Tytiana

by Marc Secchia

  “Na’axion.”

  “Huh?”

  “The man behind the note.”

  “Oh … oh!” Tytiana was sure Zihaeri’s eyes were just as quizzical as her own. Na’axion? Where did such a name come from? “That may very well mean –”

  “Aye.”

  “Which could well identify my –” She stroked one of her long tresses meaningfully. Zihaeri nodded soberly. “How did the note taste?”

  “Like an affair of significant import,” her sister stressed lightly.

  That was one way of putting it! Despite that they had suspected this much, Tytiana felt desperately unsettled. It was one thing to speculate. Quite another to find a note between her mother and … a lover? At best, a confidante? At worst – this ignoble Na’axion might have a shock of bright red hair. He might have seduced their poor mother, or …

  “Fire!” Zihaeri hissed.

  Extinguishing her fingers, Tytiana rounded on her sister. “So, this offer from Faran – you aren’t just trying to protect me, are you? When did that little affair begin?”

  Hurt flashed into Zihaeri’s eyes. “While you were away.”

  She wished those words back. How she wished … eventually she reached out for her sister’s hand, which was given reluctantly, and she whispered as they walked beneath the musty-smelling conifers alongside the road, “Forgive me?”

  “For what? I don’t wish a dungeon upon my own sister, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  Tytiana said, “How far down the road shall I kick myself before you realise how sorry I am? I’m trying, alright? It’s just all this stupid fire mixed with stupid jealousy and a stupid tongue that wags when it is most unwelcome and stupidly tries to set everything on fire.”

  “Alright, alright. Forgiven.”

  They ambled along companionably for a space, each thinking her own thoughts. Still sensing the fire all too acutely, Tytiana soon added:

  “What I was attempting to ask is, is this what you want? Is it a pragmatic arrangement? Is this father’s doing – though it doesn’t seem that way to me? And, I want to assure you I think Faran is a fantastic match and he probably has no clue how totally smashing and incredible you are, and if he doesn’t treat you like first-quality silk I will personally march over to House White and slide my dagger through his slimy, stinking lizard-gizzard and twist the … ah, I give up! Rotten tongue. Ha ha.”

  “Uh …” Zihaeri chuckled. She seemed so proper and capable on the outside, but Tytiana knew she could be hurt, and she had prodded one nasty talon into the exact spot. She said, “Should I warn him about my overprotective little sister?”

  “Little? I’m taller than you.”

  “Age comes before young sprouts,” her sister averred. “Alright, question for you. Is it better or worse when he’s around?”

  Tytiana scratched her chin thoughtfully. “Both.”

  “Same for me – for us. Tyti, he’s my Mister Handsome. We met him at the Ball three years ago. I don’t know if you remember, but he was gallant enough to offer you your very first dance, even though you were only thirteen.”

  “I remember standing on his toes. Twice. Remember how my foot didn’t fit properly at that time? While I felt ready to die, he graciously complimented my terrible dancing. And then –”

  “And then he danced with me.”

  She felt rather than saw her sister skip a little as she spoke, perhaps unconsciously, and realised that even practical, no-nonsense Zihaeri could be swept up in rainbows over Islands. Her inner heat seemed to mellow. Taking half a second to glance over her shoulder, she saw that Jakani had just offered her sisters one of his jars to collect – beetles? No, Sariaki was rescuing a beautiful purple-spotted monarch butterfly from a bush by the roadside. She gave the Dirt Picker a glare that threatened instant disembowelment should he dare to touch her baby sister. Freaking windrocs, she was in a tetchy mood today. He evidently felt it too, because he flinched as if she had struck him, and she was not convinced she did not spy smoke wafting from his ears. Maybe the memory of smoke?

  Excellent. Let him stew upon that!

  As she and Zihaeri caught up on the road, Jakani punched several holes in the lid with a sharp shard of flint and handed the bottle to Sari with a bow. “Your treasure, honoured Choice.”

  Sariaki simpered and threw Tytiana a perfectly, most infuriatingly smug glance.

  “Right, let’s ride on!” she called, narked – once again.

  Lumpish lummox! Lugubrious, lily-livered larva! How was it that Zihaeri found herself a worthy match and she was dallying with an immigrant Dirt Picker of the Third Class, and … had no absolutely intention under the suns of stopping?

  She stumbled climbing into the carriage as a new realisation hammered home. All this talk about Mister Handsome. The truth was, he was the one, wasn’t he? Zihaeri was right. All the ralti sheep in the Island-World could not pull enough wool over her eyes to disguise what she knew to be real and true and undeniable, right in the deepest places of her being. An Island-shaking truth. What could she do? Elope, leaving behind all she loved? Where would they even go? And how could she ever entrust her sisters to father? No way!

  Jakani clearly felt strongly toward her. He disguised it well. Yet could he rise above his heritage as a lamko to make more of himself? He was a poor boy living in a mud and stick hut, a labourer, an unschooled serf. Her lip curled at the tenor of her thoughts. Her hands trembled. Were these her criteria, that he should be educated, clean, not dressed in rags, suave, comfortable with wealth, well-spoken – would she even rip his lamko accent from him? What kind of a person was she? She could not even stop thinking of him as lamko in the first instance!

  All her fine sensibilities.

  All her superiority.

  She hated what she saw in herself, and the fire most of all.

  * * * *

  On Tytiana’s orders the carriage sped over the highland terrain at double time. The ridge was rocky in the main, but they passed open, scrubby grass areas where a few ancient fenturi trees, amongst the largest Jakani knew of, fought for a living. Occasionally, they skirted outcroppings of huge sandstone boulders, and twice cut through pungent forests of very tall, straight pines with their characteristic, downward sloping thickets of green needles. Then they slowed for the switchbacks on the dry side of the ridge and descended through the green and then grey orchards. Tytiana had been studying the effects of water supply on the tensile qualities of spider silk – apparently, deprivation of this crucial resource made for stronger but less beautiful thread. She had proposed making silk rope out of the type of thread cultivated on these dryer slopes, to uproar in the House and beyond. Silk rope? They’d ruin their market!

  The Choice certainly loved to cultivate scandal.

  The roads through these relatively younger plantations were very straight, so they rattled right along, making a good pace. Also there had been no rain this side of the ridge, so now instead of eating mud, he was breathing in clouds of dust.

  Overhead, the Green Dragon who had been shadowing their progress spiralled slowly upward on a thermal. Jakani wondered if he enjoyed the warmth. Dragons were reptilian in appearance, but unlike lizards, he understood that they generated their own internal heat like mammals. So how did one classify the Dragonkind? Not amongst animals if one preferred to stay alive. Tales suggested that they had fire stomachs and even, that they had fire-streams rather than bloodstreams. Whatever the case, that was one incredible, magical beast up there. When he passed over, his wings overshadowed the suns. His body alone had to be twice the size of Jakani’s hut back home, discounting the head, neck and tail, and those fangs… wow. Chomp-a-monster plus. Surely these ralti sheep they passed now in a small pasture set back amongst the orchards, who were themselves the size of a decent cart and stood taller than a man, felt a shiver right through their mortal marrow as that Dragon passed over?

  Tytiana. She had living fire within her, did she not? He felt its effect every time they were near.
Did that mean she was one of the legendary third race, those people said to have real, living fire within them? How did they not simply end up in a puff of smoke?

  Her healing fire had to be magical. No way could that be faked.

  What then of a man who could lift a solid iron carriage with his bare hands? What did that make him? For fire featured in those tales, but not an unnaturally strong or fast man. That was a mystery. Perhaps it was his Nikuko heritage?

  On and on the carriage rumbled, bringing them through the four-mile-wide band of cultivated lands. The air grew hazy before them, hazy with both smoke and moisture, just as he remembered from his last trip out here with the tiger cub. They smelled pongy brimstone and charred salts and rich mineral tangs from the abundant hot springs, and then to Sariaki’s squeals of delight, a huge geyser erupted in the distance, the column of boiling water rising perhaps a hundred feet into the air.

  “Best avoid that,” muttered one of the soldiers.

  To the near side of the springs were a number of well-known pools that were safe for swimming. Deeper in the area, the ground was more unstable as the geyser had just demonstrated, and Jakani understood that the Merxxian Heavy Dragons had dug themselves a nice lava bath right near the centre, in the hottest part. One way of bathing, he supposed!

  Here, the Choices alighted from their carriage. Servants quickly set up tall cloth screens on wooden frames around a cluster of fetchingly purple pools so that the ladies could bathe in seclusion – he tried manfully not to think about Tytiana in the nude. Maybe rich people had something like bathing clothes? No idea. Poor people had rivers and their skins. But this was a whole operation. And now half of the soldiers disappeared to another isolated pool a short ways off. From there came the sounds of splashing and merriment.

  “Dirt Picker!” He jogged over to Tytiana’s side. She said, “You reek worse than the sulphur around here. After you unmuddify yourself –” she scowled at Jakani as his eyebrows had the cheek to twitch at her made-up word “– set up my equipment and then go track down my tiger. I am going to go bathe.”

  “Aye, Choice.”

  Aye. I’ll do the work whilst you relax.

  She glared at him. “What did you say? Still standing here catching flies? MOVE!”

  As he turned, a most unexpected slipper’s toe applied firmly to his backside almost sent him sprawling. Four soldiers standing nearby burst into guffaws. Tytiana! Burning of ear and metaphorically scratching his head, Jakani raced off to the supply carts. Had she heard him speak? Had he spoken? Quick now. He unpacked her tables and set them up, then placed the travelling trunks alongside and assembled her equipment as he had been taught. Good. All done. Dashing off, he remembered the matter of his cleanliness and hopped fully clothed into a steaming – “Yeow! Hot. Hot … hmm. That’s actually quite nice. Vegetable-boiling temperature, but ooh. No wonder those wealthy types like their baths.”

  He glanced suspiciously around him, still unconvinced he was not going to catch some unmentionable disease from bathing. Ugh. Alright. Dunk the head, swish a bit of water about and call himself clean. Good enough.

  After that, he set out tracking. The area covering the hot springs and volcanic activity was roughly oval, about a mile and a half to two miles in diameter. A maze of rocks, cracks, pools and colourful salt formations greeted him. The pools varied in colour from a bilious yellow to a frighteningly luminous green; some were crimson and others, variegated shades of orange. A few appeared to be fresh water, or at least, water he might trust to swim in. The greener pools were occupied by squawking flotillas of wading birds, which appeared to be feasting upon the algae growing profusely in the shallows. Skirting the worst of the geysers and the steaming cracks that opened across his path, he continued to search methodically, using the suns as his guide.

  A couple of hours later, Jakani finally tracked down some cat scatter over at the far Eastern side of the hot springs, but when he found the tiger responsible, it was not Furball. He had to flee for his life.

  Great. Awesome tracking skills.

  Another hour passed in futile exploration. At this rate he could not even find a Dragon standing in an open field. He petulantly contemplated tossing a stone into a pool just to scare the water birds wading there. The Choice would grill his backside rather than just kicking it.

  He was finally returning like a hunting hound slinking back to its master, tail between its legs, when a prickle at the back of his neck alerted him. “Furball!”

  RARRRGGGH!

  Gold blurred toward him. Jakani took off with impressive speed. “Furball! Come on. I know it’s you,” he gasped, leaping up a pile of boulders like a crazed runaway goat before springing way, way over a pink pool to land awkwardly among the boulders beyond.

  GRR-GNARR!

  “Furball, no!” The tiger was not listening.

  Jakani sprinted away. At this point, he knew only one thing might save him from a cat that was either ravenous, or intent upon playing with him as a feline plays with a mouse. Neither option was desirable; both struck him as decidedly lethal. He was not about to argue with those fangs.

  “Tytiana! Choice Tytiana! Heeellpp!”

  He ran like a storm unleashed. He ran like a man grateful for his hide. And he supposed he ran like a terrified rat, because the tiger’s fearsome growls changed to something that unequivocally crossed purring with cat laughter, at least in his panicked brain, because it seemed to be toying with him, repeatedly herding him this way and that as Jakani hurdled salt formations and dashed through short tunnels and doubled back upon himself, all to no avail. At last, he spotted a flutter of white. The bathing enclosure.

  “Choice! Help meeeee!”

  There she was, wrapped in a pink towel that clashed so violently with her titian hair, Jakani’s eyes hurt. Bare calf. Phew. Even better. As he lengthened his stride in a final flat-out dash for safety, he thought he might just make it. Fifty feet. Thirty! From nowhere, he felt a heavy weight crash into his back and he went flying nose first into a crusty patch of salt with a tiger riding him down.

  “Heelp!”

  “Furball!” Tytiana cried happily.

  Mrrrrwwl, purred the half-grown tiger. Despite the foetid breath fluffing up his hair, Jakani felt a rough tongue rasp the sweat off the nape of his neck. Mrr-rrr. GRRWLL!

  “Walking flipping thunderstorm,” he growled, trying to wriggle up, but the cat pinned him down with a paw and licked his cheek. Slurp. “Ouch.” Slurp. “Yeow!” His skin was going to be rasped clean off him. “Get off, you’re meant to be a wildcat, not a lapdog. Stop with the slobbering already.”

  “Nice catch, Furball,” Tytiana laughed, hopping toward them on one leg and using her crutch this time for balance. Oh. He had not considered that she would have to remove her foot for swimming. “Keep licking the nonsense off of him. That’s right.”

  “Excuse me,” Jakani complained.

  Way to not impress a girl, unless she liked the comedian type. How humiliating. Yet he spotted a tiny twinkle in Tytiana’s eyes, and a curve of her lips that betrayed amusement at his predicament even though she was pretending unconcern.

  The Choice called her sisters over and introduced them to Furball, who was much warier with them than with her or the apparent captive, but she did bend her head to sniff Sariaki’s hand and suffered a short scratch behind the ears. The blonde child’s eyes were as wide as Jakani knew his must be. The golden cat now stood almost the height of Tytiana’s armpits, where she had tucked her towel, and it had filled out a great deal and become sleeker, much less the fluffy cub now and more the lethal predator. Sariaki was simply dwarfed.

  “She seems to be doing well,” Tytiana said. “Oh. There she goes.”

  Jakani made a show of groaning and sitting up. He dusted his skinned palms with a couple of loud slaps. “Alright. Could someone please check if I’m still alive?”

  “Poor boy,” said Tytiana. “Qui, would you say he looks mostly alive?”

  Blue eyes danced
in his direction before lowering modestly. “Mostly, aye. Did you order him to serve as bait? Or was this the impromptu entertainment you promised us?”

  He kicked crusty salt at her foot. “Entertainment? You are clearly as radiant as your older sister, o Choice Quiraeli.”

  “I could have sworn I just heard him say, ‘rude’,” Zihaeri claimed facetiously, reading his meaning with rather disastrous accuracy. He tried not to wince. “Must be that barbarous lamko accent.”

  Escape by Dragonship! He leaped aboard. “That was me mumbling around all the dirt I just scraped up with my jaw, honoured Choice. Ruddy Furball. Guess she likes me after all.” Scrambling to his feet, he bowed deeply, mostly to check his knees, which were scraped up a treat. Then he looked up. “I do believe – skanky plague rats!”

  There, standing right behind the bathing pool, was a humongous blue Dragoness.

  Chapter 13: Devious Dragons

  DRAGONESS. PREDATOR. HAVING Adazara the Teal sneak up behind her without the slightest sign or disturbance, evading all of their guards, was an experience that would remain imprinted in Tytiana’s memory forever after. A grizzled, battle-scarred veteran, Adazara could have looked into a second-storey window back at her mansion with ease. Tytiana knew the statistics from her research. Forty-three tonnes. Twenty-one feet tall at the shoulder. Wingspan, ninety-four feet. Muzzle twisted by an old injury and four distinct talon marks scored down her rear left thigh, while part of her jagged ruff of skull-spikes had been sheared clean off, flush against the right side of her skull. She was also a Blue shade, which usually meant a Dragon possessed higher magical powers – such as concealing a presence which now began to play upon her every sense as though a curtain had been drawn aside to reveal a fiery suns-rise?

  The Dragoness smiled lazily and in a voice like deep, slightly rasping flutes, said, “The most fiery greetings of Fra’anior grace your lives with living fires, little ones. I am Adazara the Teal Dragoness. Thank you for your communication requesting parley. You must be Zihaeri, Tytiana the Red, Quiraeli, and the delightful hatchling, Sariaki?”