Dragon's Bait

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Slowly Alys sat up. The silhouettes of the hills to her left were suddenly familiar, and she realized Selendrile had brought them to land just a short walk from the village of Saint Toby's. She rubbed her chilled arms. "I don't think," she admitted, "I'll be able to use the same disguise as I did in Griswold. I've lived with these people all my life, and men's breeches and a hat aren't going to fool anybody."

  "All right," Selendrile said equably.

  She sat looking at him, and he sat looking at her.

  "Well?" she finally asked.

  He sighed. "Assuming we can work around people recognizing you, what would you like to see done?"

  Alys considered. "Gower wanted my father's land so that he could expand his own shop. His wheelworking is very important to him. I think I'd like to see him lose his shop, ruin his reputation."

  "Easy to do. What about the daughter?"

  Alys remembered the glee with which Etta had embellished the false accusations her parents had made, and how she'd suggested burning Alys at the stake. She felt a tightness in her chest and was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. "I want her to be accused of the same thing I was, to know that she's innocent and to have nobody believe her. I want her to be just as scared as I was."

  Selendrile smiled. "And the mother?"

  Alys jumped to her feet. "I don't know," she cried. "It's not going to work anyway. They'll recognize me as soon as they see me. Why are you doing this?"

  The dragon-youth looked at her calmly, and whether he was considering the nature of clouds or thinking that he could have saved himself a lot of trouble by eating her on the mountain that first night, Alys couldn't guess.

  He said, "It's not that late. I'll go to the village now and tell Gower that I need a wheel for a farm cart. Then, tomorrow, we'll both go to the village." He kept on talking though she had started to shake her head. "We'll place a bandage around your head and face so that nobody can get a proper look at you, and tell them your jaw is broken so you can't talk. I'll tell them you were injured when the wheel we bought from Gower broke. That way we've already started to chip away at his reputation and we'll say that we have nowhere to stay so Gower—feeling guilty—will have to put us up."

  "Gower has never felt guilty about anything in his life," Alys said.

  Selendrile shrugged, an indication, Alys supposed, that they'd worry about that when they came to it.

  Alys once again tipped her face up to the night sky, annoyed that he could take all this so lightly. "The rest of it could work," she conceded.

  When he didn't answer, she looked and saw that he'd never waited for her decision but had already started walking toward the road that led to Saint Toby's. Alys had to run to catch up. "Am I supposed to wait here, or what?" she demanded.

  "Your decision," he said. "Though I'd have thought you'd be interested." He was making it sound as though she'd been wheedling not to go.

  "That's not—Oh, never mind." With his longer stride, it took all her breath just to keep up without looking like a silly little puppy.

  "Through the woods here." She pointed to where the road began the final curve before the village.

  They stayed to the perimeter of Barlow's pasture so that the trees would hide them from anyone looking out a cottage window, for the moon was full and the night was bright. Then they cut across the corner of Wilfred's wheat field and so came upon Saint Toby's from behind.

  "This is as far as I dare go," Alys whispered, crouching between rows of black currant bushes to make herself as small as possible. Selendrile stooped down also, resting his hands on her shoulders to look beyond her to where she pointed. "That's Gower's house, the one with the wagon wheel by the right-hand corner." Candlelight peeked out through the chinks by the window, though it must be getting close to bedtime. Next door, dark, was the house in which she'd been born and had lived all her fifteen years. Loneliness—the yearning for her father, for things to go back to the way they had been—swept over her. The house was close enough that—except for the fear of being seen—Alys could have run up and touched it in the time she would need to count to twenty.

  Selendrile showed no inclination to move, so Alys said, "If you're going to be telling them that you're—we're—from one of the farms between here and Griswold, you'd better circle round to the front and approach openly."

  He gave her a cold look, which could have meant that he'd thought of that already, or that she was being too loud, or any of a dozen other things. Without acknowledging her suggestion, without even standing, he moved back and disappeared between the bushes. Only he could have made such a move look graceful. If she had tried it, she'd have pitched forward onto her face.

  Eventually Alys gave up trying to catch some telltale movement or rustle to betray his passage, and she sat down to wait, trusting that there was no reason for him to abandon her here. She propped her chin up on her hands and enjoyed the quiet of the night and the reassuringly familiar smell of good farming earth. She found her head beginning to nod when suddenly she caught sight of Selendrile approaching Gower's house, walking next to Gower's wife. Presumably Una had been out late visiting one of the households on the edge of the village when Selendrile had entered, and she must have offered to guide him to her husband's wheelwright's shop. But to Alys's dismay, she realized that while she could see well enough, she could hear absolutely nothing.

  All unsuspecting, Una led the dragon-youth to her door. She turned back to say something to him—Alys could see the flash of her smile in the moonlight—then she went in while Selendrile waited outside, never glancing in Alys's direction. Gower came out, and in an agony of frustration she watched the two of them talk. Gower kept shaking his head, but after a few moments, he entered his shop, and Selendrile sat down on the ground, leaning his back against the wall. That had to mean everything was going smoothly. Didn't it?

  The back window opened, and daughter Etta dumped out a panful of water before securing the shutters again.

  Una came out of the house carrying a steaming bowl, presumably left over from supper, and handed it to Selendrile.

  Hmph! thought Alys, who had never gotten a free meal from Una despite the nearly dozen wheels she and her father had paid Gower to make.

  Una went back inside and Selendrile tossed pieces of whatever it was Una had given him out into the street, where a suspicious, but apparendy half-starving, dog gobbled them up, coming closer and closer, but warily.

  You'll be HIS dinner next, Alys mentally warned the dog.

  Una came back out, fanning herself with her hand as though the house was too warm, which Alys didn't believe for a moment. She'd seen the way the women of Griswold had looked at Selendrile, and even from this far away she could recognize that Una was giving him the same look. Maybe if Alys hadn't known what he was, he'd have had the same effect on her. But, she told herself, she wouldn't have been so obvious about it.

  Gower came out of the shop, rolling a wheel before him. Selendrile returned the bowl to Una, no doubt with his usual charming smile. Alys could see him pay Gower, then lift the wheel up onto his back and start off down the road to the outskirts of the village.

  Alys crawled along the row between the bushes, then cut off through the wood to meet him just beyond where the road curved.

  Either he heard her coming despite the fact that she had deliberately moved as quietly as possible, or being a great hulking dragon had given him steady nerves, for he didn't flinch when she jumped out of the dark at him.

  "I couldn't hear a thing," she told him. "What did he say?"

  Selendrile positioned himself so that he was facing in the direction of Saint Toby's. He set the wheel down on its edge and looked at her over the top. "The shop closes at sundown and I have a lot of nerve interrupting a hardworking man's rest."

  Alys glanced meaningfully at the wheel. "Obviously something changed his mind."

  "The wife."

  Alys snorted. "I can imagine."

  Selendrile seemed to shift intent
between the breath he took and the words. "Is there something specific you want to argue about, or are you just being generally unpleasant?"

  Alys squirmed, but couldn't bring herself to apologize. "They didn't seem to suspect anything?"

  "No."

  "Una seemed in a rare talkative mood. What did she say?"

  He looked beyond her as though to make sure no one from the village had followed. "All of it?" He sighed.

  She tried to stifle a smile. "Just the important parts."

  "There weren't any important parts."

  This time Alys laughed, and Selendrile's attention shot back to her. "She was flirting with you," Alys explained, lest he think she was laughing at him. "She liked you."

  Selendrile considered. His expression never changing from thoughtful innocence, he looked back toward Saint Toby's and said, "Maybe we can use that against her."

  Chapter 11

  ALYS FELT AS THOUGH she'd slept only moments when Selendrile shook her awake.

  "What? What is it?" She was alert enough to know that she wasn't alert enough to cope if something had gone wrong. And something had gone wrong, or else why was Selendrile getting her up while it was still dark out?

  Not that he seemed anxious or afraid, she realized as he pulled her up to a sitting position.

  But then again, when had he ever?

  Only slightly less groggy now, she asked, "Has something happened?"

  By the way he paused to consider she could tell that nothing had, at least not in the sense she had meant.

  "I broke the wheel," he said, "so that it would look as though the wood had been stressed then patched while Gower was making it."

  "Yes," Alys said, for this was what they had decided earlier. "Fine. Good night."

  He held on to her arm so that she couldn't lie back down. "It's almost dawn. And I brought these." He dropped a handful of rags onto her lap.

  It took a moment for her to realize that what in the dim light looked like black patches was in fact blood. She flinched and his grip tightened. "I'm awake," she assured him. If she was going to claim to be injured, it only made sense to nave bandages that supported that claim. Still, she didn't ask where the blood had come from; and he didn't say. He just sat there looking at her.

  The blood was still wet, though it had gone cold and sticky. Gingerly she draped one of the cloths over her head and around her chin, inwardly cringing at the touch of it against her cheek.

  "Tighter," Selendrile advised. "You don't want it to sag, or they'll see that there's unbroken skin beneath." He took over, then sat back and evaluated his handiwork. He must have been satisfied, though she'd never have guessed from his face, because he picked up another cloth and began to wrap it around the knuckles of her right hand.

  From between teeth which were clenched together from the tightness of his knot, Alys said, "I can't talk." Even she couldn't make out her words.

  "What?"

  Alys loosened the head cloth. "It's too tight. I can't talk."

  Selendrile pulled it up tight again. "You don't need to be able to talk. You only need to be able to breathe. You can breathe, can't you?"

  "Just barely." The words sounded garbled to her, and Alys doubted whether he'd understood. But apparently the fact that she was neither turning purple nor falling over onto her side and twitching satisfied him that she was getting enough air.

  "If you talk," Selendrile said, "somebody might recognize your voice."

  Alys sighed, knowing he was right.

  "If you sigh around other people as much as you sigh around me, somebody's bound to recognize that, too."

  THEY REACHED the outskirts of Saint Toby's as the edge of the sky began to turn pink. Some of the villagers would be just getting up, Alys knew, though nobody was out and about yet.

  Selendrile was dragging the damaged wheel and she was trying to remember to favor her right leg, which was supposed to be injured, in case anybody was watching. In front of Gower's home, she leaned against the wheel as though for support while Selendrile banged on the door, much louder than necessary to rouse just Gower's household. "Wheelwright!" he bellowed.

  The door flung open, and there was Gower, holding a candle to see what the commotion was, looking as furious as a water-doused cat. At the sight of him, Alys's knees got weak and she was glad she had the wheel to support her after all.

  "What's all this?" he demanded, looking straight at her.

  She realized that she was breathing loudly, stopped, remembered that she was supposed to be hurt and that great wheezing breaths might be mistaken for exhaustion as well as panic, and resumed with a ragged intake of air.

  "That wheel you sold us broke," Selendrile said, still overly loud. "My brother Jocko, here, has been injured."

  Behind Gower, Etta and Una hovered in the doorway.

  "My wheels don't break," Gower said.

  Alys heard another villager's door open nearby and saw Gower's glance shift to the left.

  "The wheel broke," Selendrile shouted. "Just look at my poor brother. This town was closer than our farm, so we came back here."

  Yet another door opened a crack.

  "Just"—Gower held his hands out, indicating there was no need for excitement in front of witnesses—"come inside."

  Selendrile threw his arm around Alys as though she couldn't make it alone.

  Gower shoved his daughter in the direction of the wheel. "Get that thing indoors," he commanded between clenched teeth.

  Alys let Selendrile half drag, half carry her across the floor of the living area to the bed. Gower looked pretty sour about that, but Una lit a candle from the low-burning night-fire and brought it over.

  Compassionate soul that she was, Etta made a disgusted face and put her back to them to get breakfast started.

  With an expression that matched her daughter's, Una nodded toward Alys's head and said, "That probably needs a fresh bandage."

  "No!" Alys mumble-cried. She couldn't be sure anybody could understand her, and she flinched away.

  "No," Selendrile said quietly. "We had a terrible time getting the bleeding to stop. It's probably best to leave the wound alone."

  For all that she'd gotten closer than her daughter had, Una looked relieved. "If you think that's best," she murmured.

  Oh, for heavens sake, Alys thought at the worshipful expression on the older woman's face.

  "Never saw anything like this happen to one of my wheels before," Gower said, examining the wheel by the light of the fire.

  "Well," Selendrile said charitably, "it can't be helped now. We're just lucky we weren't both killed when the cart tipped into the ditch."

  "Oh my!" Una said breathlessly, never glancing away from Selendrile, not even to the wheel.

  Slowly Selendrile looked up from Alys, flat on her back on Gower and Una's bed, and met Una's gaze. Even from this awkward position Alys could see his smile was dazzling. She groaned and burrowed deeper into the mattress.

  "I'll make a new wheel for you," Gower said, heading for the workshop.

  After he was gone, Selendrile said, "I should be going."

  "What?" Alys cried, her voice muffled by the bandages.

  "Must you leave?" Una asked.

  Selendrile took Una's hand and held it gently between his own. With a look so sincere Alys wanted to choke, he said, "After the accident, Jocko and I just left the cart upturned in the ditch by the road, with the ox tethered so it could graze a bit without wandering off. I need to return it to the farm and make sure everything's all right there. Could you please watch over my brother until this evening?"

  "Certainly," Una said, which Alys knew only meant that she wanted to see Selendrile again.

  Between clenched teeth, Alys hissed, "Don't you dare leave me behind."

  "What did he say?" Una was gazing at Selendrile in a dreamy sort of way.

  "He said you're much too kind," Selendrile said, still looking deep into Una's eyes. "And you are. You're very kind."

  Una modestl
y looked away. "I do what I can," she whispered.

  Alys was tempted to demand, "Since when?" Instead she waited for Selendrile to once again lean over her.

  "I'll be back as soon as I can, Jocko." He gently patted her shoulder.

  With her supposed "good" hand, she grabbed a handful of shirt and, as distinctly as possible, whispered, "I'll get you for this."

  "What did he say?" Una asked.

  "I don't know." Selendrile turned and gazed at her sincerely. "After that knock on the head, he hasn't been making much sense lately. I think you just need to leave him alone all day—let him rest."

  "Don't do this to me," Alys begged.

  Without a word, he straightened, kissed Una's hand, and left.

  Chapter 12

  WHY WAS HE always doing this to her? Alys wondered: helping her, guiding her, tricking her into trusting him—liking him even—though all her instincts warned against either, and then repeatedly tossing her out on her own, forcing her to plot and make decisions and confront her enemies all by herself?

  She burrowed deeper into the bedding and lowered her eyelids so that they were open only the slightest crack, pretending sleep. Una still stood by the door, shifting her gaze from her hand to the path Selendrile had taken. Wherever she looked, she wore an expression that reminded Alys of the large moist eyes of particularly loyal and brainless cows. Alys thought of the dog Selendrile had been feeding last night. At least it had had the sense to be afraid. And at least it was getting food out of the relationship.

  As though suddenly aware of what she was doing, Una cast quick looks at Alys and beyond, presumably to Etta, who was noisily setting out the breakfast meal. Apparently satisfied that no one had been watching, Una moved out of Alys's range of vision to help Etta.

  "Here," she heard Una say, "go put this by him."

  "But he's disgusting," Etta protested. "He's all bloody and"—Alys could just picture the wince—"dirty."

  "Hush your mouth and do as I say."

  Etta sneered, "You do it then if you're so taken by him and his brother." Then, "All right, all right, AT J. RIGHT," she squealed in a tone that made Alys suspect Una was twisting her ear.