Dragonslayer

by Tui T. Sutherland

  “Yikes,” Daffodil said when they reached a safe distance. “I thought that was the end of everything! I was starting to wonder if I’d have time to pack before we got thrown out of Valor!”

  “I’m sorry,” Ivy said. She didn’t know how to shield her friends if her father’s anger turned on them.

  “Don’t be,” Foxglove said, looping one arm around Ivy’s shoulder and squeezing her. “You have nothing to be sorry about. We know more than we did at the beginning of the day. And we have something.” She took the pile of blankets with the sapphire hidden inside. “I’ll find a place for this. And I guess I’ll … wash these. Daffodil, since you volunteered, if you’d like to come help me do that tomorrow, I would appreciate it.”

  “I will!” Daffodil said. They split off from Foxglove at the next tunnel and headed back toward Ivy’s cave. Violet still hadn’t said a word since leaving Stone’s cave.

  “Violet, are you all right?” Ivy asked.

  “Just thinking,” Violet said. “Was he really mad about you getting a little wet? Or why did he order us confined to the caves?”

  So Violet had noticed Heath’s anger, too. “Do you think he suspects?” Ivy whispered. “If he saw the sapphire — he would have taken it from us, wouldn’t he?”

  “I don’t think it was about the treasure,” Violet said thoughtfully. “I think he didn’t like seeing Wingwatchers with Stone. Maybe he’s worried his brother will try to steal his position as lord of Valor.”

  “No way. Uncle Stone isn’t at all interested in that,” Ivy said.

  “But the Dragonslayer is clearly feeling threatened by something,” said Violet. “I think I’d better tell the Wingwatchers to be extra careful for a while. Even if they just roll their eyes at me and say, ‘Nobody is UP TO anything, Violet, buzz off,’ like they normally do.”

  “Do we have to be extra careful, too?” Daffodil asked with a dramatic sigh. “I hate being extra careful.”

  “Have you literally ever tried, even once in your life?” Violet asked.

  “What about our plan?” Ivy interjected. “To fix everything? What do we do about it now?” She didn’t want to give up. Especially now that she’d seen the village — if dragons were still doing that to other villages, she would do anything to get the treasure back and stop them.

  “Well,” Violet said, “if seeing Pine in the old village spooked him into moving the treasure, it stands to reason he’d have moved it closer to him. Somewhere he could keep an eye on it all the time.” She gestured at the tunnels around them. “Somewhere down here.”

  “So we keep looking,” Daffodil said. “Don’t worry, Ivy. We’ll find it.”

  *  *  *

  * * *

  It was several days before Ivy found herself alone at home again. Her father seemed to be lurking around more than usual, eyeing her with either suspicion or concern. He was short-tempered with her mother and grumbled about everything — the fish stew, the temperature of the cave, all the whining people kept doing about tunnels collapsing and vegetable shortages, like it was his fault the architects and gardeners were so lazy.

  Ivy noticed that he’d also added several men to his private guard, all of them brawny and surly and devoted to the Dragonslayer. She saw a few Wingwatchers be summoned individually to his office, and she wondered whether that meant they were loyal to him, or whether they were the ones he most suspected of fomenting rebellion.

  One day at breakfast, Ivy’s father announced that he had to go on an inspection tour of the orchards. “Something about pests eating all the fruit,” he muttered. “Don’t know what they think I’m going to do about it!” He snorted and looked at Ivy’s mother. “Wingwatcher training is suspended for today so a patrol can accompany us. So you should stay home with Ivy, Lark.”

  Mother gave him a puzzled, dismayed look. “But I have that meeting with the gardeners,” she protested. “We’re working on a new solution to the sunlight problem.”

  “You’ll have to miss it,” he said, standing up.

  “Ivy can stay home by herself, dear,” she said. “She’s fourteen! She’s almost a full Wingwatcher.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said, frowning. “Still, stay together for today. I’d feel safer if you did.”

  “I could go to Daffodil’s while Mother has her meeting,” Ivy suggested.

  “No, no,” he said. “You spend quite enough time with those girls. Both of you, here. And don’t leave until I return.”

  “Heath —” Mother protested, but he was already striding out the door. She stared after him for a moment with a bewildered expression. Watching her, Ivy realized that there was something different about her mother’s face … something missing.

  The dreamy look, she thought. The hero-worship eyes she used to give Dad all the time, same as most everyone in Valor. I haven’t seen her look at him like that in a while.

  When did that change?

  She tried to think back to when the bedtime story stopped, or to some of the fights her parents had had in the last few years. Was it possible her mom had started noticing Dad’s lies, too? Had she realized, somewhere along the way, that he was not as much of a hero as she’d first believed?

  Ivy knew her mother loved working on projects to improve Valor. Now that she thought about it, those projects had been taking up a lot more of her time in the last few years … as though Lark was happy to stay busy and away from Heath.

  It’s probably good for Mom to see him more clearly, she thought. But … they’re my parents. I still want them to love each other.

  No. What I really want, she admitted to herself, is for Dad to be the person that Mom and I thought he was.

  Her mother was still staring at the door, frowning in a puzzled way.

  “Mom? Why is Dad acting so weird?” Ivy asked.

  “He’s … got a lot on his mind,” her mother said, looking down at the table. She started to clear the breakfast things and Ivy stood up to help her.

  “So do you,” Ivy said gently. “Your work on the gardens is really important, too.”

  “I do think it is!” Her mother stopped and took a deep breath. “Right now your father is worried that something might happen to us. There’s a man — a very powerful man — who’s been trying for years to get your father to come work for him.”

  “Really?” Ivy said. “Who? What does he want Dad to do?”

  “Slay dragons, of course,” her mother said ruefully. “He’s the lord of the Indestructible City.”

  Oh, wow, Ivy thought. She’d heard of the Indestructible City, but she didn’t know anything about its lord. What would it be like if they all moved there and Heath became a professional dragonslayer? Would he lead the lord’s armies against the dragons?

  Dad would never work for anyone else; he likes being lord himself too much. And he doesn’t want to fight any more dragons. He’d rather hide from them.

  “Anyway, the last couple of messengers have been more … persistent than the ones before. Your father is worried about what they might do. I think he’s afraid they might even kidnap one of us.”

  Ivy wondered if that was exactly true, or whether that was her mother’s own interpretation of Heath’s concerns. I think he’d be more worried a kidnapper would ask for the treasure as ransom. Would he give it to them? In exchange for either of us?

  “Not to mention all the unrest in Valor,” Lark sighed. “So many angry people, all wanting your father to fix everything.”

  Well, it would certainly help if he tried to fix SOMETHING, at least, Ivy thought.

  She glanced sideways at her mother as they washed the dishes. “I think you should go to that meeting, Mom. If you’re not there, the gardeners will only get more angry with Dad — but if you are, maybe you can help fix things. I promise I’ll stay here with the door locked.”

  Her mother pushed her hair out of her face, leaving a damp streak on her forehead. She gazed at the door, looking worried. “I wouldn’t be gone long,” she said. “It is p
retty important … if I go, do you think we could keep it between ourselves?”

  “Of course, Mom,” Ivy said, giving her a hug. “Go save the vegetables.”

  “All right. Yes. I will! Thank you, Ivy.” Her mother smiled and hurried off to change.

  Ivy finished cleaning up, wondering if this was the first time she’d ever seen her mother disobey one of her father’s orders, or if had happened before without her noticing. She hoped it wasn’t a terrible mistake to encourage her mom to go. She hoped Dad wouldn’t find out and be furious. But it didn’t seem fair that her mother had to miss a meeting she cared about, just because he was feeling paranoid, when Ivy could certainly look after herself.

  Almost as soon as her mother was gone, there was a knock on the door. Ivy checked the peephole, but she already knew it was Violet and Daffodil.

  “I was just trying to figure out how to send a message to you,” Ivy said, opening the door.

  “No need,” Daffodil said, sweeping in grandly. “We’ve been watching and waiting for AGES for them both to be gone.”

  “Everyone focus,” Violet said. She had her hair back in a dark purple band of cloth and was wearing gray instead of her Wingwatcher uniform, but she still looked like she was ready to take over Commander Brook’s job the moment it was available. “We’re going to search every corner of this place, but we have to do it fast.”

  “I’ve already searched every corner!” Ivy protested. “I really have!”

  “We’re doing it again,” Violet said, striding purposefully toward the Dragonslayer’s office. Properly this time was strongly implied.

  “I need a snack first,” Daffodil said. “We’ll catch up to you!”

  Violet rolled her eyes and disappeared into the next cave.

  “Guess what?” Daffodil whispered to Ivy, pulling her into the kitchen. “Forest asked me to be his date to the Wingwatchers dance!”

  “Oh — wow,” Ivy said. She’d completely forgotten about the Wingwatchers dance. “Yay? Yay, right? That’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Daffodil said, “except that Violet will be a huge pain in the butt about it.” She took an apple from the barrel in the corner and started cutting it into slices.

  “You haven’t told her?”

  “Obviously I will,” Daffodil said, “but I was thinking I’d wait until the very last minute, just to minimize the amount of time I have to spend hearing about how all boys are gross and he’s the worst and couldn’t I do better and so on forever and so forth.”

  She took the plate of apple slices into Ivy’s living room, but stopped short in the entranceway. “Speaking of gross!” she said, flourishing one hand at the tail barb on its pedestal. “How do you live with that thing?”

  “I avoid it,” Ivy admitted. “I’ll walk all the way around the tables to get past it.”

  Daffodil’s eyes suddenly went wide. “So,” she said slowly, “hypothetically, when you were searching the whole place … did you avoid it then, too?”

  Ivy gasped. Of course she had. She hadn’t even thought about it. She avoided it instinctively. She’d never once lifted the tapestry draped over the pedestal to see what was underneath.

  “Violet!” Daffodil shouted.

  A few moments later, they had folded the tapestry over the glass box and the tail barb, revealing the huge wooden cabinet that formed the pedestal. It was definitely a cabinet, because it had a door, but there was no keyhole. Instead there was a series of tumblers embedded in the wood, with letters inscribed on them.

  “It’s a combination lock,” Violet said. “We have to line up the letters to spell the right word in order to get it to open.”

  “Wait,” Ivy said as Daffodil reached for the first tumbler. “Let me memorize what it is right now, so we can put it back the way it was before Dad comes home.” She studied the letters, her heart beating wildly.

  “What could it be?” Violet mused. “Four letters … maybe a word that means something to him?”

  “Try Lark,” Ivy suggested. “My mom’s name.”

  Daffodil lined up LARK, but that didn’t work.

  “SLAY?” Violet suggested. “TAIL? BARB?”

  They tried all three. No luck.

  “What about something no one would expect?” Daffodil said. “Like … BOOK? Or LOVE?”

  Violet snorted, but she tried both of them. “Shockingly terrible guesses,” she said when neither worked.

  “I am thinking outside the box, VIOLET,” Daffodil said.

  “Claw?” Ivy said. “Wing? Fire?”

  They tried every dragon-related word they could think of, and then all the treasure-related ones, like GOLD and GEMS and RICH.

  “Anyone might guess one of those,” Violet said. “It has to be something more specific to him, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh,” Ivy said softly. “I know. Try Rose.”

  She held her breath as Daffodil clicked the letters around. R-O-S-E. The lost sister who he must think about every time he saw his treasure. He must wonder if it had been worth it, losing her in exchange for this.

  Daffodil tugged on the door. It did not open.

  “Whoa,” she said, blinking up at Ivy and Violet. “I really thought that would be it! That would be the perfect password. Like a sign that your dad does have a soul after all.”

  “Hey now,” Ivy said. “He has a soul. Sometimes he’s really funny or does something thoughtful for Mom. He’s not completely evil.”

  “Try EVIL,” Violet suggested.

  “Violet,” Ivy said, rolling her eyes, but she was secretly relieved when that word didn’t work either.

  “Maybe IVY … S?” Violet said. “Like, all this will be Ivy’s one day?”

  That didn’t work either. Ivy would have been enormously surprised if it had. She didn’t think she was that present in her father’s thoughts.

  Besides, he wouldn’t think of the treasure as something that would belong to anyone else, ever. The way he talked about it, the way he loved it — it was his, and he wouldn’t ever give it up.

  “Maybe … try MINE,” she said. As in, this treasure is all mine.

  The letters clicked into place, and the cabinet door swung open.

  “Yeesh. Not to be judgy,” Violet said, “but that’s an upsetting choice of password.”

  “Oh my stars,” Daffodil whispered, staring into the cabinet. Ivy crouched beside her and saw that it was packed, top to bottom, with piles of gold coins, gemstones, and a dragon carved from blue stone with emeralds for eyes.

  “We found it,” she said. “Now quick, lock it up again.”

  “Can’t I touch it?” Daffodil said wistfully.

  “No, Ivy’s right,” Violet agreed. “Leave everything the way it was.”

  “Before we take the treasure, we need to work out the rest of the plan,” Ivy said. “How to give it back to the dragons …”

  “And survive,” Violet finished.

  Leaf yelled and fought and pounded on the dragon’s claws, but the dragon only glanced down at him and made a low chuckling kind of noise.

  Whoa. This one’s face was totally different, kind of square and flat on top. And it was brown — the warm tree-bark brown of Wren’s eyes. Its eyes were brown, too, and more human than any other dragon’s he’d seen before.

  If it wasn’t the silliest thought Leaf had ever had, he might say the dragon’s eyes were twinkling at him.

  Also, the last two dragons had held Leaf tight and carelessly, like a squirmy, annoying carrot; this one carried him cupped in both hands, the way Wren used to carry baby rabbits out of the garden so no one would catch them and kill them.

  “What the heck kind of dragon are you?” Leaf shouted. “I’m not scared of you! If you eat me, I will kick out your teeth and poke your guts and make you generally miserable! I’m going to be a dragonslayer, you hear me?! It’s my destiny, so you can’t eat me, because that’s not my destiny, so —”

  The brown dragon reached the top of the cliff and landed awk
wardly on its back talons. Using its wings for balance, it crouched and opened its claws, setting Leaf down behind a boulder with astonishing gentleness.

  Leaf’s legs almost gave out underneath him. He stared up at the dragon, blinking in confusion.

  It … it looked like it was smiling.

  Dragons don’t smile, do they, Wren?

  “Rrrrrr rrrrrmble rrrrrgle rrrrrbpity rrrrrflte,” the dragon said.

  It’s TALKING TO ME.

  The dragon pointed off into the mountains, nudged Leaf gently with one claw, and then turned and flew back into the palace through the hole in the roof of the central hall.

  Leaf had to sit down.

  He covered his face with his hands and tried to think.

  Did that dragon just … help me?

  Why didn’t it eat me?

  What was it trying to say? It looked like it knew I was escaping … like that’s what it wanted me to do.

  WHY WOULD A DRAGON HELP ME ESCAPE?

  He couldn’t figure it out. There was no reason for that dragon to catch him and then let him go. Did it really see him climbing, figure out that he needed help, and decide to lift him to the top of the cliff?

  It could have eaten him in a heartbeat. It should have eaten him.

  Surely any other dragon would have eaten him, or left him to fall and die.

  Was that dragon … weird? Or are there actually lots of friendly, helpful dragons in the world? Just … living side by side with the murderous, person-eating ones?

  He’d been sitting there for a little while, trying to wrap his head around this idea and recover from the climb and the shock, when four dragons burst out of the roof hole nearby. They looked like the ones he’d seen before — one coppery and wreathed in smoke, one blue and scowling, and the kind brown one — plus one more, this one much bigger and red, with a burn scar on its face.

  Leaf hid in the shadow of the boulder as they soared into the sunlight and then away, back down over the cliff he’d been climbing.

  “Kind brown one” indeed. It probably just has indigestion today. That would explain the expression that looked like a smile. It was full and its stomach hurt, so it let me go.