Bee Sting Cake

by Victoria Goddard

  “Hey!” I said, and was briefly conscious of everyone else’s shock.

  The dragon snapped its head around. Sir Vorel crumpled.

  “Hey!” I said again, hoping to keep its attention distracted. “What are you doing here? I answered your riddle!”

  The dragon drew back its thin lips in what was not nearly so appreciative a smile. “So you did, young sir, and so I am a free dragon at last.” It waved its head from side to side, blue tongue flickering out like a snake. All the people who had been crowding so close before to the display table were trying now to escape the tent, but the crush of people outside—how had they not noticed the dragon landing on the pavilion?—prevented them from leaving.

  “And so you come here, why?”

  It cocked its head at me. Something made a grinding noise. After a moment I realized the grinding was its talons digging through the mats laid on the grass to serve as a floor. Its voice came out as a low hiss. “I was summoned out of the Wide Dreaming to bear riddles to test the strength of the Woods in these lesser days. I was wooed with promises of the gold of the Woods. I was promised blood.”

  It arched its head so that its golden horns flared around it, all its spinal spikes rising up like a dog’s hackles. Its eyes, so incongruously blue, so cold, so inhuman, were glittering like chips of broken glass. Its voice dropped down another note, into a deep, uncomfortable rumble that pulled me inexorably out of ordinary time into that world of mortal danger. I was conscious of nothing but the dragon, its eyes, the way it shifted its weight back to its powerful haunches, the coiling curve of its tail, some deep, deep vibration within its belly.

  That fire came from somewhere.

  It made a complicated movement that brought its wings back. It kept its eyes on me, trying to hold me, but with some faint awareness in my peripheral vision I saw how it was lifting its foot to pin my unmoving uncle to the ground.

  “I will take what I am owed,” it whispered, in a whisper louder than any shout I had ever heard, and several things happened at the same time.

  —Dominus Gleason and Hal both cried something in Old Shaian, though their voices jangled across each other and I could not decipher meaning—

  —Mrs. Etaris reached towards her hip for a sword I had never seen her wear—

  —The dragon opened its mouth—

  —And I—snapped.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I have One More Idea

  WE HAD SPENT A GOOD month on how to fight dragons in Self-Defense.

  In the first lesson Dominus Lukel had discussed fighting one without armour, shield, lance, sword, or proper training. That class had been a roll-call of almost-famous heroes who had died facing definitely-famous dragons.

  I had no armour, shield, lance, or sword, and as for proper training, well ... Dominus Lukel didn’t pretend he’d ever seen a dragon, much less fought one.

  I did, however, have a cake knife.

  And an off-set spatula.

  I let out a wild yell of challenge and without further rational thought launched myself forward and into that clear sensible world of pure and perfect danger.

  Deep in the throat of the dragon was a rising glow. Heat radiated before it, and I knew that fire was rising.

  A dragon’s weaknesses were the eye, the central underpart of the jaw, and the upper armpits.

  Archers and lancers aimed for the upper armpits, and most often were the ones to come back victorious.

  Knights who had lost their lances and their horses went for the jaw, and usually perished for their courage.

  Superlative fools went for the eye, because it seemed like the easiest target, and regretted it very much when their arrows went out the back of the skull without hitting the brain, which in a dragon was set very deep towards the spine, far below the nasal hollows under the crown of spines.

  I decided in the split second in which such decisions are made that I had no chance of reaching either armpit, that sticking a knife into a jaw full of dragonfire was a recipe for total disaster, and that really, everyone in Ragnor Bella was already in agreement that I was a fool, so I might as well aim to be a superlative one.

  Also, I did know where the brain was.

  I vaulted over our table and onto the one in front of us.

  The dragon was moving with slow deliberation. It was unhurried, knew I was hardly a threat to be concerned with, not with fire rising in its throat. Not with a mouth full of hand-length razor-sharp teeth. Not with golden claws lifting over the huddled figure of my uncle to sweep round at me.

  I threw the off-set spatula into its mouth, hitting the back of its throat with as much force as I could. The dragon swallowed automatically, confusion and anger warring for a brief moment as the spatula went down into whatever devil’s brew of acid and fire was boiling in its stomachs.

  The anatomy books had not been clear as to whether dragons had separate stomachs for fire and eating or if the digestive juices were so caustic they lit when exposed to air.

  The dragon had lifted its head to swallow, giving me a split second again to decide between throat and eye. But I knew how hard it was to kill a dragon, that there was an asbestos palate-bone protecting the brain from the fires passing below, that the throat was bulging as those fires rose.

  Another half-thought as I rolled off that table and under the grasping talons, dove in a running somersault over my uncle, launched myself up onto the table on the other side of the aisle. If I succeeded—if I succeeded—we could anatomize the dragon and find out.

  The dragon had swallowed the spatula now and was turning, but it was turning slowly, its anger and its bulk making it sweep its tail out across the room, knocking over people, tables, and cakes with equal abandon. I heard the crashes as from a great distance. My mind was focused on the not-quite-blunt point of my cake knife and that single spot at the back of the eye socket where the optic nerves led straight down to the brain.

  The dragon reared its head back. I waited, knees slightly bent, feet in the classic fencer’s stance, stomach taut, left hand out for balance, right hand holding the cake knife at the ready.

  This was almost as good as running.

  The dragon launched itself forward in one all-out motion, mouth wide enough to swallow me whole—so long as I went in sideways, and so as it came the dragon twisted its head slightly to the side, so that instead of coming at me with its horns high above me, they were just to my left in a laddered semi-circle.

  At some moment I could never have rationally analyzed I jumped up and sideways, grabbed one of the horns with my left hand, swung myself onto the bridge of its nose, and even as its teeth closed with an almighty crash where I had been standing I was using my momentum to plunge that cake knife all the way up to its hilt in—and down—through its eye.

  Even as I shuddered at the cold jelly suddenly exploding all up my right hand and arm I was gripping the hilt more and more tightly, adding my left hand to force the knife through some barrier as the dragon flung its head wildly in the air. I gripped its snout with my knees as if I were riding a bucking horse, grimly determined to get the knife through its brain, and was only barely conscious of how much I was moving until with a finally tremendous jerk the I was flung hard into a rising incongruous sea of cinnamon and chocolate.

  I SAT UP SLOWLY, REGRETTING it as the world spun around me. I closed my eyes and concentrated first on breathing, and secondly on massaging the feeling back into my hands. After a moment, I registered that something was dripping all down my face.

  I had received a few head wounds, most courtesy of an over-enthusiastic Roald or Mr. Dart when we were boys, and my first coherent thought was that it must be a bad one to be streaming so much blood that my eyes were already all crusted over. I fumbled wearily in my pocket for a handkerchief and carefully wiped my eyes. Blinked numerous times to clear them, and finally stared at the brown and purple mess on the cotton in my hand.

  “It’s Mrs. Kulfield’s Blackberry Chocolate Cake,” said Mrs. Eta
ris, her voice soothingly normal.

  I nodded without looking up. Touched my fingers to a wet patch above my ear. That was very red when I took it away, but Mrs. Etaris went on, still very calmly, “And that is probably Miss Torrow’s Sour Cherry and Hazelnut Torte.”

  I took a deep breath. “And the cinnamon?”

  “I believe that would be Mrs. Jarnem’s Quincy Apple Cake.”

  I took another deep breath, nodded a little too vigorously, crumpled the handkerchief up. “My uncle?”

  “He appears to be unharmed.”

  I nodded again. Swallowed what seemed to be a mixture of honey cream and blood. “The dragon?”

  “Oh, very certainly dead, Mr. Greenwing.”

  Her voice was so soothingly normal I looked automatically up to catch the merriment in her eyes. Her mirth was so contagious I smiled lopsidedly and raised my head to survey the scene before me.

  My first thought was how totally smashed the baking pavilion was. Tables were flung hither and yon, many of them in splinters. I was sitting in the ruins of what had been the display table, cakes of all sort in all forms of disarray under and around me. Mrs. Etaris stood slightly to my right, beside the dragon’s head.

  I blinked again.

  Mrs. Etaris was wearing the striped green dress she had been wearing that morning. She had somehow contrived not to be splashed by anything, and apart from her location—right beside a dragon’s head—she looked almost—almost damnably ordinary. Yet she was calm, and matter-of-fact, and alone of all the people in my field of vision had been the one reaching for a weapon when the dragon arrived.

  She had not had a sword at her belt, as presumably had become habit during her days as a student in the siege of Galderon. She was the bookmistress, the wife of the town constable, a prominent member of the Embroidery Circle.

  She was patting the nose of the dragon.

  I followed her motion up to the collapsed eye. The hilt of the cake knife was buried deep into the back of the eye socket, much farther in that I remembered being able to push it. “It was stuck on something,” I said foolishly, staring at it. “There’s such a small opening for the optic nerve—I thought I’d missed—”

  “Dominus Lukel would be very proud,” Hal said, coming up behind Mrs. Etaris. To my total astonishment he was still holding our cake. “We’ll have to write to tell him that month he spent on dragon-slaying came in useful.”

  Mrs. Etaris smiled and stepped aside, revealing Mr. Dart hastening up behind Hal.

  “Jemis! Are you a complete idiot?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled. “Is that our cake?”

  “You got that knife all the way through the back of the skull.”

  “It was stuck. I had to make sure it got into the brain.”

  “Oh, you did that,” Hal assured me, grinning.

  “Lost your off-set spatula,” said the Honourable Rag from right behind me. I jumped violently, finding myself somewhat unexpectedly on my feet. I reeled, was braced by Mrs. Etaris, and consequently smeared various cake components down her sleeve.

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry, Mrs. Etaris.”

  “Dragon-slaying is somewhat notoriously messy, Mr. Greenwing. That is why it is usually done far from the haunts of men.”

  The lines sounded like something out of Fitzroy Angursell, but I couldn’t place them. “Er, I didn’t have time to draw it off.”

  “Young man!” came the high cackle of Old Mrs. Quimby. “You have ruined all the cakes!”

  “Except theirs,” said the Honourable Rag. “It’s very convenient.”

  Old Mrs. Quimby stalked towards me like an avenging goddess (albeit a somewhat decrepit one), one hand hanging off Master Dart’s arm, other waving her stick in the air and nearly walloping first my uncle, then Dominus Gleason, and then the Baron, all of whom were making their way towards me.

  My uncle’s dumbfounded expression as he looked at the dragon was one I was sure I would cherish for the rest of my life. He halted a good ten feet away and started to sway. We all watched him without moving, to see whether he would faint or vomit or sound forth encomia or prophecies, but when he raised his shaking hand and pointed, it was not at the dragon, but behind me.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Honourable Rag has No Idea

  THE BAKING PAVILION—OR what remained of it by this stage of the proceedings—was quite close to the road. This meant that the coach-and-six that was thundering towards us was indeed thundering directly towards us.

  The coach was black.

  The harness was black.

  The horses were black.

  Whatever device might have been on the door was hidden by black crêpe.

  It galloped towards us in a great rattle of of chains and couplings all accompanied by an unearthly two-tone groaning wail. The wail rose to a screech as the coachman hauled back on the reins, forcing the horses to sit nearly on their haunches to stop the carriage as it swung around to present its broad side at us.

  The horses, snorted and panting, heaved themselves into a semblance of order, the coachman released his iron grip on their reins, and there was for a moment silence.

  “If that is Lady Death,” said Mr. Dart, “she needs to grease her axle.”

  Somewhere above us part of the pavilion structure fell down and landed on a bowl with a tinny ringing sound.

  A footman jumped off the back of the carriage, hurried round to let down the steps, opened the door, and then stood beside it in rigid terror.

  Apparently satisfied that our attention was sufficiently gathered away from the distractions of a recently-deceased dragon and a destroyed cake competition, my grandmother disembarked.

  SHE HAD MADE AN EFFORT, I saw immediately: was dressed no longer in the filthy court gown of my earlier encounters, but in a different court gown of equal antiquity, sumptuousness, and incongruity. This one was made of stiff green silk with an overlay of ivory lace. It had what must have been steel-hooped corseting and a décolletage I found slightly uncomfortably low for my grandmother, especially as she emphasized the low cut with a necklace composed of three loops of emeralds interspersed with pearls.

  She wore the whole parure, I realized after a moment: emerald tiara nestled into an elaborately curled hairdo, emerald earrings, rings on every finger. And she had changed her makeup: her lips were still brilliant red and her face white with that rice powder or arsenic, but she had chosen a slightly softer pink for her eyelids.

  She still held the ebony walking stick.

  She paused a moment at the bottom of her carriage steps, looking around the scene before her with those sharp brown eyes. She passed over both me and the dragon, paused briefly at Hal, continued on. After a moment she focused on the Baron, who was standing next to Master Dart and convulsively wringing his hands in a handkerchief. I felt a moment’s pity for him; he hated anything to be unhygienic. Master Dart himself appeared nonplussed.

  “Baron Ragnor,” the Marchioness said. Her voice was stronger than it had been, easily piercing all the low buzz of whispers. “You look just as foolish as ever. Whatever have you been doing with yourself? This Fair is not as I recall.”

  The Baron kept wringing his hands, and added shaking his head wordlessly from side to side.

  “We were surprised to be interrupted by a dragon,” said Master Dart. “I’m not certain if you will remember me, Lady Noirell: I am Torquin Dart, Squire of Dartington. I was good friends with Jack Greenwing and your daughter the Lady Olive.”

  “I am here for my grandson,” she announced, causing a fair stir among the crowd, who all turned to face me. I blinked and blushed as my grandmother stomped over, ignoring broken plates and broken cakes and broken furniture with equal aplomb. She stopped a couple of feet away to pull out her lorgnette and give me yet another piercing once-over. “I see my fears have been realized,” she announced. “Your appearance is a complete disgrace.”

  Someone in the crowd of people hovering safely on the far side of the dragon giggled.

&n
bsp; I felt my numbness start to dissipate under this barrage of unexpected criticism. My voice came out tartly. “I do apologize for not having realized I ought to have been dressed for a court ball this afternoon, Lady Noirell, but I’m afraid it seemed better to me this morning to dress appropriately for my day’s activities. I did not intend to fight a dragon in the midst of these, but, well, as Mrs. Etaris mentioned just now, that’s an untidy business and if I had been better organized no doubt I would have managed to do so somewhere less public.”

  The Marchioness stared at me, lips pursed tight, for a long, long moment. Then she cackled. “Come here, my boy, you have leave to kiss your grandmother. Fought a dragon, did you?”

  Kissing my grandmother was not high on my list of objectives for the day, but I obediently crossed over the feet between us and gave her a light peck on the cheek, hoping as I did so that people didn’t really use arsenic powder for make-up.

  But even I knew that in the game of Poacher that was life, that invitation and that gesture was a Hand hardly to be beaten.

  The Marchioness had lifted her lorgnette to survey the dragon. “Mmph,” she said, or rather snorted. “You have successfully proven yourself to be the true heir to the Woods Noirell. Leave this carcass and this foolish embroilment of yourself with the lower classes. You have much to learn. Give me your arm to the carriage.”

  I was feeling somewhat stunned on numerous counts, but not so stunned that I was prepared to go meekly with that invitation. “I beg your pardon, Lady Noirell?”

  “You may call me Grandmama,” she said, with no softening whatsoever of her demeanour. “Do not be a fool: now that you are acknowledged as the Viscount St-Noire, you must learn what your duties are.”

  I took a breath. “While I do not deny that I have responsibilities as the—as the heir, you cannot mean for me to go with you this instant?”