How did these people ever get anything done? The noise was so intense it took me a moment to even pick out any of the individual voices, as our lieutenant led us carefully through the crowd towards the table and the crown princess.
‘This is why we should have sent the army and the mages into the mountains years ago! If anyone had ever listened to me …’ That came from a man in a dark green suit, banging on the table.
The man behind him shook his head violently. ‘We should be digging tunnels underground to escape into the forest! If we set the army to digging now …’
A tall, bony man in a black robe snarled, ‘Maybe if we had been given enough funds for our research, without the merchants always haggling over prices and trying to keep all the taxes for themselves …’
The woman next to him let out a muffled shriek of outrage. ‘We merchants are the only reason this city has prospered! If you black-robed nincompoops were ever left in charge –’
Another woman, in a long black robe, lunged up from the table and shouted, ‘What did you just call us, shopkeeper?’
Stones and bones. We didn’t have time for any of this!
When I’d tried to talk sensibly to the royals before, they hadn’t listened to a word I’d said. I could already tell that this group wasn’t interested in calm reason either.
So it was time to stop acting like a servant and be a dragon, after all.
‘Enough!’ I roared, only two feet behind the king.
Everyone in the room jerked around to stare at me. Even the king peered around the back of his massive chair with wide, startled blue eyes.
I knew exactly what they all saw when they looked at me, with my young face, short hair and dull brown dress. I knew that their shock would only hold them silent for a moment, before their outrage and disbelief would take over.
So I used the single moment that I had, crossed my arms and gave the king a look as steady and grim as any I had ever seen from Marina.
‘None of you can stop those dragons,’ I told him. ‘But I can.’
CHAPTER 21
That was it. The silence broke, as all around the table a dozen men and women erupted at once.
This time, though, the king’s hand slashed through the air to cut them all off. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Come here, child. Explain yourself!’
I stepped forward until I stood between him and the crown princess, arms still crossed before me. As I moved, another gasp swept across the room, this one of obvious horror. Panicky whispers started up all through the group of nobles watching us from the chairs. The king’s bushy blond eyebrows lowered into a scowl, and the crown princess’s dark eyebrows rose high on her light brown forehead.
What had I done wrong now? I’d just been following orders.
Then I felt a hard nudge in my back, and I twisted around to see Silke glaring at me. ‘Bow!’ she hissed.
Oh. I uncrossed my arms and bent my whole body forward, the way I’d seen some humans do before. I nearly banged my head on the corner of the table, and a wave of tittering laughter started up from the rows of onlookers behind me, but by the time I straightened, the king’s scowl had dimmed. I was vaguely aware of more people, probably servants, hurrying around the table towards the other end, but I ignored them, focusing on the two royals.
‘You can’t attack the dragons,’ I told the king. ‘They’ll burn the city to the ground in retaliation if you do that. Wait and find out what they want first. They won’t have come here without a reason.’
‘A reason?’ A woman halfway down the table let out a crack of laughter. ‘They’re primitive beasts, girl! Their only reason is they’re hungry.’
The man beside her nodded. ‘They’re not like us,’ he told me. ‘They don’t have the brains to want anything apart from blood and gold!’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Don’t you people know anything about dragons?’
The king’s eyes narrowed as he studied me. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that they’re the greatest danger ever to threaten this city. And you expect us to listen to an unknown young girl and not even try to protect ourselves from their attack?’
‘You can’t protect yourselves from them anyway,’ I said impatiently, ‘so –’
‘Wait!’ The man with the massive floppy hat who sat at the other end of the table leaned forward and pointed one beefy finger at me. ‘Your Majesty, you are being deceived. My assistant knows this girl. She’s a mere shop apprentice, and a known troublemaker. We need to have her thrown out, now, before she wastes another minute of this council’s precious time!’
Behind his chair, a familiar face smirked straight at me. It was the lord mayor’s woman … and now I knew exactly who that man was, too. My muscles tensed.
‘No, Aventurine!’ Silke grabbed my shoulder. ‘Not now!’
Our lieutenant started forward, wide-eyed and already reaching out as if to yank me away from the royals. Before he could, though, the crown princess raised one hand, and silence fell.
‘I thought I recognised you,’ she said. Despite myself, I was impressed by the power of her voice; it never rose anywhere near a shout, but her words still carried through the room with calm authority. ‘Aventurine, wasn’t it? From the Chocolate Heart?’
The king winced. ‘Not that chocolate house they had to shut down for its dirty kitchen?’
‘It was not dirty!’ I snapped. ‘It passed that inspection and got a certificate to prove it, too. The only reason they even bothered –’
‘Ahem.’ The crown princess cleared her throat. ‘Be that as it may, why exactly would a young apprentice chocolatier know how to stop a ravening pack of dragons?’
Well, this was it. I looked her in the eye and said, ‘Because I used to be one of them.’
Silke’s hand suddenly clenched around my shoulder, even as the room exploded into noise.
There were shouts of laughter, there were howls of disbelief and there were several snorts of disdain, but through it all, I heard Silke’s whisper vibrate in my ear: ‘So that’s it!’
An instant later, she was darting in front of me, sweeping an elaborate bow to the royals. ‘What she meant to say, Your Majesties …’
The crown princess raised her eyebrows. ‘Yes?’
Silke smiled brightly as she straightened. ‘Aventurine is from the mountains. She lived in the middle of nowhere, in an eccentric family, so she had the chance to speak with these dragons herself and get to know them. So –’
‘Spy!’ bellowed the lord mayor, and started to his feet, slamming one big hand noisily against the table. ‘Is she the reason they’re coming here now? Did she feed them information about our city?’
The crown princess’s eyes closed for a brief moment of what looked like extreme weariness as the yelling around the table started up again, worse than ever. Even more men and women jumped up from their seats. Others started banging their fists on the table, adding to the din. The king scowled and covered his mouth with one hand, studying me with narrowed pale blue eyes.
I had a nasty feeling that even roaring wouldn’t work on these humans any more.
The crown princess didn’t lift her own hand for silence this time. She only leaned forward, speaking to me alone while the other council members filled the rest of the room with noise. ‘What exactly would you do to stop the dragons from coming here?’ she asked.
‘There’s no way to stop them coming now that they’re already on their way,’ I told her. ‘You can’t hurt any of them with bullets or spells; their scales are too hard for that. The only thing we can do is wait and let them come.’
‘And then?’ the king demanded. He was leaning forward to listen, now, too.
I shrugged. ‘I’ll talk to them,’ I told him. ‘If I can get up to the top of the clock tower, I can make myself the first thing that they see. Then I’ll make them see sense.’
‘Make them see – ?!’ The king let out a snort so powerful it ruffled against my face. ‘Oh, wonderful,’ he growled. ‘Ou
r capital city’s whole plan for defence: sending one young girl, who can’t be more than twelve years old, to talk things over with a pack of fire-breathing monsters! Because everyone knows how reasonable dragons can be!’
A growl of my own came rumbling up my throat, vibrating through my body as I glared at him. ‘You don’t know anything about dragons! They’ll be coming here for a real reason, not just to destroy the city. They won’t do that unless you make them angry by attacking them unprovoked. Someone’s got to talk to them, and I’m the only one who knows how to persuade them into anything.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The crown princess sighed, leaning back in her chair. ‘You must see how impossible that is. The idea of listening to a child and allowing those monsters to fly over Drachenburg undisputed – simply sitting back and waiting for them to attack, without even trying to defend our own citizens from their flame …’
An unexpected voice spoke behind me. ‘We cannot stop them from flying over the city, Your Highness.’ It was the tall bony mage who’d argued with the merchants earlier. His arms were crossed and he looked down at me consideringly, with light green eyes that looked almost reptilian themselves. ‘I recommend that we follow this child’s suggestion.’
‘You must be joking!’ The king stared at him. ‘You want us to put all of our protection in the hands of one unknown girl?’
‘No,’ said the mage. ‘I want to use the girl to draw the dragons to their doom. That is my suggestion.’
As the four of us stared at him in shock, the mage raised one bony shoulder in a shrug. ‘Well? The mages of Drachenburg have never been granted the funding we needed for serious research on penetrating dragon hide from a distance. If we try to attack while they’re flying high above the city, we’ll have no more luck than your soldiers with their pathetic rifle shots that bounce off dragon scales without effect. However –’ his thin lips curved into a small, smug smile – ‘we have recently come up with some extraordinary new attack strategies that will, I believe, work well at close range, even against the power of fully hardened, adult dragon scales. If we can use this girl as bait to draw the dragons down to the level of the clock tower, then mount a surprise attack from the floor just below while the beasts are off guard, thinking it to be a truce …’
‘That’s disgusting!’ I spat. ‘And cowardly, and deceitful, and –’
He didn’t even raise his voice as he spoke over me. ‘That is my recommendation, as the most experienced battle mage in Drachenburg. In my considered opinion, that is the only way that we can win this battle and protect our innocent civilians. Therefore, Your Majesty … ?’ He raised one eyebrow.
The king nodded heavily. ‘Yes. Let’s do it. We’ll have to put the motion to the council for form’s sake, but I’ll overrule the others if necessary. If you start organising your mages into position now –’
‘No!’ I shouted. If I’d had my wings, they would have been flaring around me, higher than ever before. ‘I won’t trick and deceive them, not even to save this city! I told you, I can talk them into leaving peacefully. There’s no reason for you to attack them – especially in such a shameful way! How can you even consider treating anyone like that?’
The king raised his upper lip in a sneer. ‘Remember, we are talking about dragons, not humans, girl. There’s a difference.’
‘Not that much,’ I told him. ‘Not as much as I used to think.’
He sat forward, turning away from me. ‘Young lady, we’re wasting time.’ He reached for his feather pen and inkwell. ‘Now, you can do as you’re ordered, or you can be thrown into the holding cells downstairs to stop you from creating any trouble, while someone else draws your dragons down instead. So …’
‘No one else will be able to do it,’ Silke said abruptly. ‘No one except for Aventurine.’
The king’s head jerked around. ‘And why is that, exactly?’
Silke answered before I could. ‘Because she’s the only one who knows the secret signal – the peace signal for the dragons.’
The what? My mouth fell open. Of all the ridiculous, unbelievable suggestions …
But Silke was already continuing: ‘How do you think she and her family survived with the dragons all those years, without a special coded signal to mark them out as dragon-friends?’
The king scowled.
The mage’s eyes narrowed.
Silke nudged me. Oh. My turn.
‘I won’t tell anyone else the signal,’ I snarled, lifting my chin. ‘It’s my family secret.’
My family would have sent smokeballs careening all around this room with their laughter at the very idea of that stupid signal. But I saw barely repressed rage on the king’s reddening face, and I knew he’d been convinced.
He pointed one finger at me, opening his mouth as if to roar, but the crown princess smiled and spoke first.
‘Very well,’ she said smoothly. ‘I propose a compromise solution. Lord Krakauer –’ she nodded to the mage – ‘if you would be so good as to gather your mages in place, hidden just below the clock tower, we would very much appreciate it. However –’ she gave me a cool, assessing look – ‘we will not order any attacks until Aventurine has attempted to negotiate the dragons’ peaceful departure. Aventurine, do you agree?’
Uh-oh.
I narrowed my eyes at her, desperately trying to read the truth behind her serene, innocent expression. I knew this feeling, and I didn’t like it. My sister Citrine was just this calm, pleasant and confident whenever she was using her gift with words to trick me or Jasper into doing something we would absolutely hate.
The crown princess was definitely hiding something … but there was no time to quibble. I let out my held breath in an explosive sigh. ‘All ri–’ I began.
Silke cut me off before I could finish. ‘Your Highness,’ she said, in a tone like ice, ‘don’t you mean to promise, instead, that you won’t order any attacks until Aventurine has failed to negotiate the dragons’ peaceful departure?’
Oh. Oh! That was why it had felt so wrong!
Irritation flashed across the crown princess’s face.
She was just like Citrine, after all.
‘You were trying to trick me,’ I breathed. ‘You were going to order the attack as soon as I first started trying to negotiate with them, weren’t you?’
And in that case … Oh. I glared at her. ‘How did you think I was going to survive that attack, when the mages went after the dragons right beside me?’
The crown princess gave me a smile that I didn’t believe in for a second. ‘Forgive me,’ she said sweetly, ‘but what else could we do? After all, none of the rest of us knows your special peace signal. If you negotiate with the dragons alone on that clock tower, how will we know whether or not your negotiations are working? Really, we have no choice but to assume the worst, so …’
I crossed my arms. Thinking of Citrine had given me the perfect answer.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then I won’t be alone with them. I’ll have one other person with me up there, who can run back down and tell you if it all goes wrong. But it’ll be someone that I trust. Someone that I choose. And someone who’s my own age, no older, so the dragons won’t feel threatened when they see that I’m not alone.’
‘You mean your friend here?’ The crown princess laughed as she looked at Silke. ‘Oh, really. Do you expect us to trust her to tell us whether or not we should attack?’ She shook her head gently at us both, as if she was a disappointed parent. ‘She might be a clever girl, but her first loyalty obviously lies with you, not with her city.’
Silke cringed. But I didn’t.
‘That,’ I said, with grim satisfaction, ‘is why you’re going to send your younger sister up to the clock tower with me instead.’
The king let out a bellow of outrage that shook the room. The crown princess’s lips pressed tightly together … but for the first time I saw real respect in her eyes.
The pride that Silke radiated as she looked at me was unmistakable.
But unlike Silke, I didn’t smile, even when the commotion finally died down, the arguments ended and everyone eventually gave in.
Because now it was time to face my family.
CHAPTER 22
High at the top of the clock tower, a chill wind whipped through my hair and against my face, blowing over the waist-high stone walls and through the thin sleeves of my brown dress, and leaving goosebumps prickling all over my skin. The younger princess – Princess Sofia, the others had called her – wore a satin-lined hooded cloak that should have kept her warm against anything, but she still huddled in the far corner of the square tower, four feet away from me and scowling.
Scowling was good. If she’d looked afraid, I would have had to reassure her before my family could arrive. It wasn’t safe to show fear in front of predators.
But I didn’t have enough confidence to reassure anyone right now, least of all myself.
All I had was determination … and my scale-cloth, as a tangible reminder. I held it close to my chest as I watched my family wing through the air, their forms looking more and more massive with every moment. They flew in a wide formation across the outer edge of the city, their great heads tilting to observe everything below. Now that I could finally make out their colours, I recognised Grandfather in the lead, Mother on his right, Aunt Tourmaline and Aunt Émeraude flying behind and … was that actually Citrine, flying on his left? She hadn’t been back for a visit in ages!
Whatever had brought them all here was clearly monumental, if they’d summoned Citrine away from her palace and her worshippers to take part.
And I was supposed to talk them out of it? All of the adults in my family together?
Even when I’d been a full dragon, they hadn’t taken my opinions seriously. They’d all seen me as the restless, disobedient hatchling, the only one who couldn’t settle into her education or find her passion, the one who kept on causing trouble for everyone. And now …
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