Honorbound

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “No. Of course I’ll go.”

  “—I feel the king doesn’t always have your best interest—”

  “Stop.” The word is forceful and authoritative—the word of the king’s son. “Don’t say anything you’ll regret.” Amelrik gets up from the table, glancing around, like he’s worried someone could have overheard.

  “I never regret speaking the truth,” Gilbert says, but he keeps the rest of his thoughts about the king to himself.

  “I have to go,” Amelrik tells me. He makes quick eye contact with Odilia. “It’ll be okay. He hasn’t done anything yet. Well… nothing too terrible. Just hold on until I get back.”

  He leaves with Gilbert, who looks visibly relieved.

  Odilia sniffs really hard, still trying not to let her tears fall. Osric looks more and more stricken as he reads over the letter. Nobody offers me any information.

  “So,” I say, trying not to feel like a huge third wheel, “who wants to get started on those snowballs?”

  I get all cozy in the bed later, with a mug of hot chocolate and Cedric’s letter, which I borrowed from Odilia, and a pile of books on learning Vairlin. I have them sort of spread out around me—two volumes on grammar and one dictionary—along with the letter and a wax tablet for trying to figure out the translation.

  Amelrik’s lounging next to me, supposedly reading a book, except he keeps peering over at my notes. “That says ‘I’ve been observing their ways,’ not ‘I’m going to…’” He squints at my writing. “Wait, what does that say?”

  I jerk the tablet out of his view. “It says mind your own business. I’m never going to learn if you keep giving me the answers.”

  “You already know what’s in the letter.”

  “Only the gist of it.” Which I picked up when he and Odilia were discussing it earlier, after he got back from talking to his father. Except once they got going, they switched to Vairlin without seeming to notice, even though some of us still wanted to know what was going on. But it’s something about dragon attacks happening in the town where Cedric lives—in East Westford, which, as Odilia pointed out, is a really stupid name—and now a troop of paladins have arrived to investigate. And instead of getting the hell out of there like any sane dragon would do, Cedric’s decided this is the perfect opportunity to study them.

  Amelrik reaches across me for the wax tablet. I hold it out of his grasp, but he tickles my side—which is really low, if you ask me—and I burst out laughing. He takes the tablet, grinning as he reads it. “‘I’m going to discover their mating habits’?” He wrinkles his nose. “That is not what he wrote.”

  “Yes, it is! Right there.” I point to the line in the letter. “I mean, maybe he doesn’t say that exactly, but he does say something about mating habits. Doesn’t he?”

  “Cedric might be fascinated by paladins, but not like that. It says… Well, first of all, your tense is wrong. And second of all, mating is a possible meaning here, I guess, but that’s kind of archaic, and it should have been clear from context that it’s social habits. Like, their personal relationships. How they interact with each other.”

  “This is your dictionary. If it’s archaic, that’s your fault, not mine.”

  “Which I suppose could include mating,” he says, conveniently not taking responsibility for his faulty dictionary, “but… it doesn’t.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He shrugs. “It just doesn’t.”

  Well, that’s no help. I skim over my translation. It’s taken me, like, over an hour just to get the first paragraph done, and apparently I’ve botched the whole thing.

  “Hey, you got this part right,” Amelrik says cheerfully, pointing at my first sentence.

  “You mean, ‘Hey, Odilia, greetings from East Westford!’? Because that’s not the confidence booster you think it is.”

  He smirks as he reads the next part, trying and failing not to laugh.

  I snatch my wax tablet back from him. “Just read me the letter.”

  “No, you’re right, Virginia, you should learn.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Well—”

  I grab the book he was reading before, which he seemed pretty into, at least when he was actually reading it instead of being distracted by my bad translation. I hold my mug of hot chocolate over it.

  Amelrik gasps. “You wouldn’t!”

  “I might.” He’s right, though—I totally wouldn’t. “If you don’t want this book to have a terrible accident, you’d better start reading me that letter. And I want a real translation. No paraphrasing.”

  He rolls his eyes at that, but he also moves the letter closer, so it’s sitting between us, I guess so I can follow along.

  Which is kind of a stretch, but it’s still a nice gesture. I stuff his book under my pillows for safe keeping and lean back against them as I sip my hot chocolate, which is just cool enough to drink now.

  “‘Hey, Odilia, greetings from East Westford!’”

  “I know that part already.”

  He speaks slowly as he goes, giving himself time to read ahead. “‘Exciting stuff going on here. You wouldn’t believe it. There was another dragon attack last week. No idea who’s been doing it, but another one of the townspeople was killed after they got…’” He hesitates, pausing in his translation.

  “See?” I tell him. “It’s not so easy.”

  “‘…clawed from behind.’” He snickers. “Well, there’s your mating habits.”

  “Shut up. That’s not even the same sentence.” And what does clawing have to do with mating? Or do I not want to know? “Besides, someone is dead. It’s not funny.”

  “No, but your translation is. What did you have it down as?”

  “Um.” I pretend to check my notes, even though I already know the answer. “Afterward violenced upon.”

  He cracks up at that.

  I make a mental note to sip my hot chocolate more slowly, in case I need it for ammunition. “Keep reading.”

  “Right. Okay. Then it says… ‘Half a dozen more paladins arrived just last week. I’ve been observing their ways.’” He gives me a pointed look when he reads that sentence, the one I’d gotten so wrong. “‘They’re extremely fascinating. I’ve managed to start a conversation with a few of them—’”

  “He’s been talking to them?” That’s bold. Or completely stupid. Maybe both.

  “That’s Cedric for you.” His tone is a mixture of exasperated and wistful.

  “You miss him.” It’s not a question.

  “We were really close, growing up. I didn’t really have a lot of friends, just my cousins. I was the king’s son, and, well… It’s not like everyone didn’t know what I am.”

  “Amazing and wonderful?”

  He half snorts, half scoffs at that. “Odilia hung out with us a lot, but she had a lot of other friends, too. And she was a few years older. But me and Cedric, we mostly did everything together.”

  I nod, remembering how me and Celeste used to spend hours acting out crazy scenarios with our dolls or racing through the Hall of Heroes, the one with all the mangled old suits of armor on display. Which is actually kind of a creepy place to play, now that I think about it, but it didn’t mean anything to us back then. But Celeste was older than me, and as time passed, that difference felt wider and wider. And then there was the fact that I didn’t have St. George magic and sort of witnessed our mother get torn apart by a dragon in the marketplace and everyone thought I was pretty much useless. My social status plummeted—if I’d ever even had a status, which I’m not so sure of—while meanwhile Celeste only got more and more popular.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him,” Amelrik says. “Not since my father sent me to live with Elder clan. But judging from this letter, he hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “Keep reading. He started talking to some of them?”

  “Right. He says… ‘I’ve managed to start a conversation with a few of them, but no worthwhile information yet. On
e of them tells me he prefers spears over swords when it comes to gutting dragons. He was quite proud of that, for some reason. But the most interesting information I’ve gotten…’” Amelrik squints at it.

  “What?”

  “‘…was made through an observation. Some of the paladins have given each other nicknames. Midnight, Slipstream, Lodestone—”

  A cold wave of panic loosens my grip on my mug. It only slips for a second, but it’s enough to slosh some over the edge.

  “Virginia!” Amelrik yanks the letter away, but it’s too late, and he just flings drops of hot chocolate all over.

  My hands are shaking. Carefully, I set the mug back on the nightstand. “The next word. What is it?”

  “Are you okay? Do you know these people?”

  “They’re not people. I mean, they’re not names. Just tell me.”

  He looks at the page, but the ink’s smeared where I spilled on it. “I can’t read it. The words are gone. Virginia…” He sounds freaked out now, too.

  My stomach twists. “Was the next word vermilion or scarlet? You read it earlier. Maybe you remember.”

  “I don’t know. We don’t… They’re both red. I don’t know which one he meant.” He swallows. “If they’re not names—”

  “Code words. Paladin code words. It means…” I press my palms against my knees to steady myself. “If they were saying them around Cedric, they know he’s suspicious. And… it means they think they’ve pinpointed who the dragon is. They’re using stealth, for now, no open attacks, but if he gives them any more reason to suspect something…”

  Amelrik’s face is pale and his knuckles are white where he’s clutching the letter. “What’s vermilion?”

  “Capture for questioning.”

  “And scarlet?”

  I swallow, not even wanting to say it. “Orders to kill on sight.”

  6

  JUST BECAUSE I’M A ST. GEORGE DOESN’T MEAN I’M A MURDERER

  Odilia wrings her hands together as we make our way down to the lake. Our breath fogs in the air, and our feet make crunching noises in the snow. The very cold snow that I can’t help noticing is not our nice warm bed or my pajamas or a mug of hot chocolate. I mean, it’s only late afternoon, and I wasn’t actually wearing my pajamas yet, but still. An outdoor trek to the lake in the freezing cold wasn’t on my list for the day, let alone what we’re about to do, but that’s the least of my worries.

  Well, actually, what we’re about to do might be worth worrying about. But still. I’m not the one about to be gutted by paladins.

  “You’re sure?” Odilia says, her voice tight.

  I think she’s asking me, even though she looks at Amelrik when she says it. “Yes,” I tell her. Sure enough that something terrible’s going to happen. Whether they mean to kill him or capture him, the results are bad either way. I hope it’s capture, and I hope it hasn’t happened yet. But then again, if it has… They’d put a dragon ring on him, which would be torture enough. I remember the painful red marks on Amelrik’s neck when he was in our dungeon, my sister’s prisoner. But it was different for him, because he doesn’t have to transform regularly like the others. It would be worse for Cedric. I think of Amelrik’s mother—his terrifying, insane mother who tried to kill us and who I never want to run into again—and what they did to her. But she wore the ring for months, not days.

  If they do have Cedric, their torture won’t stop at the dragon ring. That’ll only be the beginning. And East Westford doesn’t have its own barracks. They might have taken him somewhere else for questioning, somewhere more fortified. My stomach clenches at the thought. I try to remind myself that either way, they’re not expecting a St. George to show up and free him. Which is maybe kind of becoming my specialty, now that I think about it.

  “It’s going to be okay, Odilia,” Amelrik tells her, his voice soft. I don’t know if he really believes that, or if he’s just saying it to comfort her.

  She nods, though her lower lip trembles a little, and she doesn’t look reassured. “It’s like that time he got lost in the woods and you had to go get him. He cried the whole way home.” She grins a little at that.

  “We were only five. And your mother told him dragons from Elder clan roamed the woods after dark, looking for draclings to eat.”

  “Seriously?” I guess things with Elder clan really weren’t good if they were their version of the bogeyman.

  Odilia snorts. “He was such a baby.”

  “You remember when he almost ate those berries?” Amelrik makes a face that’s half worried, half amused. “The really suspicious-looking ones he found in the woods?”

  “Yes. ‘To see what they were like.’ It’s like he wants me to have a heart attack. I smacked them out of his claws and stomped on them.”

  I glance around at the surrounding trees. “Are there really berries in these woods that can kill dragons?”

  Odilia gives me an accusing look, like she thinks I’m making a mental list of their weaknesses. “Best not to find out.”

  I suppose that’s true, but she doesn’t have to use that tone. Just because I’m a St. George doesn’t mean I’m a murderer.

  “You remember when he broke that music box?” she says, forgetting about me and turning to Amelrik. “The one Aunt Ingrid used to listen to over and over for hours? She was livid. Practically foaming at the mouth. He wasn’t allowed to leave his room for a month. He cried then, too.” She smiles gleefully at that, as if remembering all the times her little brother ended up in tears makes her really happy.

  Amelrik shifts uncomfortably. “Actually… That was me.”

  “What? No, it was Cedric. My stupid, clumsy brother—”

  “Took the fall for me. I broke the music box. Cedric was there—we were standing over it when my mother came in. She took one look at me…” He winces at the memory. “She was so angry. And she knew I’d done it. She just knew—she didn’t even wait for an explanation. She started yelling, and then she lunged at me. Cedric got in the way. He said he was the one that broke the music box, that he’d wanted to see how it worked and accidentally dropped it.”

  See? His mother—totally crazy. But I keep that thought to myself, not that he doesn’t already know and not that it isn’t obvious. “That’s awful.”

  He tries to shrug it off, but he doesn’t say anything.

  Odilia stares at him. “He never told me. You never told me.”

  “Neither of us ever mentioned it again. My mother didn’t really believe him—I know she didn’t—and it was like… like if we ever talked about it, we wouldn’t be able to keep up the lie.”

  Odilia scowls at that. “You still could have told me. Now I feel like an idiot. I teased him about that for years.”

  Which sounds kind of mean either way, really.

  We arrive at the edge of the lake—the perfect takeoff spot, according to Odilia.

  Amelrik wraps his arms around himself and takes a deep breath. “I swore I’d never do this again.”

  The sound of flesh ripping and tearing echoes out across the lake as Odilia transforms. It makes me cringe, but the dragons busy doing ice gliding don’t even turn to look.

  Odilia lashes her tail, her dark scales gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. “You cried last time we did this. That was definitely you.”

  “Odilia!” He glares at her. “I did not cry.”

  “Your eyes were wet.”

  “From the wind!” He kicks at the snow, sending a tuft of flakes flying through the air. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Odilia’s expression’s hard for me to read, now that she’s in dragon form, but something in her face changes, and when she speaks, her tone is serious instead of mocking. “You’ll find him. You’ll bring him back.”

  “We both will,” Amelrik says, meaning the two of us, since Odilia will be flying back home after she drops us off.

  She scrapes a claw against the ice. It makes a horrible scritching sound. “Are you sure… are you sure y
ou’ll be okay? Maybe I should—”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Amelrik says. “It’ll be easier for just me and Virginia.”

  She exhales, wisps of smoke from her nostrils mingling with her breath in the air in front of her. When we first started telling her our plan, she insisted on going, too. Until she actually started thinking about having to be in the same place as thousands of humans, some of them paladins, and then she looked sick and started fidgeting and acting really uncomfortable. I could tell she didn’t want to back out of going to save her brother, especially after she’d just made a big deal about it, but it was also obvious that going into that city was the last thing she wanted to do.

  I was also thinking she’d make the least believable human ever and would probably give us away the second we walked through the gates, especially if there were paladins around. I was still trying to think of a polite way to say that that wouldn’t end in her either hating me forever or actually murdering me when Amelrik told her it would be easier for just the two of us, since neither of us have to transform. I mean, in my case, I can’t, since I’m not a dragon. But I get his point.

  Odilia had seemed relieved, but still worried about Cedric, and she made him promise we’d find him.

  Amelrik said we’d do our best, which didn’t go over well, and then they argued for a while in Vairlin. But when all was said and done, Odilia had agreed to fly us there and then come back home.

  Which means we’d better actually find him, or else we’re going to have an awfully long walk back to Hawthorne clan in the snow. I mean, obviously that wouldn’t be the worst part about not finding him, and we did bring some supplies, just in case, but it’s still not something I’m looking forward to.

  “You ready?” Odilia asks. She spreads her giant talons palm up on the ice.

  Amelrik’s shoulders lift as he sucks in a breath. He mutters something to himself in Vairlin and doesn’t move.

  Which is really selling this whole dragon-flight thing.

  I stick out my hand to shake with him. “Well, it was a pleasure knowing you.”

  He rolls his eyes at me. “Virginia, we’re not going to die.”