Moth and Spark (40 page)

She picked a long blade of grass and began to tie it into knots. One of the hawks overhead cried. Tam said, “Something changed. He could have killed you several dozen times over since you were born. Why is he doing it now? Did he just learn?”

“Ask Kelvan,” he said. “He’s seen him much more closely. At a guess it involves his sons. They’re putting pressure on him, and he needs the dragons more than ever.” It was a good question, though, and he had no real idea of the answer. The dragons would have found a way to keep their secrets, yet somehow Hadon had learned.

They were quiet. Corin looked up along the river, watching the way the sun fell on the meadow grasses and water and cliffs. There were streaks of black and red on the sheerer faces of the granite. He felt tiny and remote.

Tam said, “Have you ever seen anyone go mad?”

“I’ve seen them raving in a madhouse and on the streets.”

“That’s not how it always happens. Sometimes a person goes very quietly mad inside, and no one realizes it until it’s too late. When they finally shatter there’s nothing left.”

He remembered a painting in a room in the Mycenean palace. It was of a battle. A man fell with a spear through his chest. In one hand he held a human-faced snake. It writhed in his grip. Above him a black bird with a red head stretched out vast wings. How often had Hadon stood in front of that painting when he planned his wars?

Corin said, “You’re thinking of Hadon.” He had had the thought more than once himself.

Her hands pulled at the grass and ripped it. She made it into a wad and tossed it aside. “He’s bound to the dragons. I think that when he went mad he started to see what they can see. We don’t want to believe in the dark place, Corin, so we don’t see it. But when madness happens, there’s no reason to keep closing one’s eyes to it. If the rest of the world doesn’t make sense, you give up that denial.”

“By that logic, we could both be mad.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Once we go down that path, there’s no point in doing anything, so let’s not. And your premise is wrong. I did not say that madness was the only way to see it.”

There it was, the cleverness he had missed. “I love you,” he said. He pulled her into him and rolled her over so she lay on her back. He leaned over her. Her skin was very smooth. There were freckles on her nose and sun-browned cheeks. He kissed her.

It went on for a while. His hand found the hem of her shirt, and before he knew what he was doing he had pulled it up and placed his palm on her stomach. Her skin was very pale in the bright sun, and his hand was dark against it. He lifted the hem further and bent to kiss the roundness of her breast.

“Not here,” she said, but her arm went back over her head, and her belly and hips twitched with desire. There was no sound but the faint rustle of reeds. As he slipped her trousers down, he realized he had never done that to a woman before. It was a little awkward, very different from removing a skirt.

Their lovemaking was fierce and hard. “Oh,” she said, “oh,” and then she bit his finger to suppress her cries.

Afterward they lay silently on the grass. Corin watched a creamy
yellow butterfly flit about among the wildflowers. Then Tam sat up, pushed her hair back, and said thoughtfully, “It’s an opportune time for the dragons, with Tyrekh on the one hand and the chaos in the Empire on the other. Could they have pushed it? Twisted his mind?”

It took Corin an instant to realize she was back in the conversation about Hadon. Fear pricked at his spine. He had the uneasy feeling that she was right. “I don’t know what power they have,” he said. “You told me so that night at the ball, but I haven’t learned anything more. I think they could do it, though. You’ve ridden one now, what do you think of them?”

“I was too tired and frightened and sick to think of anything.”

“You’ve been thinking plenty about politics.”

“There wasn’t much else to do when walking across fields or hiding behind trees. And it is my affair now.”

“It certainly is.” He sat up. “Perhaps the dragons gave you a push too. I need you, Tam.”

She briefly gripped his hand and did not make light of it. After a pause, she said, “If I have Sight, it makes sense that they would push me. But why you?”

He found words for the thought that had only begun to surface in his mind in the past few days of solitude. “I think the dragons chose me because I would have access to Hadon’s court, because I would have a reason to want to overthrow him. Because I could turn to the wizards for help. A farmer’s son would not know the things I know.”

“They chose you because it was politically expedient?”

“Yes. It’s an ordinary struggle for power among princes, only the tools are different. The dragons are using me. I am using wizards. Hadon is using whatever he can.”

“But it could have been your father or grandfather they chose, for the same reasons. It was you.”

That had not occurred to him. He was too close to the problem. “I don’t know,” he said. “Tam, they don’t live in time as we do. They may see already that I freed them. That I love you, that you are a Seer. They chose their time, and I was the one who fit into it. And it was because I fit into it that they chose it. It’s all paradox.” He was thinking aloud, words falling into place before he knew it. It felt right. He glanced down at his hands and noticed the clawlike curve of his fingers. They had given him their powers, but perhaps it was not a gift. Perhaps it was a transformation.

I will not, he thought fiercely.

“Have you ever asked them?” she said.

“No. Why don’t you? You have no fear of prying into the secrets of those more powerful than you.”

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said, grinning. Then she turned serious. “They can’t just want you to kill Hadon. That’s too easy.”

“Yes. And too human a solution. Whatever works, it will be something we can’t think of.”

“You can still decide to abandon them,” she said. “Leave them to their own devices and do your duty as a prince.”

“No,” he said. He would not have sent for her if he still had that opportunity. “I’ve committed. If I try to withdraw now it will probably drive
me
mad. But I don’t expect a happy ending. There will be a sacrifice of some sort, there always is.”

To his relief she did not ask him which of them it would be. Her face was still. She raised his hand to her lips. They were a little rough, sunburned and wind-chapped. His body started to stir again.

Then Tam stood up. She said, “Must I bathe in the river?”

“Not at all.” He picked up the basket. “There’s a tub of water that’s been sitting in the sun for hours. I’ll stand guard.”

“That’s all you’ll do,” she said warningly.

But when she was clean, and her hair was combed and braided, and she was dressed in soft clothing he had cadged for her from the villagers, she took his hand and led him wordlessly into his room. Their room.

Kelvan and the dragon returned several hours later. Corin felt the approach and brought Tam outside to watch. She held his hand very tightly. The dragon landed without much grace and put its head down. Its folded wings shimmered in the sunlight. The front talons still had blood on them. Its tail extended into the shadow of the trees and twitched a little. He yearned for it, as he always did. For a moment he saw it new, as Tam must see it, all weapons and armor and cruel hardness.

Tam said, sounding startled, “It’s basking.” Her nose was wrinkled a little, and he realized how accustomed he had grown to the smell of sulfur.

Kelvan joined them. “Aye, my lady.”

Corin half hoped Tam would not disclaim the title. Not because she should become practiced in being a princess—that was silly, here—but because he wanted to keep her name to himself. Kelvan was seeing her for the first time in daylight, and Corin watched the rider straighten, as men always did for her.

She did disclaim it, of course. “Tam,” she said. “I’m sorry I called you a liar this morning.”

“What? You mean about the wind? That’s what people always say, I’m used to it.”

She looked at Corin. “Did you?”

“Not the first time. Later, though.”

“Could you take me up?”

He had only had a few flights by himself. He said, “Perhaps. Not very high. If Kelvan lets me.”

“We’ll see,” said Kelvan neutrally.

The dragon’s eyes were closed. Tam said, to Kelvan this time, “Does it have a name? And why is it an ‘it’?”

“Its own name is something humans can’t pronounce, my lady. There’s no need for me to give it a name to speak with it. Dragons are neuter except when they are breeding, when they can be either sex.”

“How often do they breed?”

“Once a year in the spring. Less often as they age. This one hasn’t gone blue for several years now.”

Tam’s lips opened as though to speak, then went shut. She slipped her arm about Corin’s waist and said nothing else. There was a tautness to her body that he attributed to fear of the dragon. “Let’s get out of the sun,” he said, placing his own arm across her shoulders. They never could have been this intimate with another person present in Caithenor.

Kelvan said, “Prince, there’s news.”

“What?” he asked, anticipation building sharply in him. He should have been angry that Kelvan had not said this immediately, but he was not. He was too foolishly pleased that Kelvan had given Tam preference.

“Your sister’s been rescued.”

He could hardly take it in. Tam’s arm tightened. “How?”

“I don’t know the details. But there was at least one rider involved,
and several soldiers. Hadon’s furious. He tried to send other riders after her, and the dragons wouldn’t budge.”

“Where are they taking her?”

“I don’t know,” Kelvan said. He took his gloves off and tossed them on the ground beside the dragon. “This only happened a few hours ago, my lord, and the rider isn’t saying a word. What I know is from the riders still in Mycene.”

“Do you trust him?” Corin asked. Hadon might have arranged the whole thing himself, to get Tai some place more secure. Or his sons, to gain an advantage against their father. Her husband was dead, she could be made to marry.

“Aye,” Kelvan said.

Corin could not quite allow himself to hope yet. “My father can’t have had another dragonrider spy.”

“No. The man turned. I think others are ready. The dragons may be pushing them harder.”

They had tried to free her once. Perhaps they had tried again, nudging the things Aram had laid in place.

Tam said, “Joce said the Mycenean soldiers won’t like what Hadon’s done.”

“They don’t,” said Kelvan. “He broke allegiance, and that’s a cowardly thing to do. They have their honor.”

Corin kissed Tam’s hair and stepped out of her touch. Tai’s freedom was about the last thing he had expected, and he had not worked it into his considerations at all. Hadon losing command of the dragons was crucial too. With Tai free, Hadon had no hold on him. There was no reason to delay his own actions further. This was another fulcrum, a place where the decision he made could not be smoothed out or reversed. He realized with shame that a very small part of him wished Tai were still captive, because now he had to move.

He looked at Tam and saw the same quiet strength that had been on her face when he first told her about the dragons.
I’m still here
, she had said. He had sent the dragon for her and she had come back on it, trusting in him. If he weakened she was ready.

He caught hold of her hand and gripped it hard. “I need to think,” he said. “Give me some time alone.”

They nodded. Resolutely, he turned his back on them and walked to the river. Once he looked over his shoulder and saw that both of them
had gone elsewhere. He was glad Tam was not watching, waiting. The dragon was obscured by the trees. The cottage looked bucolic in the afternoon light, a charming spot for a wedding tour.

He found a rock where he could sit and watch the waves break at the river mouth. The tide was coming in, and the river was rising. For a little while he stared mindlessly at the water. The sea was a different shade of blue where the sediment from the river was swept out to it.

Then he began to draw his thoughts together. If riders and soldiers both were ready to turn on the Emperor, the war would not last much longer. Hadon could not withdraw his soldiers and his dragons and leave Caithen in Tyrekh’s hands, because that would only bring his men into open rebellion against him. He had to sit tight, or send reinforcements against the Sarians as he should have a month ago.

If he didn’t, the soldiers might drive out the Sarians of their own accord. His sons would likely mass the Myceneans too. The princes would not want Hadon to be able to turn to Tyrekh for help, so they would do their best to smash the Sarian army, which would have the added benefit to them of reducing their father’s troops in the process. If Joce succeeded in killing Tyrekh, the Sarians would turn tail and run. Caithen and Argondy would be the bloody battleground where two empires clashed, but in the end the Sarians would be gone.

But as long as Hadon held the dragons, he held the Empire. And Caithen.

Slowly Corin realized that was what mattered. Five hundred years ago Mycene had been a young Empire. Its history was full of tumult. There had been the revolts, the betrayals, the daughters, all the things that shifted the possession of the crown from one line to another. But when the dragons came, it changed. The throne had been held father to son unbroken ever since. The Empire began its ascendancy. The dragons’ power fed the emperors and was passed along with the crown. It gave them no power of magic or prophecy, no power like that of a wizard; it was the simple and unassailable power of might.