Very well,” Jeon said.

Tirza squawked like a goose and battered his shoulders with her fists. The soldier before him broke into a wide, relieved smile. Jeon turned the horse around. None of them followed him. He rode back down the beach until the shore bent around again, carrying him and Tirza out of sight of the Imperials, and reined in. She whacked him again from behind and he twisted around and caught her wrist.

“Stop hitting me,” he said. “Look—there's a way up this cliff to the top. I can see what's going on from there. You stay here with the horse and wait.”

Her eyes widened, understanding, and she looked at the cliff, and at once she leapt off and ran to climb it. Jeon laughed. He loosened the saddle girth and slipped the bit out of the horse's mouth so it could graze, and went after her.

*   *   *

“Be careful,” her brother said. “Don't let them see you.”

He and Tirza lay flat on the grassy brow of the cliff and crawled up to the edge. She put her head down on the ground a moment, the sun warm on her back, and spread her arms out. The distant boom of the surf sounded in her ears. She felt like never moving. After the long aloneness she had Jeon back again and soon would be home, deep in the middle of her family. Beside her, Jeon muttered something.

“There are a lot of them here.”

She crept to the edge of the cliff and peered down through the stalky grass. She had already seen this, from down there on the beach. Below them the cliff had fallen away in a long crumple, forming a bowl of higher ground behind the beach. On the raw, dark earth at the bottom, the striped men moved like beetles, digging and hauling rocks, and laying rocks together. Already they had covered the toe of the slide with a neat crisscross of stone lines. She nudged Jeon, and turned her palm up, asking.

He cupped his hand around his mouth, shielding his voice, even here. “I think they're going to build some kind of wall. Maybe a fortress. You see how they can watch anybody moving down the road from here. And the cove here is sheltered enough for a couple of ships, if the wind doesn't blow too foul.”

She looked down again. She remembered the sea captain's chart: they were casting their net over more of the world. The men down there were too far away to make out faces; they swarmed around in constant movement, their black and white bodies sharp against the dark earth. She thought there were at least thirty people here, maybe twice thirty. Beyond the toe of the slide, down the beach, there was a mess of sticks and tents. She thought she saw smoke rising. A camp. That was where they lived, all these men. From that direction a man on a horse was jogging up toward the workers.

Jeon said, “That's Oto.” His voice was suddenly hard, like a blade. “Erdhart's son.”

Jeon gnashed these names between his teeth. She glanced at him, startled at the raw anger in him. She could not remember that in him before. Now he was pushing himself back from the cliff.

“Luka will want to know all of this. Come on. We have to go back east up the coast and circle around inland to the high road—they picked this place well. It blocks the whole coast trail.” His voice was still tight with purpose. She went on down the hillside, to where they had left the horse, and they rode off down the beach.

*   *   *

Oto stared away toward the far end of the shore, where the high cliff came down almost into the ocean. “There was just the one?”

The soldier at his stirrup said, “Well, except for the girl. Should I have brought him in? You said—”

“No, no, you did well, keeping him away.” Oto put his hands on his saddlebow, thinking of Jeon. “A mere boy, this Prince, not tall, thin, no beard yet.”

“Yes. He had a girl with him.”

“So you said.”

“She had red hair, too.”

“Well, well.”

He gathered his reins. Swiftly he ran this through his mind. Clearly Jeon had found the missing Princess. Oto's father would marry at once. Oto would be stuck down here, piling up rocks, while Erdhart took Castle Ocean into his hands, gave out power and privileges. Oto's fingers curled around the reins. He had to be there when all this happened. He could not let Broga seize all the benefits. Oto looked around the new fort, which only that morning he had been so pleased with. Now the long, straight walls, the beginning of the tower, all swarming with workers, looked like nothing more than a prison.

“Go,” he said to the soldier. “Make sure they have gone back.” He reached into his saddle pouch for the map, so he could decide the quickest way back to Castle Ocean.

*   *   *

Jeon and Tirza rode two days eastward along the coast to where a track up the cliff led inland. A few miles from the sea, they came on the highland track, winding through the brushy meadows and low hills below the first wind-bent line of the forest, down into the west toward Cape of the Winds. After more days, the road led them down through a saddle in the hills, and ahead they could see the thin black towers of Castle Ocean against the horizon.

At first all they saw was the tops of towers. As they rode on through the day, the black bulk of the castle appeared, crouched above the sea. Birds circled it. The air was hazy with the spume of the surf beneath it. The new tower, eastmost of the five, looked false, with its squat shape, its grey stone quarried from the hills. The gate was of the same stuff; some early King had built them, to keep people out of the castle while seeming to let them in.

The road led up to the cliff's edge, short of the gate, and turned to run down to the south. A bridge arched across the gap between the cliff and the castle gate. Riding along behind Jeon, her hand on his belt, Tirza leaned out to look, and saw people moving on it, those same black and white bodies that had swarmed over the half-begun fort.

They weren't coming away, or going in, but standing there on the bridge, and they all had the long sticks in their hands, the blades jutting up higher than their heads. She said, “What is this?” and heard the incomprehensible mutter that came out.

Jeon's head turned toward her. “Erdhart's men. They patrol the bridge day and night.” He pointed off across the cliff-top meadow. “They have a camp over there.”

She laughed. Then that was useless. But she wished her brother had taken another way, down by the beach, so they could have avoided this. Pace by pace, the horse carried them on up the arch of the bridge, past narrow-eyed strangers with pale hair and padded striped chests, toward the big gatehouse, toward her mother, toward whatever happened next.

*   *   *

Marioza could hear them laughing, out in the hall, long before they burst in the door, Mervaly and Casea like bells pealing and Tirza higher, wilder, and then they crashed into the room. Mervaly's lavender gown billowed around her when she stopped, and she reached to draw Casea back out of the way. Between them, the youngest of them all stood, skinny and shabby and dirty faced, staring at her mother.

Marioza felt a violent surge of love. She stretched her arms out, and Tirza came up to her and she gathered her to the warmth of her bosom. The girl was stiff in her mother's arms, wary, as always. Scrawny as a sick chicken. Marioza touched Tirza's hair. “Ah, my little. I am glad you are home. We'll fatten you up and make you glad again.” She let the girl go, and Tirza backed up a foot and stood, her wide blue eyes fixed on her mother.

Mervaly came up beside her, a hand on her shoulder. “Mother, she's here now. You heard what Jeon said. You must never send her back to Santomalo.” Tirza looked up at Mervaly, and put her hand on Mervaly's hand.

Marioza sat back. The glow of motherliness was ebbing away. And now she would have to marry Erdhart. There was nothing to be done but go through with it all. Yet she was still glad to see Tirza, and smiled at her, and nodded. “I think we must abide each other. No more tricks, hah.”

Tirza suddenly smiled back. This made her prettier, but not much. The blue eyes blazed with that fierce stare, as if she could speak through looking, force the words from her mind to her mother's without the use of voice. She made a little awkward bow to Marioza. Tirza was a full year older than when Marioza had seen her last, a young woman now, but still all angles, like a sawtooth.

Something else had changed in her, something deeper.

“Tirza!”

Luka strode in the door; he slapped Mervaly on the behind, and gave Casea a quick kiss, all the while heading toward Tirza, as she was turning to meet him. Reaching her, he gathered her up with a shout and tossed her into the air and caught her. “You're back! How did you do that? 'Zeyes, don't you wish she could tell us.” He hugged her, their red heads together. Tirza, Marioza saw, hugged him back, burrowing her face into his shoulder. Through the door behind him came Jeon and then, to Marioza's surprise, Erdhart himself, his younger boy on his heels. Luka set Tirza down on her feet.

“You're so thin. Look at you. Somebody clean her up. Mervaly—”

“She's just arrived, Luka; they've been traveling for months.”

“So,” Erdhart said. He was standing by the door. He looked, as always, polished like a gemstone. He was smiling, as always. “The freemartin has returned.”

They had all fallen still at the first sound of his voice, their heads swiveled to look at him behind them. Marioza said, “This is my daughter Tirza.”

He laid his gaze briefly on the girl before him. He gave a harrumph, half laugh and half sneer. His attention turned to Marioza.

“Then we shall be married tomorrow.” He passed his smile around the room, his eyes glittering. “We shall all rejoice.” He inclined his head to Marioza, and left.

She grunted. Before her, Tirza swung around toward her again, and their eyes met. Mervaly was bending over her sister, saying, “Come on; we'll give you a good bath.” Tirza let her sisters lead her away.

Alone, save for the servants, Marioza sat staring into nothing. In the morning she would marry Erdhart. She could not bear that. His touch was awful to her already, when he only took her hand. She thought of Reymarro. They had married by their fathers' arrangement, but from the first kiss she had loved him. He would have told her what to do. He would never have lost his castle to them in the first place, if he had stayed here. But they had lured him away from the ocean, and then they had killed him.

She would not endure this. She would not let Erdhart have this. She shut her eyes, to let the boom of the surf, far below the window, pour into her mind.

*   *   *

The sisters all lived in the room at the top of the south tower, which had a big window looking out over the bay. Since she was a child Mervaly had loved birds, lured them in with treats and singing, rescued them from cats and boys and the weather, mended broken wings and legs. Most of them left eventually, but many came back and forth through the window, and so the room was always full of their chirruping and whirring.

When the sisters came in the door, the seagull on the windowsill squawked and the chitter-chatter rose to a merry screech, all the wings flapping. Through this noisy welcome Tirza followed Mervaly through the room toward the window. There were fewer birds than usual: the seagull, who never left, and an old raven, the four swallows with their nests up under the eave, an owl, and in one corner of the hearth a petrel, very sick, all its feathers staring.

A serving girl with a broom stood back to let them pass, smiled at Tirza, and bobbed a little bow. She was tall and skinny and Tirza thought once she must have been a stork. Mervaly's big wooden tub sat by the window. Tirza stood tamely while her sisters peeled off her clothes, lifted her, and plopped her into the hot water.

“Aah!” She gave up her breath at the shock. The warmth soaked into her, and her sisters' hands stroked her, scrubbing away the dirt on her body, on her hands and face, between her toes. She let them handle her, her eyes shut, all her body blissful. Mervaly sat her up and washed her hair, tugging and pulling, and she didn't even mind that. They dried her off, put on her a clean shift of Casea's, far too big, wrapped a scarf around her waist to keep it on, and then sat her on the bed so that Mervaly could brush her hair.

Casea leaned toward her, took one of Tirza's hands, and opened it up, running her fingers over the palm. “Oh, poor thing,” she said. “Look at her poor hands, Mervaly.”

“I saw them while I was washing them,” said Mervaly. “She's lived by her hands.” Mervaly's arms dropped down around Tirza and drew her back against her softness. “What a marvel you are. To have done that.”

Casea said, “Tell us about the shipwreck.”

Tirza made motions like the boiling sea, and brought the dragon up with both hands. But her sisters knew it was a shipwreck, and so they did not understand. She howled once, frustrated, and Mervaly hugged her.

“It was awful, I know.”

You do not know. Tirza got up and walked away across the room, looking at the birds.

Behind her, Casea said, “Mother has to find a way to put this wedding off.”

“He is such a toad. Did you see how he looked at Tirza? What he called her? Freemartin! We have to do something. I won't let that happen, her marrying him.”

“Leave it to Mother,” Casea said. “Whatever she decides we'll all go along with.”

Tirza did not want to hear all this. It was delicious to be clean, to be dry and fed and safe again, a sister again. The fluttering and cooing of the birds was delicious. The swallows up under the ceiling were whispering together. On a wall perch, in a basket full of straw, the owl sat, her new feathers prickling up through the down. Tirza put out her hand cautiously toward her. She would not think about the rest of this. The owlet put out her beak, as if to kiss Tirza's finger. She laughed.

There was a sharp knock on the door. She turned.

The page opened it, and Marioza came in, alone. She wore a long embroidered nightdress, a cloak over it, and her hair in a braid down her back. She swept her gaze over her daughters, fixed her eyes on Mervaly, and said, “Please, leave me alone with Tirza.”