Dragon Heart (9 page)

Tirza gave a start. Here came what she was afraid of. She cast a begging glance at Mervaly and Casea, but they both dipped their knees and went off through the door to the hall. Tirza pressed her lips together; she turned her eyes on her mother, high above her. Marioza was watching her steadily, and now she sighed.

“So, girl.”

Tirza said, “Mama.” It came out a growl. She locked her hands in front of her.

Marioza stood before her like a piece of the rock, immovable. She sighed again, and frowned, and then said, “This must be done. I have never told you this. I am the cause of all this between us. When you were born, I cursed you.”

Tirza felt that like a stone striking her; she let her hands fall to her sides, and her mouth opened. Nothing came out. She felt a lump rising in her throat. Marioza went on, looking away, toward the wall of birds.

“You came by surprise. You were four hours at least after Jeon was born, a big, lusty boy, bellowing like a bull calf. I was lying in the bed, and there was a shiver in my loins and out you came, little wizened thing there between my legs. And I picked you up and held you up before me—”

Marioza stopped, and her gaze came back to Tirza's. Tears coursed down Marioza's cheeks. “In your eyes, I saw my doom. And now you have proven it.”

Tirza said, “I didn't mean to.” A jumble of clicks and whistles. She clenched her jaws. All this time, she had thought something was wrong with her.

“So I pinched your lips together. ‘Whatever you know, you can tell no one.' As if that mattered. I pushed you off, sent you away. But it has still happened.”

She held out her hands to Tirza, palms up. “I wish I had not done it. I wish I had been braver. But I have failed. I lost Reymarro; I have lost his castle. Tomorrow I marry his murderer's brother.”

Tirza could not move; her mother seemed to be dropping away, smaller and smaller, into an abyss. She blinked. Marioza stood before her, solid, still.

Her mother spoke again. “I laid a curse on you. I cannot remove that. So I am giving you another curse. Keep faith. That's all. Keep faith.” She turned, and walked out the door.

*   *   *

Curled up in the big bed in between her sisters, Tirza could not sleep. Since she escaped from the dragon, she had slept in ditches, under rocks, in the high grass, cold and hungry. Now she had deep featherbeds under her, white pillows. She was where she belonged. She was warm and clean and comforted, and yet her mind would not rest.

Like birds circling, her mother's words went around and around in Tirza's mind: I cursed you. Her own mother had made this happen to her. And now a new curse.

Keep faith. With whom, to what? And why was it a curse?

Her mother's voice, speaking words. Tirza shut her eyes. On her side, with Mervaly against her back and Casea before her, she drew her body close, and began to tell herself a story about a Princess, who was cursed with keeping faith. But Tirza slept almost at once, and the story disappeared.

In her sleep she imagined that someone was caressing her, tender, gentle as music, all over. She turned to see who it was, and above her was the huge red eye of the dragon.

*   *   *

Jeon and Luka went down into the town, not bothering to go out by the gate where Erdhart had his guards but down a long, steep passage that often opened up just outside the great hall. For a long while the way was dark and they went along carefully, but then the passage leveled out and they came into a wide, high-ceilinged room of six or seven walls of different lengths. A green lamp hung from the high ceiling, giving only a faint light that fell in veils toward the shadowy floor. All around the irregular room, set in the walls, were niches, and in each of the niches a body lay. Jeon made a bow to them before he went by, and after; the old ones had always awed him.

Luka did nothing, frowning, but went on through to the sea gate, below, where they had to wade because the tide was in.

The evening was coming and the beach before the shops was full of people packing up and going home. Trollo, the piper boy, had made up a puppet show, over by the cypress tree, and a crowd of children still lingered there, watching him take down his stage. A shepherd, a lamb on his shoulder, was herding three ewes along toward the grass on the high end of the beach.

Luka led the way to the brewery, with its broad, open porch stretched along the foot of the cliff. Lumilla, the brewster, had taken in the kegs off the porch, and the open deck was empty. Jeon followed Luka through the door into the smoky, ill-lit cliff room, full of people waiting for Lumilla to feed them supper. When Luka came in, they all called out to him. As usual the people were mostly women. Since the massacre in the mountains, men had been in short supply in Undercastle.

At the back of the room was a stair cut into the rock, and the two brothers went up and through a corridor to another, smaller room. One wall of this was open to the air, and the evening light filled the space. Lumilla's daughter followed them in, wiped off the table, and moved another chair to it. She was a big, muscular girl, tawny as a lioness. Her name was Amillee. She gave Luka a broad smile.

“Your customary, my lord?” Leaning over the table to pick up a stray dish, she gave him a good look down her dress. Luka sat down, grinning. Jeon took the other chair. Amillee hardly even glanced at him; she gave a waggle of her hips and went back into the stairwell.

Luka watched her go. Jeon said, “Is she—are you—” and felt the heat rise into his face.

His brother laughed at him. Luka leaned his forearms on the table, and said, “So tell me more about this work you saw them doing up the coast, when you went to get Tirza. Where was it?”

“About half a day west of the Black Reeks. An old landslide comes down, there's a cove, some offshore rocks.”

“Just east of Pelican Head.”

“I guess so,” Jeon said, uncertain. Nobody else knew the coast as well as Luka.

His brother said, “What do you think they're doing there?”

“They're trying to build some kind of fort. But they're doing it on the toe of the slide, so I don't see how big they can make it. There's a lot of rock, but the ground is still settling.”

“The beach there is worse; the sand sweats there. But it's a very good position.”

Amillee came back with a pitcher and two cups. Luka said, “My brother is likely hungry—Jeon, do you want something to eat?”

“I'll bring something,” she said, and went out again. Luka poured a cup of ale and leaned on the table. Jeon drained his cup; the fragrance made his head pulse.

“How any men are there?”

“Maybe sixty. Oto was there.”

“Ah, yes. I've seen him coming and going; he always says he's going to hunt, but he never comes back with game.” Luka drank. “I thought there were fewer soldiers here, but they're always moving; it's hard to keep track.”

“What are we going to do about Mother?”

“Us? Nothing. Let Mother deal with Erdhart.”

“But we can't let her send Tirza back to Santomalo.”

Amillee came in again with a plate of bread, cheese, and sausages. She took the pitcher, now empty, smiled at Luka, and left. Luka watched her go.

“Nobody is going to Santomalo. It burnt to the ground, a long month ago.”

“What?” Jeon said. His mind flew back to the red roofs, the awnings of the market. That must have happened soon after he was there, searching for Tirza.

“Somebody came in from the sea and torched the place. Slavers. Everybody not burnt up they carried off.”

“What are you going to do?” Jeon broke off a chunk of bread, but now he had no appetite.

“Me? Nothing. Santomalo is an Imperial town.”

“What is Erdhart doing?”

“A lot, and very little. He sends out patrols, every day, to the high road. That makes it hard to figure how many men he has, but I'm thinking somewhere around forty. They make up their squadrons in twenties. And he's put a guard on the big gate and won't let anybody in and out without purpose. He wants to tax everybody, even the people in the hills, and to do that he has to know who everybody is. So far he can't even find out how many people are in Undercastle.” Luka flashed a smile. “He's waiting for messages from the Holy City. I'm thinking the galley that wrecked under you and Tirza was bringing him messages. Nobody here talks to him. Travelers come and go without him even seeming to notice. I knew about what happened at Santomalo long before he did. Something he said once makes me think they will try to bring a fleet here sometime this summer.”

Jeon chewed and swallowed. All the while he had searched for Tirza he had thought of none of this, how the Empire was settling in around them. He said, “What do you think Mother is going to do?”

Luka gave a snort of laughter. “Erdhart is marrying his grave.” He lifted the cup. “To Marioza, Queen of Castle Ocean!” And drank.

*   *   *

Lumilla saw her daughter come down from the back room, the pitcher in her hand, and followed her over to the taps. She waited until Amillee had filled the jug again, and then Lumilla got between her and the way back to the stairs.

“What are you doing? Or, I should say, why are you doing it?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“We have other custom than him! Listen to me.” Lumilla put her lips close to her daughter's ear. “I love Luka. If not for him, after what happened in the mountains, there would be no men left in this town at all. But you keep your place with him.”

“My place,” Amillee said, with a flirt of her hips. “Like your place with Aken? You think I don't know about that?”

“Bah,” Lumilla said, unperturbed. Everybody knew about her and Aken. Her husband had died with Reymarro and she was a lusty woman: nobody could expect her to do otherwise. “He lives next door to me. He is my kind. Do you imagine you'll live up there in the castle, someday? Is that it?”

Amillee shrugged one round shoulder. “I don't see why I—”

Lumilla pushed her back toward the taps. “You're wasting your time. They are not like us. They are half ghost, and half something I don't even want to think about, and we are just people.”

“Let me by,” Amillee said. She held the jug before her like a ram and moved. Lumilla stood where she was, blocking the way, long enough to show she could keep Amillee there if she really wanted to, and then stepped aside. Amillee went by her with a swish of her long skirt and back up the stair.

*   *   *

Late that night, Oto Erdhartsson rode alone over the bridge to the gate of Castle Ocean. The guards admitted him into the gate yard with many bows and welcomes, which he liked, but then he saw his father's herald coming out the door into the main tower. This he did not like. He gave his exhausted horse to the nearest soldier, and tramped up the stair.

The herald bustled around him, with flourishes of his hands and his head bobbing up and down. “My lord, your father commands you to him.”

Oto could not refuse, but he stood a moment, staring down at the herald, until the man cringed. “Lead me there,” Oto said loftily, and the herald hurried away ahead of him, into the big, round room where all the stairs began, and up.

Erdhart was sitting in a corner of his room; he tended now always to keep his back to the wall. Oto went across to the broad table by the window, where wine waited in jugs, and nodded to the servant there to pour him a cup. Erdhart watched him steadily, his face dark with temper. Oto ignored this until he had his cup, and then drank. When he went up before his father he sat down without waiting for permission, and his father flared at him.

“You should have red hair. You are acquiring their manners. Why have you come back without orders?”

“One of them turned up at the new fort,” Oto said. He planned to call it Otosberg, but he was not yet that sure of himself.

“Ah.” Erdhart lifted his head, alarmed, and Oto smiled at him, pleased, a step ahead.

“Rest assured. He saw nothing. We shunted him properly off. He had a girl with him. I formed a certain conclusion. So I came. When is the wedding?”

He drank more wine. Erdhart cast a quick glance at the servant, who came at once for his cup.

“Tomorrow. The prize is almost in my hands. When the Queen is mine, the whole of Castle Ocean is mine.” He shifted his weight. “Everything is done by the law; there is no undoing it.” The ring in his voice sounded false. He was quaking like a rabbit in a field of foxes. Oto wondered where Broga was: probably praying, the fool. He clenched his jaw: his father was playing this too softly. These people needed to be bitted and bridled and ridden hard.

If it had been Oto's command that would have been done immediately, when they first got here, with the body of Marioza's last husband still warm in its coffin. Only the Emperor's nice concern with law stood in the way of it. This family had no army anymore, only fishermen and shepherds. Oto hated Luka, the way he strutted around, the way everybody bowed and cringed around him, but he had never even seen Luka carry a sword. The younger brother was nothing, barely out of his wet pants. The only other one who mattered was Mervaly, and Oto wanted to throw Mervaly down on the nearest bed and bury himself in all that soft, sweet flesh, stuff her laughing mouth with his flesh, own her entirely. The idea made his head swim a moment, delirious. The others he would only kill, but Mervaly he would marry.

The servant came back with the cup, and Erdhart stopped to drink. He needed both hands to hold the cup.

He went on, “This is where my brother Ruddich failed. He let his guard down, when she seemed to marry him, and she tricked him. I intend to keep this going my way. Before the wedding, you will personally go through the chamber where I am to bed her, make sure there is nothing concealed, no weapon, no vial, nothing. The ceremony and the feast will be in the hall. You will personally inspect every inch of that room also. And then, during the ceremony, during the feasting, you will station a man to watch each of the Queen's children, each of her servants, ready to draw dagger and do death at the slightest sign of evil intent.”