Slither

by Melody Steiner

  “Yes?” What does that mean?

  He swallows. “Something will have to be done about you.”

  My heart beats into a rhythm that is faster than the tempo of the music. I find my hips pivoting to one side, then the other. My toes tap inside the awful shoes Adom and Raina insisted that I wear. “You mean you have plans to let me go?”

  He polishes off the wine and sets down the glass. “I have... plans.” He begins to veer in the direction of the dancing bodies—curse him—leaving me with too many questions in my head.

  Without thinking, I reach out and weave my arm around his. He stops and looks over his shoulder at me, his eyes drowsy slits of fire that come alive and expressive in an instant. The question is plain on his face. Why are you touching me, Rat?

  “Why don’t you let me go now? Today?”

  He removes his arm from mine. “It isn’t sensible to free you.” He points at the beheaded animals along the wall. “Not unless I want to end up like them.”

  “Tell the others you ate me. I won’t return to Onyx for revenge. I just want freedom.”

  “If you impress me on this mission, I’ll remember your contribution.” Adom stares at the moving bodies, and then his eyes fix on mine. “Lord Faigen is gone, so there’s no point in staying any longer.” His eyebrows rise. “Unless, of course, you wish to learn how to dance.”

  I swallow, my tongue suddenly thick and my brain foggy. It’s the damn heat in this room and all the swaying bodies. And I’m hungry.

  My mind refocuses. Adom is teasing me, is all. “You said you’re looking for other changelings.” I gesture to the full room. “Have all these people been cleared?”

  The glint in his eyes fades. He studies the room. “No, I suppose they haven’t. My current investigations have been a bit more targeted.”

  “Let me walk around the room, Adom. Please? I’ve spent my whole life lurking in the shadows, overhearing things I shouldn’t hear. I’ll bet I can learn something useful to you.” The sounds and noises of the place are, as predicted, a sensory overload, but I’m determined not to let Adom catch on to this fact. How am I ever going to get away from him if I don’t learn to navigate the human world?

  His chin tilts, eyebrows pressed together. His lips begin to form a “no.”

  “Excuse me,” says a sweet-spoken gentleman dressed flagrantly like a black and gold speckled dragon. He extends a hand to me, but his eyes are on Adom. “I should like to dance with the swan if her snake guardian would unravel himself from around her neck.”

  I stare at his extended hand with dismay. Who is this strange person and why is he asking Adom’s permission to dance with me? I give Adom a horrified look, hoping he correctly interprets my stony silence. I’m not dancing with Adom or this prancing dragon-fellow who won’t even look me in the eye. I didn’t come here to dance. I came to do what I do best, to blend in, gather secrets, and make my exit as uneventful and anonymous as humanly possible. I take a hard look at the man, at his widely curly blond hair, his sapphire eyes, and the stretched smile on his too-friendly, too-symmetrical face.

  The corners of Adom’s mouth curve up, and the mischievous glint returns. “She’s a recent debutante.” He yawns. “Her parents asked me to look after her tonight. She hasn’t yet learned to dance, so you may want to move along.”

  Oh, so now I’m a debutante? I’m moving up in the world, I see. Only now, the fool dragon-man thinks we’re on equal footing. I catch the determined gleam in his eyes and clench my fists together. Is this Adom’s way of trying to discourage the man? If so, I’m not impressed.

  “I’ll teach her,” the man volunteers. His hand is still extended toward me. “Welcome to society, my dear. Would you like to learn to dance?”

  Adom looks completely disinterested. Clearly, I will have to shoo the man away myself.

  “I don’t know you,” I say flatly.

  “Lady Elanor,” Adom helpfully gestures to the unwanted dragon. “May I introduce you to Lord Rhydian Berrel? He’s quite an ingenious man, with a razor mind in the mining business. He’s contributed millions to the king’s army for the campaign against the dragons.” The words sound hollow, like an obligatory introduction. I get the sense that Adom isn’t particularly impressed with Lord Berrel’s business savvy—or his money for that matter.

  “Really?” Adom might not realize it, but even with the tepid introduction he’s selling Lord Berrel as a potential ally. I don’t want to dance with the man, but if my blockhead captor makes himself scarce I could pick Lord Berrel’s mind like a carrion bird enjoying a bloody feast. I glance at him again. He’s not bad looking.

  Berrel gestures toward the dance floor. “This way, my lady.”

  “But I’m not sure...” I pat Berrel’s hand, growing more and more flustered, all the while glaring at Adom. He’s fidgeting with his pocket handkerchief, not even bothering to look up.

  The lord misreads the intentions of my pacifying hand and grasps hold of it, then tugs me away from Adom and meets my gaze for the first time. At the center of his eyes, a jealous spark catches me off balance. Suddenly, I have the suspicion that this is all a power show and I’m caught in the middle, an unintentional casualty of a secret feud. It reminds me of one very unfortunate game of dragon slap I was baited into playing three years ago. The rules were simple enough: tie a rope to your midsection and hang from a cave ceiling, playing dead, while two dragons bat you back and forth like a couple of cats pawing at a mouse.

  I’d be damned if I let these two imbeciles treat me like a dead mouse. If Berrel wants to dance with me, it probably has to do with plying me for information. If Adom seems disinterested, it’s because he wants Berrel to think I’m irrelevant. Time to stir the waters a bit.

  I escaped the grisly game of dragon slap by clinging to one of the dragon’s talons. When it tried to shake me off, it pulled the rope from the ceiling, freeing me. Then I ran. I smile, my strategy forming. I shift willingly toward Lord Berrel and curtsey. “There’s no need to pull. I’ll gladly dance with you, my lord.”

  Adom’s reaction is as startling as a clay wall turning to feathers. His back is stiff and straight, and his eyes are suddenly attentive and sharp. “Elanor?” His voice lilts in surprise. “You don’t have to go if you’d rather not. It’s getting late.”

  So now he shows concern? Ah. He was counting on my bullish manners and my lack of social skills to drive Berrel away. “Don’t be silly, Count Malandre.” I grit my teeth. “This clever young dragon wants to teach me how to dance. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  He reaches for my arm, and there is an awkward tug-of-war between myself and the two men. “Remember we have responsibilities to attend to?” Adom says with a tight jaw. “We have to leave. It wouldn’t do to be caught up dancing.”

  If that’s all the fight the man has, I might as well elope with Lord Berrel here and now. Adom can’t steal me away or kill me if someone expects me home in time for supper.

  “Nonsense.” My voice drips with syrupy sweetness while I push him away. “Isn’t that why you brought me here? To learn about society? My parents would be so disappointed if they heard you wouldn’t even let me dance at my first event.”

  Adom gives me a warning look before stalking to one of the serving tables. He’s not happy with my performance, but how can he expect a flawless act when I never pretended around him before? Besides, doesn’t he want me to mingle and learn more about the dragon changelings? Or is everything he told me this morning a lie?

  Berrel seems immensely pleased with himself for acquiring me, as if I had nothing to do with the arrangement whatsoever. He grins hard at Adom’s retreating back, smug, as if he won a joust or cut off a dragon’s head. In fact, I’m a tinge more impressed with Adom for showing an extraordinary amount of will power by not changing and swallowing Berrel whole. Adom the human is a yawning house-cat compared to his rip-you-in-half counterpart. He
’s bound by all the same rules and niceties as everybody else in Trana.

  At last, my would-be dancing partner seems to recall my presence. He crooks his head and smiles at me. “Where do you hail from, Elanor?” he asks, all traces of pomp and pretense gone. Now his voice sounds benign and conversational, the heat and urgency from before mysteriously purged from it. “You seem older than the usual debutante.”

  “I’m from an island not far off the coast of Trana. I’m twenty-one. It’s the normal age to go into society where I’m from.” I hope he doesn’t catch the slight breathlessness in my voice and detect the lie. It’s not, technically, dishonest but I’m certainly not a debutante.

  “Meriddow,” he guesses. “Or Cornoc.”

  “Close,” I say. “South of Cornoc.”

  “And what are you doing here with the Count?” He glances toward Adom and sneers. “The man has quite the reputation with the ladies. He’s been known to leave decimation and mayhem in his path. I hope you have your guard up.”

  How in the world do I answer? Decimation and mayhem? Maybe not in the way Berrel is thinking, but Adom definitely leaves both in his wake. “As he informed you earlier, he’s my guardian this evening. He’s accompanying me to the city.” I avoid addressing his last statement, although I feel like the twitching muscle near my eye is giving away my discomfort.

  “I see.” He intertwines my fingers into his. “Let’s waste no more time on pleasantries. Allow me to show you how this is done.” He winds my free arm around his waist and rests his hand gently on my hip. “Follow my lead. One, two, three. One, two three. Move with the music.”

  For several focused minutes, I tune out the sound of glasses tinkling and people laughing. My eyes fix on the glowing pinpoints of Berrel’s blue irises and my ears latch onto his voice as he counts out the rhythm. My body vibrates to the beat of the percussion. The lord moves with precision, each step a thoughtful and deliberate placement. After a time, my eyes screw shut. I pretend I’m walking through black caves, the delicate balance of toe and heel essential for safe passage, for survival. Berrel’s fingers tighten around my hip and he draws me closer. He smells pleasant, like the bark of a Black Jack pine on a sunny day. And his palm against mine is dry and firm, neither coarse like Muuth’s nor insistent like Adom’s.

  “You are quite agile for a young woman with no tutelage in dance,” Berrel comments, his voice warm with unexpected emotion. “You’re a natural on your feet.”

  “Thank you.” I peer up at him with drowsy eyes.

  “So you aren’t lovers, then?”

  All fuzzy feelings disintegrate. “Excuse me?”

  “You and Count Malandre?”

  I step on his foot. Hard. The mask slides down the bridge of my nose, and I have to pause for a moment to push it up. When I can see again, I realize I’ve done real damage.

  “Ow.” His eyes slide shut and his foot shifts away from mine.

  “So sorry,” I say without a hint of remorse.

  He flashes a brittle smile. “I’ll pretend that was an accident.”

  “So will I.”

  Berrel gives me a measuring stare. “I can see why he likes you.”

  “Why do people always assume—”

  “It’s the way he looks at you.”

  It takes me several seconds to recover from this. Whose business is it what Adom is to me? I have no interest in chit-chat with strangers about non-existent relationships with individuals I happen to loathe. Maybe this is how strangers talk to each other in Trana? I think hard about a polite way to tell Berrel to mind his own business. “You’re mistaken.”

  “I think you’re new to affection, madam.”

  Ugh. Could this ‘gentleman’ be any more condescending? “Berrel, was it?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkle. “That’s my name.”

  “I’m a bit fatigued.”

  “Would you like to dance closer to the punchbowl?”

  “That would be appreciated.”

  The moment we reach the table, I pull away and fill my hands with a glass so I have an excuse to discontinue the activity. I drink it slowly, counting the seconds in the hopes that he will become bored and wander away. On the whole, dancing is not entirely unpleasant. On the other hand, when dancing with Lord Berrel each and every step seems like a calculated move to ensnare me in some way. Adom is right to distrust him.

  “Where do you come from?” I ask, because he isn’t going anywhere. Furthermore, it’s uncomfortable just standing here staring at him, and about time I reverse the tables.

  “North of this country,” he answers vaguely.

  I motion to his excessive costume. “Do you have dragons in your land?”

  He blinks. “Don’t tell me you believe in all this dragon gossip?”

  “You don’t?”

  “I supposed you were smarter than that,” he admonishes. “Where I come from, there’s a theory about what’s happening here. Trana is angled closer to the sun than the rest of the land. There’s a drought. The land is scorched by dry air, lack of rainfall, and the parched farmlands.”

  “You don’t think dragons could do it?”

  “The stone soldiers killed them all, didn’t they? It’s just fear and superstition talking.”

  Maybe it’s because I’m used to quibbling with Adom by now, or maybe it’s because I can’t seem to forget ships sailing to avoid Onyx Island, but I find myself on the defensive. “You believe in a mythical stone army, but won’t entertain the possibility of dragons in spite of the eyewitness accounts? Lord Berrel, surely you are smarter than that,” I repeat his own words. “What if the stone soldiers didn’t kill them all?” Hadn’t Muuth implied this, after all? He’d said many dragons had died in the battle, not all of them.

  “We wouldn’t be celebrating Jetarna Day next week if it hadn’t happened.”

  I feel my face going long and blank. “Jetarna Day?”

  “I forgot you aren’t from here. There was a woman, Jetarna, who went to all the nations and prophesied that the stone soldiers would come and defeat the dragons. Three days later, the soldiers appeared. They came from the mountains, from the farmlands, from the ground itself. They drove back the dragons, their simple touch changing the fiery beasts to stone.”

  “So the dragons turned to stone? They didn’t die?” Is that what Adom meant by the stone disease? I’m dying to ask, but what if I’m wrong and it catches Berrel’s attention?

  “That’s what killed them. People gathered the stone dragons after the battle and ground them to dust. They spread the dust across the country so no one would ever be able to put them back together again. And guess what they did to Jetarna?”

  “What?”

  He grins. “They hung her.”

  While strong horror and even disgust surges, provoked by his frank insensitivity, there’s a dark part of me that connects on a very base level with his transparency. It’s the same part that connects me to Muuth, as twisted and confused as my cave-dwelling friend might be at times.

  “Why did they hang her?”

  “How could she predict the dragon’s downfall? Obviously, she must have been a witch.”

  “Then why is there a Jetarna Day?”

  “The threat’s gone. There are no witches, and there are no dragons. People love to believe in the unseen, they love a martyr, and they love the excuse to drink and revel. The dragons haven’t returned, Lady Elanor. Superstition and wild imaginations have.”

  I think of the bit of scale around Raina’s neck, and of the two scales in my satchel. “And what do you make of the dragon scales? Where do you suppose they come from?”

  His eyes narrow wickedly. “I deal in dragon scales. It’s how I made my fortune.”

  “You don’t believe in dragons, but you sell the scales and make money off of superstition and wild imagination? Why do you
contribute money to the king’s army?”

  “It’s my civic duty to support the king in his endeavors no matter how the funds are used. I own a mine where the ‘scales’ are found in abundance. Believe me, madam, they don’t come from dragons. They’re rocks with pretty designs that can be purified, shaped, melted and fashioned into exquisite jewelry.” His chest puffs up. “Why, if you go to the city, you’ll see every person of influence wearing one of my pieces. It’s quite the thing, now.”

  Berrel thrusts a hand in his pocket and pulls out what looks at first like a gold bit of thread. He holds it up to the lamplight, revealing a flat, glossy bead the size of a coin at the end of the delicate length. “You can have one, if you’d like.”

  I stare at the pretty trinket, then back at Lord Berrel’s bearded visage. “No, thank you.” I think about the millions of scales I left on Onyx. “It’s kind of you, but I don’t wear jewelry.”

  Berrel nods, his eyes narrowing as he puts the necklace away. He combs a hand through thick, curly hair. “You’re absolutely right. I wouldn’t wear one of these gaudy baubles, either.”

  Instead of flattered, I feel vaguely uneasy. It’s almost as if Lord Berrel means to insult me, only I can’t figure out how. “I think our time is at an end, sir. The dance is over.”

  “Forgive me.” He folds at the waist and dips his head low. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  Adom manifests in front of me. “I take it you’re ready to go?”

  I gaze from Adom’s profile to Lord Berrel’s. For all I know, one is a cooking pan and the other is a hornet’s nest. But chatting with Lord Berrel gave me some useful food for thought. Muuth is right: some Tranars don’t believe the dragons exist, and yet dragon scales are still a valuable commodity. Berrel might prove useful if I ever need to trade those scales in my satchel for money. Nothing is more reliable than a person’s greed, and something tells me that Berrel has plenty of that to fund my interests. He also told me a little more about the local superstitions about the stone soldiers and the woman who supposedly predicted the dragon’s demise, Jetarna.