Tytiana

by Marc Secchia

  “They weren’t much use last time, noble Flicker,” said the Commander. “Fearfully expensive –”

  “Expensive? My harem is expensive, albeit stocked with the most glorious – ahem! My warren is expensive. Your neck is very, very expendable at this point in time!” snarled the dragonet. “Stars above, you youngsters take liberties, and with an elderly dragonet’s most sensitive feelings at that.” He placed a paw dramatically upon his chest, and with the other, showed them the errant egg. “This is my poor, long-lost egg we are talking about here – an egg that refuses to be hatched as yet, worse and worse woe be upon me! She says her job isn’t done yet.”

  He snivelled piteously.

  “But your egg’s a hero!” Jakani blurted out. “Heroine, even.”

  Flicker’s rose-coloured eyes brightened in apparent amazement. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you sired a heroine, o noble Flicker,” he repeated, “who doesn’t even need to crack the eggshell to perform epic and valiant deeds. Long have I laboured to find the one who brought into being such a magnificent jewel.” Even as he spoke with surprising eloquence, the august dragonet appeared to be swelling before his eyes. “If you would allow it, may I tell you the amazing story of this egg, as much as I know of it?”

  Wiping his fire-orbs with his knuckles, Flicker exclaimed, “Oh, by my wings, Princess Shalanya! This young Shapeshifter might be worth salvaging from the scrap heap after all.”

  He threw the Princess a beseeching look. The scrap heap?

  She bowed. “Your wisdom, o most puissant Flicker?”

  The aged dragonet appeared to be on the point of expiring with ecstasy at these compliments. “Speak on, noble Dragon Jakani. Speak on!”

  Shalanya said, “Aye, please do, noble Jakani – truthfully, if you can.”

  * * * *

  Ting.

  Tytiana whirled. Food time, it appeared. She walked over to the grating, where a scared-looking girl knelt to slide a plate of food carefully through a slot to her. The fare was not inspiring – some kind of formless, probably tasteless lentil stew. It looked like last week’s gruel a Choice of the House would not have fed to her pets.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The girl appeared to be watching her lips, and made a gesture of assent.

  “You don’t speak?” Tytiana cupped her ear. Do you speak sign? she asked with her hands, slowly and probably with a terrible … well, accent?

  The girl was extremely pale and unkempt-looking, but she had dark hair and Tytiana would have placed her as originating from somewhere near Sylakia by her roundish facial features. She signed back, Aye, great lady.

  What an awful ulcer she had on the back of her right hand! It was partially concealed by a strip of bandage which would have been better left in a rag bucket, but judging from the girl’s clothing and general state of health and hygiene, this might be all she had. She could see the white of tendons deep inside the wound. Heavens weeping rainbows, even the lamko were mostly in a better state than this girl.

  I am – it took her several tries to remember all of the rune-signs – T-Y-T-I-A-N-A.

  Now, the lank dark hair slid forward to hide the girl’s face. She turned away from the grating as if frightened. Tytiana reached through quickly. “May I?” And before the girl could protest, she covered that thin, bony hand with her own. “Be healed.”

  Her fire flared gently in the dark.

  With a soundless scream, the girl fled down the tunnel behind the grating. What a clatter! She must have knocked over a cup or bucket of water, Tytiana realised. She would just have to go thirsty. The price of trying to force mercy upon another, she supposed, feeling guilty about what she had done so impulsively. The choice of a Choice rather than that of a person of true mercy.

  Tytiana realised something else. She had probably just met her first modern slave to the Dragons.

  That evening, she explored her environs minutely, trying to see if she could figure any way out of the mess in which she found herself. She was growing heartily sick of being a captive. In a sense, she had been a captive all her life to her father’s desires and ambitions for her. Not that she had disliked her job or the status her excellence in the assessment of silk had brought her, but it had not been her heart that led her to that work. Botany and science were fun and provided intellectual stimulation, but were limited to matters that pertained to the greater profitability of House Cyraxana. She had always known that, of course. Father had impressed the House’s need – or his greed, she supposed – upon her from her earliest experiments, when the tutors had agreed she showed an aptitude for the field.

  Conclusion? To escape this pit, she needed to be able to fly, or simply walk over the edge in imitation of a monstrous bruiser like Excorion. Easy.

  Very well. If she was such a clever scientist – cough, cough – then why not turn her intellect to the mystery of her own fire? True, that probably required drooling over Jakani’s ripped biceps or imagining kissing him again, which was deeply uncomfortable territory given his probable fate, but she knew he would have approved. ‘Be free, o Tytiana,’ he would have said, with that oh-so-wicked glint in his eye. ‘Burn for me.’

  Great dancing Islands, she must try to be rid of his shirt before her father saw her in it. Deliberately, she shucked her only garment and tossed it across the pit. Out of harm’s way.

  Then, she worked on manipulating her outer environment as she had done with the warming cocoon. She imagined plants. Rocks of fire. Wings. Breezes. Tendrils. A trunk. Fiery hands to raise her up. She tried to wield her fire in arcs, spatially bounded areas, glows, sprays, fountains. She attempted to move the glow around her body, from her fingers to her toes, through her hair, even into her eyes. She tried to focus the fire on one fingertip at a time, until she had the sense of concentrating it just right, and could begin to warm the rock in order to perhaps think of carving steps or handholds leading upward.

  No good, there. Whatever the Dragons had done in scooping out this pit, the rock appeared to dissipate the heat which she could generate faster than her ability to supply power.

  Exhausted, Tytiana slept.

  She awoke to the sound of the plate tinging against the grating again.

  Same girl. Be more considerate this time. A shy little smile from behind the metal grating greeted her. Thank you, Tytiana signed as she accepted the plate. Dry bread. Water carefully passed to her in a cup that she was forced to sip at through the grating, since it would not fit through any of the gaps. The girl filled it again from a bucket, then showed Tytiana that she would leave the wooden cup and bucket within reach. Her eyes flicked to the wooden foot and the strappings around and above her knee, which Jakani’s shirt left exposed since it hung only to mid-thigh.

  Catching the girl’s attention by tapping on her arm, Tytiana said, Accident. She tapped down her calf and again on the toes. All wood, see? It can come off.

  Sorry. Was it bad? asked the girl.

  I don’t remember much. It happened when I was three. How is your hand?

  Again, that frightened-mouse look. Squeezing the hand in her armpit. After she signed encouragement, however, the wan girl extended it, trembling, to show her the upper side. “Look! New flesh!” Tytiana cried excitedly, which must have communicated, because the girl stroked her hand to show that it was good. Not entirely, but it was doing visibly better.

  Her first success with an ulcer! Tytiana made an offering gesture. The girl shook her head, making several angry signs she did not understand.

  She asked, Are you a … worker?

  The girl pointed to her lips, and mimed, Slave. She taught Tytiana the sign.

  Slave. Are you many?

  Merciful heavens, she had to stop scaring the poor thing like that. She took off as if Excorion himself had roared in her face. Tytiana sighed. “You are a slave, and I’m a freak. Sorry.”

  Then, she remembered that sensation of sliding out between Ablazion’s talons and she went cold. There
might be a way out of here after all. But would she endanger a few slaves if she tried to escape that way? Maybe she should just try … just to see what she could do?

  Jakani would have teased, ‘Maybe you could escape down the sewer pipe, Choice Tytiana.’

  Her sudden burst of laughter earned her the sight of a Dragon’s muzzle peering down over the edge. So, she was being watched? Not half as efficiently as Excorion had suggested, however.

  She bowed from the waist. “Noble Dragon?”

  He vented a fiery snort and stalked off with a huff that suggested slaves were meant to be miserable and downtrodden, not cheerful.

  * * * *

  So, he had sat through an entertaining four-hour lecture from Flicker the One True Companion and Soul of the Star Dragoness herself, blessed be Her name, which covered a great deal of information on Shapeshifters, much of what he needed to know and a few things he honestly didn’t. Toilet habits? No thanks. Clothing problems when transforming between one form and another? Interesting but hardly the main point, he felt – Jakani would much rather have learned how to actually change into a Dragon, if he could at all.

  Then, Princess Shalanya had presented much the same information in neat, compressed point notes. Much more digestible. In her opinion, all the complexities could wait upon another day.

  Jakani pursed his lips. As in, the day after tomorrow, or as soon as he tried to rescue Tytiana from the pirate cabals?

  He also received a potted history of Shapeshifters. Apparently, Hualiama Dragonfriend had received the original, miraculous fire-gift from an Ancient Dragon who had lived somewhere around Fra’anior Cluster. With the help of Flicker, who had rescued her life more times than seemed possible in even a purported eight centuries of life – he really must ask someone about that – she had travelled all over the Island-World, including to the realms South of the Rift, breathing her unique magic into every true-fires Dragon or Human who was deemed worthy. Or not, in Flicker’s withering opinion, which included Jakani’s relative of yore. When he tactlessly joked that this made Hualiama sound like a Love Dragoness spreading rainbows of peace and happiness over the Isles, he earned a tongue-lashing from an apoplectic octo-centenarian which even Tytiana would have showcased proudly.

  He privately told Shalanya that the honour of being blasted by a living legend made him feel right at home in Immadia. She folded up in a fit of, in his non-expert opinion, very un-Princess-like giggling.

  Fed up to the eyeballs, bathed to within an inch of his life, having slept upon silken sheets in a bed fit for a King and breakfasted in eye-popping luxury, Jakani now wandered down the surprisingly warm halls of Immadia’s Royal Palace clad in nothing but a towel. Rather than crying, ‘out, you filthy Dirt Picker!’ all of the servants greeted him with respectful bows or nods. ‘Noble Dragon,’ and, ‘Honoured Dragon,’ and, three maidservants blushing in a corner, ‘It’s the new Dragon – don’t look!’ ‘Mercy.’ ‘Ooh, he looked at me!’

  This was all starting to go his head and he did not like it.

  Noble? Right.

  Apparently he was now a member of an exclusive third race, those who were both Human and Dragon simultaneously. That painted a target on his back because many Dragons regarded his kind as profane, a monstrous adulteration of the purity of draconic fire-life. Equally, many Humans innately distrusted Shapeshifters and some Islands, pan-Islandic organisations and guilds, and religious groups actively tried to hunt down and exterminate his kind.

  There. Now he felt so much better.

  Especially about the towel and the frigid temperatures outside. Stepping from the warm halls of the hallowed Palace, past a relatively new painting of King Beran who was father to a Star Dragoness – his eyes widened at the display of all this august history – he walked out into a rear courtyard covered in several inches of snow. Dawn painted the mountains a delicate shade of pink. The air was as crisp as dry leaves. His breath steamed in front of his face. And, amidst all this beauty, Princess Shalanya stood in the middle of the courtyard wearing just a towel, too. Wow, if only Tytiana …

  Abruptly, his feet started steaming in the ice. Sorry, Tytiana! He was just not accustomed of a frosty morn to meeting, firstly, young Princesses with perfectly white hair, and secondly, Princesses who seemed perfectly at home in a state of undress. Was she not supposed to be agoraphobic? Or did the courtyard walls function to help her feel safe enough out here?

  Shalanya dimpled prettily. “Islands’ greetings, Jakani! So, ready for lesson number one? Transforming. I sense your Dragon fire is ready.”

  Jakani gritted his teeth. She was looking at his feet! “Islands’ greetings, Princess.”

  “So, I will demonstrate and then you follow. Remember the rule. No more than two or three transformations per day, and don’t keep up that pace for days on end. Magic can be depleted.” Untucking her towel, she thankfully held it in front of her so that Jakani could not see most of her person. Just the toes curling in the snow. “Don’t forget to feed both of your forms. And, so.”

  Whoosh!

  “Unholy caroli!”

  He stumbled backward as a Dragoness appeared in front of him, the towel wrapped around her extended fore-talon. She was white with elegant pink detailing upon her muzzle, wing struts and lower belly. Even her talons were improbably pink. As if he could be in any doubt about her identity, the Albino Dragoness whirled her eye-fires at him in what Jakani realised was a coquettish manner. Not good.

  A very large part of him could not believe what he was seeing. A tiny, dimple-cheeked girl turned into that fire-breathing monster?

  “How do you like it?” fluted the Dragoness.

  Jakani pinched his thigh discreetly. Awake. Alarmed. Amazed!

  “Truthfully, Princess?” He noticed the unusual feature of her butterfly-like wings and her size, perhaps half of what Ablazion would be. Still, fifty-five feet or thereabouts was plenty of Dragoness! Especially when she was smiling at him with a row of gleaming white fangs. “Your Dragoness is strikingly beautiful.”

  Shalanya purred with pleasure.

  Uh-oh. Another mistake. Wasn’t he supposed to be telling the truth these days? Maybe a little less of the unadorned truth …

  The Dragoness cooed, “Tell me, Jakani, can your Tytiana do this?”

  Definitely a serious error of judgement. But he was not going to backtrack now, nor was he about to draw comparisons between two women. Isiki had suggested that a man might better throw himself off an Island rather than make that mistake. Between two Dragonesses? His life would not be worth living, not for long, anyways.

  He said, “Aren’t your wings most unusual, Princess?”

  Affecting a mournful air, she said, “Most Dragons value utility over beauty. I am attractive, indeed –” she arched her frankly amazing wings to showcase their delicate beauty “– but more in the way of a pretty bauble than a powerful Dragoness. Worse, my breath is not so much fire as, well, this.”

  Lifting her muzzle, she expelled into the air a stream of what Jakani fervently expected to be super-heated Dragon flame. Instead, he saw … pink sparkles. Figured.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “Unfortunately, my mighty breath-weapon serves no actual purpose we can discern.” Shalanya sighed theatrically. “Put little me in a battle and my utility drops to zero. Well, near zero. I have a range of minor psychic powers. Isn’t that marvellous? A pink sparkle-breathing Dragoness who is so terrified of wide open spaces, she has never even left the shores of this Island. So much for helping you rescue your Tytiana. You’ll have to do all the prodigious heroics by yourself, Dragon Jakani.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it. “Have you met many Dragons out here?”

  She said, “Not many care to fly all the way to Immadia. But I bet you’ve no idea what it’s like to belong to an illustrious clan where you have actual living stars in your heritage and everyone expects you to be as amazing and beautiful as my grandmother Aranya or as cool as great-aunt Iridiana, who’s li
ke this totally astonishing Chaos Shifter who can change into anything she likes. Compared to them, I’m pretty miserable. Really. Life sucks like a giant Land Dragon.”

  Quite lost amidst this splurge of information, he inquired vaguely, “What’s a Land Dragon?”

  “Island-sized Dragons that live beneath the Cloudlands.”

  “Oh. I thought it was all dead down there?”

  “No, you silly bleater. Don’t you know anything? Oh. Sorry. Forgot you’re a poor boy.” As Jakani tried to unstick the gnashing of his teeth to yell something rude, the Dragoness laid a paw upon his shoulder and said, “Sorry! Mother tells me I’m very much too direct sometimes. That was rude, wasn’t it? Forgive me?”

  “Aye. Forgiven.”

  He was absolutely not supposed to be thinking this very lethal pink Dragoness was cute, but she was. Tytiana would have slain him on the spot!

  “Thanks, noble Jakani. Now, I know you probably don’t feel very noble because you wince every time someone says that, which is sort of endearing, but I need you to realise something.” Her light pink eyes considered him, and suddenly her fires seemed to whirl in toward his soul, hypnotic and fearful and infinitely wise. “You are a Shapeshifter Dragon. You don’t think so. You don’t believe it. But I can tell you I have the power to see these things – some things, at least – and I know you are a Dragon. I can see, feel, touch and taste your Dragon fires, and if that’s not enough, my sixth and seventh senses are also abuzz with your magic. So, get on with it. Clothe yourself in all that is Dragon, as you did before.”

  Simple, right?

  An hour of frustration later, two further demonstrations by the Princess, and Jakani was steamed for reasons that had nothing to do with his ability to tramp steaming footprints all around the courtyard. Glorious day. Magical snow. A secluded place to practice being highly embarrassed.