The Dragon Queen (Lamb & Castle Book 3)

by J M Sanford

  “Good luck,” said Bessie sincerely, bringing him back from those thoughts.

  “You can do it, boy,” said Meg, slapping him on the thigh. “Go get that dragon.”

  “Just come back in one piece,” said Amelia.

  18: QUEEN TO QUEEN

  Sable pranced and preened and cackled: the day was turning out to be the most entertaining one since the city fell. He’d fought with a dragon, and when that had flown away he’d wrestled his brother instead. He’d watched the red-faced boy fall off a horse so many times. He’d found a big metal spider that ran all over the place and curled up into a ball when he swatted it. He’d got a new satchel to keep his treasures in, and he wore it with pride. After lunch, he’d flown up the high towers to see what the stone men were doing there. He’d knocked loose some chunks of ice that fell so far and smashed into dust and shards when they finally hit the ground, and then the stone men had wanted to play chase. When they caught him (they always caught him in the end, because they could run all day and Sable couldn’t) they took him to see the magician in his special locked room.

  The magician ought to have known better than to take that muzzle off old Reggie. Sable had only seen old Reggie a couple of times, but even he could tell that the big mean dragon had muscle where his brains ought to be. Stupid magician, ought to have guessed that mean old Reggie would take the chance to use his flames rather than talk. Sable had missed half the fight, and only heard the full story from Scarlet, but the fun of the day had not yet come to an end, even though the sun was going down. Sable shivered with excitement, ruffling up his feathers, then took the time to preen them flat again. Must be sneaky, must be cunning. Must be the best griffin. Then there would be rewards. He prowled around, searching for his prey. He guessed he was getting close when the flash of a broken star gave away one of the stone men, standing still as a statue outside Scarlet’s kitchen. Sable slunk past, keeping an eye on it. He didn’t like the stone men much.

  In the kitchen, the visitors stood crowded together, talking loudly at each other. Scarlet would be happy: Scarlet liked new friends more than anything else in all the worlds. The noise settled to a rustle of whispers when the visitors saw Sable, and soon every eye in the room was on him. He sat down, cocking his head to look at each one of the visitors in turn. Angry little girl. Blonde lady. Amily! Stranger in armour. Stranger with scars… and cat-who-walks-like-a-man.

  The blonde lady spoke up. “No need to worry about him. He’s on our side, aren’t you, Sable? Have you got something for us there?” she asked, pointing to his new satchel.

  Sable backed up. “Mine. Mine.” The bag was for his best treasures, so he would never lose them. The blonde lady had her own bag so she probably liked collecting treasures too. But she couldn’t have any of his.

  The cat-who-walks-like-a-man was standing in front of the stove, staring at nothing. Sable slunk up to him and brushed against him, making the cat-who-walks-like-a-man jump as if a stray spark from the fire had hit him in the ear. “What do you want?” growled the cat-who-walks-like-a-man.

  “Friend?” Sable croaked, circling close. There it was, inner left coat pocket.

  “No. Please leave me alone.”

  “Sable, let Bryn be,” said the blonde lady firmly, digging into her bag. “No need to worry, he’s just hoping for food… Here,” she pulled out a strip of dried meat and tossed it towards Sable. He snapped it right out of the air. Dry. Tough. Irritating prickly flavour. He began to regret eating it, and thought about bringing it back up again, but Scarlet didn’t like it when he did that, and had once gone so far as to try to rub it in his face. In the ensuing tussle, both griffins had ended up with puked curried haddock in their feathers and fur.

  With a shudder at the horrible memory, Sable settled down by the range, curling up so he could lay the tassel of his tail over his eyes. Must be cunning and patient. Must be the best griffin. With only three of them, being second best meant being second to last. He watched through the haze of coarse black hairs. He listened to the conversation pick up again. Kitchen warmth was comfortable, and he could wait. Must be cunning and patient. He yawned widely. Must not sleep…

  He didn’t know how much time had elapsed before he opened his eyes again. Sneakily, he looked around through his tail tassel, but the lamps had all been put out and the fire in the stove had died right down. He could hear the gentle rhythm of breathing from sleeping bodies all around him. In silence, Sable stretched out his claws, then reversed the stretch to work the stiffness out of his back legs. He padded carefully around the room until he found somebody else’s tail lying draped across the arm of a chair. The cat-who-walks-like-a-man, curled up and snoring softly. Carefully, Sable used his beak to peel the sleeper’s coat back from his body. Even through the cloth of the pocket, Sable could feel the humming of magic from the box within. Slowly, in time with the sleeping breathing, he pulled the box clear of the pocket. It was almost too big to carry in his beak, but he wasn’t going to indignify himself by getting into human form if he could help it. Leave that nonsense to Scarlet. Adjusting his grip on the magic box, he padded stealthily to the door, and slunk out. He’d just sat down to wrangle the awkward box into his satchel for safekeeping when –

  “You have the mysterious box,” said a voice in the darkness, and Sable almost jumped out of his skin. Hackles stiff, he turned to face the stone man and growled in warning. This did nothing to discourage the stone man. “Give it to me.”

  Turning sharply, Sable bounded off, the magic box clamped in his beak, the stone man behind him breaking into a tireless run.

  ~

  Every fairy tale Amelia had ever read told her that her current situation ought to be the pinnacle of romance. Her knight in shining armour had ridden off to fight a dragon for her, and judging by countless fairy tale illustrations, she should be standing at the window of a high tower, watching wistfully for his triumphant return. She couldn’t bear it. High towers were out of bounds for the time being anyway, unsafe after the dragon’s rampage. The golems were checking over the structure of the guest wing before the visitors could return to their rooms, so they’d congregated in Scarlet’s main kitchen instead. Amelia, still uneasy with her companions since her secret had come out, had tried distracting herself by visiting the winter garden again, talking fruitlessly to the mechanical birds and collecting flowers for the table, but her walk had been cut short by a vicious hailstorm. Her stomach churned whenever she thought about poor Harold out there in the cold and the storms, surrounded by people (not even people, really) who had tried to kill them both in the past. She didn’t just feel a bit queasy at that thought, she genuinely believed she might be sick. Just look at how her own alliance with Bessie had turned out, and she’d thought for a while that Bessie was her friend.

  Amelia sat at the great kitchen table, trying to feed some ornamental grass to Stupid, bouncing the long tasselled stems in front of him, but he wasn’t having any of it. She could have sworn his flames had grown brighter over the past few days, but he remained listless and sulky, with no love for the weird magic of the artificial world. The clock ticked lazily, dragging out the hours, and Meg’s knitting needles clacked out of time with it. The hunt shouldn’t be taking this long: where were they?

  “That dragon’s your prince, you know,” said Meg, picking up a conversation in the middle.

  “Yes,” said Amelia through gritted teeth, and prodded Stupid a bit too hard with the grass stem, making him squeak.

  “Just something to think about.”

  “You said I didn’t have to marry him. You said –”

  “I know what I said. Just making sure you realised that.”

  “Of course I’d realised that!”

  They’d all agreed that the wedding between Prince Archalthus and Miss Hartwood would spell a bad future for the rest of them. With the Red King and Queen crowned, who would need Amelia and Bessie, or any of their attendants? At best, they could look forward to life as puppets and plaything
s of the new royal family.

  Amelia turned to Bessie, who sat with her arms crossed on the table top and her head held low. “Do you think you should try talking to Rose?”

  Bessie gave her a sour look. “I’ll try it, next time I feel like being insulted and manhandled by golems,” she spat.

  “No, but if we can convince her to talk to us properly…” Not all of the Antwin Academy’s curriculum revolved around knives and poisons. A lot of it was about diplomacy, seeking out hidden information and manipulating events without the need for bloodshed.

  Bessie looked sheepish. “Rhetoric and Persuasion? That’s fifth and sixth year stuff. I don’t know how to do any of that.”

  “I’m going to at least try talking to her.”

  “I don’t care. Maybe you’ll get to be her best lady’s maid. Or maybe you’ll mess it up like you always do, and lose your conjuring rings as well. Doesn’t matter to me.”

  ~

  With Bessie’s unkind words ringing in her ears, not to mention the fear of spiders, Amelia opted to go directly and openly to the Red Queen. She went through the proper channels to get permission, and soon she was knocking on the door to Rose’s private chambers, bold as brass.

  “Who is that?” Rose’s voice rang out. “Go away: I don’t want anybody to see my wedding dress until it’s finished!”

  Amelia thought for a moment. “Oh please?” she wheedled. “I’ve been just dying of curiosity about it. Scarlet makes such beautiful dresses and I can’t bear to go on any longer without seeing. Your dress will be made by Scarlet, won’t it?”

  “Of course it will! Scarlet, let her in so I don’t have to stand here shouting all day.”

  There was a pause, and then the door opened. “Hello there, poppet,” said Scarlet wearily. “So you’ve come to see what goes on.” In the middle of the room, Rose stood on a footstool, swathed in white silk and draped in a rain of countless diamonds that shimmered like a waterfall whenever she so much as breathed.

  “Oh my goodness…” Amelia whispered, both hands to her mouth. As with the winter garden, she hardly had to feign her admiration. Rose’s porcelain skin and the white silk were equals in their soft smoothness, her black hair pinned up showed off a neck as elegant as a swan’s, her blue-green eyes and red lips the only points of colour, captivating. The finest sculptors alive surely couldn’t have matched the perfection of her features or the sweeping folds of silk. “It’s finished, surely?” said Amelia. “Nobody could look more beautiful.”

  Rose beamed delightedly, that smile which would win the hearts of thousands. “Well I will.”

  “Oh yes, lots to do yet,” agreed Scarlet, tugging at the silk, straightening and adjusting. “Lots and lots. A thousand and one details to take care of. It all takes time, but we can’t have Her Ladyship going to the altar looking anything less than perfect, can we? I couldn’t live with that on my conscience, oh no.”

  “And I still haven’t decided on how my hair should be done,” said Rose. “Ow! You just poked me, Scarlet! Don’t forget there’s pins in there! If you’ve made me bleed on the silk, I shall make you start all over again.” But a pinprick was nothing to stop the juggernaut of a bride-to-be’s excitement. “And there’s the veil to be finished yet,” she told Amelia. “I won’t look like a proper bride without a veil, will I?”

  “Breathe out please, Mistress,” said Scarlet. “Your waist is small enough as it is, and we can’t have you fainting at the altar.”

  “My prince will catch me if I do,” said Rose, and then sighed dreamily, which had the effect of relaxing her waist, at any rate. “My prince… I can hardly believe it, even after all these months.”

  “Hmm. He is a dragon, though,” said Amelia.

  Rose’s turquoise eyes narrowed, as mean as a cat’s. “And?”

  Amelia shrugged. “I just… I was just thinking how beautiful you look in that lovely dress, and how no man in the world could refuse you, looking like that. And I thought… surely there are princes who aren’t dragons.” And Prince Archalthus could not be King without his bride. Amelia shrugged again, as if she hadn’t carefully planned what she’d just said to Rose.

  The girl’s fine features lost some of their beauty as her expression turned cruel. “You’re just having a little fit of pettishness because I’m going to be the Dragon Queen, and you’re not,” she said. She eyed Amelia suspiciously. “You didn’t come here, to my beautiful winter world, thinking you could take my prince for yourself, did you?”

  “Oh no! I wouldn’t dream of it! I’m… I’m in love with Harold, you see.” Her sudden hot blush gave a convincing level of honesty to the sentiment, something that a thousand words could never have achieved.

  Rose’s finely arched eyebrows shot up. “Your Paladin?” she almost whispered the scandalous notion, a gossip’s delight shining in her eyes. “That hayforker?”

  “He’s not a hayforker,” Amelia protested, not sure if that was a euphemism for something other than the obvious. “He’s an apprentice butcher, and his family is well respected in our town.”

  Rose threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, how precious! Oh, no, I don’t mean to laugh, you poor dear. But if you’re to be my first courtier, we’ll have to find you a proper husband. One who’ll put all thought of country boys out of your silly head.”

  “Harold’s kind, and honest, and dependable,” Amelia persisted. “When he thought I’d been kidnapped, he rode out to rescue me.” She left out the part about the bicycle, suspecting that wouldn’t help her case. “And what I meant to say was that you’re so beautiful, you could have your pick of men who are as rich and handsome as the prince, but as good and sweet as Harold. You needn’t marry a dragon, surely?”

  Scarlet, busily finnicking about with the hem of the wedding dress, removed a handful of pins from between her lips. “She thinks you’re selling yourself short, Mistress.”

  “Keep out of this, you,” said Rose. “What’s so bad about my prince being a dragon, anyway? It’s not all of the time.”

  Even with a mouthful of pins, Scarlet expressed her opinion with just eyes and eyebrows, and was lucky that Rose couldn’t see her.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the story of the woeful bachelor of Attagon?” asked Amelia. Seeing Rose’s blank look, she continued: “Hundreds of years ago in the city of Attagon, there lived a handsome young bachelor, tall and dark, with eyes as blue as the summer sky…”

  Every girl in town vied for this young man’s attention, some artfully, some not so. He couldn’t walk the streets in peace without some hopeful young maiden or other falling into step beside him, coaxing him into conversation on any subject she guessed might please him. Eloquent girls recited poetry, wealthy girls regaled him with tales from court, studious girls taught him of the dance of the stars in the heavens, but every one of them endeavoured to discover what nature of woman could capture his fickle heart. None of them knew that his heart already belonged to another, someone who was always waiting for him when he returned home, someone he already loved far more than he could love any of this crowd of over-keen girls. Truthfully, the handsome bachelor considered his cat the best companion he could wish for: quiet, demure and graceful; loyal and affectionate; white as the moon, with eyes as blue as his own.

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Rose. “Why would a man be in love with a cat?”

  Amelia stopped short. “I don’t know, he just was. That’s how the story goes.”

  Anyway, the young bachelor’s father, preparing to hand down his business, had begun to hint rather heavily that the bachelor must pick a girl and become a husband, for the generations of their family were like links in a chain, and that chain must never, ever break. So, the bachelor first visited a marriage arranger, but none of the girls she offered were beautiful or graceful enough. Next he consulted a fortune teller, who told him nothing new: his heart was already spoken for. Finally, he sought out a wizard, who agreed to come to the bachelor’s home and solve the problem.

&nb
sp; “You mean a mage,” said Rose. “Only ignorant country types speak of wizards.”

  All right, then, the mage visited the bachelor in his home. It was the work of many hours to transform the cat into a fit bride for the bachelor, but when she stood before him in human guise, her skin and hair as white as the moon, her eyes as blue as the summer sky, he was more certain than ever before that he loved her, and could never love another. The bachelor called for his mother and father, for all his aunties and uncles and cousins, and for the priest to marry him at once. Everyone at the wedding admired this beautiful, demure young lady with the moon-white hair, and though she spoke barely a word to the guests, they allowed that she only had eyes for her groom. That is, until a mouse scurried out from a corner. Without a thought, the beautiful bride pounced on the mouse. Every guest at the wedding heard the crunch of tiny bones as the bride bit off the mouse’s head. With blood on her lips, she smiled beautifully at her new husband, and knelt to present the mouse at his feet.

  Well, as you can imagine, this put him in a difficult position, socially. The priest, realising the trick, annulled the marriage on the spot, cursing the young man to forever be a bachelor. The young man’s father paid the mage double to reverse the spell on the cat, but the story had run full circle around Attagon before sunset, and no young lady joined the accursed bachelor to discuss poetry, or gossip, or the dance of the stars ever again.

  “I still don’t understand,” said Rose, “why a man would marry a cat.”

  Amelia took a deep breath. Rose couldn’t have missed the entire point of the story, could she? After all that had gone before it… “Well, the moral is –”

  “How old are you?” Rose interrupted. “Telling ridiculous children’s stories when I need to prepare for my wedding.” She clicked her tongue. “Go away. Scarlet, make her go away before she tells me another story.”