“You sound like you’re digesting an overweight grizzly bear,” Scarlet commented acidly.
“I think it’s perfect,” said Chameleon.
“Thanks, Dad,” Peril said, grinning.
“Dragonets,” Scarlet muttered. “I never saw the appeal.” The Sky Palace came into view ahead of them, its towers and turrets and spires jutting through the clouds around the mountain peaks like long spindly claws. The fading sunlight seemed to catch for a moment in the queen’s eyes, adding a glimmer of menace to her yellow gaze as she regarded the palace.
“That’s why this never occurred to me before,” she went on. “But I should have remembered … it was only a couple of months before the whole catastrophe.”
Chameleon cleared his throat and the queen glanced at him, trading some kind of significant unspoken message.
“Won’t there be guards?” Chameleon asked quickly. “Patrolling around the mountains?”
“Not as many as there would be if Ruby were home,” Queen Scarlet said. “But she’s still off hunting for me and trying to identify missing heads. It’s the perfect opportunity to take over … and get the leverage I need to keep it that way.”
Two SkyWings suddenly emerged from the mist, flapping toward them with spears clutched in their talons and fearsome scowls etched on their snouts.
“Still,” Chameleon said, “um … any guards seems like a problem, right?”
“Not for us,” Queen Scarlet said, tossing her head triumphantly at Peril. “Let’s go, darling.”
Darling! Peril thought with delight as she soared up behind the queen. That’s me. She does love me!
The two guards lifted their spears when they saw Queen Scarlet approaching — but a moment later they saw Peril, and she saw them recognize her, and she saw the fear that engulfed them. One dropped his spear and turned tail instantly, fleeing back to the palace as fast as his wings could carry him. The other hovered indecisively for a moment, shifting her weapon from talon to talon and flicking her tail like a leaf about to be blown off a tree. Then she, too, broke down and fled.
Peril watched them go, feeling hurt and lonely and misunderstood exactly the way she always had, and trying to reach for that part of her that was too fierce and scary to care.
But it’s different now, she told herself. It’ll all be different once they know that I’m normal. Maybe we’ll even be friends. That would be cool; I’ve never had a real friend before.
Something poked at the corners of her mind. Oh — that SeaWing. Turtle. I guess he was sort of a friend, apart from lying to me.
She realized that she should tell Queen Scarlet that the SeaWings had an animus. That was definitely the kind of thing the queen would want to know, plus it would be pretty impressive to be the dragon who got to tell her such an important and surprising secret.
She twisted toward the queen, but Scarlet was already in a dive, aiming for an opening high in one of the towers. It was a room Peril had never been to, as far as she could remember, and she flew after Scarlet, puzzling over what it could be.
If she’d had a normal dragonethood, she might have been able to guess from the murmur of little voices that came through the windows.
Then again, if she’d had a normal dragonethood, she’d have spent most of it right here.
They swooped through the highest opening of the tower, straight into an enormous space full of SkyWing dragonets.
The wingery, Peril realized. Of course I’d never have been allowed in here. Staying out of the way of clumsy, floppy dragonets was always the hardest thing about moving around the palace. In fact, the danger of running into Peril was probably why most dragonets were confined to the wingery until they had better control of their limbs.
The youngest dragonets were play-fighting on the floor, far below Peril, near the base of the tower, where black and gold rugs overlapped. Toy weapons were scattered around them, blunt spears and dented shields leaning haphazardly against balls and attack dummies and what appeared to be toy cooking supplies stacked with bits of half-chewed goat bones and other snacks.
Slightly older dragonets swarmed the walls and climbing structures above the rugs, clambering busily along fake rocky outcroppings and jumping to gradually higher and higher platforms. A few of them slipped and fell, but the padded rugs below caught them without injury.
At the highest levels, closer to the ceiling, was space for flying practice — longer spaces to cross with each leap, ropes to catch on midflight, obstacles to practice swerving around. Here the biggest dragonets stretched their wings, red and orange swerving around one another as they catcalled and showed off new moves.
They all seemed so happy. Not just happy — unworried. Like nothing could trouble them, like all they needed was a place to fly and friends to fly with.
What would I be like if I’d grown up in this wingery? Peril wondered. Would I have friends? Would I giggle like that?
The memory of Turtle tugged at her again and she shook it off. She’d known him for, what, four days? That hardly counted as true friendship. He was probably glad she was gone.
The walls in here were not as embellished with gold and jewels as the rest of the palace; Peril wondered if Queen Scarlet didn’t trust dragonets to keep their grubby claws off her treasure. Instead, the room was full of light and air from windows and skylights, most of which were barred — especially on the lower levels — so none of the crawlers or new fliers could fall out.
The only decoration was a portrait of Scarlet five times the size of the actual queen. It covered a huge swathe of wall, forcing dragonets to find ways to climb or flap around it. Queen Scarlet’s perfect orange scales, bright yellow eyes, and cascades of jewelry glowed over the whole wingery, as if she were approving of their play while also imprinting their young brains with the constant reminder that she was the queen (and always would be, hinted her expression).
In fact, it was surprising that Ruby hadn’t taken that down yet, Peril reflected. Perhaps the interior design of her palace wasn’t quite as high a priority for her as it had been for her mother.
Look how beautiful Scarlet was, Peril thought. She glanced at the disfiguring scar Glory had left on the queen’s face and gave a little shudder of pity.
Glory … how did she get to the queen? What was I doing when that happened? How did I fail her?
Queen Scarlet swooped to a perch at the peak of the tower, on a winding branch carved from wood. It twisted across the roof as though it was the finish line for all the dragonets trying to reach the top of the room. Peril wanted to sit on it herself — her wings were starting to get tired — but she remembered that she was still supposed to be all firescales, so instead she made herself hover just below the queen.
A hush fell over the wingery — very slowly, as several dragonets were too busy playing to notice either the growing quiet or the giant dragon glowering from above. But Queen Scarlet waited, smoke hissing from her snout and ears.
As they noticed her, many of the dragonets let out squeals of fear. A few of them near the floor dove under whatever they could reach, hiding their faces behind shields or rugs or goat-spattered saucepots, although their trembling tails were still stuck out in the open.
A few of the others began to whisper …
“Is that the dragon in the picture?”
“That’s not the old missing queen, is it?”
“What wrong with her face?”
“She don’t look like her picture.”
“How’d she get all meltedish?”
“That’s really gross. Gross like Cardinal drooling when he sleeps.”
“Shut up!”
“Way grosser than that.”
“I wish my face was all melty and scary!”
“Ew, you do not, we would so never play with you if it was.”
“But you’d be scared of me and then I could creep up on anyone in the dark and give them nightmares forever! It would be awesome!”
“Yuck. I bet she can’t even lo
ok in mirrors anymore.”
“My mom said she used to be wicked scary.”
“And kind of mean, not like Queen Ruby.”
“She look kind of meanish now, I thinking.”
“Should we be more scared?”
Gradually the whispers, too, fell silent under Queen Scarlet’s withering glare.
“Hello, dragonets,” she finally hissed. “I am your queen — Queen Scarlet of the SkyWings. I have returned to take my throne, but I need something from you. Someone, actually.”
“Excuse me,” a little voice piped up. “I thinking maybe you in the wrong palace maybe? We already has a queen. Queen Ruby, she super-nice.”
“Ruby is not your queen,” Scarlet snarled. “She is an imposter! I am your queen!”
“What’s a nimposser?” asked another voice.
“It’s furry and sleeps upside down and has a really chewy tail,” said another. “Melty-Face, ma’am, you’s wrong, Ruby’s not furry at all. An’ I bet her tail’s not chewy either but I hasn’t checked.”
“She’s a very nice queen,” offered yet another dragonet, “and she visits all the time and knows all our names and says sorry when she bumps into someone and brings us snacks and we like her lots.”
“Maybe you could be queen of someone else?” a small orange dragonet suggested. “ ’Cause we already gots a good one but I hears that there’s some NightWings maybe lookin’ for a new queen? And maybe because they spooky, too, maybe they like your spooky face?”
“Oo, yes,” a few others agreed. “She’d be super-good spooky! They could change their name to SpookyWings or NightmareFaces!”
“STOP TALKING THIS INSTANT,” Queen Scarlet bellowed. Peril was finding it close to impossible to keep a straight face. She wished there had been a chorus of impertinent dragonets around for every conversation she’d ever had with the queen. Perched on the windowsill, Chameleon wasn’t even trying to hide how his shoulders were shaking with laughter.
“Sheesh,” one of the little voices muttered as they subsided. “Jus’ makin’ some helpful suggestibles, no need to be crankmonstery.”
“I am looking,” Queen Scarlet said, cold and clear, with iron in her voice, “for a dragonet named Cliff.”
Now everyone really was silent. The SkyWing dragonets glanced around uneasily, and then gradually one head after another turned toward a small, dark red dragon with a long neck who was clinging to a platform near the ground. He looked no more than eight or nine months old.
He stared up at Queen Scarlet and Peril, his tiny claws trembling. Suddenly Peril didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
A grim smile spread across Queen Scarlet’s face.
“Hello, little prince,” she said. “I thought it was time for you to meet your grandmother.”
Prince Cliff was by far the teeniest dragon Peril had ever been this close to. If she hadn’t known that her scales were safe to touch, she would never have dared to stand so close, no matter what Queen Scarlet’s orders were. She tried to wink at him in a friendly way, but she must have done it wrong — friendly winks weren’t exactly something she’d ever had a chance to practice — since it just made him throw his wings over his head and curl into a shivering ball.
She didn’t love that. She wanted to hug him — she could hug dragons now! — and tell him not to be scared, that she wasn’t scary at all, not anymore. But she had her orders, and she couldn’t ruin Queen Scarlet’s plan, not when it was working so well.
They’d marched the dragonet out of the wingery and down the long winding tunnels with SkyWings scattering in panic before them. Three guards had tried to resist, standing firm at the entrance to the throne room. But when Peril stepped toward them with her talons outstretched, one outright fainted with terror, and the other two were distracted long enough for Scarlet to leap forward and kill them.
“Much better,” Scarlet said with satisfaction, shoving the bodies to the side of the door and then setting all three guards on fire. The one who was only unconscious woke up screaming, but the screams didn’t last very long.
Chameleon herded Cliff into the throne room and plunked him on the lower visitors’ throne, which Burn had often used during alliance meetings. Queen Scarlet swarmed onto her own throne, the tall column carved in the shape of clouds that sat in the center of nearly all Peril’s memories of her. Queen Scarlet, issuing orders. Queen Scarlet, scolding Peril for whatever new thing she’d done wrong. Queen Scarlet, choosing who would die under Peril’s talons today.
The queen poked at her throne for a few minutes, sniffing with disgust as though she could smell traces of Ruby on it, and then she settled herself majestically and stared out the open wall opposite her. From up there, Peril knew, the queen could see a sweeping view of her kingdom, the Claws of the Clouds Mountains scratching the sky all the way to the far horizon.
“Stand next to the prince,” Scarlet ordered Peril. “Close enough to grab him if anyone comes in.”
Cliff whimpered and tried to make himself smaller.
“I remember when you hatched,” Queen Scarlet said to the little red dragonet. “It was like someone had woken up Ruby for the first time in years. I’m afraid your mother has always been very, very boring. No spark in her at all, which of course is why I allowed her to live. But when she saw you for the first time, suddenly there were sparks. You’d think your scales were plated with gold and you’d crawled out with sapphires wrapped around your tail. I can understand a dragon getting excited about treasure, but that excited about an ordinary dragonet? It was very weird. You are merely ordinary, aren’t you, little grandson? I can tell.”
“No,” Cliff said suddenly, sitting up and puffing out his chest. “I is not.”
Scuffling and stamping sounds came from the hall outside the throne room, as if a couple of dragons were trying to put out the last of the fire. The queen watched with narrow eyes as a dragon with bright red scales edged inside and threw himself into a deep bow before her.
“Mother!” he said with a little too much enthusiasm.
She kept her gaze fixed on him, smoke rising from her nostrils.
“Your Majesty!” he added quickly. “You’re alive! You’ve returned! What a, uh — what a glorious day for the Sky Kingdom! We’re all so, so, so, uh, blessed and lucky and relieved! Yes. This is thrilling, it really is.”
“Vermilion,” said the queen, and Peril shivered. The weight of the fury in that one word — Peril hoped she’d never have to hear Scarlet say “Peril” like that. She might as well have called her son “Disappointment.”
“A great day,” he said, his voice hiccupping over the words. He threw a confused look at Peril, as if he didn’t expect to see her there, which was odd because where else would she be? “So … great.”
“Tell me, Vermilion,” the queen growled. “Why exactly did you allow your sister to steal MY throne?”
“Steal — she —” he stammered. “I didn’t — we thought —”
“Did you really think I was dead?” Queen Scarlet sat up and spread her wings so she loomed over the whole space. “Me?”
“Y-y-yes?” he tried, his expression clearly indicating that he wasn’t sure which answer would get him killed faster.
“Really,” she said. “Oh, never mind the dreams, is that it? Every night for MONTHS, I came to you. I told you where I was. I told you to send an army for me. Then after I escaped from Burn, I told you to meet me. I told you to form a plan to get my throne back. I told you to kill your sister. Did you do even one of those things, Vermilion?”
Yikes, Peril thought. She remembered the nightly visits from Scarlet, full of guilt and rage and expectations. It hadn’t occurred to her that Queen Scarlet might be using the dreamvisitor to stalk other dragons besides her. Poor Vermilion.
“But — I didn’t know it was real,” he protested weakly. “Could have been my, um … subconscious.”
“You mean your guilty conscience?” Queen Scarlet snapped. “Except I told you about the dreamvis
itor. I followed you through every normal dream you had. Every night you promised to do as I commanded.”
“And then I woke up,” he said miserably, “and it seemed crazy to obey a dream … ”
“Or a queen who wasn’t right in front of you,” Scarlet guessed. “Because it was easier to be a coward, and obey my little mouse daughter, and hope I never came back, rather than to be loyal to your true queen.”
“I’m sorry.” Vermilion dropped his head and his wings drooped to the floor. “I know you’re going to kill me. Or would you rather have me kill myself?”
“Not just yet,” Scarlet said, flicking her tail. “I want to know what Ruby has ruined in my absence. It looks like she’s been prying my treasure right out of the walls in here.”
Peril glanced around and realized the queen was right. The throne room used to have so much gold inlaid in the walls that stepping inside on a bright day would give you an instant headache. At least half of that gold was gone now, leaving only wisps of cloud shapes here and there.
“Um,” said Vermilion. “Yes. About that.”
“Or was it other dragons stealing from me?” Queen Scarlet guessed. “As soon as they thought I was gone and they knew a weakling was in power — did they immediately start stripping the bones of the palace?”
“No, no,” Vermilion said. “No one did that! It was Ruby. She took the gold and used it to, uh — she —”
“Spit it out,” the queen hissed.
“She turned your arena into a hospital,” he blurted. “She pardoned all the prisoners and brought in doctors and healers from other tribes to teach ours everything they know and she made space for all the wounded soldiers from the war and she’s been finding them all places to live and jobs to do and using the gold for all of that.”
A long silence followed. Queen Scarlet flicked her tongue out and in, regarding Vermilion with slitted yellow eyes.
“You like her,” she said suddenly. “You think Ruby is a good queen.”
“No!” he protested, flapping his wings with alarm. “Never! You’re the only good queen! I liked my arena job! It’s absolutely terrible here now! We always loved all the, uh, the fighting! We missed you so much!”
Escaping Peril Page 13
