The Silent Dragon: Children of The Dragon Nimbus #1

by Irene Radford

  The ladies went into a huddle, discussing whether the princess should be allowed to dictate fashion to the rest of the court. From the way they plucked at the plain pleats on their bodices, Linda guessed they’d dash to the fabric stalls on Market Island the moment they finished their duties today.

  Lace had been out of fashion for a few years now—probably because it cost so much. And she thought there’d been a war with SeLennica. She hadn’t paid that much attention to her modern history lessons. Ancient legends and dragon lore were much more interesting. Now there was a treaty with SeLennica, but the lack of demand had dropped the prices of lace—a point of economics P’pa had taught her.

  “Princess Rosselinda.” M’ma dipped her head the precise depth dictated by formal protocol.

  Uh-oh. Formality before breakfast meant something awful. Had M’ma missed her pair of riding gloves that Linda had borrowed?

  M’ma didn’t ride anymore. And Linda didn’t want to see the fine leather go to waste . . .

  “Is P’pa all right?” she asked breathlessly. She advanced to kneel before her mother, crumpling her heavily brocaded skirts in both hands. Best way to deflect a reprimand was change the subject as fast as possible.

  “You father fares well, my dear,” M’ma chuckled. “He paces like an angry spotted saber cat, but he fares well.”

  “What angers him?” Linda asked warily. Had he found out that ’twas she who had stripped rosebuds from their stems after the men in the arena had so obviously let her win her bouts? Lucjemm was the only one honest enough to make her work for her victories. And yesterday he’d disappeared the moment she had arrived in the arena.

  On that thought her father appeared from the inner room. He prowled from window to chair to doorway, hands locked behind his back, head thrust forward, shoulders reaching for his ears. With his golden hair lightened with touches of gray, still tightly bound in a four-strand queue from its morning dressing, he resembled the predatory cat M’ma had likened him to.

  No, not precisely a spotted saber cat. More like a caged golden wolf.

  For some reason known only to her parents, she wasn’t allowed to mention that resemblance. Clear evidence to Linda that she had landed close to a truth. A dangerous truth.

  A truth told in cautionary legends of a prince enticed away from his duties by evil sorcerers and changed into a wolf so that he’d be killed on a random hunt. But he was saved by the dragons and a mysterious red-haired woman. The prince of legend was named Darville, and plainly resembled the current king; and like all tales, it supposedly took place long ago, before times anyone living had witnessed.

  Could the tale be true, a part of her father’s history, and could the mysterious red-haired woman be the mother of P’pa’s bastard son?

  A bell rang in the great hall directly below the queen’s quarters.

  Linda raised her eyebrows in question when her parents did not respond to the summons to break their fast.

  The ladies looked to Queen Rossemikka expectantly. Almost anxiously. Were they so eager to be first on Market Isle and conforming to the newest court fashion?

  The queen dismissed the women with a wave. “Yours too, Linda,” she whispered.

  Linda nodded her head toward Miri and Chastet. They curtsied and backed out of the room, eyebrows raised in question.

  “Later,” Linda mouthed. They had no secrets. Well, not many.

  When they had cleared the room, M’ma indicated that Linda should sit beside her.

  “What is wrong?” Linda blurted out.

  “A true diplomat dances around a problem with courtesies and niceties,” King Darville reprimanded her. Very much the king and not just her beloved father.

  “I’m not at a foreign court. You are my family, and I know something is wrong, terribly wrong.” She lifted her chin stubbornly. She’d been told she resembled her father when she did that.

  Her parents exchanged a pained glance. Some silent communication passed between them. Finally her father looked away first and heaved a sigh.

  “You know that we love you and would never do anything to hurt you,” he said quietly. His dominant left hand reached toward her. Then he dropped it abruptly and clasped both hands behind his back again. He stiffened his spine and looked down at her from his regal height.

  “However,” Linda prompted. There was always a “however.” She sighed. “Something about the decision of the Council to find me a husband against your wishes, Your Grace?” If he was going to play the king, then she must act the Princess Royale.

  “However, the Council of Provinces demands a male heir to the throne . . .” he paused for a gulping breath that almost controlled the high color of anger on his cheeks. “They would pressure you to bear children while you are barely more than a child . . .”

  Linda bristled. She was a woman now. Her body had made the transition two years ago. Since she showed all signs of living through the worst of the change in body and emotions, M’ma had helped her put up her hair, ordered new gowns with lower hems, and appointed her two closest friends from the schoolroom to be her ladies-in-waiting.

  “They . . .” her father continued, ignoring her offence. “Rather than throw you into a loveless marriage with a foreign prince, with foreign interests, we have opted to send for my son.”

  Linda forgot to breathe. “The boy you have not admitted to fathering!” She bit her cheeks before she shouted ugly words at him. How dare he betray M’ma? That red-haired woman was an evil seductress, as evil as the sorcerers who transformed P’pa into his totem animal: a great golden wolf.

  She dredged up the rest of the conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard. “The people will not accept a bastard.”

  “Linda!” her mother reprimanded. “Where did you learn that word?” She looked paler than usual. For as long as Linda could remember, her mother had been ill. Only recently had she realized that five miscarriages in as many years after three pregnancies in five years had weakened her. Drained her vitality.

  Now she understood the whispers among the ladies that another pregnancy would kill her.

  Five potential heirs dead before birthing.

  “I am as smart and as well educated as any man in the kingdom,” Linda asserted. She resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “Why will they not accept me as your heir?”

  “I have trained you and your two sisters to follow in my footsteps,” her father said. “I had hoped that by this time the Council of Provinces would have relaxed their insistence upon a male heir. Their only compromise is to offer a joint crown to you and a husband. You are too young to marry. I have no choice but to bring my bastard son to court.”

  “But if he is illegitimate, and baseborn, then he can’t rule,” Linda shouted. Panic rose hot and vile in her throat. She needed to spit the acid of her jealousy and bewilderment back at her parents.

  Her mother’s gentle hand kept her sitting when she wanted to pace and prowl as relentlessly as her father.

  “There are ways to correct the boy’s illegitimacy. His mother has some royal blood in her heritage. Her grandmother was my father’s cousin.”

  “Ways of making him legitimate include putting aside my mother, your queen, and marrying the mother of your bastard?”

  “That is not an option. That has never been an option,” her father said vehemently.

  “Then why?”

  “I had not yet met your mother. I did not yet know how deep and abiding my love for her would be. Brevelan and Jaylor were my best friends. My only friends when Lord Krej tried to usurp the throne. We thought Jaylor had died. Brevelan and I turned to each other in our grief. Our love for each other and for him stretched out to the realm of dragons and brought Jaylor back from the brink of death. Out of that night came a beautiful baby boy.”

  Linda gasped in dismay at the names. She k
new them as well as those of her sisters. The Senior Magician and his witch-wife were both revered and reviled. Lord Krej’s name and that of his daughter Rejiia were held up as examples of the dangers of allowing a monarch to possess magic. Lord Krej was the evil sorcerer who transformed Darville into a wolf.

  “The people will never accept your magician bastard as their king,” she retorted. What else could she say? How else could she defend herself and her position at court?

  “Probably not, but we have to give them the chance,” M’ma said quietly. “We have to stall and give you time to finish growing up. We expect word any time now of Glenndon’s imminent arrival.”

  Wild anger flashed through Linda’s blood. It flushed her face and made her fingers tingle. Her heart beat too fast and her thoughts swirled. She grew hot then cold. And still that tingle that demanded she do something. Something bold and . . . destructive.

  She took a deep calming breath, and then another, and another. The tingle withdrew.

  “If you . . . The moment he arrives I will no longer consider myself a member of this family. Bring him here and you throw me away!” She surged up and ran, picking up her skirts to an indecent level.

  She had to get away. She had to run far and fast to escape her own fear and anger and confusion.

  How could M’ma be so calm about accepting P’pa’s son into her household? How could her father insult M’ma by bringing the boy here?

  Down the long broad corridor she ran. Deep into the oldest and least trafficked part of the keep she ran. Around this corner, under that archway. She ran until a stitch grabbed her side. She kept running until her breath came in great racking sobs that might have been tears.

  “Princess Royale Rosselinda Mirilandel Kathleen de Draconis, stop right there,” King Darville shouted from a shadowed alcove to her left.

  “How?” she gasped. She didn’t have enough breath to say more.

  “I’ve been taking shortcuts to hidden rooms in the palace a lot longer than you.” He tried to look stern, but a tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

  Linda allowed herself to set her balance and deepen her breathing.

  He tilted his head as if listening. Linda had seen him do that from to time.

  She wished she knew who spoke to him with magic in secret.

  “Yes, I agree,” he whispered.

  “Agree to what?” she demanded.

  “Linda, please break your fast with the rest of the court in the Great Hall. Then meet me by the mounting blocks.” P’pa turned away, blending into the shadows, ready to disappear again.

  “Yes, Your Grace.” She curtsied without looking at him.

  “Don’t you want to know why?”

  “That is for Your Grace to inform me when he deems the time right.” She parroted her governess’ phrase.

  “You want to know everything, right now. You do not believe in secrets. That is why you listen so closely to Council meetings. I have let you remain hidden so that you could learn something of politics. Now I wonder if I should have kept you more sheltered.”

  “What point in teaching me to be a king when I will never be more than the wife to one?” She set her chin in defiance.

  “Because I had hoped . . . Linda, we will ride out to Battle Mound southeast of the city.”

  A two-hour ride, half of it negotiating the islands of the river delta and the connecting bridges that made up Coronnan City. Battle Mound, the site of the last great battle between barons and their battlemages, the last conflict before Nimbulan created the covenant with the dragons and made magic communal and governable.

  “Why? Do we go alone? Or will half the court follow?”

  “You will tell no one of this excursion. No one. Especially not your ladies or your sisters. We take no servants or bodyguards. Only the groom who fetches our steeds will know of our departure.”

  Curiosity sent her mind spinning, dissolving her anger. A trip outside the city with P’pa. Just the two of them. Not even Fred, P’pa’s bodyguard who was always within spitting distance, except these last two weeks when he’d gone home to attend a dying grandmother or something. Special. Unusual.

  “The entire city will know of this venture before we set out. They always do.”

  P’pa almost laughed. “Undoubtedly. They always do. A contingent of soldiers and lords will follow—hopefully discreetly. And they will witness a miracle. And so shall you, my daughter. So shall you.”

  CHAPTER 10

  LINDA DUG HER HEELS into the flanks of her favorite fleet steed, a big, opinionated, chestnut mare. The beast bunched her muscles and lengthened her stride. Together they flew across the open meadows to the east and south of the river delta islands that comprised Coronnan City.

  The wind of their passage blew Linda’s cloak hood back and tangled her hair. She laughed out loud and pressed the steed to gallop faster.

  “Ease up, Linda!” her father called. His big black stallion moved alongside, matching stride for stride. He looked over his shoulder often, like he was afraid of pursuit.

  “I want to run free,” she called back to him.

  “You will slow down before you fall off. Never override your steed. I thought I taught you that when you were five.” He edged ahead by half a nose, forcing his steed closer to hers until he grabbed her reins and turned them in a slowing circle.

  Linda’s steed fought the restriction. Her father tweaked the reins back and down, until they had made two complete circles, P’pa on the inside, and stopped.

  Even then he did not release the reins.

  “But Belle likes to run wild,” Linda protested. She knew better than to try to wrest the reins away from her father. She had to fight to keep her lower lip from sticking out in a pout. Pouts made her look ugly. And childish.

  “She’s had a run. Now we move at a safer pace.” P’pa looked upward, tilting his head as if listening.

  Listening to what?

  “Why are we coming all the way out here?” Linda asked.

  “You will see in a few moments.”

  “I don’t like secrets.”

  “I know that. The time has come to reveal my biggest secret.” He chuckled like he did when he made an amusing word play. Then he released Belle and kicked his own mount into a sedate trot.

  “A bigger secret than your bastard son?”

  “Yes. A more important secret.”

  She examined his words one by one and all together while she matched his pace. She couldn’t find anything funny hidden in there.

  “Have you heard of Amazon oil?” he asked without prelude.

  “Um,” she searched her memory. The product sounded familiar, exotic, but not unknown to her. “I have heard of it, but I can’t remember where. Why?”

  “It is a byproduct of a fruit that grows only on the big continent northeast of Coronnan.”

  “Across the Great Bay?”

  “Beyond the Bay. Remember your geography lessons, Little Lindy. Do I have to send you back to the schoolroom?”

  “No, P’pa. I can picture it on the maps now.” So this was what the outing was about, drilling her on her lessons. Oh, well, best parrot off a bunch of facts to satisfy him. Then they could get on with the adventure he’d promised. “The interior of the continent is largely unexplored, at least by those known to us here in Coronnan. We trade with the coastal city-states. Each has its own ambassador to our court. They have large resources of grain, fruit, and herd beasts.”

  “And?” he prodded her.

  “The Stargods defeated a herd of winged snakelike creatures that were destroying the land by turning it into one vast desert. What were they called?”

  “Krakatrice,” the king said absentmindedly.

  “Krakatrice. Right. But once the Stargods defeated the Krakatri
ce and eliminated them from the land, they destroyed the artificial dams and restored the riverbeds. The land is fruitful once more.”

  “And?”

  “Amazon oil!” She remembered in a flash of blinding light. Or was that something in the sky reflecting the light of the sun?

  “What is it and what does it do?” her father prodded.

  “It’s the residue from pressing the Amazon fruit into a pulp mixed with dried meat for journey rations. The oil sinks to the bottom of the vat—it’s quite heavy—and is used to keep metal free of rust.” She turned a big smile on her father, happy to have dredged those facts out of the bottom of her brain. “We use it to tend our sword blades.”

  “Yes. Correct. But what happens if you mix Amazon oil with miner’s acid?”

  “Um. Something not good. Wouldn’t the acid eat through the oil to damage the metal?” She chewed her lower lip.

  King Darville nodded sadly.

  “But it would take a while,” she mused. “Amazon oil is resilient.” Was that the right word?

  “Yes it is, Linda.” He must approve of her assumptions if he used her familial name. “After a while, a few days, or a really long and vigorous battle, or practice session, the acid would weaken the steel until it broke without warning.”

  “Is this about you breaking your sword two weeks ago?” she gasped.

  “Yes.”

  “Who would do such a thing? It wouldn’t have been an accident. Miner’s acid is not readily available.”

  “It is in the Provinces that have mines,” he said flatly.

  “Oh.”

  “Think about it while we finish our ride. I need you to know who might have damaged my sword either as a warning, or an attempt upon my life.”

  Linda swallowed heavily. All of a sudden the day did not seem so bright and warm. She saw in her mind the lords whose land abutted the western range of mountains that separated Coronnan from SeLennica. Geoine, Lord of Sambol, Bennallt, Lord of the Port City of Baria, Miri’s father and Lady Anya’s husband. No she wouldn’t believe either could be involved in an assassination plot. Better to believe the acid and the assassin came from Hanassa, the ungovernable hidden city of rogue magicians, outlaws, Rovers, and disgruntled exiles. They looked to no lord. Any one of them could be hired or bribed to perform any dastardly deed.