“Luka,” I said, my eyes fixed on a diagram of the New Palace that lay on the table. “How long will it take the earl to organise his men?”
Luka looked to Tobin, who held up his thumb.
“They’re standing ready, but it’s dark now, so they won’t be able to move out until tomorrow morning. Dawn probably.”
“Good.” I got to my feet, shaking out my crumpled and now rather stained and ragged skirt. “I’m going after the slippers myself. By the time he’s organised his ambushes, I’ll have them back on
my
feet and our problems will be solved.”
The duke raised his eyebrows. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“Easily,” I said, hoping that my voice wouldn’t tremble. “I’m going to have Feniul fly me to the palace, and then I’m going to find Amalia, punch her nose, and take them back. Niva and Amacarin are collared, Prilian has, what, three dragons with him? That means five fewer dragons guarding the palace.” I tried to snap my fingers, but they were shaking too badly. I would not let Shardas and the others be “exterminated”, even if I died on this fool’s errand.
“I’m coming with you,” Luka said.
“Absolutely not.” The duke stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Neither of you is going anywhere tonight. I will not allow a royal prince to endanger himself in this way, Luka. And Creel.” He turned to me. “You’re an intelligent young woman: think! What chance do you really have at succeeding? Even if Feniul can get you to the palace without a hostile dragon seeing you, how will you find Amalia? I’ve no doubt she’s heavily guarded. How will you get the slippers and escape?”
Luka sagged back in his chair, glum, but I didn’t waver. “I would rather die tonight trying to help my friends, then stand by tomorrow as every one of Sarryck’s bowmen opens fire on them. Besides, as the earl himself keeps saying: we can’t afford to spare any more men. How many of the archers will die tomorrow, trying to kill the dragons? Their arrows will be little better than kindling.”
Now it was the duke’s turn to sag. “I know. And Sarryck knows. But we don’t have any experience with this: last time we fought the Roulaini, the dragons were on our side.”
“Let me go,” I said levelly. “Feniul knows me. He’ll listen to my orders, he’ll protect me. And, just like the Roulaini sending Amalia in as their spy, who would suspect that you would send a young girl to steal the slippers?”
The duke stared moodily at the fireplace for a long time.
“You’ll have to lock me up to stop me, you know,” I said a few minutes later.
“I know.” He ran his fingers through his greying hair. “Just … try to be careful.”
“I will.” Impulsively I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry.”
He snorted at that. “At least Prince Luka has some sense,” he said, indicating the morose prince, slumped in the chair beside us. Luka grunted.
I went to ask Feniul, who was somewhere in the
gardens with the other dragons. I had just stepped on to the gravel path that led to the herb garden when Luka came out of the manor behind me and grabbed my arm.
“I’m going with you,” he said, his voice low and tense. His free hand gripped the hilt of his sword.
“Fine,” I said, hiding my relief at not having to go it alone. “Just don’t get in my way.”
We found Feniul in the duchess’s herb garden, trying not to trample anything. I told him what I wanted, and he dithered.
“You are Shardas’s cousin,” I reminded him. “You have an obligation to him.”
“All right.” He sighed reluctantly.
“All you have to do is drop me on the roof of the palace. You can fly back here, and I’ll climb down into a window. Your part will be easy.”
Feniul gave another sigh and stopped beating the lavender plants with his tail. He bent down for me to mount.
I climbed up Feniul’s shoulder and took my place between his neck ridges, just behind the collar. Unfortunate though it was that they were even necessary, I found the collars to be very handy for dragon riding. Luka asked Feniul’s permission to come along, but Niva stepped forward and offered to let him ride.
“I have business to conduct in the King’s Seat,” she said, and neither of us dared to ask what it was. Luka scrambled on to her back, and I gave Feniul a pat on the neck.
“Go, Feniul!”
We flew to the King’s Seat at a faster speed than I had ever gone before. I had to keep my eyes shut for some of the trip, and was heartily glad that I had been too upset to eat supper. It certainly made me swallow my earlier delusions concerning my dragon-riding abilities. I came to realise that on my previous rides the dragons had been going slow to spare my delicate constitution. But Niva had no time or patience for human weakness. She set the pace, and Feniul struggled to keep up with the larger dragon, with me clinging to his back like a nauseated burr.
When we approached the King’s Seat, things looked even worse than they had before. Much of the city was on fire, and a number of the manors surrounding the palace had been reduced to rubble as well. Several of the larger houses that still stood had lights in their windows, and the wind carried the sound of men shouting drinking songs. The earl’s scouts had reported that more regiments of Roulaini soldiers had arrived in the past few days, but I don’t think even he realised how many there were. I counted at least five mansions that had been turned into barracks.
By tugging on Feniul’s collar and pointing broadly, I managed to direct both dragons to land on the top of a chapel. It was the same flat-roofed building with the squat steeples where Shardas and I had enjoyed a midnight talk weeks ago. I slithered off Feniul’s back, and Luka joined me.
“What now?” He looked at the sky nervously, but there was no sign of a dragon patrol.
“We can’t land on the roof, like I planned,” I said. “There are far more soldiers than I counted on. Luka, you know the palace best. How do we get inside, and find Amalia, without being caught?”
He blew his breath out, stirring my hair. “That could be a problem. I was hoping that you had a better plan.”
“No, I was too upset to think of an alternative.”
“Well, all my family’s apartments have broad balconies. If Niva and Feniul could drop us on to a balcony, our best bet would be to sneak through the family quarters and make our way to the council rooms. I don’t think there was a light in Miles’s rooms …” He scanned the skies again.
“But what if we run into Shardas, or one of the others?” Feniul dipped his head and spoke in the dragon version of a whisper, which nevertheless vibrated my back teeth. “We’ll have to fly straight across the square. Anyone, human or dragon, might see us.”
“True,” I agreed. “What if they dropped us at the far end of the gardens, and we snuck in ourselves? Through a kitchen door or some such place?”
“The palace is crawling with Roulaini soldiers. They’d catch us long before we got within a hundred metres of Amalia,” Luka predicted, shaking his head. “First we’d have to get across the gardens, then into the palace, and then through the halls. Not possible.”
“Back to the balcony, then?” I twisted my fingers nervously in my sash.
“I don’t like it,” Feniul said.
“Neither do I, but there isn’t another option,” Niva
put in. “I’ll take them both myself: one dragon is far less conspicuous than two. I’ll fly in, drop you on a balcony, and fly away as fast as I can. You’ll be on your own once you dismount,” she warned.
“Understood,” Luka said, his voice tense.
“But what about me?” Feniul sounded close to tears. “What if something happens to you? I promised Shardas that I would keep you safe.”
I put a hand on his muzzle. “Dear Feniul, you have kept me safe and been braver than I could have imagined. Thank you for that. I know Shardas will be proud when he hears about all you’ve done. But for now, I need you to go back to the Mordrel estate. Keep an eye on things there, and follow the duke’s orders. All right?”
His tail swept around and curled briefly around my legs, wrapping me from ankle to hip, and then uncurled. “All right,” he said finally.
“Good man … er, dragon,” Luka said.
I patted Feniul’s nose and then stepped aside. With a final bob of his head and lash of his tail, he leaped into the sky and glided away.
Niva shook her head. “He is rather strange,” she said.
“He has a good heart.”
“True.”
And with that, Luka and I mounted the green female dragon. In silence she took off from the roof of the chapel, and in silence she flew to the New Palace. She checked her speed when the dark form of another dragon
flapped between two of the chimneys that still stood. But the patrolling dragon continued on, and Niva soared in the opposite direction, to where a stone balcony jutted out above the rose gardens.
Luka leaned close over her neck. “That’s Miles’s bedchamber,” he whispered loudly.
Niva’s head dipped, and she manoeuvered until she was just above it. Without stopping to think, I slithered off her back and dropped to the stone floor, Luka a heartbeat behind. Niva wheeled in the air and flapped away, leaving us alone and exposed in the moonlight.
Luka drew his sword and I pulled Marta’s dagger out of my sash. We exchanged a look, and then he pushed open the glass doors and we stepped into the crown prince’s bedchamber.
I’m not sure who was more startled: Luka and I, or Larkin. Luka swore and I took a step back, but Larkin dropped the gown she was mending and shrieked. That gave Luka just enough time to stride across the room and clap a hand to her mouth.
No one came to answer her shriek. I peeked into the adjoining dressing room. It was knee-deep in shoes and cast-off gowns – Amalia had clearly taken over – but there was no sign of her or anyone else. The only light in the entire apartment came from a trio of candles on the table near Larkin. I turned my attention back to the traitor.
“Larkin!” I wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled. The duchess had been right: she had come to work for her precious Roulaini princess. “How can you sit there and mend
her
clothes! Do you realise what she’s done – what you’ve done?” I waved a hand at the balcony
doors, although the pretty view of the gardens outside belied what was happening in the city all around us.
Larkin just gave me a defiant look over Luka’s hand. I took a step towards her, but Luka warned me away with a shake of his head.
“Larkin,” he said in a much calmer voice, “where is Amalia? If I take away my hand, will you tell us?”
She shook her head, still glaring.
“Larkin,” I said, making my voice as calm as Luka’s, “do you realise who this is? This is Prince Luka. Of Feravel. The son of
your
king. And if the Roulaini have killed Prince Miles,
he is your future king
.” I saw with great satisfaction that her eyes were wide and the colour had drained from her face. “Now tell us where Amalia is.”
She shook her head.
I had never seen Luka’s face look so cold. He kept staring around at the room that had once belonged to his brother. Amalia had redecorated with a vengeance. It was all pink hangings and boxes of sweets. Shawls and scarves were draped over most of the chairs and crystal vials of perfume cluttered the dressing table.
Leaning in close to Larkin, Luka said, “Do you know what the penalty is for spying? Or conspiring with the enemy? Or kidnapping a member of the royal family?” He whispered something in her ear that made her go even whiter. “But if you cooperate,” he said in a normal voice, “I will see to it that some leniency is given.” He slowly removed his hand.
Larkin’s spine stiffened and she gave him a haughty
look. “Princess Amalia isn’t here,” she said. “His Majesty King Prilian just arrived by dragon. She’s gone with him to the caves where your father was hiding like a coward. Your father is dead, and you are the heir of nothing.” She laughed, a mad cackling sound, and then drew a deep breath. “Gua—”
Before she could finish, I stuffed a stocking into her mouth. Luka grabbed one of her hands and I grabbed the other, and we tied her to her chair with a pair of embroidered sashes. I took off the gold filigree bracelet Amalia had given her as a reward for the slippers. I put it on my own wrist and pretended to admire it, ignoring her glares, and then slipped it off again.
“I wouldn’t want to wear traitor’s gold,” I said, and walking to the balcony doors, I pitched it out. “How do we get to the caves?” I asked Luka, pointedly not looking at Larkin’s frantic struggling.
“Through here.” Luka led me into the little dressing room, shoving aside mountains of clothing.
The back of one of the wardrobes opened with a hidden latch, and we slipped into a narrow passageway between the walls. Seeing how dark it was, I returned to the bedchamber and fetched a lamp, while Larkin glared at me and drummed her heels on the floor.
With the lamp held high, Luka led me deep into the bowels of the palace. Other tunnels and stairwells crossed ours, and from time to time we passed another secret door, but Luka never wavered. Neither of us said anything: we didn’t want to give Larkin’s words any credence.
King Caxel could not possibly be dead.
One of the little doors to our left rattled open, and we froze. I took the lamp, and Luka unsheathed his sword. A shaved head tattooed with blue dragons poked through the door: Tobin.
He grinned, and gestured, and we both sagged with relief. We stepped out of the hidden passage and into a dimly lit corridor.
“He says that Amacarin told him where we’d gone,” Luka translated, “and he came here after us. He heard from some guards on his way in that Amalia and Prilian had gone to the caves, and figured that’s where we were headed.”
“So he’s been backtracking to find us?”
Tobin nodded, and gestured again.
“Yes,” Luka translated, “but he’s also been trying to figure out how the Roulaini even got to the caves; the lower passages have been collapsed.”
“Did the dragons do that?” The lower levels of the New Palace had looked intact; how could the dragons have got to the hidden tunnels?
“No, my father did.” Luka didn’t need to ask Tobin. “It’s part of the defences. Some of the tunnels are rigged to collapse as a last defence.”