The Whim of the Dragon (43 page)

T
HE fresh-faced girl sat at the head of their table; saw to it that whatever she thought they needed arrived promptly; and conducted the conversation with the same absent-minded skill Ted’s father exhibited when he played solitaire at four in the morning because he was too tired to go to bed. She had sorted them out so that it was impossible to continue the argument in any kind of privacy: on her right were Ted, Jerome, Ruth, and Julian; at the foot of the table, pale but smiling, was Andrew; and up the other side, from Andrew to the fresh-faced girl, sat Stephen, Dittany, and Randolph. Ted was sure she had seated them that way on purpose.

Sometime after the roast chicken and the potatoes cooked with cheese and radishes and the three kinds of bread and the sweet butter and the cucumbers and several dishes veiled in pastry that Ted couldn’t identify had all come and gone, the conversational topics she had sown over the table actually took root down at its foot; something about a new kind of stone they were digging up in the Outer Isles. The five at that end were absorbed by it, while Dittany, Randolph, and Jerome got tired of shouting their comments into the intellectual morass at the table’s far end and diverged into a discussion of the castle’s architecture. Ruth sat stranded between these two conversations, a line between her black brows, biting her lip and eating when she remembered. She looked as if she were doing a stiff homework assignment.

That left the fresh-faced girl only Ted to deal with. She smiled and commended him on his part in the battle just past, as if she were congratulating him on a good game of tennis. It would be rude to appear horrified, especially when he had no idea of the exact status of all the creatures he had killed. Ted said something deprecating and watched her peel a peach. He remembered Conrad at the Banquet of Midsummer Eve, eating a peach without bothering to peel it; and his cheerful acceptance of the fact that Ted, going for Andrew, had spilled his dinner all over Conrad. Conrad was dead; one of the creatures of dubious status had killed him. And the other people those creatures had killed, strangers to him, he knew their status also. Edward had known all of them.

The fresh-faced girl finished her peach and looked inquiringly at him; he had missed her last question. Wanting still to be polite, both because it would be disaster to be otherwise and because she was so pretty, he looked up at her, readying a change of subject that would not seem too abrupt; and saw the little blue flame standing in each of her eyes. Edward said remotely,
They will turn me in your arms into a lion bold.
And Ted saw her clear eyes and fresh skin and silky yellow hair and clever hands all as a garment she was wearing, the black dress but a cloak dragged carelessly over it.

They were clearing away dishes and bringing in the rose-water by then. Ted swallowed hard and asked her, completely at random, if she played any musical instrument. This got her off the subject of the war; but it also brought her, lute in hand, back to their rooms with them, for three acutely uncomfortable hours. She was a brilliant musician. Ruth got out her flute; Randolph took a turn at the lute; everybody sang. But there was no comfort in it and all the camaraderie was false.

When she trailed her black skirts out the door at last, thanking them all graciously and bidding them to have pleasant rest, it was after midnight. The Dragon King had granted them audience at nine in the morning.

Stephen, Dittany, Jerome, and Julian looked hopefully at Randolph, and then went upstairs. Ted lay on the bed and looked around. Ruth was sunk in the armchair Andrew had sat in earlier. Randolph sat on the hearth with his head in his hands. Andrew was sitting on a stool in a far corner. To reiterate his order to Andrew would be an insult. But Ted wanted to say something, after the constraint of the evening.

“Was that a strange dinner,” he said, “or am I just uncivilized?”

Randolph gave a brief snort of laughter from under his hands. “I hope you never see one stranger,” he said.

“Did you see that woman peel that peach?” said Ruth. “It would take me ten years to learn to do that.”

“That wasn’t a woman,” said Ted. “Randolph, what does it mean that she has little blue flames in her eyes?”

“That she is of the shape-shifters that choose what form pleaseth them,” said Randolph. “All present were but so.”

“Why did that form please her?” said Ruth, sitting forward.

“A courtesy to us, who have been but the one form, perhaps,” said Randolph.

“Well, that would be why she didn’t turn up as a tree or a horse; but couldn’t she have been a nice wholesome-looking boy?”

“She’s the Dragon King’s daughter,” said Andrew, “and her eye’s on Edward.”

Randolph lifted his head and looked at Andrew. Ruth, too, turned and peered over the edge of her armchair at him; and both of them looked as if they wondered, not at the assertion itself, but at how Andrew knew it.

Ted said, as levelly as he could, “Is that part of your idea of an alliance rather than a chastisement?”

“You could do worse,” said Andrew.

He did not look at Ruth; he clearly meant Ruth; and nobody in the room took him up on it. Ted rolled over and sat up on the bed. Randolph said, “What have you promised him?”

“I?” said Andrew. “How should I promise him aught?”

“Aye, how? Do tell us.”

Andrew seemed unlikely to answer. He was the only relaxed person in the room; the rest of them were strung up like so many overwound crossbows. Then he made a little impatient motion of the head, and said, “An the servers call her Princess, is she not the Dragon King’s daughter? An she make eyes at Edward, shall I not note it?”

Randolph swung around and caught Ted’s eye. Ted stood up. “Andrew,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I fear your tongue. I think you had better not come to our audience with the Dragon King.”

“You should fear’t,” said Andrew. “Shall I call our four companions?”

Ted thought of them; one unknown quantity; one of the old King’s men-at-arms; two of the old King’s Counselors, whose opinion of his heir was not high, who had served on the board of inquiry into the old King’s death. If there were factions in that odd body, the old King’s Council, Jerome and Julian were not of Fence and Randolph’s faction.

“You gave your word to King William,” said Ted.

“Randolph, believing King William misguided,” said Andrew, “did wish to do him a great injury. Wherefore should not I, believing Randolph misguided, do him a lesser?”

“Andrew,” said Randolph, “do but consider the injury you do yourself. Your nature is not made for these convolvings; the leaning of your thought is to plain proceeding.”

“And thine is better made for crooked ways?” said Andrew.

“No,” said Randolph. “Wherefore I may so advise you.”

“I will come to this audience,” said Andrew.

“You know,” said Ruth, reflectively, “I don’t think you can stop him.”

“For God’s sake,” said Ted, “let’s go to bed.”

There was a large alcove with a bed for Ruth, and a smaller one with a bed for Andrew. Ted and Randolph got the four-poster, which had a feather mattress into which you sank so far you hardly needed the blankets. Ted hoped he wouldn’t have to leap out of it in a hurry. He was sleeping in his clothes, as was Randolph, precisely out of a fear that he might want to leave this room quickly. He lay enfolded in lavender-smelling linen and watched Randolph bank the fire, and move around the room, blowing out all the candles and bolting the door. Cold moonlight trickled in from the window to the inner courtyard, which nobody had bothered to shutter. Randolph came to Ted’s side of the bed, holding a long, thin shape that glinted.

“Is that my sword?” said Ted.

Randolph bent briefly. “I’ve laid the hilt ready to thy hand,” he said.

“Or my foot,” said Ted.

“Hence the blade is under the bed,” said Randolph. He walked to the other side, laid his own sword down, and got into bed.

“Give you quiet rest,” he said.

“And nice, innocuous dreams,” said Ted. “Randolph? What do you think Andrew will do?”

“Good night,” said Randolph.

Ted didn’t have one. He dreamed disjointedly of people with flames in their eyes, red or yellow or blue, who spoke him fair and hugged him warmly and turned in his arms to adders and asps, to flames that burned fast, to doves that beat their wings in his face and swans that pecked him. Last of all came the fresh-faced girl, who, when he smiled and kept his distance from her, turned appallingly into Margaret, Celia’s daughter, and asked him in the most prosaic possible manner if he would play the part of the cat for her, for she had been overtaken with sickness. Ted refused politely, whereupon she smiled, Margaret’s own bright mocking smile; and he saw in her eyes, where no flame stood, the little image of what she was looking at; and it was not his own familiar unprepossessing figure, but a cat.

Ted jerked upright. The whole bed was bathed in moonlight and he had gotten himself tangled in the blankets. He began to set them to rights softly, so as not to wake Randolph, and saw then that Randolph lay staring open-eyed at the dark ceiling. He turned his head and took the edge of the misplaced blanket Ted held out to him, but he did not speak.

 

The Dragon King held his audiences in the formal garden, before breakfast. The grass here was still green, and so were the dark, red-veined leaves of the little ornamental trees. The roses were everywhere, the smell of them heavy on air already warmer than a fall afternoon would be in the Hidden Land.

The Dragon King looked like his daughter; or at least, the guise he had chosen, rosy-skinned, yellow-haired, quick-handed, and young for what he was doing, resembled hers strongly. He had a very deep voice. He sat on a raised platform that looked as if it were made of teak and was carved in closely packed shapes of animals and trees. His chair was silver. The people awaiting audience had carved chairs with silk cushions. The embassy of the Hidden Land sat, tense and sleepy and hungry, not speaking to one another, for about fifteen minutes while the Dragon King dealt incomprehensibly with a delegation from the Outer Isles, come to sell stone, and with two people who had some business to do with lions. Then the fresh-faced girl beckoned to them. Ted, Randolph, and Andrew walked over the long strip of carpet laid on the grass to where the Dragon King awaited them.

Randolph, having received permission to speak for his King, who was young and but newly come to his eminence, was allowed to get all the way through his speech. Ted admired it. In the most flattering and mellifluous terms imaginable, it called the Dragon King an unprincipled meddler from no other motive than malice, and required him to desist or he would be sorry for it. It also required payment of damages for the waste of lives and property attendant on the late war.

The Dragon King heard it all, smiling. He did not deny the charges; he did not, either, cloak his answer in the same flowery terms so that he would sound, superficially, as if he were admitting nothing. “I offer you in compensation for your wrongs,” he said, “the most precious thing in my power: the hand of my daughter in marriage.”

Ted stared at Andrew; but Andrew had merely allowed mild interest to overtake the bland expression he had been wearing since he got up. It was impossible to tell if he had expected this, let alone engineered it.

Ted looked at Randolph, in case he was, God help him, supposed to answer this offer himself. Randolph only regarded the Dragon King thoughtfully, and let a good long silence develop before he answered. “That is a most generous offering,” he said; and actually made his best bow in the direction of the fresh-faced girl, who did him a courtesy in return. “I do regret exceedingly that King Edward is betrothed already, and neither can nor will give offense in that quarter.”

Ted was afraid to look at Andrew. The Dragon King allowed his own silence to develop. He said at last, mildly, “Might that quarter be otherwise satisfied? I have a son.”

Ted felt his jaw dropping, and quickly clamped his mouth shut. Was this some kind of joke?

Andrew said, “The King’s betrothed is here, your grace.”

“Let her come forward,” said the Dragon King, agreeably.

Ted jerked, and felt Randolph’s hand on his arm, very lightly. Then Randolph turned and walked back along the red carpet, past the brightly dressed people in their carved chairs, to where Ruth sat petrified in the midst of her traveling companions, and held out his hand to her. Ruth had put on one of Lady Ruth’s white dresses, a gauzy thing that didn’t show creases. It was better suited to this weather than the layered silks and velvets everybody else was wearing. She was whiter than the dress; but when she took Randolph’s hand and stood up, the red mounted in her face until she looked as she had three summers ago, when she won their influenza competition with a temperature of a hundred and four.

She and Randolph walked back up the strip of carpet, and Ted and Andrew fell aside for them.

“What say you, lady?” said the Dragon King.

“I cry you mercy,” said Ruth in an admirably steady and carrying voice. “It grieves me to refuse your splendiferous offer. But my heart is given already.”

Oh clever Ruth, thought Ted.

“Is it, lady?” said Andrew. “And to whom? Not to your King, to your betrothed, is that not so?”

“It is given,” said Ruth, “what matter where? Why should I insult the son of the Dragon King with an empty betrothal?”

“There is no insult,” said the Dragon King, equably. “A marriage of policy likes us well. He’s richly dowered; and how in conscience could we make war on any country wherein he lived and was happy?”

Ruth stood dumb; she was out of her depth, and Ted couldn’t blame her. He had the horrible feeling that the Dragon King was not playing a part; that his understanding of marriage and giving of hearts was extremely faulty, and that he truly thought, making this monstrous offer, that he was offering just, even liberal recompense.