The scales weren't rough at all, she found; they fit together seamlessly, and were not entirely hard. There was some give to them, more like chain mail than plate armor. Edelweiss made a soft huff that May could feel against her back and settled down.
"I was wondering," May began before Edelweiss could say anything, "what exactly a challenge of compassion could be. You don't strike me as the sort to put someone in danger to make me rescue them."
"I'm not," Edelweiss said agreeably.
"Your first challenge showed that to me," May said. She made herself comfortable, folding her hands against her belly. It was strange how relaxed she felt. She'd been going so fast for so long, but Edelweiss was forcing her to slow down. "You like to talk. You like to understand. You don't like to act."
Edelweiss huffed again. "You're getting to know me so well."
"That you're going to fight me for the third challenge at all seems against your nature," May noted.
"Ah," Edelweiss said. "But it is in yours."
May couldn't argue with that. She shrugged one shoulder and inclined her head at the same time. "So, more talking today."
"Not philosophizing, though," Edelweiss said. "Philosophizing is ultimately just about creating matters for the mind to work on. This will be just your feelings, and me, here, assessing if you are genuinely caring enough for my princess to go with you."
There was a lot May could say to that. For all that she had saved people in trouble plenty of times, she tended to go hard, think hard, feel hard, and look back on things later rather than try to anticipate what anyone was feeling at the time. "This is very untraditional," she said softly.
"And you're afraid, I'm sure," the dragon said. "Losing at this would be a great deal worse than losing at any other matter of glory, yes?"
"Losing in battle might kill me," May pointed out, uneasy.
"But it certainly wouldn't find you wanting as a person," Edelweiss said. "Well, view it as anticipation. Endure this and show yourself a caring person, and you'll get to fight me all you want."
May knotted her hands into fists. Something felt weird, a churning anxiety in her chest that made her skin crawl briefly. But she nodded.
"As the princess told you, I'm no longer the princess's captor, no matter how I started out," Edelweiss said.
In their position, it was hard to see her face, and May didn't embarrass herself by craning around to try to do so. "Well, you're clearly looking out for her best interests," she said neutrally. "It didn't seem like you were just keeping her as a prize."
"With that in mind," Edelweiss said, "what are you doing here, May? I know you're doing it for the glory, of course, but from what you said while philosophizing, I know that you won't do something awful just for the sake of glory. But what sort of princess do you think would hide away in a tower guarded by a dragon? What sort of life are you offering her if you meet the challenge and she comes away with you?"
Oh.
That was a question May hadn't really anticipated. The closest she'd come had been imagining what kind of person the princess was.
She started there since it seemed easiest, tilting her head back against Edelweiss's side and exhaling slowly. "I think she's a very lonely woman," she said.
Edelweiss's side heaved again. "Lonely?" she asked, sounding deeply startled.
May nodded. "Well, she's been out here all the time. With you for company, sure, but who else? Just knights who come and yell like I did, who probably try to fight right away, or get annoyed with your challenges, or fail them? Maybe she talked to them herself originally, maybe she didn't, but clearly by now she doesn't even want to engage with them at all."
"I'm not sure I'd call that lonely," Edelweiss hedged.
"Not wanting to be among others might be one of the worst forms of loneliness," May said. "When I was younger..."
"When you were younger...?" Edelweiss prompted, when it was clear May wasn't going to move on right away.
May shook her head, too embarrassed, chest too tight. "That's not important," she said hurriedly. "But the point is, people aren't meant to be alone. Whether you love other humans or whether you hate them, they're necessary. Everyone has their reasons for being how they are—even if they're unpleasant old cumbergrounds. And maybe if those are all you see you get... impatient. Easily angered. Want to either prove them wrong or leave them alone forever. Good lord, but I know it. But what happens then?"
Edelweiss shifted behind her. "What does happen then?"
"I can... only guess," May muttered, forcing words out around the way her ribs had seemed to lock up on her lungs. "But one way or another, you'd get stuck in yourself, wouldn't you? There's nobody to open up to or close off from. Nobody to learn from or vow to never be like. What kind of goal can anyone have...?"
"A goal that has nothing to do with people, perhaps."
"What kind of goal?" May repeated, insistent.
For a long moment, it didn't seem like Edelweiss would answer. "Peace, perhaps," she said finally.
"Is it really?" May asked. "If it was peace, then why would she be considering me at all? Why set a challenge? Why not just keep you in there and stay silent until I eventually left?"
"I can't answer that—"
"Is it because she got curious?" May asked. "Because she got lonely enough to engage with another human being, even if it was just... to try to toy with me? Why so many questions if she doesn't want to know about me? Or—" A thought occurred. "Is it because I'm a woman?"
Edelweiss seemed tense, put on the spot on her princess's behalf. "You have to admit it's rare."
"Oh, yes, I'm an oddity," May agreed, feeling herself get more tense and irritable, even though it was hardly Edelweiss—or Edelweiss's princess's—fault. "What kind of woman tries to become a knight? What sort of court will knight her? What sort of princesses does she rescue, and why?"
"All that aside," Edelweiss said firmly, "let's stick to my earlier question for today. So you want to rescue that sort of princess from her solitude. You think it'd be good for her. But then what do you do with her?"
May found herself blushing for some reason. It was the phrasing, she decided—it was too blunt and offered up too many possibilities. "I mean," she said, words almost tumbling out of her as she tried to get them in order, "originally I was planning to take her back to King Edelmarr's court, and would try to reintegrate her. She has been gone a long time, but presumably if her family line has survived, there are relatives who would want to see her, whether in his kingdom or elsewhere, and that would be the best place to start. His court is big and rich. There are many scholars, many knights, and many families represented. As well, his capital city has many craftsmen. I would hope she would find something to interest her now, even if she had nothing before, locked away as she is."
"And if she does not want to stay, after she has given that a fair shot?"
May blinked, finally turning to crane around at Edelweiss, finding her face hard to read for once, serious and alien. "She's not a prisoner," May said finally. "And I don't expect to tear this tower down stone by stone when I leave it. If she wishes to come back here, she could do that at any time."
"Hm," Edelweiss said.
She moved away so suddenly that May lost her balance, falling back onto her elbows as the dragon somehow slipped out from under her, flicking and twisting away to climb the tower again.
"Edelweiss!" May called in a panic. "Did I hurt your feelings in some way? I'm sorry!"
At the sound of her voice, Edelweiss paused at the window ledge and looked back. "No," she said, after a strange pause. "I'll catch you something for dinner shortly. But you answered, so I'm reporting back to my princess now."
"Ah," May said, turning away so her strange relief wouldn't be too visible. "Very well."
*~*~*
The next day, May left her tent with some bread and wine for her morning meal, only to find Edelweiss already out of the tower and waiting for her.
"Good morni
ng," May said, surprised.
"Good morning," Edelweiss replied brightly. "Do you have any early plans today, or would you like to talk to me now?"
"I'm barely awake," May protested, gesturing toward her helplessly. "But if you or your lady wishes... What brings this on so early?"
Edelweiss came over at once, winding around May, so she sat in the middle of a ring made of the wyrm's body. It was an odd position to be in, strangely anxiety-inducing—she was reminded of a picture she had seen in a bestiary once of a knight wrapped up in a serpent's body, having the life squeezed out of him.
Or at least, she'd thought that was what had been happening. Bestiaries did not always have the most comprehensible illustrations.
She drew a few breaths to calm herself down. A dragon, certainly, but just Edelweiss, and they were still two days out from when they would fight. So this was harmless—an embrace, perhaps.
That Edelweiss might want to embrace her was itself somewhat flattering. She put a hand on Edelweiss's side and sat slowly, so that it was more like last night, her back against Edelweiss's coil. This time, with Edelweiss coiled around more tightly, May could see the dragon's face. Couldn't avoid it, really.
Edelweiss smiled at her. "I couldn't wait any longer," she said. "I've known what I wanted to ask you today since yesterday."
"You could have just asked me yesterday, then," May grumbled, but kept eye contact with Edelweiss. "Well, if you're so eager, you might as well go ahead. Do you mind if I eat while I talk?"
"I suppose I'll allow it," Edelweiss said, amused. "Since you've your food in your hand and everything. Mind it doesn't make you answer poorly."
"I'll mind," May said, and dipped her bread in the wine pointedly.
Edelweiss smirked. "In that case," she said, "What kind of woman tries to become a knight? What sort of court will knight her? What sort of princesses does she rescue, and why?"
May froze with the bread halfway to her mouth, dripping wine on her shirt front. "Did you just," she began, stunned.
"I did!" Edelweiss let out a giggle, the very tip of her tail curling to cover her mouth, though not doing a very good job of it. "I've heard of chevaleresses before, of course, but to my understanding, it's rare to see a case where a lady knight just goes out on adventures, isn't it? Usually the title is given to a bunch of women at once if, oh, they defend the castle when the army is off at war and someone takes advantage of it to attack. Or defend their town when the men are captive, or so forth and so on. And most of those, as I understand it, stay in their castle or town where they earned the honor, and continue to be guards there."
"That's true," May said, hearing her voice come out kind of strange and high, scratchy with the sudden embarrassment of knowing she was going to have to talk about herself.
Edelweiss nodded wisely, eyes glittering. "But while I'm sure you'd stand and fight if any brought the battle to you, you're the sort of knight who goes on quests to win honor and glory. To make a name for themself as an individual. As a man does."
"Yes."
"So, your answer?"
"How does this have anything to do with the challenge?" May asked, but knew how even as she did. "No, never mind. If she's to go with me, she needs to understand me. The kindness, the empathy, is in recognizing that." She wished she didn't sound a little resentful, but could hear it in her voice. "Correct?"
Smirking toothily, Edelweiss said, "Correct."
"Stop looking at me so directly," May said, and wished she hadn't had to ask it. "It's... difficult."
Edelweiss's smirk dropped off her face. "Oh," she said, sounding genuinely taken aback. "I... apologize."
And she lidded her eyes, turning her face away more, her cheek nestled on her own coils.
"Thank you," May mumbled, knowing the sound was still clear as day to the dragon. "I hardly know where to start. Do you just want to know how I was knighted...?" And then, before Edelweiss could answer, she sighed. "No, my motivations. I'm not one to speak of myself beyond the honors I've earned, you know."
"I can tell," Edelweiss murmured, but at least she kept her tone non-judgmental.
May closed her eyes. Even with Edelweiss not looking at her, there was something so immediate about this, the sight of those coils, that long tooth-lined cheek, the soft rise and fall of her scales as she breathed. She could still feel Edelweiss this way, but it put some artificial distance between them.
"When I was a child," she said softly, "I dreamed of being a knight. I had three older brothers, separated by two years each, all of whom were training in the military arts, and I tagged along after them. At first, my father thought it was amusing. He let me train along with the youngest boy, with a dull wooden practice sword and a wooden shield. It meant that his older two children could pair off, and his youngest two likewise."
Edelweiss let out a little rumble, a soft noise of acknowledgment.
"But as I grew older, and as they grew older," she said, "that changed. The swordsmaster took on each brother one at a time, and eventually the youngest of my brothers graduated to his training, leaving me without my sparring partner. I waited with excitement for my turn, and to see what my father had planned for my training until I was old enough to join the swordsmaster's students."
"And it was nothing," Edelweiss said.
"Yes," May said. "Father had no plans for me. I trained on my own in the yard for two weeks before begging a sparring partner off him. One of the fosterlings, somebody. Anybody, so I could improve and the swordsmaster wouldn't overlook me."
Edelweiss winced, but said nothing. She clearly guessed where this was going.
May sighed. "Father didn't take me seriously. After he'd finished laughing and saw how intent I was on this, he got annoyed. To put it simply, he had viewed my desire to train and fight and become a knight like my brothers as nothing more than a childish fancy—rather, he'd thought mostly that my inherent girlish desire to help others had been focused on aiding my brothers in achieving their dreams. But now that they had advanced in their training past the point I could help, it was time for me to turn to what my dreams for myself should be, and learn proper womanly pastimes."
That earned her a sigh from Edelweiss, but again, nothing more.
"Nothing I could say got through to him," May said softly. "There was no argument I could make that didn't annoy him more. He had his view of why things were the way they were and he not only had not considered my feelings in the matter, he doubled down the more I argued. I was hurt, felt as though my dream had been cut off, was abandoned and betrayed. He assumed I was just lonely without my brothers, and having some typically feminine hysteria over it, and that he'd instigated this by allowing me to train in the first place."
When Edelweiss still didn't say anything, May thought over what she'd just said and scoffed softly. "Not entirely untrue, actually. Maybe if my expectations had been lower I wouldn't have had the chance to get hurt so much."
"Or it may have been a different sort of hurt," Edelweiss said dryly. "A deep, insidious one where you wouldn't have been able to identify why you felt so terrible all the time."
"You could be right at that," May said. Even talking about this was dragging her down, making her heart beat in that old, painful way, too slow, aching in her chest. "I only know what happened to me. I felt like I hit a wall of my own gender, where before nothing had stood in my way. So I gave in. I learned the things he wanted me to, I practiced needlepoint and singing and all that. I dressed like a proper young lady, and something inside me died and rotted."
"Died and rotted?" Edelweiss echoed.
May shook her head, sighing. "I don't know how else to put it," she said. "I wish I did. Sleep became my main motivation. I wanted nothing more than to go to bed as early as possible and sleep as late as possible."
"You were tired of the world."
"I'm not sure. Actually, the world became a little unreal, like I was looking at it through glass or a fog. I stopped feeling things deeply at all, as i
f my feelings had got so overused that they broke. I still did the things they wanted, but only because I was prodded to do them. Maidservants got me up so I had to get out of bed, they dressed me so I had to be dressed, they put food in front of me so I had to eat. Sometimes I even fantasized about..." She trailed off, her desire to put things into words frustrated by things she couldn't say. "Well, it doesn't matter. I was hurting in ways I couldn't even entirely feel, and I wished deep down that the people around me would realize how much they were hurting me so that... what? I didn't even know. It was like that."
Edelweiss was shifting now, winding around behind her, but slowly enough that it didn't make it hard to keep her seat. Rather, it was the closest thing the dragon could do to a hug without being a threat, this sort of loose coiling, and how odd was that?
"So what changed?" Edelweiss said. "Did you just eventually happen to heal? Did you get a scare that made you decide to reclaim your dream...?"
"Neither," May said roughly. "It went on some years, to the point that my father started warning me that 'my bad attitude' would impact my marriageability. Oh, I hoped that it ought to—I was only just old enough to have desires for anybody, and I assure you, it wasn't for men. I'm sure if Father knew that, he'd only put it down to more perversions to my nature due to him having allowed me to behave so like a man when I was younger."
Her ears caught up to her mouth, and she hesitated, going red and waiting to see how Edelweiss might react to that bit of news. Now that she was older, she knew such things really weren't unheard of and occurred fairly regularly, even in the court, but that didn't make them any less the cause for shameful gossip or ridicule. And many protectors of a lady, let alone a princess, would want to hide their charges from someone like her.
"What a shame if he were to think so," Edelweiss said after a brief pause. Her tone was a little odd, but there was no shock or scandal in her voice—not even that note of teasing she liked to favor May with. "Even beasts love and mate with their own sex as they see fit. It's as natural as anything else, so why put it down to some error in upbringing?"
To the Victor Page 29
