Lyf waited at the edge of the wood until all of the draclings had straggled in. Across the field in the fading gray light she could make out the byre and a few outlying sheds.
And a dovecote. There was a dovecote.
Beyond lay the cottage, its smoke a tantalizing promise of food and rest and warmth.
Yanil would take care of her, Kaeldra had said.
If this was Yanil’s cottage.
If only, Lyf thought, she could leave the draclings here in the woods while she checked the lintel for the dove sign.
“Stay!” she said to them.
She hefted Owyn to one hip and set out across the field. “Stay!”
The draclings thronged after her, thrumming and rubbing against her legs.
“Stay!”
They came crowding round her feet, not even pretending to obey.
Lyf sighed. She had feared it would come to this. She could not escape them.
What now?
The cottage looked so snug, so solid. A yellow glow flickered in the window, spilled out across the yard.
It must be Yanil’s cottage. Farms with dovecotes were few enough—and this stood just east of the mountains. At any pass, the darkness was thickening. Likely none would see them crossing the field. She would check the lintel and knock only if the sign of the dove was there.
She trudged across the furrowed field—Owyn on one hip, the egg in its carrier before her, one dracling draped around her neck, a dozen more slinking behind. The rain had started up again—and hard. A cold stream trickled down her back; she was sodden to the bone. She skirted the byre and made straight for the cottage.
There. A mark above the lintel. A dove?
Yes. She could make it out now. A dove!
Lyf stumbled eagerly forward, grasped the iron knocker, thudded at the door. The draclings crowded round; she let Owyn slide down her hip to the ground. She could smell the fire and the rich aroma of a well-spiced, meaty stew.
Footsteps. The door was thrust ajar; a lanky, sandy-haired youth peered out. He looked older than Lyf, though not by much.
“We’re here for Yanil—” she began, then stopped, silenced by the shock in his eyes.
“Begone with you!” he said, urgent and low. “And take your beasties with you. We’re not wantin’ you here.
“Begone!”
Harper’s Tale
A man does not suspect, when he goes to a great deal of trouble to do a thing secretly, that those from whom he hides his deed might have planned it all along.
The window was high, my lords and ladies. The ground was far below. Were it not for the blankets, which the captives ripped into strips and knotted together, they would never have escaped.
That the queen might have left the blankets for just such a purpose … what reasonable soul would suspect?
Also I would think that if the queen truly desired her captives’ escape, she might have had the courtesy to loosen two bars instead of one, so that harpers, grown stout from the gains of their excellence, would not have to writhe and squirm and wriggle most painfully to squeeze out.
(Would you pass me one of those tarts? There’s a good lass!)
Perhaps the late arrival of Nysien in the room should have set their thumbs to pricking. But he was blackened in one eye and raging against the Krags. And it was he, after all, who discovered the loose bar. Why, if he had betrayed them, would he help them to flee?
So they put their suspicions to rest.
And Kaeldra, Jeorg, Nysien, and the finest harper since the time of the old road builders escaped and stole away.
CHAPTER 9
Brine Rats
“Gar? Gar, who is it?” A woman’s voice came from within the cottage.
“It’s no one, Ma. Just …”
The door opened wider, and a short, round, worried-looking woman peered out. Wisps of gray hair escaped her headwrap. She was haloed in yellow light. Something shifted in her face; she drew in breath. Lyf felt a quick movement near her feet, then looked down to see a long, red tail streaking through the doorway and into the cottage.
Screams from within. More streaking forms: the draclings.
“Come back!” Lyf cried, but to no avail. The overpowering flood of their hunger surged into her mind.
The youth named Gar tried to shove the door shut, but a tangle of draclings and skirt and leg got in the way. The little bluish green female on Lyf’s shoulders gathered herself, leapt, thudded against the door, then staggered back, shook herself, and tunneled under the woman’s skirts.
Gar had vanished from the doorway, and now the woman fled within as well, leaving the door ajar. With a hoarse shout, Owyn bolted through.
“Owyn!” Lyf snatched at the nape of his cloak, missed, lunged after him into the cottage.
All was in an uproar.
Draclings filled the room, scrambling over one another to fling themselves at a large, steaming kettle that hung over a central hearth. They pumped their wings futilely, as if trying to fly. Two of the larger draclings stretched up on hind legs until their talons hooked over the rim. The kettle tilted precariously. The heat of the iron surface didn’t seem to trouble them, but then one stepped into the fire, sprang sharply back, knocked over the churn. Milk came gushing out. A dark-haired girl leapt upon a bench, screaming. Another, younger, girl ventured into the fray and swatted at the draclings with a broom. She was screaming too. The woman grabbed hold of the broom-swatting girl’s waist and strove to drag her away. The youth, from a safe distance, pelted the draclings with crab apples.
Lyf looked about for Owyn. There! He had somehow got hold of a barley bannock and was happily munching away.
“Come! Draclings, come!” Lyf called.
They still paid her no mind, except for one of the littlest ones, who stretched up on his hind legs and tried to nibble Lyf’s fingers. An apple smacked against a big orangy-red draclings head. He whipped around, spat out a lick of blue flame. It kindled at one edge of the broom straw and then—to Lyf’s horror—set it all ablaze.
With an ear-piercing shriek, the girl dropped the broom, then retreated back near her sister. The woman, surprisingly quick, snatched up a ewer and dumped water onto the broom. In a billow of steam, the fire hissed out.
The draclings stared raptly at the smoldering broom. For a moment all was silent, save for the last fizzling hiss of steam. One by one, they all—the bench-standing girl and the broom-swatting girl, the youth named Gar and the woman who must be their mother—turned to look at Lyf.
She felt the weight of their gazes upon her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “They’re hungry. And Owyn, too. I’m sorry he took your bread. We are all of us—” She stopped, flustered. “This is … where Yanil lives?”
“Aye, ‘tis,” the woman said. “Only …” She paused. “We’re not knowing where he is. I’m afeared—” She drew breath, spoke again. “But I need to know this: Will they harm us? The beasties?”
“Owyn and I, we spent the night with them—and all this day past. And never have they made shift to harm us. But … they are hungry.”
“Alone in the woods with ‘em? Poor lass! And you not more than ten winters old, by the look of you.”
“Almost twelve,” Lyf said. She hated it when people thought she was younger than she was. Which they did. Ever they did. And she thought, when she was truthful with herself, that it was not only her smallness, but something else as well. Something that had been protected which, in most children of her age, had been buffeted about a bit. Something cosseted and soft.
The woman regarded Lyf thoughtfully. Her flesh was slack, with many fine wrinkles, but her eyes looked keen and alert. She seemed about to say something when a thud by the kettle drew her eye. The draclings were assailing it again.
“Fetch the brine rats from the byre, Gar! And be quick about it!”
“But Ma— ”
“Fetch them then, Gar! We are doing this thing. Your da has pledged himself—pledged all of us. Get along with you!”<
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Gar sullenly turned and loped out the doorway.
The woman turned to Lyf. “Can you spoon them out a bit of the stew? To keep them busy till the brine rats are come?”
“Yes,” Lyf said. But … brine rats. What were these brine rats?
Lyf shrugged off the egg carrier, set it down in a corner. The woman handed her a ladle and a wide wooden basin. Lyf made her way into the swarm of draclings near the pot, careful not to step on talon or tail, and hoping not to get nipped. They crowded round her, nosing her. Their hungries swelled to a flood in her mind. She breathed in the rich, meaty aroma and scooped high over the pot so that the draclings could not reach the basin. They leaped up, nipping with needle-sharp teeth.
Lyf set down the basin; the draclings fell into a slurping frenzy, pushing it across the rush-strewn floor. She hoped the woman would offer her “a bit of the stew” as well. And Owyn too, of course. Although, she thought enviously, he was still munching on his loaf. His stomach was no longer hollow, like hers.
“Gar bears a long grudge, so he does,” the woman said, staring anxiously at the draclings. “All the way from the last time.”
“The last time?”
“When the other green-eyed one came,” the bench-standing girl said.
“Her that was dressed like a boy,” the broom-swatting girl said.
“You mean Kaeldra?” Lyf asked.
The woman nodded. “Aye, she’s the one. Though she called herself Coldran.” She eyed Lyf sharply. “And who would you be, then?”
“Lyf. Kaeldra’s second-sister. And this is Owyn, Kaeldra’s son.”
Owyn looked up from his loaf. “Is Mama here?”
Lyf shook her head. Owyn’s face fell. Lyf feared that he would cry, but he only took another bite of bannock.
“But Yanil… will be back, then?” she asked the woman. She needed for him to come back.
“He’s my husband. He will come back—unless harm has befallen him.”
The broom-swatting girl edged toward the diaclings. One of them looked up and snorted out smoke. The girl hastened back.
“What happened … the last time … with Gar?” Lyf asked.
“Didn’t the other one tell you? Those draclings ate three of Gar’s pet rabbits. That was bad enough. But t’other thing… They killed our dog.”
“Burnt it to a cinder,” the broom-swatting girl said.
“Oh!” Lyf was taken aback.
“But you must know how the beasties are, being a dragon girl yourself.”
“I’m not a dragon girl. I don’t care a crumb about the draclings! They followed us here; we couldn’t get rid of them!”
Gar pushed through the door and thumped down two heavy buckets on the floor. A greenish liquid came sloshing over the sides. Furry, green-gray lumps floated within.
“What’s that?” Lyf asked.
“Why, brine rats,” the woman said. “What did you think?”
“But what… what are brine rats?”
The woman seemed surprised. “You of all folk should know. We trap our rats and pickle them in brine. It’s for to feed the beasties, should they have need. All of the dove sign do it.”
Pickled rats? Ugh! All at once, Lyf felt queasy.
The draclings looked up, sniffing. “Let’s fetch these down to the cellar now,” the woman said. “I will not turn the beasties out, but I won’t be havin’ them skelterin’ all about the place.” She lugged the pails to the cellar hatch, pried it open.
“Are you certain they won’t do harm to the draclings? Those brine rats?” Lyf asked.
“It’s meat, missy—only meat! That’s what they like—or so my Yanil tells me.”
Two of the draclings edged toward the buckets. The basin, Lyf saw, was licked clean. The woman grabbed one bucket and climbed down the ladder. Lyf took hold of the second bucket, waited to hand it down.
“Wait,” Lyf said. “In a moment.”
The other draclings looked up. A few of them stepped tentatively toward Lyf, then they all scampered in a pack across the room and converged about the bucket.
“Hurry!”the woman said. “Give it down!”
Lyf handed her the bucket. The draclings spilled through the hatch and down the ladder. Lyf heard the woman cry out, “Oh! Oh, me!” as she was swallowed up by a tide of draclings. Then she was charging back up the ladder, startlingly spry for her girth. “Shut the hatch!” she said. “Shut it!”
Lyf started to, but then stopped, troubled, and peered into the darkness below.
The larger draclings thronged all around the buckets— but the three littlest ones couldn’t get near. They couldn’t push their way in to eat. One of them nipped at the other draclings’ tails, spitting out sparks.
They hadn’t been able to get at the stew, either. And in the forest … had they eaten then? Lyf couldn’t recall.
“Would you shut that hatch!” the woman was saying. “I’ll ladle you out some stew!”
Lyf could feel their hungries now—just a few of them— high and plaintive. Her own stomach growled. “The little ones,” she said. “They can’t get to the food. I’ll have to feed them.”
She climbed down the ladder into the damp, low-ceilinged cellar, pushed her way through the mob of draclings. The brine rats reeked of vinegar and pickling spices and something else—a sickening, rancid-meat smell. Lyf approached one of the buckets, careful not to get too near those needle-sharp teeth. She steeled herself and reached within, shuddering at the slimy touch of pickled rat fur. She groped round until she found a tail, then, grasping it between thumb and forefinger, pulled it out. In the half-light from above she could see the dead rat’s wide-open eyes, the glimmer of a pointy tooth. Ugh! She flung it back among the little draclings. The spark spitter reared up, caught it in his mouth, gobbled it with a crunch and a gulp. Lyf tossed out one rat after another, until the little ones had eaten their fill.
Abruptly, she glimpsed movement from above. Something smacked her square in the face, then bounced onto the floor.
A brine rat! Revolted, she wiped her eyes and looked up into Gar’s smirking face.
“Dragon girl,” he taunted.
Tears sprang into Lyf’s eyes. She was not. She had only brought them here, and now Yanil would do what needed to be done with them. But… how if Yanil never came?
“Gar!” The woman’s voice was angry. “Tell the lass you’re sorry or you’ll be feelin’ the back of my hand.”
Gar’s face disappeared from the hatch.
“Gar! Gar!”
Scuffling footsteps above, and then the slam of the door.
Now all the brine rats were gone. Some of the draclings had tipped over the buckets and were snuffling about inside them, pushing them across the cellar floor until they bumped against the rows of kegs, the baskets of roots and dried peas. Their bellies bulged and sagged. One by one, the draclings stretched, yawned, curled up together until they formed a lumpy mass. Lyf started for the ladder, but the three littlest draclings sprang up and thronged about her feet, thrumming. And she felt a plea, a tugging at her mind:
“Lyf?” The woman and two girls were peering down at her. “Come have some stew now,” the woman said. “You’ve done your part.”
Reluctantly, Lyf bent down, scratched each of their heads in turn. They were thrumming now, thrumming deep in their throats. One, whose scales showed the color of green apples through rents in her tattered skin, nibbled gently at Lyf’s fingers. The little bluish green-scaled dracling hooked her talons into Lyf’s gown and tried to climb up. Lyf backed away fast, shaking her off. The pumpkin-colored one spat out sparks.
“You stay here,” Lyf ordered, and added, “I’ll soon return.”
Lyf hardened herself, climbed briskly up the ladder, and shut the hatch.
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She was not the dragon girl.
“I thought you didn’t like them.”
The younger of the two sisters poured water over Lyf’s hands. Lyf scrubbed hard, trying to get rid of the brine rats’ stench.
“You said you didn’t care about them, but you went down to feed the little ones. And then you stroked them, as if they were only byre cats. You looked like you might be listening to them. Like you can understand them. Can you?”
“I don’t know,” Lyf said shortly, wiping her hands on her kirtle. They still stank, but she had cleaned them as best she could.
“Leave her be now, Brita,” the woman said. “It’s late. Go to the loft with your sister and get you to bed.”
“But Ma!”
“Begone with you!”
Brita left grudgingly, moving slowly up the ladder, with many a lingering look back.
The woman handed Lyf a warm bowl of stew. It was thick and meaty and good. Lyf ate until the pangs in her stomach subsided and then, to the gentle proddings of the woman—her name was Una—she poured out her tale. Una was easy to talk to, now they were alone. Owyn had eaten while Lyf fed the draclings and lay asleep, hugging the egg. Gar had not returned. But Lyf heard shiftings in the straw above, and she was all but certain that the two girls had their ears pressed to the boards.
“And what was it you were saying of Yanil?” Lyf asked when she had done with her story. “Why do you fear for him?”
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