Dragon Rose (3 page)

I held my breath, waiting.

At length she said, “We will wait and see if this blows over. I have some money set by, and we needn’t worry. Not yet.”

Relief course through my veins, even as I wondered at her words. Oh, there had been money on her side of the family—her father, though he had died before I was born, had been a successful tinsmith, and it was his house that we lived in now, the house my mother inherited when my grandmother died. I had been a small child then, barely five years, and I remembered very little of my maternal grandmother. She had been a wispy pale little woman who seemed content to let her daughter rule things. I guessed there had been very little argument when my mother took it into her head to marry a young potter with barely a copper
graut
to his name.

However, I’d never heard a whisper of any savings, and indeed, with the way my mother talked about the household finances, I had always assumed that we lived from month to month, with only my father’s earnings to keep us afloat. Now those earnings were threatened, but perhaps it didn’t matter quite as much as I had thought.

“
Some
money,” she repeated, giving me a warning look. “Certainly not enough to permanently replace your father’s income, or even keep this house going for more than a month…possibly two, if we are very careful. So do not look quite so relieved, Rhianne.”

Since there was very little else I could say, I merely bowed my head. I wouldn’t let myself become too discouraged.

After all, a great deal could happen in a month’s time.

Chapter Two

My father came home three days later, riding in the back of the cart his savior shepherd used to bring wool to town. We all clustered around him, exclaiming over his return, but he was uncharacteristically quiet, a grimness that couldn’t be completely attributed to his condition somehow clinging to him. My mother shushed Darlynne and Maeganne, saying that their father needed his rest, and bustled him up to the room my parents shared.

Down in the entry hall, my sister Therella and I exchanged wary glances. I had not spoken of what passed between Liat Marenson and myself, and neither had my mother said anything, but news gets around in a town the size of Lirinsholme. More than once I had seen Therella give me grudging looks, as if she blamed me for our current situation. Ridiculous, of course—it was not my fault that Liat Marenson was such a narrow-minded prig, nor that the world carried such prejudices against women engaging in trade. Or, to be more precise, women engaging in trades reserved for men. It was all very well for Alina to sell her vegetables in the market, or for the Widow Lanson to sew clothing for those who did not wish to make their own, but the potter’s trade—along with that of the tinsmith, the glass blower, the ironmonger, and all those others who made up the Craftsmen’s Guild—was the sole province of men. In their eyes, I had far overstepped my bounds and intruded where I had no right.

Finally, Therella said, “I hope you’re happy.”

“I?” I repeated. “I am happy Father is home, if that is what you mean.”

She made an impatient gesture. “I always knew it was a bad idea, you helping Father is his workroom. Now look where we are! No one has placed an order for days, and I saw Mother giving money back to the Widow Mallin. What are we going to do now?”

“Wait for Father to get better,” I replied, trying to keep the bite out of my words. Truly, I understood my sister’s fear, even if I found her blame to be entirely misplaced. But she was seventeen, old enough to want to be grown up while at the same time lacking the life experience to achieve such a state. She could not—or would not—understand that we were all victims here. It wasn’t as if I had asked to help out in the workroom. My parents had decided on the matter together, knowing the risks.

“And that will help exactly how?”

“At least then he will be able to go back to work. If people see him working—while I am far away from his workshop—then perhaps things will begin to mend. But fretting isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

She made a derisive noise but did not argue, instead turning from me and going upstairs to the room we shared. This was her own form of revenge, for our bedroom was not large, and with one of us occupying it, the other was effectively locked out.

I sighed and moved on to the little sitting room off the kitchen, where I had left some of my hated embroidery. At least no one could accuse me of painting while my hands were occupied with a needle and silk floss.

Days passed, and my father slowly mended, although he could not or would not return to his workroom. My mother seemed to turn paler and more silent with each passing day, and one night I chanced upon her as she sat at the kitchen table, a meager-looking stack of silver coins in front of her and a paper covered with figures set off to one side, as if she had pushed it away. Her head drooped, and I heard her weeping.

I stopped then, and crept away. I knew she would not want me to see her weakness.

That night I dreamed.

I saw the dark granite bulk of Black’s Keep silhouetted against the night sky. And from its highest tower I saw a black shape move off into the wind, the shadow of its wings blotting out the stars. With the night wind came a high, keening cry, like that of a diving hawk, yet a thousand times stronger, filling the cold air with the echoes of its pain. Darkness seemed to flow out from it, running up the hills and down the valleys between the Keep and the town of Lirinsholme, swallowing everything in its path, as if some god had poured ink from the heavens to paint the entire world black. And we all stood in the town square and watched the shadow approach, fear rooting us in place, until the black tide rushed up and over us, drowning us all.

Then I sat up in bed, gasping, cold sweat trickling down my back even though the night air coming in the open window was sweet and warm. I grasped the linen of my bedsheets, softened by countless washings, and made myself remember where I was. From across the chamber I heard my sister’s soft snores. I was home. I was safe.

Once I might have discounted such a thing as merely a nightmare, simply fragments of the day’s worries recast into a dream shape. But a year earlier I had dreamed of my cousin Clary giving birth to her son in the night, and when I awoke the next morning, news came to us that she had indeed borne a healthy boy that night. I might have thought nothing of it—after all, Clary’s impending childbed had been on all our minds—save that another night, only two months later, I dreamed that my Granny Menyon had fallen and broken her hip. So she had, as she’d gotten up in the darkness to fetch herself a cup of water.
 

I spoke of the dream to her several days later, as I was taking my turn in watching over her, and she smiled. “It’s a true Seeing, child. Nothing to fear.”

“‘Nothing to fear’?” I echoed. “But isn’t it…magic?”

I had lowered my voice on that last word, for even in these latter days magic is something mistrusted and even reviled, an unquiet relic from an age when sorcerers ruled the land. No one much believed in it anymore, at least not in the world at large. Here in Lirinsholme, however, we had the Dragon as a constant reminder that magic wasn’t quite as dead as the rest of the world seemed to think it was.

Granny Menyon only smiled again and shook her head. “Not magic…at least not the way people think of it nowadays. It’s only your heart seeing the important things, and telling your head. Nothing to fear. It’s a gift, such as the way you can make a few strokes of paint look like a forget-me-not.”

Her words made me look at her in surprise. I had thought I was being so careful about hiding my unconventional avocation.

The smile didn’t waver. Despite her years, she still had teeth as white and straight as a twenty-year-old’s. “Your father is proud of you, proud of your talents. He shares things with me…as he should. Any road, ’tis only that you have a way of seeing things, and sometimes you see them with your heart first. Tell yourself that, child, and it won’t seem so strange.”

At the time I had been comforted, and since I hadn’t had a true dream like that for some time, I had almost forgotten my so-called gift, pushed it off to some corner of my mind where I could forget it.
 

But now…

I pushed back my bedclothes and stood, then went to the window and looked out over the town. A half-moon hung low in the east, its twin barely visible above the horizon. To the north all was dark, although in the town itself the streets in their orderly grids were picked out here and there by flickering torchlight. All calm, all quiet. Perhaps my dream had been only that, a dream. Never mind that I could still hear the echoes of that wailing cry in my ears, still feel the cold air freezing my very marrow. In the past my Seeing had been of things taking place the same time I saw them, and yet nothing in my world seemed to have been disturbed.

Why, then, could I not forget that image of darkness rising to swallow us all?

Lilianth came by the next morning, as she wanted me to accompany her to the shop of Willem the cloth merchant to help make the final choice of fabric for her wedding gown. I was glad enough of the diversion, even though I knew I would have to tell my friend soon enough that I could afford no fabric of my own for a new gown.
 

But it was good to be free from the brooding atmosphere in my house, where things had once been bright and merry. Oh, we had not been abandoned entirely—several of those who counted themselves friends of the family had made sure to purchase some pieces from us—but these small gestures could not begin to replace the income we had lost from our wealthier clients.

Even now some people stared as I passed them in the street, but I affected not to notice, and Lilianth was so caught up in her chatter about the upcoming nuptials that of course she didn’t detect any frostiness on the part of the passers-by. We spent a good hour in Willem’s shop, and although she had protested earlier that she meant for it to be a very quiet affair, her choice in fabric seemed to bely that description, for she ended up walking out with a length of marvelously supple sky-blue cloth that Willem said was a new weave of linen and silk, providing strength and sheen at the same time. It was truly lovely, I had to admit, but I blanched a little at the number of coins Lilianth counted out to the merchant in exchange for the material.

We emerged into the bright noonday sun and blinked. Certainly nothing could be more different from my black dream of the night before than the clear sky above and the reflected green of the hills all around us.
 

At first I didn’t even realize I had seen it. A flash of red, just a glimmer of crimson above the dark shoulders of Black’s Keep. And then I heard the murmur of the people around me grow into a roar, as Lilianth’s fingers dug into my arm and people began pointing northward. Yes, there it was, a red silk banner snapping in the breeze above the Dragon’s castle.
 

I swallowed, and realized my dream had been a true one after all. Not with darkness, perhaps, but nevertheless, doom had come to Lirinsholme.

“A month,” my mother said, staring at me in some despair. “One month more, and you would have been safe.”

“It’s better this way,” I said stoutly, and gave Therella’s hand an encouraging squeeze. “At least we can go as sisters, and stand together.”

My mother swallowed and shot a despairing glance at my father. He was pale but composed, although I noticed his hand shook a little as he grasped the cane he’d been using ever since his heart spasm.
 

“It will be all right,” he said. “There are many eligible, and they choose only one. We’ll be back for supper and laughing, knowing that the Dragon will not choose another Bride until after both girls are old enough to be safe.”

That was true enough, but it didn’t secure the safety of my two younger sisters, thirteen and eleven. Still, suffice the day’s evil, as they say, and the odds of two girls being chosen from the same household were probably about the same as being struck by lightning. Or worse, maybe, as we all knew old dazed Janson, who had been hit by a bolt in his youth and had never been the same since. On the other hand, there were no records of sisters ever having been the Dragon’s Bride.

Therella and I stood in the entry hall, having put on our best gowns. That was always the way of it—the daughters of the town would assemble in the main square, all wearing their finest, and the elders would gather on the wide balcony that topped the entrance to Lirinsholme’s town hall. The name was drawn from a large silver urn into which small pieces of paper with the candidates’ name written on them had been dropped. Maintaining the list of names was part of the elders’ duty, as was sitting up the night before the Bride was selected and writing out all the names on those scraps of paper.

It had not been a good night for any of us, of course. My sister had muttered and cried out in her sleep, and I was restless as well, shifting seemingly every quarter-hour so I could find a more comfortable position. What sleep I did manage was untouched by any dream, true or otherwise. This halfway disappointed me, for while I was not overly eager to learn my fate, at least if I’d had some inkling of what I faced on the morrow, I might have been better equipped to face it.

The sun shone through the stained-glass windows on either side of the front door, tracing elegant patterns in blue and green and red on the gleaming wood floor beneath. The air smelt of the beeswax we rubbed into the molding to make it shine. I glanced around me, and wondered if this might be the last time I ever stood here.

But I knew better than to speak such words aloud.

The town square was not large enough to accommodate all of Lirinsholme’s citizens; the candidates had first priority, of course, and stood closest to Brecken Hall and the balcony where even now the three elders stood, the silver urn containing all our names sitting on a small table off to one side. Ranged beyond the uneasy crowd of young women were their families, and beyond that the merely curious, the onlookers who wanted to see firsthand the Dragon’s doom fall on yet another unlucky candidate.