Dragonskin Slippers

by Jessica Day George

  “Well, then, be off with you and your country fancy-work,” she sneered, and swept a cloud of dust straight at me.

  I ran, trying to keep away from the worst of it, my cheeks burning with embarrassment and my eyes smarting with tears at the sound of her raucous laughter. What was I, little Creel of Carlieff Town, doing in the King’s Seat? Did I really think that my crude provincial skills were wanted here in the city?

  I kept on going because I had nowhere else to go, but I didn’t ask for directions again. After three hours, when I hadn’t seen anything that looked like the cloth-workers’ district, and yet still was nowhere near the palaces, I turned down one of the side streets, my fingers crossed that it would lead where I wanted to go.

  I passed through a market that sold all sorts of exotic fruits and vegetables, and even more exotic animals for fine ladies to keep as pets. There were fantastically plumed birds and brown bears no higher than my knee, and little black monkeys, with wild manes of white hair, that could fit in a pocket.

  When I stopped to gape at these last creatures, the trader displaying them smiled at me kindly. He had a very brown face with very white teeth, and wore a strange, conical blue hat. I dared to ask him if he knew the way I wanted to go, but he merely smiled and shook his head.

  “Please?” My voice wavered a little from tiredness and frustration.

  “Gaal matto,” the man replied, shaking his head again.

  Across the way, the man selling bright-feathered birds called out, “He don’t speak the language, maidy.”

  I turned around, hope rising in my breast, to address the friendly-sounding bird seller. “Sir? Do you know the way to the cloth-workers’ district?”

  “Aye, that I do. But come here so I don’t have to shout, you’re a fair way off.”

  But as I took an eager step towards him, I tripped over what had to be the world’s smallest dog.

  The Princess’s Pippin

  “Watch where you are going, you horrible cow!” The voice snapped at me over the sound of a small dog yipping with pain.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” I looked at the young woman standing behind me and then down at the little animal I had stepped on.

  The girl had a cascade of brown curls falling from a coronet of stiffened silk and ribbons, and her brown eyes were narrowed in anger. The dog was white, and barely larger than a bedroom slipper. Its long hair was tied up with a lavender bow on top of its head, revealing two round black eyes and a small brown nose. In contrast to its mistress, the dog wagged a long plumed tail at me in greeting, apparently already recovered from being trod upon.

  “Pippin! Pippin darling! Come here,” the owner shrilled, holding out her manicured hands to the dog. “Let Mummy see if the nasty big peasant hurt my darling!”

  But Pippin didn’t want to be comforted. She wanted to smell my shoes. That done, she trotted over to the monkey seller and stood on her hind legs to get a better look at the little black-and-white creatures.

  “Pippin!” The girl’s voice was sharp now. “Come here to Mummy right now!”

  Pippin seemed to sigh and slowly wandered back over to her mistress, giving a casual stretch rather like a cat before condescending to being picked up. Her “mummy” fussed over her for several seconds, looking for any sign of injury, while I stood red-faced and stammering over and over again how sorry I was.

  “You’re very lucky, country cow, that you didn’t break one of my Pippin’s little paws.” The other girl sniffed at me. “She cost more than your family’s entire farm, I’m sure.”

  “I am so very sorry,” I said for the thousandth time, bristling at being called a country cow. “I truly didn’t see her.”

  “Well, how could you? In that great dragging old-fashioned gown and with those huge boats for feet,” the girl sneered.

  As I got a better look at what she was wearing my heart sank. She was right: my gown was old-fashioned, or at the least, dreadfully countrified. While I wore a single long gown with a fitted bodice and flaring skirt all of a piece, she was elegantly dressed in layers of skirts that had been pinned up in the front to reveal each successive garment. Her bodice had the look of a tightly fitted jacket over a foamy white shift.

  There was embroidery along the neckline and in long panels down her skirts, though. I gave it a quick scan and saw that it was nothing I couldn’t do.

  “How dare you stare at me in that way!” The rich girl stomped one pink-slippered foot. “Who is your mistress? I will have you fired at once! First you try to kill my precious Pippin, then you ogle me with your horrible country eyes!”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, looking down at my dragging country skirts. What more did she want from me?

  “Do you know who I am?” she demanded.

  “No,” I muttered.

  “No? No what?”

  “What?” I looked up at her and blinked again. Did she want me to call her “mistress”? We were the same age, as near as I could guess.

  She looked over one shoulder and screeched something in a strange tongue. Four hulking brutes in scarlet tunics with heavy swords belted at their hips stepped forward. I hadn’t even noticed them before, since all my attention had been focused on the dog and its excitable mistress.

  She pointed her finger at me and babbled some more in that foreign language, and one of the brutes pulled a length of cord from a large belt pouch while the other made as if to grab my arm. I dodged out of his reach and for a wild moment I considered knocking over a cage of monkeys to create a diversion.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “What’s going on?”

  “You need to be taught a lesson,” the girl said.

  “I say, what’s all this?”

  A tall and fairly good-looking young man in a rich green velvet doublet and leather riding breeches stepped forward. He frowned at me and then at the girl. “What’s the to-do, Amalia?”

  “This great peasant tried to kill my poor Pippin,” the girl said in a voice that suddenly sounded on the verge of tears. She pulled out a dainty handkerchief and sniffed into it. As it wafted past the dog’s face, “poor Pippin” tried to bite it. “I thought she had crushed my sweet doggie! And then she said rude things to me!”

  “I did not!” I was astonished at this turn of events. She had gone from being shrill and demanding to weepy and victimised in a matter of seconds. And I liked dogs, even small fussy ones, and felt quite bad about stepping on Pippin.

  “I say!” The wealthy young man turned grey eyes on me, looking stern. “What is the meaning of this? Is it true that you accosted Princess Amalia and attempted to kill her dog?”

  I didn’t even know how to answer. “P-Princess Amalia?” I stammered finally. “She’s a princess?” I shook my head to clear it, and remembered some Carlieff Town gossip about the crown prince being engaged to marry a foreign princess. Oh, dear.

  “Yes, she’s a princess.” The young man drew himself up stiffly and stared at me. “The Princess Amalia of Roulain.” Then he looked at my clothes. “Ah, just in from the country?” He relaxed a little.

  I blushed. Was it so obvious that I was a total bumpkin? But not so backward that I didn’t realise who this wealthy young man was. If the shrill girl was Princess Amalia, than this richly dressed youth must be the Crown Prince Milun.

  “Yes, Your Highness,” I murmured politely, making a small curtsy as my mother had taught me. “Forgive me. This is my first day in the King’s Seat, and I did not recognise the princess. I didn’t mean to step on her dog, truly I didn’t.”

  “There!” The prince gave me a patronising smile. “Very prettily said. You see, Amalia?” He turned to his betrothed. “She didn’t mean any harm.” He waved his hands at the brutes guarding the princess. “Pippin looks quite all right, as well.”

  It seemed a bit much to me that the princess needed four enormous men to guard her on a simple shopping trip, but I didn’t remark on it. Who was I to know the ways of royalty? Particularly foreign royalty.

  The little d
og was watching all this with bright black eyes, and didn’t seem to even remember having been stepped on. She looked very much like she would prefer being on the ground, investigating the black-and-white monkeys, to being squeezed by her royal mistress.

  “Well, I think she did it on purpose,” the princess said, refusing to be mollified. “If you ever come near me again, I’ll set my guards on you!” She shook her fist at me.

  “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” I forced myself to say. What I really wanted to do was slap the silly wench, royal or no, but I was sure I would be spending the rest of my life in a dungeon if I did.

  The princess whirled around and stormed off, her guards and the crown prince in tow, and I breathed a sigh of relief. After I had calmed myself, I turned to ask the bird seller the way to the cloth district.

  “Please go away,” he said uneasily, refusing to meet my eyes.

  “What? But you said –”

  “I don’t want no trouble, maidy,” the man said, and made a shooing gesture at me, still not meeting my gaze.

  “But can’t someone please just point me towards the cloth-workers’ district?” I looked around at the other exotic pet sellers, who busied themselves with cleaning cages or untangling leashes. The brown man with the black-and-white monkeys smiled back, though, and gabbled something I couldn’t understand. “Please?” I tugged at my clothes and raised my eyebrows at the monkey seller, trying to mime what I wanted.

  “Dorfath,” he said merrily, and pointed down the street in the direction I had come from. “Dorfath!”

  “Thank you!” And I marched off in that direction, hoping he knew what he was talking about.

  The Curfew Bells Toll

  By the time the sun began to set, I had to admit that either the monkey seller hadn’t known what I wanted, or he was playing a cruel joke on me. I had plodded up and down the streets and found no sign of a dress shop or even a glove maker. In fact, for the last hour I hadn’t seen any shops at all. Instead I had been wandering among large houses with brightly painted shutters and window boxes full of flowers. No one I passed would give me directions. The people on foot looked to be servants hurrying about their errands, and the rest were fine ladies and gentlemen riding horses or closed up in carriages.

  As the streets darkened, lamplighters came along with their long torches and lit the polished lanterns that hung from posts in front of every house. I tried asking one of them for directions, but they were all foreigners, and only brandished their torches at me and shouted, “Fire hot, maidy! Fire hot!” so that I would stay clear.

  “Here now, what are you doing out and about?”

  I wheeled around to see a guardsman in a green leather jerkin glaring at me. I clapped my hands in relief.

  “Oh, please, sir,” I said, so tired that I was swaying where I stood. “Could you direct me to the cloth-workers’ district? I just came from the country today, and I’m looking for work.”

  “It’s nearly curfew, girl,” the guardsman said in a rough voice. “It’s not time to be lookin’ for work. Get on home with you!”

  “I haven’t got a home, sir,” I began.

  “Vagrant, are you?” He frowned at me.

  “Er, no. I’ve only just arrived in the King’s Seat,” I repeated. “I’m looking for work, but haven’t found the cloth-workers’ district –”

  “So you don’t have work or a home?” He chewed his lip. “I’ll have to take you in for violating the curfew,” he warned me. He glanced up at the sky, where the sun had set and the smaller moon was just rising.

  “Please, I don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I’ve only just arrived; what is this about a curfew?”

  “What town are you from?” The guard’s eyebrows were approaching his receding hairline. “The curfew, girl, the curfew!”

  I looked at him with a blank expression. None of the traders who stopped in Carlieff Town had ever said anything about there being a curfew in the King’s Seat.

  “The curfew’til the crown prince’s wedding!”

  “What?” I still didn’t follow.

  “Can I help?”

  The guard and I both turned to look at the young man who had come up while we’d been trying to understand one another. He looked to be about my age, some sixteen years or so, but was far better dressed than I in a tunic of fine grey wool and black leather breeches. He had brown eyes and brown hair with streaks of gold in it.

  “Your Highness!” The guardsman tapped his fist to his chest in salute.

  “Another one?” The question burst out of me in a squeak before I could stop it, and I stared at the young man in horror.

  The prince and the guardsman looked at me with amusement and shock, respectively. I covered my mouth with both hands, wishing I could take those two words and shove them right back into my mouth.

  “Another one?” The prince looked momentarily confused, and then he burst out laughing. “Don’t tell me you’re the maid who faced off with Amalia this afternoon? The one she claims tried to assassinate her lapdog?”

  My face turned red and I put my hands on my cheeks. “Oh, no, has the entire city heard that story?” I silently cursed the princess and my clumsy feet. “I wasn’t trying to kill her dog! I swear!”

  “Oh, this is too wonderful,” the prince said. “Did you hear that, Tobin?” He looked over his shoulder at someone.

  Out of the shadows came a large man neither I nor the guardsman (judging by his flinch of surprise) had seen. He was huge, taller than any man I had ever met, his shaved head rising even above the prince’s, and the prince was quite tall. Blue tattoos ran up both bare arms and over his scalp, and there were fat gold rings in his ears. He opened his mouth and laughed soundlessly, looking at me with kind blue eyes.

  “This is the person who attacked the Roulaini princess?” The guard gaped at me. “I shall take her into custody at once!” He reached towards me.

  I skipped out of the way. “I didn’t attack her! She was only …” I couldn’t say that she was being mean, or foolish; she was a princess, after all. “It was a misunderstanding.”

  “Yes, yes,” the prince said, waving his hand. “My brother was quite satisfied that no harm was meant.”

  Suddenly, bells began chiming all across the city, making me jump. Both the prince and the guardsman looked up at the sky, checking the position of the moons, I guessed. The tattooed man, Tobin, continued to simply stand and watch.

  “It’s curfew, Your Highness,” the guard said, a trifle unnecessarily, in my opinion.

  “Indeed it is,” the prince said lightly. “So I had best escort this young lady to her lodgings. Carry on there, guardsman.” And with that, the prince took my elbow and steered me away.

  I was too numb to protest. I had not thought it possible to be more tired or frightened or lonely than I had been as I had made my weary way along the King’s Road from Carlieff. But I was wrong: right this moment I was so exhausted and terrified and homesick that it was all I could do to stay on my feet. “I don’t have any lodgings,” I mumbled.

  “Yes, I heard. And you’re trying to find work in the cloth-workers’ district?”

  I could only nod and blush; he had heard me pleading with the guard. I was embarrassed, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “I’ll take you there, or near there. I know someone who has an inn just a few streets over.”

  “Why is there a curfew?” It was the only one of the many questions buzzing around in my head that I could think to ask just now.

  He looked at me, seeming surprised. “You haven’t heard? You must be from far away, then.”

  I didn’t say anything, so he went on.

  “It’s because of Amalia and Miles getting married. A lot of people don’t like the idea of him marrying a foreigner, especially one from Roulain.” A shrug. “Old prejudices run deep. There have been protests, and even attacks. Mostly little things: mud thrown at her carriage, threats of harm from people who couldn’t possibly do anything to a heavily g
uarded princess.” He shrugged again. “But as a precaution my father has ordered that everyone stay in after dark, at least until after the wedding.”

  “Oh.” I felt I owed him some sort of explanation, since he was helping me, after all. “I’m from Carlieff Town, all the way in the north. We had barely even heard that the crown prince was betrothed.”

  “I’m hardly surprised, it’s been rather sudden.” The prince flashed his bodyguard a grim look, which Tobin returned with an eloquent expression, making me realise that he wasn’t taking part in the conversation because he was a mute. Despite his handicap, it was clear that he shared his prince’s distaste for the speed of this controversial marriage.

  “So,” I began, thinking to change the subject, “who exactly are you taking me to? Not that I’m not grateful to you, Your Highness, for all your help,” I added hastily.

  “Tobin’s older sister runs an inn just outside the cloth-workers’ district,” the prince explained patiently. “Ulfrid was my nanny when I was a child, and will be happy to help you.”

  “Oh, thank you.” I looked back at Tobin, who was shadowing us with one hand on the hilt of his sword. “And thank you, Tobin,” I told the bodyguard.

  He raised his eyebrows and nodded curtly.

  I slowed my steps, though, as we passed beneath a brightly burning lamp. “But, Your Highness, if I may ask: Why are you helping me?”

  He stopped and raised his eyebrows. “Why shouldn’t I help you?”

  “Because … well, I’m nobody. I’m a farm girl from Carlieff. You’re a prince: Why do you care if I get locked up for vagrancy?”

  The prince looked at me thoughtfully. “Had a hard day, eh?”

  I looked down at the blue toes of my slippers, peeping out from under my hem. “You have no idea,” I said softly, thinking of the endless walking, the dust, the raucous laughter of the woman who had shaken her broom at me. And that was before I had stepped on the princess’s dog.

  “Well, that’s why. Because it is my duty to make up for the harsh treatment you have received thus far,” he said, striking a noble pose.