by Jo Walton
Selendra almost burst into the dining room where her family was gathered, with Frelt still in pursuit. Fortunately her good sense returned to her when she was far enough from him, so she could turn and face him in the broad hallway between the speaking and dining rooms.
“I am serious, sir, and I mean what I say,” she said. “No, do not come closer, you are a parson and I know you were making me an honest offer and do not mean to ravish me.”
Ravishing her was closer to Frelt’s thoughts than he would have wished to admit, but he also was calmer after the chase and stopped as he was bidden. “Will you not take a little time to consider?” Frelt asked. “Must I consider my hopes dashed forever?”
“Yes, yes, forever,” Selendra replied, still in some agitation. “Now go, please, if that was your purpose in coming here.” Again she repeated the rote words of refusal, running them together in her haste to have them said. “I am sensible of the honor you do me but my answer is no. Please believe me, Blessed Frelt.” She put her hand on the door to the dining room. “My brothers are here and I am under their protection.”
Frelt found himself growling far back in his throat. She had not needed to say that. He was a respectable parson, not some bandit. He forgot for the moment that he had hoped to carry her off and go through formal arrangements later. He even forgot how close he had been to her, and that he might yet have succeeded in his object despite all her denials. He turned around huffily, and before him lay the long downward corridor, and beyond that the long walk home, and once more he was facing it without having partaken of any refreshment.
3
The Sisters’ Vow
9. SELENDRA’S COLORING
All three dragons looked up from their beef as Selendra pushed the dining room door open in its arch. It was a sturdy old-fashioned close-fitting wooden door, and it creaked beneath Selendra’s hand. Some say wooden doors are Yargian and therefore abhorrent, lumping them with mantillas, confession, and cooked meat, others say they are simply out of the mode for the time being. Bon Agornin had yielded sufficiently to fashion to remove the door on his speaking room, but he had insisted that tradition must rule so far as concerned his dining room. The siblings therefore had the protection and warning a door affords, and prepared themselves to greet their sister and, as they still imagined, the Blessed Frelt.
Selendra came in in some confusion. At one moment she was flushed almost pink, at the next, she went pale, paler even than Haner’s accustomed delicate gold. She closed the door behind her and stood a moment with her tail to her family.
“What is wrong?” Haner asked at once.
“Where is Frelt?” Penn inquired, only a moment later.
If Selendra had been given time to compose herself, she might have been able to give dissembling answers to these questions. She knew a dragon maid should not betray agitation after turning away a proposal of marriage. Yet the agitation was internal, she was given no time, and she could hardly feel that the proposal had been decorous. She turned to face them.
“Frelt has gone,” she answered her brother. “And I am a little shaken,” she informed her sister. She lowered herself to the ground, and Avan silently passed her a haunch of beef. She took it but did not begin to eat for a moment. The others stared at her.
“Gone?” Penn asked, collecting himself. “Without waiting for whatever business that brought him here?”
“He had no such business,” Selendra said. “Or rather, I was his business. He came to propose to me, and he did, and I declined, and he has left. That’s the whole of it.” Seldom has a maiden been less gratified by an unwelcome proposal. She sank down on her haunches, again flushed pink and reduced to a condition of near-paralysis.
“Did he . . . approach you?” Haner asked.
“If he did I will have him torn out of the Church,” Penn said, rising to his feet angrily.
“And I will tear him to shreds once he has lost his immunity,” Avan said, his wings rising of themselves. “Selendra?”
“He has not hurt me,” Selendra said quickly. “He did not assault me. But he approached closely enough to distress me and I seem to have lost my composure.”
“You are pink!” Penn declared, though at that moment she was almost white. “If he has done that he will marry you in recompense.”
“But that’s what he wants!” Selendra said, pinkening again, and backing a step away from her brother without rising. “He came here hoping to claim me as a bride. I hate him, and I will never marry him.”
“You should not have been alone with him,” Avan said.
“A parson!” Haner said, stung into defending her sister. “Parsons are always greeted, you know that, because they cannot fly up to the usual entrances. You were there when Sel said she was going to greet him, you yourself told us she had gone with approval.”
“He was abusing his position as a parson,” Avan said.
“I am not hurt,” Selendra insisted, the weakness of her voice belying her words. “Nothing has happened, except that he proposed and I rejected him.”
“He should have asked me for permission to speak to you,” Penn said, frowning. “Permission which I should certainly have denied. But if you are pink my dear, and I am afraid it seems you are, then it is too late to turn back and there must be a marriage. It is making the best of a bad situation, I know, but consider the alternative.”
“I am not pink, I am merely agitated, I shall not be pink when I have eaten and rested a little,” Selendra said, attempting to turn her head to examine her own scales. “I will never marry Frelt. He is a bully and a prig and a pompous swine.”
Avan and Penn exchanged speaking glances. They were dragons who had seen more of the world than their sisters, and the thought of what could be done with a sister who was neither maiden nor wife hung heavily upon them. Avan was reduced to wondering if he had any acquaintance in Irieth who might consent to take his sister as a consort in such circumstances as this. It would not be a marriage such as he would desire, one which would give her an establishment of her own, but there were dragons rising in the capital who might find her dowry and connections sufficiently attractive for that, despite her blush, even if they might not want to share their names and status with her. It was not what any dragon would choose for his sister, but it might be better than a marriage with a parson she despised and who had deliberately ruined her.
Selendra took a few bites of her beef in silence. Then she looked up, her big violet eyes brimming with tears and whirling rapidly. “Why are you all looking at me without speaking?” she asked. “I have done nothing wrong, nothing. I am not in disgrace. I refuse to be.”
“Of course you are not,” Haner said, going to her sister at once and folding her wings around her. “Come away to our own cave and rest, you’ll soon be well again.”
The sisters made their way out together. “Am I really pink?” Selendra asked Haner as soon as they were alone. “Pink so that everyone can see?”
“Just a little, sometimes,” Haner answered. “It will soon pass off, I’m sure, if you didn’t let him come up close to you.”
“But I did,” Selendra admitted. “I was so surprised that I couldn’t move, and he came close and leaned on me.”
“Whatever are we going to do?” Haner asked. “Penn really does mean it about making the best of a bad situation, he’ll have you married off. But what else can you do?”
“Amer will know,” Selendra said with decision. “Go to fetch Amer, and tell her what has happened. If there is anything we can do to get my color back, she will know.”
Selendra made her way to the sleeping cave, and Haner hurried off to fetch Amer.
10. THE SISTERS’ VOW
Amer tutted and blew out hot breath when Haner explained what had happened, and poured out scorn and expletives upon Frelt. Then she told Haner to bring Selendra to the kitchen, and put a kettle of water on the fire to heat.
“You are old enough to understand,” she began, when Selendra came in,
pink and miserable. “I cannot treat you like a child to be given medicine without knowing.”
“I’ll take it whatever it is,” Selendra pleaded.
“Most likely, this will restore you without danger,” Amer said, as she ground her herbs. “But you should know there is a chance that it will not work, and another smaller chance that it will work too well. This is medicine, not magic, and medicine works by numbers and not by nature.”
“By numbers?” Selendra was confused and still pink. “Let me have it, and I shall count as high as you like.”
“That would be magic,” Amer said, smiling and showing her teeth. “Besides, it has to brew, and you will have to wait. Haner said he touched you?”
“He leaned on me,” Selendra admitted for the second time. She sank to the floor, couchant, her head bowed down on her upper arms and her wings half-furled over her, almost more affected by the memory than when it had happened.
Haner put out her own wings to help cover her sister, and there were tears in her eyes. “We have to do something,” she said to Amer.
“I’m doing all I can,” Amer said. “You will certainly need this tea to help you put it behind you. But what I mean by working by numbers is that for most dragons it works without harm, but there is no way of telling whether you are one of the few who will be harmed.”
“I’ll take it,” Selendra said, so low as to be almost inaudible.
“You have to understand,” Amer insisted. The water was boiling, and she poured it on to the mess in the pot. There were ground seeds and some green weeds and something red and dried that swelled in the water to look almost like a flower. Amer stirred it vigorously then set it aside. “If it doesn’t work, you’re no worse off than now. If it does, well and good. If it works too well, you’ll be restored, but you’ll not be able to blush when the right time comes. Now sit up and tell me you understand before I give it to you.”
Slowly, Selendra rose from the floor. She stretched herself to her whole length, twenty feet without curling, and raised her crest and wings as much as was possible in the kitchen, crowding Haner and Amer into corners. “I understand, and I will take the risk,” she said. “I have always wanted to marry and have dragonets with some dragon I love, despite the risk, but I will give all that up if only I may be restored to safety and not have to spend the rest of my short life with that repulsive Frelt.”
“You don’t have to give up hope unless you don’t blush when you’re close to a dragon who loves you,” Amer said. “It’s repeated doses of this that really do harm. Besides, don’t overrate the risks of marriage. You speak of a short life as if that’s the lot of every bride, but your mother didn’t sicken until her third clutch, and they say such things go by blood. If you’re careful, both of you, and if you marry a dragon who will be satisfied with two clutches, not too close together, you may live to be dowagers gloating over grandchildren yet.”
“I think it’s terrible that maidens must give up their gold and marry,” Haner said. “Both their dowry gold and their own natural golden color. I don’t wish to die as mother did, as so many dragons do.”
“It’s just as bad to be an old maid,” said Amer. “You toughen under the chin, and then your gold turns gray.” Amer herself was almost the same color of the rock of the caves. She picked up the pot of tea, sniffed at it, then strained it carefully into a cup.
“If I can’t marry, I’ll give you my dowry, Haner,” Selendra said, as she took the cup. “With both of our shares, and your delicate beauty, you can make a splendid match to some very considerate August or Eminent, and I can come and live with you and be an aunt to your single clutch of dragonets.” She sipped the tea, wrinkling her snout at the bitterness.
“Or if you find you can marry, I could do the same and come and live with you,” Haner said. “Let’s say that we will not agree to marry any dragon the other does not know and esteem, and that we will make our establishment together in that way.”
Selendra drained the cup. “I can agree to that,” she said. “But it seems as if you would have a much better chance of finding a good husband if it were known that you have sixteen thousand crowns worth of gold, instead of a mere eight.”
“Most likely the tea won’t have any bad effect,” Amer said. “The more you fret about it the worse it will be.”
“I’m feeling better already,” Selendra said. Indeed, she seemed to be returning at once to her natural gold.
“Fretting about not being able to blush can stop you doing it just as much as my medicine,” Amer said.
“I’m not fretting,” Selendra said. “I’m just talking about Haner’s marriage prospects. There’s that friend of Daverak’s, Dignified Londaver, he danced with you twice at Berend’s ball.”
“He’s nothing to me,” Haner insisted, but she smiled.
“I’d esteem him,” Selendra went on.
“You’ll like as not marry yourself and be happy,” Amer said. She scraped the remaining herbs from the pot and threw them on the fire where they sizzled and shrivelled with an acrid smell.
“I’m feeling sleepy,” Selendra said.
“That’s the medicine working,” Amer said, taking the cup from Selendra. “I’ll just wash this for you. Go to your cave and sleep, when you wake you’ll be as good as new.”
Haner went through the passages behind her sister. As soon as they went into their sleeping cave, Selendra settled down on her gold.
“I mean it you know,” she said to her sister. “Tell everyone you have sixteen thousand.”
“Then you do the same,” Haner said. “If it should be that you can’t marry, you’ll find that out. If not, then whichever of us shall first find a husband will also give a home to the other. It would be so good to live together as we always have. I shall miss you so much when I am with Berend.”
“I shall come and visit you there,” Selendra said. “Berend invited me. I shall come for a few weeks or a month next spring. There will not be room in Penn’s parsonage for you to visit me, but we shall not become strangers to each other.”
“But then if you meet some dragon you wish to marry in Benandi he will be quite a stranger to me.”
“I doubt I shall ever marry,” Selendra said. “I thought I wanted to, but this was so unpleasant as to change my mind about it entirely. I shall remain a maiden, old and gray, and you shall be a ruby-red dowager, and we shall live together always.” Selendra yawned in a way any mother, governess, or nanny would have said was unfitting for a dragon maid, showing the full expanse of her fangs and the great red cavern of the inside of her mouth.
“The first of us to find a dragon to love shall accept him only if the other knows and esteems him, and then we shall all live together,” Haner said.
“I so swear,” Selendra said, embracing her sister.
“I so swear,” Haner repeated, embracing Selendra back.
Selendra settled back on her gold, yawned again, more befittingly with her wing before her mouth, and fell asleep. Haner watched her for a moment, feeling the first pang of what separation would really mean. For Haner, separation from Selendra seemed as great a sorrow as their father’s death. She sat down across the mouth of the cave and prepared to guard her sister against any dangers that might come.
11. SURPRISES FOR PENN
Penn spent the whole day from breakfast onwards up on the heights, praying to all three gods. He prayed for mercy for Selendra, for wisdom for himself to do the right thing for her, and for the soul of his father, flying even now towards rebirth. He would have gone to the old church where he had first learned to know the gods, but for the possibility of meeting Frelt there. The more he thought of Frelt the more angry he became. He tried to forgive him, as a parson should, he tried to think better of him than he did, and he tried to find peace through meditation. He found no forgiveness, and could not but think worse of Frelt the more he considered matters, but at last he did find a kind of peace in sitting on the highest point of the crag, the winds and clouds aro
und him, repeating the prayers for his father’s soul over and over.
When he came down, he first encountered his brother. Avan had also spent the day fretting about Selendra. Frelt’s proposal had eclipsed even the Illustrious Daverak’s rudeness for both brothers. Penn’s silver eyes were distant when he came in, whirling only once or twice in a minute, for he had kept them fixed on the depths. He almost stumbled over Avan where he lay couchant across the ledge blocking his brother’s entrance.
“I have had a thought about Selendra,” Avan said. Penn blinked, stepped back carefully, and tried to bring his mind up to the moment, losing all his hard-acquired calm in the process.
“What?” Penn asked. “I can’t see that there’s any choice but that she will have to marry him.”
“I knew you would think so, but there may be another answer.” Avan smiled and drew himself up sejant, legs under him, tail curled around his legs and his arms folded across his breast. “I have a good friend, the Exalt Rimalin. She has an establishment in Irieth, and one in the country, somewhere in the north. Her husband is a minister in government.”
“I believe I have heard of him,” Penn said, though his friends were not political. He was utterly puzzled as to where this could be leading.
“They have some gold, but are not rich, not as those of Exalted rank are considered to be rich. However, they own their establishments outright and owe nothing to anyone and are looked at on all sides as a respectable family. I believe the Exalted Rimalin might be induced to look favorably upon Selendra, with her dowry and being my sister, and yours of course.”
“Look favorably on her?” Penn was even more confused. He even wondered for a moment if Avan could be suggesting some such position as governess to Rimalin’s children. “Look favorably how?”
“As a consort, of course.”
“But you said he had a wife, that his wife was your friend.”
